WASHINGTON

Kerry cautions lawmakers against new Iran sanctions

Secretary of State John Kerry warned Congress Wednesday against scuttling a historic opportunity for a nuclear pact with Iran by pressing ahead with new sanctions while international negotiators seek to prevent Tehran from being able to assemble an atomic weapons arsenal.

Kerry, who as a senator joined the effort to impose crippling oil, trade and investment restrictions on Iran, said the U.S. and other world powers are united behind an offer they presented to Iranian negotiators in Geneva last week. But he said new action now from U.S. lawmakers could shatter an international coalition, endangering hopes for a peaceful end to the decade-long nuclear standoff.

Law offers states incentive if schools stock epinephrine

The deaths of two girls in Illinois and Virginia from severe food allergies have helped spur efforts to get schools to stockpile emergency medications that can save lives.

That effort has now reached the highest level: President Obama’s desk. The president signed a bipartisan bill on Wednesday that offers a financial incentive to states if schools stockpile epinephrine, considered the first-line treatment for people with severe allergies. The medication is administered by injection, through preloaded EpiPens or similar devices.

“This is something that will save children’s lives,” Obama said, adding that his daughter Malia has a peanut allergy.

With law about to expire, plastic guns come under fire

With a law banning undetectable firearms about to expire, federal agents are focusing attention on the latest twist in high-tech weaponry: guns made entirely out of plastic.

Three-dimensional industrial printers that can create plastic models and prototypes now can make guns that can’t be picked up by metal detectors.

A longtime ban on undetectable firearms is scheduled to expire Dec. 9 and two Democratic senators, Chuck Schumer of New York and Bill Nelson of Florida, have called for a ban on plastic guns. Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., also has introduced legislation on the issue.

In order to comply with current law, a person manufacturing a gun must use a certain amount of metal in the finished product so that the firearm is detectable by scanners.

Report calls oceans’ future ‘hot, sour and breathless’

Greenhouse gases are making the world’s oceans hot, sour and breathless, and the way those changes work together is creating a grimmer outlook for oceans, according to a new report Wednesday from 540 international scientists.

The world’s oceans are getting more acidic at an unprecedented rate, the report said. But it’s how this interacts with other impacts that scientists say have them even more worried.

They already had calculated how the oceans had become 26 percent more acidic since the 1880s because of the increased carbon. They also had measured how oceans had warmed because of carbon dioxide. And they’ve observed that at different depths the oceans were moving less oxygen around because of the increased heat.

But together “they actually amplify each other,” said report co-author Ulf Riebesell, a biochemist at the Geomar Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research in Germany. He said scientists are increasingly referring to the ocean’s future prospects as “hot, sour and breathless.”

– From news service reports