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newstfionline · 3 years

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Sunday, August 15, 2021

Canada to require air travelers to be vaccinated (AP) The Canadian government will soon require all air travelers and passengers on interprovincial trains to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said Friday that includes all commercial air travelers, passengers on trains between provinces and cruise ship passengers. “As soon as possible in the Fall and no later than the end of October, the Government of Canada will require employees in the federally regulated air, rail, and marine transportation sectors to be vaccinated. The vaccination requirement will also extend to certain travelers. This includes all commercial air travelers,” his office said in a statement. France announced this week that it will require people have a special virus pass before they can travel by plane, train or bus across the country.

Debt: So long to the savings glut (The Week) “Americans are borrowing again,” said AnnaMaria Andriotis at The Wall Street Journal. After a year in which many consumers reduced spending, stashed savings, and used stimulus checks to pay down debt, more people have gone back to “splurging on cars, vacations, and eating out”—and seeking loans to pay for it. “Lenders originated some 3 million auto loans and leases in March, the highest monthly figure on record,” with the balances for those new originations topping a record $73 billion. A record 6 million new general-purpose credit cards were also issued the same month. The balances on our cards are still “about $140 billion lower than at the end of 2019,” said Alexandre Tanzi and Katia Dmitrieva at Bloomberg. But household debt—which includes mortgages, credit cards, and other consumer loans—rose in the second quarter “at the fastest pace since 2013.” Much of that was driven by the hot housing market—and Americans scrambling to refinance while mortgage rates remained low.

More US cities requiring proof of vaccination to go places (AP) Hold on to that vaccination card. A rapidly growing number of places across the U.S. are requiring people to show proof they have been inoculated against COVID-19 to teach school, work at a hospital, see a concert or eat inside a restaurant. Following New York City’s lead, New Orleans and San Francisco will impose such rules at many businesses starting next week, while Los Angeles is looking into the idea. The new measures are an attempt to stem the rising tide of COVID-19 cases that has pushed hospitals to the breaking point, including in the Dallas area, where top officials warned they are running out of beds in their pediatric intensive care units.

Western fires threaten thousands of homes, strain resources (AP) A month-old wildfire burning through forestlands in Northern California lurched toward a small lumber town as blazes across the U.S. Western states strained resources and threatened thousands of homes with destruction. Crews were cutting back brush and using bulldozers to build lines to keep the Dixie Fire from reaching Westwood east of Lake Almanor, not far from where the lightning-caused blaze destroyed much of the town of Greenville last week. To the northwest, the Monument Fire continued to grow after destroying a dozen homes and threatened about 2,500 homes in a sparsely populated region. They were among more than 100 large wildfires burning in a dozen Western states seared by drought and hot, bone-dry weather that has turned forests, brushlands, meadows and pastures into tinder. The U.S. Forest Service said Friday it’s operating in crisis mode, fully deploying firefighters and maxing out its support system.

500 years later, Mexico recalls Spanish conquest (Los Angeles Times) The final resting place of one of Mexico’s signature historical figures is easy to miss. A simple red plaque—just a name and the years he lived—marks the spot where his tomb is embedded in a wall to the side of the altar in a dilapidated downtown church. The name alone, however, recalls centuries of conflict and a never-ending debate about the essential identity of Mexico: HERNAN CORTES 1485-1547. The legendary Spanish military commander may be hidden away in death, but a few blocks away, authorities are readying a remembrance of his momentous triumph—the conquest of the Aztec Empire. Friday marks the 500th anniversary of the fall in 1521 of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, now the site of Mexico City. The bloody siege culminating in its surrender launched three centuries of Spanish dominion in Mexico. “We were all born from the conquest, no longer Aztecs, no longer Spanish, but Indian-Hispanic-Americans, mestizos,” wrote Carlos Fuentes, the late Mexican author. “We are what we are because Hernán Cortés, for good or for bad, did what he did.”

7.2 magnitude earthquake hits Haiti; at least 304 killed (AP) A powerful magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck southwestern Haiti on Saturday, killing at least 304 people and injuring at least 1,800 others as buildings tumbled into rubble. Prime Minister Ariel Henry said he was rushing aid to areas where towns were destroyed and hospitals overwhelmed with incoming patients. The epicenter of the quake was about 125 kilometers (78 miles) west of the capital of Port-au-Prince, the U.S. Geological Survey said, and widespread damage was reported in the hemisphere's poorest nations as a tropical storm also bore down. Henry declared a one-month state of emergency for the whole country and said some towns were almost completely razed.

Belarus floods the European Union with migrants (CNN) Desperate, frightened and begging for help, they emerge from the darkness: a group of Yazidi migrants, lost in the forests of eastern Europe. It’s a surreal sight—and one that has been repeated over many recent nights. Having survived persecution by ISIS at home in Iraq, here on the Belarus-Lithuania border the Yazidis find themselves caught up in a breathtakingly cynical plot. Belarus’s authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, has been accused of using these desperate souls as pawns in his high-stakes game with the European Union. Over the course of 24 hours from July 27 to 28, a record 171 people were caught on the border—many of them Iraqis. A total of more than 4,000 have been caught so far this year. European officials say Lukashenko’s bureaucracy is extracting thousands of euros from each traveler then “weaponizing” them—according to Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis—in order to burden Belarus’s neighbor Lithuania. Officials say the migrants are flown from the Middle East to Minsk, and then guided to the Belarus-Lithuania border by unspecified facilitators, where they are allowed to cross, unimpeded by Belarusian border police. Lithuania has called it “petty”—“mass revenge” for sanctions imposed by the EU after Belarus forced a Ryanair plane to land in Minsk so they could arrest an opposition blogger on board. A Western intelligence official told CNN the scheme could not function without the permission of the Belarusian state, and that Lukashenko was likely using the migrants as a way to pressurize the EU into negotiations on lifting the sanctions against him.

Heat wave edges higher in southern Europe (AP) Intense heat baking Italy pushed northward towards the popular tourist destination of Florence Friday while wildfires charred the country’s south, and Spain appeared headed for an all-time record high temperature as a heat wave kept southern Europe in a fiery hold. Italy saw temperatures in places upwards of 40 C (104 F), and Rome broiled. By late afternoon Friday, the heat in Florence reached 39 C (102 F). That city and Bologna also were issued alerts for Saturday by the health ministry. Many southern European countries have suffered days of intense heat, accompanied by deadly wildfires in Algeria, Turkey, Italy and Greece. Wildfires on the Italian island of Sardinia were reported largely contained, but a blaze early Friday near Tivoli in the countryside east of Rome forced the evacuation of 25 families.

At least 40 killed in Turkey flood as search for missing continues (Reuters) Families of those missing after Turkey’s worst floods in years anxiously watched rescue teams search buildings on Saturday, fearing the death toll from the raging torrents could rise further. At least 40 people have died from the floods in the northern Black Sea region, the second natural disaster to strike the country this month. Drone footage by Reuters showed massive damage in the flood-hit Black Sea town of Bozkurt, where emergency workers were searching demolished buildings.

Marine vanguard lands in Kabul as US speeds up evacuations (AP) The first forces of a Marine battalion arrived in Kabul at week’s end to stand guard as the U.S. speeds up evacuation flights for some American diplomats and thousands of Afghans, spurred by a lightning Taliban offensive that increasingly is isolating Afghanistan’s capital. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said “elements” of a battalion were now in Kabul, the vanguard of three Marine and Army battalions that the U.S. was sending to the city by the end of the weekend to help more Americans and their Afghan colleagues get out quickly. The Taliban, emboldened by the imminent end of the U.S. combat mission in the country, took four more provincial capitals Friday, heightening fears they would move soon on the capital, which is home to millions of Afghans.

‘Why did my friend get blown up? For what?’ (Washington Post) After enlisting in the U.S. military against his family’s wishes, Chicago native Tom Amenta said he found himself in “middle-of-nowhere,” Afghanistan, in 2002 as an Army Ranger in a remote area some 15 minutes from the border with Pakistan. He was fighting the initial battles of a war that few knew would stretch on for 20 years. Now 40 and retired from the military, he felt anger foam inside as he watched the evening news. Headline after headline broadcast the latest gains by Taliban fighters, who have seized control of more than a dozen of the country’s provincial capitals as the Afghan government inches closer to collapse in the final days of the U.S. withdrawal. Friends who had been killed there came to mind, including NFL star Pat Tillman. Fond memories of former Afghan colleagues, such as interpreters, who remained in the country and whose fates he didn’t know, also resurfaced. “It makes me angry, really angry,” Amenta said of the U.S. withdrawal, lamenting the billions upon billions of dollars spent on the war effort—not to mention the emotional, financial and human toll suffered by thousands of Americans who served or sent their loved ones to fight in Afghanistan. “I mean, why did my friend get blown up? For what?” said Amenta. “No one’s saying, ‘Hey, you know, at least we did something.’ There’s just nothing to really show for it,” former Army medic Frank Scott Novak said. “And so, everyone’s kind of angry and wondering, why? Why were we even there?”

Nobody running Lebanon, says central bank boss (Reuters) Lebanon’s central bank governor said nobody was running the country as he defended his decision to halt fuel subsidies that have drained currency reserves, saying the government could resolve the problem by passing necessary legislation. In an interview broadcast on Saturday, governor Riad Salameh pressed back against government accusations that he had acted alone in declaring an end to the subsidies on Wednesday, saying everyone knew the decision was coming. The move is the latest turn in a crippling financial crisis that has sunk the Lebanese pound by 90% in less than two years and pushed more than half the population into poverty. Salameh said Lebanon could recover but it was not possible to say how many years that would take. “So far you have nobody running the country,” he said in the interview with Radio Free Lebanon. Lebanon’s sectarian politicians have failed to agree on a new government since Prime Minister Hassan Diab quit last August after the catastrophic Beirut port blast.

#headlines #news

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dipulb3 · 4 years

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At least 26 homes destroyed in Colorado's CalWood Fire as historic wildfire season continues

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/at-least-26-homes-destroyed-in-colorados-calwood-fire-as-historic-wildfire-season-continues/

At least 26 homes destroyed in Colorado's CalWood Fire as historic wildfire season continues

“This is actually the biggest wildfire in Boulder County history,” Boulder County Sheriff’s Office Division Chief Mike Wagner said during a press briefing Sunday, “as far as by acreage, and so it’s the largest our community has ever seen.”

The CalWood fire has destroyed at least 26 homes in an area that had been ordered to evacuate near the town of Jamestown Saturday, and it’s believed several other homes have likely burned, Wagner said.

“We don’t believe that their list is complete,” Wagner said of the destroyed structures. “There’s likely more structures that we just could not get to within that burn area, and so damage assessment teams are going to come and go out again tomorrow attempt to locate additional structures and report those out as we can.”

A list of homes that have been destroyed will be posted to the Boulder OEM website, Wagner said.

About 1,600 homes and 2,600 structures were included within the perimeter of the mandatory evacuation zone issued Saturday, with about 3,000 people affected by the evacuations.

About 250 firefighters were in the field working to establish a direct line around the perimeter of the CalWood fire Sunday, Wagner said.

“That’s one of their number one things is try to keep the fire knocked down and protect structures that have not been impacted by the fire yet,” the chief said. “They’re gonna continue to construct a direct fire line which I spoke around the perimeter of the fire to secure it.”

Air operations were planned for Sunday, but weather conditions have prevented aircraft from flying, Wagner said.

“The plan was to try to hit the fire really heavy with air resources this morning there were a number of aircraft on order with the conditions you see down here, and visibility aircraft can’t fly,” Wagner said.

Additional resources, including a federal firefighting team, were scheduled to arrive Sunday and take over command of the CalWood fire by Monday morning, Wagner said.

Two people who were unaccounted for Saturday were located Sunday, and one firefighter suffered a minor ankle injury battling the CalWood fire, according to Wagner.

A joint investigation has been launched for the CalWood Fire by the Boulder Sheriff’s office and the US Forest Service, Wagner said.

A second fire — the Lefthand Canyon fire erupted Sunday near the town of Ward, about 15 miles southwest of Jamestown, Boulder OEM said in a tweet. Nearly 150 homes were ordered to evacuate because of the blaze.

The Lefthand Canyon fire was brought to full containment after burning more than 300 acres in a matter of hours, according to Wagner.

Weather and Covid-19 complicating firefight

While cooler temperatures and increased humidity helped fire suppression on Sunday, Wagner said, there are concerns about the impact of increased heat and dryness in the coming days.

The National Weather Service Boulder office said strong gusts of up to 50 mph will develop over the foothills early Monday. A few sprinkles and flurries are also forecast.

“These conflicting factors will keep the fires active but should limit growth tonight,” NWS Boulder said on Twitter Sunday night.

Wagner added that maintaining Covid-19 protocols is adding another “layer of complexity” to firefighting operations.

“Trying to do all that while trying to comply with all the COVID safety protocols, which just adds a whole different layer of complexity to any large event, or large incident. And this would be no different,” Wagner said.

Largest wildfire in Colorado history

The Cameron Peak Fire burning near Fort Collins, in the northeast part of the state, has burned 203,253 acres and is 62% contained, according to Inciweb.

The fire is the largest wildfire ever recorded in the state and the first known to reach 200,000 acres. It ignited on August 13 in the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests.

Lower winds and higher humidity reported Saturday evening helped firefighters battle the blaze, according to a Sunday morning incident report update.

“Although weather conditions are expected to moderate, significant fire activity along (the) unsecured line will continue to be a concern,” the update said.

New wildfires grow in Utah

Two new wildfires in Utah that ignited over the weekend have burned nearly 4,500 acres, according to posts on Twitter from Utah Fire Info.

The Range Fire is burning just outside of the city or Orem, in Utah County, about 40 miles southeast of Salt Lake City. As of Sunday night it had grown to 3,000 acres and no containment had been reported.

About a hundred miles northeast of the Range Fire, the Fire Canyon Fire started Saturday and has burned at least 1,460 acres and has been 10% contained.

Suppression operations continued throughout the day, with the use of aircraft and firefighters on the ground, Utah Fire said.

The Fire Canyon Fire was first spotted burning near a ridge between Fire Canyon and Bald Canyon the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources said in a press release where the agency announced the temporary emergency closure of the Henefer-Echo Wildlife Management Area because of the fire.

The blaze is not currently threatening any structures and the cause of the fire is still being investigated but it is believed to be human-caused according to Utah Fire Info.

Dry conditions and above normal temperatures are forecast in Utah through Wednesday, when a front will approach bringing cooler and wetter weather to the region, according to Appradab Meteorologist Michael Guy.

The higher humidity accompanying the front will help in fire containment efforts, Guy said.

More than 4 million acres burned in California

In California, firefighters have been battling a historic number of fires since early August when the fire season picked up.

Thirty-one people have died and more than 9,200 structures have been destroyed this season, with more than 4.1 million acres burned this year.

Firefighters responded to and quickly contained 23 new wildfires Saturday while continuing to battle 20 existing fires throughout the state, an update from California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire) said.

Twelve of the 20 wildfires in California are considered “major incidents,” CalFire said.

The Glass Fire in Napa and Sonoma Counties is currently 97% contained with 67,484 acres burned, CalFire said. While the August Complex fire is 86% contained with more than a million acres burned, according to the update.

“Although the Red Flag Warnings have expired, dry weather and unseasonably warm temperatures continue through much of next week” and no rain is forecast, said CalFire.

There are currently 7,700 firefighters on the frontlines, according to CalFire.

Appradab’s Leslie Perrot, Gisela Crespo, Melissa Alonso and Alta Spells contributed to this report.

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dandymeowth · 4 years

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On the outskirts of the city, power lines sag and buzz, overloaded with electrons as the demand for air conditioning soars and the entire grid is pushed to the limit. In an Arizona heat wave, electricity is not a convenience, it is a tool for survival.

As the mercury rises, people die. The homeless cook to death on hot sidewalks. Older folks, their bodies unable to cope with the metabolic stress of extreme heat, suffer heart attacks and strokes. Hikers collapse from dehydration. As the climate warms, heat waves are growing longer, hotter, and more frequent. Since the 1960s, the average number of annual heat waves in 50 major American cities has tripled. They are also becoming more deadly. Last year, there were 181 heat-related deaths in Arizona’s Maricopa County, nearly three times the number from four years earlier. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 2004 and 2017, about a quarter of all weather-related deaths were caused by excessive heat, far more than other natural disasters such as hurricanes and tornadoes.

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“What will the Hurricane Katrina of extreme heat look like?” he wonders aloud as we sit in a cafe near the ASU campus. Katrina, which hit New Orleans in 2005, resulting in nearly 2,000 deaths and more than $100 billion in economic damage, demonstrated just how unprepared a city can be for extreme climate events.

“Hurricane Katrina caused a cascading failure of urban infrastructure in New Orleans that no one really predicted,” Chester explains. “Levees broke. People were stranded. Rescue operations failed. Extreme heat could lead to a similar cascading failure in Phoenix, exposing vulnerabilities and weaknesses in the region’s infrastructure that are difficult to foresee.”

In Chester’s view, a Phoenix heat catastrophe begins with a blackout.

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When the city goes dark, the order and convenience of modern life begin to fray. Without air conditioning, temperatures in homes and office buildings soar. (Ironically, new, energy-efficient buildings are tightly sealed, making them dangerous heat traps.) Traffic signals go out. Highways gridlock with people fleeing the city. Without power, gas pumps don’t work, leaving vehicles stranded with empty tanks. Water pipes crack from the heat, and water pumps fail, leaving people scrounging for fresh water. Hospitals overflow with people suffering from heat exhaustion and heatstroke. If there are wildfires, the air will become hazy and difficult to breathe. If a blackout during extreme heat continues for long, rioting, looting, and arson could begin.

And people will start dying. How many? “Katrina-like numbers,” Chester predicts. Which is to say, thousands. Chester describes all this coolly, as if a Phoenix heat apocalypse is a matter of fact, not hypothesis.

“How likely is this to happen?” I ask.

“It’s more a question of when,” Chester says, “not if.”

Extreme heat is the most direct, tangible, and deadly consequence of our hellbent consumption of fossil fuels. Rising carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere trap heat, which is fundamentally changing our climate system. “Think of the Earth’s temperature as a bell curve,” says Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann. “Climate change is shifting the bell curve toward the hotter end of the temperature scale, making extreme-heat events more likely.” As the temperature rises, ice sheets are melting, seas are rising, hurricanes are getting more intense, rainfall patterns are changing (witness the recent flooding in the Midwest). Drought and flooding inflict tremendous economic damage and create political chaos, but extreme heat is much more likely to kill you directly. The World Health Organization predicts heat stress linked to the climate crisis will cause 38,000 extra deaths a year worldwide between 2030 and 2050. A recent study published in Nature Climate Change found that by 2100, if emissions continue to grow, 74 percent of the world’s population will be exposed to heat waves hot enough to kill. “The more warming you have, the more heat waves you have,” says Michael Wehner, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “The more heat waves you have, the more people die. It’s a pretty simple equation.”

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Extreme heat is already transforming our world in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Disney executives recently voiced concern that rising temperatures will significantly reduce the number of visits to their parks. In Germany, officials were forced to put a speed limit on the autobahn because of fears the road would buckle from heat. The U.S. military has already incurred as much as $1 billion in costs during the past decade — from lost work, retraining, and medical care — due to the health impacts of heat. The warming of the planet “will affect the Department of Defense’s ability to defend the nation and poses immediate risks to U.S. national security,” a recent DOD report said. Forests and soils are drying out, contributing to explosive and unprecedented wildfires. Habitation zones for plants and animals are changing, forcing them to adapt to a warmer world or die. A U.N. report found that 1 million species are at risk of extinction in the coming decades. Another study by researchers at MIT suggests that rising temperatures and humidity may make much of South Asia, including parts of India and Pakistan, too hot for human existence by the end of the century. As scientist Peter Gleick, co-founder of the Pacific Institute in California, told me, “There is a shocking, unreported, fundamental change coming to the habitability of many parts of the planet, including the USA.”

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But the greatest risk to human health may be in areas that are already hot, where temperature increases will strain habitability. In the U.S., the fastest-warming cities are in the Southwest. Las Vegas, El Paso, Tucson, and Phoenix have warmed the most, each by at least 4.3°F since 1970. Globally, many of the hottest cities are in India. In May, a deadly heat wave sent temperatures above 120°F in the north. The desert city of Churu recorded a high of 123°F, nearly breaking India’s record of 123.8°F, set in 2016. There were warnings not to go outside after 11 a.m. Authorities poured water on roads to keep them from melting. A 33-year-old man was reportedly beaten to death in a fight over water. The preliminary death toll in India for this summer’s heat wave is already more than 200, and that number is likely to grow.

How hot will it get? That depends largely on how far and how fast carbon-dioxide levels rise, which depends on how much fossil fuel the world continues to burn. The Paris Climate Agreement (which President Trump pulled the U.S. out of) aims to limit the warming to 3.6°F (2°C). Given the current trajectory of carbon pollution, hitting that target is all but impossible. Unless nations of the world take dramatic action soon, we are headed for a warming of at least 5.4°F (3°C) by the end of the century, making the Earth roughly as warm as it was 3 million years ago during the Pliocene era, long before Homo sapiens came along. “Human beings have literally never lived on a planet as hot as it is today,” says Wehner. A 5.4°F-warmer world would be radically different from the one we know now, with cities swamped by rising seas and epic droughts turning rainforests into deserts. The increased heat alone would kill significant numbers of people. A recent report from the University of Bristol estimated that with 5.4°F of warming, about 5,800 people could die each year in New York due to the heat, 2,500 could die in Los Angeles, and 2,300 in Miami. “The relationship between heat and mortality is clear,” Eunice Lo, a climate scientist at the University of Bristol and the lead author of the report, tells me. “The warmer the world becomes, the more people die.”

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The psychological impacts of extreme heat are obvious to anyone who’s ever felt cranky on a hot day. But the impacts go beyond crankiness. When temperatures rise, suicide rates can go up at a pace similar to the impact of economic recessions. Some aspects of higher cognition are impaired. School test scores decline, with one study showing decreases across five measures of cognitive function, including reaction times and working memory.

The link between heat and violence is particularly intriguing. “There is growing evidence of a psychological mechanism that is impacted by heat, although we can’t yet say exactly what that is,” says Solomon Hsiang, a professor of public policy at Berkeley. Some scientists speculate that higher temperatures impact neurotransmitters in the brain, resulting in lower levels of serotonin, which has been shown to lead to aggressive behavior. So rising heat may literally alter the chemistry in our brains. One study showed that police officers were more likely to fire on intruders during training exercises when it was hot. Andrew Shaver, a professor of political science at the University of California, Merced, analyzed data about conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and found that attacks by insurgents involving RPGs and assault rifles increased with higher temperatures, while planned attacks did not. “During conflicts, higher temperatures seem to provoke more impulsive aggression,” Shaver says. One speculative paper projects that by 2099, due to rising heat, the U.S. could see an additional 22,000 murders, 180,000 rapes, 3.5 million assaults, and 3.76 million robberies, burglaries, and acts of larceny.

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A recent poll found that two-thirds of Arizonans accept that climate change is happening, but most elected officials in the state, including Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, are hardly climate activists. Arizona is one of the sunniest states in the nation, and yet only 6.5 percent of the state’s electricity comes from solar power. A statewide ballot initiative in 2018 to require 50 percent renewable power by 2030 was soundly defeated, in part because the parent company of Arizona Public Service, the big public utility in the state, spent more than $37 million on false and misleading arguments about how transitioning to renewable power would raise power bills and destroy the Arizona economy.

“We have a large number of elected officials who don’t believe in climate change, period,” says Stacey Champion, a longtime Phoenix energy and climate activist. “How do you get effective, data-driven policy if you have people pushing hard against it because they are batshit crazy, or they are afraid it will spook companies like Nike who want to come here?”

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Air conditioning is one of those paradoxical modern technologies that creates just as many problems as it solves. For one thing, it requires a lot of energy, most of which comes from fossil fuels. AC and fans already account for 10 percent of the world’s energy consumption. Globally, the number of air-conditioning units is expected to quadruple by 2050. Even accounting for modest growth in renewable power, the carbon emissions from all this new AC would result in a more than 0.9°F increase in global temperature by the year 2100.

Cheap air conditioning is like crack cocaine for modern civilization, keeping us addicted and putting off serious thinking about more creative (and less fossil-fuel-intensive) solutions. Air conditioning also creates a kind of extreme heat apartheid. If you’re rich, you have a big house with enough air conditioning to chill a martini. And if you are poor, like Leonor Juarez, a 46-year-old single mother whom I met on a recent July afternoon when the temperature was hovering around 115°F, you live in South Phoenix, where sidewalks are dirt and trees are few, and you hope you can squeeze enough money out of your paycheck to run the AC for a few hours on hot summer nights.

On hot days, Juarez’s small apartment feels like a cave. She has heavy purple curtains on the windows to block the sun. “I could not live here without air conditioning,” she tells me. Because she has poor credit, she doesn’t qualify for the usual monthly billing from Salt River Project, her utility. Instead, to pay for electricity and keep her AC running, SRP has given her a card reader that plugs into an outlet that she has to feed like a jukebox to keep the power on. Juarez turns on her AC only a few hours a day — still, her electric bill can run $500 a month during the summer, which is more than she pays for rent. To Juarez, who takes a bus five miles to a laundromat in the middle of the night because washing machines are discounted to 50 cents a load after 1 a.m., $500 is a tremendous amount of money.

She shows me the meter on the card reader: She has $49 worth of credit on it, enough for a few more days of power. And when that runs out? “I am in trouble,” she says bluntly. Juarez, who works as an in-home caretaker for the elderly, says she knows of several people who lived alone and died when they failed to pay their electric bills and tried to live without AC.

#climate change #global warming #classism #death #illness #heatstroke #heat stress #heat #environmentalism

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newstechreviews · 4 years

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Imagine Massachusetts on fire, literally the entire state engulfed in flames. That is how much land has already been ravaged—at least 5 million acres—in the wildfires of California, Washington and Oregon. Put another way, in just a few weeks these fires have burned as much land as was destroyed by a decade of using napalm and Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. With temperatures over 100°F, toxic air now blankets tens of millions of people, power outages have afflicted vast regions, and dozens have already died from the blazes. Air quality in West Coast cities has ranked among the world’s worst, with Portland’s air at points being almost three times more unhealthy than in notoriously polluted cities like New Delhi. The scenes of red skies out of America’s West have an unreal quality to them, as if they come from a different planet. In a sense they do—they are portents of the future.

There are many proximate reasons for these forest fires—fireworks, campfires, a stray spark—but there is one large cause that is blindingly clear: human actions that have led to climate change. To put it simply, the world is getting hotter, and that means that forests get drier. A yearslong drought, which ended in 2017, killed 163 million trees in California—and that deadwood proved to be the kindling for this year’s devastation. A scientific study led by Stanford, released in April, found that California’s five worst wildfires—whether measured by deaths, destruction or size—all occurred during 2017 and 2018. And we can be sure of one thing: it’s going to get worse. Temperatures continue to rise, drought conditions are worsening, and the combined effect of all these forces will multiply to create cascading crises in the years to come.

Cascades, in which small sparks cause great conflagrations, are happening all around us. Think of COVID-19, which began with a viral speck that was likely lodged in a bat somewhere in China—and is now a raging global pandemic. While viruses have been around forever, they mostly originate in animals and, when they jumped to humans, remained largely local. But over the past few decades, many viruses have gone global, causing widespread epidemics—SARS, MERS, Ebola, Zika and now the novel coronavirus. In a recent essay in the scientific journal Cell, the country’s top infectious—disease expert, Anthony Fauci, and one of his colleagues, David Morens, warn that we “have reached a tipping point that forecasts the inevitability of an acceleration of disease emergencies.” In other words, get ready for more pandemics. The fundamental reason behind this acceleration, they argue, is human action—the ever increasing scope and pace of development.

Damon Winter—The New York Times/Redux. A housing development on the edge of undeveloped desert in Cathedral City, Calif., on April 3, 2015, during the state’s punishing drought.

We have created a world in overdrive. People are living longer, producing and consuming more, inhabiting larger spaces, consuming more energy, and generating more waste and greenhouse gas emissions. The pace has accelerated dramatically in the past few decades. Just one example: a 2019 U.N. report, compiled by 145 experts from 50 countries, concluded that “nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history.” It noted that 75% of all land has been “severely altered” by human actions, as has 66% of the world’s marine environments. Ecosystems are collapsing, and biodiversity is disappearing. As many as 1 million plant and animal species (of 8 million total) are threatened with extinction, some within a few decades. All these strains and imbalances produce dangers—some that can be foreseen, and others that cannot.

The pandemic, for its part, can be thought of as nature’s revenge. The way we live now is practically an invitation for animal viruses to infect humans. Why do diseases seem to be jumping from animals to humans at a faster pace in recent decades? As cities expand, they bring humans closer and closer to the habitat of wild animals, making it more likely that virus in a bat could be transmitted to a pig or a pangolin and then to humans. Developing countries are modernizing so quickly that they effectively inhabit several different centuries at the same time. In Wuhan and other such cities, China has built an advanced, technologically sophisticated-economy—but in the shadows of the skyscrapers are wildlife markets full of exotic animals, a perfect cauldron for animal-to-human viral transfer. And the people who live in these places are more mobile than ever before, quickly spreading information, goods, services—and disease.

Our destruction of natural habitats may also be to blame. Some scientists believe that as humans extend civilization into nature—building roads, clearing land, constructing factories, excavating mines—we are increasing the odds that animals will pass diseases to us. COVID-19 appears to have originated in bats, which are hosts to many other viruses, including rabies and Ebola. Bats used to live farther from humans. But as we encroached on their habitats, their diseases increasingly became our diseases. “We are doing things every day that make pandemics more likely,” said Peter Daszak, an eminent disease ecologist. “We need to understand, this is not just nature. It is what we are doing to nature.”

As economic development moves faster and reaches more people, we are taking ever greater risks, often without even realizing it. Think about meat consumption. As people get richer, they eat more meat. When this happens globally, the effect is staggering: about 80 billion animals are slaughtered for meat every year around the world. (And that doesn’t even count fish.) But supplying this enormous demand comes at great cost to the environment and our health. Animal products provide only 18% of calories worldwide yet take up 80% of the earth’s farmland. Meanwhile, meat is now produced on a vast scale with animals packed together in gruesome conditions. Most livestock—an estimated 99% in America, 74% around the world—comes from factory farms. (Organically farmed, grass-fed meat is a luxury product.) These massive operations serve as petri dishes for powerful viruses. “Selection for specific genes in farmed animals (for desirable traits like large chicken breasts) has made these animals almost genetically identical,” Vox journalist Sigal Samuel explains. “That means that a virus can easily spread from animal to animal without encountering any genetic variants that might stop it in its tracks. As it rips through a flock or herd, the virus can grow even more virulent.” The lack of genetic diversity removes the “immunological firebreaks.”

Sebastián Liste—NOOR for TIME. A slaughterhouse in the Brazilian state of Rondônia in February 2019. The company boasted an expansion would allow a cow to be killed every eight seconds at the facility.

Americans should know better. The country has experienced several ecological disasters, most notably the 1930s Dust Bowl. The event is seared in the American imagination. The bitter tale of desperate Dust Bowl migrants inspired John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath—describing the plight of people who could be called America’s first climate refugees. And it is a story of human actions causing a natural reaction.

The Great Plains are the semiarid places east of the Rocky Mountains and west of the Mississippi River. The wind blows fast over these lands, sometimes scarily so. Over centuries, probably millennia, nature’s solution was to grow grass that held the loose topsoil in place. But by the late 19th century, as the pioneers headed west, lured by promises of fertile farmland, they tilled the prairies, turning the grassy plains into wheat fields. The farmers felled trees that served as windbreaks, and turned the soil over and over, until there was no grass and the topsoil had been reduced to a thin, loose layer just covering the hard land beneath.

Then came bad weather. Starting in 1930, the region was hit by four waves of drought. With the drought came winds—ferocious gales that blew off the entire layer of topsoil with a force that few humans had seen before and kicked up dust storms that blackened the sky. By 1934, the topsoil covering 100 million acres of land had blown away. The heat intensified the suffering—1934 was the nation’s hottest year on record until 1998. Thousands died and millions fled. The farmers left behind were plunged into a decade of poverty.

We are tempting fate similarly every day. We are now watching the effects of climate change on almost every part of the natural environment. It is bringing a warmer climate to more of the world, thus creating more hospitable conditions for disease. It is also turning more land into desert—23 hectares every minute, by the U.N.’s estimate. In 2010, Luc Gnacadja, who headed the organization’s effort to combat desertification, called it “the greatest environmental challenge of our time,” warning that “the top 20 centimeters of soil is all that stands between us and extinction.” Thirty-eight percent of the earth’s surface is at risk of desertification. Some of it is caused less by global climate change than by something more easily preventable: the overextraction of water from the ground. One of the world’s most crucial water sources is the Ogallala Aquifer, which sprawls through the Great Plains and supplies about a third of the groundwater used to irrigate American farms. This seemingly bottomless well is in fact being emptied by agribusiness so fast that it is on track to shrivel by 70% in less than 50 years. If the aquifer ran dry, it would take 6,000 years for rainfall to refill it.

Travis Heying—Wichita Eagle/Tribune News Service/Getty Images. An irrigation pivot sprays water onto a young corn crop in Grant County, Kans., in 2015.

You may say that this is not new. Human beings have been altering natural processes ever since they learned how to make fire. The changes picked up speed with the invention of the wheel, the plow and, most dramatically, the steam engine. But they intensified, particularly in the 20th century and in the past few decades. The number of people on the planet has risen fivefold since 1900, while the average life span has doubled. The increase in life span goes “beyond the scope of what had ever been shaped by natural selection,” explained Joshua Lederberg, the biologist who won the Nobel Prize at age 33 for his work on bacterial genetics. In a brilliant, haunting speech in 1989 at a virology conference in Washington, D.C., Lederberg argued that we have changed our biological trajectory so much that “contemporary man is a man-made species.”

Lederberg called human beings’ continued economic and scientific advancement “the greatest threat to every other plant and animal species, as we crowd them out in our own quest for lebensraum.” “A few vermin aside,” he added, “Homo sapiens has undisputed dominion.” But he pointed out that we do have one real competitor—the virus—and in the end, it could win. “Many people find it difficult to accommodate to the reality that nature is far from benign; at least it has no special sentiment for the welfare of the human vs. other species.” Lederberg reminded the audience of the fate that befell rabbits in Australia in the 1950s, when the myxoma virus was unleashed upon them as a population—control measure. Eventually, rabbits achieved herd immunity, but only after the virus had killed over 99% of those infected in the first outbreaks. He concluded his speech with a grim image: “I would … question whether human society could survive left on the beach with only a few percent of survivors. Could they function at any level of culture higher than that of the rabbits? And if reduced to that, would we compete very well with kangaroos?

This is a gloomy compendium of threats. And given the unstable nature of our international system, it may seem that our world is terribly fragile. It is not. Another way to read human history is to recognize just how tough we are. We have gone through extraordinary change at breathtaking pace. We have seen ice ages and plagues, world wars and revolutions, and yet we have survived and flourished. In his writings, Joshua Lederberg acknowledged that nature usually seeks an equilibrium that favors mutual survival of the virus and the host—after all, if the human dies, so does the parasite.

Human beings and our societies are amazingly innovative and resourceful. This planet is awe-inspiringly resilient. But we have to recognize the ever greater risks we are taking and act to mitigate them. Modern human development has occurred on a scale and at a speed with no precedent. The global system that we are living in is open and dynamic, which means it has few buffers. That produces great benefits but also vulnerabilities. We have to adjust to the reality of ever increasing instability—now.

Joe Raedle—Getty Images. The aftermath of Hurricane Michael, which made a devastating landfall as a Category 5 hurricane near Mexico Beach, Fla., in October 2018.

We are not doomed. The point of sounding the alarm is to call people to action. The question is, what kind of action? There are those, on the right and the left, who want to stop other countries from growing economically and shut down our open world. But should we tell the poorest billion in the world that they cannot escape poverty? Should we close ourselves off from the outside world and seek stability in national fortresses? Should we try to slow down technology, or the global movement of goods and services? Even if we wanted to do any of this, we would not be able to arrest these powerful forces. We could not persuade billions of people to stop trying to raise their standards of living. We could not prevent human beings from connecting with one another. We could not stop technological innovation. What we can do is be far more conscious of the risks we face, prepare for the dangers and equip our societies to be resilient. They should be able not only to withstand shocks and backlashes, but also learn from them. Nassim Nicholas Taleb suggests that we create systems that are “anti-fragile,” which are even better than resilient ones. They actually gain strength through chaos and crises.

We know what to do. After the Dust Bowl, scientists quickly understood what had happened. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Administration produced a short movie to explain it to the country, The Plow That Broke the Plains. Government agencies taught farmers how to prevent soil erosion. The Administration provided massive aid to farmers, established the Soil Conservation Service and placed 140 million acres of federal grasslands under protection. In the past three-quarters of a century, there has been no second Dust Bowl, despite extreme weather.

“Outbreaks are inevitable, but pandemics are optional,” says Larry Brilliant, the American physician who helped eradicate smallpox 45 years ago. What he means is that we may not be able to change the natural occurrences that produce disease in the first place, but through preparation, early action and intelligent responses, we can quickly flatten its trajectory. In fact, the eradication of smallpox is a story that is only partly about science and mostly about extraordinary cooperation between rival superpowers and impressive execution across the globe.

Similarly, climate change is happening, and we cannot stop it completely. But we can mitigate the scale of change and avert its most harmful effects through aggressive and intelligent policies. It will not be cheap. To address it seriously we would need to start by enacting a carbon tax, which would send the market the right price signal and raise the revenue needed to fund new technologies and simultaneously adapt to the already altered planet. As for economic development, there are hundreds of ways we could approach the process differently, retaining traditional ingredients like growth, openness and innovation while putting new emphasis on others like security, resilience and anti-fragility. We can make different trade-offs, forgo some efficiencies and dynamism in some areas, and spend more money to make our societies prepared. The costs of prevention and preparation are minuscule compared with the economic losses caused by an ineffective response to a crisis. More fundamentally, building in resilience creates stability of the most important kind, emotional stability. Human beings will not embrace openness and change for long if they constantly fear that they will be wiped out in the next calamity.

And what about preventing the next pandemic? Again, we need to balance dynamism with safety. Much attention has focused on wet markets where live animals are slaughtered and sold, but these cannot simply be shut down. In many countries, especially in Africa and Asia, they provide fresh food for people who don’t own refrigerators. (In China, they account for 73% of all fresh vegetables and meat sold.) These markets should be better regulated, but they pose limited risks when they do not sell wild animals like bats, civets and pangolins. It is that exotic trade that must be outlawed. Similarly, getting the world to stop eating meat may be impossible, but promoting healthier diets—with less meat—would be good for humans and the planet. And factory farming can be re-engineered to be much safer, and far less cruel to animals. Most urgently, countries need strong public-health systems, and those systems need to communicate, learn from and cooperate with one another. You cannot defeat a global disease with local responses.

Marcio Jose Sanchez—AP. Firefighter Ricardo Gomez, part of a San Benito Monterey Cal Fire crew, sets a controlled burn with a drip torch while fighting the Creek Fire in Shaver Lake, Calif., on Sept. 6, 2020.

So too California can’t stop climate change or wildfires alone. But, like America after the Dust Bowl, it can learn from its policy mistakes, using controlled burns to clear out underbrush and practicing sustainable construction. Unfortunately, earlier this month it took a step in the wrong direction when lawmakers killed a reform bill that would have allowed denser housing development. Without new action, single-family homes will keep sprawling outward into the forest, expanding the human footprint and making future destructive fires inevitable. Rather than subsidizing settlements on the coastline and in forests and deserts, governments should encourage housing in safe and more sustainable areas. We have to recognize that the way we are living, eating and consuming energy are all having an impact on the planet—and increasingly it is reacting.

Human beings have been developing their societies at an extraordinary pace, expanding in every realm at unprecedented speed. It is as if we have built the fastest race car ever imagined and are driving it through unknown, unmarked terrain. But we never bothered to equip the car with airbags. We didn’t get insurance. We have not even put on our seat belts. The engine runs hot. Parts overheat and sometimes even catch fire. There have been some crashes, each one a bit worse than the last. So we douse the vehicle, tune up the suspension, repair the bodywork and resolve to do better. But we race on, and soon we are going faster and faster, into newer and rougher terrain. It’s getting very risky out there. It’s time to install those airbags and buy some insurance. And above all, it’s time to buckle up.

#Blogger

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maintl · 5 years

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How Nigerian govt’s inaction causes death of hundreds annually from snakebite

Massive deaths from snakebites have become a recurrent decimal in Nigeria.

The casualty figures usually get more staggering during the heat when these cold-blooded reptiles are forced out of their hiding places in search of fresh air.

That period, usually between January and April, is incidentally the time farmers go to the fields to clear their farms, preparatory to the farming season.

It is also the time herdsmen in the north move into thicker forests in their search for greener fields in view of the harsh realities of the dry season.

Records from various snakebite treatment centres across the country have also indicated that the figures go up during the harvest season, especially for crops like rice and yam.

According to a medic at the Zamko Comprehensive Medical Centre, Langtang, a snakebite treatment point in Plateau, rats go to yam farms to eat yam, snakes go to the farm to wait for the rats. When farmers reach their farms for the harvest, they get bitten.

During one of such peak snakebite periods last year, 250 victims died within three weeks in Plateau and Gombe states.

The figure represented the number of confirmed deaths in two snake treatment centres – General Hospital, Kaltungo, Gombe State, and Zamko Comprehensive Medical Centre. More victims were confirmed to have died at herbal treatment centres within the period.

States worst hit by the menace include Gombe, Bauchi, Taraba, Adamawa, Plateau, Borno, Nasarawa and Benue.

Nandul Durfa, Managing Director, Echitab Study Ltd Guarantee, the outfit handling the collection and distribution of Echitab Anti-Snake Venom (ASV), from their production centres in United Kingdom and Costa Rica, says that the situation has been particularly bad this year because of a paucity of the ASV.

“As at January, we had less than 200 vials left for the whole country. The report we get from the snakebite treatment centres is mind blogging, but there isn’t much we can do,’’ a hapless Mr Durfa told journalists in Jos recently.

He said that his outfit was expecting the next supply of 2,000 vials from Micropharm Ltd in Wales, UK, and another consignment from ICP University in Costa Rica, on April 22.

“Clearly, the nation is in trouble at this peak period of snakebite. The quantity in the store has proved too little to meet the demand. The situation is frightening.

“Already, the snakebite treatment centre at the General Hospital, Kaltungo, receives an average of 16 cases a day. That centre received more than 3,086 cases last year. The situation is even worse at the Zamko medical centre,’’ he said.

He regretted that not much attention was being paid to victims of snakebites, and blamed that on a claim that the victims of snakebite were mostly the poor people.

“Everyone should be interested in assisting victims of snakebites because those affected are mostly the productive group – the farmers, miners, hunters, youths and herdsmen – responsible for our food, milk, meat and other critical areas of the economy,’’ he posited.

But, with more Nigerians dying as a result of snakebite, analysts have continued to wonder why the shortage of the ASV has persisted over the years. They particularly wonder why Nigeria had yet to start producing the facility locally so as to make it readily available and affordable.

Mr Durfa says that the ASV is always in short supply because of the process involved in producing and ferrying it to Nigeria.

According to him, ASV comes in two forms – EchiTAB Plus ICP polyvalent, produced at the Instituto Clodomiro Picado, University of Costa Rica, which treats bites from all venomous snakes in Nigeria, and EchiTAB G, produced by Micropharm Ltd, United Kingdom, solely for carpet vipers, the commonest snakes in Nigeria.

Mr Durfa says that tedious processes, lasting more than three months, are involved in producing and importing the ASV.

“Normally, we take the live snakes to Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine where they are killed and their venom extracted and sent to the manufacturing sites in Wales and Costa Rica.

The drugs are produced there and brought to Nigeria.

“Aside the transport, the weather is different; we must ensure that the snakes are kept in a regulated temperature similar to what they are used to, in Nigeria, so that they will not die.

“If we produced at home, we shall ward off the heavy amounts paid in foreign exchange to technicians in the UK, because salaries are lower here,” he said.

Mr Durfa explained that local production of ASV would be “very easy” in Nigeria because the consultants had expressed their readiness to transfer the technology to the country.

“The consultants are willing to transfer the technology and also train local personnel to handle the processes. Nigeria must take full advantage of this kindness,” he stated.

He said that former President Olusegun Obasanjo approved the local manufacturing of the ASV in 2006, but regretted that nothing came of it.

“Obasanjo approved a production cost of N2 billion and suggested that the money be sourced from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) fund; sadly, no money was made available for the project.”

Mr Durfa further explained that EchiTAB ASV, whose name is sourced from Echis ocellatus – the biological name for carpet viper – with TAB referring to Therapeutic Anti-Bodies, had three variants including EchiTAB G for carpet vipers responsible for 97 per cent cases of snake bites in Nigeria, and EchiTAB Plus for carpet viper, Puff Adder and Black Cobra venom.

He traced the ASV’s production to 1991, when Prof. Ransome Kuti, then health minister, sought the assistance of two UK Professors – David Warrel of Oxford University and David Theakston of Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.

“There was an acute shortage of ASV then, and the minister contacted the duo.

“The production processes went through various levels of screening and 11 clinical purification trials before the drugs were certified and registered by NAFDAC.

“The clinical trials were carried out in Kaltungo General Hospital, Gombe State, Zamko Comprehensive Health Centre, Langtang and Jos University Teaching Hospital,” he recalled.

He advised the government to pay special attention to local production of the drug because snake bites affect mostly the productive group, and regretted that many had continued to die from a menace that could be effectively tackled.

Mr Durfa suggested that the federal government could establish a factory to manufacture the drug using a Public-Private- Partnership (PPP), arrangement.

“The best arrangement is the PPP because government policies are usually unstable. One government can start a project that its successor may discard. That will take us back to square one.

“But if private hands are involved, continuity will be guaranteed,” he argued.

Durfa declared that snake bite was a menace that must be taken seriously because it was worse than Ebola, monkeypox and even HIV/AIDS.

“It happens mostly to the rural dwellers who stabilise the economy by farming. We cannot abandon them to face the consequences of heeding government’s call to return to the farm because that will not be good for the economy,” he said.

While reaffirming that the only way to make ASV readily available and affordable at all times, was for Nigeria to begin local production of the drug, he expressed dismay that Nigeria was still depending on foreign countries for ASV to neutralise poison from very common snakes like viper, cobra and puff adder.

“The only time we can have enough ASV to meet our rising demand is when we produce it locally. That is the only time we can determine our fate.

“The partners are ready and willing to transfer the technology for the production of the ASV, but Nigeria has not been forthcoming,’’ he lamented.

He said that the producing processes were always delayed because the producing centres have specific periods allocated to manufacturing the Nigerian variant of the ASV.

“No matter how pressed we are, we must wait for that period. The only way to make the drug readily available and cheap is to produce locally,’’ he said.

Abubakar Bala, the Snakebite Treatment Officer at the Kaltungo General Hospital, Gombe, equally presented a gory picture of the helpless situation and urged the federal government to take urgent measures to begin the local production of the ASV.

“The persistent shortage of ASV has reached a crisis level. Very often, we have had to watch helplessly, while patients gasp for breath. We cannot continue like this.

“It is a critical situation but we are helpless. We want the government to treat the issue as an emergency and a necessity. Government should equate the necessity of ASV with having an army, customs, police and other security agencies.

“The drug should be treated as a security issue. Every developing country should have its anti-snake venom manufacturing company.

“The other option is to have a reliable supply channel, with government subsidising the cost to avoid a major crisis like the types we suffer very often in Nigeria; in truth, we find it difficult and embarrassing to explain such situations to our patients.”

He advised the government to look for a long term solution to the scarcity by collaborating with private producers to manufacture the drug locally, via a technology transfer arrangement with Echitab producers in Costa Rica and the United Kingdom.

Titus Dajel, Medical Superintendent, Zamko Comprehensive Medical Centre, spoke in the same vein.

“There are many victims of snakebites, but the ASV is always in short supply.

“Government must act fast because traditional healers have taken advantage of the situation to extort monies from victims, with a promise to heal them.

“What the herbalists are doing is trial and error. Most victims bleed in the brain because the venom is vicious. Traditional healers cannot tackle that because they concentrate on healing the wound,” he explained.

Mr Dajel urged the federal government to treat snake bite as a national emergency and take urgent steps to make the anti-snake venom available.

“Importing is very dangerous, especially in view of the rising cost of the dollar. We must look into the possibility of domesticating the production of the drug to avoid constant crisis,” he said.

Tim Golu, whose Pankshin/Kanam/Kanke constituency in Plateau, is heavily hit by the snakebite menace, says he is “very uncomfortable’’ with the constant paucity of the ASV, adding that the situation had cost many lives “in the past few weeks’’.

“We have lost many people in the past few weeks. Right now, we have several cases in Kanke, my village,’’ he said.

Golu regretted that fake drugs were being sold to desperate victims, causing more deaths and deformities, and appealed to the federal, states and local governments to intervene by committing funds for the purchase of ASV.

The legislator said that he had initiated a bill for the establishment of a National Centre for Research and Production of Snake Vaccines, and expressed optimism that the bill would soon be passed into law to offer relief to snakebite victims in the country.

But Adamu Atiku, a specialist in human medicine, says that the first step to establishing a factory for the local production of ASV must start with the federal government declaring snakebites as a national emergency in view of its prevalence.

“When government does that, it will give special attention to the menace and adopt measures to curb it. One of such measures will naturally include the local production of ASV.

“If the federal government demonstrates the political will to establish an ASV producing outfit, the National Assembly will be compelled to see the need for a special vote for that special project,’’ he stated.

With the government paying more attention to the agricultural and mining sectors so as to diversify the economy, analysts say that Nigeria cannot afford to ignore a major menace associated with the two industries – rising prevalence of snake bites.

They particularly note that the victims of the reptiles are active members of the society on the fields to actualise that goal, and urge government to urgently begin the local production of ASV to reduce its cost and ensure steady supply, so as to end the vicious cycle of snakebite deaths that had become a daily routine in the country.

This article was published on March 17, 2019 by Ephraims Sheyin for Premium Times. You can find the original post here.

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bluebrightly · 5 years

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Yes, it’s word play, but seriously, the unseasonably cold weather here in the Pacific northwest seems thoroughly unreasonable, to me at least. (We could talk about the futility of pairing reason with weather, but that would be another conversation). Seattle’s airport, Sea-Tac, marked its snowiest February on record before we were even half way through the month. The airport might get its coldest February on record, too. We’ve been locked into a nasty pattern of snow and cold for most of the month now, with more snow possible this week.

Winter weather in this part of the world normally consists of a tedious parade of gray days with plenty of drizzly rain and temperatures hovering around the mid 40’s F (7 C). We don’t have a lot of below-freezing days, and when it snows, it usually melts away in a day or two. Usually. But “usually” is just a memory, now that we’re stuck in this unreasonably unseasonable February.

Combine at least six inches of snow on barely plowed roads, temperatures consistently at or below freezing, and a declared state of emergency and you’ve got the perfect storm of difficult winter weather for our area. Then there were the cancelled flights, schools closed for days, impassable highways…we just don’t do snow that well. In these conditions a lovely walk outdoors has become a rare treat. I hadn’t realized until now that I’ve become spoiled by the region’s normally mild weather and the easy access to extraordinary natural habitats.

Of course, what we’re experiencing is nothing compared to many places in the US, Canada, and other places where snow is serious business and cold lasts all winter long. When I lived in New York I was used to shoveling out my car and slipping and sliding down the sidewalks. Since moving here though, I’ve acclimated to a different reality and I’m just not used to real winter anymore. Imagine my distress when for a week, my go-to coffee shop either didn’t open at all or closed early. During the worst of it, when Seattle suffered through its “Snopocalypse” I had my own crisis, i.e. “OMG where am I going to get my espresso?”

Lest I sound unreasonable, I don’t expect any sympathy, especially from my hardy friends in colder places. This is actually more about a sense of wonder that our blue, spinning earth continues to bring us so many surprises. May it always be so, and may nature always have the upper hand.

***

It all began innocently enough with a light, rather picturesque coating of snow on the third of February. At home, perfect little bird tracks in the snow and tiny ice balls in the nets protecting the fruit trees were a delightful novelty. The roads weren’t bad that day. Even the dirt road to Cranberry Lake was navigable, so I set out on a cold, careful walk in the woods. The forest was enchanting that afternoon, but my fingers got numb very quickly. I was grateful I had a warm home to return to.

1. A dusting of snow at Cranberry Lake.

2. Sword fern plants bowed down under coats of mealy-looking, icy snow in a dark corner of the woods.

3. The birds were busy, leaving a maze of tracks in the thin layer of snow under the feeders. I singled out one little hop for a black and white.

4. An enclosure to protect young fruit trees against deer was dotted with balls of ice.

The next day it was bitter cold and the roads were icy. I took pictures indoors, photographed a deer through the window, and caught up on things at home.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Soon the roads improved and the sun came out, but it was still very cold. I drove to a local park one day, hoping the road around it was passable. The boat dock sustained storm damage but – Yes! – the road was open. I drove happily through the woods at the proscribed 10 mph speed limit, stopping to photograph a twisted Maritime juniper tree. After 20 minutes in the cold I retreated back to the parking lot. Hearing the vibration of blasting music coming from a car, I muttered curses under my breath. Then I saw two young women sitting in their car, watching the sunset, and they seemed to be having a great time. Suddenly I realized the music was from the Bach Cello Suites! My frown turned to a smile. What prompted them to choose Bach instead of a hit from this week’s Top 100? I don’t know, and maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised by their choice. I gave them a thumbs up and a big smile. What a nice send-off to that icy-cold day.

6. Looking up into the dead branches of a Maritime juniper tree. Imagine standing under this noble tree while listening to a Bach Cello Suite.

7. The svelte mid-section of another maritime juniper tree.

8. As the sun set that day it left an orange glow behind the Olympic Mountains, 60 miles away.

A few days later there was another round of snow, this time in the form of big, wet flakes falling softly overnight, leaving clumps of the cottony stuff everywhere. It was still snowing that morning but I set out for the coffee shop anyway, creeping along on clean white roads. Hardly anyone was out. After getting coffee I drove around March Point and tried to photograph the snow falling but there was little light to work with, and once again my fingers numbed in minutes. Back at home, I noticed our little creek was an important source of fresh water for puffy little Dark-eyed Junco’s that were endlessly flitting back and forth between feeder and stream.

9. This little creek is dry as a bone in summer.

10. Cattails wore top hats of snow over their fluffy seed heads on March Point.

11. Leaning stakes probably mark old shipping lanes at March Point, where oil refineries share space with herds of cattle and a Great blue heron rookery.

12. The snow thickened over Fidalgo Bay, smudging the horizon.

Three days later, more snow fell….is this getting repetitive? You bet it is! I prowled around the yard again….

13. A Sword fern seems to shrivel and shiver in the cold. These hardy, evergreen ferns should be OK except for clumps damaged by the weight of wet snow. I believe those clumps will gradually recoup as new fronds emerge to replace the ones that broke under the snow.

14. How long before these petite clumps of snow fall to the ground?

After that snowstorm, another bout of cabin fever hit me so I made my way to Deception Pass State Park at a snail’s pace. The parking lot hadn’t been plowed but since it’s on a busy inter-island thoroughfare (and maybe because there are restrooms there), vehicles had been driving into the lot, leaving deep tracks in the slushy snow. I steered my little car along the tracks, stopped, and got out. The staircase under the bridge had been trampled just enough – I could walk down the stairs while clutching the railing (and feeling thankful for waterproof boots). Under the bridge is a network of trails that traces the forested edges of Deception Pass. Only a dusting of snow had filtered down through the thick canopy of trees there. The path was easy to follow but it was dark and cold in the woods. Again, I didn’t last long but just being in the woods, gratefully breathing fresh air, was a treat. A tiny mouse raced past me, oblivious to my presence. He pawed at the snow, searching for food, and then ran off into the dark woods. I thought about my warm home….

15. The forest is dark on a perimeter trail at Deception Pass State Park.

16. Last year’s Ocean Spray flower (Holodiscus discolor) drips with melting ice and snow.

17. The water racing through the pass that day was a cheerful turquoise color, and the view through the tall trees across to Pass Island was delightful.

18. The leathery, evergreen leaves of Salal (Gaultheria shallon) cheer up the forest floor in winter. The orange leaves are dead Redcedar leaves from the drought we had last summer. All the snow we’re getting now will help prevent drought in the months ahead.

19. The mouse. I enlarged and lightened the photo as much as I could, and it’s still hard to see him…that mouse was tiny!

Steps away from the parking lot is the Deception Pass bridge, which has a pedestrian walkway. It’s usually a spectacular view from the bridge, high over the rushing water, but on that day the view was reduced by moisture still hanging in the air. Far out on the water I could barely make out some cormorants, gulls, a few seals, and one sea lion – all working hard for their living.

20. Snow on the rocks below the bridge at Deception Pass.

21. North Beach from the Deception Pass bridge. No one walks the beach on this snowy day.

22. A phone photo taken on the road home that day.

One day I ventured off the island to Mount Vernon, a small city with a good food cooperative where I like to shop. On the way I passed acres of fallow, snowy fields. The sun is bright out on Skagit Flats. The orderly rows of crops with their striped furrows converging on the horizon was pleasing to see.

23. A bus for migrant workers sits in the field, waiting for Spring. It looks like this is one of Skagit Valley’s famous tulip fields – you can see them coming up. The snow won’t bother them a bit.

24. Afternoon sun throws a maze of shadows on a farm building.

The snow has melted a little now, but it’s still below freezing at night and not much above freezing during the day. Friday I took a walk at Bowman Bay, part of Deception Pass State Park. I lingered on the trail until sunset. The tide was out and a lone Great blue heron was busy foraging in the quietly lapping waves. The sun felt good.

25. A Great blue heron picks its way through the riches of low tide.

***

Unseasonable and Unreasonable Yes, it's word play, but seriously, the unseasonably cold weather here in the Pacific northwest seems thoroughly unreasonable, to me at least.

#Deception Pass State Park #snow #Washington Park #weather

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kansascityhappenings · 6 years

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23 dead in massive California wildfire after 14 bodies recovered

The number of people killed in the Camp Fire in Northern California has risen to 23 with the discovery Saturday of 14 more sets of remains, Butte County Sheriff and Coroner Kory Honea told reporters.

Honea said 10 of the victims were recovered from the fire-ravaged town of Paradise. He said seven people were found in homes, and three were outside. Of the remaining four, two were in cars and two were in houses in other areas.

Saturday brought a break in the fierce winds that have whipped the three major wildfires in California that have destroyed a record number of buildings and displaced more than 300,000 people.

But officials know the gusts will be back Sunday and most evacuation orders remain in place.

“Mother Nature has given us a short reprieve … but we know tomorrow Mother Nature’s gonna turn her fan back on and the winds are going to start blowing,” Ventura County Fire Chief Mark Lorenzen told reporters. He said he cautioned his firefighters and the public not to be lulled by the better weather Saturday.

“Stay vigilant,” he said.

Fire has killed nine people in Northern California and possibly two in Southern California. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Chief John Benedict said the charred remains of two people were found in a car in Malibu, but homicide investigators were still working the case.

Winds could gust as high as 30 to 40 mph on Sunday, officials said. Much of the state hasn’t seen rain in more than a month, according to CNN meteorologists, and the dry vegetation has only served to fuel the fires.

Latest developments

• Burning and growing: The Camp Fire is the largest of the three major fires, swelling to 100,000 acres by Saturday morning, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire. It is the most destructive blaze in the state’s modern history. The Woolsey Fire doubled in size overnight, growing to 70,000 acres. The Hill Fire was at 4,500 acres.

• Trump tweets: President Donald Trump blamed the wildfires on the “gross mismanagement of the forests” in a tweet early Saturday. “Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!” he said. In another tweet sent Saturday he wrote: “Our hearts are with those fighting the fires, the 52,000 who have evacuated, and the families of the 11 who have died. The destruction is catastrophic. God bless them all.”

• Massive evacuations: Fire officials estimate the number of people forced from their homes statewide is more than 300,000; in Los Angeles County it is 170,000.

• Containment: Firefighters are struggling to put down the flames. The Camp Fire is 20% contained, while the Woolsey Fire is just 5% contained. The Hill Fire was 25% contained.

• Destruction: In Northern California, nearly 7,000 structures have been destroyed, including 80% to 90% of the homes in Paradise, north of Sacramento, according to officials. In Los Angeles and Ventura counties, a significant number of homes were destroyed or damaged, fire officials said.

Camp Fire

The Camp Fire has killed at least nine people in Paradise and destroyed 6,453 structures.

The bodies of five people were found in or near a vehicle, and the other four were in or outside a home.

It took just a few hours for the fire to explode in size after breaking out early Thursday morning. Among the communities hit was Paradise, a town about 80 miles north of Sacramento.

Families raced to escape the blaze as it consumed much of the town. Footage captured by evacuees showed flames along roads, scorching trees and devouring houses.

“The flames were whipping and spreading so fast,” Whitney Vaughan said after fleeing her home in Paradise. “It began to jump the road. There wasn’t anywhere to go.”

The town was mostly empty, and the main road littered with downed trees and power lines. Burnt out cars line blackened roadsides, abandoned in the panic and chaos of the evacuations.

“We do intend to rebuild,” Paradise Mayor Jody Jones said. “It’s going to be a process — a lot of hard work, a lot of coming together.

“We want to see Paradise be Paradise again.”

An estimated 52,000 people evacuated in Butte County, where Paradise is located.

Fire officials said three firefighters and some civilians were hurt, but details about their injuries were unknown. About 35 people have been reported missing, authorities said.

Woolsey Fire

More than 200,000 people have fled in Ventura County and in Malibu in Los Angeles County due to the Woolsey Fire, officials said.

Firefighters worked to protect thousands of students and staff sheltering in place Saturday at Pepperdine University as flames started reaching the campus overnight, school officials said.

The fire crossed US 101 a few miles east of Thousand Oaks — the site of Wednesday night’s bar shooting — and was headed south to the Pacific coast in the direction of Malibu Creek State Park and the city of Malibu, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said.

In Malibu, mandatory evacuations were ordered for the entire city of about 12,000 people that’s known for its celebrity beachside homes.

Two people were arrested in looting incidents Friday during the evacuations, according to Ventura County sheriff’s Sgt. Eric Buschow.

The howling Santa Ana winds fueled the Woolsey Fire. These are strong, dry winds that high-pressure systems push from east to west, from the mountains and desert areas down into the Los Angeles area.

Fire officials said the winds had temporarily died down Saturday, giving them a brief opportunity to make progress.

“This is just a lull,” Los Angeles County Fire Chief Daryl Osby said, “so we’re going to take advantage of that and try to get as much line perimeter in as we can with the expectation that we will get more winds tomorrow.”

Another round of Santa Ana winds is forecast to whip the area Sunday through Tuesday, though it may be weaker than Friday’s.

Hill Fire

The Hill Fire is burning near the site of this week’s mass shooting in Thousand Oaks.

“It’s been a brutal, hellish three days for the city of Thousand Oaks,” City Councilwoman Claudia Bill-de la Peña said at a news conference on Saturday.

The fire started Thursday and initially spread quickly, torching 10,000 acres in six hours. But firefighters have made some progress.

Part of the fast-moving blaze was burning into the footprint of a 2013 wildfire, which could slow its spread, chief Lorenzen said.

No houses or businesses have been lost, but a number of RVs and outbuildings have been burned, and a firefighter suffered a minor injury, authorities said.

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2018/11/10/23-dead-in-massive-california-wildfire-after-14-bodies-recovered/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2018/11/11/23-dead-in-massive-california-wildfire-after-14-bodies-recovered/

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newstechreviews · 4 years

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Damon Winter—The New York Times/Redux. A housing development on the edge of undeveloped desert in Cathedral City, Calif., on April 3, 2015, during the state’s punishing drought.

Travis Heying—Wichita Eagle/Tribune News Service/Getty Images. An irrigation pivot sprays water onto a young corn crop in Grant County, Kans., in 2015.

Joe Raedle—Getty Images. The aftermath of Hurricane Michael, which made a devastating landfall as a Category 5 hurricane near Mexico Beach, Fla., in October 2018.

#Blogger

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newstfionline · 4 years

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Headlines

California wildfires burn amid high risk of brutal blazes (AP) Bone-dry vegetation fueled three wildfires near Los Angeles amid warnings Friday that the risk of new blazes erupting was high as temperatures spike and humidity levels drop during a statewide heat wave. A huge forest fire that prompted evacuations north of Los Angeles flared up Friday afternoon, sending up an enormous cloud of smoke as it headed down to the desert floor and the California aqueduct in the Antelope Valley. Fire crews managed to stop its movement there but additional evacuations were ordered for the western Antelope Valley. Firefighters were struggling in steep, rugged terrain amid scorching temperatures. The high hit 100 degrees (38 Celsius) Friday in the area, and the forecast called for continuing hot, dry weather with dangerous fire conditions because of possible gusty winds.

New push on training officers how to stop abuse in own ranks (AP) Despite policies on the books for years that require officers across the United States to stop colleagues from using excessive force, there has been little or no effort to teach officers how to intervene, law enforcement officials and experts say. That’s now changing following the killing of George Floyd, who died after a white Minneapolis police officer held a knee to Floyd’s neck for nearly eight minutes while three colleagues watched. Police departments nationwide are showing new interest in training officers how they should stop, or try to stop, abuse in their own ranks. “I don’t think departments have prepared their officers sufficiently to deal with that sort of situation,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based think tank. “Have we really thought through what that actually means, what’s actually expected of them? ‘Duty to intervene’ has to mean more than words. It has to mean actions.” The duty to intervene is not a new concept. There were calls for requiring officers to stop inappropriate use of force after the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police in 1991 as many officers looked on. Similar calls came after Eric Garner died in 2014 when a New York City officer put him in a chokehold with other officers present. But the culture at many departments may look down at officers who intervene and lead to retaliation against them, and that has been an obstacle to duty to intervene policies, said Jon Blum, a law enforcement consultant and former police officer.

As Colleges Move Classes Online, Families Rebel Against the Cost (NYT) After Southern California’s soaring coronavirus caseload forced Chapman University this month to abruptly abandon plans to reopen its campus and shift to an autumn of all-remote instruction, the school promised that students would still get a “robust Chapman experience.” “What about a robust refund?” Christopher Moore, a spring graduate, retorted on Facebook. A parent chimed in. “We are paying a lot of money for tuition, and our students are not getting what we paid for,” wrote Shannon Carducci, whose youngest child, Ally, is a sophomore at Chapman, in Orange County, where the cost of attendance averages $65,000 a year. A rebellion against the high cost of a bachelor’s degree, already brewing around the nation before the coronavirus, has gathered fresh momentum as campuses have strained to operate in the pandemic. Incensed at paying face-to-face prices for education that is increasingly online, students and their parents are demanding tuition rebates, increased financial aid, reduced fees and leaves of absences to compensate for what they feel will be a diminished college experience.

The pandemic has forced many Chinese students to rethink dreams of a U.S. diploma (Washington Post) For Chinese students bound for the United States, fall 2020 looks nothing like what they expected. Some returning students are stranded in the United States. Incoming students are stuck in China. Nobody knows what will happen in September. Nobody can believe this is happening at all. That uncertainty is changing lives and trajectories. It will reshape American education, potentially making U.S. institutions less attractive. And it may diminish what remains of the United States’ soft power in China as ties between the world’s two largest economies hit fresh lows. Chinese students have much on the line: Years of work, family sacrifice, the chance to study in an environment where they can for the most part browse, speak and write as they please. U.S. schools do, too. For more than a decade, Chinese students have been one of the biggest stories in American higher education. Between 2009 and 2019 Chinese students in the United States nearly tripled, according to data from the Institute for International Education. There were more than 360,000 Chinese students in the United States in the 2018-2019 academic year, making up about a third of international students, the IIE reported. According to a Department of Commerce estimate, these students put $15 billion into the U.S. economy in 2018.

Venezuelans brave open sea on tubes, fishing for survival (AP) The biggest fear is a fishhook puncturing the inner tube that keeps them afloat far from shore. Then come sharks grabbing their catch and maybe biting their legs. And the current that threatens to pull them out to sea. A small but growing number of people in the coastal town of La Guaira, just a few minutes from the capital of Caracas, have turned to the sea for substance since the COVID-19 pandemic has shut down the Caribbean nation’s already miserable economy. “If we had steady work, we wouldn’t risk our lives out there,” said Juan Carlos Almeida, who is accompanied by his fishing partner Eric Méndez. “We’re bricklayers, but there’s no construction.” Others who paddle out in small groups up to 5 miles (8 kilometers) from shore lost jobs in restaurants or shops catering to beachgoers. All the beaches are closed, but the workers still have hungry children at home in their hillside barrios. “If we don’t help ourselves and don’t go to work, who’s going to feed us?” said the 35-year-old Almeida. “Nobody.” Despite the risks, the fishermen say being at sea for several hours brings a calm. They’re far from the struggles of life on land — the growing coronavirus, economic crisis, hungry children and no work. On a good day they pull in enough fish to feed their families and share some with neighbors for a week. The rest they sell for a few dollars.

Cash Handouts Boost Bolsonaro’s Popularity Despite Virus Toll (Bloomberg) The approval rating of Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro jumped to the highest level since the start of his term amid increased government spending to combat the coronavirus, a public opinion poll showed. The survey comes as Bolsonaro��s administration spends billions of dollars on items including popular stipends for informal workers to mitigate one of the world’s worst coronavirus outbreaks. Economists have credited government stimulus for sustaining some demand and preventing an even larger economic recession this year. Meanwhile, the president has also attempted to ease political tensions with the legislature and judiciary.

Virus flareups in Europe lead to club closings, mask orders (AP) New flareups of COVID-19 are disrupting the peak summer vacation season across much of Europe, where authorities in some countries are reimposing restrictions on travelers, closing nightclubs again, banning fireworks displays and expanding mask orders even in chic resort areas. The surges have spread alarm across Europe, which suffered mightily during the spring but appeared in recent months to have largely tamed the coronavirus in ways that the U.S., with its vaunted scientific prowess and the extra time to prepare, cannot seem to manage. The continent’s hardest-hit countries, Britain, Italy, France and Spain, have recorded about 140,000 deaths in all. In addition to clubs and alcohol-fueled street parties, large family gatherings—usually abounding with hugs and kisses—have been cited as a source of new outbreaks in several European countries. Some of the toughest new measures were announced in Spain, which has recorded almost 50,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the past 14 days. Health Minister Salvador Illa, after an emergency meeting with regional leaders, said nightclubs nationwide were ordered to close. Visits to nursing homes will be limited to one person a day for each resident for only one hour.

Taking Hard Line, Greece Turns Back Migrants by Abandoning Them at Sea (NYT) The Greek government has secretly expelled more than 1,000 refugees from Europe’s borders in recent months, sailing many of them to the edge of Greek territorial waters and then abandoning them in inflatable and sometimes overburdened life rafts. Greeks were once far more understanding of the plight of migrants. But many have grown frustrated and hostile after a half-decade in which other European countries offered Greece only modest assistance as tens of thousands of asylum seekers languished in squalid camps on overburdened Greek islands. Since the election last year of a new conservative government under Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Greece has taken a far harder line against the migrants—often refugees from the war in Syria—who push off Turkish shores for Europe. The harsher approach comes as tensions have mounted with Turkey, itself burdened with 3.6 million refugees from the Syrian war, far more than any other nation. Greece believes that Turkey has tried to weaponize the migrants to increase pressure on Europe for aid and assistance in the Syrian War. But it has also added pressure on Greece at a time when the two nations and others spar over contested gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean.

Workers Join Belarus Protests, as Leader’s Base Turns Against Him (NYT) The popular uprising against President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus entered a new phase on Friday as protests spread at the state-run factories at the core of his political base. In one of the most dramatic demonstrations, hundreds of workers gathered at the entrance to the Minsk Tractor Works, a Soviet-era industrial giant whose farming machinery is one of Belarus’s best-known brands. They presented an ultimatum to management: Unless a new and fair election is called, they will go on strike. Footage of similar protests by transit workers and autoworkers, at an oil refinery, and at factories making synthetic fabric, fertilizer and trucks coursed through social media. The new flash of discontent at state-owned companies—making it clear that the opposition to Mr. Lukashenko has spread far beyond the urban middle class—appeared to have been driven by accounts of widespread police violence against protesters that spread online on Thursday. “These people were worse than the Nazis,” said Anatoly I. Los, 58, head of the electroplating workshop at the Minsk Tractor Works. “We cannot live like this anymore.”

Thailand Elite Card aims to lure expats seeking virus haven (Bangkok Post) Thailand’s “pay to stay” visa programme for wealthy foreigners is seeing an expansion opportunity, with visions of the country becoming a haven for expats thanks to its relative success in containing the coronavirus. The Thailand Elite Card is a residential-visa programme for affluent expats, investors and long-stay groups. Membership, which ranges from 500,000 baht to 2 million baht, provides for a renewable five-year visa. Expats already living in the country on other types of visas have accounted for 70% of subscriptions this year, having concluded that it’s better than dealing with one-year work, retirement or marriage permits that often require multiple trips to government offices, lawyers and fixed-deposits in local banks.

75 years later, can Asia shake off shackles of the past? (AP) Northeast Asia doesn’t so much repeat history as drag it along like an anchor. The bombs stopped falling 75 years ago, but it is entirely possible—crucial even, some argue—to view the region’s world-beating economies, its massive cultural and political reach and its bitter trade, territory and history disputes through a single prism: World War II and Japan’s aggression in the Pacific. Even as Northeast Asia’s tangle of interlinking economic and political webs grows denser by the day, the potential for an unraveling may loom as large now as at any time since 1945. Japan in 2020 is unrecognizable to the fascist military machine that once rolled across Asia. Its military is now legally constrained as a “self-defense force.” Its constitution demands peaceful cooperation with the world. Postwar Japan has pumped trillions of yen (tens of billions of dollars) into regional development. So how does this peaceful, generous, stable nation still enrage so many? Why do the crimes of long-dead Japanese politicians and soldiers still loom so large in its neighbors’ eyes? For many Koreans and Chinese, there’s a dogged perception, long encouraged by their national leaders, that Japan has failed to fully address past atrocities, including the sexual enslavement of Asian women by Japanese troops, the forced labor of Asian men in Japanese factories and mines, and a host of other unresolved insults lingering from Japan’s brutal early 20th century push for regional dominance. Many in Japan, meanwhile, are frustrated that repeated and explicit high-level apologies for wartime actions—not to mention the huge amounts of aid sent to former enemies over the years—have seen so little goodwill in return.

#headlines #news

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