The Kincade Fire burned through the Soda Rock winery in Healdsburg, California, on Sunday, 27 October 2019, one of at least 79 structures destroyed so far. Photo: Eric Thayer / The New York Times

California enters uncharted territory: Massive blackouts, historically dangerous wind, nearly 200,000 people evacuated – “This is definitely an event that we’re calling historic and extreme”

By Phil Willon, Joe Mozingo, Rong-Gong Lin II, and Maura Dolan 26 October 2019 SAN FRANCISCO (Los Angeles Times) – Northern California braced for a weekend in uncharted territory as Pacific Gas & Electric prepared to shut off power to more than 2 million people as the region faced one of the worst periods of […]

Traffic moves past a gas station during a blackout in Calistoga, California on 24 October 2019. Photo: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg

PG&E warns of largest intentional blackout ever as windstorm approaches – “The upcoming wind event has the potential to be one of the strongest in the last several years”

By David R Baker and Mark Chediak 25 October 2019 (Bloomberg) – PG&E Corp. warned it will shut off power again on Saturday to as many as 2.5 million people as violent winds batter the state — in what will be California’s largest intentional blackout ever. The outages will impact up to 850,000 homes and businesses […]

A car drives through a darkened Montclair Village in Oakland, California, after Pacific Gas & Electric shut down power in October 2019 to prevent wildfires. Photo: Noah Berger / AP

California can expect blackouts for a decade, says PG&E CEO – Power outage in Fall 2019 could cost California economy more than $2 billion

By Richard Gonzales 18 October 2019 (NPR) – The CEO of Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. told California energy regulators that the state will likely see blackouts for another 10 years like the one imposed last week that left as many as 800,000 customers without power. The revelation by corporation CEO Bill Johnson came Friday […]

Map of Zimbabwe showing the Acute Food Insecurity Phase for June 2019 to September 2019 and October 2019 to January 2020. Graphic: FEWS NET

“It’s a nightmare”: Zimbabwe struggles with hyperinflation – Extreme poverty surges to 34 percent as 1 million more added to poor bracket – “People should brace for worse”

By Alois Vinga 18 October 2019 (New Zimbabwe) – Extreme poverty in Zimbabwe has risen to 34 percent, with 1 million more citizens now added to the existing 4.7 million, World Bank (WB) said in a recent Poverty and Equity brief. The global lender said there has been a significant growth in the country’s poverty […]

Flowers grow in new meadows in Western Siberia above the 70th parallel, only 1000 miles away from the North Pole. An expedition organised by Tomsk State University in the summer of 2019 found oases of rich vegetation formed in places of actively thawing permafrost. Russian scientists were surprised to find carpets of herbs and flowers, with daisies, dandelions, polar poppies, horsetail, several types of wormwood, cereals, and even willow growing in Arctic “oases”. Photo: Sergey Loiko / Tomsk State University

Poppies, dandelions, and daisies bloom in never-before-seen Arctic oases

By Olga Gertcyk 16 October 2019 (The Siberian Times) – ‘Blooming’ might be the last word to associate with the Arctic, yet pictures below show meadows bursting with life as brightly-coloured flowers blossom in lush green grass. And while vegetation in khasyreis, basins of drained Arctic lakes, is less of a surprise, researchers discovered ‘bursts […]

Top: firefighters spray water on fire-damaged mobile home at the Journey’s End Mobile Home Park in Santa Rosa, California, 9 October 2017. Bottom: the same mobile home, a year later. “We really didn’t have two years,” said Lisa Frazee, who lost her Santa Rosa home in the Tubbs fire. “We had to get our infrastructure back – the bridges, the roads – before we could even start personally thinking of rebuilding. The cities and counties were inundated with that first. Then we had to get builders and there aren’t enough builders. There aren’t enough laborers.” Photo: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Two years after California wildfires, survivors poised to lose housing funds – Dealing with insurance companies is “the disaster after the disaster”

Bu Vivian Ho 8 October 2019 SAN FRANCISCO (The Guardian) – Two years ago, they lost everything – their homes, baby photos, family heirlooms, keepsakes, jewelry, mementos – in a flurry of wildfires that ripped through California’s wine country. Now, on the second anniversary of these fires that killed 44 and destroyed thousands of buildings, survivors are […]

Five-year average of temperature change around Zyryanka, Siberia compared with the late 1800s. Data: Berkeley Earth. Graphic: The Washington Post

Radical warming in Siberia leaves millions on unstable ground – “The permafrost is thawing so fast, we scientists can’t keep up anymore”

By Anton Troianovski and Chris Mooney 3 October 2019 ON THE ZYRYANKA RIVER, Russia (The Washington Post) – Andrey Danilov eased his motorboat onto the gravel riverbank, where the bones of a woolly mammoth lay scattered on the beach. A putrid odor filled the air — the stench of ancient plants and animals decomposing after […]

Rates of reported cases of primary and secondary syphilis in the U.S. by region, 2009-2018. In 2018, the West had the highest rate of reported P&S syphilis cases (15.0 cases per 100,000 population), followed by the South (11.1 cases per 100,000 population), the Northeast (8.7 cases per 100,000 population), and the Midwest (7.1 cases per 100,000 population). During 2017–2018, the P&S syphilis rate increased 16.4% in the Midwest, 15.6% in the South, 15.4% in the West, and 10.1% in the Northeast. Graphic: CDC

America’s sexually transmitted infection rates are out of control – “Systems that identify, treat, and ultimately prevent STDs are strained to near-breaking point”

By Rachel Feltman 10 October 2019 (Popular Science) – Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are still on the rise in the United States, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). On Tuesday the CDC released a report on statistics from 2018, which indicate historic rates of chlamydia and the worst rates of syphilis […]

The community center in Altha, Florida after Hurricane Michael, shown on 12 February 2019 (top) and 11 September 2019 (bottom). Photo: Tallahassee Democrat

Hurricane Michael survivors hanging on one year later – Thousands of Panhandle residents still live in tents, trailers, and hotel rooms – “Collectively we’ve forgotten them”

By Nada Hassanein 12 October 2019 SNEADS, Florida (Tallahassee Democrat) – Rodney and Tonya Hewett remember gazing outside the window of their farmhouse during Hurricane Michael. They saw their pool fence flying in the forceful winds, the wooden poles like swords. A deer that tried to run for safety went airborne. The Hewetts have been […]

People walk home in the dark due to power shortages in Harare, on Monday, 30 September 2019. Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa presented a State of the Nation address on 1 October 2019, at a time the southern African nation is reeling from its worst economic crisis in more than a decade. Zimbabweans are enduring shortages of everything from medicines, fuel, cash and water, bringing a weariness and disgust that has often flared into streets protests. Opposition lawmakers walk out of president’s speech. Photo: Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi / Associated Press

Surviving the extreme water shortage in Zimbabwe’s capital – Doctors on strike over “appalling and disgraceful” conditions in hospitals – Opposition lawmakers walk out of president’s speech

By Morgan Passi and John McGill 2 October 2019 (CBC Radio) – Think of it as a cash and flow problem. Last month, city councillors in Harare, Zimbabwe shut off their main water plant, blaming a lack of foreign currency needed to import treatment chemicals. The water is back on now — after the national government stepped in. […]

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