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This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 12 LOCHALINE, Scotland - A tippler might not know it from the pretty advertisements, which hype the mountain streams and woolly highlands, but making Scotch whisky can be a dirty business - an energy-intensive, carbon-spewing, peat-burning industry, mostly owned by multinational conglomerates that ship their $50-plus bottles to swells around the world. On the picture-perfect western isles of Scotland famous for their whiskies - Islay, Skye, Jura, Arran - the whitewashed distilleries are often the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in their bucolic regions, ahead of the diesel ferries and pastures of belching sheep. But something head-turning is happening. The owners of the 140 distilleries in Scotland have pledged, voluntarily, to transform the industry and make their operations "net-zero" in carbon emissions by 2040, a … [Read more...] about In Scotland, making whisky with energy from wind, wood chips and tides

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 5 Years before U.S. military women were formally authorized to hold ground-combat jobs, Jaclyn "Jax" Scott was conducting nighttime raids with Special Operations personnel in northern Afghanistan. They'd kick in doors, Scott said, and she'd enter Afghans' homes directly behind the breachers, identify any women and children, and marshal them to a safe space for questioning. In Afghanistan's conservative culture, her presence was intended to be a message of good faith to villagers frightened by the sight of armed American troops. Male colleagues seldom saw it that way, Scott said, recalling what she and other women assigned to these cultural support teams, or CSTs, said was routine hostility from the Army Rangers and Green Berets with whom they were partnered. "Before they would go on missions," she said, "they looked at us and they'd be like, 'I unfortunately have to take … [Read more...] about These women survived combat. Then they had to fight for health care.

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 8 Beth Roper had already sold her husband Doug's boat and his pickup truck. Her daughter sends $500 a month or more. But it was nowhere near enough to pay the $5,950-a-month bill at Doug's assisted-living facility. So last year, Roper, 65, abandoned her own plans to retire. To the public school librarian from Poquoson, Va., it feels like a betrayal of a social contract. Doug Roper, a longtime high school history teacher and wrestling coach, has a pension and Social Security. The Ropers own a home; they have savings. Yet the expense of Doug's residential Alzheimer's care poses a grave threat to their middle-class nest egg. At nearly $72,000, a year in assisted living for Doug, 67, costs more than her $64,000 annual salary. "It's devastating," she said. "You can't wrap your head around it." A wave of Americans has been reaching retirement age largely … [Read more...] about Senior care is crushingly expensive. Boomers aren’t ready.