The Brief

An endangered flower one scientist called a “tiny mystery” has cropped up in astonishing numbers in San Luis Obispo County.

Scientists were stunned this spring to find 16,000 Camatta Canyon amoles at Las Piletas Ranch, about 50 miles inland from San Luis Obispo. The flower was previously thought to have a worldwide population of 10,000 plants.

The Camatta Canyon amole had only been known to grow in two locations within a 90-acre area of the Los Padres National Forest. The rare flower is protected under the state and federal Endangered Species acts, but this discovery by scientists from the Nature Conservancy and the California Native Plant Society could challenge that status.

The amole — with royal purple blooms atop eight-inch spiny stalks — can be tough to spot. The amole, a Spanish word that loosely translates to soap root, refers to the Chlorogalum genus that often makes strong soaps and detergent. Its scientific name is Chlorogalum purpureum var. reductum.

Though there are other types of amoles in western North America, this one is unique.

“Often, rare plants live their life without a lot of media exposure,” said Tim Becker, director of horticulture at the Thomas Payne Foundation. “This one’s definitely what I would call a deeper cut of native plants.”

Scott Butterfield, the lead scientist with the Nature Conservancy in California who surveyed and discovered the amole with his team, certainly dug deep to find the flower, which grows in a distinct topography.

He found the plant growing on the slope between vernal pools — springtime ponds typically caused by heavy rainfall — and the natural, domelike hills called mima mounds that surround them.

Heather Schneider, a senior rare plant conservation scientist at the Santa Barbara Botanical Garden, led a three-year conservation project of the Camatta Canyon amole. Why is it so scarce? Human-driven off-road vehicles and livestock grazing smash it, and it has such a limited geographical range. Some years, the amole doesn’t bloom at all.

“There’s still a lot we don’t know about how and why it germinates abundantly in a given year,” she said.

Butterfield and Schneider hypothesized that weather conditions may have led to this year’s extraordinary uptick. Drought-like conditions, which harm plants in competition with the amole, were followed by a few years of higher rainfall. Becker added that wildfires and late rain may have also led to similarly favorable conditions for the amole. That may have strengthened amole bulbs underground.

The amole is only known in two locations and is protected under the state and federal Endangered Species acts.

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Butterfield also noted the possibility that the amole has existed there the whole time. He had found a few flowers in 2024, which led him to officially survey the land this year.

“We’ve only owned the property for about five years, so it is very likely that the plant has existed there,” he said.

Butterfield’s discovery hints at the possibility of finding other amole blooms, potentially even challenging its endangered status.

Every five years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services conducts a review of plants and animals listed as threatened. By the next review, Butterfield hopes to have established a new location where the amole grows and have added enough numbers to the population that it can be taken off the endangered species list.

This change in standing, he hopes, may lead to more attention on the plant.

“Until you find a plant like this on your landscape, there aren’t that many people out there looking for it,” he said. “It might exist in other locations; we just haven’t looked.”

For a plant that had been on the decline since the 1980s, simply the potential for research is exciting.

“Until a couple months ago, I never would have even contemplated a study around Camata Canyon amole, or a rare plant on our property,” Butterfield said.

Schneider agreed that this discovery is encouraging and stressed conservation efforts. Having collected five seed samples during her study in 2021 to 2024, collecting more would be important for the future of the plant, especially in uncertain temperature conditions.

The amole may have blossomed because of drought-like conditions followed by higher rainfall in recent years, scientists hypothesize.

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“Every opportunity we have to get genotypes into long-term conservation is a little insurance policy against extinction,” she said.

She echoed Butterfield’s optimism and offered a broader perspective on conservation.

“Nature doesn’t work on our time scales,” she said. “All is not lost. There’s still hope. Nature waits. And I hope it inspires people that putting efforts into conservation and looking for plants pays off.”

In a historic vote, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's vaccine advisers recommended narrowing the agency's hepatitis B immunization guidance for newborns.

The result, if approved by the CDC's acting director, will be a rollback of a universal recommendation to start hepatitis B immunization at birth, a standard practice in the U.S. for more than 30 years that has been credited with dramatically lowering liver diseases caused by the virus.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, voted 8-3 to recommend hepatitis B at birth only for infants born to women who test positive for the virus that attacks the liver. Women whose hepatitis B status is negative or unknown should talk with their doctors about vaccination, the recommendation says.

The changes were made over the strong objections of liaisons from the medical community, who say the decades-long universal birth dose policy has dramatically reduced cases of hepatitis B in U.S. children.

"Our question is why? Why is there pressure today to change something that has been working, due to safety concerns that may be more theoretical than real?" asked Dr. Grant Paulsen during Thursday's meeting. He was representing the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society.

There was a second vote regarding the number of shots babies get. Full immunization of infants involves three shots: usually one given at birth, a second shot one to three months later and a third at six to 15 months of age.

The panel voted 6-4, with one member abstaining, to recommend testing children's antibody levels after each hepatitis B shot to determine whether additional shots are needed. The result may be that some children get one or two shots instead of the standard three shots.

Dr. Adam Langer, a CDC official in charge of the agency's center that includes hepatitis prevention, said during the panel's discussion that clinical studies of approved hepatitis B vaccines tested a three-shot regimen. Stopping at one or two shots based on antibody testing would be making an assumption about efficacy that isn't supported by existing data, he said.

The split vote on removing the recommendation for the universal vaccine reflects disagreement among the members. Several members who served on a subgroup that has been reviewing the topic led the votes in favor of the change.

The committee voting this week was hand selected by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long questioned many vaccines. Several of the voting members themselves have a history of questioning the safety of long-used vaccines.

Retsef Levi, a voting member and professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, heralded the move as "a fundamental change in the approach to this vaccine," which would encourage parents to "carefully think about whether they want to take the risk of giving another vaccine to their child." Levi said parents may want to delay the vaccine for years. "That's going to be up to them and their physicians," he said.

A handful of members raised concerns over the lack of evidence supporting the change and concerns it will put children at risk.

"We know vaccines are safe," said Dr. Cody Meissner, a professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine and the only current member who has served on the committee in previous years. "The hepatitis B vaccine recommendation is very well established. We know it is safe, and we know it is very effective, and to make the changes that are being proposed, we will see more children and adolescents and adults infected with hepatitis B."

Meissner added that he saw clear evidence of the benefits of the universal hepatitis B birth dose, but not the harms. When he registered his "no" vote, he stated, "Do no harm is a moral imperative. We are doing harm by changing this wording."

The previous recommendation to vaccinate all healthy newborns against hepatitis B was designed to make sure no at-risk infant falls through the cracks. Hepatitis B can be transmitted from mothers to infants during childbirth, but can also be spread through contact with an infected person's body fluids including saliva and blood.

Immunization in infancy confers lifelong protection against the hepatitis B virus, which can cause serious, potentially fatal health problems including liver cancer and cirrhosis. It is the cornerstone of a decades-long strategy to eliminate hepatitis B in the U.S.
Copyright 2025 NPR

A few weeks ago, Taelyr Vecchione vented her growing frustration with traffic in San Diego.

"Do you remember when traffic started at, like, 5?" she said in this video posted on TikTok. Vecchione filmed herself sitting in her car, lamenting how things in her Southern California hometown have changed.

"Now," she says, "there is always traffic. Always!"

In fact, there is data to back her up on this. San Diego has seen a significant jump in traffic delays, researchers say, as congestion across the U.S. climbed to record levels in 2024.

If it seems like traffic is getting worse where you live, that's because it probably is. After dropping during the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers say, congestion has equaled — and, in many places, surpassed — pre-pandemic levels. And those delays are spreading to more times of day and more days of the week.

"We are back. But the delay kind of has a different feel to it than it did before," said David Schrank, a senior research scientist at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, which has tracked congestion since the 1980s in its annual Urban Mobility Report.

For decades, Schrank says, those patterns barely budged. Then came 2020, when congestion plunged during the pandemic lockdown. Now it's back at record levels, he says, with the average American spending 63 hours per year stuck in traffic.

There are some other notable differences from past years too. The rush-hour peaks are still the worst times to drive, Schrank says, but there's more congestion at other times of day as well.

"It's spread out over more of the day, and thus it's not just a commuter issue," Schrank said in an NPR interview. "Everyone is experiencing more of that delay."

Those aren't the only changes researchers are seeing in the data. Schrank says there's more delay on weekends. Traffic on Mondays tends to be noticeably lighter than on the other weekdays, he said, while Thursday has nearly caught up with Friday as the heaviest traffic day of the week.

"There's more variability day to day than there was pre-pandemic. The day of the week matters, and the time of the day matters," Schrank said.

Trucks are causing more congestion as well, according to the Texas A&M report. While some truck traffic shifted toward off-peak hours during 2020 and 2021, the most recent data shows that truck-related delays during rush hour are climbing back toward their pre-pandemic level.

Schrank and his colleagues ranked every metropolitan area in the U.S. by hours of traffic delay. San Diego saw the largest percentage jump in hours of delay per commuter since 2019, at more than 37%. Miami, Phoenix and the San Francisco Bay Area saw significant jumps too.

But no city caught up to Greater Los Angeles, where the average commuter lost 137 hours to delays last year, according to the Texas A&M report.

Traffic on Interstate 210 during the morning commute in Pasadena, Calif., this month. Researchers say the average driver in Los Angeles lost 137 hours to traffic delays in 2024, the most of any U.S. city.

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That came as no great surprise to Michael Manville, a professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. He warns against reading too much into the individual city rankings but says the overall findings make sense.

"Congestion moves largely in sync with broader patterns in regional economies. And so if you have the economy doing well, congestion tends to be worse. If you have a recession, it tends to be a little bit better," Manville said.

Researchers at Texas A&M also identified a few regions where congestion is down compared with before the pandemic — most notably, Washington, D.C. That could be linked to the persistence of remote work in the federal government in 2024. And it might also have something to do with regional efforts to fight congestion, including a tolling strategy known as dynamic pricing.

"If you're going to contribute to the excessive congestion during the peak and the evening rush hours perhaps, you're going to be paying more for the tolls," said Robert Puentes, a vice president and transportation expert at the Brookings Institution.

Puentes lives in Northern Virginia, which has adopted an extensive system of tolls on major highways that charge different prices at different times. And he says that this seems to help reduce congestion.

"It's something that really could be applicable in other metropolitan areas. We see places in Texas and California, in other places, that are using it. I think it has a real future in this country," Puentes said.

Another ambitious effort to fight congestion is happening in New York City, where car drivers now pay as much as $9 to enter Lower Manhattan.

That congestion pricing plan has already cut traffic in the toll zone since its launch in January. But it's still too early to say how much it's changing commuting patterns across the region.
Copyright 2025 NPR

It's one of the most anticipated events ahead of the 2026 World Cup.

On Friday, FIFA will conduct the draw for the top men's soccer tournament, taking place across the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The draw — at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. — will determine which opponents all 48 teams participating in the World Cup will eventually face in the initial group stage.

The draw will be attended by the three leaders of the countries hosting the event, including President Trump, in an event that has become quite the spectacle over the years.

Here's what to know about the draw for the World Cup, with the ceremony set to kick off at 9 a.m. PT.

What is the draw for?

Next year's tournament is the biggest ever, with 48 teams set to be split among 12 groups of four.

These groups make up the first stage of the tournament, which determines which teams advance to the knockout rounds. The top two sides of each group automatically qualify, along with the eight best third-place teams.

Not all teams that will take part in the 2026 World Cup are known, though. So far, 42 countries have qualified, with the remaining six — including Italy — set to compete in playoffs next March to determine the final list of participants.

How will the teams be drawn?

Ahead of the draw, all teams have been placed in four pots, primarily based on their most recent FIFA rankings.

Pot 1 will include top-ranked teams such as Spain and Brazil, along with the three hosts. Pot 4 will include the lowest-ranked teams, including World Cup debutants Cape Verde, Curaçao and Jordan, as well as placeholders for the six teams that have yet to qualify.

Teams will be drawn randomly from each pot — but there are a few rules.

There can be only up to two European teams per group and only one team per group from each of the remaining five continental confederations under FIFA. That means, for example, that an African team such as Tunisia cannot be drawn into the same group as Ghana, even if they are in two separate pots.

In addition, in a quirk for this year's tournament, FIFA has determined that the top two-ranked teams — Spain and Argentina — will be placed in groups that would end up on opposite sides of the tournament bracket should they each win their respective groups. That ensures these two early favorites would not meet until the final.

The same rule will apply to France and England, the third- and fourth-best ranked teams according to FIFA.

When will we know where teams will play?

In another quirk, teams will not know at Friday's draw where or when they will play. The locations and kickoff times for each team across all 16 host cities will be determined on Saturday, at a separate event.

FIFA has said it wants to try to take travel times for teams in mind, while also ensuring that teams are drawn into kickoff times that are more favorable for spectators in their respective countries. For example, evening start times would likely be better for Asian sides, ensuring games are taking place when it's roughly the following day for spectators back home.

Spain is considered one of the early favorites to win the 2026 World Cup. Pictured here is star player Lamine Yamal, celebrating a goal against France in the semifinal of the UEFA Euro 2024 tournament, which Spain eventually won.

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Does this all matter?

The draw helps determine how easy — or difficult — the path to the knockout rounds will be for most teams.

Just like in any tournament, all teams would prefer to face the ones they view as weaker and avoid being placed in the "Group of Death," the moniker given to the group perceived to be the most difficult in a tournament.

"You don't want to be one of these heroes — like, 'give me the best,'" says Herculez Gomez, who played for the U.S. in the 2010 World Cup and now hosts the Men in Blazers podcast Vamos. "That's not how it works. Even the best don't want the best at the World Cup."

But World Cups are unpredictable. Strong soccer powerhouses have failed to advance past the World Cup's group stage before, including Germany in 2018 and 2022, and Spain in 2014.

That said, this year's tournament is bigger. Even finishing third in a four-team group can ensure qualification, although where each team ends up within its group will determine its path through the knockout rounds.

Which are the early favorites and the teams to watch?

Predictably, among the early favorites are recent global soccer powerhouses such as Spain, England and France, along with South American teams, such as Argentina and Brazil.

But there will be interesting storylines to watch outside the favorites, including Curaçao, which became the smallest country to qualify for the World Cup, with a population of just over 150,000 people.

And, of course, there will be enormous interest in which teams the three hosts will end up facing in their respective groups.

The U.S. men's national team, for example, is approaching the World Cup draw with some momentum after staying undefeated in the past five games. Its most recent record marks a big improvement after a rocky period under coach Mauricio Pochettino and previous coach Gregg Berhalter, which included an early exit from last year's Copa America regional tournament.

NPR sports correspondent Becky Sullivan contributed to this report.
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