"Why is my son gone?": Families of service members call for action a year after fatal training accident
CBSN
One year after nine U.S. service members drowned in a training accident, families of the fallen are taking steps to make sure it never happens again. Nearly a dozen Marines, including a general, have been disciplined in the July 30 accident.
Cell phone videos of the Marines crammed into an amphibious assault vehicle only last for seconds. They had no way of knowing that within hours, nine would die — drowned when their vehicle sank off the coast of California. It's been a year since the accident, and as seen from press conferences the families held, the grief for the fallen is still raw. One of those who drowned, Lance Corporal Chase Sweetwood, was just 18.Two more black-footed ferrets have been cloned from the genes used for the first clone of an endangered species in the U.S., bringing to three the number of slinky predators genetically identical to one of the last such animals found in the wild, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Wednesday.
There were 56 wild, endangered Puerto Rican parrots living around El Yunque National Forest before Hurricane Maria in 2017. After the storm, there was only one survivor. Wood thrushes, found across the eastern U.S.; 60% of them are gone. Baltimore orioles, also an eastern bird; two-fifths have been lost. Western meadowlarks, prevalent in the central and western U.S.; three-fourths have disappeared.