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Reuters
Biden announces new $700 million in military aid for Ukraine
President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday a new $700 million weapons package for Ukraine that will include high mobility artillery rocket systems, which can accurately hit targets as far away as 80 km (50 miles).
"The United States will stand with our Ukrainian partners and continue to provide Ukraine with weapons and equipment to defend itself," Biden said in a statement.
Biden announced the plan to give Ukraine precision HIMARS rocket systems after receiving assurances from Kyiv that it would not use them to hit targets inside Russian territory. Biden imposed the condition to try to avoid escalating the Ukraine war.
The Daily Beast
Putin World Descends Into Fury Over New U.S. Rocket Delivery
President Joe Biden’s latest plan to send advanced rocket launch systems to Ukraine to help defend against Russian advances is already sending Moscow into a rage.
Ukrainian officials have been pleading for months for the U.S. to send the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), which will allow them to better target Russian forces from afar, but the Biden administration had held off on providing them out of a concern that the Kremlin might interpret the transfer as an escalation.
And while administration officials have received assurances from Ukrainian officials that they won’t use weapons they’re receiving from the United States on targets in Russia, Russian officials are already sounding the alarm.
“In order to trust, you need to have experience of cases when these promises were kept. Unfortunately, there is no such experience at all,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said. […]
“We believe that the United States is deliberately and diligently adding fuel to the fire,” Peskov said.
The Washington Post
As Ukraine marks Children’s Day, U.N. says 5 million need humanitarian aid
Wednesday is International Day for the Protection of Children in many former Soviet countries — a joyful celebration typically marked by concerts, outdoor games and arts and crafts.
In Ukraine, it’s a Children’s Day like no other. On Friday, the country will mark the grim milestone of 100 days since the Russian invasion. During that time, at least 262 children have been killed and 415 injured in wartime strikes, according to UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency, which cited confirmed figures that the United Nations acknowledges are incomplete and much lower than the actual tolls.
Ukrainian officials have said there is little cause to celebrate. The war has left 5.2 million children in need of humanitarian assistance, according to UNICEF, and has disrupted children’s lives and education.
The Guardian
Luhansk governor says Russia now controls 70% of Sievierodonetsk
Russian forces now control more than two-thirds of the key eastern Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk, as Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, conceded that Kyiv’s forces were suffering up to 100 deaths and 500 wounded every day…
Confirming the latest gains in Sievierodonetsk, a strategically important city in Ukraine’s east, the Luhansk regional governor, Serhiy Haidai, said on Wednesday that Russia controlled 70% of the city.
“Unfortunately, today, Russian troops control most of the city,” said Haidai. “Some Ukrainian troops have retreated to more advantageous, pre-prepared positions.”
Deutsche Welle
Why Ukraine's Sievierodonetsk is so important
Barely two weeks after the last Ukrainian soldiers in the port city of Mariupol surrendered to the Russian army in hopes of a prisoner swap, Ukraine may lose yet another major center in the Donbas— the city of Sievierodonetsk. Reportedly, there is fighting in the streets, and Russian soldiers are said to have advanced to the city center.
Sievierodonetsk and neighboring Lyssychansk are the last major cities in the Luhansk area — the Donetsk and Luhansk regions are known collectively as the Donbas — still controlled by Kyiv. According to Ukraine's General Staff, Russia is intent on capturing Sievierodonetsk. Ukrainian troops defending the region risk being trapped, as they were in Mariupol. […]
Sievierodonetsk is also known for the fact that the first attempt to divide Ukraine was made there almost 20 years ago. On November 28, 2004, the so-called All-Ukrainian Congress of Deputies of All Levels convened in the city, attended mainlyby representatives of the pro-Russian Party of Regions.
El País
Resistance on rails: How Ukraine’s biggest employer is keeping the country moving
Ukraine’s national railway company, Ukrzaliznitsya, the country’s largest employer, is headed by a 37-year-old man who you might easily mistake for a young backpacker. Oleksandr Kamishin’s role is critical in Ukraine’s resistance to Russian aggression. Some 130 of Ukrzaliznitsya’s 231,000 workers have died in the conflict and three have been taken prisoner by Russia. EL PAÍS accompanied Kamishin for two days, traveling to the city of Lviv with the 37-year-old aboard a two-car convoy.
Since the Russian army invaded on February 24, the trains have not stopped running, despite attacks on the railway infrastructure. The most serious so far was the bombing of Kramatorsk station in the east of the country which occurred on April 8. Among the citizens waiting for a train, at least 57 people died. […]
“The history of this war is the history of the trains,” Kamishin tells EL PAÍS. His main problem right now, along with the safety of staff and passengers, is the threat of Russian bombs. Since the war began the director has spent most of his time aboard trains and in stations across Ukraine.
Euronews
Why the Druzhba pipeline was spared from the EU ban on Russian oil
With the war in Ukraine entering its fourth month with no end in sight, the European Union has taken its sanctions against Russia into uncharted territory.
In a bold move poised to reverberate across global markets, the 27 member states have agreed to phase out Russian oil, both crude barrels and refined oil products, by the end of the year.
The breakthrough followed almost four weeks of fraught negotiations that culminated in a high-stakes extraordinary summit in Brussels, where leaders gave in to a key demand vigorously advocated by Hungary: the total exemption of oil supplies flowing through pipelines.
The Local (Denmark)
Danes vote to scrap country’s EU defence opt-out
A clear majority of Danes has voted to revoke the country’s opt-out on joint EU defence policy in a national referendum held on Wednesday.
Public service broadcaster DR called the result of the referendum less than 90 minutes after polls closed, with around 58 percent of votes counted. […]
“Tonight Denmark has sent a very important signal. To our allies in Europe and NATO, and to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. We’re showing, that when Putin invades a free country and threatens the stability in Europe, we others pull together,” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told cheering supporters.
The Kyiv Independent
Russia destroys Ukraine’s historic heritage, steals rare collections from museums
[…] Almost 100 days into the Kremlin’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of cultural heritage sites in the country have been destroyed and thousands of rare historical artifacts have been stolen.
As of May 27, the Culture Ministry has documented 367 war crimes against Ukraine’s cultural heritage, including the destruction of 29 museums, 133 churches, 66 theaters and libraries, and even a century-old Jewish cemetery. This cemetery in Hlukhiv, Sumy Oblast, which is a site of pilgrimage for Jews, was hit by two Russian missiles on May 8.
“Russians have the precise aim of destroying our culture as part of our identity, something that distinguishes Ukraine from Russia,” Bloomberg quoted Olha Honchar, co-founder of Ukraine’s Museum Crisis Center, as saying. “It has become quite clear now for the whole world that Russia bombs museums, archives, and theaters not by accident.”
The Texas Tribune
Five injured victims remain hospitalized one week after Uvalde school shooting
Five of the 17 children and adults injured in last week’s mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde are still being treated in hospitals across San Antonio more than a week after the massacre.
As of Wednesday morning, a spokesperson at University Hospital in San Antonio said the facility is still treating three patients. A 66-year-old woman and a 9-year-old girl are both in good condition, while a 10-year-old girl remains in serious condition. A fourth child had been discharged as of Friday, May 27. The 10-year-old girl and elderly woman had both arrived at the hospital in serious condition, according to the hospital.
Two adults injured in the shooting remain at Brooke Army Medical Center and are in good condition, spokesperson Bob Whetstone said Wednesday.
The New York Times
Uvalde Teacher Spoke With Husband, a Police Officer, Before She Died
In the final moments of her life, Eva Mireles, a teacher at Robb Elementary School, was on the phone with her husband, Ruben Ruiz, a school district police officer, the senior county official said on Wednesday.
They spoke for the last time from opposite sides of the school walls: She was with her fourth-grade students in a pair of adjoining classrooms taken over by a gunman; he was outside the school, amid the fast-growing throng of armed officers who rushed to the scene. […]
Ms. Mireles, a teacher of 17 years and an avid hiker who took pride in teaching at a mostly Hispanic school, was shot and killed trying to protect her students, according to her aunt Lydia Martinez Delgado.
Her husband, Mr. Ruiz, who had rushed to the scene, was prevented by other police officers from going inside.
The Dallas Morning News
Five years. Five shootings. 87 dead in Texas. What gun laws could’ve applied in each case?
Texas has experienced multiple mass shootings in recent years. Since 2017, there have been five in which at least 20 people combined were killed or injured. In the wake of the most recent mass murder in Uvalde, politicians are again facing renewed pressure to reduce gun violence. […]
The Dallas Morning News looked into the preventive measures, criminal penalties or enforcement mechanisms raised after each of these five mass shooting events and reviewed which would have applied in each case. Then, we asked state leaders whether they support any of these proposals.
Here is what we found out. […]
In 2019, Texas lawmakers filed bills that would have allowed family members and law enforcement to ask a judge to temporarily seize the guns of such a person “as a result of the respondent’s serious mental illness and access to firearms.” State lawmakers did not debate the bills after Abbott and Patrick came out against the idea… […]
In 2021, Laredo Democrat Sen. Judith Zaffirini filed a bill to require courts use standardized protective order forms with the hopes that this information would more quickly be submitted to the NICS database. […]The bill easily passed both chambers of the Legislature. But Abbott vetoed the bill, one of only 21 potential new laws he shot down…
Houston Chronicle
Abbott calls for ‘intruder detection audits’ to test school safety plans
State officials will begin random, unannounced visits to schools around Texas to check whether they’re compliant with state-mandated safety measures, including checks to see how quickly a stranger “can penetrate buildings without being stopped,” Gov. Greg Abbott announced Wednesday.
Abbott said he intends to crack down on districts around that haven’t established detailed safety plans as required by state law, or aren’t following them. […]
Abbott and other Republicans have said tightening access to guns is “not a real solution” to mass shootings. They are choosing instead to focus on school “hardening,” although some experts in mass shootings have noted that shooters typically choose to terrorize places they are familiar with, making security protocols less effective.
Austin American-Statesman
Uvalde school police chief not fully cooperating with probe into school shooting, DPS says
A key law enforcement figure in the bungled police response to the Uvalde mass shooting isn't fully cooperating with a Texas Rangers investigation into the shooting, an agency spokesman said.
Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde school district police chief and the incident commander of the law enforcement response amid last week's shooting, has not responded to a request for a follow-up interview from state investigators, according to Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman Travis Considine. […]
In response to questions from CNN about his apparent decision to keep law enforcement officers from entering the classroom and confronting the gunman, Arredondo said he wanted to be respectful to the families of the 21 people who died in the rampage and would not be releasing any more information at this time.
“Just so you know, we’re going to do that eventually, obviously,” Arredondo, who has served as the school district police chief since 2020, told CNN when asked when he would explain himself to the families of the people who were killed. “Whenever this is done, when the families quit grieving, then we’ll do that obviously."
Tulsa World
Five dead including shooter at medical building near Saint Francis Hospital
Five people are dead after a shooting Wednesday at a building on the Saint Francis campus near 61st and Yale.
The shooter was armed with a rifle and handgun, according to Tulsa Police Deputy Chief Eric Dalgleish. He has been confirmed among the dead. Police have not identified the shooter, whose fatal wound was self-inflicted, Dalgleish said.
The situation was active about four to five minutes at about 5 p.m., Dalgleish said, with the gunman firing both weapons on the second floor of the Natalie Building.
The Buffalo News
Tops shooter faces indictment including domestic terrorism, hate crimes
The white supremacist accused in the Tops Markets mass shooting that killed 10 people faces a 25-count indictment in Erie County Court, including a charge of domestic terrorism that became state law two years ago following another targeted mass attack.
Payton S. Gendron has been charged by an Erie County grand jury with first-degree domestic act of terrorism motivated by hate, according to court records. Fourteen of the charges are hate crimes.
He faces 10 counts of first-degree murder, 10 counts of second-degree murder as a hate crime, three counts of attempted second-degree murder as a hate crime, as well as a second-degree criminal possession of a weapon charge.
The Oregonian
Oregon’s independent gubernatorial hopeful Betsy Johnson owns machine gun
Oregon gun owners number in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps more — no one tracks overall firearm ownership in the state.
But the federal government does track the subset of Oregonians who own machine guns, and in 2021, they numbered 6,740. Among their ranks: former longtime Democratic lawmaker Betsy Johnson, now running as an unaffiliated candidate for governor. […]
In the Legislature, Johnson consistently voted with most Republicans against gun regulations, including a 2015 expansion of background checks to cover private firearm transfers and a 2017 red flag law that allows judges to issue “extreme risk protection orders” to require a person to surrender their guns temporarily if they are a risk to themselves or people with whom they live.
Vox
Polling is clear: Americans want gun control
To be clear: Americans’ views about guns are complicated, and vary significantly by political party and geography. Overall, the vast majority of Americans support the right for private citizens to own guns, and more than 40 percent of households own at least one firearm. That doesn’t mean they’re against tighter rules on their guns. Nearly three-quarters of Americans think that gun violence is a big or moderately big problem, according to a survey last year by Pew Research Center. And a majority of Americans think that the epidemic of school shootings could be stopped with drastic changes in legislation, according to a poll this week by YouGov.
Still, when Americans are asked broadly if they support stricter gun laws, their opinions volley back and forth, and it’s hard to see a consistent majority. Slightly more than half (52 percent) of Americans in a Gallup poll last year said laws regarding firearms sales should be stricter — a number that has actually gone down in recent years — and a Quinnipiac poll last year found that just under half (45 percent) support stricter gun laws. More recently, a Politico/Morning Consult poll last week found that 59 percent of registered voters think it’s very important (41 percent) or somewhat important (18 percent) for lawmakers to pass stricter gun laws.
The Philadelphia Inquirer
A Philly homicide detective was convicted of raping witnesses. What happens to those he locked up?
According to Marvin Hill, Philadelphia Police Homicide Detective Philip Nordo had been questioning him for hours about a 2010 murder when the detective began making sexual advances — promising that, if Hill acquiesced, “all this” would go away.
Hill recoiled, according to court filings. In response, Nordo pledged “to make sure Hill’s life was a living hell and make sure he never saw daylight again.”
Nordo’s alleged promise was fulfilled — at least, for now. Hill was convicted of killing 19-year-old Stacey Sharpe, and remains in prison.
On Wednesday, Nordo was convicted of rape, official oppression, stalking, and theft by deception, after a two-week trial in which he was accused of wide-ranging official misconduct, including sexually assaulting witnesses and defrauding a city reward fund in connection with a murder case.
AP News
Harris calls water security a foreign policy priority
Vice President Kamala Harris said Wednesday the U.S. is safer if people in other countries have sufficient water to drink, grow food and safely dispose of sewage, emphasizing that water access is a foreign policy priority.
Harris said making sure that every country has enough water will prevent conflicts, improve health outcomes and boost local economies. Working towards those goals will make the world more stable and secure, according to a newly released White House plan to address issues facing global water supplies and quality. […]
More than two billion people around the world live in “water stressed” countries where demand for water exceeds supplies, the World Health Organization estimates. Harris said that reality will have a “profound impact on America’s interests around the globe.”
The Atlantic
We have no nuclear strategy: The U.S. can’t keep ignoring the threat these weapons pose
Americans have had a long respite from thinking about nuclear war. The Cold War ended more than 30 years ago, when the Soviet Union was dismantled and replaced by the Russian Federation and more than a dozen other countries. China at the time was not yet a significant nuclear power. A North Korean bomb was purely a notional threat. The fear of a large war in Europe escalating into a nuclear conflict faded from the public’s mind. […]
The end of the Cold War, however, led to an era of national inattentiveness toward nuclear issues. We forgot about nuclear war and concentrated mostly on keeping nuclear weapons out of the “wrong hands,” which reflected the American preoccupation with rogue states and terrorists after 9/11. This change in emphasis had worrisome side effects. In 2008, a blue-ribbon commission headed by a former secretary of defense, James Schlesinger, sounded the alarm: A new generation of nuclear-weapons personnel in the Air Force and Navy did not understand its own mission. In 2010, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, warned that American defense institutions were no longer minting nuclear strategists. “We don’t have anybody in our military that does that anymore,” Mullen said.
The Detroit News
Gov candidate Johnson denied spot on ballot in Court of Appeals ruling
The Michigan Court of Appeals rejected Wednesday a lawsuit from Republican businessman Perry Johnson, who asked the judges to revive his campaign for governor by giving him a spot on the August primary ballot.
The unanimous decision from a three-judge panel marked a significant setback for five GOP candidates for governor who were caught in an alleged wave of fraudulent petition signatures. Last week, the Board of State Canvassers deadlocked on whether the candidates had gathered the 15,000 required valid signatures, denying the five gubernatorial hopefuls spots on the ballot.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Stacey Abrams puts guns and abortion in first attack on Brian Kemp
[After] Stacey Abrams victory in last week’s Democratic primary… the Democrat now has access to a special committee with the power to raise unlimited funds that was created by Republican lawmakers with Kemp’s reelection bid in mind.
And Abrams is already putting it to use. The “One Georgia” leadership committee on Wednesday launched a first ad of the general election campaign, assailing Kemp on multiple fronts.
The 30-second ad pans Kemp’s support for “criminal carry” gun legislation and an income tax cut. More significantly, it’s the first TV ad this cycle from Abrams that targets the governor’s anti-abortion stance.
CNN
President Joe Biden conceded Wednesday he didn’t understand how big of an effect the shutdown of an Abbott baby formula plant in Michigan and subsequent recalls would have on the baby formula supply until April.
His admission came moments after formula manufacturers told him, during a White House roundtable on the crisis, that they knew immediately how bad the shortages could get. The White House has previously said it had been working on addressing the shortages since February.
Biden, responding to questions about how quickly the administration acted, claimed: “I don’t think anybody anticipated the impact of one facility – of the Abbott facility.” Abbott was not at Wednesday’s event.
“Once we learned of the extent of it and how broad it was, we kicked everything into gear,” he added.
Pressed by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on the comments from manufacturers that they knew immediately what the impact would be, Biden responded: “They did, but I didn’t.”
UPI
President Joe Biden touts U.S. manufacturing growth reflected in ISM report
President Joe Biden said continued U.S. manufacturing growth, reflected in a report released Wednesday by the Institute for Supply Management, is no accident.
"Today, we learned that American manufacturing continued to grow in May," Biden said in a statement. "Since I took office, we've added 545,000 manufacturing jobs -- and more manufacturing jobs were created in 2021 than in any year in nearly 30 years. This didn't happen by accident -- this is a direct result of my economic plan to grow the economy from the bottom up and middle out." […]
The U.S. manufacturing sector grew in May for the 24th consecutive month, according to the ISM report. The May Manufacturing PMI, an index of manufacturing activity in the United States, reached 56.1%, up from 55.4% in April. A reading above 50 indicates that the manufacturing economy is expanding.
NPR
Abortion bans with no exceptions may be politically risky
If it seems as though the anti-abortion movement has gotten more extreme in recent months, that's because it has. […]
Abortion opponents' efforts in many conservative states to exclude most exceptions — for rape or incest or to save the life of the mother — that have drawn headlines recently.
The efforts do not appear to have wide appeal. The majorities of Americans who support allowing those exceptions are nearly as large as the majorities who oppose abortion late in pregnancy, according to opinion polls. […]
Now, however, anti-abortion forces appear to be on the cusp of being granted free rein by the Supreme Court to ban abortion to any degree they want. Activists clearly want the most comprehensive bans that lawmakers will pass. Whether voters will go along with that will be decided at the ballot box in November.
NBC News
Democrats can make midterms about the ‘angry moms,’ one party strategist argues
[…] Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher proposes one place where Biden and Democrats can take the fight to Republicans, rather than the other way around.
Make the upcoming elections about “the angry mom” — on issues like gun violence and abortion.
“If this is not the year of the angry mom, I don’t know what’s going to be the year of the angry mom, right?” Belcher said on “Meet the Press” last Sunday.
He continued, “I think there’s an opportunity for Democrats — if Democrats make this election about anything except what’s happening in our schools, and what’s happening, sort of, these mass shootings, and a woman’s right to take care of her body.”
Stars and Stripes
President Joe Biden on Wednesday presided over the Coast Guard’s change-of-command ceremony that officially made Adm. Linda Fagan the first female officer in charge of an U.S. armed service branch.
“She will be the first woman to serve as commandant of the Coast Guard, the first woman [to lead] any branch to the United States armed forces, and it's about time,” Biden said. “The secretary of defense, when he sent me the name, I said, 'What in the hell took you so long?'”
Los Angeles Times
California task force suggests reparations in report detailing lasting harms of slavery
In a report Wednesday on the lingering effects of slavery, California’s Reparations Task Force offered a sweeping list of preliminary recommendations that include ending voter approval for publicly funded “low-rent housing,” providing free college tuition and creating a new state agency to implement dozens of other forms of reparation for African Americans.
The report, which totals 492 pages, is the first of two the nine-member panel will send to the California Legislature, which is ultimately responsible for passing any reparations into law. The task force focused much of the initial report on defining the harms against African Americans from slavery to present day as the basis for a detailed plan to provide remedies in a second installment next summer.
Kamilah Moore, chair of the task force, said she hopes people “pore into the report and read it with an open mind and an open heart to really understand the African American experience in the state.” She called it the most extensive government-issued report on the African American community in more than 50 years.
BBC News
How do you prove ancestry to enslaved people?
This year, California's government approved a plan to pay reparations to residents of the state who can show that they are descendants of those formerly enslaved. Seeking the evidence will be a process, genealogists say.
Adrienne Abiodun knows she is a descendant of a once-enslaved man, named Phillip Branch.
She knows the name of his former enslaver, as well - John Whitaker. Ms Abiodun's fourth great-grandfather, Mr Branch, was born in North Carolina around 1795-1800 and then was brought to Mississippi.
Mr Branch's entire family was enslaved by the Whitaker family. […]
Ms Abiodun says that while proving lineage is "not necessarily the easiest to come by, it's not impossible".
It can, however, be costly, time consuming and emotional.
Mongabay
Cash-strapped Zimbabwe pushes to be allowed to sell its ivory stockpile
Zimbabwe’s government recently concluded a conference to attempt to rally international support for the sale of its ivory stockpile. It argues that selling some of the 136 metric tons of elephant ivory and rhino horn that it’s holding — mostly from animals that died of natural causes — could fund its conservation efforts.
Critics say one-off sales in 1999 and 2008 authorized by CITES, the global convention on the wildlife trade, resulted in a sharp escalation in illegal killing and poaching of elephants across Africa, and that legalizing the ivory trade could drive African elephants to extinction. […]
“Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Authority [ZimParks] requires $20 million to $25 million a year to fund its wildlife conservation activities,” ZimParks director Fulton Mangwanya told Mongabay on the sidelines of the conference, which took place from May 23-26 at Hwange National Park, in northwestern Zimbabwe.
“It costs us tens of thousands a month for storage and security of that stockpile, money that could otherwise be used for conservation…
Gizmodo
Bronze Age City Emerges From River in Iraq Amid Extreme Drought
An ongoing drought in Iraq revealed a sunken Bronze Age city.
In an effort to stop crops in the area from wilting through months of drought and regional water shortages, locals have drained the Mosul Dam since December, and the receding water has uncovered the ancient structures along the river. According to a University of Tübingen release—which contains several fascinating photos of the site—the city includes the remains of a palace and large buildings, suggesting that this was an important center for the Mitanni Empire. Parts of the city were first excavated back in 2018, during another drought.
Wired
Companies Are Hacking Their Way Around the Chip Shortage
As the global chip shortage stretches toward the two-year mark, manufacturers are pulling some unusual tricks to keep production lines moving. Carmakers are using semiconductors taken from washing machines, rewriting code to use less silicon, and even shipping their products without some chips while promising to add them in later. With the shortage of semiconductors now a new normal, everyone is being forced to adapt. […]
The chip shortage was caused by several factors, including a rush to buy electronics needed to work from home in the pandemic, a hoarding of chips sparked by trade tensions between the US and China, and disruption to flow of components through a complex semiconductor supply chain distributed around the globe. […]
The chip crunch is dragging on partly because new issues, including Covid outbreaks in China and the war in Ukraine, are contributing to the supply chain chaos.
Grist
Yes, you can save lives by planting trees, a new study says
It’s hard not to love trees. They provide us with shade during the scorching heat of summer, help clean the air and water, and improve our physical and mental well-being. Now, a recent study has found that boosting urban greenery — including trees, shrubs, and other plants — could also save tens of thousands of lives in cities across the country.
For a study published earlier this month in Frontiers in Public Health, researchers looked at 35 metropolitan areas within the U.S. They compared satellite data showing changes in how much greenery a city had with mortality data for people aged 65 and older from 2000 to 2019. Using these measures, they estimated that even small increases in greenery could have saved over 34,000 lives over the past two decades.
“One of the primary questions that urban planners ask is where should they implement greening, and can we quantify the impact of greening initiatives for them — because there is a cost for tree planting campaigns or shrubbery planting,” Kevin Lane, an assistant professor of environmental health at Boston University, told the School of Public Health’s news service.