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Administration will lead the initiative, which grew out of a series of regional forums held in response to the 2012 drought, the most severe and widespread in more than 70 years. It covered more than two-thirds of the continental U.S. and caused more than $30 billion in losses from crop failures, wildfires and other ripple effects.
• "We were very aggressive in responding to the drought but all of it was after the fact," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We made money available for technical assistance after the fact. We provided disaster loan assistance and extended grazing aid after the fact. We purchased surplus product after the fact."
• With droughts likely to become more frequent and widespread as the climate warms, "we have to adjust to this new normal and we have to understand what it means to be proactive instead of just reacting," he said.
• Vilsack was announcing Friday the creation of the National Drought Resilience Partnership, which also will involve the Department of Interior, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management Administration. The goal is to help communities and individual farmers, ranchers and others whose livelihoods are particularly vulnerable during low-water periods to be ready and cope.
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• CHICAGO (AP) -- Identical twins Kelly McCarthy and Kristen Maurer have shared a lot in their lives so when one was diagnosed with breast cancer, she urged the other to get tested, too.
• "You just do everything together, don't you," the doctor told Maurer before delivering the bad news that she, too, had the disease.
• Now the 34-year-old twins from Crown Point, Ind., are sharing a medical rarity: Maurer donated skin and fat tissue for McCarthy's breast reconstruction.
• "It wasn't a question, she didn't have to ask me," said Maurer, a college enrollment counselor. "Having a twin is very like having a child. You would do anything for them ... in a heartbeat."
• The first successful organ transplant was between identical twins in Boston in 1954 and involved a kidney.
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