Unfathomable heat helped June smash North America record

By Monica Danielle, Accuweather.com

Two-year-old Avery Smith of Belleville, Ill., keeps cool in a sprinkler in Kiener Plaza in St. Louis as temperatures reach 101 degrees on June 18. Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI | License Photo

Researchers have confirmed what millions of Americans and Canadians who just endured scorching temperatures probably already suspected: Last month was the hottest June on record in North America.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service, an agency supported by the European Union, said that average surface temperatures for June in North America were about one-quarter of a degree Fahrenheit higher than the average for June 2012, the previous record-holder.

Additionally, last month's average temperature was more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the average from 1991-2020.

"These heat waves are not happening in a vacuum. They are happening in a global climate environment that is warming and which makes them more likely to occur," said C3S climate scientist Julien Nicolas.

The heat dome above southwestern Canada and the western United States generated headlines around the world last month as daily temperature records -- and even all-time record highs -- were shattered.

In Portland, the temperature shot up to 116 degrees Fahrenheit on June 28, smashing the previous all-time record high set on each of the previous two days and setting a new all-time high benchmark for the city. Prior to last month's heat wave, the highest temperature ever recorded in Portland was 107 in August 1981.



Gabby Smith, 7, plays catch with her mother while swimming in the Aloe Plaza Fountain in front of Union Station in St. Louis, Mo., on June 13, 2021. Temperatures have reached the low 90s with high humidity. Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI | License Photo

Study: More air pollution, worse COVID-19 outcomes

By Ernie Mundell & Robert Preidt, HealthDay News

The air people breathe -- and how much pollution is in it -- may make a difference in their outcomes when infected with COVID-19, a new study finds.

Researchers found that living in more polluted areas -- including near sewage water dischargers and in close proximity to heavy traffic -- was linked with a greater likelihood of being admitted to the intensive care unit and more likelihood of needing mechanical ventilation after infection with COVID-19.

"The key takeaway is that living in a more polluted neighborhood is an independent risk factor for severity of COVID-19 disease," said study author Dr. Anita Shallal, from the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

According to the American Lung Association, Detroit is the 12th most polluted city in the United States, measured by year-round fine particle pollution.

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Because low-income and minority populations often live in more polluted areas, the study also "calls attention to the systemic inequalities that may have led to the stark differences in COVID-19 outcomes along racial and ethnic lines," Shallal said.

"Communities of color are more likely to be located in areas closer to industrial pollution, and to work in businesses that expose them to air pollution," Shallal said.


The new research is scheduled for presentation during the online annual meeting of the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases.

RELATED 18% of COVID-19 deaths in U.S. linked to air pollution, study finds

Dr. Theodore Maniatis, medical director at Staten Island University Hospital in New York City, said the findings "make perfect sense."

He said that the lungs work in a "delicate balance" that's easily compromised by dirty air. Anything that upsets that balance "will likely increase the risk of pulmonary infections and decrease the lungs' ability to clear such infections," said Maniatis, who wasn't involved in the new study.

In the study, Shallal's team collected data on where participants lived as well as data from the Environmental Protection Agency and other sources on local levels of pollutants including PM2.5, ozone, and lead paint.

RELATED Long-term air pollution exposure increases COVID-19 death risk, study says

They used this data to explore associations between COVID-19 outcomes and exposure to a variety of pollutants.

The results: COVID-19 patients who lived in areas with higher levels of PM2.5 and lead paint were more likely to require mechanical ventilation and be admitted to the ICU, compared to those living in less polluted neighborhoods.

In fact, each small increase in long-term PM2.5 exposure was associated with more than three times the odds of being mechanically ventilated and twice the likelihood of a stay in ICU.

However, it was not associated with a greater risk of dying, the study team reported.

They note that the study couldn't prove cause-and-effect, only that pollution was associated with worse COVID-19 outcomes.

The researchers also found greater risks for patients who were male, black, obese or with severe long-term health conditions. They were much more likely to need mechanical ventilation and to be admitted to the ICU.

Being male, obese or having severe long-term health conditions were also predictors of death following admission, according to the study.

Speaking in a meeting news release, Shallal said it's not yet clear "how air pollutants contribute to more severe disease."

But she theorized that "it's possible that long-term exposure to air pollution may impair the immune system, leading both to increased susceptibility to viruses and to more severe viral infections."

Added to that, "fine particles in air pollution may also act as a carrier for the virus, increasing its spread," Shallal said. "Urgent further research is needed to guide policy and environmental protection, to minimize the impact of COVID-19 in highly industrialized communities that are home to our most vulnerable residents."

Dr. Irene Galperin is chief of pulmonary medicine at Long Island Jewish Forest Hills, in New York City. Reading over the findings, she noted that "inhalation of fine particulate matter can lead to chronic inflammation, reduced immune response and diminished ability of the lung to heal and repair itself."

Galperin said that, "based on this latest study, [it's possible that] patients with history of such exposure are more likely to develop severe COVID 19 illness."

Experts note that findings presented at medical meetings are considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.More information

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences has more on pollution and health.

Copyright © 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Marine Corps corporal gets 3D-printed teeth with jaw reconstruction



Marine Corps Cpl. Jared Murry undergoes an examination after jaw reconstruction surgery and placement of what the Defense Department called its first use of 3D-printed teeth. Photo courtesy of the Defense Department


July 9 (UPI) -- A Marine Corps member is the first recipient of the Defense Department's first jaw reconstruction using 3D-printed teeth, the Pentagon said on Friday.

A tumor prompted the removal of most of Cpl. Jaden Murry's jaw in a November 2020 surgery.

It was reconstructed using a portion of his fibula, or lower leg bone, but his lower teeth were made using a digital model, which was then printed into a physical replacement bridge and inserted in the new jaw.

Murry is a member of Logistics Battalion 7, Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, Calif.

RELATED Losing wisdom teeth may enhance sense of taste, new research suggests

The surgery was conducted by a multi-department team of surgical specialists at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego.

"All of the providers worked as a team to keep his recovery on track," Lt. Cmdr. Daniel Hammer, maxillofacial surgical oncologist and reconstructive surgeon, said in a press release.

"We were able to safely remove his tracheostomy tube [inserted in a patient's neck when there are concerns about postoperative breathing] within a week of the surgery, and it was then we knew he was making strides in the right direction."

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Murry is recovering in the Naval Center's Wounded Warrior Battalion, and on a diet of soft foods. A final prosthetic set of teeth will be available to him in about two months.

"Since his surgery, [OMFS specialists and I] see Jaden twice weekly for check-ups, and we're guiding his healing process," Hammer said in December. "To see him swallowing, speaking, walking and not using a tracheostomy tube one week post-surgery was a huge victory, both for [Murry] and for us."

The success is also a part of a program developed by the U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine whose researchers work to use the body's natural healing powers, in this case through the fibula transfer to the jaw, to improve head and face reconstruction.

Murry said that he is eager to resume his Marine Corps duties.

"I really look forward to getting back to a healthy mindset and working out, running and bodybuilding," he said, adding that he will seek pizza when he again can eat solid food.

THIRD WORLD USA

One-third of U.S. adults went without dental care, even before pandemic

By Steven Reinberg HealthDay Reporter

In 2019, a third of adults under 65 hadn't had a dental exam or cleaning in the past 12 months, a new study found, Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI | License Photo


Millions of American adults haven't seen a dentist in at least a year, a new U.S. government health survey reveals.

In 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic made dental visits difficult, a third of adults under 65 hadn't had a dental exam or cleaning in the past 12 months, according to the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

And the problem was worse in rural America, the National Health Interview Survey showed. The authors suspect the reason is easy to explain.

"It was beyond the scope of study, but we kind of assumed there are fewer healthcare providers in the rural areas, compared to urban areas, so there's less access to dental care in rural areas," said study co-author Robin Cohen, a statistician at CDC's National Center for Health Statistics.

RELATED Study: 1 in 4 dentists has faced physically aggressive patients at work

Income and race also underpin the results, Cohen said.

The survey found:
In 2019, 65.5% of U.S. adults saw a dentist in the past 12 months.

More adults in urban areas than rural areas saw a dentist (67% versus 58%).

In both cities and rural areas, women were more likely than men to have visited a dentist in the past 12 months.

In urban areas, White adults (70%) were more likely than Hispanic adults (59%) or Black adults (62%) to have seen a dentist.

In rural areas, White adults (59%) were more likely than Hispanic adults (46%) to have had a dental visit.As income increased, so did the odds of seeing a dentist. And that was true in both rural and urban areas.

Dr. Jane Grover is director of the Council on Advocacy for Access and Prevention at the American Dental Association in Chicago. She said staffing shortages are a key contributor to access issues in rural America.

RELATEDCracked teeth another coronavirus scourge

"They may not have the staffing that many urban areas have -- I'm talking about the number of dental assistants and dental hygienists," Grover said.

Cost is another barrier to care, Grover said. Low-cost clinics can help in urban settings, and some clinics charge on a sliding scale based on patients' ability to pay.

In rural areas, these clinics can be few and far between.

Grover said more needs to be done to make dental care available to folks who can't afford it, no matter where they live. This includes involving dental students who can help provide services at little or no cost.

Grover said dentists can also work with pediatricians and primary care doctors to help patients get oral care.

"Dentists are health professionals that can not only address issues of the mouth, but can also offer connections and guidance for other aspects of your health," Grover said, emphasizing that dentists today do much more than clean teeth and fill cavities. A modern-day dentist realizes the mouth is connected to the rest of the body, she said.

"Many dentists have close working relationships with family doctors and pediatricians," Grover said. "Integrated care is really an accepted and embraced practice today as never before."

Regular dental visits are also important because conditions can be treated before they become serious and involve more time and expense, Grover noted. While many Americans avoided going to the dentist during the pandemic, she said care is now getting back to normal.More information

For more on dental health, see the American Dental Association.
SOURCES: Robin Cohen, PhD, statistician, National Center for Health Statistics, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Jane Grover, DDS, MPH, director, Council on Advocacy for Access and Prevention, American Dental Association, Chicago; U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, NCHS Data Brief, July 7, 2021

Copyright © 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Light over Turtle Island: Indigenous tales about North America’s creation

Lysandra Nothing

Zed Files is a Global News exclusive series exploring unusual, unexplained and legendary stories in Canada.

--


Who made the land and sky?

Indigenous people have been telling tales to answer that question since long before the settlers arrived in North America — and those tales are still being told today, as part of the rich oral tradition that lives on among many First Nations across Canada.

Read more: A Day to Listen: Amplifying Indigenous voices and working towards reconciliation

The stories vary from one community and storyteller to another, and they can teach a different lesson each time they’re told, according to Chantal Chagnon, an Ojibwe storyteller and artist from Muskeg Cree Lake Nation, Sask.

“Many people will have different perspectives, different interpretations, but it's about your personal experience and personal growth and what learnings you need from that story,” said Chagnon.

Perhaps no story is more essential than the origin of the sun and the land — a story that has been told many times across Canada’s Indigenous communities.
The origin of Turtle Island

Many Cree legends star Wasakajak, a shape-shifting trickster figure who often helps humanity.

In a Cree legend shared by Chagnon, Wasakajak helps the world recover from a great flood by venturing out with Beaver, Turtle and Muskrat to find soil.

It is said that the giant flood was the “Creator’s anger at the humans for destroying the land,” and that the Creator wanted a new start.

Beaver and Turtle failed in their searches, said Chagnon. Then the tiny Muskrat “stepped through the crowd and she popped out her chest really proudly and said she could do it.”


"It's a glimpse of a way of belief and understanding, a deeper meaning of culture."

Muskrat dove into the water and was out of sight for a long time. A “bubble of air surfaced” and all the animals grieved, assuming she had failed.

But she hadn’t. According to this legend, Muskrat floated to the surface with a small patch of soil in her paws.

“Wasakajak took the soil and rubbed it onto the turtle’s back and as he did, it got larger and heavier, and so it created all of the landmass that we see now,” Chagnon said. “This is why we call North America Turtle Island.

“He took a deep breath and blew to the east and as he did, Grandfather Sun came up from behind the clouds, and he warmed the earth. All of the seeds that were within the earth began to spring into life.

“Wasakajak blew to the south and the earth began to shake. Huge trees began to grow out of the ground. Mountains started to form, which led to valleys, and the hills and plains to deserts and to all of the land that we see now.”
Raven the lightbringer

According to another Indigenous legend from the Na-Cho Nyak Dun First Nation in northern Yukon, the creation of light came from a mythological figure known as Raven.

The legend outlines hardships that should still be familiar to much of humanity today: those of pregnancy, motherhood, sacrifices and love.

“We were all in darkness at one time, and there's a beautiful story about how Raven was able to trick the Big Sky Chief into giving him light so he can bring light to the world,” says Louise Profeit-LeBlanc, a traditional story keeper from the First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun in Mayo, Yukon.

The woman who gave birth to Raven was the second wife of the Big Sky Chief, a legendary being in the form of the sun.

The Big Sky Chief killed their first two children for “unknown reasons,” according to the legend told by Profeit-LeBlanc.

The first wife of the Big Sky Chief told the second wife there was an “island up at the other end of the land.” The second wife agreed to go because she could not stand the sight of the Big Sky Chief, who had killed her children.

When she got there, the grieving woman went into the sea in hopes of being pulled under the waves.

Read more: Kahnawà:ke elects first woman, LGBTQ2S member as Grand Chief

Profeit-LeBlanc says the woman encountered a “mysterious man” who appeared on the shore. He comforted her over the loss of her first two children and instructed her to “go back to her camp and make a fire.”

As the tale goes, she made the fire and was instructed to “place a stone in the fire” and then swallow it whole.

“She thought, ‘Oh man, he is trying to help me do the job quickly,’” said Profeit-LeBlanc, indicating the woman thought that the mysterious man wanted to help her find an easier way to die. “She threw it in her mouth. And she drank water quickly, so it didn’t burn her mouth or tongue.

“Not too long afterwards, she felt that familiar movement inside of herself, inside of her womb.”

She was pregnant. According to the legend, the woman gave birth to Raven under a tree. When Raven was able to fly, he grew tired of flying in the dark world, so Raven looked for light.



”These are stories that help people to continue to be resilient, strong and loving."

One day, Raven saw Big Sky Chief take the light out of a box. Raven decided he would steal that light.

Raven was flying when he saw the Big Sky Chief’s daughter bathing in the river. He turned himself into a spruce needle, which the woman swallowed.

Later, Raven transformed into a human infant and was “born” as the child of the Big Sky Chief’s daughter. Raven then asked his “grandpa,” the Big Sky Chief, if he could play with the ball of light. The Big Sky Chief said no, which “angered the mother,” and she opened the box and tossed the ball of light to Raven.

Raven immediately transformed again into his true form and flew off with the light. The Big Sky Chief transformed into an eagle and chased Raven across the land and over the ocean.

During the chase, Raven “knocked the ball of light into a cliffside,” and the piece that broke off became the moon and stars.

Raven fled across the ocean and eventually the eagle turned back. Raven “dropped the ball of light” in exhaustion and the light “began to rise over the horizon, becoming the sun.”

“This is the amazing thing about the oral tradition of Indigenous people. This story is packed with knowledge. It's packed with cultural knowledge, theoretical knowledge, what and how people help each other,” said Profeit-LeBlanc.

There are often multiple tales that tell the same story; in many cases, different Indigenous groups from all over Turtle Island have varied versions, showcasing the beauty of the oral tradition.

Buffalo and the first fire

In a Cree legend shared by Chagnon, humans learned how to create fire after it was stolen from the Thunderbirds, another group of mythological beings.

As the legend goes, Wasakajak kept a keen eye on the “two-legged,” a term used to describe humans.

“By the fourth year, the winter got really, really cold. It got so cold that the two-legged people started freezing to death and Wasakajak knew that something had to be done,” said Chagnon.

“Wasakajak went to the Creator, who said to him, 'Go and talk to the Buffalo and tell him the situation and see what the Buffalo are willing to do.'

“And so the Buffalo said, 'I'm going to teach all of the two-leggeds how to use every aspect of me. To know how to feed themselves through the winter with my meat, how to be able to cook it and dry it, but also how to make clothing out of my hide, how to smoke it, to make leather, how to be able to create blankets to be able to stay warm. I will teach them how to stretch my hide along with the lodgepole pine tree to create a teepee.'

“The people learned how to sustainably use the buffalo and never take more than what they needed, but it was still too cold and they were starting to die,” said Chagnon.

Read more: Canadian UFO sightings are up — but are aliens or COVID-19 to blame?

Wasakajak’s only option was to ask the Thunderbirds, who controlled the storms, to stop the cold weather.

“He said, “Thunderbird, Thunderbird, please stop with the weather, it's too cold for the two-leggeds.'”

In the legend told by Chagnon, the Thunderbirds agreed with Wasakajak about the weather being too cold, but they insisted that “there are plants that need that cold, to be able to replenish themselves for the years to come,” and that “there are animals that need the cold to be able to hibernate a lot longer. There are other animals that need the cold to be able to adjust and adapt and survive in a better way.”

“Wasakajak asked for fire instead, but the Thunderbirds said no.”

Chagnon says that in the legend, Wasakajak tried to steal one of the Thunderbirds’ fire eggs while they slept.

“He tripped over a root and he dropped the fire egg, and it started to roll down the hill towards the two-leggeds and left a trail of fire behind it.”

Wasakajak took shelter in some birch trees, which the Thunderbird attacked in anger. Its claws “left deep dark grooves in the tree,” which are the “same ones we see today on the bark,” said Chagnon.

The fire egg rolled into the midst of the two-leggeds, “who gathered around the fire and began to tell stories to one another.”

These stories and many more have been told around campfires for centuries. They don't always mean the same thing or include the same details or characters, but the legends and myths are all a part of our shared history, even if we come from very different places. Despite this, each legend and myth has important meaning.

“It's a glimpse of a way of belief and understanding, a deeper meaning of culture,” said Chagnon. “But storytelling is essential in any culture, because it teaches us about the world around us and it's a way to connect on a deeper level.”

Profeit-LeBlanc said: “These aren't just little made-up stories, you know.”

”These are stories that help people to continue to be resilient, strong and loving."

Climate change has already started reshaping the economy and it's only 

going to get worse

insider@insider.com (Juliana Kaplan) 
 

Roberto Cedomio prepares his bed at a cooling shelter run by the Salvation Army at the Seattle Center during a heat wave hitting the Pacific Northwest, Sunday, June 27, 2021, in Seattle. AP Photo/John Froschauer

Summer 2021 is a climate crisis, from the Florida condo collapse to the Northwest heat dome to NYC's tropical storm

Experts say people are becoming more aware of the climate crisis as a force, but not its wide-ranging effects.

Meanwhile, a potential infrastructure package with pared-down climate measures looms on the horizon.

The toll of the climate crisis on daily life has become increasingly clear. Just ask President Joe Biden.

"Interesting to me - I didn't raise it - but how many of the survivors and how many of the families talked about the impact of global warming," Biden told reporters after meeting with the families of victims in the Surfside, Florida condo collapse.

The tragedy in Southern Florida that killed at least 18 people and left as many as 145 missing wasn't the only sudden catastrophe with climate at its root this summer. Just days earlier, temperatures reached record-breaking highs in the Pacific Northwest amid a deadly "heat dome" that local medical officials eventually declared a "mass casualty event." Then, New York City's streets and subways flooded during a tropical storm that recalled Hurricane Sandy's devastation not too long ago.

The climate crisis - long a far-off warning or even political talking point - is suddenly a deadly reality. And it's starting to have what one expert called local effects, meaning it's really changing the way people live, hitting the food they eat, places they live, and especially their health. Climate change is an economic issue, now more than ever.

"People are talking about it as if it's now something we should be considering when talking about the risks that we face as a society - risks to infrastructure, risks to human life," Amir Jina, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, told Insider.

Going outside will look different. UCLA environmental law professor Sean Hecht said the climate crisis changes "the parameters that have defined our built environment."
The climate crisis is already in your backyard, or your local store

In the Pacific Northwest, some grocery stores stopped selling perishables, and restaurants and other businesses temporarily shuttered due to the heat. Globally, a UN report finds that the world's food supply will be gravely impacted by the climate crisis without intervention, and that extreme weather could disrupt food supply chains.

"We are going to be seeing roads that aren't placed in places that make sense," Hecht said. Communities might not be equipped for less beach or snow, and farmers may need to adjust the crops they're planting. For instance, California's booming $6 billion almond industry was hit hard by a historic drought this year, The Wall Street Journal reported, with many farmers forced to simply raze trees they can no longer water.

"When the world changes around [climate change], these basic legal and then really human expectations start to not match the physical environment. And that creates a lot of conflict," Hecht said.

That was apparent for the New Yorkers wading through several feet of water to finish their commutes. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted a video of the flooding and said it makes the case for her Green New Deal, which hasn't yet become law: 'The Green New Deal, which is a blueprint to create millions of good jobs rebuilding infrastructure to stem climate change & protect vulnerable communities, is unrealistic. 'Instead we will do the adult thing, which is take orders from fossil fuel execs &make (sic) you swim to work.'"

The economic impacts have already started, and they'll be unequal

While these extreme weather events illustrate the larger-scale impact of the climate crisis, the smaller-scale impact will hit your wallet soon.

On a macro scale, climate change cost the US economy $500 billion over the previous half-decade, according to a Fed official, and potentially over $1.775 trillion since 1980, according to the NOAA. Research by Tatyana Deryugina in the American Economic Journal found that the economic costs of hurricanes may be greater than previously thought - since the distribution of measures like unemployment insurance goes up.

On the individual level, Jina said the costs add up, too. "There's a set of risks involved in anywhere we choose to live or any economic activity we choose to engage in that we need to start thinking about a little bit more," he said.

And, of course, the costs aren't felt equally. As Hecht said, whenever there's disruption, people with more resources can better afford to address the disruption.

Sarah O'Sell transports her new air conditioning unit to her nearby apartment on a dolly in Seattle on Friday, June 25, 2021. O'Sell snagged one of the few AC units available at the Junction True Value Hardware as Pacific Northwest residents brace for an unprecedented heat wave that has temperatures forecasted in triple-digits Manuel Valdes/AP

Hecht says research "very consistently" shows that disruptions are harder on communities with fewer resources, which creates inequity by class, something that "also is correlated in large part with race." Research from Jina and other members of the Climate Lab finds that the poorest counties will take the largest income hit from the crisis.

As Healthline reports, the climate crisis disproportionately impacts people of color, such as comorbidities linked to racism exacerbated by rising temperatures, to being redlined into areas more likely to be impacted.
Infrastructure spending is (maybe) on the horizon

Meanwhile, climate measures - or lack thereof - have come to the forefront in President Biden's infrastructure proposals.

The bipartisan deal that the president struck with a group of senators omits some of his original climate proposals, and pares down spending on others. Democrats have already sent a list of climate demands for inclusion in a reconciliation bill, including equity for low-income communities and communities of color impacted by pollution, along with a carbon-free grid.

© Provided by Business Insider Climate change protesters disrupt candidate Joe Biden during a campaign event on October 9, 2019 in Manchester, New Hampshire. Scott Eisen/Getty Images

The federal government can be instrumental when it comes to addressing how we produce and consume energy, the experts said. Actually creating that infrastructure is one important step.

Biden has floated his infrastructure deal as one way to both generate jobs and address the impact of climate change, Insider's Ayelet Sheffey reported.

"We gotta make lemonades out of lemons here," Biden has said. "We have a chance to do something that not only deals with the problem today, but allows us to be in a position to move forward - and create real good jobs, by the way, generate economic growth."

Even though Biden has proposed spending up to $4 trillion on rebuilding infrastructure, not all of that is focused on climate initiatives. Meanwhile, although Ocasio-Cortez did not initially put a price tag on the Green New Deal, she later clarified its cost would be much higher. "It's not a fun number to say, I'm not excited to say we need to spend $10 trillion on climate, but ... it's just the fact of the scenario," she said in 2019.

"Let's make sure that when we build a house or rezone an area, that it's not just going to be repeatedly flooded every single year - where the potential insurance costs or the reconstruction costs are going to completely dwarf the construction costs," Jina said. "That just makes simple economic sense."

A big part of addressing the situation is in more "mundane" aspects, like updating building codes, Jina said.

Read the original article on Business Insider

White evangelical support for Donald Trump wasn't about partisanship -- it was about animus toward minorities

Chrissy Stroop, AltrNet
July 10, 2021

Evangelicals praying over Trump (Photo: Screen capture)

In the wake of the Pew Research Center's findings that 84 percent of the white evangelical Protestant vote went to former President Donald Trump in 2020, it is more important than ever for the American public to face the uncomfortable truth about the authoritarian Christian right's deleterious impact on society, culture and politics.

Some of us have been pushing for this conversation for years, with various iterations of relevant data and scholarship helping to elucidate key points. During the 2016 primaries, a few political scientists drew attention to a link between authoritarian personality traits and support for Trump. For Religion Dispatches, I wrote at the time, "if 'a desire for order and a fear of outsiders' predicts Trump support, the question of why white evangelicals are backing a trash-talking billionaire can be easily answered."

Although the mainstream press has only haltingly begun to take such analysis seriously, my conclusion, which was intuitive to me as someone who grew up in white evangelical subculture and attended Christian schools, aged well over the next few years, as the rubric of "Christian nationalism" became an important part of the relevant discourse. No one should have been surprised by evangelical Trump support, and that the American public has done such a poor job of grappling with the issue is a sad commentary on the fundamental weakness of American civil society.

One of the key roots of that weakness is the tendency of TV news and the legacy press to present "both sides" of any issue that can be framed as partisan. The right has long since learned to exploit this tendency by using manufactured "controversies"—where there is no serious controversy among experts in the relevant fields—to shift the Overton window in, for example, areas such as climate change. While a strong argument that American polarization is "asymmetric," and driven primarily from the right, has been available, this understanding has done little to improve the situation.

Could the national discussion of right-wing, white Christians as a distinct authoritarian "faction" that transcends party help us to escape from the trap of bothsidesism? Lilliana Mason, associate professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland, seemed to suggest as much in a recent Twitter thread exploring some of the implications of a new paper she and colleagues Julie Wronski and John V. Kane recently published in American Political Science Review.

The main finding of the paper, "Activating Animus: The Uniquely Social Roots of Trump Support," is that support for the former president was driven primarily by negative feelings toward discrete social groups primarily associated with the Democratic Party: African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, and gays and lesbians.

Using a 2011 baseline that could be checked against later voting preferences, the authors show that animosity toward marginalized groups increased Trump support regardless of party affiliation, with a particularly strong effect among independents (a 30-percentage-point shift in Trump's favor vs. a 15-percentage-point shift among both Republicans and Democrats). The effect does not hold for other Republican leaders or the Republican Party in general. The authors found no similar effect of animosity toward groups primarily associated with Republicans—whites and Christians—on support for the Democratic Party. Thus, as the authors put it:

The observed relationship between group animosity and Trump support is neither an artifact of his serving as a de facto party leader nor a phenomenon that manifests symmetrically across candidates in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Rather, it appears that Trump support is uniquely drawn from animosity toward social groups linked with the out-party, whereas most other elites' political support is unrelated to these kinds of sentiments.

It would therefore be incorrect to "explain Trump's appeal with partisanship alone." These conclusions seem to be the basis of Mason's Twitter thread, in which she contends, "More than 'polarization,' we need to worry about the very real threat posed by an anti-democratic group that has always existed in the electorate, and [that] has taken control of parties to cover for their explicitly anti-democratic aims."

It is certainly true that this white Christian faction identified by Mason and her colleagues exists throughout American history not only as a bastion of white supremacist patriarchy, but also as something distinct from the political parties with which it may be aligned at any given time. It is not clear to me, however, that simply pointing out that American racists used to be mostly Democrats, but are now mostly Republicans, can do much to change the public discourse. After all, appeals to seemingly moderate Republicans to show "spine" or "conscience" in recent years have yielded precious few results in this post-2010 gerrymandering environment that has allowed the Tea Party and the Christian right to control the GOP. To be sure, the concentration of authoritarians in one of two major parties in a two-party system is a serious problem, but there is no simple way to dislodge the authoritarians from their power over the current Republican Party, which is more white and male than ever.

That being said, I wholly agree with Mason's contention that we need to talk about white right-wing Christians as the core of anti-pluralist, anti-democratic America. I'm not sure, however, that trying to make the case that doing so is "non-partisan" will have much impact when, despite the findings of Mason and her colleagues, the faction in question currently defines the GOP. Whether this argument will convince media gatekeepers, there's also still the issue of Christian supremacy, and the concomitant de facto taboo on subjecting Christian demographics to social criticism, to overcome.

Despite the challenges, I think it makes sense for American liberals and leftists, and for all Americans who support democracy and human rights, to push both these narratives. And they are more likely to have an impact the more they can be associated with relatable human faces and stories. I have worked over the last few years to elevate the voices of "exvangelicals" and the nonreligious to argue that we should be considered stakeholders in discussions of evangelicalism and the Christian right—as should anyone directly affected by their politics. This approach has yielded some results, and I believe it has legs, inasmuch as stories have power. The stories of those who have left the Republican Party because of the authoritarian faction's control may also be mobilized to change the national conversation, which is indeed a crucial part of the long game in politics. Whether it will be enough to avoid a long period of minority authoritarian rule by our racist, anti-democratic faction, however, is far from certain.

Residents of Canadian town destroyed by record-breaking fire return for glimpse of homes

Reuters
July 10, 2021



By Jennifer Gauthier

LYTTON, British Columbia (Reuters) - Residents of Lytton, British Columbia, were able to see the remains of their homes on Friday for the first time since they were forced to flee for their lives days ago.

The central British Columbia town made headlines at the end of June for breaking Canada's heat record - hitting 49.6°C (121.28°F) at its hottest - and was then almost completely destroyed in a forest fire caused in part by the heat wave.

The town of around 250 people had just minutes to evacuate on June 30, along with roughly 2,000 people living in nearby indigenous communities, after a forest fire was started by what authorities suspect was human activity.

Ninety percent of the town was destroyed, Lytton Mayor Jan Polderman said.

"A few buildings survived in town but nearly every home in the centre of the village is gone. Where many buildings stood is now simply charred earth," Polderman wrote in an open letter published in the Merritt Herald, the local newspaper. "We want everyone to know that their bravery was incredible in the face of this unimaginable horror."

Residents had not been able to return to the town until Friday due to ongoing fires and toxic substances in the area. Roughly 250 people - including residents and media - were taken on bus tours of the town on Friday afternoon, according to Thompson-Nicola Regional District, which organized the tours.

"Didn't get much sleep last night thinking about the bus tour into Lytton today," resident Edith Loring-Kuhanga posted on Twitter. "I know it's going to be heartbreaking but I need to go see our little town even though it's decimated!"

The scenes were a shock to residents, one told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

"We've seen the videos, but until you actually see it, it's hard to believe," Chloe Ross said. "I understand why others don't want to go. Nothing about this feels real."

Two people died in the fire. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who have been coordinating family reunification efforts, said on Friday no one has been reported missing so far.

(Reporting by Moira Warburton in Vancouver and Jennifer Gauthier in Lytton; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Right-wing anti-vaccine hysteria hits fever pitch as Nazi comparisons grow

Jon Skolnik
July 10, 2021

Laura Ingraham speaking at the Values Voter Summit, photo by Gage Skidmore.

Right-wing scaremongering about the COVID-19 vaccine hit a fever pitch this week, from Fox News to some of the conservative movement's more fringe characters, with pundits placing particular emphasis on the apparent connection between President Biden's vaccine rollout and Nazi Germany.

The hysteria appears to have its roots in a Tuesday speech the president gave in which he encouraged volunteers to knock on doors.

"We need to go [sic] to community-by-community, neighborhood-by-neighborhood and, oftentimes, door-to-door, literally knocking on doors to get help to the remaining people protected from the virus," Biden said.
Chris Matthews talks to Raw Story: Who would you bet on in 2024, Trump or Kamala?

The White House later clarified the president's remarks, stating that only community volunteers would be leading the door-knocking effort to encourage vaccination — but that didn't stop right-wing pundits and politicians from pouncing on what they said was America's slide toward authoritarianism.

Fox News in particular dedicated hours of programming to its crusade against the administration's push to vaccinate the country against a virus that has already killed 600,000 Americans — with Tucker Carlson equating workplace vaccine requirements to forced sterilization, guest and right-wing activist Charlie Kirk using his appearance to compare vaccination to South African apartheid, and a rash of other hosts decrying the Biden administration's emphasis on vaccination.


"The focus of this administration on vaccination is mind-boggling," Fox host Brian Kilmeade said on Fox & Friends Thursday. "They're going to knock on your door, they're going to demand that you take it, and they're going to give you a third shot," he added during a bizarre rant the next day, giving no indication of what the third shot is or why it would be required.

Longtime Fox host Laura Ingraham also added to the fear mongering with a chyron that read "THE LEFT'S CONSTANT COVID POWER GRAB"

The message filtered down to the Republican party's Congressional members, who hammered home the idea that Biden was sending people door-to-door to force vaccines on people who did not want them — which is, of course, not true.

"The Biden Administration wants to knock on your door to see if you're vaccinated," Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, tweeted. "What's next? Knocking on your door to see if you own a gun?"

"How about don't knock on my door," echoed Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas. "You're not my parents. You're the government. Make the vaccine available, and let people be free to choose. Why is that concept so hard for the left?"

Missouri GOP Gov. Mike Parson – whose state saw the highest COVID-related deaths and hospitalizations in the last week, baselessly warned Biden "that sending government employees or agents door-to-door to compel vaccination would NOT be an effective OR a welcome strategy in Missouri!"

Other Republicans were more bombastic in their reaction to Biden's speech, not only bandying misinformation but painting an explicitly totalitarian picture of the president's vaccine rollout, often explicitly using the Nazi regime and the Third Reich as a comparison point.

"Biden has deployed his Needle Nazis to Mesa County," Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., tweeted on Thursday. "The people of my district are more than smart enough to make their own decisions about the experimental vaccine and don't need coercion by federal agents. Did I wake up in Communist China?"

Freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., called the officials handling Biden's vaccine push "medical brown shirts." Historically, brown shirts refers to the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, called the SA, which carried out much of Adolf Hitler's bidding. Green's comments came on the heels of her last Nazi-related comparison, in which she said that mandatory mask-wearing was similar to the Nazi-era requirement that Jewish people wear identifying Stars of David on their clothing.

Conservative pundit Tomi Lahren also joined the chorus on Thursday, tarring flight attendants who enforce COVID health precautions as "Nazis of the air." Last year, as the Daily Beast noted, Lahren made headlines when she said that those who comply with social distancing rules are engaging in a form of "willful slavery."

Meanwhile, Charlie Kirk, the founder of conservative youth advocacy group Turning Point USA, eschewed a Nazi-era comparison, instead calling Biden's vaccination push an "apartheid-style, open-air hostage situation." He claimed that the administration would only let you "have your freedom back if you get the jab."

Conservative vaccine hesitancy, fueled by this militant anti-vaccine messaging, remains strong — despite pleas from numerous Republican governors to get vaccinated. Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., admitted on Thursday that he's "perplexed" as to why so many Americans are refusing to get vaccinated.

Some on the left have speculated that it's the administration's very encouragement of vaccination – rather than the safety of the vaccine itself – that is largely contributing to right-wing resistance.

"The only solution may be reverse psychology," as Salon's Amanda Marcotte wrote last month. "People who want the pandemic to end need to, paradoxically, release the desire to see conservatives get vaccinated. The more zen that liberals (or people perceived to be liberals) are about vaccination rates, the less fun it is to try to piss liberals off by refusing to get the shot."

Colombians’ arrest highlights growing presence of private military contractors in Haiti
2021/7/9 
©Miami Herald
Two men, accused of being involved in the assassination of President Jovenel Moise, are being transported to the Petionville station in a police car in Port au Prince on July 8, 2021. - Valerie Baeriswyl/AFP/AFP/TNS

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The arrests of 15 Colombians in the death of Haitian President Jovenel Moise has shocked many Haitians, already reeling from the middle-of-the-night assassination of the country’s leader. Less surprising, even as police publicized photos of the detained foreigners and the array of weaponry allegedly used in the attack on the president’s home, is the presence in Haiti of heavily armed, foreign former soldiers and private security contractors.

Over the past four years Haiti has faced waves of anti-government protests against Moise’s leadership and disarray in its weak national police force. It has seen a growing number of private security contractors and soldiers for hire in the midst of its own forces.

The growing presence of these soldiers of fortune coincided with the 2016 election of Moise after a tumultuous presidential vote that had to be re-run because of fraud allegations. They also coincided with the end of a long-running United Nations peacekeeping mission, as business owners and Moise could no longer depend on the so-called U.N. Blue Helmets for protection, and lacked trust in Haiti’s own police force.

The trend has worried Haiti watchers and the U.N., which had made strengthening the police a key focus of its 15-year presence in the country in the wake of increasing gang violence and political instability.

“With the disintegration of the (Haiti National Police), which had its own internal splits, to the explosion in gangs, which I now call ‘armed militias,’... the next logical step is escalation in an arms race to secure even more firepower and expertise than can be found on the local market: foreign mercenaries,” said William O’Neill, a Haiti security expert and international human rights lawyer who was involved in the rebuilding of the country’s police force.

The first recent sighting of foreign security contractors came in May 2018, during a Haitian Flag Day celebration in the city of Arcahaie. Three unidentified, heavily armed foreign security agents were seen in the president’s security detail. They were not members of the Haiti National Police, a former high-ranking Haitian police official told The Miami Herald, recalling the incident.

Three months later, as businesses were looted during what became known as “peyi lòk” — or country on lockdown — business owners in Port-au-Prince began contemplating private contractors from abroad to protect their property and investments.

Six months later, anti-government demonstrators clashed with police during protests and people took to social networks to share photos of re-branded police vehicles belonging to presidential palace guards with M-60 machine guns and photos of individuals who appeared to be foreigners standing in the middle of Haitian agents. Among them was a former member of a United Nations peacekeeping mission, hired as part of a Haitian government contract.

The police chief at the time, Michel-Ange Gedeon, later went on radio to denounce the presence of the military hardware, saying that no new specialized unit inside the Haiti National Police had been created and that it was the first time he was seeing the new equipment.

Three months later, Gedeon’s forces arrested five Americans and two other foreign nationals claiming to be on “a government mission” after they were found with a cache of automatic rifles and pistols on the streets of Port-au-Prince.

The men didn’t specify which government had hired them. But at one point, they told officers that “their boss would call our boss.” One of the men arrested, Christopher Osman, was a former Navy SEAL.

It was later revealed that one of the men arrested had previously worked in Haiti as a private security contractor.

Facing charges of illegal arms possession and other crimes in Haiti, the group was swiftly taken out of the country with the help of the U.S. Embassy and the State Department, with the approval of Haiti’s justice minister.

At a news conference a few months later, Moise was publicly asked to address reports that he had hired private military contractors to beef up his security in the midst of escalating violent protests and demands for his resignation. Moise responded that they were there to conduct an evaluation of his security.

Moise had been ruling by decree since January 2020 when he issued an executive order in March declaring a state of emergency, allowing the Haitian government to contract with foreign entities if need be to help with the country’s rising insecurity. The move followed the death of five police officers in a botched anti-gang raid in a seaside slum of the capital, and fellow officers angrily taking to the streets to protest the killings.

Now, retired Colombian soldiers are suspected of participating in the assassination of Moise. Of 28 people suspected of carrying out the killing, 26 of them are Colombian nationals and two are naturalized Americans of Haitian descent, Haiti’s interim police director Leon Charles told journalists late Thursday.

Colombian authorities on Thursday said at least two of the Colombians implicated in the Haitian president’s assassination are former members of the country’s army.

Colombia Defense Minister Diego Molano said the South American nation had received an official request from Interpol, the international police agency, for information about the Colombian suspects.

Molano said he had instructed Colombian police and the military to collaborate with Haitian authorities “in the face of the alleged participation of Colombians in that abominable act.”

He added Colombia had created a team of experts to help in the investigation.

The head of the Colombian Army also said that he had “received a clear order of the president of the republic Ivan Duque Marquez that we are willing to provide to the national police of Colombia all of the information regarding the events and where these two former members of the public force were involved, in this case the national army.”

On Friday, Duque announced that he was sending a team from Colombia to Haiti to assist authorities. The White House also announced that a team from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security was on its way to Port-au-Prince to assist.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki announced that the Haitian government, currently being led by acting Prime Minister Claude Joseph, had asked for investigative help and security.

“We will be sending senior FBI and DHS officials to Port-au-Prince as soon as possible to assess the situation and how we may be able to assist,” she said.

Haiti Foreign Minister Bocchit Edmond said the government has asked the U.S. to freeze the U.S. assets of anyone who participated or planned the killing.

The use of private security forces in Haiti dates back to the mid to late 1990s when there was an explosive growth in domestic, Haitian-owned and operated private security companies, O’Neill said.

O’Neill said such forces have always been a concern for the U.N.

“A few were legitimate and fulfilled useful services, but many were not,” he said. “They in effect became private police forces, something we at the U.N. at the time worried a lot about because the government, with help from the U.N., was trying to create for the first time in Haitian history a professional police service that was not politicized or under anyone’s control.”