By Somini Sengupta and Weiyi Cai 6 August 2019 BENGALURU, India (The New York Times) – Countries that are home to one-fourth of Earth’s population face an increasingly urgent risk: The prospect of running out of water. From India to Iran to Botswana, 17 countries around the world are currently under extremely high water stress, […]
By Dale Kasler, Ryan Sabalow, and Phillip Reese 18 July 2019 (The Sacramento Bee) – Jennifer Burt knows she lives in a fire-prone community. That’s why she’s done everything she can to fire-proof her home in Meadow Vista, in the bushy, densely wooded Placer County foothills, even installing a sprinkler system on the roof. Yet […]
By Kasha Patel 26 July 2019 (NASA) – Water is everywhere on Earth, and it is a unique molecule that is critical for life. Where, when, and how it moves—the water cycle—is equally critical. Water falls over Earth’s surface as rain, snow, or ice. From there, it evaporates and returns to the atmosphere; seeps into […]
By Scott Higham, Sari Horwitz, and Steven Rich 16 July 2019 (The Washington Post) – America’s largest drug companies saturated the country with 76 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pain pills from 2006 through 2012 as the nation’s deadliest drug epidemic spun out of control, according to previously undisclosed company data released as part of the […]
By Kevin Krajick 15 July 2019 (Columbia University) – Against a backdrop of long-term rises in temperature in recent decades, California has seen ever higher spikes in seasonal wildfires, and, in the last two years, a string of disastrous, record-setting blazes. This has led scientists, politicians and media to ponder: what role might warming climate be […]
By Scott Waldman 8 July 2019 (Science) – A March news release from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) touted a new study that could be useful for infrastructure planning along the California coastline. At least that’s how President Donald Trump’s administration conveyed it. The news release hardly stood out. It focused on the methodology of […]
By Gerald Porter Jr. and Jeremy Hodges 22 June 2019 (Bloomberg) – The Kariba Dam has towered over one of Africa’s mightiest rivers for 60 years, forming the world’s largest reservoir and providing reliable electricity to Zambia and Zimbabwe. But as drought grips the region, flow on the Zambezi river has dwindled to a third of what […]
By Del Quentin Wilber 14 June 2019 (Los Angeles Times) – Soon after he took over as medical director of the Urgent Care & Surgery Center in eastern Tennessee in 2012, Dr. Marc Valley realized he was supervising illegal drug dealers in lab coats. Platoons of patients socialized in the parking lot, none seemingly afflicted […]
By Xeni Jardin 21 June 2019 (BoingBoing) – Here are the 10 U.S. cities where ICE, CBP, DHS, and other agencies plan to execute mass raids. Immigration agents will target Miami, Atlanta, Chicago, Baltimore, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York City, and San Francisco this weekend, congressional and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sources […]
By Bob Henson 20 June 2019 (Weather Underground) – The summer solstice arrives on Friday, 21 June 2019, and so does the second year of “warming stripes”. Launched in 2018, this growing campaign builds on a set of imagery developed by University of Reading climate scientist Ed Hawkins: colored stripes that portray a century-plus of global […]
