VETERAN
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
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.”
___
Associated Press writers Chris Megerian and Collin Binkley contributed to this report.
https://apnews.com/article/student-loans-biden-democrats-gop-campaign-2024-37c7a2c3dbd38dc4bf53c3333413bcd7
Judge rejects Trump’s ‘presidential immunity’ defense in second E. Jean Carroll case
The ruling paves the way for Trump to stand trial in the civil lawsuit in January.
“Trump chose to waive presidential immunity and now he must live with the results of that decision,” said Roberta Kaplan (left), an attorney for E. Jean Carroll (right),
after a federal judge denied former President Donald Trump's assertion of presidential immunity. | Bebeto Matthews/AP Photo
By Kyle Cheney and Erica Orden
06/29/2023 04:50 PM EDT
Updated: 06/29/2023 06:15 PM EDT
NEW YORK – A federal judge on Thursday sharply rejected Donald Trump’s claim of “presidential immunity” to fend off a defamation lawsuit from the writer E. Jean Carroll, ruling that Trump’s disparaging comments about Carroll in 2019 had no legitimate connection to his duties as president.
The 46-page opinion .. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.543790/gov.uscourts.nysd.543790.172.0_4.pdf .. all but ensures that Carroll’s second lawsuit against the former president will go to trial. And it’s the latest setback in Trump’s repeated bid to use the muscular protections of the presidency to shield him from civil litigation.
Trump’s “personal attacks” against Carroll, who accused him of raping her in the mid-1990s, were separate from “any official responsibility of the president,” wrote Manhattan-based U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan.
Last month, a federal jury found Trump liable for sexual assault and defamation in a trial over another lawsuit brought by Carroll, who says that Trump attacked her in the dressing room of a luxury department store. Trump is appealing that verdict.
The defamation claim in Caroll’s first trial involved a comment that Trump made in 2022, in which he called Carroll’s allegation a “hoax.” Carroll’s other lawsuit — the case in which Kaplan ruled Thursday — centers on comments Trump made in 2019, while he occupied the White House.
At the time, Trump called Carroll’s claim “a totally false accusation.” He also said in an interview with The Hill newspaper: “I’ll say it with great respect: Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened. It never happened, OK?”
Trump had pressed Kaplan to find that his response to Carroll’s allegations in 2019 were connected to his official presidential responsibilities because it related to his ability to govern. Typically, presidents are immune from any lawsuits related to their official conduct, and courts have interpreted that immunity broadly, even to actions they say are on the “outer perimeter” of a president’s duties.
But Trump crossed the line with his attacks on Carroll, Kaplan ruled.
A trial is scheduled for Jan. 15. .. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/15/trump-trial-date-carroll-lawsuit-00102328
An attorney for Carroll, Roberta Kaplan (who is not related to the judge), said Thursday: “Trump chose to waive presidential immunity and now he must live with the results of that decision. Today’s decision removes one more impediment to the January 15 trial on E Jean’s defamation damages in this case.”
An attorney for Trump, Alina Habba, said: “We disagree with the court’s decision and will be taking the appropriate steps to preserve all viable defenses.”
It’s not the first time a federal judge has ruled that Trump’s commentary as president fell outside the boundaries of his immunity from suit.
In February 2021, in a 112-page ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta concluded .. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/18/trump-january-6-lawsuit-00010249 .. that Trump’s speech to supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, was similarly disconnected from his presidential responsibilities. Kaplan approvingly cited Mehta’s reasoning, particularly his determination that the “context” of a president’s words determines whether they pertain to his official duties.
In some ways, Kaplan’s analysis of Trump’s immunity was beside the point. He also ruled that Trump raised the immunity defense far too late to be considered — nearly three years after Carroll first filed suit. Trump contended in recent filings that he wasn’t required to raise the defense because presidential immunity should automatically cover his actions. But Kaplan sharply rejected that notion, noting that presidents and others with legal immunities are often required to raise them affirmatively in order for courts to consider them.
“Such a requirement would contradict the results in many of the other civil lawsuits filed against Mr. Trump for actions during his presidency, in at least one of which … Mr. Trump agreed with the plaintiff that absolute presidential immunity was not a ‘threshold issue that must be decided before reaching the merits,’” Kaplan noted.
Besides, Kaplan said, Carroll has been litigating for years, and applying presidential immunity now would delay her pursuit of justice.
“She now is 79 years old and, as just mentioned, has been litigating this case for more than three and a half years,” Kaplan wrote. “There is no basis to risk prolonging the resolution of this litigation further by permitting Mr. Trump to raise his absolute immunity defense now at the eleventh hour when he could have done so years ago.”
Trump has, for years, made a particularly sweeping argument in support of presidential immunity, contending that anytime a president speaks on matters of public concern he is immune from civil suit.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/29/trump-carroll-defamation-immunity-ruling-00104306
Canadian wildfire smoke reaches Europe as Canada reports its worst fire season on record
By Joe Sutton, Taylor Ward and Zoe Sottile, CNN
Updated 6:22 PM EDT, Tue June 27, 2023
Smoke from Canada's record-breaking fire season has crossed the northern Atlantic and is now impacting portions of western Europe, according to the UK Met Office.
Canada has officially marked its worst wildfire season on record, with smoke from the blazes crossing the Atlantic Ocean and reaching western Europe on Monday.
Canada has had a dramatic start to wildfire season, with at least 19,027,114 acres already charred across the country. Wildfire activity in Canada typically peaks from June to August, leaving more than half of the peak season still to come.
As a result of the unprecedented start to the wildfire season, this year has become the worst fire season on record, surpassing the previous benchmark set in 1989 for the total area burned. In 1989, at least 18,254,317 acres were burned in the country, according to fire statistics from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.
And the smoke from the wildfires, which wrapped New York City .. https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/07/weather/new-york-air-pollution-canada-wildfires-climate-wednesday/index.html .. in a cloud of smog earlier this month, has now reached as far as the United Kingdom, according to the UK Met Office.
The smoke that has made its way into Europe has done so via the jet stream – strong winds in the upper levels of the atmosphere. This means the smoke will not lead to dramatically worse surface air quality like the Northeast US experienced a few weeks ago.
“Whilst the smoke is high up in the atmosphere, it may make for some vivid sunrises and sunsets in the next few days,” the Met Office, the UK’s national weather service, wrote on Twitter.
Forecast models show the smoke lingering in the upper levels of the atmosphere over Europe for much of this week.
CNN previously reported that smoke from the wildfires reached Norway at the start of June. Because the smoke is injected at high altitudes, it’s able to stay in the atmosphere longer and travel farther distances.
Fires continue to rage across Canada
The wildfires have continued to burn across multiple provinces in Canada. There were at least 53 new wildland fires on Sunday, according to the National Fire Situation Report from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.
Alberta had the most at 23, followed by Ontario and Quebec, which had eight each, according to the report.
On Monday, the agency reported at least 27 new wildland fires, with 16 in British Columbia.
The record wildfire season continues to impact air quality throughout parts of North America. On Friday, Environment Canada warned in a bulletin that smoke would continue to cause poor air quality in many parts of the country. In Ottawa, Canada’s capital, government air quality readings reached a high of 10 on Sunday, representing a “high risk,” before moderating Monday morning.
And in addition to sending smoke to western Europe, the fires have also resulted in plumes of smoke impacting parts of the US. Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana all issued air quality alerts on Monday, according to the National Weather Service.
As the climate crisis escalates, scientists expect that wildfire seasons will increase in severity, especially as droughts and heat become more common and more severe across the world. .. https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/21/world/climate-heat-wave-wildfires-weather-explainer-intl/index.html
Correction: A previous version of this article gave the wrong year for the previous benchmark of total area burned. It is 1989.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/26/americas/canada-wildfire-season-worst-2023/index.html
Canadian wildfire smoke reaches Europe as Canada reports its worst fire season on record
By Joe Sutton, Taylor Ward and Zoe Sottile, CNN
Updated 6:22 PM EDT, Tue June 27, 2023
Smoke from Canada's record-breaking fire season has crossed the northern Atlantic and is now impacting portions of western Europe, according to the UK Met Office.
Canada has officially marked its worst wildfire season on record, with smoke from the blazes crossing the Atlantic Ocean and reaching western Europe on Monday.
Canada has had a dramatic start to wildfire season, with at least 19,027,114 acres already charred across the country. Wildfire activity in Canada typically peaks from June to August, leaving more than half of the peak season still to come.
As a result of the unprecedented start to the wildfire season, this year has become the worst fire season on record, surpassing the previous benchmark set in 1989 for the total area burned. In 1989, at least 18,254,317 acres were burned in the country, according to fire statistics from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.
And the smoke from the wildfires, which wrapped New York City .. https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/07/weather/new-york-air-pollution-canada-wildfires-climate-wednesday/index.html .. in a cloud of smog earlier this month, has now reached as far as the United Kingdom, according to the UK Met Office.
The smoke that has made its way into Europe has done so via the jet stream – strong winds in the upper levels of the atmosphere. This means the smoke will not lead to dramatically worse surface air quality like the Northeast US experienced a few weeks ago.
“Whilst the smoke is high up in the atmosphere, it may make for some vivid sunrises and sunsets in the next few days,” the Met Office, the UK’s national weather service, wrote on Twitter.
Forecast models show the smoke lingering in the upper levels of the atmosphere over Europe for much of this week.
CNN previously reported that smoke from the wildfires reached Norway at the start of June. Because the smoke is injected at high altitudes, it’s able to stay in the atmosphere longer and travel farther distances.
Fires continue to rage across Canada
The wildfires have continued to burn across multiple provinces in Canada. There were at least 53 new wildland fires on Sunday, according to the National Fire Situation Report from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.
Alberta had the most at 23, followed by Ontario and Quebec, which had eight each, according to the report.
On Monday, the agency reported at least 27 new wildland fires, with 16 in British Columbia.
The record wildfire season continues to impact air quality throughout parts of North America. On Friday, Environment Canada warned in a bulletin that smoke would continue to cause poor air quality in many parts of the country. In Ottawa, Canada’s capital, government air quality readings reached a high of 10 on Sunday, representing a “high risk,” before moderating Monday morning.
And in addition to sending smoke to western Europe, the fires have also resulted in plumes of smoke impacting parts of the US. Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana all issued air quality alerts on Monday, according to the National Weather Service.
As the climate crisis escalates, scientists expect that wildfire seasons will increase in severity, especially as droughts and heat become more common and more severe across the world. .. https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/21/world/climate-heat-wave-wildfires-weather-explainer-intl/index.html
Correction: A previous version of this article gave the wrong year for the previous benchmark of total area burned. It is 1989.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/26/americas/canada-wildfire-season-worst-2023/index.html
Spain: Heat strokes and dehydration deaths soared in summer of 2022, the hottest year on record
By CIARÁN GILES
Published 11:09 AM CDT, June 27, 2023
MADRID (AP) — Deaths in Spain from heat stroke and dehydration in the hottest months of 2022 — the hottest year on record — jumped by 88% compared to the same period in 2021, the National Statistics Institute said Tuesday.
The Institute said 122 people died of heat stroke and 233 of dehydration between May and August last year when temperatures soared in a succession of heat waves. A total of 189 people died from the two conditions in 2021.
The data came as Spain sizzled in its first official heat wave of the year, with the state weather agency, AEMET, predicting temperatures to hit 44 degrees Celsius (111 degrees Fahrenheit) in much of the country during a hot spell expected to last until Thursday.
[...]
https://apnews.com/article/spain-heat-deaths-a65fe7b5f42b748388a92b536c86b39f
=============================================
Canadian wildfires are causing the worst air in the US in cities like Chicago and Detroit
By MELINA WALLING, MELISSA WINDER and TRISHA AHMED
Published 1:33 PM CDT, June 27, 2023
CHICAGO (AP) — Drifting smoke from the ongoing wildfires across Canada is creating curtains of haze and raising air quality concerns throughout the Great Lakes region and in parts of the central and eastern United States.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s AirNow.gov ..https://www.airnow.gov/ .. site showed parts of Illinois, lower Michigan and southern Wisconsin had the worst air quality in the U.S. on Tuesday afternoon, and Chicago, Detroit and Milwaukee had air quality categorized as “very unhealthy.”
In Minnesota, a record 23rd air quality alert was issued Tuesday through late Wednesday night across much of the state, as smoky skies obscure the skylines of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy issued an air quality alert for the entire state. Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources also issued an air quality advisory for the state.
[...]
https://apnews.com/article/canadian-wildfires-chicago-smoke-air-quality-aqi-e120fa48b44e6c8560b13712ba76ee1d
=============================================
Smoke from Canadian wildfires prompts a record 23rd air quality alert in Minnesota
Published 12:22 PM CDT, June 27, 2023
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Wildfire smoke from Canada prompted officials on Tuesday to issue a record 23rd air quality alert for much of Minnesota through late Wednesday night as smoky skies obscure the Minneapolis and St. Paul skylines.
Smoke from wildfires in Ontario and Quebec moved into Minnesota late Monday, and ground-level smoke is expected to linger across southern, east-central and northeastern Minnesota. That includes the Twin Cities area, up to the northeast corner of the state and down to the southwest and southeast corners.
If it seems like there have been an unusually high number air quality alerts this summer, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency says that’s correct. The MPCA tweeted that Tuesday marked the 23rd air quality alert in Minnesota this year, breaking the previous record of 21 in 2021. Minnesota usually averages two or three alerts in a season.
[...]
https://apnews.com/article/minnesota-air-quality-smoke-canadian-wildfires-unhealthy-63a62cb01db013e73055fdcef853c7e3
===============================================
Rainfall likely won’t be enough to extinguish Quebec wildfires causing US smoke, officials say
Published 3:25 PM CDT, June 27, 2023
MONTREAL (AP) — Rainfall likely won’t be enough to extinguish the wildfires ravaging northern Quebec, but the wet weather could give firefighters a chance to get ahead of the flames, officials said Tuesday, as Canada surpassed the record for area burned by wildfires this week.
Drifting smoke from wildfires across Canada is creating curtains of haze and raising air quality concerns throughout the Great Lakes region, and in parts of the central and eastern United States.
Meanwhile, NASA is reporting that smoke from wildfires in northern Quebec has reached Europe. The American space agency said satellite imagery from Monday showed smoke extending across the North Atlantic Ocean to the Iberian Peninsula, France and other parts of western Europe.
[...]
https://apnews.com/article/canada-wildfires-smoke-quebec-rain-a0e287ea5117cccadb9e6917304635ea
Climate
https://apnews.com/climate-and-environment
Spain: Heat strokes and dehydration deaths soared in summer of 2022, the hottest year on record
By CIARÁN GILES
Published 11:09 AM CDT, June 27, 2023
MADRID (AP) — Deaths in Spain from heat stroke and dehydration in the hottest months of 2022 — the hottest year on record — jumped by 88% compared to the same period in 2021, the National Statistics Institute said Tuesday.
The Institute said 122 people died of heat stroke and 233 of dehydration between May and August last year when temperatures soared in a succession of heat waves. A total of 189 people died from the two conditions in 2021.
The data came as Spain sizzled in its first official heat wave of the year, with the state weather agency, AEMET, predicting temperatures to hit 44 degrees Celsius (111 degrees Fahrenheit) in much of the country during a hot spell expected to last until Thursday.
[...]
https://apnews.com/article/spain-heat-deaths-a65fe7b5f42b748388a92b536c86b39f
=============================================
Canadian wildfires are causing the worst air in the US in cities like Chicago and Detroit
By MELINA WALLING, MELISSA WINDER and TRISHA AHMED
Published 1:33 PM CDT, June 27, 2023
CHICAGO (AP) — Drifting smoke from the ongoing wildfires across Canada is creating curtains of haze and raising air quality concerns throughout the Great Lakes region and in parts of the central and eastern United States.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s AirNow.gov ..https://www.airnow.gov/ .. site showed parts of Illinois, lower Michigan and southern Wisconsin had the worst air quality in the U.S. on Tuesday afternoon, and Chicago, Detroit and Milwaukee had air quality categorized as “very unhealthy.”
In Minnesota, a record 23rd air quality alert was issued Tuesday through late Wednesday night across much of the state, as smoky skies obscure the skylines of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy issued an air quality alert for the entire state. Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources also issued an air quality advisory for the state.
[...]
https://apnews.com/article/canadian-wildfires-chicago-smoke-air-quality-aqi-e120fa48b44e6c8560b13712ba76ee1d
=============================================
Smoke from Canadian wildfires prompts a record 23rd air quality alert in Minnesota
Published 12:22 PM CDT, June 27, 2023
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Wildfire smoke from Canada prompted officials on Tuesday to issue a record 23rd air quality alert for much of Minnesota through late Wednesday night as smoky skies obscure the Minneapolis and St. Paul skylines.
Smoke from wildfires in Ontario and Quebec moved into Minnesota late Monday, and ground-level smoke is expected to linger across southern, east-central and northeastern Minnesota. That includes the Twin Cities area, up to the northeast corner of the state and down to the southwest and southeast corners.
If it seems like there have been an unusually high number air quality alerts this summer, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency says that’s correct. The MPCA tweeted that Tuesday marked the 23rd air quality alert in Minnesota this year, breaking the previous record of 21 in 2021. Minnesota usually averages two or three alerts in a season.
[...]
https://apnews.com/article/minnesota-air-quality-smoke-canadian-wildfires-unhealthy-63a62cb01db013e73055fdcef853c7e3
===============================================
Rainfall likely won’t be enough to extinguish Quebec wildfires causing US smoke, officials say
Published 3:25 PM CDT, June 27, 2023
MONTREAL (AP) — Rainfall likely won’t be enough to extinguish the wildfires ravaging northern Quebec, but the wet weather could give firefighters a chance to get ahead of the flames, officials said Tuesday, as Canada surpassed the record for area burned by wildfires this week.
Drifting smoke from wildfires across Canada is creating curtains of haze and raising air quality concerns throughout the Great Lakes region, and in parts of the central and eastern United States.
Meanwhile, NASA is reporting that smoke from wildfires in northern Quebec has reached Europe. The American space agency said satellite imagery from Monday showed smoke extending across the North Atlantic Ocean to the Iberian Peninsula, France and other parts of western Europe.
[...]
https://apnews.com/article/canada-wildfires-smoke-quebec-rain-a0e287ea5117cccadb9e6917304635ea
Special Olympics World Games Berlin 2023
The Special Olympics World Games are the world's largest inclusive sports event. Thousands of athletes with intellectual disabilities compete together in 26 sports. Nine days of exciting and inspiring competitions, by athletes and for athletes.
From 17 to 25 June 2023, the Special Olympics World Games will take place in Berlin – the first time that Germany will host the Games!
We are looking forward to a colorful international festival of sports – with the aim of achieving greater recognition and social participation of people with intellectual disabilities in our society.
https://www.berlin2023.org/en
==================================
Thank you so much! The Berlin 2023 Games are over
25 June 2023, 20:22
We are overwhelmed! The Special Olympics World Games Berlin 2023 were full of emotions, high-class sports and exuberant parties. Everyone experienced their own personal highlights and gained unforgettable experiences. Let us reminisce together.
On the eighth and last day of competitions, our athletes were once again in action in five sports and gave their best until the end.
The last award ceremonies followed before everyone spent the evening dancing, singing and celebrating together at the Closing Ceremony at the Brandenburger Tor.
But not only all the athletes gave their full commitment, but also all the people who helped in the background and made this great event possible in the first place.
We especially thank the irreplaceable volunteers, sports officials, visitors and simply everyone who was part of the Special Olympics World Games Berlin 2023!
To underline what everyone has achieved together, here are a few facts and figures:
6,500 athletes
18,000 volunteers from 126 countries
9,000 family members
3,000 coaches and support staff
100,000 tickets sold for the competitions
15,000 Healthy Athletes® screenings
4002 medals (1st-3rd place), 6,670 ribbons (4th-8th place)
71 translators for Plain Language
1,100 referees
All this and more made this unique experience possible for everyone, but especially for our athletes.
https://www.berlin2023.org/en/news/thank-you-berlin-2023
5 Deaths at Sea Gripped the World. Hundreds of Others Got a Shrug.
Many see harsh realities about class and ethnicity in the attention paid to the Titan submersible and the halfhearted attempts to aid a ship before it sank, killing hundreds of migrants. But there are other factors.
New York Times
By Richard Pérez-Peña
June 23, 2023
On one vessel, five people died on a very expensive excursion that was supposed to return them to the lives they knew. On the other, perhaps 500 people died just days earlier on a squalid and perilous voyage, fleeing poverty and violence in search of new lives.
After contact was lost with the five inside a submersible descending to the Titanic, ..
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/22/us/titanic-missing-submarine-implosion.html .. multiple countries and private entities sent ships, planes and underwater drones to pursue a faint hope of rescue. That was far more effort than was made on behalf of the hundreds aboard a dangerously overcrowded, disabled fishing trawler off the Greek coast while there were still ample chances for rescue.
And it was the lost submersible, the Titan, that drew enormous attention from news organizations worldwide and their audiences, far more than the boat that sank in the Mediterranean and the Greek Coast Guard’s failure to help before it capsized.
The submersible accident, at the site of a shipwreck that has fascinated the public for more than a century, would have captivated people no matter what. But it occurred right after the tragedy in the Mediterranean, and the contrast between the two disasters, and how they were handled, has fueled a discussion around the world in which some see harsh realities about class and ethnicity.
Aboard the Titan were three wealthy businessmen — a white American, a white Briton and a Pakistani-British magnate — along with the billionaire’s 19-year-old son and a white French deep-sea explorer. Those on the fishing boat — as many as 750, officials have estimated, with barely 100 survivors — were migrants primarily from South Asia and the Middle East, trying to reach Europe.
“We saw how some lives are valued and some are not,” Judith Sunderland, acting deputy director for Europe at the group Human Rights Watch, said in an interview. And in looking at the treatment of migrants, she added, “We cannot avoid talking about racism and xenophobia.”
At a forum in Athens on Thursday, former President Barack Obama weighed in, saying of the submersible, “the fact that that’s gotten so much more attention than 700 people who sank, that’s an untenable situation.”
Status and race no doubt play a role in how the world responds to disasters, but there are other factors as well.
Other stories have been followed in minute detail by millions of people, even when those involved were neither wealthy nor white, like the boys trapped deep in a flooded cave in Thailand in 2018. Their plight, like that of the submersible passengers, was one-of-a-kind and brought days of suspense, while few people knew of the migrants until they had died.
And in study after study, people show more compassion for the individual victim who can be seen in vivid detail than for a seemingly faceless mass of people.
But the disparity in apparent concern shown for the migrants versus the submersible passengers prompted an unusually caustic backlash in online essays, social media posts and article comments.
Laleh Khalili, a professor who has taught about international politics and the Middle East at multiple British universities, wrote on Twitter that she felt sorry for the 19-year-old, but that “a libertarian billionaire ethos of ‘we are above all laws, including physics’ took the Titan down. And the unequal treatment of this and the migrant boat catastrophe is unspeakable.”
Many commenters said they could not muster concern — some even expressed a grim satisfaction — about the fates of people on the submersible who could afford to pay $250,000 apiece for a thrill. Before the U.S. Coast Guard said on Thursday that the vessel had imploded and the five were dead, jokes and the phrase “eat the rich” proliferated online.
That schadenfreude partly reflects the rising anger in recent years at economic inequality, at the wealthy themselves and at the growing sense that the economy works only for those at the top, said Jessica Gall Myrick, a communications professor at Pennsylvania State University, whose specialty is the psychology of how people use media.
“One of the functions of humor is it helps us bond with people socially, so people who laugh at your joke are on your team and those who don’t aren’t on your team,” she said in an interview. Expressions of anger, she said, can serve the same purpose.
For human rights advocates, their anger is directed not at the rich but at European governments whose attitudes toward migrants have hardened, not only doing little to help those in trouble at sea but actively turning them away, and even treating as criminals private citizens who try to rescue migrants.
“I understand why the submersible captured attention: It’s exciting, unprecedented, obviously connected to the most famous shipwreck in history,” said Ms. Sunderland, of Human Rights Watch. “I don’t think it was wrong to make every effort to save them. What I would like is to see no effort spared to save the Black and brown people drowning in the Mediterranean. Instead, European states are doing everything they can to avoid rescue.”
The chasm between the two tragedies was particularly noted in Pakistan, home to many of those who died on the fishing trawler, and to Shahzada Dawood, the tycoon aboard the Titan. It highlighted Pakistan’s extreme divide between the millions who live in poverty and the ultrarich, and the failure of multiple governments over many years to address unemployment, inflation and other economic woes.
“How can we complain about the Greek government? Our own government in Pakistan did not stop the agents from playing with the lives of our youth by luring them to travel on such dangerous routes,” said Muhammad Ayub, a farmer in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, whose younger brother was on the fishing vessel that capsized and is believed to have died.
One factor that made the two maritime disasters very different is the degree of familiarity — though that in no way explains the lack of effort to aid the migrants before their boat sank. It is not just that some people are indifferent to the suffering of migrants — it is also that migrant drownings in the Mediterranean have become tragically frequent.
The rescues of a few people in Turkey who had survived more than a week under the rubble of a powerful earthquake in February — unusual victories amid an unusual disaster — drew the kind of global attention rarely given to the millions of refugees from Syria’s civil war who, for a decade, have lived not far away.
In 2013, the deaths of more than 300 migrants in another boat disaster off the Italian island of Lampedusa produced an outpouring of concern and increased rescue patrols. When Syrian asylum seekers began trying to reach Europe in enormous numbers in 2015, some governments and people portrayed them as alien, undesirable, even dangerous, but there was also considerable interest and empathy. The wrenching image of a drowned 3-year-old washed up on a beach had an especially profound effect.
Years and countless migrant boat calamities later, the deaths are no less appalling but attract far less attention. Aid workers call it “compassion fatigue.” The political will to help, always spotty and precarious, has waned with it.
“No one cared about the several hundred people” who drowned in the Mediterranean, said Arshad Khan, a student of political science at the University of Karachi. “But,” he added, “the United States, the United Kingdom and all the global powers are busy finding the billionaire businessman who spent billions of rupees to view the wreckage of the Titanic in the sea.”
Reporting was contributed by Christina Goldbaum from London and Zia ur-Rehman from Karachi, Pakistan.
Richard Pérez-Peña, an international news editor in New York, has been with The Times as a reporter and editor since 1992. He has worked on the Metro, National, Business, Media and International desks. @perezpena • Facebook
A version of this article appears in print on June 25, 2023, Section A, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: 5 Deaths at Sea Gripped World. Hundreds Didn’t.. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
READ 1321 Comments: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/23/world/europe/titan-sub-greek-migrant-boat.html#commentsContainer
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/23/world/europe/titan-sub-greek-migrant-boat.html
Titamn's implosion was bound to happen...
The tragedy comes years after many marine experts and former OceanGate employees had sounded the alarm on the technology.
[...]
At Titanic depths, the water pressure is nearly 400 times more than at the ocean’s surface, experts told NBC News ..
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/titanic-sub-search-catastrophic-implosion-rcna90744 .
Some 6,000 pounds would have been pressing down on every square inch of Titan’s exterior.
“It’s a design that’s not been used in this way at this depth,” Kemper said, comparing a submersible to a balloon. “All it has to do is fail in one spot and game over.”
In contrast, U.S. Navy submarines are made with carbon steel, a “tried and true material” that is reliable and thoroughly understood, according to Captain David Marquet, a retired Navy submarine commander.
There were unique and interesting articles about: Authorities hunted Friday for the reason a submersible carrying people to the wreck of the Titanic imploded deep in the North Atlantic
And it all only lasted a few days.
For someone interested in daily updates on ongoing subjects, there is always shootings in the U.S. and other countries.
The same or similar comments could be said about any issue.
Questions emerge about Titanic-bound sub’s regulation, as investigators hunt for reason it imploded
By PATRICK WHITTLE
2 minutes ago
Authorities hunted Friday for the reason a submersible carrying people to the wreck of the Titanic imploded deep in the North Atlantic, .. https://apnews.com/article/missing-titanic-submersible-updates-6255308420cb542fab287224c3e9b1c1 .. as questions emerged about how such expeditions are regulated and tributes poured in for the five aboard who were killed.
The announcement that no one survived Thursday brought a tragic end to a five-day saga that included an urgent around-the-clock search for the vessel known as the Titan.
The investigation into what happened was already underway and would continue in the area around Titanic where debris from the submersible was found, said Rear Adm. John Mauger, of the First Coast Guard District.
“I know there are also a lot of questions about how, why and when did this happen. Those are questions we will collect as much information as we can about now,” Mauger said, adding that it was a “complex case” that happened in a remote part of the ocean and involved people from several different countries.
The first hint of a timeline came Thursday evening when a senior U.S. Navy official said that after the Titan was reported missing Sunday, the Navy went back and analyzed its acoustic data and found an “anomaly” that was consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the vessel was operating when communications were lost. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive acoustic detection system.
Those killed were Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, the company that owned and operated the submersible; two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood; British adventurer Hamish Harding; and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
The Titan launched at 6 a.m. Sunday, and was reported overdue Sunday afternoon about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to the site of the disappearance.
Any sliver of hope that remained for finding the crew alive was wiped away early Thursday, when the submersible’s 96-hour supply of air was expected to run out and the Coast Guard announced that debris had been found roughly 1,600 feet (488 meters) from the Titanic.
“The debris is consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber,” Mauger said.
The Coast Guard said Thursday that the sounds detected during the search — that had given rescuers some hope that maybe the people were alive — were likely generated by something other than the Titan.
The Navy official who spoke of the “anomaly” heard Sunday said the Navy passed on the information to the Coast Guard, which continued its search because the data was not considered definitive.
Tributes to those killed and praise for the searchers who tried to save them poured in from across the globe.
Harding’s family said in a statement: ”He was one of a kind and we adored him... What he achieved in his lifetime was truly remarkable and if we can take any small consolation from this tragedy, it’s that we lost him doing what he loved.”
In a statement beginning with a Quranic verse, the Dawood family thanked rescuers: “Their untiring efforts were a source of strength for us during this time, We are also indebted to our friends, family, colleagues and well-wishers from all over the world who stood by us during our need.”
A longtime friend and colleague of Nargeolet told French media that when contact was lost Sunday, he quickly feared the worst.
“Unfortunately, I thought straight away of an implosion,” diver and retired underwater filmographer Christian Pétron said Friday to broadcaster France-Info. At the depths in which the submersible was operating, the pressure is intense and unforgiving, he noted.
“Obviously, the slightest problem with the hull and its implosion is immediate,” Pétron said.
Director James Cameron, who has made multiple dives to the wreckage of the Titanic, told the BBC that he knew an “extreme catastrophic event” had happened as soon as he heard the submersible had lost navigation and communications at the same time.
“For me, there was no doubt,” Cameron said. “There was no search. When they finally got an ROV (remotely operated vehicle) down there that could make the depth, they found it within hours. Probably within minutes.”
He said briefings about 96 hours of oxygen supply and banging noises were a “prolonged and nightmarish charade” that gave the crew members’ families false hope.
At least 46 people successfully traveled on OceanGate’s submersible to the Titanic wreck site in 2021 and 2022, according to letters the company filed with a U.S. District Court in Norfolk, Virginia, that oversees matters involving the Titanic shipwreck.
But questions about the submersible’s safety were raised by both by a former company employee and former passengers. And experts noted the world of deep-sea exploration is not well regulated.
David Lochridge, OceanGate’s former director of marine operations, argued in 2018 that the method the company devised for ensuring the soundness of the hull — relying on acoustic monitoring that could detect cracks and pops as the hull strained under pressure — was inadequate and could “subject passengers to potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible.”
OceanGate disagreed. Lochridge “is not an engineer and was not hired or asked to perform engineering services on the Titan,” it said, and it noted he was fired after refusing to accept assurances from the company’s lead engineer that the acoustic monitoring and testing protocol was, in fact, better suited to detect flaws than a method Lochridge proposed.
In deep-sea exploration, laws and conventions can be sidestepped. The Titan wasn’t registered as a U.S. vessel or with international agencies that regulate safety, according to Salvatore Mercogliano, a history professor at Campbell University in North Carolina who focuses on maritime history and policy. Nor was it classified by a maritime industry group that sets standards on matters such as hull construction.
Rush, CEO of the company leading the expedition who died on Titan, has said he didn’t want to be bogged down by such standards.
One of the company’s first customers, meanwhile, likened a dive he made to the site two years ago to a suicide mission.
“Imagine a metal tube a few meters long with a sheet of metal for a floor. You can’t stand. You can’t kneel. Everyone is sitting close to or on top of each other,” said Arthur Loibl, a retired businessman and adventurer from Germany. “You can’t be claustrophobic.”
___
Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia; Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire; Lolita C. Baldor in Washington; Frank Jordans in Berlin; Danica Kirka in London; Gene Johnson in Seattle; Munir Ahmed in Islamabad; and John Leicester in Paris contributed to this report.
https://apnews.com/article/missing-titanic-submersible-updates-93a59c3c1d48aee2feef46caca418fd1
Exclusive: Life-saving equipment for Titanic sub search caught in red tape, Explorers Club says
In an interview with National Geographic, the club president explains why special underwater robots are needed to recover Titan without damaging its fragile hull—but requests to bring the equipment to the search area are caught in a bureaucratic snafu.
By Kristin Romey
Published June 21, 2023
Efforts by the Explorers Club .. https://www.explorers.org/search-for-titanic-expedition-intensifies/ .. to send potentially life-saving technology to locate and retrieve the missing Titan submersible have been delayed by the U.S. Coast Guard since Monday, according to exclusive information provided to National Geographic.
National Geographic can also reveal that at least one remotely operated vehicle (ROV) was destroyed during the search for the submersible.
Explorers Club president Richard Garriott de Cayeux says that offers from club leadership to deliver working-class ROVs from deep-water firm Magellan to the search since Monday have been tied up in a bureaucratic snafu.
Two crew members onboard the missing submersible, Hamish Harding and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, are Explorers Club members.
(6 urgent questions on the missing Titanic submersible.)
[..]
“Magellan has received mixed signals, first hearing from US Gov to get ready, waiting for plans, then getting told to stand down,” Garriott wrote in an email sent to Vice Admiral William Galanis, commander of Naval Sea Systems Command, U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral John W. Mauger, who is leading the recovery mission, Congressman Lloyd Doggett, and Representative Eric Swalwell on Wednesday afternoon.
Garriott notes that time is running out to rescue the five-member crew—if they are still alive. “Whatever the right thing is to do, we should still do it, even if it's now at the cusp of fatality,” he tells National Geographic.
The Magellan Argus-class ROVs, which have been used previously to survey Titanic, are capable of deploying to 6,000 meters (19,700 feet) and are outfitted with external arms that can retrieve and raise Titan. They are currently located in the United Kingdom and could be delivered to the site within 16 hours.
Instead, the U.S. Navy Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System is currently steaming to the remote Titanic site. This technology was used to retrieve an F-35 from 12,400 feet of water—very similar to the depths of the Titanic site—in March.
But unlike a warplane, the hull of Titan is made of carbon-fiber composite. Garriott is concerned that the Navy system’s recovery “scoop” may damage Titan and kill any surviving crew members during the recovery process.
“The concern is that the big scooper will crush the hull, because it would be almost impossible to get down under it in the mud without applying pressure to the hull itself,” says Garriott. “Instead, a 6,000-meter working-class [ROV] has the ability to attach directly to the [haul cable] point on the top of the sub. It’s a traditional method and people like Magellan have done it over and over again. It's the way it's designed to happen.”
“We believe there might be a living crew, but that they probably only have 24-plus hours of life support—although the crew would probably die slowly over the next days, a person at a time,” says Garriott.
There are several ROVs currently searching for Titan, but they can only record data and would be unable to assist in raising the submersible if and when it is found.
In addition, at least one ROV, possibly two, was damaged or destroyed during the search-and-rescue mission—a testament to the difficult conditions currently facing rescuers.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/titan-submersible-rescue-delay-explorers-club?rid=AEFBA20D5C5A2325E3B605C8DE89028D&cmpid=org=ngp::mc=crm-email::src=ngp::cmp=editorial::add=BreakingNews_Titanic_20230621
Capitol rioter who shocked police officer with stun gun is sentenced to over 12 years in prison
APNEWS
By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN
today
".Review of Jan. 6 cases finds judges give harsh lectures, lighter sentences..."
Rioters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. Daniel “D.J.” Rodriguez, a California man who drove a stun gun into a police officer's neck during one of the most violent clashes of the U.S. Capitol riot was sentenced on Wednesday to more than 12 years in prison.
Rodriguez yelled, “Trump won!” as he was led out of the courtroom where U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced him to 12 years and seven months behind bars for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — A California man who drove a stun gun into a police officer’s neck during one of the most violent clashes of the U.S. Capitol riot was sentenced on Wednesday to more than 12 years in prison.
Daniel “D.J.” Rodriguez yelled, “Trump won!” as he was led out of the courtroom where U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced him to 12 years and seven months behind bars for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. Only two other Jan. 6 defendants have received longer prison terms so far after hundreds of sentencings for Capitol riot cases.
The judge said Rodriguez, 40, was “a one-man army of hate, attacking police and destroying property” at the Capitol.
“You showed up in (Washington) D.C. spoiling for a fight,” Jackson said. “You can’t blame what you did once you got there on anyone but yourself.”
Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone ’s body camera captured him screaming out in pain after Rodriguez shocked him with a stun gun while he was surrounded by a mob.
Another rioter had dragged Fanone into the crowd outside a tunnel on the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace, where a line of police officers was guarding an entrance to the building. Other rioters began beating Fanone, who lost consciousness and suffered a heart attack after Rodriguez pressed the stun gun against his neck and repeatedly shocked him.
Fanone addressed the judge before she imposed the sentence. The former officer described how the Jan. 6 attack prematurely ended his law-enforcement career and turned him into a target for Donald Trump supporters who cling to the lie that Democrats stole the 2020 election from the Republican incumbent.
Fanone left the courtroom in the middle of Rodriguez’s statement to the judge. He didn’t miss an apology from Rodriguez, who has been jailed for more than two years and will get credit for that time already served.
“I’m hopeful that Michael Fanone will be okay some day,” Rodriguez said. “It sounds like he’s in a great deal of pain.”
Fanone said he left the courtroom because he didn’t care to hear his assailant’s “rambling, incoherent” statement.
“Nothing he could have said to me today would have made any difference whatsoever,” he said.
Prosecutors recommended a 14-year prison sentence for Rodriguez, who pleaded guilty in February to charges including assaulting Fanone. They also sought a fine of nearly $100,000 to offset the cost of Fanone’s medical bills and medical leave.
Fanone’s injuries ultimately ended his career in law enforcement. He has written a book about his Jan. 6 experience and testified in front of a House committee that investigated the insurrection, which disrupted the joint session of Congress for certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.
“Rodriguez’s criminal conduct on January 6 was the epitome of disrespect for the law; he battled with law enforcement at the U.S. Capitol for hours, nearly costing one officer his life, in order to stop the official proceeding happening inside,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.
Rodriguez pleaded guilty to four felony charges, including conspiracy and assaulting a law enforcement officer with a deadly or dangerous weapon. He entered the guilty plea about two weeks before his trial was scheduled to start in Washington, D.C.
On Jan. 6, Rodriguez attended then-President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally before joining the mob of rioters who attacked police in the Lower West Terrance tunnel.
“Rodriguez made his way to the front of the line of rioters battling the officers, yelling into his bullhorn at the beleaguered line,” prosecutors wrote.
Rodriguez deployed a fire extinguisher at police officers in the tunnel and shoved a wooden pole at the police line before another rioter, Kyle Young, handed him what appeared to be a stun gun, according to prosecutors.
Fanone was at the front of the police line when another rioter, Albuquerque Cosper Head, wrapped his arm around the officer’s neck and dragged him out onto the terrace steps, then restrained Fanone while other rioters attacked him. Rodriguez shocked Fanone’s neck with the stun gun, below the left ear of his police helmet.
Fanone managed to retreat and collapsed behind the police line before he was taken to a hospital.
“Once inside, when officers were able to revive him after 2 minutes and 21 seconds, the first thing Officer Fanone asked was ‘did we take back that door?’” prosecutors wrote.
Rodriguez entered the building and smashed a window with a wooden pole before leaving Capitol grounds.
Head was sentenced to more than seven years in prison after pleading guilty to an assault charge.
Young also was sentenced to more than seven years in prison for his role in the officer’s assault. Young grabbed Fanone by the wrist while others yelled, “Kill him!” and “Get his gun!”
During an interview with FBI agents after his March 2021 arrest, Rodriguez said had believed that he was doing the “right thing” on Jan. 6 and that he had been prepared to die to “save the country.” He cried as he spoke to the agents, saying he was “stupid” and ashamed of his actions.
In the days leading up to Jan. 6, Rodriguez spewed violent rhetoric in a Telegram group chat called “PATRIOTS 45 MAGA Gang.”
“There will be blood. Welcome to the revolution,” Rodriguez wrote a day before the riot.
Rodriguez’s attorneys said he idolized Trump, seeing the the former president “as the father he wished he had.”
“Mr. Rodriguez trusted Trump blindly and admired Trump so much that he referred to him as ‘dad’ in his social media chats leading up to Jan. 6th,” defense attorneys wrote, seeking a prison sentence of five years and five months for their client.
The same judge who sentenced Rodriguez also convicted a co-defendant, Edward Badalian, of three riot-related charges and acquitted him of a fourth after a trial without a jury. Jackson is scheduled to sentence Badalian on July 21.
"There have been 1,042 people charged with offenses related to the attack on the U.S. Capitol."
https://interactives.ap.org/jan-6-prosecutions/ .. with GRAPHICS
Over 700 of them have pleaded guilty or been convicted after trials.
And approximately 550 of them have been sentenced, with over half receiving terms of imprisonment ranging from seven days to 18 years.
https://apnews.com/article/capitol-riot-sentence-daniel-rodriguez-michael-fanone-stun-gun-e9695c314110df4064fc0cd242b58a68
Mass shootings and violence leave dead and injured across the US this weekend
By MATTHEW BROWN and CLAIRE SAVAGE
2 hours ago
CHICAGO (AP) — Mass shootings and violence killed and wounded people across the United States this weekend, including at least 60 shot in the Chicago area alone.
Four people were found shot to death in a small Idaho town, a Pennsylvania state trooper was killed in an ambush, and bullets struck 11 teenagers, killing one, at a party in Missouri.
The shootings happened in cities and rural areas alike, following a surge in homicides and other violence over the past several years that accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic. Officers responded to mass shootings in Washington state, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Southern California and Baltimore.
“There’s no question there’s been a spike in violence,” said Daniel Nagin, a professor of public policy and statistics at Carnegie Mellon University. “Some of these cases seem to be just disputes, often among adolescents, and those disputes are played out with firearms, not with fists.”
Related coverage
– 1 trooper killed, 1 critically wounded in central Pennsylvania
https://apnews.com/article/trooper-shot-pennsylvania-ec8fe17dc2d3f0cbba1bc0e743cef3df
– Parking lot party shooting leaves 1 dead and at least 22 people hurt in suburban Chicago
https://apnews.com/article/willowbrook-illinois-party-shooting-a730bb6b0dbfbfd31b89f9784d469edc
Researchers disagree over the cause. Theories include the possibility that violence is driven by the prevalence of guns in America, or by less aggressive police tactics or a decline in prosecutions for misdemeanor weapon offenses, Nagin said.
Only the Idaho killings fit the definition of a mass killing in which four or more people die, not including the shooter. However, the number of injured in most of the weekend cases matches the widely accepted definition for mass shootings.
Here’s a look at some of the shootings this weekend:
CHICAGO
Five people were shot, two fatally on the city’s South Side on Sunday evening when someone opened fire from a car that pulled up to a gathering, according to police.
Another four men were shot, one fatally, during an altercation in a garage in the West Side neighborhood of Austin around 3 a.m. Sunday, police said. Five others including a teenage girl were shot early Saturday near Lincoln Park Zoo, and two dozen more were shot in other incidents since Friday evening, city data shows.
Meanwhile in the suburbs, at least 23 people were shot, one fatally, early Sunday in a parking lot where hundreds of people had gathered to celebrate Juneteenth, authorities said.
The White House issued a statement calling the violence a tragedy and saying the president was thinking of those killed and injured. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said in a statement that he was monitoring the investigation.
KELLOGG, IDAHO
Police in Idaho arrested a suspect in a shooting that killed four people on Sunday at an apartment complex behind a church.
Responding officers found four people, all dead from gunshot wounds, at a residence in Kellogg that’s behind the Mountain View Congregational Church, according to the Shoshone County Sheriff’s Office and news reports. Idaho State Police said a 31-year-old man was detained, KXLY-TV reported.
ST. LOUIS
An early Sunday shooting in a downtown St. Louis office building killed a 17-year-old and wounded 11 other teenagers, the city’s police commissioner said.
St. Louis Metropolitan Police Commissioner Robert Tracy identified the victim who was killed as 17-year-old Makao Moore. A spokesman said a minor who had a handgun was in police custody as a person of interest.
Teenagers were having a party in an office space when the shooting broke out around 1 a.m. Sunday.
The victims ranged from 15 to 19 years old. A 17-year-old girl was trampled as she fled, seriously injuring her spine, Tracy said.
WASHINGTON STATE
Two people were killed and two others were injured when a shooter began firing “randomly” into a crowd at a Washington state campground where many people were staying to attend a nearby music festival on Saturday night, police said.
The suspect was shot in a confrontation with law enforcement officers and taken into custody, several hundred yards from the Beyond Wonderland electronic dance music festival.
CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA
One state trooper was killed and a second critically wounded just hours apart in central Pennsylvania on Saturday after a gunman attacked a state police barracks.
The suspect drove his truck into the parking lot of the Lewistown barracks about 11 a.m. Saturday and opened fire with a large-caliber rifle on marked patrol cars before fleeing, authorities said Sunday.
Lt. James Wagner, 45, was critically wounded when he was shot after encountering the suspect several miles away in Mifflintown. Later, Trooper Jacques Rougeau Jr., 29, was ambushed and killed by a gunshot through the windshield of his patrol car as he drove down a road in nearby Walker Township, authorities said.
The suspect was shot and killed after a fierce gunbattle, said Lt. Col. George Bivens.
“What I witnessed ... was one of the most intense, unbelievable gunfights I have ever witnessed,” Bivens said, lauding troopers for launching an aggressive search despite facing a weapon that “would defeat any of the body armor that they had available to them.”
A motive was not immediately known.
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
A shooting at a pool party at a Southern California home left eight people wounded, authorities said Saturday.
Authorities were dispatched shortly after midnight in Carson, California, south of Los Angeles, KABC-TV reported.
The victims range in age from 16 to 24, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said.
BALTIMORE
Six people were injured in a Friday night shooting in Baltimore. All were expected to survive.
Officers heard gunshots in the north of the city just before 9 p.m. and found three men with numerous gunshot wounds. Medics took them to area hospitals for treatment.
Police later learned of three additional victims who walked into area hospitals with non-life-threatening gunshot wounds. The wounded ranged in age from 17 to 26.
SAN FRANCISCO
Six people were injured after a “car-to-car” shooting in the streets of San Francisco on Sunday evening, police said.
Two victims sustained gunshot wounds, one with life-threatening injuries, in the moving shootout beginning shortly before 7 p.m., San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said at a news conference Sunday.
Suspects in two cars, a black SUV and a white sedan, “drove very recklessly and chased each other while engaged in gunfire” near the northern waterfront, Scott said. The area includes Fisherman’s Wharf, one of the city’s busiest tourist areas.
Three victims were injured by glass shards caused by “errant gunfire,” Scott said, with none of the injuries considered to be life-threatening.
Two girls, ages 10 and 16, were struck by one of the two vehicles while walking their bicycles across the street. The younger girl was injured and transported to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries while the older girl was not injured.
PHILADELPHIA
A 4-year-old boy was among five victims of a shooting in south Philadelphia Saturday night.
Police responded to the block shortly before 8 p.m. Saturday and found a 58-year-old woman with gunshot wounds to the legs, a 54-year-old woman with gunshot wounds to her wrist and leg, and the boy, who was brought to Presbyterian Hospital with a gunshot wound to the abdomen.
A 30-year-old man also arrived at the hospital with a gunshot wound to the wrist and a 40-year-old man was brought in with a gunshot wound to the abdomen. The last victim was listed in critical condition; all others were said to be in stable condition.
—
Brown contributed from Billings, Mont. Savage is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
https://apnews.com/article/mass-shootings-us-weekend-3c8cc1562a78abb0ce5f302afa600ea2
Mass shootings and violence leave dead and injured across the US this weekend
By MATTHEW BROWN and CLAIRE SAVAGE
2 hours ago
CHICAGO (AP) — Mass shootings and violence killed and wounded people across the United States this weekend, including at least 60 shot in the Chicago area alone.
Four people were found shot to death in a small Idaho town, a Pennsylvania state trooper was killed in an ambush, and bullets struck 11 teenagers, killing one, at a party in Missouri.
The shootings happened in cities and rural areas alike, following a surge in homicides and other violence over the past several years that accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic. Officers responded to mass shootings in Washington state, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Southern California and Baltimore.
“There’s no question there’s been a spike in violence,” said Daniel Nagin, a professor of public policy and statistics at Carnegie Mellon University. “Some of these cases seem to be just disputes, often among adolescents, and those disputes are played out with firearms, not with fists.”
Related coverage
– 1 trooper killed, 1 critically wounded in central Pennsylvania
https://apnews.com/article/trooper-shot-pennsylvania-ec8fe17dc2d3f0cbba1bc0e743cef3df
– Parking lot party shooting leaves 1 dead and at least 22 people hurt in suburban Chicago
https://apnews.com/article/willowbrook-illinois-party-shooting-a730bb6b0dbfbfd31b89f9784d469edc
Researchers disagree over the cause. Theories include the possibility that violence is driven by the prevalence of guns in America, or by less aggressive police tactics or a decline in prosecutions for misdemeanor weapon offenses, Nagin said.
Only the Idaho killings fit the definition of a mass killing in which four or more people die, not including the shooter. However, the number of injured in most of the weekend cases matches the widely accepted definition for mass shootings.
Here’s a look at some of the shootings this weekend:
CHICAGO
Five people were shot, two fatally on the city’s South Side on Sunday evening when someone opened fire from a car that pulled up to a gathering, according to police.
Another four men were shot, one fatally, during an altercation in a garage in the West Side neighborhood of Austin around 3 a.m. Sunday, police said. Five others including a teenage girl were shot early Saturday near Lincoln Park Zoo, and two dozen more were shot in other incidents since Friday evening, city data shows.
Meanwhile in the suburbs, at least 23 people were shot, one fatally, early Sunday in a parking lot where hundreds of people had gathered to celebrate Juneteenth, authorities said.
The White House issued a statement calling the violence a tragedy and saying the president was thinking of those killed and injured. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said in a statement that he was monitoring the investigation.
KELLOGG, IDAHO
Police in Idaho arrested a suspect in a shooting that killed four people on Sunday at an apartment complex behind a church.
Responding officers found four people, all dead from gunshot wounds, at a residence in Kellogg that’s behind the Mountain View Congregational Church, according to the Shoshone County Sheriff’s Office and news reports. Idaho State Police said a 31-year-old man was detained, KXLY-TV reported.
ST. LOUIS
An early Sunday shooting in a downtown St. Louis office building killed a 17-year-old and wounded 11 other teenagers, the city’s police commissioner said.
St. Louis Metropolitan Police Commissioner Robert Tracy identified the victim who was killed as 17-year-old Makao Moore. A spokesman said a minor who had a handgun was in police custody as a person of interest.
Teenagers were having a party in an office space when the shooting broke out around 1 a.m. Sunday.
The victims ranged from 15 to 19 years old. A 17-year-old girl was trampled as she fled, seriously injuring her spine, Tracy said.
WASHINGTON STATE
Two people were killed and two others were injured when a shooter began firing “randomly” into a crowd at a Washington state campground where many people were staying to attend a nearby music festival on Saturday night, police said.
The suspect was shot in a confrontation with law enforcement officers and taken into custody, several hundred yards from the Beyond Wonderland electronic dance music festival.
CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA
One state trooper was killed and a second critically wounded just hours apart in central Pennsylvania on Saturday after a gunman attacked a state police barracks.
The suspect drove his truck into the parking lot of the Lewistown barracks about 11 a.m. Saturday and opened fire with a large-caliber rifle on marked patrol cars before fleeing, authorities said Sunday.
Lt. James Wagner, 45, was critically wounded when he was shot after encountering the suspect several miles away in Mifflintown. Later, Trooper Jacques Rougeau Jr., 29, was ambushed and killed by a gunshot through the windshield of his patrol car as he drove down a road in nearby Walker Township, authorities said.
The suspect was shot and killed after a fierce gunbattle, said Lt. Col. George Bivens.
“What I witnessed ... was one of the most intense, unbelievable gunfights I have ever witnessed,” Bivens said, lauding troopers for launching an aggressive search despite facing a weapon that “would defeat any of the body armor that they had available to them.”
A motive was not immediately known.
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
A shooting at a pool party at a Southern California home left eight people wounded, authorities said Saturday.
Authorities were dispatched shortly after midnight in Carson, California, south of Los Angeles, KABC-TV reported.
The victims range in age from 16 to 24, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said.
BALTIMORE
Six people were injured in a Friday night shooting in Baltimore. All were expected to survive.
Officers heard gunshots in the north of the city just before 9 p.m. and found three men with numerous gunshot wounds. Medics took them to area hospitals for treatment.
Police later learned of three additional victims who walked into area hospitals with non-life-threatening gunshot wounds. The wounded ranged in age from 17 to 26.
SAN FRANCISCO
Six people were injured after a “car-to-car” shooting in the streets of San Francisco on Sunday evening, police said.
Two victims sustained gunshot wounds, one with life-threatening injuries, in the moving shootout beginning shortly before 7 p.m., San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said at a news conference Sunday.
Suspects in two cars, a black SUV and a white sedan, “drove very recklessly and chased each other while engaged in gunfire” near the northern waterfront, Scott said. The area includes Fisherman’s Wharf, one of the city’s busiest tourist areas.
Three victims were injured by glass shards caused by “errant gunfire,” Scott said, with none of the injuries considered to be life-threatening.
Two girls, ages 10 and 16, were struck by one of the two vehicles while walking their bicycles across the street. The younger girl was injured and transported to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries while the older girl was not injured.
PHILADELPHIA
A 4-year-old boy was among five victims of a shooting in south Philadelphia Saturday night.
Police responded to the block shortly before 8 p.m. Saturday and found a 58-year-old woman with gunshot wounds to the legs, a 54-year-old woman with gunshot wounds to her wrist and leg, and the boy, who was brought to Presbyterian Hospital with a gunshot wound to the abdomen.
A 30-year-old man also arrived at the hospital with a gunshot wound to the wrist and a 40-year-old man was brought in with a gunshot wound to the abdomen. The last victim was listed in critical condition; all others were said to be in stable condition.
—
Brown contributed from Billings, Mont. Savage is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
https://apnews.com/article/mass-shootings-us-weekend-3c8cc1562a78abb0ce5f302afa600ea2