Countries where the most people are killed defending the environment

Colombian natives and activists during a protest in Bogotá, Colombia, on 23 August 2019. Photo: RAUL ARBOLEDA / AFP / Getty Images

October 21, 2022

Countries where the most people are killed defending the environment

By Angelo Young 15 October 2022 (24/7 Wall St.) – As the world comes to the realization of the profound damages human beings are causing to natural environments worldwide, groups across the globe have long been trying to protect the local land and environment. In some places, these struggles are not always peaceful, and last […]

Excess U.S. death rates by county vaccination rate relative to 2019, before and after vaccine availability. The graph shows average excess death rates for Republicans and Democrats in each county for Covid Pre-Vaccine (April 2020 to March 2021) and Covid Post-Vaccine (April 2021-December 2021). The circles are each county, and diamonds are binned means for each party. The curves are quadratic fits using least squares. Graphic: Wallace, et al., 2022

October 9, 2022

Anti-vaccine rhetoric in U.S. caused elevated Republican mortality from COVID – “Overall, the excess death rate for Republicans was 76 percent higher than the excess death rate for Democrats”

By Donald Moynihan 7 October 2022 (Slate) – For at least a year now, there has been strong but largely circumstantial evidence that right-wing anti-vaccine rhetoric was having deadly consequences in the United States. Despite early wide-scale access to COVID-19 vaccines, the U.S. has outstripped its peer countries when it comes to the all-important measure of mortality known as “excess […]

Distance women must travel to receive abortion services after anti-abortion trigger laws go into effect, 24 June 2022. At the start of June 2022, nearly all women in America lived within a few hours’ drive of an abortion clinic. But with Roe v. Wade overturned, and the constitutional right to an abortion ended, clinics are quickly closing in huge swaths of the country. a quarter of U.S. women of reproductive age could have to travel more than 200 miles to obtain a legal abortion. Under the farthest-reaching scenarios, that number could rise to nearly half. Graphic: The New York Times

June 25, 2022

Digital surveillance in a nation of criminalized healthcare – Here’s a list of online healthcare resources as access to abortion in U.S. plummets

25 June 2022 (Desdemona Despair) – In the new era of criminalized health care, law enforcement agencies that are investigating abortion-related cases can use an American’s location data, messages, and search histories as evidence against them. Anybody who comes in contact with a pregnant woman in the U.S. potentially faces prosecution if an abortion-related case […]

The ashes of burnt grain can be seen in a grain silo in the town of Sivers’k, Donbas in May 2022. Photo: Alex Chan / SOPA Images / Sipa USA / Reuters

June 3, 2022

Russia’s war on global food security – Russia’s blockade of Ukraine grain exports may cause starvation of 47 million people – “It will result in famine and destabilization and mass migration around the world”

By Anders Åslund 1 June 2022 (Atlantic Council) – Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine is also a war on global food security. In February 2022, Russia blockaded all of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, through which all its bulk exports were being shipped. The ports remain closed, with no opening in sight. David Beasley, […]

Elena Mendoza, 18, grieves in front of a cross honoring her cousin, Amerie Jo Garza, one of the victims killed in the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Thursday, 26 May 2022. Photo: Jae C. Hong / AP Photo

May 27, 2022

Gun violence now Number 1 cause of death for U.S. children – “The fact that this is the leading cause of death among kids is obscene”

By Mary Kekatos 25 May 2022 (ABC News) – The mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, Tuesday has put the spotlight back on recent data showing that firearm injuries are the No. 1 cause of death among children and adolescents in the United States. A total of 19 children, mainly third and fourth […]

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro arrives at a resort hotel to meet with Elon Musk in Porto Feliz, Brazil, Friday, 20 May 2022. The Telsa and SpaceX chief executive officer tweeted that he was in Brazil to help bring Internet service to rural schools in the Amazon and to help monitor the Amazon environmentally. Photo: Andre Penner / AP Photo

May 22, 2022

Elon Musk visits Brazil’s Bolsonaro to discuss Amazon plans

By Diane Jeantet 20 May 2022 RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – Tesla and SpaceX chief executive officer Elon Musk met with Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro on Friday to discuss connectivity and other projects in the Amazon rainforest. The meeting, held in a luxurious resort in Sao Paulo state, was organized by Communications Minister Fábio Faria, who has […]

Press freedom situation in 180 countries and territories, 2013-2022. Graphic: Reporters Sans Frontières

May 3, 2022

RSF’s 2022 World Press Freedom Index: a new era of polarisation – Journalism situation classified “very bad” in record number of 28 countries

2 May 2022 (RSF) – The 20th World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reveals a two-fold increase in polarisation amplified by information chaos – that is, media polarisation fuelling divisions within countries, as well as polarisation between countries at the international level. Читать на русском / Read in Russian The 2022 […]

Evolution of democracy by category, 2008-2021. The EIU Democracy Index score ranges from 0 to 10, with 10 being best. this chart shows what has happened to the average global score across the five categories of the index between 2008 — before the global financial crisis — and 2021. The categories that have recorded the biggest deterioration in global terms are civil liberties (-1.00 on a 0-10 scale) and electoral process and pluralism (-0.47). Suggesting a possible correlation, functioning of government and political culture both recorded a very similar decline in their average global scores (-0.38 and -0.37 respectively). Graphic: EIU

May 3, 2022

EIU Democracy Index reached all-time low in 2021 – Fewer than half (45.7 percent) of the world’s people now live in a democracy of some sort – “Another bad year for democracy”

By Chauncey Devega 2 May 2022 (Salon) – Global democracy is sick. In the United States, Donald Trump’s supporters in the Republican Party continue to steamroll the Democrats and other pro-democracy forces. To say that the latter have for the most part been hapless, uncoordinated and paralyzed by denial is not overstating the case. Political scientists and […]

A body of a woman, who according to residents was executed by Russian army soldiers, lies on the street, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Bucha, in the region of Kyiv, Ukraine, 2 April 2022. Photo: Zohra Bensemra / REUTERS

April 3, 2022

Human Rights Watch report on atrocities in Russia-controlled areas of Ukraine: Summary executions, rape, and other grave abuses – “The cases we documented amount to unspeakable, deliberate cruelty and violence against Ukrainian civilians”

3 April 2022 (Warsaw) – Human Rights Watch has documented several cases of Russian military forces committing laws-of-war violations against civilians in occupied areas of the Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and Kyiv regions of Ukraine. These include a case of repeated rape; two cases of summary execution, one of six men, the other of one man; and other cases of […]

Aerial view of an area in the Amazon deforested for the expansion of livestock, in Lábrea, Amazonas state. The Amazon is still covered in smoke and torn by criminal and unrestrained destruction, according to overflights produced by the Amazon in Flames Alliance, organized by Amazon Watch, Greenpeace Brazil and the Brazilian Climate Observatory. The expedition took place between September 13th and 17th 2021, in the cities of Porto Velho (Rondônia state) and Lábrea (southern Amazonas state). Photo: Victor Moriyama / Amazônia em Chamas / Greenpeace

March 15, 2022

Brazil detects record Amazon deforestation in January and February 2022 – Forest destruction rate in 2021 was highest in ten years

By David Biller 11 March 2022 RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – Detected deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon reached a record high for the month of February following a similar record the prior month. Satellite alerts of deforestation in February corresponded to 199 square kilometers (77 square miles), the highest indicator for that month in seven […]