COVID-19 daily confirmed new cases in Florida, January 2020 - July 2021 (7-day moving average). Florida exceeded its previous peak in daily cases on 26 July 2021, as Gov. DeSantis downplayed the severity of the outbreak and told healthcare professionals that he will oppose any mask mandate for students. Graphic: Johns Hopkins University

Florida hits Covid daily case record as Gov. DeSantis downplays outbreak

27 July 2021 (Desdemona Despair) – Florida broke its COVID-19 daily-case record on Monday, exceeding the previous peak in January 2021. Hospitalizations hit the highest number since February 2021. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has downplayed the outbreak and told healthcare professionals that he opposes any mask mandate for students. Florida saw more than 18,200 new […]

Daily new Covid cases per 100,000 people in Florida, 20 July 2021. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Monday downplayed the recent spike in coronavirus cases in his state, and criticized public health officials who continue to push unvaccinated Americans to get Covid-19 shots. Graphic: Covid Act Now

Florida governor DeSantis downplays increase in COVID-19 cases after selling “Don’t Fauci My Florida” merch

By Max Greenwood 20 July 2021 ORLANDO, Florida (The Hill) – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Monday downplayed the recent spike in coronavirus cases in his state and criticized public health officials who continue to push unvaccinated Americans to get Covid-19 shots. “It’s a seasonal virus and this is the seasonal pattern it follows […]

Flames and smoke rise from the Bootleg fire in southern Oregon on Wednesday, 14 July 2021. The largest fire in the U.S. on Wednesday was burning in southern Oregon, to the northeast of the wildfire that ravaged a tribal community less than a year ago. The lightning-caused Bootleg fire was encroaching on the traditional territory of the Klamath Tribes, which still have treaty rights to hunt and fish on the land, and sending huge, churning plumes of smoke into the sky visible for miles. Photo: John Hendricks / Oregon Office of State Fire Marshal / AP

Can America save itself? Between the pandemic and climate change, the outlook is grim.

By Joel Mathis 19 July 2021 (The Week) – Is the pandemic akin to climate change? Back in March 2020, my colleague Ryan Cooper argued that it was, in an article that has haunted me ever since.  “This is what an uncontrolled, exponentially-accelerating crisis looks like on the ground: first slow, then all at once,” Cooper wrote of […]

Screenshot from the video, “Honest Government Ad | We Make Everything Good Sh!t”, by The Juice Media, 2 July 2021. Photo: The Juice Media / YouTube

Honest Government Ad: We Make Everything Good Sh!t – Australia science agencies “infiltrated and hollowed” out by fossil fuel industry

2 July 2021 (The Juice Media) – Hello, I’m from the Australien government. In today’s episode of “We Make Everythig Good Shit”, we look at the CSIRO, your trusted science agency, which has earned a reputation for great inventions: wifi, space stuff, Aeroguard. Unlike gas companies, which have earned a reputation for poisoning aquifers, ripping […]

Senior ExxonMobil lobbyist on Capitol Hill Keith McCoy describes how ExxonMobil bribes U.S. Senators to kill climate policies in the U.S. During a secretly recorded interview 7 May 2021, McCoy names eleven U.S. senators who he says are “crucial” to ExxonMobil for sabotaging government action to save the planet: Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Senator Joe Manchin, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Senator Jon Tester, Senator Maggie Hassan, Senator John Barrasso, Senator John Cornyn, Senator Steve Daines, Senator Chris Coons, Senator Mark Kelly, and Senator Marco Rubio. Photo: Greenpeace / Channel 4 News

Revealed: ExxonMobil’s lobbying war on climate legislation – Senior lobbyist caught on camera, names 11 U.S. senators who are “crucial” to ExxonMobil attacks on climate policy

By Alex Thomson 30 June 2021 (Channel 4 News) – The explosive footage was obtained by Unearthed, Greenpeace UK’s investigative platform, who posed as head-hunters to obtain the information from one of ExxonMobil’s most senior Washington lobbyists. The recordings appear to reveal the secretive behind-the-scenes activities of a lobbyist for a company that claims in […]

Global quantities of cocaine seized, by region, 1998–2019. Quantities of cocaine seized reached record levels in 2019. In 2019, the global quantity of cocaine seized increased by 9.6 percent compared with the preceding year to reach 1,436 tons (of varying purities), a record high. The 90 percent increase in the quantities of cocaine seized between 2009 and 2019 is likely a reflection of a combination of factors, including an increase in cocaine manufacture (50 per cent between 2009 and 2019) and a subsequent increase in cocaine trafficking, as well as an increase in the efficiency of law enforcement, which may have contributed to an increase in the overall interception rate. Graphic: UNODC

Illegal drug trade back to business as usual in 2020 and 2021 – Cocaine production hits record high – Number of people using illegal drugs increased by 22 percent in 2010-2019 decade

By Pia Lee-Brago 28 June 2021 (The Philippine Star) – Around 275 million people used illegal drugs worldwide in the last year of unprecedented upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, up by 22 percent from 2010, and it is “business as usual” again for drug traffickers, according to the latest annual world drug report by […]

Emergency room admissions for carbon monoxide poisoning and hypothermia in Texas during Winter Storm Uri, 1 Jan 2021 to 2 February 2021. More than 1,400 people sought emergency care for carbon monoxide poisoning and at least 1,175 for hypothermia and cold exposure from 13 February 2021 to 20 February 2021. Data: Texas Department of State Health Services. Data compiled by NBC News, ProPublica, and The Texas Tribune. Graphic: Jiachuan Wu / NBC News

Texas enabled the worst carbon monoxide poisoning catastrophe in recent U.S. history

By Mike Hixenbaugh, Suzy Khimm, Perla Trevizo, , Ren Larson, and Lexi Churchill 29 April 2021 HOUSTON (The Texas Tribune) – When Shalemu Bekele awoke on the morning of 15 February 2021, the townhouse he shared with his wife and two children was so cold, his fingers felt numb. After bundling up in extra layers, […]

Map showing Federal government estimates of Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy in the U.S., estimated percentage of adults who may be hesitant to get the vaccine by county. Data: Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. Graphic: The New York Times

Least vaccinated U.S. counties have something in common: Trump voters – “It’s terrifying to think that this may never end. So much hinges on these vaccinations”

By Danielle Ivory, Lauren Leatherby, and Robert Gebeloff 17 April 2021 (The New York Times) – About 31 percent of adults in the United States have now been fully vaccinated. Scientists have estimated that 70 to 90 percent of the total population must acquire resistance to the virus to reach herd immunity. But in hundreds […]

A forest defender counts the rings in a recently cut old-growth cedar tree in the mountains above the Caycuse watershed Cowichan Lake west of Duncan, British Columbia. Photo: Jesse Winter / The Guardian

“War in the woods”: activists blockade Vancouver Island in bid to save ancient trees – “If we want our planet to be sustainable, we have to protect these ecosystems”

By Jesse Winter 9 April 2021 (The Guardian) – Hundreds of activists are digging in at logging road blockades across a swath of southern Vancouver Island, vowing to stay as long as it takes to pressure the provincial government to immediately halt cutting of what they say is the last 3% of giant old growth […]

Michael Caputo, enigmatic Republican political consultant and international PR man who served as campaign manager for Carl Paladino and fills in as radio talk show host on WBEN. This was in his East Aurora office on Tuesday, 19 January 2016. Caputo also served as propagandist with Oliver North for Ronald Reagan’s illegal war on Central America. Photo: Robert Kirkham / Buffalo News

Trump officials celebrated efforts to change CDC reports on coronavirus, emails show – Political appointees also tried to blunt scientific findings they deemed unfavorable to Trump

By Dan Diamond 9 April 2021 (The Washington Post) – Trump appointees in the Department of Health and Human Services last year privately touted their efforts to block or alter scientists’ reports on the coronavirus to more closely align with President Donald Trump’s more optimistic messages about the outbreak, according to newly released documents from congressional investigators. […]

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