Because of melting sea ice, it is likely that more polar bears will soon starve, warns a new study that discovered the large carnivores need to eat 60 percent more than anyone had realized.

Polar bears rely almost exclusively on a calorie-loaded diet of seals. To minimize their energy consumption the bears still-hunt, waiting for hours by seals’ cone-shaped breathing holes in the sea ice. When a seal surfaces to breathe the bear stands on its hind legs and smacks it on the head with both of its front paws to stun it. Then the bear bites it on the neck and drags it onto the ice.

Climate change is heating up the Arctic faster than anywhere else, and sea ice is shrinking 14 percent per decade. Even today, in the middle of the bitter cold Arctic winter, satellites show there is about 770,000 square miles less sea ice than the 1981 to 2010 median (That's an area larger than Alaska and California combined). In the late spring, the ice is breaking up sooner and forming later in the fall, forcing bears to burn huge amounts of energy walking or swimming long distances to get to any remaining ice. Or they stay on land longer, spending the summer and, increasingly, the fall fasting, living off their fat from the seals they caught in the spring.

A massive computer breach allowed hackers to spend months exploring numerous U.S. government networks and private companies' systems around the world. Industry experts say a country mounted the complex hack — and government officials say Russia is responsible.

Russia's foreign intelligence service, the SVR, is believed to have carried out the hack, according to cybersecurity experts who cite the extremely sophisticated nature of the attack. Russia has denied involvement.

President Trump has been silent about the hack and his administration has not attributed blame.

President-elect Joe Biden opposes the death penalty and has said he will work to end its use, but as President Trump's administration accelerates the pace of federal executions in the closing days of his presidency, activists and progressive lawmakers are feeling more urgency to push Biden to act immediately upon taking office. After nearly two decades without a federal execution, the Trump administration resumed the practice earlier this year. The executions, including ones scheduled to take place just days before Biden's inauguration, have prompted criticism of the Trump administration's actions.

"Ending the barbaric and inhumane practice of government-sanctioned murder is a commonsense step that you can and must take to save lives," the lawmakers write. "We respectfully urge you to sign an executive order on Day 1 to place an immediate moratorium on the country's cruel use of the death penalty and signal your commitment to dismantle its use altogether."

While the death penalty was not a significant issue raised during the 2020 presidential race, there are sharp differences in the views of Biden and Trump. Biden opposes the death penalty, while Trump is a supporter of capital punishment who painted himself as a law-and-order president during the campaign.

Just two weeks before President-elect Joe Biden takes office, the Trump administration is trying to lock-in oil and gas drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge with a hastily scheduled and controversial lease sale.

The event, January 6, marks a major moment in a 40-year fight over whether to develop the northernmost slice of the refuge's coastal plain, home to migrating caribou, birds and polar bears.

'We don't know very much about this area'

President Trump tweeted Sunday morning that the count of cases and deaths in the U.S. is "far exaggerated" and criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's method.

The grim milestones are piling up as the United States experiences another surge in coronavirus cases. Nearly 300,000 new cases were reported on Saturday. The cumulative death toll crossed more than 350,000 the same day, according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 dashboard.

"The numbers are real," Fauci said. "We have well over 300,000 deaths. We're averaging 2-3,000 deaths per day. ... Those are real numbers, real people and real deaths."

Snowstorms, holidays and general inexperience in handling a pandemic response is to blame for a "lag" in the number of Americans so far vaccinated for the coronavirus, according to U.S. officials. The federal government previously estimated that 20 million Americans would receive the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine by the end of the year. But as 2020, a year defined by the coronavirus pandemic, comes to a close on Thursday, the government appears set to fall well short of that goal.

The vaccination process started on Dec. 14 with frontline health workers getting the shots first.

As of Thursday morning, the agency said that more than 12.4 million doses of Pfizer's and Moderna's two-dose vaccines had been distributed across the country. The CDC reports just 2.7 million people have been vaccinated

The U.S. has hit another devastating milestone: COVID-19 has killed more than 350,000 people in the country, according to a Johns Hopkins University tracker.

The variant is now in dozens of countries, including the United States, where it has infected people in Colorado, California and Florida.

Researchers say the new variant — dubbed B.1.1.7 — probably originated in the South East region of England in Septembe

On Friday, the first day of 2021, the U.S. recorded its 20 millionth confirmed coronavirus case since the beginning of the pandemic.

The U.S. reached 10 million cases on Nov. 9. In less than two months, the country doubled its total number of infections.

And a coronavirus variant — one believed to be more contagious but not more deadly — was discovered in three states this week.

n incident that took place in Oregon last week has sent shockwaves around the world. A man got rather gravely upset with a teenager as he was playing loud music. The confrontation escalated into a verbal spat followed by a fatal shooting.

“The victim had apparently been playing some music loudly in the parking lot and this upset the suspect, which caused the suspect to go down and engage him in an argument,”said the Ashland Police Department in a news release.

Keegan pulled a gun from inside his coat and let out a bullet striking Ellison. The 19-year-old was pronounced dead at the spot. Keegan was at the scene when police reached. The killer was immediately arrested and taken to the Jackson County Jail.

More than 100,000 Americans are in the hospital with COVID-19, at the same time the nation recorded its worst daily death toll since the start of the pandemic.

News of the record-breaking statistic comes the same day the U.K. announced a major step in its race to develop COVID-19 vaccines, formally approving Pfizer and the German company BioNTech's vaccine for emergency use.

More than 273,000 people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19 since the first cases were detected in January.