By Heather Long 25 May 2018 (The Washington Post) – The U.S. economy has a problem. The usual economic bench marks look really good: America in 2018 is enjoying faster growth, low unemployment, record numbers of job openings and a stock market near an all-time high. Yet an alarming number of Americans are still struggling […]
By Jeanfreddy Gutiérrez Torres 21 May 2018 LAKE MARACAIBO, Venezuela (Mongabay) – The wildlife of Venezuela, one of 17 countries that account for 70 percent of the world’s biodiversity, has come under new pressure in addition to deforestation, toxic oil spills. and illegal trafficking: human starvation.The economic crisis that began in 2014 with the collapse […]
2 May 2018 (UN News) – In a call for Member States to take action urgently, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Gebreyesus, warned that air pollution “threatens us all, but the poorest and most marginalized people bear the brunt of the burden.”According to WHO’s ambient air quality database, despite some improvements, pollution levels […]
By Christopher Flavelle 23 April 2018 (Bloomberg) – When Hurricane Irma reached Florida’s Big Pine Key in September 2017, it caused the floor of Terry and Sharon Baron’s cream-colored mobile home to collapse. On Marathon Key, twenty miles north, the winds lifted Diane Gaffield’s mobile home off its concrete pad and smashed it against her […]
AUSTIN, Texas, 27 April 2018 (AP) – Advocacy groups said Friday that Texas is poised to unfairly distribute billions in federal funding provided for housing repairs following Hurricane Harvey’s devastation — prioritizing wealthy homeowners over poorer victims in ways that could constitute racial discrimination. At issue is a draft state rebuilding plan that says homeowners […]
By Justine Calma 24 April 2018 (Grist) – Seven months after Juan and Jonathan Leija were forced to evacuate their flooded homes during Hurricane Harvey, the cousins face challenges that go beyond just recovering their lives. Building back isn’t easy for anybody, but the Leijas are doing it as looming policy decisions threaten to uproot […]
By Quirin Schiermeier 20 April 2018 (Nature) – Nations such as Bangladesh and Egypt have long known that they will suffer more from climate change than will richer countries, but now researchers have devised a stark way to quantify the inequalities of future threats. A map of “equivalent impacts”, revealed at the annual meeting of […]
20 April 2018 (UN News) – The arrival of pre-monsoon rains in southern Bangladesh has revealed an alarming level of risks for Rohingya refugees, United Nations humanitarian agencies said on Friday, warning that they do not have the funds needed to protect hundreds of thousands of desperate people once the rainy season begins in earnest.“The […]
By Tanvi Misra 27 February 2018 (CityLab) – In Philly’s Center City live its richest residents—those who can pay the premium for that walkable, amenity-rich, green neighborhood. But just across the river, blocks away from the lush, expanding campuses of the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University, the visual landscape of the city changes: Pawn […]
Dr Jonathan D Quick 18 March 2018 (The Guardian) – Somewhere out there a dangerous virus is boiling up in the bloodstream of a bird, bat, monkey or pig, preparing to jump to a human being. It’s hard to comprehend the scope of such a threat, for it has the potential to wipe out millions […]
