This Week in Words: Current Events Vocabulary for June 24–June 30, 2023

Publishers Clearing House will pay $18.5 million to settle a lawsuit accusing the company of using coercion to compel people to pay for products. The company makes its money by selling magazine subscriptions, attracting customers with multi-million-dollar sweepstakes. The suit alleges that the company's deceptive techniques deliberately made people believe they had to subscribe in order to enter the sweepstakes. The Latin root of coercion means "to control."

After centuries of deforestation, ecologists in Ireland are pushing to restore native plants on a mass scale. Generations of Irish farmers have cleared trees from their land; along with the overgrazing of sheep that rip grasses from fields, this has created spare landscapes which scientists recognize as ecological deserts, stripped of most native species. A new movement to "rewild" would replace the oak, birch, hazel, and yew trees that used to cover 80 percent of the country.

In a breakthrough for fertility studies, a team of scientists has produced laboratory models of human embryos for the first time. The researchers induced stem cells to form clumps that very closely resemble the earliest stage of a human, between fertilization and birth. They emphasized that the clusters of cells were only models that could be used to better understand embryonic development and not true embryos capable of becoming a baby.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, it's almost always safe to ignore food expiration dates, which signify freshness rather than safety. A lack of standard labeling practice means that "sell-by" dates on packaged food rarely have to do with how safe it is to eat, and perfectly edible canned, bottled, and boxed food is often thrown away. The Latin root of expiration, expirare, means "breathe one's last."

A tourist who was caught on video carving the name of his girlfriend into a wall of the Colosseum in Rome may face legal consequences. Images of the unidentified man engraving "Ivan + Haley 23" onto the 2,000-year-old structure went viral. Graffiti, derived from the Greek graphein, "to scratch or draw," was first used to describe ancient Roman scribbles found on the landmark ruins of Pompeii.

Conservationists in Myanmar captured the first known images of endangered Burmese peacock turtle hatchlings this month. The tiny newborn softshell turtles were filmed just after emerging from their eggs, as they crawled out of the underground nest where they had incubated for nine months. Scientists were thrilled with the sighting and the unusual opportunity to study an extremely rare animal.

Five people were diagnosed with malaria in the past month, the first known cases in the U.S. since 2003. The patients, four in Florida and one in Texas, contracted the disease from mosquitoes. It can be quite serious and even fatal, but malaria continues to be very rare outside of Africa and parts of Asia. The original definition of malaria was "unwholesome air," from the Italian mala aria, literally "bad air," which early doctors thought caused the illness.

A new study suggests that protecting marine plants and animals is also beneficial for the people who live close by. Researchers looked at parts of Central America's eastern coast where coral reefs are protected, and compared them with unprotected areas. They found that caring for the ocean population had a mirroring effect in its human neighbors, raising both their health outcomes and total wealth. Marine is from the Latin mare, "sea."

An armed rebellion by a group of Russian mercenaries against the country's leadership ended in an apparent agreement between President Vladimir Putin and the group's leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin. The mutiny began when Wagner Group soldiers marched into Russia on June 24 to execute what Putin called a treasonous "military uprising" in Moscow. The compromise was brokered with help from Alexander Lukashenko, the leader of Belarus. The root of mutiny means "military uprising."

A safety nonprofit group reports that pedestrian deaths in the U.S. are the highest in four decades. Data from all 50 states shows that in 2022, more than 7,500 people were killed by cars or trucks while they were walking outdoors. The number of those traveling on foot who were hit by vehicles increased by 77 percent from 2010 to 2021. Pedestrian comes from the Latin pedestris, "on foot," from a root meaning "foot."

After amassing a collection of 155 golf discs that her Labrador retriever fetched from the woods, a West Virginia woman will sell them, with the proceeds benefiting the nearby public Frisbee golf park. Daisy, a yellow lab, is so fond of bringing the small plastic discs back that she typically retrieves several on each walk with her owner, Kelly Mason. The Latin root of retriever means "find again."

Despite expensive plane tickets and pricey hotel rooms, tourists are visiting Europe in huge numbers this summer. After three years of pandemic restrictions, travelers who delayed their European vacations are now flocking to France, Italy, and the U.K., resulting in massive crowds at museums and other sites. Tourists are waiting in lines for an hour or more to get a glimpse of cultural institutions like the Vatican and the Louvre Museum in Paris.