| Fallout from Trump's coronavirus admissions Posted: 12 Sep 2020 02:20 PM PDT  President Trump told journalist Bob Woodward that he was deliberately downplaying the risks of the coronavirus in the early months of the pandemic. What impact will these statements have?
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| Compton police shooting: Everything we know about 'ambush' gun attack on two police officers in LA Posted: 13 Sep 2020 09:20 AM PDT  Surveillance footage captures suspect firing into parked patrol car
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| Professor who used racial slur in class is put on leave Posted: 12 Sep 2020 12:34 PM PDT  "I want to thank students for using their voices to share the troubling and disturbing language that was used by your professor in class," a university official wrote to students.
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| A Delta Airlines flight had to turn around after a passenger refused to comply with face covering guidelines Posted: 13 Sep 2020 03:22 PM PDT  The flight returned to a Detroit Metro Airport gate, local outlets said. As of August 28, Delta had banned 240 customers who refused to wear a mask.
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| Oregon braces for "mass fatality incident" as wildfires rage Posted: 11 Sep 2020 10:53 PM PDT  More than half a million people — 12% of the state's population — have fled their homes in Oregon.
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| Chinese military calls US biggest threat to world peace Posted: 12 Sep 2020 11:50 PM PDT  China's Defense Ministry on Sunday blasted a critical U.S. report on the country's military ambitions, saying it is the U.S. instead that poses the biggest threat to the international order and world peace. The statement follows the Sept. 2 release of the annual Defense Department report to Congress on Chinese military developments and goals that it said would have "serious implications for U.S. national interests and the security of the international rules-based order." Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Wu Qian called the report a "wanton distortion" of China's aims and the relationship between the People's Liberation Army and China's 1.4 billion people.
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| Internet searches for gut problems provide early warning of Covid-19 hotspots Posted: 13 Sep 2020 08:21 AM PDT  A surge in internet searches about gut ailments is helping researchers predict the next Covid-19 hotspots, a study has revealed. Massachusetts General Hospital found areas where there was a spike in Google queries relating to diarrhoea and loss of appetite frequently reported a sharp rise in cases of coronavirus three to four weeks later. Other markers included a loss of taste, nausea and abdominal pain. A link between Covid-19 and gut ailments was first identified in China earlier this year, with about a third of sufferers reporting gastrointestinal rather than respiratory sickness. Other patients complained of suffering from both.
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| Secretive Pentagon research program seeking to replace human hackers with AI Posted: 13 Sep 2020 09:35 AM PDT  The Joint Operations Center inside Fort Meade in Maryland is a cathedral to cyber warfare. Part of a 380,000-square-foot, $520 million complex opened in 2018, the office is the nerve center for both the U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency as they do cyber battle.
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| Tropical Storm Sally threatens Florida with forecast to be hurricane by Monday Posted: 12 Sep 2020 12:51 PM PDT  Meanwhile Bermuda fears Paulette will bring dangerous conditions Sunday night
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| Two Los Angeles sheriff's deputies are in critical condition after they were shot in Compton 'ambush' Posted: 13 Sep 2020 01:42 AM PDT  Surveillance footage of the shooting shows the assailant in dark clothing firing a gun into the police car before running away.
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| Top prosecutor on DOJ's investigation of the Russia probe just resigned out of fear of Bill Barr Posted: 12 Sep 2020 10:25 AM PDT  The investigative team is reportedly being pressed for political reasons produce a report before its work is done
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| Louisville anxiously awaits Breonna Taylor decision — and whether justice or chaos reigns Posted: 13 Sep 2020 03:00 AM PDT  The mother of Breonna Taylor called out Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, telling him to "have the power and courage to call my child yours."
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| Californian residents defying evacuation orders despite deadly fires sweeping state Posted: 12 Sep 2020 10:23 AM PDT  'I don't feel it's going to come this way'
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| Battleground Tracker: Biden gains edge in Arizona, leads big in Minnesota Posted: 13 Sep 2020 07:30 AM PDT  In Arizona, the more concerned voters are about COVID-19, the less likely they are to be voting for Trump.
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| Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli sentenced in tax evasion case as mother jailed for 16 months Posted: 13 Sep 2020 07:24 AM PDT  Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli was sentenced on Sunday to nine months' community service and her mother was ordered jailed for 16 months for tax evasion on earnings from her international career. The former Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover model, now a popular TV personality in Israel, had pleaded guilty to tax offences under a plea bargain that also included her mother and agent, Tzipi Refaeli. Israeli tax authorities accused the two of evading paying taxes on income of about $7.2 million. Security for their court appearance on Sunday was tight, with barricades in the lobby marking a path to an elevator that took the pair to the courtroom. "We love you Bar," one woman shouted as the model and her mother, both wearing coronavirus masks, walked past cameras and reporters, without making any comment.
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| Thousands of Israelis protest outside Netanyahu’s residence Posted: 12 Sep 2020 01:31 PM PDT  Thousands of Israelis demonstrated outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's official residence in central Jerusalem late Saturday, demanding he resign over his trial on corruption charges and what is widely seen as his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. With Israel reporting record levels of new coronavirus cases each day, the country appears to be headed toward a nationwide lockdown this week ahead of the Jewish New Year. Saturday's demonstration came a day after Israel announced an agreement to establish diplomatic relations with Bahrain, the second Arab country to normalize ties with Israel in under a month and just the fourth overall.
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| Tucker Carlson Calls Climate Change ‘Systemic Racism in the Sky’ Posted: 11 Sep 2020 07:27 PM PDT  In a segment on the raging West Coast wildfires, Fox News host Tucker Carlson tried to make the baffling argument that Democratic leaders' warnings about climate change are "like systemic racism in the sky." He extended the bizarre metaphor, lamenting that there was supposedly no explanation for how climate change causes more wildfires (there is!) and mocking Democrats for not explaining science to him: "You can't see it, but rest assured, it's everywhere, and it's deadly. Like systemic racism, it is your fault. The American middle class did it. They caused climate change. They ate too many hamburgers. They drove too many SUVs. They had too many children." > Tucker Carlson argues that climate change is like "systemic racism in the sky" in that it doesn't exist but liberals want you to believe its there. pic.twitter.com/dMaZ1QOtqy> > — nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) September 12, 2020Carlson's show is part of the primetime Fox News lineup that makes up the most-watched television in America, averaging 3.5 million viewers per night alongside Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, according to Nielsen Media Research.Scientists agree the rising average year-round temperatures brought about by human activity are causing more fires along the West Coast. Climate change, specifically drought spanning multiple years, has accelerated the rate at which wildfires appear and their intensity, according to a joint report released earlier this year by scientists from Columbia University, the University of Colorado, and the University of Idaho. The blazes in Washington, Oregon, and California have collectively already burned more than four million acres—three million in California and one million in Oregon—the most of any recorded fire season in either state. Experts say the West's yearly wrestling match with wildfire is just beginning. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has warned residents that the peak of the conflagration is yet to come, and Oregon Governor Kate Brown told Oregonians to prepare for what "could be the greatest loss of human lives and property due to wildfire in our state's history." More than 100,000 people have already been evacuated from their homes in Oregon, and at least five have died. In California, 20 people have died from the fires. > This is hands down the most concussed defense of climate change denial I've ever heard: "A climate change denier is anyone who thinks the ruling class has done a poor job" pic.twitter.com/61NgsHaxCN> > — nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) September 12, 2020Speaking before an image of Newsom, Carlson defended climate change denial as a matter of political power and wealth rather than one of science."What is a climate change denier? A climate change denier is anyone who thinks the ruling class has done a very poor job running their state, running their country, or protecting the people they were hired to protect and watch over," he said. "So are we climate change deniers if we point out that the state of California has failed to implement meaningful deforestation that might have dramatically slowed the spread of these wildfires? Does that make us deniers?"Carlson willfully misunderstands forest management in the same way President Donald Trump does. Both have blamed the state, run by a Democratic governor, for inadequate forest management, but the California government manages less than 3 percent of the state's forested land. The federal government, by contrast, oversees over half of all California's forested acres. Despite the imbalance, Trump has threatened to withhold disaster funding from California over the fires.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Victory for religious liberty: Chick-fil-A to be offered lease in San Antonio airport Posted: 13 Sep 2020 04:09 AM PDT  Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton joins 'Fox & Friends' with reaction.
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| 2 killed, 6 seriously injured in New Jersey shooting near Rutgers University campus Posted: 13 Sep 2020 11:56 AM PDT  The shooting, which took place in New Brunswick near the Rutgers University campus, has no affiliation with the school or its students, police said.
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| A law enforcement group in Texas put up billboards warning visitors to Austin that the city slashed its police department budget Posted: 13 Sep 2020 07:02 AM PDT  "Warning!!! Austin Police Defunded Enter at Your Own Risk," reads one of the billboards, erected by the Texas Municipal Police Association.
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| Tropical Storm Sally forecast to become hurricane as it targets New Orleans, gulf states Posted: 13 Sep 2020 08:26 AM PDT  On Saturday, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency as the storm moved closer.
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| Anti-Shiite protesters march for second day in Karachi Posted: 12 Sep 2020 04:57 AM PDT  Tens of thousands of anti-Shiite protesters including demonstrators linked to Sunni extremists rallied in Pakistan's Karachi on Saturday, in the second day of protests that have sparked fears of sectarian violence.
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| San Francisco could be first major American city to let 16-year-olds vote Posted: 13 Sep 2020 02:24 PM PDT  San Francisco could give children as young as 16 the right to vote in local elections if a landmark proposition passes in the US's November elections. The proposition to lower the voting age by two years will be decided by the city's residents, who rejected the legislation when it was first proposed in 2016, according to NBC News. "Our motivation here first and foremost is to make sure that we put new voters in a position to establish that habit in the first election they're eligible for, and then to continue participating throughout their lives which is good for democracy on every level," Vote 16 campaign manager, Brandon Klugman, told NBC News.
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| Saudi coalition attack Houthi military sites in Yemen's Sanaa: Al-Arabiya Posted: 12 Sep 2020 08:36 PM PDT |
| Pressure mounts on foreign media in China after evacuation of Australian reporters Posted: 11 Sep 2020 10:22 PM PDT  Michael Smith, a reporter for an Australian newspaper, was jolted from his sleep in his Shanghai apartment last week by six state intelligence officers who questioned him under a bright spotlight. Almost 800 miles away Beijing, meanwhile, as drinks flowed in the middle of a party at his flat, Bill Birtles, correspondent for Australia's state broadcaster, received an almost identical visit. The message from authorities was the same: pack your bags. Details were sketchy but Mr Smith and Mr Birtles were now 'persons of interest' in a case and were subject to an exit ban. The reality is more nuanced. The Australian pair had become the latest journalists to be swept up in the growing animosity between China and the West – casualties of a spiralling row that is now rapidly closing our window into a rising global superpower. A collapse in cordial relations has triggered expulsions of a group of US journalists too and sewed a culture of fear among the shrinking number of foreign reporters left inside. Recalling his interrogation, Mr Smith wrote: "I wondered if ... I was about to be 'disappeared' to one of China's notorious black jails."
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| Elon Musk blasted fellow billionaire Bill Gates, saying he's clueless about electric trucks Posted: 13 Sep 2020 02:03 AM PDT  Tesla happens to be working on an electric truck, the Tesla Semi. The vehicle is two years behind its original 2019 delivery schedule.
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| Navalny’s No. 2 Suspects ‘Putin’s Chef’ Ordered Novichok Hit on Opposition Leader Posted: 11 Sep 2020 09:14 PM PDT  MOSCOW—Tears of joy ran down Lyubov Sobol's face when news came through that Alexei Navalny had awakened after more than two weeks in a coma. The 32-year-old blond lawyer, who cultivates a nerdy look with her dark-rimmed glasses, spent a decade fighting Russia's state corruption at Navalny's side. His partial recovery doesn't make her work any less dangerous.In an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, Sobol revealed who she suspects of poisoning Navalny and why. With Navalny in a hospital in Berlin, Sobol is the de facto leader of the Russian opposition. In spite of the arrests, blackmail, and violent attacks, she has not left Russia, she says, because this fight is her life.Navalny hired Sobol when she was a teenager in law school, as the first employee for his nonprofit group, the Anti-Corruption Foundation. Together they have produced dozens of video investigative reports about high-profile, outrageous cases of corruption by President Vladimir Putin's closest allies. These reports have touched his inner circle: the petroleum kingpins Igor Sechin and Gennady Timchenko, and the Kremlin-linked catering magnate Yevgeny Prigozhin, known as "Putin's chef." More than 36 million people watched Navalny's investigation into the former president and prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, alleging he had secret real-estate holdings valued at $85 million in 2017. "We showed millions of Russians how corrupt our prime minister was and Putin replaced Medvedev, we demonstrated ex-Prosecutor General Yuriy Chaika's corruption and Putin fired him; Putin tried to change a lot, except for himself," Sobol said.Navalny Had Many Enemies in the Kremlin—but Who Wanted Him Dead?Putin's opposition has suffered countless violent attacks. Activists have been jailed, tortured and assassinated; but today one man's attacks on the group stand out, Sobol said."Navalny's poisoning does not look like a Chechen attack; it has the handwriting of secret services," she said. "Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is extremely dangerous, has the Kremlin's license for persecutions, for murder both inside Russia and in other countries, including Africa and Syria."Sobol does not have any hard evidence to link Prigozhin to the attack on Navalny."It was wrong for Interpol to drop the extradition notice for Prigozhin. The world's leaders should realize that Prigozhin's hands are absolutely free now to interfere in the U.S. presidential election in November. He has millions of corrupt dollars to spend on the interference."Sobol says Prigozhin once attacked her family: Somebody stabbed her husband, a sociologist, Sergei Mokhov, with a syringe. The attacker injected a cocktail of chemicals that made him lose consciousness. "Poisonings are Prigozhin's style, he waited for two months after our very popular investigation into his financial schemes—more than four million people watched it. Then, he conducted an attack on my husband," Sobol said.Prigozhin is not known to be under investigation for any crime in Russia and his company has sued Navalny's group for slander related to other accusations."If not for the quick ambulance pickup and the hospital around the corner from our house, my husband would have been dead," Sobol said.Protests are all but banned in Russia. People who gather in the street are punished with high fines and time behind bars. Putin regularly talks about the West financing Russian opposition: "Countries that conduct an independent policy or that simply stand in the way of somebody's interests get destabilized," he said in 2014.Some voices in Russia's liberal circles say it's time for a female leader to take on Putin. Yulia Navalny, whose prominence has risen since she took control of the situation when her husband was poisoned, is one potential candidate. Sobol is another. "Women's rights, gender equality become acute issues on Russia's agenda. People feel a lot of sympathy and support for Navalny's wife Yulia, who managed to win the battle with authorities, demonstrate incredible courage, and move her husband to Germany," Alisa Ganiyeva, an influential member of Moscow's literary circles, told The Daily Beast. "And Lyubov Sobol is a vivid example of a woman's significant transformation from a lawyer, an assistant into an independent political figure and influencer." Navalny's family is now with him in Germany, where doctors believe Putin's nemesis has been poisoned with the military-grade Novichok nerve agent.While he recovers in hospital, the political battles around Navalny's poisoning continue. The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee is calling for President Trump to investigate Navalny's poisoning. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is demanding Russian authorities "investigate this crime to the last detail and do so in full transparency."Before the poisoning, French President Emmanuel Macron was planning to reset relations with the Kremlin and visit Moscow. Those plans are now reportedly under threat.Moscow denies there was a poisoning and the foreign ministry has complained about Germany's "unfounded allegations and ultimatums."In the future, Sobol thinks, Russia should move away from having a single all-powerful leader. "It is important to understand that both Russians and Belarusians are tired of authoritarian leaders. People organize protests and movements on the horizontal level," she said. "Only this summer, we saw giant rallies in the Russian Far East, in Khabarovsk and in Bashkiria—activists realized that their leaders get arrested or attacked, so communities organize, communicate on social media, and plan strategies and rallies."Police often raid Navalny's anti-corruption group, and confiscate office and film equipment. Sobol says she spends all her spare money on fines for organizing rallies. She and her colleagues get arrested every few months, and now they have seen their boss attacked with a chemical weapon.And yet still Sobol stepped forward to fill Navalny's position as the face of the opposition. "We, Navalny's team, are like water: They squash us in Moscow, we open headquarters all across Russia. They arrest some of us, others immediately fill the gaps," Sobol said."I am never going to escape abroad—people recognize me in the streets. I am in charge of YouTube channels watched by more than six million people. And I am planning to run for Parliament next year."Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| US election spotlight mostly bypasses mainline Protestants Posted: 13 Sep 2020 06:59 AM PDT  The images were vivid: President Donald Trump brandishing a Bible outside an Episcopal church in Washington that had been boarded up amid racial injustice protests. It's one of the few times that a mainline Protestant denomination entered the national spotlight amid a volatile election year abounding in political news about evangelicals and Catholics.
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| Parents in Tennessee are suing their school district for enforcing mask mandate Posted: 13 Sep 2020 01:52 PM PDT  The lawsuit claims that the mandate is denying equal education opportunities to students who will not wear masks.
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| Wildfires are striking closer and closer to cities. We know how this will end Posted: 12 Sep 2020 03:22 AM PDT  The climate crisis is a factor, but so are efforts to fight fires - which have had the opposite effect We call them wildfires, but that might not be the right word any more.In recent days, at least five whole towns have been destroyed by fire in Oregon. So has much of Malden, Washington, and swathes of Big Creek and Berry Creek, both in California.To many people this will seem like deja vu. In 2018, another town was also wiped off the map, in the most dramatic recent example of this horrible genre. Paradise, California, was much larger, home to 27,000, and it was destroyed in just a few hours. Eighty-five people were killed.The places now being ravaged are not forests or chaparral located somewhere out there, in the wilds. Instead the current wildfires demonstrate how easy it has become for fires to invade our suburbs and towns, with their 7-11s, gas stations and doctors' offices, and lay them to waste. Where will this end? The prospects are disturbing.To understand how we got here, it is important to know that we have come to expect control over such conflagrations relatively recently. Prior to European settlement in the West, fire flowed freely, sparked by lightning or intentionally by Native Americans to encourage the growth of favored plants or clear areas for easier hunting. As much as 4.5m acres of California's 105m acres might burn every year. These low-intensity fires did not kill large trees, and some plants even came to depend on fire to regenerate themselves. A shrub called chamise appears to encourage fire by releasing combustible gases in the presence of flames.The shift to a different approach occurred after several instances in which wildfires became appalling urban fires. In October 1871, railway workers sparked a brush fire in northern Wisconsin, which swept into the city of Peshtigo and killed 1,500 people there and elsewhere across a gargantuan footprint of 1.2 million acres. And in the great fires of 1910, fires burning across several Western states killed hundreds and razed a number of towns. People escaped by train as the fires virtually licked at their heels.After this the US sought to suppress all wildfires before they could gain a foothold. In the 1930s, the US Forest Service instituted its so-called 10am policy, according to which fires had to be stamped out by that time the next day. Later came the "10-acre policy", dictating that fires should not be permitted to grow beyond that size. Fire was the enemy, an idea catalyzed by wartime imagery of firebombed cities such as Dresden, Hamburg and Tokyo. Smokey Bear helped to reinforce it, too.This strategy had a pronounced effect – though not necessarily in ways that were intended. Fire activity decreased, it is true, but with scouring flames removed from the environment, forests grew far denser and brushier than they had been before. In one Arizona forest, 20 trees per acre became 800 trees per acre. These forests can and will burn more severely. In addition the climate crisis is rendering vegetation ever drier, and by 2050 up to three times more acreage in Western forests will burn as a result of global warming. Meanwhile 60m homes can now be found in or close to high-risk areas where wildfires have previously burned.Cue urban fires. The fire that obliterated Paradise on the morning of November 8, 2018 was sparked in a rural river canyon several miles to the east of town. As we describe in our new book, Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy, it approached the community at speeds previously thought impossible, chewing through almost 400 American football fields' worth of vegetation per minute. It hit like a hurricane. Strikingly, many of the hundreds of thousands of trees in the town were spared – it was the homes that became matches setting fire to the next. The fire was so quick, so hot, that people died seeking shelter under their cars, in the driveways of their homes while holding a hose, or huddled in their bathtub.Lincoln Bramwell, the chief historian of the US Forest Service, told us that the story of Paradise "reads like these accounts from the late 19th century", of fires like Peshtigo, back before we had sought to bring wildfire under our command. "I see us going back to the future," he added. "Going back to a time when fire was not under our control."As Americans in California, Washington and Oregon are discovering, wildfires do not only impact the wilderness. Towns and suburbs are not inviolate. With so many of our Western paradises now under threat, experts are begging us to bring controlled fire back into the ecosystem in the form of prescribed burns. To ensure buildings meet stringent fire codes. And to prepare city evacuation plans so we do not repeat the gridlock in which many of those escaping Paradise were trapped. We must, it almost goes without saying, get a handle on the climate crisis.Witnessing the urban fire in Paradise, some of those we interviewed for our book no longer thought it fanciful that a fire that could maraud into the very heart of a major city, such as Los Angeles, San Diego or the communities of the San Francisco Bay.University of California scientist Faith Kearns recounted to us that she lives in the Berkeley flatlands, in a part of the Bay that is as thoroughly urbanized as can be. Suddenly she was considering the prospect that a fire might one day reach her home."My neighborhood is full of Victorians. My neighbor's window is about six feet away from my own…" she said, pausing in thought. "I think we'll see it. I think we'll see it." * Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano are the authors of Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy, available from WW Norton. Read an excerpt here
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| Transcript: Governor Kate Brown on "Face the Nation" Posted: 13 Sep 2020 08:09 AM PDT  The following is a transcript of an interview with Oregon Governor Kate Brown that aired Sunday, September 13, 2020, on "Face the Nation."
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| Nigeria's slave descendants prevented from marrying who they want Posted: 13 Sep 2020 04:14 PM PDT  Campaigners fight to overturn customs and a caste system that discriminates against some Igbo people.
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| Amid looming fee increases, Miami Citizenship Week strives to boost naturalization Posted: 12 Sep 2020 09:34 AM PDT  This has been a challenging year for immigrants seeking to complete the citizenship process.
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| Chinese-American students fire back at Republican Senate nominee's 'disrespectful' claim that they're pawns in a vast communist plot Posted: 13 Sep 2020 05:20 AM PDT  "Just because I'm Chinese-American, is he saying that it makes me dangerous because of that connection to China," one student asked Insider.
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| Disappearance of Florida mother still a mystery nearly four decades later Posted: 11 Sep 2020 06:44 PM PDT  iana Lynn Harris, 27, was last heard from by her family on July 15, 1981. She had recently moved to Big Pine Key, Florida with her children. The children left Florida on June 7 to spend the summer with their father in Michigan. When Diana failed to attend her sister's wedding in Illinois in mid-August, her family reported her missing. She had been dating and living with Gary Vincent Argenzio. Argenzio disappeared shortly after and, in 1982, was arrested in Mexico, extradited to Florida, sentence
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| Officer caught on own camera saying 'let's get these motherf******' at George Floyd protests Posted: 13 Sep 2020 10:29 AM PDT  The footage also shows an officer hitting a fleeing man with a motorcycle
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| The oldest US World War II veteran received more than 10,000 birthday cards from around the world for his 111th birthday Posted: 12 Sep 2020 10:43 AM PDT  Lawrence Brooks was born in 1909, drafted at age 31, and served in the predominately Black 91st Engineer Battalion during World War II.
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| 'No progress' has been made to prevent extinction of threatened species in UK, RSPB warns Posted: 13 Sep 2020 09:41 AM PDT  "No progress" has been made to prevent the extinction of threatened species in the UK, a leading conservation charity has warned. The Royal Society for the Protection Birds (RSPB) has described the recent decline in the population of rare birds as "catastrophic" and has urged the Government to take immediate action. Government analysis of its progress under international goals, agreed in 2010 to reverse declines in nature by this year, shows it is meeting or exceeding five out of 20 targets to help wildlife and habitats. But an assessment by the RSPB suggests the UK is doing worse than the official analysis, and is making no progress or is going in the wrong direction in six areas. Two-fifths of species have been in decline since 1970, the RSPB said. The charity's chief executive Beccy Speight said: "The UK is not alone in failing to meet the ambitious targets set out 10 years ago, but it is now time that the high ambitions set by successive governments becomes action at home as well as leading the international effort. "Every country in the UK must create legally binding targets to restore nature, invest in nature and green jobs, and support farmers to produce healthy food that's good for people, climate and wildlife. Breeding waders such as redshanks, lapwings and dunlins in particular have seen their numbers decimated over the past 35 years. A study from the charity found that the population of redshanks declined by 53 per cent between 1985 and 2011 and have estimated this figure to have now risen even higher. The charity said that without government intervention "it won't be terribly long before we lose these birds permanently". Kate Jennings, head of site conservation policy at the RSPB, told the Telegraph: "If the next decade is like the last one, I'd be surprised if we have any left at the end of it." "There is a massive gap between the Government's rhetoric and the reality of what's actually happening". Over £2.9 billion a year for the next decade on environmental land management and £615 million annually for restoring and creating habitats is needed to combat this problem, the charity estimated.
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| Historic Afghan peace talks fraught with uncertainty Posted: 12 Sep 2020 03:40 AM PDT  The U.S. had hoped negotiations would start within two weeks of Feb. 29, when it signed a peace deal with the Taliban, effectively acknowledging a military stalemate after nearly two decades of conflict. The Afghan government, which was in the throes of a political crisis over a disputed presidential election held last September, balked at being told to free 5,000 Taliban but eventually relented. U.S. peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who invested a year and a half negotiating the peace deal, called negotiations between Afghanistan's warring sides "a historic opportunity for peace ... one that benefits all Afghans and contributes to regional stability and global security."
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| Trump signs new, expanded executive order to lower U.S. drug prices Posted: 13 Sep 2020 12:14 PM PDT  President Donald Trump signed a new executive order on Sunday aimed at lowering drug prices in the United States by linking them to those of other nations and expanding the scope of a July action. The latest step, coming less than two months before the Nov. 3 presidential election, would replace a July 24 Trump executive order. It extends the mandate to prescription drugs available at a pharmacy, which are covered under Medicare Part D. The July version focused on drugs typically administered in doctors' offices and health clinics, covered by Medicare Part B.
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| Australian optometrist suspended for altering prescriptions Posted: 13 Sep 2020 03:58 AM PDT  The Australian optometrist is found to have altered over 400 prescriptions, undermining a colleague.
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| Protest in Istanbul against Charlie Hebdo cartoons Posted: 13 Sep 2020 09:23 AM PDT  Around 200 people in Istanbul demonstrated on Sunday against a French magazine's decision to republish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
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| Royal Caribbean is building the new world's largest cruise ship despite the pandemic still halting sailings — see the Wonder of the Sea Posted: 13 Sep 2020 05:18 AM PDT  The ship is set to be debuted in 2022 after a delay caused by the pandemic. The 18-deck ship will accommodate 5,000 guests with double occupancy.
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| State Department drops 'Do not travel' warning for Mexico as border closure is set to expire Posted: 13 Sep 2020 12:21 PM PDT  The U.S. State Department has downgraded its travel warning for Mexico, less than two weeks before the border closure agreement is set to expire.
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| Alice Johnson on the push for criminal justice reform in America Posted: 13 Sep 2020 04:56 AM PDT  Criminal justice reform advocate Alice Johnson and Dawn Freeman, president and CEO of the Securus Foundation, join 'Fox & Friends.'
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| ‘At the Intersection of Two Criminalized Identities’: Black and Non-Black Muslims Confront a Complicated Relationship With Policing and Anti-Blackness Posted: 13 Sep 2020 09:47 AM PDT  The BLM Movement is forcing Muslims to reckon with anti-Blackness and scrutinize their already tense relationship with police
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| 'Unprecedented': the US west's wildfire catastrophe explained Posted: 12 Sep 2020 03:00 AM PDT  The climate crisis and fire suppression underlie the disaster. Addressing it means altering society's relationship to the landThe historic wildfires that have seized the west are delivering a dire message: the climate crisis and decades of bad environmental policies have unleashed deadly consequences.Half a dozen climate scientists, fire ecologists, forest officials and Indigenous fire practitioners interviewed by the Guardian this week described the recent fires in California, Oregon and Washington as alarming but unsurprising. Stephen Pyne, a fire historian, saw the fierce fires as "an ancient plague" reawakened. Chris Field, a climate scientist at Stanford University, said the sheer number and scale of the fires overwhelmed him. "Even as someone whose job it is to study fire, it's really hard for me to keep up," he said. "There's so much death and destruction – and we know what we need to be doing to stop it, but we're not doing it," said Don Hankins, a pyrogeographer and Plains Miwok fire expert at California State University, Chico.Underlying the megafires are two human-caused catastrophes: the climate crisis and a century of fire suppression. Here's what you need to know to understand the enormity of the challenges. 'An unprecedented year of fires'Wildfires burning across the western states are staggering in size – in some cases expanding with such explosive force that they have burned more acreage within a few weeks than what might have previously burned all year. The flames this week belched up enough smoke and soot to temporarily blot out the sun and turn skies orange across the region.In Oregon, fires have burned more than 900,000 acres and leveled entire neighborhoods in what the state's governor, Kate Brown, described as possibly "the greatest loss of human life and property due to wildfire in our state's history". Half a million people – about 10% of the state's population – were under evacuation orders by Thursday afternoon. Parts of the state that rarely see fires burned with unusual ferocity; the regions south of Portland threatened by the Beechie Creek and Lionshead fires haven't seen such an intensity of fire in 300 or 400 years, said Meg Krawchuk, a pyrogeographer at Oregon State University.California has seen six of the 20 largest wildfires in its history this year, which have burned a record 3.1m acres. The fires are also hitting before the traditional start of fire season in the fall. "We're seeing an unprecedented year of fires," said Frank Lake, a US Forest Service research ecologist.In Washington state, where more than half a million acres have burned, the governor, Jay Inslee, toured a town overrun by the blazes and remarked the region has seen "this trauma all over". A one-year-old boy died as his family raced to escape fast-moving flames, and hundreds of homes and other structures remain at risk as the fires rage on. Primed for catastropheThe fires this week are raging in 13 western states, according to the National Fire Information Center, and the factors driving them are numerous and varied. But there's no doubt that "human-caused climate change is a major factor driving these fires", said Patrick Gonzalez, a fire ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley.Some of the fires around coastal California were sparked by highly unusual lightning storms that followed a searing heatwave. Others were ignited by humans – but stoked by powerful, dry winds.Drought in many cases played a role. Severe drought contributed to the death over the past decade of about 163m trees in California – and the dead vegetation has probably helped fuel and feed some of the fastest-moving fires. Continuing drought in Oregon dried soils, allowing flames to zip across the landscape unfettered by moisture."Each fire has a particular ignition, a particular context," Field said. "But when you step back, a more consistent pattern emerges." The climate crisis has increased the risks of large, extreme fires, he said, heating and drying the landscape so it's primed for catastrophe.A 2019 study found that from 1972 to 2018, California saw a fivefold increase in the area burned in any given year – and an eightfold increase in the area burned by summer fires. Another study estimates that without human-caused climate change, the area that burned between 1984 and 2015 would have been half of what it was. And a research paper published last month suggests that the number of autumn days with "extreme fire weather" – when the risk of wildfires is particularly high – has doubled over the past two decades. "Our climate model analyses suggest that continued climate change will further amplify the number of days with extreme fire weather by the end of this century," the researchers write. The land is binging on fire"But fires aren't necessarily surprising," said Lake, of the forest service. Before European colonization, 4.5m to nearly 12m acres of California would burn annually, researchers have estimated. Most of those fires burned less intensely and many were set intentionally. For thousands of years, hundreds of tribes across California used small controlled burns to clear out fire-fueling vegetation, renew the soil and prevent bigger, runaway wildfires. "They worked in partnership with nature, when lightning strikes occurred – they let fires burn," said Hankins, the Plains Miwok fire expert.European settlers disregarded and outlawed the ecological and cultural practice, however. Starting in the 1880s, the US adopted a policy of putting out all fires to protect homes and timber, fining Indigenous people for burning their own lands. California's forests became unnaturally dense, with overcrowded trees competing for increasingly scarce water.Climate change further degraded the landscape: tree species like the Sequoia, which over thousands of years had adapted to not only survive fires but thrive with them, have been less and less able to withstand progressively hotter, more extreme fires. In tandem, warmer, drier weather and a landscape deprived of fire are wrecking the region."At three million acres burned this year, we're still well below what historically burned," said Hankins. "But the difference now is that all the burning is happening in a short period of weeks and months." Starved of fire for decades, the land is now bingeing on it.The "nuclear winter" red din across the region this week was harrowing, Hankins said. But he added that "this idea that California is unlivable" because of the fires frustrates him. "In most places in California where these fires are happening, Indigenous people have lived in these places for thousands of years, with fire," he said. "That's really, really important for everyone to remember." Living with fireTaken all together, the disastrous consequences of climate change and the decades of destructive environmental policies can only be reversed by reshaping society and its relationship with the landscape, said Pyne.He characterized the west as a "fossil fuel society imposed on a fire-prone landscape". The US spews up about 6,677m metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually. It has used destructive gas-powered bulldozers to force itself into fire-prone wildlands, and gas-powered fire trucks to quell natural fires. "Long term, we're not only going to have to quit our binge-burning fossil fuels, we're going to have to reshape how we've organized society," he said.Scientists say there are no quick solutions. Fires are going to get fiercer and more frequent in coming years, researchers said in a paper published this year, "though a pathway consistent with the UN Paris commitments would substantially curb that increase", they reported. Even with dramatic action to curb climate change, the region is likely to get drier and warmer for the next few decades.In the meantime, residents may have to ease out of fire-prone wildlands and build homes that are designed to be more resilient to fires, Pyne said. California will have to renovate its outdated, dangerous electrical grids – which have sparked some of the deadliest and most destructive fires in recent history. And across the west, policymakers will have to restore Indigenous land stewardship and work with Native American fire practitioners to burn more land.So far, progress has been achingly slow, Pyne said. This year California's governor, Gavin Newsom, signed a memorandum acknowledging the state needed to treat at least 1m acres of California forest and wildlands. One study suggested that to restabilize the landscape, the state might need to burn or treat twenty times that.
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