Since the start of the racing season in late December, a shocking 21 horses have died at the famed Santa Anita Park racetrack in southern California.

It’s horrified the racing world and experts say there’s no clear answer as to why this is happening.

Santa Anita’s owners, The Stronach Group, announced on Tuesday that it was halting racing and training at the park in order to test the main track – a picturesque spot tucked next to the San Gabriel Mountains where the champion racehorse Seabiscuit won big.

“The safety, health and welfare of the horses and jockeys is our top priority,” Tim Ritvo, chief operating officer of the Stronach Group, said in a statement. “While we are confident further testing will confirm the soundness of the track, the decision to close is the right thing to do at this time.”

That same day, a filly named Lets Light The Way was injured and euthanized while training on the main track, as the equestrian publication Blood Horse reported.

“I loved that filly. I bought her at the sale—liked the way she walked,” trainer Ron McAnally told the publication. “I wanted to cry when we had to put her down.”

Like many, McAnally thinks bad recent weather contributed to the filly’s death. Southern California has been experiencing heavy rain this winter, which has the potential to impact the conditions of the track’s surface.

But experts aren’t sure that’s the problem here. Mick Peterson from the University of Kentucky conducted ground radar testing on the track, and he spoke with NPR’s Here & Now earlier this week about why the track is seeing death rates at twice the rate of the previous year.

“What we see in horse racing always is, the challenge at any track is unusual weather,” he says. But he hasn’t yet found anything unusual about the track conditions. “We’re looking at every option we can to begin to understand what’s happening,” he said. “This is not what we do as a sport.”

Santa Anita Park has expanded its testing now, bringing in its former track superintendent Dennis Moore. According to the track’s owners, he’ll use a machine that can approximate a horse running at a full gallop, to see how it impacts the surface.

“There’s no obvious answer. So every question is being asked: Is it the surface? Is it the horses that are running on the surface?” Rick Baedeker, the executive director of the California Horse Racing Board, told NPR’s All Things Considered. They’re also questioning factors such as the type of training the horses receive, he says.

Baedeker says he’s never seen anything like this. “It’s a nightmare for everybody involved in racing,” he says. The board is also seeking answers by carrying out a necropsy on every horse that died.

Particularly perplexing is the sheer diversity of the horses that have died, as Rick Arthur, chief equine veterinarian from the CHRB, told the Los Angeles Times.

“They are all over the place, from Battle Of Midway, a well-seasoned horse, to a first-time starter,” Arthur said. “They are from 19 different trainers. There is nothing that links them together.”

And, he says that we may never fully know why this is happening. “If you expect a definitive answer, I wouldn’t expect that,” Arthur told the Times. “We can hope that it identifies strategies that can make racing safer. It’s not just the track. It’s not just the horse. It’s the whole schedule. The training program. The racing program. Everything.”

The deaths have drawn outrage from PETA, which has called for a criminal investigation into the matter.

Baedeker says these deaths are coming at a time when the racing business has, over the last few years, taken steps to try to reduce racetrack deaths.

“People involved in racing, whether they’re fans or whether they’re owners or trainers, the common thread is the affection for the race horse — whether you enjoy watching them or taking care of them,” he says. “The current situation does not reflect the whole story.”

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U.S. regulators say several makeup products from Claire’s stores tested positive for asbestos, a mineral that has been linked to deadly cancers.

The Food and Drug Administration tested makeup from Claire’s and the retailer Justice, both of which market their products to young girls and teens. In a statement Tuesday, the agency reported that it found that three product samples from Claire’s and one from Justice contained the substance, and it released a safety alert about the products.

Claire’s says that “out of an abundance of caution,” it has removed the three products — eye shadows, compact powder and contour powder — from stores and is “also removing any remaining talc based cosmetic products.” Talc is a substance that sometimes contains asbestos and has been linked to lung cancer in miners.

But Claire’s says its “products are safe” and disputes the test results, saying they “show significant errors.” The retailer says the tests “have mischaracterized fibers in the products as asbestos.”

Claire’s, which sells jewelry and accessories and pierces ears, is a common sight at shopping malls, with more than 2,400 locations in North America and Europe as of last August.

The FDA said the Justice product, a shimmer powder, had already been recalled from the market in 2017.

Other independent testers dispute Claire’s claim that these products are safe. The U.S. PIRG Education Fund, a consumer advocacy group, released results last March that said its testing showed that the same three Claire’s products contained asbestos.

Asbestos is believed to cause mesothelioma, a type of cancer affecting the lining of the chest and abdomen, and is linked to an increased risk of other forms of cancer and lung disease.

In its statement, the FDA called for more expansive authority to regulate cosmetics, saying the law about its role has not been updated since it first entered into force in 1938.

“The current law does not require cosmetics to be reviewed and approved by the FDA prior to being sold to American consumers,” it said, adding that total responsibility for the safety of these products now rests with the companies that make them.

“To be clear, there are currently no legal requirements for any cosmetic manufacturer marketing products to American consumers to test their products for safety,” the FDA said. For example, the agency says that in this case, it did not have the authority to force Claire’s to pull the potentially dangerous products off store shelves.

It says it wants to work with Congress to “modernize” the way cosmetics are regulated in the United States.

This isn’t the first time testers say they have found traces of asbestos in Claire’s products. The Dutch government said last year that it found asbestos in two products, following the release of the U.S. PIRG report. In response, Claire’s insisted that the products are safe and questioned the testing methodology.

Another company has also come under recent scrutiny over the risk of asbestos contamination. “Johnson & Johnson had known for decades about the risk of asbestos contamination in its popular baby powder and other talc-based body powders, but tried to keep negative information from reaching the public,” the New York Times reports. “The company received subpoenas for more information last month from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department.”

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Someone in South Carolina claimed the $1.5 billion jackpot from the Mega Millions lottery held in October 2018, ending the mystery of whether anyone would ever come forward to say they had won.

The winner, who has elected to remain anonymous, chose the one-time payment cash option, making their prize worth nearly $878,000,000. It is the largest jackpot payout to a single winner in U. S. history, according to a statement by South Carolina Education Lottery Commission.

“We are delighted that the winner is a South Carolinian and has come forward to claim this remarkable prize,” said Hogan Brown, the commission’s executive director.

South Carolina is one in only a handful of states that allows lottery winners to keep their identities secret. The others are Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, North Dakota, Ohio and Texas.

As the Associated Press reports, until now there was a great deal of speculation about why the winner had not yet claimed the prize, ranging from suspicions that he or she was a fugitive from the law, dead, or tied up in litigation.

The winner has retained the representation of New York law firm Rivkin Radler.

The winning numbers, by the way, were 5,28,62,65, 70 and the mega number 5. They were selected by a Quick Pick.

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Every few weeks, John Ord does something unusual for most people living in 2019 — he stops by a local hardware store in rural northeastern Pennsylvania to buy coal to heat his home.

He recently spent about $56 to buy 400 pounds of coal. That will keep his 2,400-square-foot house a toasty 70 to 72 degrees for a couple of weeks.

“This is the whole glamorous part, right here,” says Ord, as he loads 40-pound bags of Pennsylvania anthracite coal into the back of his white station wagon.

When he gets home, Ord lugs the coal down to his basement, where he rips open a bag, lifts it chest high and loads it into a hopper on the back of his coal-burning stove.

It’s a lot more work than most Americans with gas or electric heat go through to keep their homes warm. They can just set a thermostat and forget it. But Ord says this is actually less work than the wood stove he replaced last fall.

“Between cutting it [wood], stacking it, letting it season, moving it into the space where you need to access it and then loading the stove,” Ord says, wood requires a lot more handling.

Ord’s coal-burning stove burns 24 hours a day when it’s cold. He likes the constant heat it gives off and says it’s cheaper than his other options — oil and electric.

While most power plants around the United States burn bituminous coal, northeastern Pennsylvania is very proud of its anthracite coal, which is shinier and harder than you might expect. Ord says it burns cleaner too.

To demonstrate this, he goes outside and points up to a white chimney. “No smoke at all. There’s no smell to it,” says Ord.

But burning anthracite coal does emit more carbon dioxide per unit of heat than just about any other fuel, according to the Energy Information Administration. That makes it a contributor to climate change.

Anthracite backers point out that it has less sulfur than bituminous coal, but environmentalists say cleaner does not mean clean.

“It still emits quite a bit of dangerous sulfur dioxide, as well as heavy metals such as lead, arsenic, and mercury,” says Tom Schuster with the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. He says anyone concerned about their contribution to climate change should avoid burning coal for heat.

Those in the anthracite coal business counter that the industry is so small that it’s not a big contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.

“If you want to look at the major CO2 producers in the world, it’s not us,” says Matt Atkinson, co-owner of Leisure Line Stove Company in Berwick, Pa. “And even if we quadrupled our current sales, it still wouldn’t be a problem.”

Seeking a new generation of customers

There was a time when coal was king in the home-heating business. In 1940, more than half of U.S. homes burned coal, according to the Census Bureau. It was a big business and such a part of the culture that coal company ads were heard regularly on the radio.

Listen to a 1953 Blue Coal radio advertisement here:

(Credit: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission/Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum)

After decades of decline, fewer than 130,000 households use coal for heat today. Half of them are in Pennsylvania, and the state’s coal industry wants to boost that. It has a plan to attract more customers.

Atkinson is among those leading the campaign. He bought Leisure Line with a business partner in 2009 and says he got into the coal stove business after experiencing a friend’s stove.

“When I opened the door, I felt this warmth that I had never felt before. … And I was hooked instantly,” says Atkinson. Talk to coal-heat advocates in Pennsylvania, and you’ll hear this repeatedly — that there’s no heat as intense as coal heat.

It’s clear that many people in northeastern Pennsylvania, the heart of anthracite coal country, have an emotional attachment to this fossil fuel.

“You have people here that their great-great-grandfathers were miners. Their grandfathers were miners. It’s a family of mining,” says Andrew Meyers, sales manager for Blaschak Coal Corp. His company also is leading the campaign to attract new customers.

“It’s mostly about growing market share within the home-heating industry,” says Atkinson. He hopes to attract a new generation of customers with the message that they can save money on heating their home if they choose coal.

In Reading, Pa., Kelly Brown welcomes the campaign. Her family’s business, F.M. Brown’s Sons, has sold coal for nearly a century and is one of the few to survive the industry’s decline.

“In this general area, there was probably about 50 coal companies. Slowly, one by one, they started closing up,” says Brown. Now her company is the only one left in Berks County.

She says the industry has improved its environmental record over the years. Pennsylvania was the first state to pass an act to address abandoned-mine reclamation, and today coal companies like to tout their work in this area.

Given Pennsylvania’s abundant coal reserves and a bigger focus on improving coal’s environmental record, Brown hopes the industry will stage a comeback. “I might not see it in my lifetime, but I think things will turn around,” she says.

So far the trend is not moving in Brown’s favor. Even in Pennsylvania, the number of households using coal for heat continues a steady decline.

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The desperate shouts for help from gold miners who have been trapped for days under debris on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi have fallen silent, an official said Saturday.

The illegal mine collapsed on Tuesday in Bolaang Mongondow, after soil shifted in the sloping, green terrain and wooden support beams at the site suddenly broke.

Eight miners have died and 20 have been rescued, according to The Associated Press. About three dozen people are thought to still be trapped.

“Since yesterday, we have heard no more voices from inside,” said local disaster official Abdul Muin Paputungan, according to the AP. “On this fourth day, the signs of life faded away.”

Paputungan added that rescuers will still try to save the miners, “even though at the moment, it seems like a miracle if they can survive.”

Some have already lost hope.

“There is no hope for survivors,” said a spokesperson at the National Search and Rescue Agency, according to CNN.

The father of one trapped miner told Agence France-Presse earlier in the week that he had been talking with his son beneath the rubble.

“He asked for water because he was thirsty,” Amrin Simbala said. “Later in the afternoon, no more voices could be heard.”

More than 200 people have been working to rescue the trapped workers, using ropes, spades and their fingers in an attempt to carve out spaces in the ground. They were able to give food and water to some of the miners, but officials have expressed fear that oxygen is running out in some areas of the pit.

Miners who made it out were taken away on makeshift stretchers.

One survivor was pulled out of the debris after his leg was caught underneath a fallen rock. Medical personnel amputated the leg and he died from blood loss, according to AFP.

Authorities have hesitated to bring in more people and to use heavy machinery for fear of causing new landslides, Paputungan said. An excavator reportedly began to hollow out ground on Friday morning after relatives approved the plan.

For an archipelago rich with minerals, a number of illegal mines pockmark Indonesia’s landscape.

A World Bank report from 2000 detailed how traditional and small-scale mining persisted in the country despite the government’s awareness of environmental damage, either because of a lack of will or a lack of ability to halt the practice.

In one part of the country, West Java, some 26,000 people were working in illegal gold mines — a 500 percent increase in three years, the World Bank said.

In North Sulawesi, corruption prevented the closure of illegal mines, according to the report. The Ministry of Forestry mounted a campaign to crack down on illegal gold mining, but local police did not enforce government orders. Three months later, the same number of mines were operating.

In more recent years, authorities have raided unlicensed mines. Law enforcement arrested people on suspicion of trading illegally mined gold in 2016. After the arrest, the police station was set on fire in apparent retaliation, the AFP reported.

Locals are often lured into the business because they lack job opportunities.

“This is all I can do to earn a living,” a miner identified only as Iwan told AFP.

But illegal mines leave them vulnerable to hazardous work conditions.

Agus Budianto, a landslide expert at the Indonesia-based Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation, told CNN that local construction techniques of unlicensed mines don’t involve feasibility studies.

He said that on Tuesday, the supports for the shaft’s entrance caved under pressure from the soil, closing the miners’ exit path.

“This is not a landslide disaster, but it is caused by human activity itself,” he said.

Relatives of the trapped miners were gathering at the rescue site, offering to join the search and hoping for good news.

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A bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers announced plans this week to address surprise medical bills in a way they believe would ease the burden on patients in the state.

During a news conference Thursday, state Sen. Kelly Hancock, a Republican from suburban Fort Worth, announced he had filed a bill in the Texas Legislature aimed at preventing medical providers from, among other things, balance billing patients — charging patients the difference between what the health care provider and the medical insurer think a medical service or procedure is worth. State Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democrat from San Antonio, is filing a similar bill in the House.

If passed, the legislation would force medical providers and health insurers to mediate payment disputes before they send bills to patients. Hancock said the point of SB 1264 is to take “the burden off of patients.”

“[It] takes it off of their plates completely,” Hancock said.

He highlighted the case of Drew Calver, a public school teacher in Austin whose six-figure hospital bill after a heart attack was featured in a “Bill of the Month” investigation last summer by NPR, Kaiser Health News and KUT, NPR’s member station in Austin. Hancock noted Calver’s bill was reduced after the media attention but said it shouldn’t take such attention for a patient to get a reasonable bill.

Under this legislation, both sides of the payment dispute would settle their issues through an existing balance bill mediation program. The Texas Department of Insurance program has been successful in lowering medical bills across the state.

The legislation would beef up the program, which addresses surprise balance bills greater than $500 from all emergency providers — including free-standing emergency departments and all out-of-network providers working at a network facility.

“This is designed to apply in situations where patients don’t have any choice which facility they go to or which physician is involved in their care,” Hancock said.

Historically, the Insurance Department’s mediation program had many loopholes, and few consumers qualified for help. It was expanded in 2017, though, and more patients have been filing complaints.

For example, in 2014, the department was asked to mediate 686 medical bills. During the 2018 fiscal year, it received 4,445 bills.

Hancock said the program, so far, has saved Texas patients $30 million.

Still, consumer advocates argue, the system works only when patients know mediation is an option.

Stacey Pogue, a senior policy analyst with the Center for Public Policy Priorities, said patients don’t always know help is available, or they find the process intimidating.

“The instructions for how to do it are on your medical bill and your explanation of benefits — the most indecipherable documents you are going to get,” she told KUT earlier this year.

She and others have argued Texas should adopt a program similar to those in other states like New York, California and Florida, whose systems are more consumer-friendly.

Martinez Fischer said it’s time Texas officials stepped in to help patients who are caught in the middle of disputes between medical providers and health insurers. “It has been an industry issue for a few years, I grant you that — the health plans and the providers fighting over their business interests,” he said. “And I respect that. But 10 years later, it is a consumer issue.”

Among other things, Hancock’s bill would allow people with federally regulated, self-funded health plans to opt into the state’s mediation program. According to Hancock, those plans make up about 40 percent of Texas’ insurance market, but those consumers are currently not able to take part in the program.

Hancock said this should provide relief to consumers while federal lawmakers weigh their own efforts to address surprise medical bills.

“Texas will send a loud and clear signal to D.C. that similar consumer protections need to be passed at the federal level,” Hancock said. “Until then, Texas … [is] committed to doing something about it.”

U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat who represents Austin in Congress, said he is encouraged by Texas’ efforts but called federal protections “essential.”

“Only approval in Congress of legislation like my End Surprise Billing Act can both protect those who work for large employers with self-funded, federally regulated ERISA plans and assure that patients across America are not forced to pay the price for conflicts between insurers and health care providers,” Doggett said in a written statement.

This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with KUT and Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service of the Kaiser Family Foundation. You can follow Ashley Lopez on Twitter: @AshLopezRadio

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