Today’s comic by Matt Bors is Trump's Mar-a-Lago Situation Room:
• Pope Francis sides with indigenous people on matters affecting ancestral lands:
Pope Francis insisted Wednesday that indigenous groups must give prior consent to any economic activity affecting their ancestral lands, a view that conflicts with the Trump administration, which is pushing to build a $3.8 billion oil pipeline over opposition from American Indians.
Francis met with representatives of indigenous peoples attending a U.N. agricultural meeting and said the key issue facing them is how to reconcile the right to economic development with protecting their cultures and territories.
• Executions in Arizona now BYO:
With drugs that can legally be used for lethal injections in short supply, the Arizona department of corrections’ latest execution protocol states that attorneys for death row inmates are welcome to bring along their own.
The protocol says that “the inmate’s counsel or other third parties acting on behalf of the inmate’s counsel” may provide the department with a sedative, pentobarbital, or an anesthetic, sodium pentothal, if they can obtain it “from a certified or licensed pharmacist, pharmacy, compound pharmacy, manufacturer, or supplier”.
• Tillerson and Priebus feuding:
“Many of the U.S. ambassadorships remain unfilled, a result of a standoff between Mr. Tillerson and Mr. Priebus, the chief of staff, said people familiar with the process.”
“Mr. Trump had told Mr. Tillerson he would have a say in appointing some key ambassadorships, including Canada and Switzerland, those people said. Mr. Priebus subsequently got the president to approve names for those positions—including several top donors to the RNC—without consulting the secretary of state, which angered Mr. Tillerson.”
• Nearly half the planet’s mammals harmed by climate change:
Climate change may be harming far more of the world's threatened species than previously thought. A new study suggests that nearly half of the mammals and a quarter of the birds on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's "red list" have already become victims of a shifting climate.
The research, published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change, concludes that scientists and wildlife conservationists have failed to account for the damage inflicted by global warming.
• Solar installations grew 95% in 2016, the best year ever:
On the back of an incredible 2016 that saw 1.3 million solar PV installations and a cumulative capacity of more than 40 [gigawatts], 2017 is set to be an explosive year for US solar also.
• Traffic fatalities rose 6% in 2016 to the highest level in a decade:
A jump in traffic fatalities last year pushed deaths on U.S. roads to their highest level in nearly a decade, erasing improvements made during the Great Recession and economic recovery, a leading safety organization said Wednesday.
Fatalities rose 6 percent in 2016, reaching an estimated 40,200 deaths compared to 37,757 deaths the previous year, according the National Safety Council. The group gets its data from states. The last time there were more than 40,000 fatalities in a single year was in 2007, just before the economy tanked. There were 41,000 deaths that year.
• Women of color will be hurt worst if ACA is ditched:
Of the nearly 8 million women at risk of losing insurance coverage under a GOP-led repeal of the ACA, two-thirds are women of color, an analysis released Tuesday suggests.
• On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Greg Dworkin, Joan McCarter, and Armando join host David Waldman in surveying the burning Landscape o’ Lunacy. Republicans circle the wagons, but must be wondering if they can survive it. Or at least survive longer than we do in Crazytown.
YouTube | iTunes | LibSyn | Support the show via Patreon