Today’s comic by Ruben Bolling is The great and powerful Special Counsel of Oz... Revealed!
• North Korea rumored to have executed four officials after failed summit with U.S. in Hanoi: The claim came from a trade official who spoke to a reporter from Asia Press. The four officials had been accused of selling information to Washington before the summit, according to a Japanese news agency.
• Survey claims Americans most stressed people in the world: The annual Gallup poll of 150,000 people throughout the world, 1,000 of them Americans, found that the latter reported feeling stress, anger and worry at the highest levels in a decade:
In the United States, about 55 percent of adults said they had experienced stress during “a lot of the day” prior, compared with just 35 percent globally. Statistically, that put the country on par with Greece, which had led the rankings on stress since 2012. [...]
When Gallup investigated the responses more closely, it found that being under 50, earning a low income and having a dim view of President Trump’s job performance were correlated with negative experiences among adults in the United States. [...]
“We are seeing patterns that would point to a political explanation, or a polarization explanation, with the U.S. data, but can we say that definitively? No,” said [Julie Ray, Gallup’s managing editor for world news. “
• Cases of U.S. measles higher so far this year than any since the disease was declared eliminated worldwide in 2000: As of Wednesday, there were 695 cases in 22 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control. In most instances, those cases have occurred in unvaccinated communities. The CDC says 91.5% of US children aged 19 months to 35 months received at least one dose of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in 2017, the most recent year data are available. The first year measles became a disease that health care providers were required to report was 1912. Over the next 10 years, an average of 6,000 people in the United States died annually from measles. Until 1963 when measles vaccinations was introduced in the U.S., 3-4 million people contracted the disease nationwide. In 2017, the most recent year with available data, the World Health Organization said measles caused nearly 110 000 deaths worldwide. Complications can mean hospitalization in up to a fourth of cases, with potential for causing brain damage, blindness and hearing loss.
MIDDAY TWEET
• Emperor penguins abandon second-largest breeding site because unstable ice.
• A GAO report finds tribal consultation lacking nearly two decades after executive order issued in the matter: The Government Accountability Office reported that the feds are still failing to meet their trust and treaty obligations, as has been the case for a century and a half. GAO investigators interviewed officials of 57 tribes, more than a tenth of the tribes that are federally recognized. They found numerous, serious failures in outreach and a lack of input on infrastructure and other projects. For example, the government approved a project that disturbed a known tribal burial site in South Dakota, and agency officials considered their consultations successful even though they approved an injection well that was opposed by the tribes they consulted with.
• Massachusetts officials approve state’s first offshore contracts for 800 megawatts of wind power: The deal with Vineyard Wind also requires the company to provide $15 million to help integrate battery storage in low-income communities.
On
today’s Kagro in the Morning show:
Biden is in. Greg Dworkin notes that David Waldman gives this sentence no exclamation point. Miller’s the latest to deny testimony to Congress. Trump's targeting of Hillary. Chinese influence peddling at Perv-a-Lago. More from the Mueller report.