Browsed by
Author: From elsewhere

Methane rises to highest level on record

Methane rises to highest level on record

The Guardian reports: Animal farming and fossil fuels have driven global emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane to the highest level on record, putting the world on track for dangerously increased heat levels of 3C to 4C. Since 2000 discharges of the odourless, colourless gas have risen by more than 50m tonnes a year, equivalent to 350m cars or double the total emissions of Germany or France, according to the latest Methane Budget study by a global team of…

Read More Read More

In historic move, Asheville, North Carolina approves reparations for Black residents

In historic move, Asheville, North Carolina approves reparations for Black residents

Asheville Citizen Times reports: In an extraordinary move, the Asheville City Council has apologized for the North Carolina city’s historic role in slavery, discrimination and denial of basic liberties to Black residents and voted to provide reparations to them and their descendants. The 7-0 vote came the night of July 14. “Hundreds of years of Black blood spilled that basically fills the cup we drink from today,” said Councilman Keith Young, one of two African American members of the body…

Read More Read More

Fauci: ‘Bizarre’ White House behavior only hurts Trump

Fauci: ‘Bizarre’ White House behavior only hurts Trump

The Atlantic reports: Anthony Fauci isn’t about to quit, despite the White House’s clumsy attempts to stain his public image. More so now than at any other point in their uneasy partnership, it seems that if President Donald Trump wants to be rid of Fauci, he’ll need to fire him. In recent days especially, the White House has stepped up efforts to discredit Fauci, a move he describes as “bizarre.” “Ultimately, it hurts the president to do that,” Fauci told…

Read More Read More

Global surge in coronavirus cases is being fed by the developing world — and the U.S.

Global surge in coronavirus cases is being fed by the developing world — and the U.S.

The Washington Post reports: When the United States began shutting down this spring, a virus that emerged months earlier as a mysterious outbreak in a Chinese provincial capital had infected a total of fewer than 200,000 people worldwide. So far this week, the planet has added an average of more than 200,000 cases every day. The novel coronavirus — once concentrated in specific cities or countries — has now crept into virtually every corner of the globe and is wreaking…

Read More Read More

Trump administration strips CDC of control of coronavirus data

Trump administration strips CDC of control of coronavirus data

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration has ordered hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and send all Covid-19 patient information to a central database in Washington beginning on Wednesday. The move has alarmed health experts who fear the data will be politicized or withheld from the public. The new instructions were posted recently in a little-noticed document on the Department of Health and Human Services website. From now on, the department — not the…

Read More Read More

Trump’s final presidential pardon: himself

Trump’s final presidential pardon: himself

Bill Press writes: Jan. 20, 2021. EXCLUSIVE TO THE HILL: According to official documents obtained by our team of White House correspondents, President Trump’s last official act as president, just minutes before leaving the White House to head directly for Mar-A-Lago, pointedly boycotting incoming President Joe Biden’s Inauguration, was to issue one final presidential pardon. In a brief written statement, Trump said, “Under absolute powers bestowed on me as president under Article II of the Constitution, I am awarding a…

Read More Read More

I’m a former civil servant. We are professionals, not a ‘deep state’

I’m a former civil servant. We are professionals, not a ‘deep state’

Russell E. Travers writes: If the intelligence community needs to correct understatements of threat (no, the Islamic State is not defeated) or correct overstatements of threat (no, data doesn’t suggest a significant threat from refugees), that’s not a “deep state” undermining the president; that’s a professional civil service doing its job. Just like the civil servants at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Justice Department and everywhere else in the government. A century ago,…

Read More Read More

The pandemic may get much, much worse. We must act now

The pandemic may get much, much worse. We must act now

John M. Barry writes: When you mix science and politics, you get politics. With the coronavirus, the United States has proved politics hasn’t worked. If we are to fully reopen both the economy and schools safely — which can be done — we have to return to science. To understand just how bad things are in the United States and, more important, what can be done about it requires comparison. At this writing, Italy, once the poster child of coronavirus…

Read More Read More

New Biden plan sees millions of jobs in aggressive climate action

New Biden plan sees millions of jobs in aggressive climate action

The Verge reports: On Wednesday, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden revealed a revamped climate and energy plan that raises spending, expands efforts to address racial disparities, and sets an earlier deadline for cutting greenhouse gases. Biden’s plan aims to eliminate carbon pollution from the power sector by 2035. Biden had previously committed to reaching a 100 percent “clean energy economy” by 2050. The plan comes with a $2 trillion price tag over four years, higher than his previous ten-year…

Read More Read More

Aerosols are a bigger coronavirus threat than WHO guidelines suggest – here’s what you need to know

Aerosols are a bigger coronavirus threat than WHO guidelines suggest – here’s what you need to know

Aerosols are made up of tiny respiratory droplets suspended in the air. Jeffrey Coolidge via Getty Images Byron Erath, Clarkson University; Andrea Ferro, Clarkson University, and Goodarz Ahmadi, Clarkson University When someone coughs, talks or even breathes, they send tiny respiratory droplets into the surrounding air. The smallest of these droplets can float for hours, and there is strong evidence that they can carry live coronavirus if the person is infected. Until this week, however, the risk from these aerosols…

Read More Read More

We ran the CDC. No president ever politicized its science the way Trump has

We ran the CDC. No president ever politicized its science the way Trump has

Tom Frieden, Jeffrey Koplan, David Satcher and Richard Besser write: As America begins the formidable task of getting our kids back to school and all of us back to work safely amid a pandemic that is only getting worse, public health experts face two opponents: covid-19, but also political leaders and others attempting to undermine the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As the debate last week around reopening schools more safely showed, these repeated efforts to subvert sound public…

Read More Read More

Trump mired in self-pity as polls sink and pandemic worsens

Trump mired in self-pity as polls sink and pandemic worsens

Bloomberg reports: President Donald Trump swept to power by championing the hardships of forgotten men and women, but his re-election bid has so far centered on the plight of just one person: himself. Trump is struggling to respond to a resurgent pandemic, an economic downturn and nationwide protests for racial justice. The coronavirus has weakened the central plank of his campaign — the economy — while mostly scuttling the rallies that he thrives on. While all those crises raged, Trump…

Read More Read More

Focusing on charging Amy Cooper lets white people off the hook

Focusing on charging Amy Cooper lets white people off the hook

Christian Cooper writes: On May 25, when I was birding in the Ramble section of New York’s Central Park, I asked a woman whose dog was off his leash to please put him back on, as the area’s rules require. She refused — and, as shown in a video that went viral, she was soon calling the police and telling them an “African American man” was “threatening” her. Now Amy Cooper has been charged by the Manhattan district attorney with…

Read More Read More

Elite hospitals have an epidemic of greed

Elite hospitals have an epidemic of greed

Washington Monthly reports: In early March, public health officials issued warnings about what the spreading coronavirus could mean for the Pittsburgh region. Debra Bogen, director of the health department for surrounding Allegheny County, forecast that between 40 to 60 percent of the adults in western Pennsylvania could come down with COVID-19 unless strong mitigation measures were taken. The Harvard Global Health Institute predicted that Pittsburgh-area hospitals could need between 480 to 720 percent more beds than were currently available. Meanwhile,…

Read More Read More