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Javier E

The Disgust Election - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...the-disgust-election.html

election financing rich corruption supreme court oligarchy campaign politics

shared by Javier E on 25 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • I would like for the most influential swing voter on the Supreme Court to step away from his legal aerie, and wade through some of the muck that he and four fellow justices have given us with the 2014 campaign.
  • How did we lose our democracy? Slowly at first, and then all at once. This fall, voters are more disgusted, more bored and more cynical about the midterm elections than at any time in at least two decades.
  • beyond disdain for this singular crop of do-nothings, the revulsion is generated by a sense that average people have lost control of one of the last things that citizens should be able to control — the election itself.
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  • You can trace the Great Breach to Justice Kennedy’s words in the 2010 Citizens United case, which gave wealthy, secret donors unlimited power to manipulate American elections. The decision legalized large-scale bribery — O.K., influence buying — and ensured that we would never know exactly who was purchasing certain politicians.
  • This year, the Koch brothers and their extensions — just to name one lonely voice in the public realm — have operations in at least 35 states, and will spend somewhere north of $120 million to ensure a Congress that will do their bidding. Spending by outside groups has gone to $1 billion in 2012 from $52 million in 2000.
  • Kennedy famously predicted the opposite. He wrote that “independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” That’s the money quote — one of the great wish-projections in court history. But Kennedy also envisioned a new day, whereby there would be real-time disclosure of the big financial forces he unleashed across the land.In his make-believe, post-Citizens United world, voters “can see whether elected officials are ‘in the pocket’ of so-called moneyed interests.”
  • you can’t argue with the corrosive and dispiriting effect, on the rest of us, of campaigns controlled by the rich, the secret, the few.
  • just the opposite has happened. The big money headed for the shadows. As my colleague Nicholas Confessore documented earlier this month, more than half the ads aired by outside groups during this campaign have come from secret donors. Oligarchs hiding behind front groups — Citizens for Fluffy Pillows — are pulling the levers of the 2014 campaign, and overwhelmingly aiding Republicans.
  • At the same time that this court has handed over elections to people who already have enormous power, they’ve given approval to efforts to keep the powerless from voting. In Texas, Republicans have passed a selective voter ID bill that could keep upward of 600,000 citizens — students, Native Americans in federally recognized tribes, the elderly — from having a say in this election.
  • What’s the big deal? Well, you can vote in Texas with a concealed handgun ID, but not one from a four-year college. The new voter suppression measure, allowed to go ahead in an unsigned order by the court last Saturday, “is a purposefully discriminating law,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in dissent, “one that likely imposes an unconstitutional poll tax and risks denying the right to vote to hun
  • With the 2010 case, the court handed control of elections over to dark money interests who answer to nobody. And in the Texas case, the court has ensured that it will be more difficult for voters without money or influence to use the one tool they have.
Javier E

How Big Business Got Brazil Hooked on Junk Food - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...brazil-obesity-nestle.html

brazil junk food nutrition industry obesity

shared by Javier E on 17 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • As their growth slows in the wealthiest countries, multinational food companies like Nestlé, PepsiCo and General Mills have been aggressively expanding their presence in developing nations, unleashing a marketing juggernaut that is upending traditional diets from Brazil to Ghana to India.
  • reveals a sea change in the way food is produced, distributed and advertised across much of the globe. The shift, many public health experts say, is contributing to a new epidemic of diabetes and heart disease, chronic illnesses that are fed by soaring rates of obesity in places that struggled with hunger and malnutrition just a generation ago.
  • Across the world, more people are now obese than underweight. At the same time, scientists say, the growing availability of high-calorie, nutrient-poor foods is generating a new type of malnutrition, one in which a growing number of people are both overweight and undernourished.
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  • “The prevailing story is that this is the best of all possible worlds — cheap food, widely available. If you don’t think about it too hard, it makes sense,”
  • A closer look, however, reveals a much different story, he said. “To put it in stark terms: The diet is killing us.”
  • Part of the problem, he added, is a natural tendency for people to overeat as they can afford more food.
  • The prevalence of obesity has doubled in 73 countries since 1980, contributing to four million premature deaths, the study found.
  • The story is as much about economics as it is nutrition. As multinational companies push deeper into the developing world, they are transforming local agriculture, spurring farmers to abandon subsistence crops in favor of cash commodities like sugar cane, corn and soybeans — the building blocks for many industrial food products.
  • the rising clout of big food companies also translates into political influence, stymieing public health officials seeking soda taxes or legislation aimed at curbing the health impacts of processed food.
  • For a growing number of nutritionists, the obesity epidemic is inextricably linked to the sales of packaged foods, which grew 25 percent worldwide from 2011 to 2016, compared with 10 percent in the United States,
  • The same trends are mirrored with fast food, which grew 30 percent worldwide from 2011 to 2016, compared with 21 percent in the United States
  • For some companies, that can mean specifically focusing on young people, as Ahmet Bozer, president of Coca-Cola International, described to investors in 2014. “Half the world’s population has not had a Coke in the last 30 days,” he said. “There’s 600 million teenagers who have not had a Coke in the last week. So the opportunity for that is huge.”
  • , Brazil is a microcosm of how growing incomes and government policies have led to longer, better lives and largely eradicated hunger.
  • now the country faces a stark new nutrition challenge: over the last decade, the country’s obesity rate has nearly doubled to 20 percent, and the portion of people who are overweight has nearly tripled to 58 percent. Each year, 300,000 people are diagnosed with Type II diabetes, a condition with strong links to obesity.
Javier E

Why does North Korea hate the United States? Let's go back to the Korean War. - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...lets-go-back-to-the-korean-war

korea war history

shared by Javier E on 17 May 17 - No Cached
  • The United States dropped 635,000 tons of bombs in Korea, not counting the 32,557 tons of napalm, Bruce Cumings, a University of Chicago professor who’s written several books on North Korea, wrote in “The Korean War: A History.” This compared with 503,000 tons in the entire Pacific theater in World War II.
  • “If we keep on tearing the place apart, we can make it a most unpopular affair for the North Koreans,” Defense Secretary Robert Lovett said after the napalm and aerial bombing campaigns of 1950 and 1951, according to Cumings. “We ought to go right ahead,” Lovett said.
  • Air Force commanders complained that they’d run out of targets.
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  • Rusk said the United States bombed “everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.” After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops, former Post correspondent Blaine Harden wrote on these pages in 2015.
  • “The physical destruction and loss of life on both sides was almost beyond comprehension, but the North suffered the greater damage, due to American saturation bombing and the scorched-earth policy of the retreating UN forces,” Armstrong of Columbia wrote.
  • “When a new and untested American president starts dangling out the prospect of a surprise missile attack as the solution to the North Korean problem, it plays directly into their worst narrative that the regime tells its people,” Delury said.
cdavistinnell

A third of Bangladesh under water as flood devastation widens - CNN - 1 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

humanitarian crisis global warming poverty

shared by cdavistinnell on 08 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • There, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) estimates that at least 1,200 have died and more than 41 million people have been affected by monsoon rains and severe flooding as of June this year. The rains are now moving northwest towards Pakistan, where more devastation is expected.
  • In Bangladesh alone, floods have so far claimed the lives of 142 people, and impacted over 8.5 million.
  • entire homes have been washed away, and crops and food supplies -- including livestock -- all but wiped out
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  • "worst in living memory."
  • "People were fearful they would soon begin to starve,"
  • Almost half of Bangladeshis are employed in the agriculture sector, with rice as the single most important product
  • Recent figures from the the Asian Development Bank show that 31.5% of Bangladeshis live below the national poverty line
  • the world's "potential impact hotspots" threatened by "extreme river floods" due to global rise in temperatures
knudsenlu

A Voice of Hate in America's Heartland - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...hovater-white-nationalist.html

america nazi normalization US culture

shared by knudsenlu on 26 Nov 17 - No Cached
  • Ms. Hovater, 25, was worried about Antifa bashing up the ceremony. Weddings are hard enough to plan for when your fiancé is not an avowed white nationalist.
  • In Ohio, amid the row crops and rolling hills, the Olive Gardens and Steak ’n Shakes, Mr. Hovater’s presence can make hardly a ripple. He is the Nazi sympathizer next door, polite and low-key at a time the old boundaries of accepted political activity can seem alarmingly in flux. Most Americans would be disgusted and baffled by his casually approving remarks about Hitler, disdain for democracy and belief that the races are better off separate. But his tattoos are innocuous pop-culture references: a slice of cherry pie adorns one arm, a homage to the TV show “Twin Peaks.” He says he prefers to spread the gospel of white nationalism with satire. He is a big “Seinfeld” fan.
  • Mr. Hovater, 29, is a welder by trade. He is not a star among the resurgent radical American right so much as a committed foot soldier — an organizer, an occasional podcast guest on a website called Radio Aryan, and a self-described “social media villain,” although, in person, his Midwestern manners would please anyone’s mother. In 2015, he helped start the Traditionalist Worker Party, one of the extreme right-wing groups that marched in Charlottesville, Va., in August, and again at a “White Lives Matter” rally last month in Tennessee. The group’s stated mission is to “fight for the interests of White Americans.’’
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  • “I mean honestly, it takes people with, like, sort of an odd view of life, at first, to come this way. Because most people are pacified really easy, you know. Like, here’s some money, here’s a nice TV, go watch your sports, you know?”
  • He is adamant that the races are probably better off separated, but he insists he is not racist. He is a white nationalist, he says, not a white supremacist. There were mixed-race couples at the wedding. Mr. Hovater said he was fine with it.
  • what life would have looked like if Germany had won World War II
  • knudsenlu on 26 Nov 17
     
    This article has been widely criticized for normalizing nazis.
anonymous

6 Lions Found Dead In Ugandan National Park : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...-dead-in-ugandan-national-park

shared by anonymous on 21 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Conservationists and wildlife enthusiasts are mourning the case of six lions that have been found dead and dismembered in what is a suspected to be a poisoning in one of Uganda's most renowned national parks.
  • In a statement, the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) said the big cats were found Friday evening with "most of their bodies parts missing" in Queen Elizabeth National Park, their carcasses surrounded by the lifeless scavengers, "which points to possible poisoning of the lions." UWA said it was "saddened" by the grisly case, and it "cannot rule out illegal wildlife trafficking."
  • The discovery is a devastating blow that officials say can negatively impact the country's tourism sector, which is a top foreign exchange earner for Uganda. Nature tourism pours $1.6 billion into the economy each year.
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  • It's not the first time lions have been set upon in the country's most popular national park. In 2018, a pride of 11 lions, including eight cubs, were discovered dead, believed to have been poisoned. Suspicion then fell on farmers who denied any involvement, but who also expressed frustration at wildlife that kills their cattle and damages their crops.
  • To incentivize farmers living near preserves and parks to protect increasingly vulnerable wildlife, Ugandan authorities give farmers 20% of the gate fees taken at national parks. The UWA says the revenue-sharing scheme enhances the livelihood of the local community and helps sustain protected areas.
  • According to wildlife conservation groups, the illegal wildlife trade, poachers, and trophy hunters are all contributing to the disappearance of lions on the African continent. The loss of habitat, poor regulation of legal trade, and climate change are also drivers in their declining numbers
  • About 20,000 lions still live in the wild of Africa; a century ago there were 200,000 lions, the largest of Africa's big cats. Lions are currently listed as "vulnerable" on the "red list" of threatened species compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
  • The park is famous for having the largest population of tree-climbing lions, and whole prides can be spotted in trees. The newly discovered mutilated lions are reported to have had this particular tree-climbing trait.
  • Nearly half live in Queen Elizabeth National Park, where a team of investigators are now on the ground, joined by conservationists and police to probe this latest grim assault on Africa's wildlife.
rerobinson03

The U.S. Has a New Climate Goal. How Does It Stack Up Globally? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...new-climate-pledge.html

shared by rerobinson03 on 22 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • President Biden announced Thursday that America would aim to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 50 percent to 52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
  • The later baseline makes the United States target look a bit better, because it omits a period when emissions were rising. An earlier baseline makes Europe look more ambitious, since it has been cutting for longer.
  • To avoid many of the most catastrophic risks of climate change, such the collapse of polar ice sheets or widespread crop failures, scientists have said that the world likely needs to zero out emissions from fossil fuels and deforestation by around mid-century. “
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  • China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has pledged that its emissions will peak by around 2030. From that point, the country will then aim to get down to net zero emissions by 2060.
  • Partly for that reason, some environmentalists have argued that the United States should have picked an even more ambitious target for reducing emissions.
  • Many Republicans in Congress have argued that the Biden administration is acting too aggressively on climate change when countries like China and India have yet to commit to absolute emissions cuts. Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming, said that the president was “unilaterally committing America to a drastic and damaging emissions pledge” that would punish the U.S. economy while “America’s adversaries like China and Russia continue to increase emissions at will.”
  • So far, the results have been mixed. Japan and Canada both agreed to strengthen their 2030 targets. The British government said Tuesday that it would step up action with a new target, cutting emissions 78 percent below 1990 levels by 2035. But other major emitters such as China, India and Russia have yet to offer significant new pledges.
  • To get at least a 50 percent cut by 2030, a variety of studies have found, the United States would need to adopt sweeping new policies and slash emissions each year at an unprecedented rate. Possible strategies include requiring utilities to install vastly more wind and solar power, persuading Americans to buy many more electric cars, and forcing oil and gas companies to slash emissions of methane, a potent heat-trapping gas. States like California and New York could help, too, by following through on their plans to clean up their power plants and vehicle fleets.
  • “In countries where a change in government can derail the whole thing,” said Oliver Geden, a senior fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, “it’s a lot harder to be sure that these goals are here to stay.”
carolinehayter

Why Democrats Are Angry At Wall Street : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...crats-are-angry-at-wall-street

politics us gop pandemic economics policy

shared by carolinehayter on 30 May 21 - No Cached
  • That anger has been magnified at a time when banks have seen their profits soar during the pandemic, in part, thanks to strong actions by the Federal Reserve to support markets.
  • And top Democrats believe they are justified in pushing for change at big banks. They want to push the country's largest financial institutions to be agents of social change. And they have specific goals, like expanding access to loans and impose fewer fees for average Americans, or more outreach to unbanked and underserved communities.
  • But Republican lawmakers disagree with that very premise. They criticize executives for comments they have made — about voting rights, in particular, and they are critical of companies making business decisions based on environmental considerations.
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  • Bank executives, Warren says, "have a responsibility to execute on making their banks part of the solution to our economic and racial problems across this nation."
  • But even with a change in power in Congress, analysts warn banks are likely to face continued pressure from Democrats — and society — on key aspects of their operations, from whom they lend money to where they invest.
  • "You know, what I have discovered about the banking community is that they have had a way of operating traditionally, historically, and they don't change easily," Waters tells NPR.
ethanshilling

15 Chinese Elephants Are On a 300-Mile Journey. Why, No One Knows. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...china-elephants.html

china elephants

shared by ethanshilling on 03 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • No one is quite sure. But for some reason, a herd of 15 Asian elephants has been lumbering its way across China for more than a year, traveling more than 300 miles through villages, forest patches — and, as of 9:55 p.m. on Wednesday, the edges of the city of Kunming, population 8.5 million.
  • It’s the farthest-known movement of elephants in China, according to experts. Where they’ll go next, no one knows. When they’ll stop? Also unclear.
  • What is certain is that they have captivated Chinese social media, jolted local officials and caused more than $1.1 million of damage. They have also left elephant researchers scratching their heads.
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  • Experts are urging the public to temper its delight with awareness of the ecological significance, in a country where avid enthusiasm for conservation has not necessarily coincided with a reckoning of what it will mean to live alongside more elephants.
  • But movement is normal for elephants, which have large “home ranges” over which they travel searching for food or mates, said Dr. Campos-Arceiz. So it was not until relatively recently that researchers and government officials began to notice just how far this herd had wandered. In April, the elephants were spotted around Yuanjiang County, about 230 miles north of the nature reserve.
  • It’s not clear what spurred the elephants to leave their home. But after conservation efforts, China’s elephant population has grown in recent years, from fewer than 200 several decades ago to around 300 today, according to official statistics.
  • The elephants’ growing proximity to humans — and their strictly protected status — has emboldened the animals, according to Dr. Campos-Arceiz. And, they’re smart: As they began breaching the boundaries of nature reserves and crossing into more populated areas, they discovered that crops were more appealing than their usual forest fare.
  • As a result, it’s unsurprising to see elephants wandering beyond their usual habitats, he said, and the phenomenon is likely to continue as their population continues to grow.
  • Still, that doesn’t explain the long-distance movement of the “northbound wild elephant herd,” as the other herd has come to be known on social media.
  • While acknowledging the public’s amusement, the government has warned people to stay away from the animals, reminding them that they can be dangerous. The wandering herd has yet to cause any injuries to humans, but there were more than 50 casualties involving Asian elephants between 2011 and 2019, according to state media.
  • The best-case outcome, Ms. Chen said, would be for the attention that the herd has drawn to raise more awareness around the possibility of human-elephant conflict, which is likely to increase. Only by preparing people for that reality, she said, would conservation efforts really succeed.
anonymous

COVID Vaccines From Novavax And Medicago Could Debut Soon : Shots - Health News : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...covid-vaccine-could-debut-soon

shared by anonymous on 06 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • A new kind of COVID-19 vaccine could be available as soon as this summer.It's what's known as a protein subunit vaccine. It works somewhat differently from the current crop of vaccines authorized for use in the U.S. but is based on a well-understood technology and doesn't require special refrigeration.
  • In general, vaccines work by showing people's immune systems something that looks like the virus but really isn't. Consider it an advance warning; if the real virus ever turns up, the immune system is ready to try to squelch it.
  • The first protein subunit COVID-19 vaccine to become available will likely come from the biotech company, Novavax. In contrast to the three vaccines already authorized in the U.S., it contains the spike protein itself — no need to make it, it's already made — along with an adjuvant that enhances the immune system's response, to make the vaccine even more protective.
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  • A large test of the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine's effectiveness, conducted in tens of thousands of volunteers in the United States and Mexico, is about to wrap up. Dr. Gregory Glenn, president of research and development for Novavax, told an audience at a recent webinar hosted by the International Society for Vaccines that "we anticipate filing for authorization in the U.K., U.S. and Europe in the third quarter."
  • To make the virus protein, Novavax uses giant vats of cells grown in the lab. But there's another way to make the protein: Get plants in a greenhouse to do it.
  • "Especially in elderly individuals in that study, it was not as immunogenic as it should be," says Dr. Paul Goepfert at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who was one of the researchers involved in those early studies. He says the issue turned out to be an incorrect calculation of the dose of vaccine being delivered."So instead of giving 10 micrograms of the dose, they were actually giving one microgram," Goepfert says.
  • Early studies suggest Medicago's candidate vaccine does just that, and the company is confident enough in those findings that it's already begun a large study in people that could involve as many as 30,000 volunteers in 11 countries.
  • Another latecomer that's coming is the pharmaceutical giant Sanofi. Its protein subunit vaccine against the coronavirus is also grown in cells in the lab.
  • Late last year the company was getting ready to mount a large study of the vaccine's effectiveness when the early results in a smaller group of people showed it did not seem to be inducing the immune response that would be protective.
  • The plants used are related to the tobacco plant, and have been modified to contain the genetic instructions to make the viral protein.The plants do something very valuable — they make a lipid shell that surrounds a bunch of the viral proteins, with the proteins sticking out.
  • Goepfert says it'll be a good thing if all these vaccines make it to consumers. But that alone isn't going to solve the problem of getting people vaccinated.Why? "Because the vaccines that we have now are just beyond our wildest dreams kind of effective," he says. "And I'm living in a state right now where it just frustrates me how slow our vaccine uptake is."
rerobinson03

The Western Drought Is Bad. Here's What You Should Know About It. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nia-western-united-states.html

shared by rerobinson03 on 07 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Drought emergencies have been declared. Farmers and ranchers are suffering. States are facing water cutbacks. Large wildfires are burning earlier than usual. And there appears to be little relief in sight.
  • A drought usually starts with less-than-normal precipitation (and what is normal varies from region to region). If the dryness persists, river flows and reservoir and groundwater levels start to decline. Warm temperatures have an impact, too, causing winter snowpack to melt faster, which can affect the availability of water throughout the year. Excessive heat also causes more evaporation from soils and vegetation, which can lead to crop failures and increases the risk of severe wildfires.
  • Experts with the United States Drought Monitor, a collaboration of several federal agencies and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, assess the severity of drought in a given area, ranking it from moderate to exceptional.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • It’s very bad, both in terms of the size of the affected area and the severity. The latest map from the drought monitor shows that all or nearly all of California, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and North Dakota are in drought, and in large areas of those states conditions are “severe” or “exceptional.” Colorado, Idaho, Washington, Montana, South Dakota and southwestern Texas are also affected.
  • It is true that much of the West is normally hotter and drier than other parts of the country. Much of the Southwest and parts of Southern California are desert. Las Vegas, for example, averages about four inches of rain a year, about a 10th of the national average. Much of the rest of California has a Mediterranean climate, which can be wet in the winter but is hot and dry in summer.
  • The fall and winter are usually wetter in California and the Pacific Northwest, so that may help. A pattern of summer storms known as the Southwest monsoon may help in Arizona, New Mexico and other areas. But the monsoon is unpredictable — the 2019 and 2020 monsoon seasons brought so little rain they were referred to as “nonsoons,” and are one reason the drought is so severe this year.
rerobinson03

A Million Years of Data Confirms: Monsoons Are Likely to Get Worse - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...monsoons-climate-change.html

shared by rerobinson03 on 07 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Scientists have known for years that climate change is disrupting monsoon season. Past research based on computer models has suggested that the global heating caused by greenhouse gases, and the increased moisture in the warmed atmosphere, will result in rainier summer monsoon seasons and unpredictable, extreme rainfall events.
  • The monsoon season, which generally runs from June to September, brings enormous amounts of rain to South Asia that are crucial to the region’s agrarian economy. Those rains affect the lives of a fifth of the world’s population, nourishing or destroying crops, causing devastating flooding, taking lives and spreading pollution. The changes wrought by climate change could reshape the region, and history, the new research suggests, is a guide to those changes.
  • The core samples were 200 meters long, and provided a rich record of monsoon rainfall. Wetter seasons put more fresh water into the bay, reducing the salinity at the surface. The plankton that live at the surface die and sink to the sediment below, layer after layer.
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  • Dr. Levermann added that the consequences for the people of the Indian subcontinent are dire; the monsoon already drops tremendous amounts of rain, and “can always be destructive,” he said, but the risk of “catastrophically strong” seasons is growing, and the increasingly erratic nature of the seasons holds its own risks.
hannahcarter11

Why The Record-Breaking COVID Count In India Is Likely An Undercount : Goats and Soda : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...-deaths-how-many-is-it-missing

India Covid Peak

shared by hannahcarter11 on 02 May 21 - No Cached
  • "There's a shortage of coronavirus tests. Nobody's getting tested! So the government's numbers for our district are totally wrong," he told NPR on a crackly phone line from his village. "If you're able to get tested, results come after five days."
  • This village's ordeal is not atypical. Across India, there are shortages of testing kits, hospital beds, medical oxygen and antiviral drugs as a severe second wave of the pandemic crushes the health infrastructure. The country has been breaking world records daily for new cases. On Friday, India's Health Ministry confirmed 386,453 infections – more than any country on any day since the pandemic began.
  • Part of the reason for the huge numbers is India's size: a population of nearly 1.4 billion. The rate of known coronavirus infections per capita is still less than the United States endured at its peak.
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  • But survivors, funeral directors and scientists say the real numbers of infections and deaths in India may be many times more than the reported figures. The sheer number of patients has all but collapsed the health system in a country that invests less on public health — just above 1% of its gross domestic product — than most of its peers. (Brazil spends more than 9% of its GDP on health; in the U.S., the figure is nearly 18%.)
  • Each day, he goes to every crematorium and burial ground in his district of the capital, tallying deaths from COVID-19. Of his 11 staff members, five currently have COVID-19, he said.
  • Last year, at the height of the pandemic's first wave in India, Sirohi said he was counting about 220 COVID-19 deaths a day. When NPR spoke to him Wednesday, he counted 702 for that day. He passes those numbers up the chain of command. But the death figures the government ultimately publishes for his region have been at least 20% lower than what he's seeing on the ground, he said.
  • He attributed this disparity to administrative chaos.
  • There is another reason why India's coronavirus numbers may be skewed: hubris. In early March, India's health minister declared that the country was in the "endgame of the COVID-19 pandemic." Daily cases had hit record lows of about 8,000 a day in early February, down from a peak of nearly 100,000 cases a day in September.
  • But over the winter, as cases began creeping up, some politicians didn't pay attention — or perhaps didn't believe the coronavirus could return.
  • There have also been allegations that some politicians tried to suppress inconvenient news about rising case numbers.
  • Fewer positive results mean fewer confirmed infections and fewer deaths attributed to the coronavirus. India's total pandemic deaths this week crossed the 200,000 mark. But that's still lower than the overall death tolls in the United States, Brazil and Mexico, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
  • There are reasons why fewer Indians might die from COVID-19. India is a very young country. Only 6% of Indians are older than 65. More than half the population is under 25. They're more likely to survive the disease.
  • By analyzing total excess deaths – i.e., the difference between total deaths in Mumbai one year, compared with the year before — he estimates that the number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 would have to have been undercounted by at least two-thirds to account for the higher 2020 death tally.
  • Those calculations are based on data from Mumbai, India's richest major city, where access to health care is better than elsewhere. So the number of undercounted deaths could be even higher in less well-off parts of the country — such as in Santosh Pandey's village.
  • Scientists said recorded infections are even more of an underestimate. But they have a better idea of how much infections have been undercounted because they have serological data from random antibody tests that authorities conducted across large swaths of the country.
  • Results of a third national serological survey conducted in December and January showed that roughly a fifth of India's population had been exposed to the virus. That meant for every recorded coronavirus case, almost 30 went undetected.
  • She's a biostatistician at the University of Michigan who's designed models that show India's reported infections will peak in late May. She predicts India could be confirming as many as 1 million new cases a day and 4,500 daily deaths by then.
  • The institute's director, Chris Murray, told NPR that India may be detecting only 3% or 4% of its daily infections.
  • India's deaths in this latest wave would peak around the third week of May, according to the institute's model.
  • That could mean more shortages, fewer hospital beds and more tragedy on top of what India has already endured in recent weeks.
anonymous

What We Know About The Boulder Grocery Shooting: 10 Murder Charges For Suspect : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...-say-hes-facing-murder-charges

shared by anonymous on 24 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Police in Boulder, Colo., have identified the suspect in Monday's shooting rampage at a grocery store as Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, 21. Ten people died in the shooting, including a Boulder police officer who had arrived to help those inside the store. The victims range in age from 20 to 65.Alissa has been charged with 10 counts of murder in the first degree, Boulder police said.
  • All of the victims have now been identified, and their families have been notified, Herold said at a news conference Tuesday morning.
  • The suspect is from Arvada, a small city between Denver and Boulder. He was wounded during the shooting and was expected to be released from the hospital and sent to the county jail sometime Tuesday, Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty said.
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  • Herold said the suspect's injury was a "through-and-through" wound to his leg.Ben Markus of Colorado Public Radio reported that Alissa has a police record, having been arrested on a misdemeanor assault charge in 2018. He pleaded guilty and paid a fine to resolve that case, according to court records.
  • An "extensive investigation" is now under way into Alissa's life, Dougherty said. He added that the suspect has "lived most of his life in the United States," but he did not elaborate on the suspect's history.The arrest warrant affidavit for Alissa says he purchased a gun less than a week before Monday's shooting, citing official databases that show the suspect bought a Ruger AR-556 on March 16.
  • The U.S. flag was lowered to half-staff atop the White House on Tuesday in honor of the victims. President Biden said he and first lady Jill Biden were "devastated" to learn of the shooting. Speaking from the White House, Biden also said it's time for Congress to tighten U.S. gun laws.
  • Biden acknowledged that the inquiry is still in its early phases, but he added, "I don't need to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take common-sense steps that will save lives in the future and to urge my colleagues in the House and Senate to act." Lawmakers' priorities, Biden said, should be once again to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and close legal loopholes.
  • The arrest affidavit provides new details about what took place inside the store, drawing from 911 emergency calls and interviews with people who were present when mayhem erupted at the King Soopers grocery store on Table Mesa Drive.Store employees told Detective Joanna Compton that they saw the suspect shoot an older man in the parking lot.
  • The weapon used in the shooting is legally classified as a "pistol" in the U.S., but many people would likely consider it to be a rifle — and the affidavit repeatedly refers to it as one. The gun has the same lower receiver, the shell-like piece that houses the trigger, as AR-15 rifles that have been used in many other mass shootings in the United States.
  • Alissa surrendered to police after he was shot in the leg. An officer said the suspect took off most of his clothes and walked backward toward a SWAT team at the store."The suspect did not answer questions, though he asked to speak to his mother," the affidavit said.
  • As the scene was being cleared, authorities worked to account for people and locate victims. While most of the victims were inside the store, police found a dead person in the parking lot, next to a Mercedes sedan that Alissa had apparently driven to the grocery store.
  • Polis, who is from Boulder, noted that he has shopped at the same store where the violence erupted Monday. Herold later added that she lives about three blocks from the store.
  • Speaking about the slain officer, Herold said that just weeks ago, she had Talley and his family in her office so she could present an award. The commendation, she explained, was for one of his sons who had saved another boy's life by performing CPR.
  • The FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and other federal agencies are helping to investigate, mainly by processing evidence at the crime scene and conducting interviews with witnesses, said Michael H. Schneider, FBI special agent in charge. He added that the effort is ongoing to determine what could have motivated the attack.
  • As a teenager in Arvada, Alissa was on his high school's wrestling team. Tyson Crosby, the father of a boy who competed against Alissa, remembered him as being nice but also "a little frustrated with life."Despite Alissa having some "anger management issues," Crosby told Colorado Public Radio, "I would have never expected to hear what I heard [about the shooting], that came as a complete shock."
  • The first reports of shots fired at the King Soopers grocery store reached the Boulder Police Department around 2:30 p.m. local time Monday, Herold said that evening. She provided more details on Tuesday, saying that with a "barrage" of calls coming in, officers were dispatched around 2:40 p.m. and arrived within minutes.The officers "immediately entered the store and engaged the suspect," the police department said in a news release. "There was an exchange of gunfire during which the suspect was shot. No other officers were injured. The suspect was then taken into custody at 3:28 p.m." and taken to a hospital, the agency said.
  • In the wake of the shooting, other state and local agencies offered to handle service calls for the Boulder police, Herold said. But she added that while her department appreciated the gesture, it declined the offers.
  • When the chief was asked what she's telling her officers now, Herold said, "I tell them that I'm sorry, we're going to get through this. Don't lose your compassion, and we'll get through this. And we'll come out of it stronger."
woodlu

The fruits of growth - Extreme poverty is history in China, officials say | China | The Economist - 1 views

www.economist.com/...history-in-china-officials-say

shared by woodlu on 14 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • EARLY IN DECEMBER China announced that it had eradicated extreme poverty within its territory.
  • some 800m people in China have escaped penury in the past four decades.
  • Never before in the country’s history has destitution come anywhere close to being eliminated.
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  • Speaking frankly, it’s a lie,” says Liang Yong, a gruff villager. The official investigation of Ziyun’s economy was, he says, perfunctory.
  • Provincial leaders popped into his village, rendered their verdict that it had left poverty behind and then sped off. “It’s a show. In our hearts we all know the truth,”
  • Pork is pricey these days, so he eats meat just a couple of times a week. After paying his two children’s school fees, he has little money left.
  • He is poorer than many others in China, especially in its cities.
  • But the ability to scrape enough together for meat, education and heating marks Mr Liang as someone who has in fact left extreme poverty
  • Sceptics understandably ask whether China fiddled its numbers in order to win what it calls the “battle against poverty”.
  • It has regularly raised the official poverty line, which, accounting for living costs, is about $2.30 a day at prices prevailing in 2011.
  • Poverty lines in rich countries are much higher: the equivalent line in America is about $72 a day for a four-member household at 2020 prices.)
  • In 1978, shortly after Mao’s death, nearly 98% of those in the countryside lived in extreme poverty, by China’s current standards. By 2016 that was down to less than 5%
  • It decollectivised agriculture, giving farmers an incentive to produce more. It allowed people to move around the country to find work. It gave more freedom to entrepreneurs. It helped by building roads, investing in education and courting foreign investors. Its goal was to boost the economy;
  • The government’s approach changed in 2015 when Xi Jinping, its leader, vowed to eradicate the last vestiges of extreme poverty by the end of 2020.
  • tried to encourage personal initiative by rewarding poor people who found ways of bettering their lot
  • They spent public money widely.
  • I
  • n 2020 the allocation per head was more than 26,000 yuan
  • One of the biggest challenges has been the terrain where the poor live.
  • about 30% of the country’s total—that were designated as poverty-stricken when Mr Xi began his anti-poverty campaign were all mainly rural. Most were mountainous or on inhospitable land
  • to introduce industry
  • mostly modern agriculture.
  • government created a 25-hectare zone for growing and processing shiitake mushrooms
  • the shiitake are a cash crop, letting them earn about 80 yuan a day, a decent wage.
  • In the 1980s China broke up communal farms, letting people strike out on their own. Now the government wants them to pool their resources again
  • turning farmers into “shareholders”
  • Residents get stakes in new rural enterprises, which, all going well, will pay dividends.
  • The Luomai shiitake farm is run by China Southern Power Grid, a state-owned firm. But there is a risk that as the anti-poverty campaign fades away, some projects will fizzle.
  • The second approach to helping hard-up villages was more radical: moving inhabitants to better-connected areas.
  • 2016 and 2020 officials relocated about 10m people.
  • The government concluded that it was too costly to provide necessary services, from roads to health care, to the most remote villages
  • A frequent problem after moving people into such housing is finding work for them.
  • the government called on local officials to arrange jobs for at least one member of each household.
  • with her new surroundings. There is a good school just across the street, which is far better for her child.
  • A bigger challenge is relative deprivation, a problem abundantly evident to anyone who has travelled between the glitzy coastal cities and the drabber towns of the hinterland.
  • recent study by Chinese economists concluded that the “subjective poverty line” in rural areas was about 23 yuan per day, nearly twice the amount below which a person would be officially classified as poor.
  • namely setting the relative poverty line at half the median income level. It suggests that about a third of rural Chinese still see themselves as poor.
  • If poverty is calculated this way it becomes almost impossible to eliminate,
  • China does not count any poverty in its cities because welfare safeguards supposedly help those without money.
  • But workers who have moved from the countryside lack the right documentation for ready access to urban welfare.
  • And for any city-dweller, support is meagre. In relative terms about a fifth of China’s urban residents can be classified as poor,
  • To reduce relative poverty, China needs different tactics from the ones used in its campaign against extreme poverty.
  • policies for which it has shown little eagerness.
  • On the streets of Guiyang, the booming capital of Guizhou, hardship is still a common sight.
  • Zhou Weifu, a porter in his 50s, scoffs at the suggestion that poverty is over. “What kind of work is this? I can barely make any money,”
brookegoodman

Middle Ages - Definition, Timeline & Facts - HISTORY - 0 views

www.history.com/...middle-ages

history

shared by brookegoodman on 25 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • People use the phrase “Middle Ages” to describe Europe between the fall of Rome in 476 CE and the beginning of the Renaissance in the 14th century.
  • The phrase “Middle Ages” tells us more about the Renaissance that followed it than it does about the era itself.
  • European thinkers, writers and artists began to look back and celebrate the art and culture of ancient Greece and Rome.
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  • the Catholic Church became the most powerful institution of the medieval period.
  • After the prophet Muhammad’s death in 632 CE, Muslim armies conquered large parts of the Middle East, uniting them under the rule of a single caliph
  • Under the caliphs, great cities such as Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus fostered a vibrant intellectual and cultural life
  • Crusaders, who wore red crosses on their coats to advertise their status, believed that their service would guarantee the remission of their sins and ensure that they could spend all eternity in Heaven.
  • No one “won” the Crusades; in fact, many thousands of people from both sides lost their lives.
  • Romanesque cathedrals are solid and substantial: They have rounded masonry arches and barrel vaults supporting the roof, thick stone walls and few windows.
  • Gothic structures, such as the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis in France and the rebuilt Canterbury Cathedral in England, have huge stained-glass windows, pointed vaults and arches (a technology developed in the Islamic world), and spires and flying buttresses. In contrast to heavy Romanesque buildings, Gothic architecture seems to be almost weightless.
  • illuminated manuscripts: handmade sacred and secular books with colored illustrations, gold and silver lettering and other adornments.
  • Between 1347 and 1350, a mysterious disease known as the " Black Death " (the bubonic plague) killed some 20 million people in Europe—30 percent of the continent’s population.
  • Symptoms of the Black Death included fever, chills, vomiting, diarrhea, terrible aches and pains – and then death. Victims could go to bed feeling healthy and be dead by morning.
  • The plague killed cows, pigs, goats, chickens and even sheep, leading to a wool shortage in Europe.
  • Today, scientists know the plague was caused by a bacillus called Yersina pestis, which travels through the air and can also be contracted through the bite of an infected flea or rat, both of which were common in the Middle Ages, especially on ships. 
  • In a feudal society, the king granted large pieces of land called fiefs to noblemen and bishops. Landless peasants known as serfs did most of the work on the fiefs: They planted and harvested crops and gave most of the produce to the landowner. In exchange for their labor, they were allowed to live on the land.
  • By 1300, there were some 15 cities in Europe with a population of more than 50,000.
  • The Renaissance was a time of great intellectual and economic change, but it was not a complete “rebirth”: It had its roots in the world of the Middle Ages.
anonymous

Spice trade: The flavours that shaped the world - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...flavours-that-shaped-the-world

history culture

shared by anonymous on 24 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • India’s history as a spice-producing nation is largely down to its climate, which is varied and ideal for growing a range of different spice crops.
  • Nearly 2,500 years ago, Arab traders told stories of the ferocious cinnamon bird, or cinnamologus.
  • As enticing as the tale is, the fabled cinnamologus never existed. The story was most likely invented to ward off curious competitors from attempting to seek out the source of the spice. For many years, the ancient Greeks and Romans were fooled. 
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  • But the world’s demand for spices grew throughout the Roman era and into the medieval period, defining economies from India to Europe.
  • This demand gave rise to some of the first truly international trade routes and shaped the structure of the world economy in a way that can still be felt today.
  • “This is very much the start of globalisation,” says Van Der Veen. “We see that even more significantly in the medieval period.”
  • But more importantly, spices became another way to define what it meant to be wealthy and powerful. This came with a profound social, emotional and economic impact in Europe
  • “The consequences of these trivial products – trivial in that you don't need them for nutrition – are cataclysmic,” says Paul Freedman, a historian at Yale University. “They were the first goods to have such dramatic and unanticipated consequences.” 
  • The process was not always smooth, particularly in terms of its cultural impact. In its early days, the spice trade led to bloodshed and conflict, as well as bringing wealth. One hard-to-ignore legacy of the spice trade is colonialism,
  • The search for a direct route – i.e. no middlemen – to find the source of spices stimulated European voyages that turned into colonial conquests
bluekoenig

The Battle Over the MedFly | Retro Report | The New York Times - YouTube - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

politics US history crisis culture retro report retro report

shared by bluekoenig on 08 Dec 19 - No Cached
  • bluekoenig on 08 Dec 19
     
    This is a Retro Report about the infestation of the Mediterranean fruit fly in Southern California which attacked and devastated fruit crops. As bad as the infestation was, the bigger issue was the debate of the use of pesticides to get rid of the fruit flies, especially in areas that were more populated like neighborhoods
Javier E

Trump Administration Hardens Its Attack on Climate Science - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-climate-science.html

trump climate change science attack

shared by Javier E on 28 May 19 - No Cached
  • President Trump has rolled back environmental regulations, pulled the United States out of the Paris climate accord, brushed aside dire predictions about the effects of climate change, and turned the term “global warming” into a punch line rather than a prognosis.
  • Mr. Trump and his political appointees are launching a new assault.
  • In the next few months, the White House will complete the rollback of the most significant federal effort to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, initiated during the Obama administration. It will expand its efforts to impose Mr. Trump’s hard-line views on other nations, building on his retreat from the Paris accord and his recent refusal to sign a communiqué to protect the rapidly melting Arctic region unless it was stripped of any references to climate change.
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  • in what could be Mr. Trump’s most consequential action yet, his administration will seek to undermine the very science on which climate change policy rests.
  • As a result, parts of the federal government will no longer fulfill what scientists say is one of the most urgent jobs of climate science studies: reporting on the future effects of a rapidly warming planet and presenting a picture of what the earth could look like by the end of the century if the global economy continues to emit heat-trapping carbon dioxide pollution from burning fossil fuels.
  • also to question its conclusions by creating a new climate review panel. That effort is led by a 79-year-old physicist who had a respected career at Princeton but has become better known in recent years for attacking the science of man-made climate change and for defending the virtues of carbon dioxide — sometimes to an awkward degree.
  • Scientists say that would give a misleading picture because the biggest effects of current emissions will be felt after 2040. Models show that the planet will most likely warm at about the same rate through about 2050. From that point until the end of the century, however, the rate of warming differs significantly with an increase or decrease in carbon emissions.
  • The administration’s prime target has been the National Climate Assessment, produced by an interagency task force roughly every four years since 2000. Government scientists used computer-generated models in their most recent report to project that if fossil fuel emissions continue unchecked, the earth’s atmosphere could warm by as much as eight degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. That would lead to drastically higher sea levels, more devastating storms and droughts, crop failures, food losses and severe health consequences.
  • “What we have here is a pretty blatant attempt to politicize the science — to push the science in a direction that’s consistent with their politics,” said Philip B. Duffy, the president of the Woods Hole Research Center, who served on a National Academy of Sciences panel that reviewed the government’s most recent National Climate Assessment. “It reminds me of the Soviet Union.”
  • the White House-appointed director of the United States Geological Survey, James Reilly, a former astronaut and petroleum geologist, has ordered that scientific assessments produced by that office use only computer-generated climate models that project the impact of climate change through 2040, rather than through the end of the century, as had been done previously.
  • “The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler,” said the physicist
  • Mr. Happer and Mr. Bolton are both beneficiaries of Robert and Rebekah Mercer, the far-right billionaire and his daughter who have funded efforts to debunk climate science. The Mercers gave money to a super PAC affiliated with Mr. Bolton before he entered government and to an advocacy group headed by Mr. Happer.
  • For Mr. Trump, climate change is often the subject of mockery. “Wouldn’t be bad to have a little of that good old fashioned Global Warming right now!” he posted on Twitter in January when a snowstorm was freezing much of the country.
  • His views are influenced mainly by friends and donors like Carl Icahn, the New York investor who owns oil refineries, and the oil-and-gas billionaire Harold Hamm — both of whom pushed Mr. Trump to deregulate the energy industry.
  • The president’s advisers amplify his disregard. At the meeting of the eight-nation Arctic Council this month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dismayed fellow diplomats by describing the rapidly warming region as a land of “opportunity and abundance” because of its untapped reserves of oil, gas, uranium, gold, fish and rare-earth minerals. The melting sea ice, he said, was opening up new shipping routes.
  • At the National Security Council, under Mr. Bolton, officials said they had been instructed to strip references to global warming from speeches and other formal statements. But such political edicts pale in significance to the changes in the methodology of scientific reports.
  • A key change, he said, would be to emphasize historic temperatures rather than models of future atmospheric temperatures, and to eliminate the “worst-case scenarios” of the effect of increased carbon dioxide pollution — sometimes referred to as “business as usual” scenarios because they imply no efforts to curb emissions.
  • Scientists said that eliminating the worst-case scenario would give a falsely optimistic picture. “Nobody in the world does climate science like that,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton. “It would be like designing cars without seatbelts or airbags.”
  • “It is very unfortunate and potentially even quite damaging that the Trump administration behaves this way,” said Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “There is this arrogance and disrespect for scientific advancement — this very demoralizing lack of respect for your own experts and agencies.”
brookegoodman

Trump Hopes Trade Deals Will Boost Growth. Experts Don't Agree. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trade-deals-economy.html

trump politics economics

shared by brookegoodman on 19 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Cabinet secretaries and White House officials have predicted that President Trump’s initial trade agreement with China and his revised accord with Mexico and Canada — slated for final passage this week — will deliver twin jolts to the economy.
  • hope: Mr. Trump is up for re-election, and the economy appears to have grown by just over 2 percent in 2019, a dip from 2018 and well short of the administration’s forecasts of growth above 3 percent for the year.
  • Mr. Mnuchin said on Sunday that he expected the economy to grow between 2.5 percent and 3 percent this year,
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  • She expects the nation’s economy to grow by 1.8 percent this year.
  • the deal calls for China to begin purchasing what the administration says will be $200 billion worth of American crops and other exported goods and services. Those purchases should increase exports from the United States to China, which, all else being equal, would promote growth.
  • administration officials appear to be counting on the agreement to revive business investment in the United States, which has fallen in recent quarters after surging in the first half of 2018.
  • The bullish case for the China agreement is that it will ease that uncertainty.
  • Many economists have praised the agreements for reducing uncertainty, but few have raised their growth forecasts because of them.
  • Mr. Trump had waged his trade wars on fronts well beyond North America and China. New trade battles loom this year, including one between the United States and France over a French push to impose a new tax that hits American tech giants like Google and Amazon.
  • Several economists expressed optimism that a “Phase 2” deal with China that rolls back more tariffs
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