By Terry Castleman 10 May 2023 (Los Angeles Times) – After a series of atmospheric rivers and cold weather hit California, this year’s snowpack was one of the biggest in history. “This year’s result will go down as one of the largest snowpack years on record in California,” Sean de Guzman, manager of the Department of Water Resources’ snow surveys, said […]
KARBALA, Iraq, 9 May 2023 (AFP) – Mr Haydar Mohamed once grew wheat and barley, but Iraq’s relentless drought has forced him off the land and into the city where he now works in construction and drives a taxi. “The transition is difficult,” said Mr Mohamed, 42, who abandoned village life several years ago for […]
By Sara Moniuszko and Danya Bacchus 16 May 2023 (CBS News) – Despite years of efforts to reduce health disparities, a new study is calling attention to the drastic differences in mortality that continue to take a toll among Black Americans. Researchers found the Black population in the United States experienced more than 1.63 million excess […]
By Dan Witters 17 May 2023 WASHINGTON, D.C. (Gallup) – The percentage of U.S. adults who report having been diagnosed with depression at some point in their lifetime has reached 29.0%, nearly 10 percentage points higher than in 2015. The percentage of Americans who currently have or are being treated for depression has also increased, […]
3 May 2023 (RSF) – According to the 2023 World Press Freedom Index – which evaluates the environment for journalism in 180 countries and territories and is published on World Press Freedom Day (3 May) – the situation is “very serious” in 31 countries, “difficult” in 42, “problematic” in 55, and “good” or “satisfactory” in 52 countries. In […]
By Rachel Chason and Chloe Sharrock 27 April 2023 KAGBANI, Guinea (The Washington Post) – One of the poorest countries on Earth has become a crucial player in the world’s green-energy transition. Guinea, a West African nation of more than 13 million people, is home to the world’s biggest reserves of bauxite — a reddish-brown […]
By Jess Thomson 5 May 2023 (Newsweek) – The long-dried basin of Lake Tulare in California has rapidly refilled in the wake of intense rainfall and snowmelt. The speed and scale of the southern San Joaquin Valley lake’s return can be seen in images taken from space by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on NASA‘s Landsat […]
Geneva, 21 April 2023 (WMO) – From mountain peaks to ocean depths, climate change continued its advance in 2022, according to the annual report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Droughts, floods, and heatwaves affected communities on every continent and cost many billions of dollars. Antarctic sea ice fell to its lowest extent on record […]
By Ivana Kottasová 18 April 2023 (CNN) – Scientists have found thriving communities of coastal creatures, including tiny crabs and anemones, living thousands of miles from their original home on plastic debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – a 620,000 square mile swirl of trash in the ocean between California and Hawaii. In a new study published in the Nature […]
By David Danelski 17 April 2023 (UCR) – Poverty has long been linked to shorter lives. But just how many deaths in the United States are associated with poverty? The number has been elusive – until now. A University of California, Riverside, (UCR) paper published Monday, 17 April 2023, in the Journal of the American […]
