Sarah Smarsh writes: Lines of Kansas voters, resolute in the August sun and 100-degree heat, stretched beyond the doors of polling sites and wrapped around buildings on Tuesday to cast ballots in a primary election. A few suffered heat exhaustion. Firefighters passed out bottles of water. When polls closed at 7 p.m. Central time, many… Read More »
The New York Times reports: Going into Election Day, many observers believed the outcome of the referendum would be determined in increasingly Democratic areas like the Kansas City suburbs — that is, by whether enough voters turned out there to compensate for the very conservative lean of the rest of the state. But abortion opponents… Read More »
Scott Gottlieb writes: When about 100 cases of monkeypox had been confirmed or suspected in Europe in May, it was clear the virus was spreading outside the areas where it was previously seen. Some on social media suggested it might already be spreading rapidly in communities in Europe and the United States. These reports should… Read More »
The New York Times reports: In Mississippi, which brought the abortion case that ended Roe v. Wade before the Supreme Court, Gov. Tate Reeves vowed that the state would now “take every step necessary to support mothers and children.” Today, however, Mississippi fares poorly on just about any measure of that goal. Its infant and… Read More »
BBC News reports: Scientists say there is “compelling evidence” that Wuhan’s Huanan seafood and wildlife market was at the centre of the Covid-19 outbreak. Two peer-reviewed studies published on Tuesday re-examine information from the initial outbreak in the Chinese city. One of the studies shows that the earliest known cases were clustered around that market.… Read More »
Yale Climate Connections reports: Esther Sanchez’s pregnancy this summer has coincided with extreme heat in Madrid, Spain, where she lives. Overnight temperatures there have been particularly uncomfortable. One recent morning, her living room was still 88 degrees Fahrenheit [31 C] at 6 a.m. “So it was impossible to sleep and to rest and have a… Read More »
Robert N. Proctor and Londa Schiebinger write: Every year, some 36 billion tons of anthropogenic carbon enter the atmosphere, mainly as a result of burning fossil fuels. With 8 billion people on Earth, this means that each human adds an average of 4.5 tons of carbon into the air annually. And wealthy people have a… Read More »
The New York Times reports: For the second time in two years, the World Health Organization has taken the extraordinary step of declaring a global emergency. This time the cause is monkeypox, which has spread in just a few weeks to dozens of countries and infected tens of thousands of people. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,… Read More »
Ed Yong writes: Jacob Bor has been thinking about a parallel universe. He envisions a world in which America has health on par with that of other wealthy nations, and is not an embarrassing outlier that, despite spending more on health care than any other country, has shorter life spans, higher rates of chronic disease… Read More »
The New York Times reports: This past week brought home the magnitude of the overlapping crises assailing the global economy, intensifying fears of recession, job losses, hunger and a plunge on stock markets. At the root of this torment is a force so elemental that it has almost ceased to warrant mention — the pandemic.… Read More »
Ed Yong writes: Well, here we go again. Once more, the ever-changing coronavirus behind COVID-19 is assaulting the United States in a new guise—BA.5, an offshoot of the Omicron variant that devastated the most recent winter. The new variant is spreading quickly, likely because it snakes past some of the immune defenses acquired by vaccinated… Read More »
The New Lede reports: In fresh evidence of the pervasive nature of pesticides, more than 80 percent of urine samples drawn from children and adults participating in a US health study contained a weedkilling chemical linked to cancer and other health problems. The report by a unit of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention… Read More »
The New York Times reports: The most transmissible variant yet of the coronavirus is threatening a fresh wave of infections in the United States, even among those who have recovered from the virus fairly recently. The subvariant of Omicron known as BA.5 is now dominant, according to federal estimates released Tuesday, and together with BA.4,… Read More »
Mosquito-borne diseases are estimated to cause over 1 million deaths a year. mrs/Moment via Getty Images Penghua Wang, University of Connecticut Mosquitoes are the world’s deadliest animal. Over 1 million deaths per year are attributed to mosquito-borne diseases, including malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever, Zika and chikungunya fever. How mosquitoes seek out and feed on… Read More »
The Guardian reports: Humanity is facing a “perfect storm” of crises that is widening inequality between the north and south, the UN secretary general has warned. The divide is not only “morally unacceptable” but dangerous, further threatening peace and security in a conflicted world. The global food, energy and financial crises unleashed by the war… Read More »
NPR reports: Like most women seeking an abortion, Brittany Mostiller already had children when she unexpectedly got pregnant again. “I had two young daughters both under the age of 5, sharing a two-bedroom apartment with my sister,” she says. She’d also just been laid off from her overnight job as a greeter for Greyhound buses.… Read More »