Aerial view of coffins being buried at an area where new graves have been dug at the Parque Tarumã cemetery in Manaus, Brazil, in April 2020. On 26 April 2020, 140 bodies of people killed by COVID-19 were laid to rest in Manaus, the jungle-flanked capital of Amazonas state. Normally the figure would be closer to 30 – but these are no longer normal times. Photo: Michael Dantas / AFP / Getty Images

Manaus fills mass graves as Covid-19 hits the Amazon – “They were just dumped there like dogs. What are our lives worth now? Nothing.”

By Tom Phillips and Fabiano Maisonnave 30 April 2020 MANAUS (The Guardian) – Day and night, the dead are delivered into the tawny Amazonian earth – the latest victims of a devastating pandemic now reaching deep into the heart of the Brazilian rainforest. On Sunday 140 bodies were laid to rest in Manaus, the jungle-flanked capital of […]

Aerial view of the Clinical Research Center of the National Institutes of Health. Photo: NIH

Trump cuts U.S. research on bat-human virus transmission over China ties

By Sarah Owermohle 27 April 2020 (Politico) – The Trump administration abruptly cut off funding for a project studying how coronaviruses spread from bats to people after reports linked the work to a lab in Wuhan, China, at the center of conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 pandemic’s origins. The National Institutes of Health on Friday […]

View of air pollution in Moscow, Russia on 6 August 2010 and 20 April 2020. Photo: Natalia Kolesnikova / Niklas Halle'n / AFP / Getty Images

Before-and-after photos show dramatic decline in air pollution around the world during coronavirus lockdown

By Sophie Lewis 22 April 2020 (CBS News) – As humans continue to stay indoors under lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Earth is slowly healing. Wild animals have taken to roaming the streets, clear waters have returned to the Venice canals and the world is literally shaking less.  With billions of people quarantined and businesses closed, travel has all but […]

Dame Jane Goodall is known for her work with primates, but she’s also an avid animal rights and environmental activist. In a CNET interviews, she says, “It’s because of our lack of respect for the environment that this terrible COVID-19 virus has shut down the world”. Photo: National Geographic

Dame Jane Goodall: “It’s because of our lack of respect for the environment that this terrible COVID-19 virus has shut down the world”

By Bonnie Burton 23 April 2020 (CNET) – Jane Goodall has a lot to say about how human disregard for animals and the environment brought on the coronavirus pandemic. But the famed British primatologist believes there’s still a chance we can repair our relationship with the natural world, a point she stresses in the new National Geographic […]

Total column ozone field (in Dobson Units) from CAMS, 1 April 2020 - 6 April 2020, showing values below 250 DU over large parts of the Arctic. Video: Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service / ECMWF

Arctic ozone depletion tracks at record levels in Spring 2020

9 April 2020 (WMO) – Depletion of the ozone layer, ­ the shield that protects life on Earth from harmful levels of ultraviolet radiation, ­is at an unprecedented level over large parts of the Arctic this spring . This phenomenon is caused by the continuing presence of ozone­-depleting substances in the atmosphere and a very […]

Mother and son wearing masks stand under a sky tinted red as surrounding bushfires close in, Mallacoota, Australia, 4 January 2020. Photo: Reuters

The age of stability is over, and coronavirus is just the beginning – “Our modern interconnected global economy is much more vulnerable than we thought”

By Wolfgang Knorr 16 April 2020 (The Conversation) – Humanity has only recently become accustomed to a stable climate. For most of its history, long ice ages punctuated with hot spells alternated with short warm periods. Transitions from cold to warm climates were especially chaotic. Then, about 10,000 years ago, the Earth suddenly entered into a […]

A healthcare worker stands in a crosswalk to block hundreds of pro-death pro-Covid protesters in Denver, on 19 April 2020. Photo: Alyson McClaran / Reuters

Are we finally seeing science denialism for the death wish it is? “Denying the severity of COVID-19 is tantamount to denying the worth of the thousands who have died and the thousands more who will”

By Heather Houser 16 April 2020 (the Austin Statesman) – Every day it seems we read headlines that connect science denialism to cruel indifference and death. Just recently, when talking about the initial COVID-19 response, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi asserted that ”[Trump’s] denial at the beginning was deadly.” In Arizona, some residents called […]

Protesters shout outside the Ohio Statehouse Atrium where reporters listen during state officials’ coronavirus update Monday, 13 April 2020. About 100 demonstrators assembled outside the building, upset that the state remains under a stay-at-home order and that non-essential businesses remain closed. Photo: Joshua A. Bickel / Dispatch

Attacks on press credibility endanger U.S. democracy and global press freedom

WASHINGTON, D.C., 16 April 2020 (CPJ) – When President Donald J. Trump initially minimized the danger of the COVID-19 virus in the first two months of 2020, he attacked news media reporting about the growing threat and his administration’s slow response. “Low Ratings Fake News MSDNC (Comcast) & @CNN are doing everything possible to make […]

Trump during a daily press briefing on the coronavirus crisis, 10 April 2020. An attack ad for Donald Trump's campaign for reelection showed Gary Locke, a former governor of Washington state and U.S. ambassador to China, as a Chinese official. Photo: Reuters

Masha Gessen: We won’t know the exact moment when democracy dies – “Autocracy creeps in, staking one claim after another, but it does not firmly and finally announce its own arrival”

By Masha Gessen 16 April 2020 (The New Yorker) – In the early days of the Trump Presidency, there was a lot of speculation about when, if, and how we would pass the point of no return, when we would know that American democracy had been destroyed. That conversation faded after a while, drowned out by the […]

Simulated high temperatures in Florida on Tuesday, 14 April 2020 by the American NAM model. Graphic: WeatherBell

Miami is shattering heat records during a wildly-warm start to 2020 – Most of Florida has endured record heat in the past four weeks

By Matthew Cappucci 15 April 2020 (The Washington Post) – Florida is supposed to be warm. After all, it’s, well, Florida. But temperatures in the Sunshine State have been shattering records and rivaling typical readings during the heart of summer. Miami even endured its earliest heat wave on record last week, when it hit at […]

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