Here are some of tonight’s stories:
- Emperor penguin colonies doomed for extinction due to climate change.
- Trump’s last-ditch push to steal the election becomes clearer with newly released letter.
- Wildfires are raging across the western United States and around the world.
- Majority of the New York Assembly would oust Gov. Cuomo if he doesn’t resign.
- Last month’s heat wave cooked Walla Walla sweet onions to mush as climate change has driven U.S. crop insurance losses by $27 billion in 27 years.
- Pres. Biden is losing favor with independents over the economy and coronavirus.
- Trump’s lawyers says Congress only wants his tax returns for "for the sake of exposure, to improperly conduct law enforcement.”
- Some teachers and parents across the U.S. are fighting against mask rules in schools, while COVID-19 infected children are ‘fighting for their lives’ in St. Louis-area hospitals.
- The Taliban is advancing across Afghanistan and waging a war of retribution, causing some families to flee their homes.
- The American right is anti-America and actively undermining the nation.
Details and links to sources below the fold.
This is an open thread. Everyone is encouraged to share articles, stories, and tweets in your comments.
614,596 PEOPLE HAVE DIED FROM CORONAVIRUS IN THE U.S. 192.1 MILLION PEOPLE IN THE U.S. HAVE RECEIVED A VACCINATION DOSE
The Washington Post
Nearly all of the world’s emperor penguin colonies may be pushed to the brink of extinction by 2100, a study has found, as the United States moves to list them as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
If climate change continues at its current rate, more than 98 percent of emperor penguin colonies are expected to become quasi-extinct by the turn of the century, a group of global researchers wrote in the journal Global Change Biology on Tuesday. The scientists’ near-term predictions were equally grim: They estimated at least two-thirds of colonies would be quasi-extinct by 2050. […]
The species is especially vulnerable to climate change because, like polar bears in the Arctic, they depend on sea ice for vital activities including breeding, feeding and molting, the researchers say.
A newly released letter tells us more about Trump’s last-ditch push to steal the election
Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election by 7 million actual votes and 74 electoral votes, a fate that was cemented in early November after states finished counting ballots. But to Trump, that was simply the starting point of the second phase of the battle to steal Joe Biden’s victory by any means possible.
Trump had spent months — years, really — laying the groundwork. He’d repeatedly sowed doubt about the security of elections, without evidence, leveraging long-standing Republican rhetoric about election fraud as a personal defense mechanism. The advent of the coronavirus pandemic allowed Trump to apply a new sheen to the old claims, focusing on an increase in mail-in ballots as a conduit for what he insisted would be an avalanche of fraudulent voting. It allowed him to falsely suggest that anything counted after, say, midnight on Election Day was suspect — which he did, over and over.
Many Americans justifiably see the riot at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6 as the apex of the effort to keep Trump in office. It was certainly the most dangerous moment and the most striking, but even it was nearly matched a few hours later when a majority of the House Republican caucus voted to block the counting of electoral votes from two states, precisely the outcome that the rioters hoped to effect. In recent months, though, we’ve learned that Trump’s most direct effort to steal the election unfolded about a week prior, over the last few days of 2020.
The Sacramento Bee
Biden administration promises ‘boots on the ground’ to fight wildfires in California
Responding to criticisms about the federal government’s firefighting efforts, the Biden administration promised Gov. Gavin ] on Wednesday that the Forest Service will contribute “more boots on the ground” and other resources to make California’s forested lands less prone to wildfires.
Newsom “has challenged us to do a better job,” U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said, standing next to the governor at an overlook in the fire-ravaged Mendocino National Forest, where the largest fire in history burned last year. “We are prepared to do a better job — if we have the resources.”
Los Angeles Times
Forest Service changes ‘let it burn’ policy following criticism from Western politicians
Facing criticism over its practice of monitoring some fires rather than quickly extinguishing them, the U.S. Forest Service has told its firefighters to stop using the strategy for now, to help prevent small blazes from growing into uncontrollable conflagrations.
The policy change came days after California and Western states politicians, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, publicly challenged the “let it burn” practice in the wake of the Tamarack fire. The criticism was detailed in a Times story on Sunday.
Instead of letting some naturally caused small blazes to burn, the agency’s priorities will shift this year, U.S. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore indicated to staff in a letter Monday. The focus, he said, will be on firefighter and public safety.
Newsom can call recall proponents ‘Republicans and Trump supporters,’ judge rules
A Sacramento judge tentatively decided Wednesday to reject a lawsuit by recall leaders challenging Gov. Gavin Newsom’s description of them as “Republicans and Trump supporters.”
“As persuasively demonstrated by Governor Newsom,” wrote Sacramento Superior Court Judge Laurie Earl, “the recall effort was clearly spearheaded by Republicans.”
Recall leaders said in their suit that Newsom’s arguments for the official voter information guide for the Sept. 14 election were false and misleading and should be stricken. They argued that many of their supporters were not Republicans.
San Francisco Chronicle
California drought: One of the state's biggest reservoirs hit a record low this week
Lake Oroville, one of California’s biggest reservoirs, reached its lowest-ever point this week, breaking a record set decades ago in the latest troubling sign of the punishing drought conditions afflicting the state.
The lake reached a “new historic low elevation” of 642.73 feet of water, which is down from 645 feet in September 1977, said John Yarbrough, assistant deputy director of the California State Water Project, in a statement.
The new record low comes two months after officials at Lake Oroville warned that elevation was dropping steadily and would reach a record-low by the fall.
PG&E power line may have started the Fly Fire that merged with big Dixie Fire
A smaller wildfire that became part of the huge Dixie Fire now burning in the Sierra Nevada may have started when a tree fell on a Pacific Gas and Electric Co. power line.
PG&E said late Monday that it filed a report to state regulators about its possible link to the Fly Fire, which burned more than 4,000 acres before merging with the much larger Dixie Fire.
AP News
Huge California fire grows as heat spikes again across state
California’s largest wildfire exploded again after burning for nearly three weeks in remote mountains and officials warned Tuesday that hot, dry weather would increase the risk of new fires across much of the state.
Firefighters saved homes Monday in the small northern California community of Greenville near the Plumas National Forest as strong winds stoked the Dixie Fire, which grew to over 395 square miles (1,024 square kilometers) across Plumas and Butte counties.
“Engines, crews and heavy equipment shifted from other areas to increase structure protection and direct line construction as the fire moved toward Greenville,” the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire, said Tuesday morning.
Majority of NY Assembly would oust Cuomo if he doesn’t quit
A majority of state Assembly members support beginning impeachment proceedings against Gov. Andrew Cuomo if he doesn’t resign over investigative findings that he sexually harassed at least 11 women, according to an Associated Press count Wednesday.
At least 83 of the body’s 150 members have said publicly or told The AP that they favored initiating the process of ousting the third-term Democratic governor if he doesn’t quit. A simple majority of Assembly members is needed to authorize an impeachment trial.
Medford Mail Tribune
Seven new wildfires discovered Tuesday
79 fires have been discovered in southwest Oregon since July 29.
Fire crews working overnight and through the day discovered seven new fires sparked by lightning Tuesday, bringing the tally of Southern Oregon wildfires sparked by five days of lighting strikes to nearly 80.
On Tuesday morning, a multi-mission aircraft equipped with night vision and infrared technology discovered the Jack Creek fire burning in the Rogue River Siskiyou National Forest and two other fires burning in the northwestern portion of Jackson County on Oregon Department of Forestry lands: the Horse Mountain fire and the Skyline fire.
Salem Statesman Journal
Oregon wildfires: Five new fires in Bull of the Woods near Detroit, largest blaze grows to 300 acres
Lightning has ignited a new round of wildfire clusters across Oregon, including in the Cascade Mountains near Detroit, Oakridge and into southern Oregon… Three of the fires — the Janus, Kola and Ridge fires — are in the southeast corner of the Bull of the Woods Wilderness in the Janus Butte area.
The Janus Fire is the largest at an estimated 300 acres, up from 200 acres a day ago, while the remaining fires are each less than an acre… The wilderness fires will not be attacked directly due to inaccessible and dangerous terrain, fire spokeswoman Mary Ellen Fitzgerald said.
Given the shortage of resources and remote location, fire managers are planning to take "indirect tactics" on the wilderness fires — in other words, they'll likely try to create control lines to keep the fires in the wilderness area but won't hit the fire itself, expect possibly from the air.
The Oregonian
‘The political will is not there’: As COVID-19 rages, Oregon takes mostly hands-off approach
Gov. Kate Brown’s decision to hand off COVID-19 safeguards to individual counties has led to widespread inaction by local leaders during a pivotal fifth wave, which is threatening to become Oregon’s worst of the pandemic.
The delta variant is overtaking the country and Oregon, leading to huge spikes in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations and prompting the federal government last week to recommend indoor masking for the hardest hit areas – which includes 35 of 36 local counties. […]
Several public health officials told The Oregonian… they would like to push for stronger measures, but they feel powerless because of the enormous retribution they might face -- from county leaders who have the ability to hire or fire them, and a public weary of the past 17 months of pandemic restrictions and more than willing to direct their anger at them.
The Seattle Times
Why building rail transit in U.S., Seattle costs so much and takes so long
Rail-transit projects across the U.S. take longer to build and cost nearly 50% more on average than in Europe and Canada, says a new study of 180 megaprojects…
Project delays reflect a lack of political will, concludes the report released Thursday by the nonpartisan Eno Center for Transportation, based in Washington, D.C., titled “A Blueprint for Building Transit Better.”
“The United States suffers from a political climate that does not uniformly see investment in transit infrastructure as net positive. Instead, transit project sponsors spend much of their public outreach effort simply justifying their existence and the value of transit, rather than engaging on the details of a project,” Eno says. “The lack of broad public acceptance for transit also results in communities demanding mitigation for negative construction impacts rather than demanding faster timelines.”
Heat wave cooked Walla Walla sweet onions to mush
In June, as the sun baked the ground, harvest began at Enriquez Farms, a midsized operation in Walla Walla specializing in the region’s famous sweet onions. Up to that point, the alliums had thrived in the warm weather, and Fernando Enriquez Sr., the elder of a father-son duo that manages the farm, was excited for the year’s crop.
“All of this field, it was beautiful onions,” Enriquez Sr. said. “But the sun, it really hit it.”
The next day, he walked out to his fields and discovered that the tops of the oversized onions, baked by record heat as high as 120 degrees, had begun to develop soft, pale blisters just beneath their papery skin. Another day later, everything that had not already been harvested was ruined.
“There was nothing we could save,” he said, stepping over the husks of thousands of broken red and yellow onions left to dry out in the sun.
Stanford News
Global warming increased U.S. crop insurance losses by $27 billion in 27 years, Stanford study finds
A new Stanford University study shows hot, dry conditions caused by climate change have added billions of dollars to the cost of the federally subsidized insurance program that protects farmers against drops in crop prices and yields.
The study, published July 28 in Environmental Research Letters, finds that long-term warming contributed $27 billion to the losses covered by the U.S. crop insurance program from 1991 to 2017, or just over 19 percent of the $140 billion total. Rising temperatures contributed nearly half of the $18.6 billion in losses during the single costliest year, 2012, when record-smashing heat and severe drought engulfed much of the Midwest corn belt.
Gizmodo
Redfin Will Now Tell You How At-Risk Your Dream Home Is to Climate Change
It hard enough to buy a home, but the climate crisis is making it even more challenging. Will a prospective house be underwater? Catch on fire? Real estate brokerage firm Redfin is offering a new tool to assess those and other climate risks.
Anyone who visits the site will soon be able to see a climate safety rating ranging from 0 to 100 for the county, city, neighborhood, and zip code of the home they’re looking at. The grades, provided by the startup ClimateCheck, are based on an analysis of an area’s risk for five climate-related disasters—storms, temperature, drought, fire, and floods—over the course of 30 years, which is the length of a traditional mortgage.
Morning Consult
Biden Has a Growing Problem With Independents
President Joe Biden’s standing among independent voters on the pandemic and the economy has taken a hit in recent weeks amid a surge in COVID-19 cases and rising inflation, according to new Morning Consult/Politico polling.
It appears to be weakening Biden’s general reputation among unaffiliated voters, who helped Democrats secure full control of the White House and both chambers of Congress this year, exposing an early problem for his party to remedy with 14 months to go until the midterm elections.
According to a July 31-Aug. 2 poll, 44 percent of independent voters approve of Biden and 49 percent disapprove. Since April, the president’s net approval rating (the share who approve minus the share who disapprove) has dropped 18 percentage points among unaffiliated voters – a slow but consistent decline that is weighing on his overall numbers as Democrats express urgency regarding efforts to more aggressively sell the president’s successes and his agenda.
Orlando Sentinel
DeSantis rails at Biden, blames immigrants for record COVID surge
Gov. Ron DeSantis launched an angry attack on President Biden on Wednesday, joining other Republicans in claiming without evidence that immigrants are behind the surge in COVID cases and hospitalizations.
“Why don’t you do your job?” DeSantis said of the president. “Why don’t you get this border secure and until you do that, I don’t want to hear a blip about COVID from you.” […]
“Joe Biden is taken to himself to try to single out Florida over COVID,” DeSantis said. “He’s imported more virus from around the world by having a wide-open southern border, you have hundreds of thousands of people pouring across every month. ... So he’s facilitating who knows what new variants are out there.” […]
DeSantis also described Biden’s support of local school boards being able to make their own mask policies as having “the government force kindergarteners to wear masks in school. He doesn’t believe the parents should have a say in that, he thinks that should be a decision for the government. Well, I can tell you in Florida, the parents are going to be the ones in charge of that decision.
Miami Herald
Florida COVID update Wednesday: 16,935 new cases, hospitalizations break record for 3rd day
Florida reported 16,935 new COVID cases, 140 deaths and more than 12,000 people hospitalized in the state as of Tuesday, the third day in a row of record-breaking COVID hospitalizations as Florida hospitals temporarily suspend elective surgeries to conserve staff and make room for infected patients, the majority of them younger and unvaccinated.
The high number of hospitalizations has not been seen since the surge last July, the worst month for Florida COVID hospitalizations since the pandemic began 17 months ago.
Florida, which represents about 6.5% of the U.S. population, accounted for about 15% of the country’s new cases on Tuesday, based on the data the state is reporting to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The state’s seven-day average of new cases was 17,756 as of Aug. 3, up from a seven-day average of 2,195 on July 3, a 700 percent increase.
CBS News
Congresswoman Cori Bush is calling on lawmakers to work to make sure that "people have a footing" after the new eviction moratorium ends. Bush, who was once "houseless" herself, said on CBSN Wednesday that Congress needs to look at what it can do right now to make sure that after the moratorium expires on October 3 it has "exhausted" government money available to help people.
"This has bought Congress some time to see what it is that we need to do," Bush said. "One issue that we have is this 40 plus billion dollars that is sitting in those state and those local government coffers that we need to get out to the people. We need to get it out and see where we are, believing that this will help to get the country back on track as far as those that are possibly facing evictions."
Trump asks court to block IRS from giving tax records to House committee
Donald Trump asked a federal court on Wednesday to block the Treasury Department from handing over six years of his tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee after the Justice Department said last week that the IRS must turn them over.
Lawyers for Mr. Trump argued in a filing with the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia that the requests from Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, a Democrat from Massachusetts, lack a legitimate legislative purpose and instead are meant to expose the former president's private tax information for political gain. […]
Mr. Trump's attorneys … claimed the purpose of Neal's request to the IRS for Mr. Trump's tax information and from eight of his business entities is not to help inform future legislation, but to obtain the records "for the sake of exposure, to improperly conduct law enforcement."
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgians’ need for food stamps remains high despite economic recovery
The number of households receiving food stamp assistance has held steady for the past year after ballooning by 40% in the first six months after the COVID-19 pandemic hit Georgia.
At the same time, fewer Georgians are receiving welfare benefits this year than last, a downward trend that’s existed for more than a decade as government officials sought to reduce the rolls.
The economy has begun to turn around — with unemployment rates falling and reports showing that some Georgians are comfortable spending disposable income again — but a new variant of COVID-19 could slow that progress.
Instead of seeking help from the welfare program, those experiencing financial hardship have chosen to turn to help from food stamps, where the number of households receiving the benefit has remained much higher than pre-pandemic levels for the past year.
Houston Chronicle
This season's hurricane forecast from NOAA just got a little bit worse
Don’t be lulled by the quiet start to this year’s hurricane season in Texas. NOAA is maintaining its forecast for an above-average year and has upped the number of storms it’s expecting.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Wednesday there could be 15 to 21 named storms. Between seven and 10 of those could become hurricanes and three to five could be major hurricanes of Category 3 or higher, according to the agency’s Climate Prediction Center.
It had previously predicted 13 to 20 named storms, including six to 10 hurricanes and three to five major hurricanes.
'Dark times': Houston's fourth COVID-19 wave to be the largest yet, medical leaders predict
Fueled by the delta variant, a surge in Houston COVID-19 hospitalizations is growing as fast as at any time during the pandemic so far, and is projected to pass previous records by mid-August — even though roughly half of all eligible Houstonians are fully vaccinated.
“We’re heading into dark times,” said Texas Medical Center CEO Bill McKeon. Already, he said, “our ICUs are filled with unvaccinated people.”
On Tuesday, Texas Medical Center hospitals listed 1,372 people in intensive care — more than the number of regular ICU beds. The hospitals are now in Phase II of the medical center’s surge plan, opening unused wards to accommodate the gravely ill patients expected to need them.
The Dallas Morning News
‘Overwhelmed’: COVID-19 testing demand climbing in North Texas
It’s a routine Sonia Herrera has gotten used to since she started working at a COVID-19 testing site in December. She arrives about 8 a.m., puts on a mask and purple gloves and heads out to wait for people to drive up.
For the past week, there’s been a line of cars already waiting by the time Herrera arrives at the drive-through run by YesNoCovid in an old gas station at Northwest Highway and Abrams Road in northeast Dallas. On Tuesday morning, about 30 vehicles wrapped around the site and spilled over into the road.
“I was very exhausted and overwhelmed,” Herrera said.
She said the site usually processes 30 to 40 tests for coronavirus a day. But over the past week, they’ve tested more than 100 people a day — sometimes nearly 200. Herrera said they hired three more people to keep up.
Texas lawmaker asks AG to consider constitutionality of critical race theory, “anti-racist” teaching
[…] Rep. James White, the only Black Republican House member, sent a letter this week to Attorney General Ken Paxton asking him to weigh in on the ongoing political fight over the idea of critical race theory.
Among the several questions White asks Paxton to consider is: “At what point do programs or trainings that address racial inequities become unconstitutional?”
Debate over how race and racism is taught in schools has consumed conservative state legislatures in recent months. Texas recently passed a vague law aimed at banning critical race theory from the classroom, but lawmakers have so far been unable to take further steps to “abolish” it during the special session.
White said he reached out to Paxton because he doesn’t know when lawmakers will be able to resume work in Austin and wants teachers and principals to understand the “legal guideposts.” He said he is cognizant that the opinion he asked for could be “sweeping.”
Arizona Republic
Teacher's lawsuit against Phoenix Union district's COVID-19 mask mandate headed to court
A Phoenix Union High School District teacher who filed suit challenging the district's COVID-19 mask mandate will have his day in court next week.
The district is requiring staff, students and visitors to wear mask to be worn indoors when students head back to school next week — despite an Arizona law that bans mask mandates.
Douglas Hester, who teaches [biology] at Metro Tech High School, sued the district, its governing board and its superintendent in Maricopa County Superior Court. He alleges Phoenix Union’s governing board lacks the legal authority to require masks. […]
Judge Randall Warner ruled arguments will begin Aug. 13 at 9 a.m. The case will be heard in person, but attendance will be limited due to COVID-19 restrictions.
The Denver Post
Jeffco parents protest mask mandate for students ages 3-11
About 300 parents — many with kids in tow — spent Wednesday morning protesting Jeffco Public Schools’ decision to require students ages 3 to 11 to wear masks in classrooms to start the upcoming school year.
Standing outside of the Jefferson County Public Health headquarters in Lakewood, parents chanted “my body, my choice” and held signs decrying last week’s decision by the state’s second-largest school district. […]
Data from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment shows less than 3.5% of all COVID hospitalizations have occurred among people 19 and younger since the pandemic started, and just a quarter of 1% of all COVID deaths have occurred in that age cohort.
“The huge difference is that high-risk people have the choice to get vaccinated,” Parker said. “We need to stop asking kids to sacrifice for adults.”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Area hospital leaders are raising the alarm about an increase in the number of children hospitalized with COVID-19 and asking adults to protect children by getting vaccinated and wearing a mask.
In just one week, the major hospital systems across the St. Louis area have gone from having 13 children hospitalized with COVID to 20, Dr. Clay Dunagan said Tuesday, speaking on behalf of the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force.
Ten were younger than 12 and too young to get vaccinated, while the rest were ages 12 to 18. Three in the youngest age group and four in the oldest were in intensive care “fighting for their lives,” said Dunagan, chief clinical officer for BJC HealthCare. […]
“It’s true that children typically don’t have a very rough time with COVID. Many weather it with minor symptoms, not that much worse than a cold, but not all of them do,” Dunagan said.
The Guardian
Millions more people vulnerable to flooding in next decade, study shows
From Germany to New York City, this summer has demonstrated the destructive force of floods. Now, a new study shows that many more people will live in flood-prone areas in the coming decade and reveals the population in areas likely to flood is increasing at a greater rate than other places.
The study, which was published in the journal Nature today, used daily satellite observations of floods during 913 large flood events between 2000 and 2018.
During that time, 255-290 million people were directly affected by floodwaters. The authors also found that population growth in these areas rose by 34.1%, more than the total global population rise of 18.6%. This means that ten times as many people will be threatened by floods in the next decade than the estimated number of people who have been exposed to flooding since the turn of the century, the authors write.
Taliban suicide-bomb attack targets defence minister’s Kabul home
A suicide-bomb and gun attack in Kabul’s Green Zone that targeted Afghanistan’s acting defence minister and killed eight people on Tuesday was claimed by the Taliban, as the hardline Islamist group continued to escalate violence across the country.
The suicide bombing, which targeted the house used by Bismillah Mohammadi, was one of the most significant in the Afghan capital in recent months. It came amid heavy fighting in the south and west of the country as the Taliban have sought to take three key cities.
The attack took place in the wealthy Sherpur neighbourhood, located in the high-security Green Zone that houses several embassies, including the US mission.
Al Jazeera
Afghan families flee homes in south amid Taliban advance
Families have fled their homes in the southern city of Lashkar Gah as the Afghan army launched a major counterattack against the Taliban, residents said.
But many remained stuck in the crossfire as the armed group continue to control vast swathes of land.
Dozens of civilians have already died in the intense battle for Lashkar Gah, a city of 200,000 people that would be the Taliban’s biggest prize since they launched a nationwide offensive in May.
Thailand reports daily record of more than 20,000 COVID-19 cases
Thailand has reported 20,200 new coronavirus cases and 188 additional deaths – both records since the start of the pandemic last year – increasing the likelihood that virus-related restrictions will be extended.
The new cases and fatalities reported on Wednesday brought total cases to 672,385 and deaths to 5,503, data from the health ministry’s website showed.
The country recorded its previous high of daily COVID-19 cases at 18,912 and record-high daily fatalities at 178 just last Saturday.
EuroNews
Turkish power plant 'at risk of being destroyed' by wildfires
A thermal power plant in southern Turkey was evacuated on Wednesday as flames from raging wildfires approached it. Images posted online by the mayor of Milas, Muhammet Tokat, showed the fire at the gates of the plant.
Local authorities had earlier said the hydrogen tanks used to cool the plant, which runs on oil and coal, had been emptied and filled with water as a precaution.
The fire was initially brought under control earlier in the day by two water-bombing planes and helicopters, which poured water on nearby wooded peaks and residential areas. But the flames returned in the afternoon.
WHO calls for COVID booster jab moratorium to accelerate vaccination in poorer countries
The head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) called on Wednesday for a moratorium on booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines so that those vaccines can be made available to countries that have only been able to inoculate a small proportion of their population.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters that although "hundreds of millions of people are still waiting for their first dose, some rich countries are moving towards booster doses" — a dose to be administered after a full vaccination course. […]
"I understand the concern of all governments to protect their own people from the Delta variant. But we cannot accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it, while the world's most vulnerable remain protected," he added.
BBC News
Thailand bans coral-damaging sunscreens in marine parks
Thailand has banned sunscreens containing chemicals that damage coral from all of its marine national parks. Concerns are growing that lotions tourists use for sun protection are harming slow-growing corals.
The Thai Department of Conservation said four ingredients commonly found in sun creams were shown to destroy coral larvae, obstruct coral reproduction and cause reef bleaching. Anyone flouting the ban can be fined up to 100,000 baht (£2,100).
Dalit girl rape and murder: Indians protest over girl's forced cremation
Protests are continuing for the fourth day over the alleged gang rape, murder and forced cremation of a nine-year-old girl in the Indian capital, Delhi.
The girl's parents have accused a Hindu priest and three others of attacking her when she had gone to fetch drinking water from the crematorium's cooler. Her mother said the gates were shut and she was threatened when she objected to her daughter's cremation.
Police have registered a case of gang rape and murder and arrested the men.
Deutsche Welle
Health of Germany’s forests is in terminal decline
The health of German forests is in terminal decline. Global heating and poor management are at the roots of a countrywide die-off, an urgent issue being confronted by a national forest summit this week. […]
While the climate crisis and rampant bark beetles are a major cause for concern, the forest summit aims to rethink and realign the way forests are managed. One example is the widespread planting of fast-growing spruce conifer trees after World War II in areas where they are not native. Making up 25% of German forests today, spruce is an Alpine tree that requires wet and cold conditions.
"It is the artificial forest that is dying," said German forester and author, Peter Wohlleben. "It's not a natural forest, it's not a primeval forest," he told DW. "In the next 10 years or so, we could see 50% or more of the forest dying because of bad management."
[…] Fires have been raging throughout Italy for weeks. Several central and southern regions have lost tens of thousands of hectares of forest. In Sardinia, botanists are alarmed at the decimation of the local biodiversity and the number of secular olive groves that have been destroyed. In Sicily, wildfires reached Catania, where about 150 people were evacuated by sea, and the airport was closed for several hours. […]
According to Coldiretti, the largest farmers association in Italy, at least 60% of the wildfires in Italy were started by arson.
The Atlantic
What the Ohio Special Election Actually Means
In the next few days and weeks, Americans will read headlines announcing all the lessons learned from Nina Turner’s primary loss to Shontel Brown in Ohio’s Eleventh Congressional District yesterday. Political writers might treat the race as a parable: a warning for progressives and an endorsement of the Democratic establishment’s approach to politics. Twitter pundits will publish threads about what Turner’s loss portends for the American left, and cable-news commentators might riff on the election as a harbinger of the 2022 midterms.
But in truth, this election does not tell us much. The outcome has no particularly useful implications for any brand of Democrat—or for the party’s broader electoral strategy. “Special elections are unusual occurrences, and this is a primary for a special election held in one district,” Justin Buchler, a political-science professor at Case Western Reserve University, told me yesterday. Any attempt to derive meaning from such an event “makes precisely zero sense.”
Congress Is Slashing a $30 Billion Plan to Fight the Next Pandemic
President Joe Biden campaigned as America’s pandemic fighter. So it will be strange, to say the least, if his infrastructure bill fails to significantly increase the country’s pandemic-preparedness budget.
But it could happen. Biden proposed $30 billion to address the issue, which advocates say could permanently mitigate the risks of future outbreaks. The investment would replenish medical stockpiles, proactively develop vaccines for major types of viruses, and ensure that the United States has a permanent production base of face masks and respirators. In effect, it would amount to an Apollo program–like push to guarantee that a global pandemic could never shut down the country again.
Yet those funds have been slashed in the current negotiations over the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package as part of a push to slim it down, according to a source familiar with the situation.
Vox
Delta is surging. Your boss wants you in the office. Is it safe?
If you’ve spent most of the Covid-19 pandemic working from home, the idea of going back to the office might make you nervous — especially amid a surge in cases in some areas driven by the delta variant, which is highly contagious and may cause more severe illness. […]
But some bosses are calling their US employees back to the office anyway. If you’re one of these employees, you may be wondering: How do I know if it’s safe to go back? […]
If you and everyone else in your office are vaccinated, that’s already the biggest, most important battle won.
That said, if you’re looking to minimize risk further, look to your office’s ventilation. [Monica Gandhi, a physician and medical professor at the University of California San Francisco] emphasized that “in light of the delta variant, it is very important to have good ventilation even if your office requires vaccines,” adding that ventilation is that much more important if your office does not require vaccines.
The Olympics are typically a boom time for jingoism: patriotic fervor heightening among Americans of all stripes with each gold medal for Team USA. But this year, we’ve seen an unlikely faction of Americans rooting against our athletes: conservatives. […]
These attacks on Team USA are not just culture war red meat; they are a reflection of a rising tendency in the conservative movement to reject America itself. In this thinking, the country is so corrupted that it is no longer a source of pride or even worthy of respect. In its most radical versions, you even see cheerleading for revolution or civil war.
Conservative anti-Americanism still pays lip service to love of country: Its proponents declare themselves the true patriots, describing their enemies as the nation’s betrayers. But when the cadre of traitors includes everyone from election administrators to Olympians to the Capitol Police, it becomes clear that the only America they love is the one that exists in their heads. When they contemplate the actual United States — real America, if you will — they are filled with scorn.
Bloomberg
Senate Rejects Border Wall Addition to Infrastructure Bill
The U.S. Senate rejected an amendment to a broad $550 billion infrastructure package that would have barred the Biden administration from canceling contracts related to former … Donald Trump’s border wall, as the Senate plowed through proposed changes with the vast bipartisan plan intact and just days away from passage.
The vote on the amendment proposed by GOP Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin defeated one of the few controversial proposed changes to the bill, keeping the broader legislation on track. It was blocked in a 48-49 vote that was well short of the 60 needed for inclusion.
Africa Is the Continent Without Climate Data
A lack of weather stations is holding back climate science. But dusty manuscripts in Timbuktu could help fill in some gaps. […]
“Weather and climate have a huge variability, so you need observations over decades and even over centuries,” says Peer Hechler, a scientific officer at the World Meteorological Organization, the United Nations agency that oversees weather and climate issues. “If you have data-sparse areas, you have a problem understanding the weather and the climate globally.” […]
Stories from Timbuktu, the ancient center of learning and trade in the southernmost corner of the Sahara, have captured Hienin Ali Diakité’s imagination since he was a child. His father, a Malian migrant in Burkina Faso, would spend hours recounting his own long journeys across the desert and the Niger river, waxing lyrical about the city’s golden ages. […]
By the 19th century, the fall of the Malian empire and colonization by the French brought an end to the centuries-old practice of studying the manuscripts. The documents faded away, forgotten by almost everyone. When western scholars found them more than a century later, they were baffled. Their findings allowed them to rewrite West African history, which they previously thought had been preserved solely through the oral tradition. […]
The texts, some of which can be accessed online, give hints of what the weather was like centuries ago. One talks about a drought-led famine in 1785; others include passages on the precise places where rivers sprung up in the desert during the rainy season. The large number of magic intonations said to invoke rain, or to make it stop, indicate that the weather was something people spent a lot of time trying to control.
Reuters
China reports most new COVID-19 cases since January amid Delta surge
China reported on Wednesday the most new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases since January as some cities stepped up restrictions, cut flights and increased testing to get to grips with an outbreak driven mainly by the Delta variant. […]
Since late July…, the highly transmissible Delta variant has been detected in more than a dozen Chinese cities, including the capital.
China has reported 485 locally transmitted cases with symptoms between July 20 and Aug. 3, although it's not immediately clear how many involve the Delta variant.
Mexico sues U.S. gun makers, eyes $10 billion in damages
Mexico sued several gun makers in a U.S. federal court on Wednesday, accusing them of reckless business practices that supply what it called a "torrent" of illegal arms to violent Mexican drug cartels, leading to thousands of deaths.
The lawsuit alleges that units of Smith & Wesson, Barrett Firearms, Colt's Manufacturing Company, Glock Inc, Sturm, Ruger & Co and others knew their business practices had encouraged illegal arms trafficking into Mexico.
The lawsuit cites weapons that had entered Mexico used in notorious shootings, noting that Colt's .38-caliber "Emiliano Zapata 1911" pistol is engraved with the image of the Mexican revolutionary, and is a status symbol coveted by drug cartels.
Mother Jones
Will This Court Case End the Mining Industry’s 150-Year Dominance of the West?
[…] The Rosemont mine would not be some weird outlier of public lands despoliation. Thousands of hardrock mines throughout the West have left behind similar ravages, all of which can be attributed to the General Mining Act of 1872, which has long been interpreted to give the mining industry the right to occupy public lands upon which valuable minerals have been found, no matter a mine’s impact on environmental or cultural resources. Written when miners with burros and pickaxes filled carts with high-quality deposits and rode away from relatively tiny piles of leavings, the law now seems an absurdly inappropriate legal framework for today’s mega-operators, who gouge low-grade ore from giant pits using electric shovels sporting 60-cubic-yard buckets while generating billions of tons of waste. […]
But the unfettered freedom to mine may soon be coming to an end. That’s largely thanks to the persistence of Roger Flynn, an attorney whose nonprofit Western Mining Action Project has been suing mining companies—with frequent success—for more than a quarter-century. Flynn recently helped stop a massive silver and copper mine on the boundary of national forest land in Montana’s Cabinet Mountains Wilderness, and he’s now awaiting a decision on the Rosemont case from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. A win there would not only stop Rosemont in its tracks; it could also forever change the face of public lands mining in the West. […]
Flynn, in other words, wasn’t contesting Hudbay Minerals’ right to mine ore from the 1,968 acres of Santa Rita mountain land that it owned outright. His case targeted the company’s plan to dump waste from its mine on another 2,447 acres of public land. Did that land contain valuable minerals that Hudbay eventually planned to extract? The company shared no data on the land’s mineral worth, and the Forest Service declined—as it usually does—to conduct a so-called validity test before approving Rosemont’s plan. Mining companies have been claiming and dumping waste on public land adjacent to their ore-filled claims for more than half a century. But just because this has become accepted practice, Flynn argues, doesn’t mean it is legal.
Ars Technica
The State Department and 3 other US agencies earn a D for cybersecurity
Cybersecurity at eight federal agencies is so poor that four of them earned grades of D, three got Cs, and only one received a B in a report issued Tuesday by a US Senate Committee.
“It is clear that the data entrusted to these eight key agencies remains at risk,” the 47-page report stated. “As hackers, both state-sponsored and otherwise, become increasingly sophisticated and persistent, Congress and the executive branch cannot continue to allow PII and national security secrets to remain vulnerable.”
The report, issued by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, comes two years after a separate report found systemic failures by the same eight federal agencies in complying with federal cybersecurity standards. The earlier report found that during the decade spanning 2008 to 2018, the agencies failed to properly protect personally identifiable information, maintain a list of all hardware and software used on agency networks, and install vendor-supplied security patches in a timely manner.