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Trump's $475 million 'big lie' defamation lawsuit against CNN dismissed
By Joseph Ax
July 29, 20233:43 PM CDT Updated 3 hours ago
July 29 (Reuters) - A federal judge has thrown out Donald Trump's $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN, in which the former president claimed the network's description of his election fraud as the "big lie" associated him with Adolf Hitler.
In a ruling late on Friday night, U.S. Judge Raag Singhal, who was nominated by Trump in 2019, said CNN's words were opinion, not fact, and therefore could not be the subject of a defamation claim.
"CNN's statements while repugnant, were not, as a matter of law, defamatory," wrote Singhal, who sits in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, near Trump's home at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
In a statement, a Trump spokesperson said: "We agree with the highly respected judge's findings that CNN's statements about President Trump are repugnant. CNN will be held responsible for their wrongful mistreatment of President Trump and his supporters."
The statement did not say whether Trump would appeal the decision.
The lawsuit, which was filed in October 2022, highlighted five instances in which CNN either published stories or aired comments referring to Trump's assertions about the 2020 election as his "big lie." The phrase is also associated with the Nazi regime's use of propaganda.
The wording, the lawsuit said, constituted "a deliberate effort by CNN to propagate to its audience an association between the plaintiff and one of the most repugnant figures in modern history."
But the mere use of the phrase "big lie" is not enough to give rise to a true connotation, Singhal wrote.
"No reasonable viewer could (or should) plausibly make that reference," he said.
Since launching his first presidential campaign in 2015, Trump has often attacked media outlets whose coverage he dislikes, with CNN a favorite target.
Trump is the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, despite facing both state and federal indictments.
Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Sandra Maler and Deepa Babington
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-475-mln-big-lie-defamation-lawsuit-against-cnn-dismissed-2023-07-29/
A very impressive RESUME... that only Trump's Brain-dead followers could appreciate
Man who beat officer with flagpole during Capitol riot is sentenced to over 4 years in prison
By The Associated Press - | Jul 25, 2023
'-- A Republican nightmare seems about to become real --'
FILE - Violent insurrectionists loyal to President Donald Trump storm the U.S. Capitol, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. An Arkansas truck driver who beat a police officer with a flagpole attached to an American flag during the U.S. Capitol riot was sentenced Monday, July 24, 2023, to more than four years in prison. Peter Francis Stager struck the Metropolitan Police Department officer with his flagpole at least three times as other rioters pulled the officer, head first, into the crowd outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The bruised officer was among more than 100 police officers injured during the riot. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Arkansas truck driver who beat a police officer with a flagpole attached to an American flag during the U.S. Capitol riot was sentenced Monday to more than four years in prison.
Peter Francis Stager struck the Metropolitan Police Department officer with his flagpole at least three times as other rioters pulled the officer, head first, into the crowd outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The bruised officer was among more than 100 police officers injured during the riot.
Stager also stood over and screamed profanities at another officer, who was seriously injured when several other rioters dragged him into the mob and beat him, according to federal prosecutors.
After the beatings, Stager was captured on video saying, “Every single one of those Capitol law enforcement officers, death is the remedy. That is the only remedy they get.”
U.S. Judge Rudolph Contreras sentenced Stager to four years and four months in prison, according to a spokesperson for the prosecutors’ office.
Stager, 44, of Conway, Arkansas, pleaded guilty in February to a felony charge of assaulting police with a dangerous weapon.
Prosecutors had recommended a prison sentence of six years and six months.
Stager assaulted the officer during one of the most violent episodes of Jan. 6 — a battle between rioters and police guarding an entrance to the Capitol building in a tunnel on the Lower West Terrace.
Stager’s actions at the Capitol “were the epitome of disrespect for the law,” prosecutors said in a court filing.
“Stager joined a prolonged, multi-assailant attack on police officers, which resulted in injuries to the officers,” they wrote. “Stager himself wielded a flagpole and used it to strike at a vulnerable officer, who, lying face down in a mob of rioters had no means of defending himself.”
Stager’s truck driving job took him to Washington, D.C., on the day before then-President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6. Stager stayed overnight to attend Trump’s rally after delivering a load of produce, a decision that he will regret for the rest of his life, his lawyers said in a court filing.
Stager’s attorneys say he tried to help others in the crowd who were injured after the riot erupted. Shocked by what he saw, Stager had “reached his breaking point” and was “seeing red” when he picked up a flag on the ground, they said.
“Once the adrenaline wore off, Mr. Stager immediately called his wife to tell her he was horrified by his actions and that he was going to turn himself in upon returning to Arkansas,” his lawyers wrote.
More than 1,000 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riot.
Over 620 of them have pleaded guilty.
Approximately 100 others have been convicted by juries or judges after trials.
Nearly 600 have been sentenced, with over half receiving terms of imprisonment ranging from three days to 18 years.
Stager was indicted with eight other defendants on charges related to the tunnel battle. Four of his co-defendants also have pleaded guilty to assault charges.
Florida resident Mason Courson was sentenced in June to four years and nine months in prison.
Michigan resident Justin Jersey was sentenced in February to four years and three months in prison.
Michigan construction worker Logan Barnhart was sentenced in April to three years in prison.
Georgia business owner Jack Wade Whitton is scheduled to be sentenced on Aug. 16.
https://www.nashuatelegraph.com/top-headlines/2023/07/25/man-who-beat-officer-with-flagpole-during-capitol-riot-is-sentenced-to-over-4-years-in-prison/
Tony Bennett's World War II Experience Was a 'Front-Row Seat in Hell'
Honoree Tony Bennett arrives at the Los Angeles Confidential Magazine 2012 Grammys Celebration in Beverly Hills, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 9, 2012. Bennett, the eminent and timeless stylist whose devotion to classic American songs and knack for creating new standards such as "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" graced a decadeslong career that brought him admirers from Frank Sinatra to Lady Gaga, died Friday, July 21, 2023. He was 96. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles, File)
21 Jul 2023
Military.com | By Blake Stilwell
Singer Tony Bennett's stint in the U.S. Army during World War II led him to legendary entertainer Bob Hope, which inspired him to pursue a career spanning more than seven decades. Only after he announced he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease in 2021 did the crooner retire from performing live shows.
He continued to rehearse his repertoire, however, and broke the Guinness World Record for the oldest person to release an album of new material, at age 95. It was just one more honor earned by a man who spent a lifetime receiving awards and accolades for his work. Bennett died on July 21, 2023, two weeks shy of his 97th birthday.
His experience in World War II not only shaped the rest of his life, it put infantry rifleman Anthony Dominick Benedetto in the spotlight as a member of Special Services, singing for the Allied troops in the trenches, sometimes literally.
"The main thing I got out of my military experience was the realization that I am completely opposed to war," Bennett wrote in his 1998 autobiography, "The Good Life." "Although I understand why this war was fought, it was a terrifying, demoralizing experience for me... life can never be the same once you've been through combat."
From the age of 15, young Tony watched as his friends and relatives were drafted into service. Bennett turned 18 in the summer of 1944, and that November, he received a draft notice of his own. He was sent to the Army, completed basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and became an infantry rifleman at Fort Robinson, Arkansas.
After his post-training furlough, he waited to hear about his next assignment. He was shipped to Le Havre, France, to become a replacement troop for units that suffered heavy casualties fighting the Germans in Europe. Bennett was sent to G Company, 7th Army, 63rd Infantry Division.
Tony Bennett in the U.S. Army, 1945. (TonyBennett.com)
Bennett's group of replacements were taking over for casualties lost during the Battle of the Bulge. He recalled his batch being awakened at 4 a.m. by none other than Gen. George S. Patton himself, shouting: "Now listen up! Forget your mothers and everything else you've ever known! You're going up to the line."
The line was a terrifying place for all the replacements. Many, Bennett wrote, had no experience in combat and some had never fired a weapon. The idea was that more experienced soldiers would help instruct the replacements, but there was no time for that.
“Snow covered the ground and the front was a front-row seat in hell,” he wrote. “It was an absolutely terrifying spectacle.”
They quickly found themselves digging foxholes in the hard ground to protect themselves from German 88-millimeter artillery. During his first night on the line, Bennett was almost killed by shrapnel from a German 88. He learned the rules for the front line quickly: "Don't move."
"Most nights, we'd be awakened by the bombs that were going off around us," Bennett wrote. "On the front line, we'd see dead soldiers, dead horses and big craters in the ground where bombs had exploded. To me, it's a joke that they make 'horror' movies about things like Dracula and Godzilla, and they make 'adventure' movies about war. War is far more horrifying than anything anyone could dream up."
Bennett's company entered Germany in March 1945, pushing the Wehrmacht back and fighting house by house to take German towns. When he was finally pulled off the line, he went with a thousand other GIs to see Bob Hope perform a USO show.
"All the GIs loved him so much for boosting our dismally low morale," wrote Bennett. "He became a big part of the reason I went into show business, because at that moment he made me realize that the greatest gift you can give anyone is a laugh or a song."
The last official mission of his regiment was the liberation of a concentration camp near the town of Landsberg, 30 miles south of the Dachau Concentration Camp. The camp was still being defended by German prisoners, but Bennett's regiment fought hard to liberate those people, even fording the treacherous Lech River.
"Many writers have recorded what it was like in the concentration camps much more eloquently than I ever could, so I won't even try to describe it," he recalls in his autobiography. "Just let me say I'll never forget the desperate faces and empty stares of the prisoners as they wandered aimlessly around the campgrounds.
"We immediately got food and water to the survivors, but they had been brutalized for so long, they couldn't believe that we were there to help them and not to kill them."
Germany eventually surrendered, then Japan. Bennett had only been in the war for four months, so he had to stay on with the occupying force.
He was transferred to Special Services to entertain the Allied troops who had to stay behind. There, he met many musicians and performers who would see similar success on stage in their postwar years.
Tony Bennett singing with a U.S. Army Band, 1945. (TonyBennett.com)
In 1946, he set sail for New York, where he was honorably discharged on Aug. 15, where the war had "changed everything in ways I couldn't explain." He was ready to get his life started again.
https://www.military.com/off-duty/music/2023/07/21/tony-bennetts-world-war-ii-experience-was-front-row-seat-hell.html?ESRC=mr_230724.nl&utm_medium=email&utm_source=mr&utm_campaign=20230724
Tony Bennett's World War II Experience Was a 'Front-Row Seat in Hell'
Honoree Tony Bennett arrives at the Los Angeles Confidential Magazine 2012 Grammys Celebration in Beverly Hills, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 9, 2012. Bennett, the eminent and timeless stylist whose devotion to classic American songs and knack for creating new standards such as "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" graced a decadeslong career that brought him admirers from Frank Sinatra to Lady Gaga, died Friday, July 21, 2023. He was 96. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles, File)
21 Jul 2023
Military.com | By Blake Stilwell
Singer Tony Bennett's stint in the U.S. Army during World War II led him to legendary entertainer Bob Hope, which inspired him to pursue a career spanning more than seven decades. Only after he announced he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease in 2021 did the crooner retire from performing live shows.
He continued to rehearse his repertoire, however, and broke the Guinness World Record for the oldest person to release an album of new material, at age 95. It was just one more honor earned by a man who spent a lifetime receiving awards and accolades for his work. Bennett died on July 21, 2023, two weeks shy of his 97th birthday.
His experience in World War II not only shaped the rest of his life, it put infantry rifleman Anthony Dominick Benedetto in the spotlight as a member of Special Services, singing for the Allied troops in the trenches, sometimes literally.
"The main thing I got out of my military experience was the realization that I am completely opposed to war," Bennett wrote in his 1998 autobiography, "The Good Life." "Although I understand why this war was fought, it was a terrifying, demoralizing experience for me... life can never be the same once you've been through combat."
From the age of 15, young Tony watched as his friends and relatives were drafted into service. Bennett turned 18 in the summer of 1944, and that November, he received a draft notice of his own. He was sent to the Army, completed basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and became an infantry rifleman at Fort Robinson, Arkansas.
After his post-training furlough, he waited to hear about his next assignment. He was shipped to Le Havre, France, to become a replacement troop for units that suffered heavy casualties fighting the Germans in Europe. Bennett was sent to G Company, 7th Army, 63rd Infantry Division.
Tony Bennett in the U.S. Army, 1945. (TonyBennett.com)
Bennett's group of replacements were taking over for casualties lost during the Battle of the Bulge. He recalled his batch being awakened at 4 a.m. by none other than Gen. George S. Patton himself, shouting: "Now listen up! Forget your mothers and everything else you've ever known! You're going up to the line."
The line was a terrifying place for all the replacements. Many, Bennett wrote, had no experience in combat and some had never fired a weapon. The idea was that more experienced soldiers would help instruct the replacements, but there was no time for that.
“Snow covered the ground and the front was a front-row seat in hell,” he wrote. “It was an absolutely terrifying spectacle.”
They quickly found themselves digging foxholes in the hard ground to protect themselves from German 88-millimeter artillery. During his first night on the line, Bennett was almost killed by shrapnel from a German 88. He learned the rules for the front line quickly: "Don't move."
"Most nights, we'd be awakened by the bombs that were going off around us," Bennett wrote. "On the front line, we'd see dead soldiers, dead horses and big craters in the ground where bombs had exploded. To me, it's a joke that they make 'horror' movies about things like Dracula and Godzilla, and they make 'adventure' movies about war. War is far more horrifying than anything anyone could dream up."
Bennett's company entered Germany in March 1945, pushing the Wehrmacht back and fighting house by house to take German towns. When he was finally pulled off the line, he went with a thousand other GIs to see Bob Hope perform a USO show.
"All the GIs loved him so much for boosting our dismally low morale," wrote Bennett. "He became a big part of the reason I went into show business, because at that moment he made me realize that the greatest gift you can give anyone is a laugh or a song."
The last official mission of his regiment was the liberation of a concentration camp near the town of Landsberg, 30 miles south of the Dachau Concentration Camp. The camp was still being defended by German prisoners, but Bennett's regiment fought hard to liberate those people, even fording the treacherous Lech River.
"Many writers have recorded what it was like in the concentration camps much more eloquently than I ever could, so I won't even try to describe it," he recalls in his autobiography. "Just let me say I'll never forget the desperate faces and empty stares of the prisoners as they wandered aimlessly around the campgrounds.
"We immediately got food and water to the survivors, but they had been brutalized for so long, they couldn't believe that we were there to help them and not to kill them."
Germany eventually surrendered, then Japan. Bennett had only been in the war for four months, so he had to stay on with the occupying force.
He was transferred to Special Services to entertain the Allied troops who had to stay behind. There, he met many musicians and performers who would see similar success on stage in their postwar years.
Tony Bennett singing with a U.S. Army Band, 1945. (TonyBennett.com)
In 1946, he set sail for New York, where he was honorably discharged on Aug. 15, where the war had "changed everything in ways I couldn't explain." He was ready to get his life started again.
https://www.military.com/off-duty/music/2023/07/21/tony-bennetts-world-war-ii-experience-was-front-row-seat-hell.html?ESRC=mr_230724.nl&utm_medium=email&utm_source=mr&utm_campaign=20230724
Sick of hearing about record heat?
Scientists say those numbers paint the story of a warming world
BY SETH BORENSTEIN
Published 3:46 AM CDT, July 22, 2023
A man walks across an almost dried up bed of river Yumana amid hot weather in New Dehli, India, May 2, 2022
The summer of 2023 is behaving like a broken record about broken records.
Nearly every major climate-tracking organization proclaimed June the hottest June ever. .. https://apnews.com/article/heat-record-temperature-climate-change-el-nino-cb53a97161b0725ef94cae9b53bf1f81
Then July 4 became the globe’s hottest day, albeit unofficially, according to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer. .. https://apnews.com/article/global-record-breaking-heat-july-27069b5380117534d78f1f40a6edc7a0
It was quickly overtaken by July 5 and July 6. .. https://apnews.com/article/global-heat-record-hottest-climate-change-july-7d55e351fc97f5cd6368bda60ed2bf31
Next came the hottest week, a tad more official, stamped into the books by the World Meteorological Organization and the Japanese Meteorological Agency.
With a summer of extreme weather records dominating the news, meteorologists and scientists say records like these give a glimpse of the big picture: a warming planet caused by climate change.
It’s a picture that comes in the vibrant reds and purples representing heat on daily weather maps online, in newspapers and on television.
Beyond the maps and the numbers are real harms that kill. More than 100 people have died in heat waves in the United States and India so far this summer.
Records are crucial for people designing infrastructure and working in agriculture because they need to plan for the worst scenarios, said Russell Vose, climate analysis group director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He also chairs a committee on national records.
In the past 30 days, nearly 5,000 heat and rainfall records have been broken or tied in the U.S.
and more than 10,000 records set globally, according to NOAA. Texas cities and towns alone have set 369 daily high temperature records since June 1.
Since 2000, the U.S. has set about twice as many records for heat as those for cold.
“Records go back to the late 19th century and we can see that there has been a decade-on-decade increase in temperatures,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, keeper of the agency’s climate records. “What’s happening now is certainly increasing the chances that 2023 will be the warmest year on record. My calculations suggest that there’s, right now, a 50-50 chance.”
The larger the geographic area and the longer stretch of time during which records are set, the more likely the conditions represent climate change rather than daily weather. So the hottest global June is “extremely unlikely” to happen without climate change, as opposed to one city’s daily record, Texas state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said.
Still, some local specifics are striking: Death Valley has flirted this summer with the hottest temperature in modern history, though that 134 degree Fahrenheit (56.7 Celsius ) record is in dispute.
Phoenix grabbed headlines among major U.S. cities on Tuesday when it marked a 19th consecutive day of unrelenting mega heat: 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius) or more. It kept going, reaching a 22nd straight day on Friday. The daytime heat was accompanied by a record stretch of nights that never fell below 90 Fahrenheit (32.2 Celsius).
“Everybody’s drawn to extremes,” Vose said. “It’s like the Guinness Book of World Records. Human nature is just drawn to the extreme things out of curiosity.”
But the numbers can be flawed in what they portray.
The scientific community “doesn’t really have the vocabulary to communicate what it feels like,” said Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field, who co-chaired a groundbreaking United Nations report in 2012 warning of the dangers of extreme weather from climate change.
“I don’t think it captures the human sense, but it really does underscore that we live in a different world,” Field said of the records.
Think of the individual statistics as brush strokes in a painting of the world’s climate, Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald said. Don’t fixate on any specific number.
“The details of course matter, but the thing that really matters, especially for the impressionist painting, is when you step back and take a look at everything that’s happening,” Mahowald said.
She and other climate scientists say long-term warming from burning coal, oil and natural gas is the chief cause of rising temperatures, along with occasional boosts from natural El Nino warmings across parts of the Pacific, like the planet is experiencing this year.
El Nino is a natural temporary warming of parts of the Pacific that changes weather patterns worldwide and adds an extra warm boost. An El Nino formed in June and scientists say this one looks strong. For the previous three years El Nino’s cool flip side, La Nina, dampened a bit of the heat humans are causing.
A super El Nino spiked global temperatures in 1998, then was followed by less warming and even some flat temperatures for a few years until the next big El Nino, Mahowald said.
Weather won’t worsen each year and that should not become a common expectation, but it will intensify over the long run, she said.
The University of Michigan’s Richard Rood used to blog about climate records for Weather Underground, but in 2014 he got sick of continuously new extremes and stopped.
“I think we need to get away from that sort of record-setting sensationalism at some level and really be getting down to the hard work,” he said, addressing the need for people to adapt to a warmer world and get serious about slashing emissions causing hotter, more extreme weather.
NOAA tracks weather observations from tens of thousands of stations throughout the U.S. and its global calculations incorporate data from more than 100,000 stations, Vose said.
When those records come in, the agency checks their quality and calculates where the numbers fit historically. NOAA’s National Center for Environmental Information in North Carolina is the arbiter of national records, while the local National Weather Service offices handle those for individual cities, Vose said.
A special international committee deals with world records and, at times, scientists disagree on the reliability of 100-year-old data. Those disagreements come into play over questions such as determining the hottest temperature recorded on Earth.
Validating records takes time. Because of a backlog of extreme weather events to analyze, officials haven’t finished approving 130 degree Fahrenheit records from 2020 and 2021 at Death Valley, Vose said.
“Our primary job is keeping score, meaning what happened? How unusual was it?” he asked. “It’s not like we take great joy in saying it was the warmest year on record. Again.”
It’s the bigger picture that matters, Northern Illinois University climate scientist Victor Gensini said.
“Look at them all together in the aggregate sense of the atmospheric orchestra,” Gensini said. “There are so many clear signs that we are just not living in the same type of climate that we were.”
___
Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
https://apnews.com/climate-and-environment
https://apnews.com/article/record-breaking-heat-climate-change-environment-7bcb569321504065cbf2356a34ba8902
Sick of hearing about record heat?
Scientists say those numbers paint the story of a warming world
' Why are they breaking records from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s? Lol " ????
BY SETH BORENSTEIN
Published 3:46 AM CDT, July 22, 2023
The summer of 2023 is behaving like a broken record about broken records.
Nearly every major climate-tracking organization proclaimed June the hottest June ever.
Then July 4 became the globe’s hottest day, albeit unofficially, according to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer. It was quickly overtaken by July 5 and July 6. Next came the hottest week, a tad more official, stamped into the books by the World Meteorological Organization and the Japanese Meteorological Agency.
With a summer of extreme weather records dominating the news, meteorologists and scientists say records like these give a glimpse of the big picture: a warming planet caused by climate change. It’s a picture that comes in the vibrant reds and purples representing heat on daily weather maps online, in newspapers and on television.
[...]
https://apnews.com/article/record-breaking-heat-climate-change-environment-7bcb569321504065cbf2356a34ba8902
CLIMATE CHANGE
https://apnews.com/climate-and-environment
2020 Presidential Election Results: Biden Wins
"-- THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020 WAS RIGGED AND STOLEN! --" LOLOL
306
Joseph R. Biden Jr. Winner
81,284,666 votes (51.3%)
232
Donald J. Trump
74,224,319 votes (46.8%)
--with details and graphics
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-president.html
---------------------
Presidential Results
Joe Biden wins election to be the 46th US President
Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes put native son Joe Biden above the 270 needed to become the 46th President of the United States. Born in Scranton, the former vice president and longtime Delaware senator defeated Donald Trump, the first President to lose a reelection bid since George H.W. Bush in 1992.
306 BIDEN
51.3%
81,284,666
232 TRUMP
46.9%
74,224,319
--with details and graphics
https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/results/president
------------------
EXPLAINER: Election claims, and why it’s clear Biden won
ATLANTA (AP) — As Democrat Joe Biden is sworn in Wednesday as the nation’s 46th president, Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters still believe Biden was not legitimately elected after Trump continues to argue the election was stolen.
There is no evidence of the widespread fraud that Trump and his allies have claimed. Republican and Democratic election officials have certified the election as valid.
Courts have rejected lawsuit after lawsuit, and a clear majority of Congress has confirmed the final result despite a riotous mob earlier this month that sought to disrupt the process.
So who has claimed what, precisely? What’s the evidence that the 2020 election was valid and Biden is the duly elected president of the United States?
THE ‘MOST SECURE’ ELECTION IN U.S. HISTORY
After a rocky primary season that played out during the coronavirus pandemic, election officials were determined to ensure voters could safely cast their ballots and ramped up operations to handle a massive influx of absentee ballots. Voting absentee has long been available in the U.S., with some states limiting it to certain voters, and the process has safeguards so any ineligible voter or voter casting multiple ballots is caught and prosecuted.
[...]
https://apnews.com/article/election-claims-biden-won-explained-bd53b14ce871412b462cb3fe2c563f18
Speffler, Cameron Smith, Koepka, Fleetwood, Hatton 273
The week in 32 photos
Published 6:28 PM EDT, Thu July 13, 2023
Catastrophic flooding, spawned by epic rainfall, damaged or destroyed countless homes in Vermont this past week.
The worst-hit areas include Barre, Ludlow, Londonderry, Andover and the state capital, Montpelier.
The state's governor estimated Wednesday that thousands of lives have been upended.
"I know thousands of Vermonters have lost homes, businesses and more," Gov. Phil Scott said. "The devastation is far-reaching."
President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for the state, and the state's public safety commissioner, Jennifer Morrison, said the recovery could take "years — if not a decade."
Here are some of the stories that made headlines over the past week, as well as some photos that caught our eye.
People look over a railing as the Ottauquechee River rises in Quechee, Vermont, on Monday, July 10.
Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe/Getty Images
Revelers stand around a cow as it enters a bull ring during the San Fermin festival in Pamplona, Spain, on Monday, July 10. The cows are released at the end of the traditional running of the bulls. They are smaller than the bulls and have padded horns. Alvaro Barrientos/AP
Lava emerges from a fissure of the Fagradalsfjall volcano near the Litli-Hrútur mountain, some 30 kilometers (19 miles) southwest of Reykjavik, Iceland, on Monday, July 10. Marco Di
Giant panda Ai Bao holds one of her babies in her mouth on Tuesday, July 11, after giving birth to twins at a theme park in Yongin, South Korea. Samsung C&T/Yonhap/Reuters
People rest at a train station in Amritsar, India, after rail services were disrupted following heavy rainfall on Tuesday, July 11. Narinder Nanu/AFP/Getty Images
. . .
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/13/world/gallery/photos-this-week-july-6-july-13-ctrp/index.html
And....I will laugh myself to sleep tonight!!!!
Mike Lindell Reveals MyPillow Has Lost $100M as He Auctions Off Equipment
BY JAMES BICKERTON ON 7/11/23 AT 9:29 AM EDT
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has claimed the company "lost $100 million" after major retailers stopped stocking its products in response to his vocal support for the discredited conspiracy theory that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. .. https://www.newsweek.com/mike-lindell-huge-amount-hes-spent-trying-overturn-election-1800182
Due to its difficult financial situation, the company is currently selling hundreds of pieces of surplus equipment on the online auction site K-Bid, and subleasing manufacturing space.
Trump is continuing to insist the 2020 presidential contest was rigged against him, despite the claim being repeatedly rejected in court and by independent and even Republican-leaning legal experts. Special Counsel Jack Smith is investigating whether Trump broke the law in his bid to overturn the election, including his role in the January 6, 2021, storming of Congress by Trump supporters.
Speaking to the Minnesota-based newspaper Star Tribune, Lindell said MyPillow was hit with a "massive, massive cancellation" after his election fraud claims.
https://www.startribune.com/mypillow-is-auctioning-off-equipment-after-losing-many-retailers-mike-lindell-minn-2020-election/600288705/
[...]
https://www.newsweek.com/mike-lindell-mypillow-lost-100-million-auctioning-equipment-1812211
AP Investigation
' The importance of staying angry at the Supreme Court '
Justices teach when the Supreme Court isn’t in session. It can double as an all-expenses-paid trip
By BRIAN SLODYSKO
Published 4:20 AM CDT, July 11, 2023
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-teaching-paradise-travel-46c7d9ed41a5fabc5c64579b45abdd98
--------------
Senators call for Supreme Court to follow ethics code like other branches of government
By CHRIS MEGERIAN, ERIC TUCKER and BRIAN SLODYSKO
Published 4:30 PM CDT, July 11, 2023
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-ethics-congress-durbin-john-roberts-5d357f00cfdf42b6515f2cb80db4166b
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Supreme Court justices and donors mingle at campus visits. These documents show the ethical dilemmas
By BRIAN SLODYSKO and ERIC TUCKER
Published 4:05 AM CDT, July 11, 2023
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-ethics-donors-politics-4b6dc4ae23aac75d4fccb1bcff0b7e0b
--------------
Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor’s staff prodded colleges and libraries to buy her books
By BRIAN SLODYSKO and ERIC TUCKER
Published 4:14 AM CDT, July 11, 2023
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-sotomayor-book-sales-ethics-colleges-b2cb93493f927f995829762cb8338c02
--------------
Inside the AP’s investigation into the ethics practices of the Supreme Court justices
By ERIC TUCKER and BRIAN SLODYSKO
Published 4:30 AM CDT, July 11, 2023
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Associated Press examination. .. https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-ethics-donors-politics-4b6dc4ae23aac75d4fccb1bcff0b7e0b .. of the ethics practices of the U.S. Supreme Court relied on documents obtained from more than 100 public records requests to .. https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-teaching-paradise-travel-46c7d9ed41a5fabc5c64579b45abdd98 .. public colleges, universities and other institutions that have hosted the justices over the past decade.
Here’s a look at how the reporting was done:
To conduct its review, the AP surveyed local news stories and social media and obtained data from ScotusTracker, a website that logged justices’ activities, to develop a list of appearances over the past 10 years.
[...]
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-ethics-documents-conflicts-9fa2847e60e11601c872c3ba3eea12a3
US says it no longer deems Donald Trump immune from E. Jean Carroll lawsuit
By Jonathan Stempel
July 11, 20235:19 PM CDT Updated 2 hours ago
E. Jean Carroll reacts as she exits the Manhattan Federal Court following the verdict in the civil rape accusation case against former U.S. President Donald Trump, in New York City, U.S., May 9, 2023. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo
The United States Department Of Justice
NEW YORK, July 11 (Reuters) - Donald Trump suffered a legal defeat on Tuesday as the U.S. government reversed its earlier position that the former president could be immune from the writer E. Jean Carroll's $10 million defamation lawsuit against him.
In a letter to Trump's and Carroll's lawyers, the U.S. Department of Justice said it no longer believed Trump acted within the scope of his office and employment as president in June 2019, when he denied having raped Carroll in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.
[...]
https://www.reuters.com/legal/e-jean-carroll-asks-judge-throw-out-donald-trumps-defamation-counterclaim-2023-07-11/
TRUMP WAS WORST PRESIDENT EVER ---- VERIFIED
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=164406121
Minnesota had a few days earlier this summer with temp. in the 90's, but recently near the average high of 83. (Minneapolis-St.Paul) area.
A few days ago we received alot of Canadian smoke, but the air is clear now.
Here's a good site to check the Current Air Quality,
www.airnow.gov
AirNow.gov
AirNow is your one-stop source for air quality data. Our recently redesigned site highlights air quality in your local area first, while still providing air quality information at state, national, and world views.
?? https://www.airnow.gov/?city=Raleigh&state=NC&country=USA
Summer Heat Waves Killed 61,000 in Europe Last Year, Study Says
Researchers suggest that strategies to cope with higher temperatures aren’t keeping pace with global warming.
A firefighter in a parking lot cries and puts one hand on his forehead as great clouds of gray and orange-tinted wildfire smoke billow up in the distance behind him.
Delger Erdenesanaa
Wildfires in northwestern Spain during a heat wave in July 2022. Spain was among the European countries with the highest heat-related death rates last summer.Credit...Emilio Fraile/Europa Press, via Associated Press
By Delger Erdenesanaa
July 10, 2023, 11:00 a.m. ET
More than 61,000 people died because of last year’s brutal summer heat waves across Europe, according to a study published on Monday in the journal Nature Medicine.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02419-z
The findings suggest that two decades of efforts in Europe to adapt to a hotter world have failed to keep up with the pace of global warming.
“In an ideal society, nobody should die because of heat,” said Joan Ballester, a research professor at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health and the study’s lead author.
This summer is likely to be even worse: On top of climate change, the Earth has entered a natural El Niño weather pattern during summer for the first time in four years, bringing about conditions that will turn up the heat in many parts of the world.
The season is already shattering various global temperature records. .. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/06/climate/climate-change-record-heat.html
The researchers who studied last year’s heat waves used data collected by the European Union from 35 countries, including some nonmember states.
Most of the people who died were women, especially those older than 80. Among younger people, men died at higher rates. Mediterranean countries, where temperatures were highest at the time, suffered most: Italy, Spain and Portugal had the highest heat-related mortality rates.
------
Latest News on Climate Change and the Environment
Card 1 of 5
Heat records. As an astonishing surge of heat across the globe shattered temperature records from North America to Antarctica, forecasters warned that the Earth[could be entering a multiyear period of exceptional warmth .. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/06/climate/climate-change-record-heat.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-climate&variant=show®ion=MAIN_CONTENT_1&block=storyline_levelup_swipe_recirc .. driven by continued emissions of heat-trapping gases and the return of El Niño, a cyclical weather pattern.
-----
Extreme heat had been expected that summer based on how much the planet had warmed overall in the past decade, Dr. Ballester said. When temperatures spiked, many European governments had “heat action plans” ready, developed in response to a more unexpected and deadlier heat wave in 2003, but those adaptations weren’t enough to prevent mass casualties, he said.
As climate change continues, the world can expect more and more deaths from extreme heat, Dr. Ballester added.
The European Union’s statistics office, Eurostat, regularly publishes the number of excess deaths (deaths above the expected average for a given time period) in European countries. Dr. Ballester and his colleagues took the official reports of total excess mortality from June through August 2022 and estimated how many of those deaths could be attributed to heat instead of other unusual factors like the coronavirus.
They used epidemiological models, meaning they matched recent historical temperature trends in different regions of Europe with mortality trends over the same period, to establish numerical relationships between deaths and temperature swings in those areas.
“When there is an up and down of temperature, we always observe an up and down of mortality,” Dr. Ballester said.
His team’s findings echo those of a study done shortly after the 2003 European heat wave, with some of the same collaborators. The earlier research found more than 70,000 excess deaths in Europe during the summer of 2003.
The previous study did not separate heat-related deaths from other excess deaths, so Dr. Ballester cautioned that the two numbers couldn’t be compared directly. The 2003 study also covered only 16 European countries, while the new study covers more than twice as many. When the researchers limited the results of this new modeling to those same 16 countries, they ended up with just over 51,000 heat-related deaths.
The researchers are working on applying the same epidemiological models to the 2003 heat wave to more precisely compare the two years. Barring drastically different numbers after a similar analysis, their results suggest that public policies adopted after 2003 have helped slightly reduce extreme heat’s toll.
In France, the more than 10,000 extra deaths in the summer of 2003 had political consequences .. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/15/world/heat-is-easing-in-europe-but-not-for-leaders-in-france.html .. , including the resignation of the country’s director general for health.
Over the past 20 years, officials there and elsewhere in Europe have invested in early warning systems for extreme heat, public cooling centers, volunteer forces to check on older residents, and better coordination between social services and hospitals.
But the changes throughout Europe haven’t been enough. “It’s a spectrum” across different regions and populations, Dr. Ballester said.
Older people remain highly vulnerable, especially those without access to air-conditioning, and so are people who work outdoors. Older women were likely the worst-off group last summer simply because they live longer than men into the ages when people are most frail and likely to die during intense heat, Dr. Ballester said. He said other researchers have studied the reasons for demographic differences in mortality rates: For example, men tend to have worse health outcomes at younger ages, and some outdoor occupations, like construction, are dominated by men.
This paper did not compare deaths among people of different races or ethnicities, but that’s another important factor in vulnerability to heat, said Juan Declet-Barreto, a senior social scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists who studies the health effects of environmental hazards and wasn’t involved in this study. While Dr. Declet-Barreto is less familiar with demographics in Europe, he said that in the United States people who work outdoors and are more exposed to heat tend to be immigrants of color.
Eurostat does not have a breakdown of excess mortality data by race, ethnicity or immigration status, an agency spokesperson wrote via email. Dr. Ballester and his colleagues recommended in their paper that the countries reporting to Eurostat better coordinate how they collect and share health data, including more demographic breakdowns. This year, the European Parliament proposed a regulation to do just that.
Even without additional demographic information, the study is “very timely” given this summer’s extreme heat, Dr. Declet-Barreto said. He thought the study’s methods seemed sound, given that “there’s a fairly well-known relationship in public health between heat and excess deaths.” He also agreed that comparing the 2022 and 2003 heat waves was helpful for revealing what health and policy interventions are still needed.
Four years ago, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies published a guidebook .. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/climate/red-cross-heat-waves.html .. to help city officials respond to heat waves, and its recommendations included changes to homes and physical infrastructure, like improving energy efficiency and ventilation.
Dr. Declet-Barreto said that he and other public health researchers have found that the most important factor in preventing deaths during heat waves is expanding access to air-conditioning.
Learn More About Climate Change
* If you struggle to understand the science behind climate change, let us walk you through the basics.
* What’s causing global warming? How can we fix it? Our F.A.Q. will tackle your climate questions, big and small.
* Replacing all of our polluting machines with electric versions could be the key to fighting climate change. But electrifying almost everything is a formidable task.
* Is carbon capture really an effective counterweight to the overheating planet? Here’s how these technologies work.
* Half the world could soon face dangerous heat. We measured the daily toll it is already taking.
* New data reveals stark disparities in how different U.S. households contribute to climate change. See your neighborhood’s climate impact.
* Wildlife is disappearing around the world as humans take over too much of the planet. Meet some of the animals that are running out of places to live.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/10/climate/heat-waves-europe-deaths.html
Summer Heat Waves Killed 61,000 in Europe Last Year, Study Says
Researchers suggest that strategies to cope with higher temperatures aren’t keeping pace with global warming.
""Canada Wildfires Are Still Burning—Why and When Will it End?" "
A firefighter in a parking lot cries and puts one hand on his forehead as great clouds of gray and orange-tinted wildfire smoke billow up in the distance behind him.
Delger Erdenesanaa
Wildfires in northwestern Spain during a heat wave in July 2022. Spain was among the European countries with the highest heat-related death rates last summer.Credit...Emilio Fraile/Europa Press, via Associated Press
By Delger Erdenesanaa
July 10, 2023, 11:00 a.m. ET
More than 61,000 people died because of last year’s brutal summer heat waves across Europe, according to a study published on Monday in the journal Nature Medicine.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02419-z
The findings suggest that two decades of efforts in Europe to adapt to a hotter world have failed to keep up with the pace of global warming.
“In an ideal society, nobody should die because of heat,” said Joan Ballester, a research professor at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health and the study’s lead author.
This summer is likely to be even worse: On top of climate change, the Earth has entered a natural El Niño weather pattern during summer for the first time in four years, bringing about conditions that will turn up the heat in many parts of the world.
The season is already shattering various global temperature records. .. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/06/climate/climate-change-record-heat.html
The researchers who studied last year’s heat waves used data collected by the European Union from 35 countries, including some nonmember states.
Most of the people who died were women, especially those older than 80. Among younger people, men died at higher rates. Mediterranean countries, where temperatures were highest at the time, suffered most: Italy, Spain and Portugal had the highest heat-related mortality rates.
------
Latest News on Climate Change and the Environment
Card 1 of 5
Heat records. As an astonishing surge of heat across the globe shattered temperature records from North America to Antarctica, forecasters warned that the Earth[could be entering a multiyear period of exceptional warmth .. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/06/climate/climate-change-record-heat.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-climate&variant=show®ion=MAIN_CONTENT_1&block=storyline_levelup_swipe_recirc .. driven by continued emissions of heat-trapping gases and the return of El Niño, a cyclical weather pattern.
-----
Extreme heat had been expected that summer based on how much the planet had warmed overall in the past decade, Dr. Ballester said. When temperatures spiked, many European governments had “heat action plans” ready, developed in response to a more unexpected and deadlier heat wave in 2003, but those adaptations weren’t enough to prevent mass casualties, he said.
As climate change continues, the world can expect more and more deaths from extreme heat, Dr. Ballester added.
The European Union’s statistics office, Eurostat, regularly publishes the number of excess deaths (deaths above the expected average for a given time period) in European countries. Dr. Ballester and his colleagues took the official reports of total excess mortality from June through August 2022 and estimated how many of those deaths could be attributed to heat instead of other unusual factors like the coronavirus.
They used epidemiological models, meaning they matched recent historical temperature trends in different regions of Europe with mortality trends over the same period, to establish numerical relationships between deaths and temperature swings in those areas.
“When there is an up and down of temperature, we always observe an up and down of mortality,” Dr. Ballester said.
His team’s findings echo those of a study done shortly after the 2003 European heat wave, with some of the same collaborators. The earlier research found more than 70,000 excess deaths in Europe during the summer of 2003.
The previous study did not separate heat-related deaths from other excess deaths, so Dr. Ballester cautioned that the two numbers couldn’t be compared directly. The 2003 study also covered only 16 European countries, while the new study covers more than twice as many. When the researchers limited the results of this new modeling to those same 16 countries, they ended up with just over 51,000 heat-related deaths.
The researchers are working on applying the same epidemiological models to the 2003 heat wave to more precisely compare the two years. Barring drastically different numbers after a similar analysis, their results suggest that public policies adopted after 2003 have helped slightly reduce extreme heat’s toll.
In France, the more than 10,000 extra deaths in the summer of 2003 had political consequences .. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/15/world/heat-is-easing-in-europe-but-not-for-leaders-in-france.html .. , including the resignation of the country’s director general for health.
Over the past 20 years, officials there and elsewhere in Europe have invested in early warning systems for extreme heat, public cooling centers, volunteer forces to check on older residents, and better coordination between social services and hospitals.
But the changes throughout Europe haven’t been enough. “It’s a spectrum” across different regions and populations, Dr. Ballester said.
Older people remain highly vulnerable, especially those without access to air-conditioning, and so are people who work outdoors. Older women were likely the worst-off group last summer simply because they live longer than men into the ages when people are most frail and likely to die during intense heat, Dr. Ballester said. He said other researchers have studied the reasons for demographic differences in mortality rates: For example, men tend to have worse health outcomes at younger ages, and some outdoor occupations, like construction, are dominated by men.
This paper did not compare deaths among people of different races or ethnicities, but that’s another important factor in vulnerability to heat, said Juan Declet-Barreto, a senior social scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists who studies the health effects of environmental hazards and wasn’t involved in this study. While Dr. Declet-Barreto is less familiar with demographics in Europe, he said that in the United States people who work outdoors and are more exposed to heat tend to be immigrants of color.
Eurostat does not have a breakdown of excess mortality data by race, ethnicity or immigration status, an agency spokesperson wrote via email. Dr. Ballester and his colleagues recommended in their paper that the countries reporting to Eurostat better coordinate how they collect and share health data, including more demographic breakdowns. This year, the European Parliament proposed a regulation to do just that.
Even without additional demographic information, the study is “very timely” given this summer’s extreme heat, Dr. Declet-Barreto said. He thought the study’s methods seemed sound, given that “there’s a fairly well-known relationship in public health between heat and excess deaths.” He also agreed that comparing the 2022 and 2003 heat waves was helpful for revealing what health and policy interventions are still needed.
Four years ago, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies published a guidebook .. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/climate/red-cross-heat-waves.html .. to help city officials respond to heat waves, and its recommendations included changes to homes and physical infrastructure, like improving energy efficiency and ventilation.
Dr. Declet-Barreto said that he and other public health researchers have found that the most important factor in preventing deaths during heat waves is expanding access to air-conditioning.
Learn More About Climate Change
* If you struggle to understand the science behind climate change, let us walk you through the basics.
* What’s causing global warming? How can we fix it? Our F.A.Q. will tackle your climate questions, big and small.
* Replacing all of our polluting machines with electric versions could be the key to fighting climate change. But electrifying almost everything is a formidable task.
* Is carbon capture really an effective counterweight to the overheating planet? Here’s how these technologies work.
* Half the world could soon face dangerous heat. We measured the daily toll it is already taking.
* New data reveals stark disparities in how different U.S. households contribute to climate change. See your neighborhood’s climate impact.
* Wildlife is disappearing around the world as humans take over too much of the planet. Meet some of the animals that are running out of places to live.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/10/climate/heat-waves-europe-deaths.html
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter mark 77th wedding anniversary at home in Plains, Georgia
File 1/7. In this Feb. 8, 2017, photo, former President Jimmy Carter, right, and his wife Rosalynn arrive for a ribbon cutting ceremony for a solar panel project on farmland he owns in their hometown of Plains, Ga. Jimmy and Rosalynn are celebrating their 77th wedding anniversary, Friday, July 7, 2023. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)
By BILL BARROW
Published 11:10 PM CDT, July 6, 2023
ATLANTA (AP) — Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are marking their 77th wedding anniversary with a quiet Friday at their south Georgia home, extending their record as the longest-married first couple ever as both nonagenarians face significant health challenges.
The 39th president is 98 and has been in home hospice care since February. .. https://apnews.com/article/politics-united-states-government-gerald-ford-ronald-reagan-hospice-care-f4e26c10a7b366f14e62f690da403b0a?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_01
The former first lady is 95 and has dementia. .. https://apnews.com/article/rosalynn-carter-dementia-4f939d0925d7f1eb0a882a543d184bfc .. The Carter family has not offered details of either Jimmy or Rosalynn Carter’s condition but has said they both have enjoyed time with each other and a stream of family members, along with occasional visits from close friends, in recent months.
“As we have looked back at their legacy, it has been really wonderful to see the outpouring of support and respect and love,” grandson Jason Carter said recently. “That word love is really the one that defines certainly their personal relationship, but also the way they approach this world.”
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter have been on the American and international stage together for a half-century.
What they described as “full partnership” began years earlier in the Carter family farm business before his political career and their decades of global humanitarian work since leaving the White House in 1981 and establishing The Carter Center the following year. .. https://www.cartercenter.org/
Through the center, Jimmy Carter conducted multiple diplomatic missions, working with the blessings of his Oval Office successors, even as he sometimes rankled them. The former president and center employees have monitored at least 114 elections across Asia, Africa and the Americas since 1989. They have recently turned their efforts to U.S. elections.
Among their public health outreach, the center’s Guinea worm eradication program has nearly conquered the water-born parasite once prevalent in the developing world. Known cases measured in the millions in the mid-1980s when Jimmy Carter set a goal of eradicating Guinea worm disease. There were fewer than two dozen cases in 2022 and, as of earlier this spring, the center had yet to document a case in 2023.
Rosalynn Carter, meanwhile, took her signature policy issue — mental health treatment and advocacy — beyond the White House and established an annual fellowship for journalists to concentrate on mental health reporting. She also advocated widely for better services for caregivers, a focus the Carter family highlighted earlier this year when they announced the former first lady had dementia.
Beyond the Carter Center, the couple became the most famous volunteers for Habitat for Humanity, the international outfit that builds, repairs and renovates homes for low-income people.
The Carters first volunteered for Habitat in 1984, taking a bus from Georgia to the New York City worksite along with other volunteers. They would soon begin hosting annual builds bearing the former president’s name, donning hardhats with volunteers into their late 80s and early 90s.
“Everything they’ve done is really just an extension of what they started and who they were in the White House,” said Donna Brazile, a former Democratic Party chairwoman who got her start in politics on Carter’s presidential campaigns. “Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are just good, decent people.”
The Carters married July 7, 1946, in their hometown of Plains. But their relationship extends to the cradle.
Jimmy Carter’s parents were friends of Rosalynn’s parents. The future president’s mother was the nurse who delivered Eleanor Rosalynn Smith at the Smith family home in 1927. “Miss Lillian” returned to the Smith home a few days later with her eldest son, preschooler Jimmy, to meet the new baby. The Carters moved to a farm in nearby Archery, just outside of Plains, not long after, though the Carter children and Smith children would continue to see each other at school in Plains.
Rosalynn would become a close friend of Jimmy’s sister Ruth, who played the part of matchmaker during one of her elder brother’s visits back home from the U.S. Naval Academy. Jimmy and Rosalynn married soon after he graduated. They left Plains with no intention of returning other than as visitors. But in 1953, James Earl Carter Sr. died, leaving behind the family’s farming and warehouse enterprise. Without consulting Rosalynn, the young lieutenant decided to leave the Navy and move his young family back to Georgia.
The future president, who became an advocate for women’s rights and nominated more women and non-white people to federal posts than any of his predecessors, later called it inconceivable that he did not consult his wife. Yet over the ensuing years, Rosalynn Carter became a key partner in the family business.
“I knew more on paper about the business than he did. He would take my advice about things,” she told The Associated Press in a joint interview with her husband ahead of their 75th anniversary in 2021.
That continued in politics, as Rosalynn Carter proved herself a skillful campaigner and forceful policy advocate in her own right, overcoming her youthful shyness that the former president has depicted in his writing and painting.
“My wife is much more political,” he said in the interview.
Beyond their longevity, both Carters credit their long marriage to open communication and their shared Christian faith.
“Every day there needs to be reconciliation,” the former president said in 2021. “We don’t go to sleep with some remaining differences between us.”
The pair also have enjoyed hobbies together for years — sometimes even competitively.
Before they became frail, they enjoyed playing tennis, hiking and cycling together.
Both prolific writers, they sometimes raced to finish drafts of books.
Fishing often involved competition, too, and they continued to fish into their 90s on their property in Plains.
They added bird watching in recent decades as they slowed down physically.
For all their common joys, Rosalynn Carter added another component of a successful marriage.
“Each should have some space,” she said. “That’s really important.”
https://apnews.com/article/jimmy-carter-rosalynn-anniversary-hospice-930e327d46fb487401a352ef7af8036f
Tuesday set an unofficial record for the hottest day on Earth. Wednesday may break it.
BY MELINA WALLING AND SETH BORENSTEIN
Published 9:05 PM CDT, July 4, 2023
The planet’s temperature spiked on Tuesday to its hottest day in decades and likely centuries, and Wednesday could become the third straight day Earth unofficially marks a record-breaking high.
It’s the latest in a series of climate-change extremes that alarm but don’t surprise scientists.
The globe’s average temperature reached 62.9 degrees Fahrenheit (17.18 degrees Celsius) on Tuesday, according to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, a common tool based on satellite data, observations, and computer simulations and used by climate scientists for a glimpse of the world’s condition. On Monday, the average temperature was 62.6 degrees Fahrenheit (17.01 degrees Celsius), setting a record that lasted only 24 hours.
For scientists, it’s a sweaty case of I-told-you-so.
“A record like this is another piece of evidence for the now massively supported proposition that global warming is pushing us into a hotter future,” said Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field, who was not part of the calculations.
On Wednesday, 38 million Americans were under some kind of heat alert, said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief scientist Sarah Kapnick. She said the global heat is from a natural El Nino warming of the Pacific that heats up the planet as it changes worldwide weather on top of human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and gas.
MORE CLIMATE COVERAGE
Global sizzling: July was hottest month on record, NOAA says
BY SETH BORENSTEIN
Published 2:21 PM CDT, August 13, 2021
Earth sizzled in July and became the hottest month in 142 years of recordkeeping, U.S. weather officials announced.
[...]
https://apnews.com/article/science-environment-and-nature-climate-change-f6cb3a4f7c2ecdb333a4f0fcfb1025f8
-----
2022 was fifth or sixth warmest on record as Earth heats up
BY SETH BORENSTEIN
Published 11:11 AM CDT, January 12, 2023
DENVER (AP) — Earth’s fever persisted last year, not quite spiking to a record high but still in the top five or six warmest on record, government agencies reported Thursday.
[...]
https://apnews.com/article/science-weather-us-news-climate-and-environment-af0300e0682b4fa0bdc7f0c039adeb9f
-----
Fever chart: Earth had its hottest decade on record in 2010s
Published 4:09 PM CDT, January 15, 2020
WASHINGTON (AP) — The decade that just ended was by far the hottest ever measured on Earth, capped off by the second-warmest year on record, two U.S. agencies reported Wednesday. And scientists said they see no end to the way man-made climate change keeps shattering records.
“If you think you’ve heard this story before, you haven’t seen anything yet,” Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said at the close of a decade plagued by raging wildfires, melting ice and extreme weather that researchers have repeatedly tied to human activity.
Schmidt said Earth as a whole is probably the hottest it has been during the Holocene — the past 11,500 years or so — meaning this could be the warmest period since the dawn of civilization. But scientists’ estimates of ancient global temperatures, based on tree rings, ice cores and other telltale signs, are not precise enough to say that with certainty.
[...]
https://apnews.com/article/fires-us-news-ap-top-news-climate-change-science-9ba6b553a63f93ed70aa4405b2cbcf04
https://apnews.com/article/global-record-breaking-heat-july-27069b5380117534d78f1f40a6edc7a0
Tuesday set an unofficial record for the hottest day on Earth. Wednesday may break it.
BY MELINA WALLING AND SETH BORENSTEIN
Published 9:05 PM CDT, July 4, 2023
The planet’s temperature spiked on Tuesday to its hottest day in decades and likely centuries, and Wednesday could become the third straight day Earth unofficially marks a record-breaking high.
It’s the latest in a series of climate-change extremes that alarm but don’t surprise scientists.
The globe’s average temperature reached 62.9 degrees Fahrenheit (17.18 degrees Celsius) on Tuesday, according to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, a common tool based on satellite data, observations, and computer simulations and used by climate scientists for a glimpse of the world’s condition. On Monday, the average temperature was 62.6 degrees Fahrenheit (17.01 degrees Celsius), setting a record that lasted only 24 hours.
For scientists, it’s a sweaty case of I-told-you-so.
“A record like this is another piece of evidence for the now massively supported proposition that global warming is pushing us into a hotter future,” said Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field, who was not part of the calculations.
On Wednesday, 38 million Americans were under some kind of heat alert, said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief scientist Sarah Kapnick. She said the global heat is from a natural El Nino warming of the Pacific that heats up the planet as it changes worldwide weather on top of human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and gas.
MORE CLIMATE COVERAGE
Global sizzling: July was hottest month on record, NOAA says
BY SETH BORENSTEIN
Published 2:21 PM CDT, August 13, 2021
Earth sizzled in July and became the hottest month in 142 years of recordkeeping, U.S. weather officials announced.
[...]
https://apnews.com/article/science-environment-and-nature-climate-change-f6cb3a4f7c2ecdb333a4f0fcfb1025f8
-----
2022 was fifth or sixth warmest on record as Earth heats up
BY SETH BORENSTEIN
Published 11:11 AM CDT, January 12, 2023
DENVER (AP) — Earth’s fever persisted last year, not quite spiking to a record high but still in the top five or six warmest on record, government agencies reported Thursday.
[...]
https://apnews.com/article/science-weather-us-news-climate-and-environment-af0300e0682b4fa0bdc7f0c039adeb9f
-----
Fever chart: Earth had its hottest decade on record in 2010s
Published 4:09 PM CDT, January 15, 2020
WASHINGTON (AP) — The decade that just ended was by far the hottest ever measured on Earth, capped off by the second-warmest year on record, two U.S. agencies reported Wednesday. And scientists said they see no end to the way man-made climate change keeps shattering records.
“If you think you’ve heard this story before, you haven’t seen anything yet,” Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said at the close of a decade plagued by raging wildfires, melting ice and extreme weather that researchers have repeatedly tied to human activity.
Schmidt said Earth as a whole is probably the hottest it has been during the Holocene — the past 11,500 years or so — meaning this could be the warmest period since the dawn of civilization. But scientists’ estimates of ancient global temperatures, based on tree rings, ice cores and other telltale signs, are not precise enough to say that with certainty.
[...]
https://apnews.com/article/fires-us-news-ap-top-news-climate-change-science-9ba6b553a63f93ed70aa4405b2cbcf04
https://apnews.com/article/global-record-breaking-heat-july-27069b5380117534d78f1f40a6edc7a0
WATCH LIVE: A Capitol Fourth 2023
Arts Jul 4, 2023 11:50 AM EDT
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/watch-a-capitol-fourth-2023
Grammy Award-winning group Boyz II Men, singer Babyface, rock band Chicago and singer Belinda Carlisle will all perform at the 43rd edition of “A Capitol Fourth,” the July 4th concert and fireworks celebration broadcast on PBS. The celebration is happening outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
The July 4 event begins at 8 p.m. ET. Watch in the player above.
This year’s Capitol Fourth will be hosted by Fresh Prince of Bel-Air actor and America’s Funniest Home Videos’ Alfonso Ribeiro.
Past Capitol Fourth Concerts have featured television and music stars including singer Patti LaBelle, composer John Williams and actor Steve Martin and the Muppets from Sesame Street.
Biden hosts military families for Fourth of July
08:45
Biden hosts military families for Fourth of July
08:45
Revelers across the US brave heat and heavy downpours to celebrate Fourth of July
BY STEVE LEBLANC
Published 3:14 PM CDT, July 4, 2023
James Tyler, 19, tilts his head back so the popcorn he is eating on the back of a decorated Jeep won't catch on his artificial Uncle Sam mustache after Tuesday's Independence Day parade in Buffalo Gap, Texas Tuesday, July 4, 2023. (Ronald W. Erdrich /The Abilene Reporter-News via AP)">
BOSTON (AP) — Revelers across the U.S. braved heat and heavy rain to take part in Fourth of July activities Tuesday — celebrating the nation’s founding with parades, fireworks and hot dog eating contests at a time of lingering political divisions and concerns about the country’s future.
In Boston, people dodged raindrops to nab a coveted space on the grassy oval in front of the Hatch Shell along the Charles River ahead of the traditional Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular. Hundreds of thousands of partygoers typically line both sides of the river for the fireworks spectacular that follows a concert.
At another longstanding celebration, fans of competitive eating crowded to watch Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July hot dog eating contest held in the Coney Island section of New York City.
Heavy downpours interrupted the contest, but after the pause, Joey “Jaws” Chestnut swallowed 62 franks and buns in 10 minutes.
“What a roller coaster, emotionally,” Chestnut said. The 39-year-old from Westfield, Indiana, first competed for the title in 2005 and hasn’t lost since 2015.
New York wasn’t the only state where weather factored into events.
The 10-kilometer Atlanta Journal-Constitution Peachtree Road Race that typically draws thousands of runners in humid summer weather was cut short due to possible thunderstorms.
Farther north, fireworks show in Yankton, South Dakota, was postponed until Wednesday night because lightning prevented crews from setting up the display. In Nebraska, the Omaha Symphony’s Independence Day Celebration that includes a concert and fireworks shows were also postponed until Wednesday night.
New Orleans residents welcomed rain and slightly cooler conditions after days of heat and humidity baked the city. The General Roy S. Kelley fireboat was returning to New Orleans Riverfront for a patriotic water show, sending streams of red, white, and blue water into the air.
President Joe Biden hosted a barbecue for military families at the White House, which was decked out with red, white and blue bunting and big U.S. flags draped over the columns facing the South Lawn. Biden told the crowd gathered how grateful he was for their service. And he talked about how important it was to work to unify the nation.
“Democracy is never guaranteed,” Biden said. “Every generation must fight to maintain it.”
Vice President Kamala Harris was in her home state of California, where she visited a Los Angeles fire station to pay tribute to first-responders who she said risk their lives for their community.
“On this Independence Day, we came by to thank them, and to let them know we think of them all the time,” Harris said.
While the holiday put a spotlight on how Americans carry different views of patriotism, many people embraced the holiday with whimsy and a sense of community.
In Hannibal, Missouri, the hometown of Mark Twain, the Fourth of July weekend coincides with National Tom Sawyer Days. Fence-painting and frog-jumping contests were held.
Altoona, Iowa, dubbed its celebration “CORNival.” In addition to the nod to America’s birthday, the festival marks the 100th anniversary of the first acre of commercial hybrid seed corn, grown and harvested in Altoona in 1923. Twenty 6-foot-high fiberglass corn cob statutes decorated by local artists were being unveiled and will later be placed around the town of 21,000 residents.
In Joppatowne, Maryland, hundreds of people lined up at a Sheetz gas station to pump regular fuel at $1.776 per gallon, WBAL-TV reported. Sheetz set the price per gallon in commemoration of the year the Declaration of Independence was signed, according to a statement posted on the company’s website.
And in the east Tennessee city of Gatlinburg held its annual Independence Day midnight parade early Tuesday. George Hawkins, who created the parade, died Saturday, news outlets reported.
Running events were a feature of many celebrations.
In Lexington, Kentucky, about 2,000 people ran through the city’s downtown. Stephanie Thurman told WKYT-TV that the race had been on her bucket list. “I started these races here in 2019; I turned 50. That was one of the things on my bucket list, so I did that, and ever since then, I was bit by the bug,”
Hundreds participated in Alaska’s Mount Marathon, a grueling mountain race that features steep inclines, loose rock and shale that the top runners seemingly fly over on their way down. It’s an Independence Day tradition in coastal Seward, a town of about 2,500 people south of Anchorage.
Some cities were eschewing firework displays for shows in which drones fitted with lights are coded to create massive, moving shapes in the sky. Los Angeles, Tahoe City, California, Salt Lake City, and Boulder, along with a few other Colorado towns, have opted for the the aerial spectacles that can display an expansive American flag and the year 1776 in red, white and blue. Avoiding explosive fireworks limits the danger of fires in states already devastated by massive burns.
The air pollution agency for Southern California issued an alert for potential health problems caused by high levels of airborne particles from fireworks. The particulate advisory by the South Coast Air Quality Management District is in effect through Wednesday in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
The Chicago suburb of Highland Park, where a shooting at least year’s Fourth of July parade left seven people dead, also held a drone show to avoid the startling noise of fireworks.
Gun violence also marred some of the celebratory atmosphere, as shootings left five dead in Philadelphia and three dead in Texas.
Fireworks also led to at least one death, in western Michigan. Nine other people were injured in that fireworks explosion on Monday, the Ottawa County Sheriff’s Department said.
https://apnews.com/article/july-fourth-celebrations-fireworks-parades-4e7ed2fd547b5aa46dca62f2ccf9f998
This Independence Day Let's COMMIT to Saving Democracy
Tuesday, July 04, 2023 at 6:52:38a CDT
We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident
Today, we in America rightfully celebrate the birth of our country, a Democracy founded upon the precepts of equality and Divinely bestowed "inalienable" rights such as the pursuit of "life, liberty and happiness."
But as we celebrate the joy of being Americans, let us also recognize the fragility of said democracy, and renew our commitment to the PRESERVATION of it, in full recognition of the equally "self-evident" truth that our Democracy is now being threatened, undermined, and imperiled like never before, by authoritarian elements of fascism and supremacist ideology, promoted by wealthy power brokers and oligarchs (domestic and abroad), whose sole purpose is to further empower themselves via hate based rancor, divisive rhetoric, and the systemic demonization of some perceived "other." Just as they ALWAYS HAVE.
And imo, few narratives have captured and quite succinctly summarized how this has played out time and time again, from early in our nation's history, as did Thomhartmann's rather excellent piece,
"Why are We Letting Red State "Welfare Oligarchs" Mooch Off Blue States?" .. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/27/2177933/-Why-are-We-Letting-Red-State-Welfare-Oligarchs-Mooch-Off-Blue-States
In it, he wrote:
This Independence Day Let's COMMIT to Saving Democracy
Tuesday, July 04, 2023 at 6:52:38a CDT
We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident
Today, we in America rightfully celebrate the birth of our country, a Democracy founded upon the precepts of equality and Divinely bestowed "inalienable" rights such as the pursuit of "life, liberty and happiness."
But as we celebrate the joy of being Americans, let us also recognize the fragility of said democracy, and renew our commitment to the PRESERVATION of it, in full recognition of the equally "self-evident" truth that our Democracy is now being threatened, undermined, and imperiled like never before, by authoritarian elements of fascism and supremacist ideology, promoted by wealthy power brokers and oligarchs (domestic and abroad), whose sole purpose is to further empower themselves via hate based rancor, divisive rhetoric, and the systemic demonization of some perceived "other." Just as they ALWAYS HAVE.
And imo, few narratives have captured and quite succinctly summarized how this has played out time and time again, from early in our nation's history, as did Thomhartmann's rather excellent piece,
"Why are We Letting Red State "Welfare Oligarchs" Mooch Off Blue States?" .. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/27/2177933/-Why-are-We-Letting-Red-State-Welfare-Oligarchs-Mooch-Off-Blue-States
In it, he wrote:
AP PHOTOS: From NYC’s skyline to Washington DC’s monuments, wildfire haze envelopes familiar sites
BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published 5:24 PM CDT, June 7, 2023
As firefighters in Canada battled hundreds of wildfires, the smoke spreading south engulfed New York City, Washington D.C. and beyond in a yellowish haze on Wednesday as people, many wearing masks, passed by familiar landmarks obscured by the smoky fog.
The New York City skyline could barely be seen across the Hudson River from New Jersey, while the Washington Monument and National Mall were enveloped in a rainless gray haze, where at one point a single jogger ran.
The New York Yankees took on the Chicago White Sox Tuesday night in a Yankee Stadium blanketed under a heavy amber pall, but Wednesday’s game was postponed because of the hazardous air quality.
In New York, commuters fished out pandemic-era face masks in the face of the hazardous conditions as masked street vendors did a brisk business selling them to those who had run out.
Haze from northern wildfires obscured the sun Wednesday morning as horsemen rode their mounts towards the track ahead of the Belmont Stakes horse race, scheduled for Saturday.
[...]
https://apnews.com/article/wildfire-haze-canada-new-york-washington-0d24be8f977dc3e43fbbf17e363edfed
AP PHOTOS: From NYC’s skyline to Washington DC’s monuments, wildfire haze envelopes familiar sites
BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published 5:24 PM CDT, June 7, 2023
As firefighters in Canada battled hundreds of wildfires, the smoke spreading south engulfed New York City, Washington D.C. and beyond in a yellowish haze on Wednesday as people, many wearing masks, passed by familiar landmarks obscured by the smoky fog.
The New York City skyline could barely be seen across the Hudson River from New Jersey, while the Washington Monument and National Mall were enveloped in a rainless gray haze, where at one point a single jogger ran.
The New York Yankees took on the Chicago White Sox Tuesday night in a Yankee Stadium blanketed under a heavy amber pall, but Wednesday’s game was postponed because of the hazardous air quality.
In New York, commuters fished out pandemic-era face masks in the face of the hazardous conditions as masked street vendors did a brisk business selling them to those who had run out.
Haze from northern wildfires obscured the sun Wednesday morning as horsemen rode their mounts towards the track ahead of the Belmont Stakes horse race, scheduled for Saturday.
[...]
https://apnews.com/article/wildfire-haze-canada-new-york-washington-0d24be8f977dc3e43fbbf17e363edfed
Canada Wildfires Are Still Burning—Why and When Will it End?
BY ALEKS PHILLIPS ON 6/30/23 AT 10:18 AM EDT
Canada is already on track to have its worst season for wildfires, with over 20 million acres of forest burned, as a mix of hot and dry conditions is having devastating consequences for wildlife and poses increasing health risks for people in the path of smoke clouds.
The latest official maps as of Friday show the most intense wildfires in Canada are focused in Quebec and western Ontario, as well as in Alberta province, which borders Montana.
In the past day, the danger has also become "extreme" in northern parts of Saskatchewan and British Columbia.
As of June 29, figures from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) show that there were 497 active fires, or which 229—nearly half—were out of control. In the year to date, 8.1 million hectares (about 20 million acres) of land have been burned.
Cities in northeastern U.S. states have been impacted by plumes of smoke descending on southerly winds, reducing visibility and causing the U.S. government to issue alerts for some places.
What Caused Canada's Wildfires?
What makes 2023's wildfire season so remarkable is that the area burned already this year has exceeded the previous record set in 1995, when 7.1 million hectares (17.5 million acres) of land were burned across the entire year.
Canada's wildfire season typically runs from May to October, suggesting the situation could grow worse as 2023 progresses. Meanwhile, NASA said earlier this week that smoke clouds had already made it as far as western Europe.
In recent weeks, northern continental America has seen warm, dry weather with little rain, after a relatively dry winter.
"You have a lot of heat and dryness at this moment in time, which means there's a lot of potential fuel," Mark Maslin, a professor of earth system sciences at University College London (UCL), told Newsweek.
"The other thing is that the forests aren't managed, and therefore all of that fuel—i.e. the dead wood, et cetera—isn't cleared, just because [the forests are] massive," he said. "And so what you have is a stockpile of fuel which can be ignited very easily."
Experts largely agree that the widespread forest blazes, and the conditions that have allowed for them, are another example of extreme weather caused by climate change.
https://www.newsweek.com/climate-change-extreme-weather-events-worse-1460125
As the average temperature of the earth warms, more energy is being pushed into the weather system, contributing to greater volatility in the jet stream—a current of air that divides colder atmospheric patterns toward the poles from warmer climes near the tropics.
This makes it shift further northward and southward than usual, precipitating freak hot weather events in area closer to the poles than historically expected, such as 2022's heatwaves in Europe, .. https://www.newsweek.com/wildfires-europe-weather-heatwave-temperature-france-spain-portugal-uk-footage-videos-1725337. ..
and cold snaps further towards the equator, such as the winter freeze as far as Texas in December.
"Quite a lot of these [wildfires] are burning quite a long way from where you would expect a strong local, human influence—so there clearly is a role of climate change coming into this," Chris Brierley, an associate professor of climate science at UCL, told Newsweek.
There are concerns that humans may, inadvertently, be lighting the touchpaper on such arid conditions. At the end of May, Nova Scotia's Premier Tim Houston warned residents not to flick cigarette butts due to the risk of combustion.
Maslin said that even something as seemingly insignificant as a broken glass bottle could "concentrate sunlight and cause a spark."
Why Are They Still Burning?
Official figures .. https://ciffc.net/statistics (with graphics) .. show that the number of wildfires across Canada picked up rapidly from the end of April, and the weekly totals have been increasing since then. In the year to date, there have so far been 3,053 wildfires.
"The problem is that, once the fires start, because it's so dry and hot, there's nothing preventing them from becoming wildfires and burning vast areas of forest," Maslin explained.
The climate author added that while trees with deep roots would be able to draw water from deep underground, a dry underlayer to the forest was "like a keg of gunpowder just waiting to go off."
Smoky haze from wildfires in Canada diminishes the visibility of the Chrysler Building on June 7, 2023 in New York City.
DAVID DEE DELGADO/GETTY IMAGES
Air quality was expected to improve on Thursday as a weather front moved into northern Quebec, with hopes that heavy rain would damp down the wildfires and bolster firefighting efforts.
However, Steven Flisfeder, a meteorologist at Canada's Environment and Climate Change department, told reporters on Wednesday that the heaviest rain was expected to miss the worst-affected areas, according to the Toronto Star.
The latest forecast for the region by Environment Canada says that there will be patches of cloud on Friday, with chances of showers on Saturday. A long-range forecast by Weather25 suggests a more consistent stretch of rain could arrive in the second week of July.
When Will Canadian Wildfires End?
Firefighting efforts alone are unlikely to quell the blazes.
Bringing the current swath of wildfires to a halt depends not merely on there being rain, but consistent or heavy rain over an extended period.
This is because wildfires can only be prevented by stopping the two main conditions that lead to them starting—dry fuel and hot conditions that make ignition more likely.
"They will end once there is enough precipitation to dampen the actual ground enough that the fires can't either spread or catch in the first place," Maslin said, adding: "When the temperature's also lower, you find that less combustion actually occurs."
When that will be is hard to say, but there will have to be enough rain to soak the dry ground and dead wood that is allowing the blazes to spread so rapidly, which has the added effect of preventing combustion events in the first place.
Smoke or Heat: Summer 2023 for Many
Earlier in the week, Cleveland, Ohio, became so engulfed in smoke that the city's skyline disappeared while New York has been subject to an orange haze.
Air particle pollution is as of Friday considered at unhealthy levels in parts of Washington D.C., Pittsburgh and Baltimore, as well as many other areas on the East Coast and in the Great Lakes regions, according to government air quality monitoring site AirNow.
At present levels, it recommends residents avoid strenuous outdoor activities, shorten the amount of time they have to spend outside or wait for the air quality to improve before exercising in the open.
"The biggest problem with wildfires apart from the immediate danger is the decrease in air quality," Maslin said. "This is very severe because the soot and smoke can cause huge issues [for] people with sensitive respiratory diseases."
As well as potentially exacerbating conditions such as asthma, the particulates from the wildfires can compound pollution already produced by humans.
According to Advisory Board, a healthcare research firm, experts have warned that exposure to the smog can be as damaging to the lungs as smoking 22 cigarettes a day. Maslin likened the effects to that of a city with bad air quality "multiplied multiple times."
At the same time as the Northeast and Midwest is facing a haze of smoke, meteorologists have issued excessive heat warnings for swaths of the U.S. Southwest caused by a heatwave that is expected to continue into next week, with temperatures sustained above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
On Thursday, the National Weather Service said the heatwave is expected to ease somewhat early next week, before conditions return to "typical summertime heat" towards the latter half of the week.
However, it noted that heat-related dangers to people remain elevated "due to the longevity of this ongoing heatwave."
Meteorologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have said that the same static weather pattern causing the unusually hot, dry conditions in Canada had then caused both the smoky air descending over northern America and the oppressive heat in the south.
"Pick your poison," Greg Carbin, forecast operations chief for the agency's Weather Prediction Center, told WRAL on Thursday, adding: "As long as there's something to burn, there will be smoke we have to deal with."
READ MORE
Before and after photos show Cleveland "disappear" into wildfire smoke
https://www.newsweek.com/before-after-photos-cleveland-ohio-disappear-wildfire-smoke-1809836
Why Chicago now has the worst air quality in the world
https://www.newsweek.com/why-chicago-worst-air-quality-world-1809446
Space satellite images show wildfire smoke engulfing Midwest U.S.
https://www.newsweek.com/satellite-images-show-wildfire-smoke-over-midwest-1807198
https://www.newsweek.com/canada-wildfires-burning-why-explainer-1810132
Canada Wildfires Are Still Burning—Why and When Will it End?
BY ALEKS PHILLIPS ON 6/30/23 AT 10:18 AM EDT
Canada is already on track to have its worst season for wildfires, with over 20 million acres of forest burned, as a mix of hot and dry conditions is having devastating consequences for wildlife and poses increasing health risks for people in the path of smoke clouds.
The latest official maps as of Friday show the most intense wildfires in Canada are focused in Quebec and western Ontario, as well as in Alberta province, which borders Montana.
In the past day, the danger has also become "extreme" in northern parts of Saskatchewan and British Columbia.
As of June 29, figures from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) show that there were 497 active fires, or which 229—nearly half—were out of control. In the year to date, 8.1 million hectares (about 20 million acres) of land have been burned.
Cities in northeastern U.S. states have been impacted by plumes of smoke descending on southerly winds, reducing visibility and causing the U.S. government to issue alerts for some places.
What Caused Canada's Wildfires?
What makes 2023's wildfire season so remarkable is that the area burned already this year has exceeded the previous record set in 1995, when 7.1 million hectares (17.5 million acres) of land were burned across the entire year.
Canada's wildfire season typically runs from May to October, suggesting the situation could grow worse as 2023 progresses. Meanwhile, NASA said earlier this week that smoke clouds had already made it as far as western Europe.
In recent weeks, northern continental America has seen warm, dry weather with little rain, after a relatively dry winter.
"You have a lot of heat and dryness at this moment in time, which means there's a lot of potential fuel," Mark Maslin, a professor of earth system sciences at University College London (UCL), told Newsweek.
"The other thing is that the forests aren't managed, and therefore all of that fuel—i.e. the dead wood, et cetera—isn't cleared, just because [the forests are] massive," he said. "And so what you have is a stockpile of fuel which can be ignited very easily."
Experts largely agree that the widespread forest blazes, and the conditions that have allowed for them, are another example of extreme weather caused by climate change.
https://www.newsweek.com/climate-change-extreme-weather-events-worse-1460125
As the average temperature of the earth warms, more energy is being pushed into the weather system, contributing to greater volatility in the jet stream—a current of air that divides colder atmospheric patterns toward the poles from warmer climes near the tropics.
This makes it shift further northward and southward than usual, precipitating freak hot weather events in area closer to the poles than historically expected, such as 2022's heatwaves in Europe, .. https://www.newsweek.com/wildfires-europe-weather-heatwave-temperature-france-spain-portugal-uk-footage-videos-1725337. ..
and cold snaps further towards the equator, such as the winter freeze as far as Texas in December.
"Quite a lot of these [wildfires] are burning quite a long way from where you would expect a strong local, human influence—so there clearly is a role of climate change coming into this," Chris Brierley, an associate professor of climate science at UCL, told Newsweek.
There are concerns that humans may, inadvertently, be lighting the touchpaper on such arid conditions. At the end of May, Nova Scotia's Premier Tim Houston warned residents not to flick cigarette butts due to the risk of combustion.
Maslin said that even something as seemingly insignificant as a broken glass bottle could "concentrate sunlight and cause a spark."
Why Are They Still Burning?
Official figures .. https://ciffc.net/statistics (with graphics) .. show that the number of wildfires across Canada picked up rapidly from the end of April, and the weekly totals have been increasing since then. In the year to date, there have so far been 3,053 wildfires.
"The problem is that, once the fires start, because it's so dry and hot, there's nothing preventing them from becoming wildfires and burning vast areas of forest," Maslin explained.
The climate author added that while trees with deep roots would be able to draw water from deep underground, a dry underlayer to the forest was "like a keg of gunpowder just waiting to go off."
Smoky haze from wildfires in Canada diminishes the visibility of the Chrysler Building on June 7, 2023 in New York City.
DAVID DEE DELGADO/GETTY IMAGES
Air quality was expected to improve on Thursday as a weather front moved into northern Quebec, with hopes that heavy rain would damp down the wildfires and bolster firefighting efforts.
However, Steven Flisfeder, a meteorologist at Canada's Environment and Climate Change department, told reporters on Wednesday that the heaviest rain was expected to miss the worst-affected areas, according to the Toronto Star.
The latest forecast for the region by Environment Canada says that there will be patches of cloud on Friday, with chances of showers on Saturday. A long-range forecast by Weather25 suggests a more consistent stretch of rain could arrive in the second week of July.
When Will Canadian Wildfires End?
Firefighting efforts alone are unlikely to quell the blazes.
Bringing the current swath of wildfires to a halt depends not merely on there being rain, but consistent or heavy rain over an extended period.
This is because wildfires can only be prevented by stopping the two main conditions that lead to them starting—dry fuel and hot conditions that make ignition more likely.
"They will end once there is enough precipitation to dampen the actual ground enough that the fires can't either spread or catch in the first place," Maslin said, adding: "When the temperature's also lower, you find that less combustion actually occurs."
When that will be is hard to say, but there will have to be enough rain to soak the dry ground and dead wood that is allowing the blazes to spread so rapidly, which has the added effect of preventing combustion events in the first place.
Smoke or Heat: Summer 2023 for Many
Earlier in the week, Cleveland, Ohio, became so engulfed in smoke that the city's skyline disappeared while New York has been subject to an orange haze.
Air particle pollution is as of Friday considered at unhealthy levels in parts of Washington D.C., Pittsburgh and Baltimore, as well as many other areas on the East Coast and in the Great Lakes regions, according to government air quality monitoring site AirNow.
At present levels, it recommends residents avoid strenuous outdoor activities, shorten the amount of time they have to spend outside or wait for the air quality to improve before exercising in the open.
"The biggest problem with wildfires apart from the immediate danger is the decrease in air quality," Maslin said. "This is very severe because the soot and smoke can cause huge issues [for] people with sensitive respiratory diseases."
As well as potentially exacerbating conditions such as asthma, the particulates from the wildfires can compound pollution already produced by humans.
According to Advisory Board, a healthcare research firm, experts have warned that exposure to the smog can be as damaging to the lungs as smoking 22 cigarettes a day. Maslin likened the effects to that of a city with bad air quality "multiplied multiple times."
At the same time as the Northeast and Midwest is facing a haze of smoke, meteorologists have issued excessive heat warnings for swaths of the U.S. Southwest caused by a heatwave that is expected to continue into next week, with temperatures sustained above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
On Thursday, the National Weather Service said the heatwave is expected to ease somewhat early next week, before conditions return to "typical summertime heat" towards the latter half of the week.
However, it noted that heat-related dangers to people remain elevated "due to the longevity of this ongoing heatwave."
Meteorologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have said that the same static weather pattern causing the unusually hot, dry conditions in Canada had then caused both the smoky air descending over northern America and the oppressive heat in the south.
"Pick your poison," Greg Carbin, forecast operations chief for the agency's Weather Prediction Center, told WRAL on Thursday, adding: "As long as there's something to burn, there will be smoke we have to deal with."
READ MORE
Before and after photos show Cleveland "disappear" into wildfire smoke
https://www.newsweek.com/before-after-photos-cleveland-ohio-disappear-wildfire-smoke-1809836
Why Chicago now has the worst air quality in the world
https://www.newsweek.com/why-chicago-worst-air-quality-world-1809446
Space satellite images show wildfire smoke engulfing Midwest U.S.
https://www.newsweek.com/satellite-images-show-wildfire-smoke-over-midwest-1807198
https://www.newsweek.com/canada-wildfires-burning-why-explainer-1810132
Biden offers new student debt relief plan, lashes out at GOP after Supreme Court ruling
BY WILL WEISSERT AND COLLEEN LONG
Published 12:34 PM CDT, June 30, 2023
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden vowed Friday to push ahead with a new plan providing student loan relief for millions of borrowers, while blaming Republican “hypocrisy” for triggering the day’s Supreme Court decision that wiped out his original effort.
Biden said his administration had already begun the process of working under the authority of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which he called “the best path that remains to provide as many borrowers as possible with debt relief.”
In the meantime, since student loan-payment requirements are to resume in the fall, the White House is creating an “on ramp” to repayment and implementing ways to ease borrowers’ threat of default if they fall behind over the next year.
The president said the new programs will take longer than his initial effort would have to ease student loan debt.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, Biden said borrowers now angry about the court’s decision should blame Republicans. He is trying to stay on the political offensive even as the ruling undermined a key promise to young voters who will be vital to his 2024 reelection campaign.
“These Republican officials just couldn’t bear the thought of providing relief for working class, middle class Americans,” Biden said. “The hypocrisy of Republican elected officials is stunning.”
Trying to place staunch opposition to student loan forgiveness on the GOP could allow Biden’s reelection campaign to maintain the issue as one of strength in the short term. But that may ultimately offer little solace to 43 million Americans who benefited from the initial program and will now have to wait for its replacement to take shape.
“We do not want to go into excruciating debt for our entire lives to enhance our education,” Voters of Tomorrow, a Gen Z-led organization that promotes the power of young Americans, said in a statement.
The White House efforts to forgive loans were an attempt to keep a Biden promise stretching back to his 2020 campaign to wipe out student loan debt — an idea that was especially popular with young voters and progressives. Both will be key for the president in next year’s presidential race but may be less energized about supporting him after the high court’s decision.
Wisdom Cole, the national director of the NAACP Youth & College Division, said Black Americans helped put Biden in the White House, so there’s an obligation for him to “finish the job” with his pledges to provide relief for borrowers.
“It’s going to have a huge impact on the next election,” Cole said, adding, “If we don’t do this, we continue the cycle of seeing our elected leaders make promises and not follow through.”
A May poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 43% of U.S. adults approve of how Biden sought to handle student debt, similar to his approval rating overall of 40% in the same poll.
The poll suggested that Biden gets credit for his handling of the issue among young adults in particular. Fifty-three percent of adults under age 30 said they approved of Biden’s handling of student debt, compared with only 36% who approved of his job performance overall.
Senior administration officials said Biden’s top advisers had met frequently lately to prepare for a high court ruling on student loans. They also spoke with advocates and allies in Congress. After Friday’s decision, Biden met with top advisers and ordered them to immediately begin implementing a new loan plan.
The White House argues that its new efforts will stand up to future legal challenges, even given the Supreme Court’s 6-3 current conservative majority. However, the administration also insisted its original plan was legal .
Biden bristled at suggestions his efforts to ease student loan burdens got borrowers’ hopes up unnecessarily.
“I didn’t give any false hope,” he said. “The Republicans snatched away the hope that they were given.”
The political stakes are especially high since progressive Democrats in Congress and activists have been clamoring for the administration to offer an alternative to Biden’s original student loan plan for months, fearing that the Supreme Court would ultimately move to block the president’s original efforts.
Many progressives argued that the Higher Education Act was the best vehicle all along, though the administration worried that implementation might have been slower had it originally tried employing the act.
The new approach uses a provision allowing Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to “compromise, waive or release” student loans. The Biden administration used the same basis last year to forgive $6 billion in loans for borrowers who were deceived by their colleges.
The details of the new forgiveness will be negotiated through a federal rulemaking process that the administration launched Friday. The process allows the Education Department to write or change federal regulations with the weight of law.
But there’s no guarantee that the plan could survive another legal challenge.
The Higher Education Act has been used to cancel student debt but never at this scale, and lawyers for the Trump administration concluded in 2021 that the education secretary “does not have statutory authority to provide blanket or mass cancellation” under the act.
The GOP has long countered that repaying student loans is a fairness issue, and many leading Republicans celebrated Friday’s ruling. Betsy DeVos, who served as secretary of education under President Donald Trump, called Biden’s original plan “deeply unfair to the majority of Americans who don’t have student loans.”
Republicans now seeking their party’s 2024 presidential nomination lined up to applaud the decision, with former Vice President Mike Pence saying he was “pleased that the court struck down the radical left’s effort to use the money of taxpayers who played by the rules and repaid their debts in order to cancel the debt of bankers and lawyers in New York, San Francisco, and Washington.”
Addressing the Moms for Liberty conference in Philadelphia on Friday, Trump slammed Biden’s efforts on student loans as “a way of trying to buy votes, that’s all it was.” Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nation’s Nikki Haley said the Supreme Court was “right to throw out Joe Biden’s power grab.”
After Biden announced his response, some Republicans were equally quick to reject it.
“Taxpayers just got sucker punched – again – by this administration,” said Rep. Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina Republican. “Today, President Biden announced that taxpayers will be forced to pay for the costliest regulation in our nation’s history.”
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Associated Press writers Chris Megerian and Collin Binkley contributed to this report.
https://apnews.com/article/student-loans-biden-democrats-gop-campaign-2024-37c7a2c3dbd38dc4bf53c3333413bcd7