Indigenous leader Paulo Paulino Guajajara photographed in September 2019. He was hunting on 1 November 2019 inside the Arariboia reservation in Maranhao state when he was attacked and killed by illegal loggers. Photo: Ueslei Marcelino / REUTERS

Illegal loggers assassinate Amazon indigenous warrior who guarded forest, wound another – “The Bolsonaro government has indigenous blood on its hands”

By Anthony Boadle and Leo Benassatto 2 November 2019 BRASILIA (Reuters) – Illegal loggers in the Amazon ambushed an indigenous group that was formed to protect the forest and shot dead a young warrior and wounded another, leaders of the Guajajara tribe in northern Brazil said on Saturday. Paulo Paulino Guajajara, or Lobo (which means […]

A Brazilian soldier puts out fires at the Nova Fronteira region in Novo Progresso, Brazil, on 3 September 2019. Photo: Leo Correa / AP

The Amazon hasn’t stopped burning. There were 19,925 fire outbreaks last month, and “more fires” are in the future – “The government is looking to promote mining and ranching in the Amazon”

By Jorge L. Ortiz 18 October 2019 (USA Today) – The proliferation of fires in the Amazon rainforest drew international attention in August, especially when French President Emmanuel Macron called for urgent action. Since then, the eyes of the world have shifted elsewhere as House Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, Hurricane […]

Air pollution (fine particulate matter PM2.5) in the United States, 2009-2018. in 2016, pollution started to increase significantly in the U.S. Midwest and West. Data: National Bureau of Economic Research. Graphic: The New York Times

America’s air quality worsens since Trump election, ending years of gains – “This increase is a real about-face”

By Nadja Popovich 24 October 2019 (The New York Times) – New data reveals that damaging air pollution has increased nationally since 2016, reversing a decades-long trend toward cleaner air. An analysis of Environmental Protection Agency data published this week by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that fine particulate pollution increased 5.5 percent on average across the […]

Andrew Crane-Droesch is a data scientist with the University of Pennsylvania Health System. He worked as a research economist at the Economic Research Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture between 2016 and 2019. Photo: UC Berkeley Energy and Resources Group

The Trump administration didn’t like my agency’s research. So it sent us to Missouri. – “They can’t tolerate it when scientists present hard truths they don’t like”

By Andrew Crane-Droesch 21 October 2019 (The Washington Post) – I joined the Economic Research Service (ERS) in 2016. I wanted to use my academic training to do something in the public interest — I didn’t really expect to get involved in agriculture. Then I got absorbed in the subject: Humanity’s dependence on the environment […]

Aerial view of an illegal gold mining facility on the Seyba River, 255 kilometers south of Krasnoyarsk city, Siberia, that was destroyed by flooding from a dam burst on 19 October 2019. Photo: The Siberian Times

Dam collapse at illegal Siberia gold mine leaves at least 15 dead, 130 evacuated

By Yuliya Fedorinova 19 October 2019 (Bloomberg) – A dam collapsed at a gold mine in Russia’s Krasnoyarsk region, leaving at least 15 people dead, the Ministry of Emergency Situations said on its website. The collapse happened at about 2 a.m. Moscow time near one of the small local gold mining companies’ operations, the ministry […]

Wild reindeer cross a river in the Taymyr Peninsula in Siberia. More than 40,000 wild reindeer have perished since the last count in 2017, say scientists who returned from an expedition to the Taymyr Peninsula. Photo: Zapovedniki Taymyra / The Siberian Times

Northern reindeer that roamed Taymyr peninsula are at the brink of extinction – “The losses are catastrophic”

By Olga Gertcyk 30 September 2019 (The Siberian Times) – More than 40,000 wild reindeer perished since the last count in 2017, said scientists who returned from a major expedition to the Taymyr Peninsula. The Yenisei group of reindeer has disappeared entirely while the westernmost group living along the Tareya River has dramatically shrunk in […]

Trump refers to a map, modified using a Sharpie, while talking to reporters following a briefing from officials about Hurricane Dorian in the Oval Office at the White House on 4 September 2019. Photo: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Top Commerce Department aides orchestrated NOAA’s Hurricane Dorian statement attacking NOAA meteorologists for contradicting Trump

By Jason Samenow and Andrew Freedman 10 October 2019 (The Washington Post) – A letter sent Thursday from the chair of the House Science Committee to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross reveals that it was the Commerce Department, not the leadership of its National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, that drafted a controversial NOAA statement on 6 […]

Screenshot from a video depicting a fake President Trump massacring the news media and his critics that was shown at a conference for his supporters at Trump National Doral Miami in October 2019. Photo: The New York Times

Macabre video of fake Trump murdering media and critics is shown at his resort

By Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman 13 October 2019 WASHINGTON (The New York Times) — A video depicting a macabre scene of a fake President Trump shooting, stabbing and brutally assaulting members of the news media and his political opponents was shown at a conference for his supporters at his Miami resort last week, […]

Total U.S. Tax Rate (Federal, State and Local), 1950-2018, by income decile. Graphic: The New York Times

For the first time in history, U.S. billionaires paid a lower tax rate than the working class in 2018

By Christopher Ingraham 8 October 2019 (The Washington Post) – A new book-length study on the tax burden of the ultrarich begins with a startling finding: In 2018, for the first time in history, America’s richest billionaires paid a lower effective tax rate than the working class. The Triumph of Injustice, by economists Emmanuel Saez […]

Drone video showing hundreds of blindfolded men being led from a train in China, posted anonymously on 17 September 2019. The video raises new concerns over the ongoing crackdown on Muslim Uyghurs in the far western region of Xinjiang. Video: War on Fear (战斗恐惧) / YouTube

Authoritarian advance: How authoritarian regimes upended assumptions about democratic expansion – “These regimes are turning the tools of coercion outward to push back on democracy”

By Laura Rosenberger 13 September 2019 (GMF) – Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin wall, democracies again face a struggle against authoritarianism. This is not the ideological battle of the Cold War, but it is a confrontation between systems of government. As democracies are showing cracks and as authoritarian regimes are gaining strength, […]

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