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UPI
Scandinavian research shows Arctic warming nearly four times as fast as entire globe
New Finnish-Norwegian research published Thursday shows Arctic global warming is happening nearly four times as fast as the entire globe. This is known as Arctic amplification.
"We show that during 1979-2021, the Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the globe, and provide evidence that climate models struggle to simulate this four-fold Arctic amplification ratio," the researchers wrote.
The study scientists said their research cautions that referring to Arctic warming as being twice as fast as the global warming rate is "a clear underestimation of the situation during the last 43 years since the start of satellite observations."
"Our results indicate that the recent four-fold Arctic warming ratio is either an extremely unlikely event, or the climate models systematically tend to underestimate the amplification," the study said.
The Washington Post
FBI searched Trump’s home to look for nuclear weapons documents and other items, sources say
Classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought in a search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence on Monday, according to people familiar with the investigation.
Experts in classified information said the unusual search underscores deep concern among government officials about the types of information they thought could be located at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and potentially in danger of falling into the wrong hands. […]
Material about nuclear weapons is especially sensitive and usually restricted to a small number of government officials, experts said. Publicizing details about U.S. weapons could provide an intelligence road map to adversaries seeking to build ways of countering those systems. And other countries might view exposing their nuclear secrets as a threat, experts said. […]
One former Justice Department official, who in the past oversaw investigations of leaks of classified information, said the type of top-secret information described by the people familiar with the probe would probably cause authorities to try to move as quickly as possible to recover sensitive documents that could cause grave harm to U.S. security.
The Palm Beach Post
Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart faces political firestorm after signing Mar-a-Lago search warrant
As he has done scores of times before, U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart on Friday, Aug. 5, signed off on a search warrant.
Unlike the countless others he has inked in his four-year judicial career, this one, allowing FBI agents to search Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach home of ... Donald Trump, ignited a political firestorm. […]
Those who worked with Reinhart during the decade he worked as a federal prosecutor in West Palm Beach said they are stunned by the misinformation and the malice being heaped on a magistrate who was simply doing his job.
The New York Times
Subpoena Preceded Search Warrant in Push to Retrieve Material From Trump
…Trump received a subpoena this spring in search of documents that federal investigators believed he had failed to turn over earlier in the year, when he returned boxes of material he had improperly taken with him upon moving out of the White House, three people familiar with the matter said. […]
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland on Thursday confirmed that he personally signed off on a search warrant that was executed on Monday. He did not address a subpoena, but said that “where possible, it is standard practice to seek less intrusive means,” indicating that other measures were tried before a search took place. […]
Some senior Republicans have been warned by allies of Mr. Trump not to continue to be aggressive in criticizing the Justice Department and the F.B.I. over the matter because it is possible that more damaging information related to the search will become public.
McClatchy DC
Justice Department asks to release Mar-a-Lago warrant, ‘absent objection’ from Trump
The Justice Department has asked a federal court in Florida to unseal the warrant that led to the search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on Monday and make public a list of the items removed from the property — “absent objection” by the former president.
The unusual move by the department, announced Thursday by Attorney General Merrick Garland in a rare public statement on an ongoing criminal probe, reflected the extraordinary nature of the search of a former president’s house. It also put the burden on Trump to choose whether to make potentially incriminating details of the case available to the public.
Garland said the FBI had gone to lengths to keep the execution of its search warrant out of public view, noting it was Trump — not the Justice Department — who alerted the media to the mid-morning search of his Palm Beach estate.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Daughter of a former Republican congresswoman pleads not guilty to threatening Georgia judge in election case
The daughter of a former Republican congresswoman has pleaded not guilty to felony charges alleging that she threatened a Georgia judge after he dismissed a lawsuit claiming fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Erin Northup, a 43-year-old from Louisville, Kentucky, left a voicemail message with the judge’s office saying “There will be hangings. We will be coming after your family,” according to an arrest warrant. Northup entered a not guilty plea last week in Henry County Superior Court.
The expletive-filled call to the office of Superior Court Judge Brian Amero’s office came on the night he ruled against Donald Trump supporters who wanted to unseal absentee ballots so they could look for fakes. […]
Northup, the daughter of former U.S. Rep. Anne Northup, faces two counts of terroristic threats on allegations she threatened to kill Amero and a court clerk.
Houston Chronicle
Texas elections officials targeted amid 2020 fraud claims report threats, intimidation to Congress
Misinformation about elections has led to violent threats against election workers in Texas and other states — including one who was told “we should end your bloodline” — according to a new report released by a House panel Thursday.
The House Committee on Oversight and Reform heard from one county election official in Texas that he received death threats after being singled out by out-of-state candidates who claimed the 2020 election was stolen. Those threats quickly escalated and eventually included his family and staff. […]
The findings are the latest evidence of how … Donald Trump’s unfounded claims that the 2020 election was rigged against him have taken root as they have been echoed by his supporters, including Texas Republicans who passed new voting restrictions last year.
Vox
How Republicans rigged Texas’s federal courts against Biden
One of the biggest impediments to President Joe Biden’s ability to govern is a small crew of Republican-appointed federal trial judges, all of whom sit in Texas. […]
The fact that all these cases — and this is just a sample of the many policy-setting lawsuits being shunted to a handful of the most conservative judges in Texas — are winding up before a few GOP-appointed judges is not a coincidence. It is a deliberate strategy, made possible by procedural rules that effectively allow litigants to select which judge will hear their lawsuits, and by all appearances, intentionally pursued by the Texas attorney general’s office. […]
So the Biden administration’s policies are routinely blocked, not because an impartial judge gives those policies a fair hearing and determines them to be illegal, but because Republican litigants can ensure that lawsuits seeking to undermine President Biden are heard by some of the most partisan judges in the country. […]
Texas’s district courts divide their work in ways that make it easy for plaintiffs challenging a federal policy to choose which judge will hear their case.
ABC News
Trump Organization CFO to appear in court on alleged tax fraud
Allen Weisselberg, for decades the chief financial officer of former President Donald Trump's namesake family business, is due in a New York court Friday for a hearing in his criminal case.
The Manhattan District Attorney's office charged Weisselberg and the Trump Organization last summer with tax fraud after they were accused of compensating employees "off the books" in order to pay less in taxes. Weisselberg pleaded not guilty.
According to the charging documents, Weisselberg avoided taxes on more than $1.7 million in the past 15 years, resulting from the payment of his rent on an apartment in a Trump-owned building and related expenses that prosecutors said included cars and private school tuition for his grandchildren.
Wyoming Public Radio
Hageman slightly increases her lead in the latest U.S. House poll
A new University of Wyoming poll shows that Republican U.S. House candidate Harriet Hageman leads Congresswoman Liz Cheney by nearly 30 points as primary election day looms.
The survey was conducted by the Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center between July 25th and August 6th. It received 562 responses from likely Wyoming voters in the upcoming primary and has a margin of error of plus or minus four percent. […]
“For Cheney to be successful, in particular, she needs to do very well among independents, and she's not doing well enough to overcome Hageman's advantage among Republican identifiers,” said [UW Political Scientist Jim King].
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Scott Perry says he’s ‘not a target’ of FBI probe amid reports of subpoenas for other Pa. GOP lawmakers
Federal subpoenas and search warrants delivered to Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania this week were the subject of some confusion, and a bit of clarity.
First the clarity: U.S. Rep. Scott Perry on Thursday said his attorneys were told by the U.S. Department of Justice that he is “not a target of its investigation” after three FBI agents confronted him with a search warrant Tuesday and seized his cell phone. […]
On Thursday, Perry released a statement saying he has instructed his attorneys to cooperate with the Justice Department “to ensure it gets the information to which it’s entitled, but to protect information to which it’s not — including communications that are protected under the Speech and Debate Clause of the United States Constitution.”
The Bulwark
Alex Jones Isn’t Going To Pay $45.2 Million in Damages
[…] The repeated legal misconduct by Jones and his attorney during the trial sapped some of the intrigue; the judge in Austin ruled last year that Jones should lose by default for repeatedly withholding evidence that court rules require to be shared between the litigants. The trial on damages ended last week, with a jury finding Jones should pay $4.1 million in compensatory damages to two parents, followed by a separate award of punitive damages (called “exemplary” damages in Texas) in the amount of $45.2 million.
Maybe this sounds low to you, based on what a pile of human garbage Jones is. But the truth is actually worse. Jones will never pay that $45.2 million. Because of tort reform caps, those punitive damages are going to get pared back to a meager $750,000.
To understand how that will play out, you need to understand the laws that govern these sorts of proceedings in Texas.
Reuters
Ex-cop sentenced to more than 7 years in prison for role in storming U.S. Capitol
A former Virginia police sergeant who joined Donald Trump's supporters in storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced to seven years and three months in prison on Thursday, a Justice Department spokesperson said.
A jury in April convicted Thomas Robertson, a former police sergeant for the town of Rocky Mount, Virginia, of six criminal charges, including obstructing an official proceeding and obstruction of justice.
Prosecutors had asked U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper to sentence Robertson to eight years - the longest amount yet for any Capitol riot defendant - on the grounds that Robertson abused his position of trust as a law enforcement officer.
The Dallas Morning News
Five reasons why you’re paying way less at the gas pump in Texas
For nearly 60 straight days, drivers in Texas have seen a steady drop in gasoline prices – something that seemed unfathomable earlier in the summer when the state’s average price approached $5 a gallon.
The national average dipped below $4 Thursday for the first time since March, according to AAA, and the average price in Texas leads the country at $3.49 a gallon. […]
But noted gas price authorities Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis for Dow Jones-owned Oil Price Information Service, and GasBuddy oil analyst Patrick De Haan believe the trend is approaching an end. […]
Kloza said some credit has to be given to tapping into the U.S. reserves, though President Joe Biden’s plan expires in October… The big question is whether Biden will pull another lever once October rolls around.
Bloomberg
The Snowballing US Rental Crisis Is Sparing Nowhere and No One
[…] Rental costs in the US are soaring at the fastest pace in more than three decades, surpassing a median of $2,000 a month for the first time ever and pushing rents above pre-pandemic levels in most major cities. Increases are particularly steep in metropolitan areas that saw large influxes of new residents during the pandemic, but the rental market is sparing almost nowhere and no one.
While the affordability crisis in the US is not new, it has snowballed over the past year as people returned to big cities and some areas short on housing supply saw a boom of new residents. Demand for rentals has soared, with many would-be homebuyers backing out of the market after mortgage rates jumped this year as a result of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest-rate hikes. […]
Meanwhile, US landlords, including property investors snapping up a growing share of homes in metro areas, are gaining the upper hand.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Wisconsin GOP received three times more corporate contributions than Dems in 2022
The Wisconsin GOP and two Republican legislative campaign committees accepted more than three times the corporate contributions than their Democratic counterparts during the first half of 2022, according to a new report from the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. […]
Corporate contributions came from businesses, unions, and trade associations. […]
A GOP bill passed in 2015 substantially rewrote Wisconsin's campaign finance laws, expanding corporate contributions up to $12,000 a year to each party and legislative campaign committee if they create a segregated fund for the money.
For more than 100 years prior to this, such corporate contributions were illegal.
Chicago Tribune
Obama Foundation revenues down in 2021 amid pandemic, delays in approval for construction
Former President Barack Obama’s foundation set a goal last summer of raising $1.6 billion between 2021 and 2026 to pay for construction of his presidential center and an endowment to sustain it for years to come. […]
“It’s hard to believe that it’s only been five years since Michelle and I launched the Obama Foundation — especially because so much has changed since then,” the president wrote in the annual report’s introduction.
Obama noted those changes included pandemic, climate change and threats to democracy that have left “the future of our collective experiment in self-government hanging in the balance.”
The Washington Post
Historians privately warn Biden that America’s democracy is teetering
President Biden paused last week, during one of the busiest stretches of his presidency, for a nearly two-hour private history lesson from a group of academics who raised alarms about the dire condition of democracy at home and abroad. […]
Most of the experts in attendance have been outspoken in recent months about the threat they see to the American democratic project, after the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, the continued denial by some Republicans of the 2020 election results and the efforts of election deniers to seek state office.
NPR News
What the Inflation Reduction Act does and doesn't do about rising prices
[…] The White House says the roughly $700 billion package will address inflation in two key ways: by lowering energy and health care costs for families and by helping to bring down the deficit…
There are three main ways the bill targets rising prices, according to [Shai Akabas, the director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center]. First, it plans to reduce the federal deficit, which is the difference between how much the U.S. government spends and how much it makes in taxes and revenue. When there's less money floating in the economy, there tends to be less demand and fewer price hikes, Akabas said…
Second, it will promote the production of certain goods, mainly in renewable energy. Having more supply than demand could help lower some costs over time, he added.
Third and more directly, one provision of the bill will help limit the price growth of certain prescription drugs by allowing Medicare to negotiate their cost with pharmaceutical companies. Still, some of the biggest drivers of inflation, including food and energy costs, are not immediately addressed. […]
"It's not likely to have a major effect on inflation in the next few months," Akabas said.
Oregon Public Broadcasting
Oregon Democrats say landmark bill would help communities adapt to climate change
[…] On Wednesday, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael S. Regan along with Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, Oregon Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, discussed how funding from proposed [Inflation Reduction Act] would significantly address the many inequities Black, Indigenous and communities of color face because of climate change. […]
The Inflation Reduction Act includes $60 billion for clean and renewable energy infrastructure like solar panels, wind turbines and tax credits for purchasing electric vehicles. The bill pledges $27 billion for a greenhouse gas reduction fund, also known as a ‘green bank,’ to help fund more clean energy and sustainable projects, like Mudbone Grown.
Shantae Johnson, co-owner of Mudbone Grown, said the creation of a green bank would make it easier for farmers like her to apply for public money rather than applying for private funds. She said green banks would also help smaller farmers get started and maintain their business instead of being priced out.
Cincinnati Enquirer
Armed man who attempted break-in at Cincinnati FBI field office shot and killed by police
The armed man who attempted to breach the Cincinnati FBI building in Sycamore Township Thursday was shot and killed by police after a chase and a prolonged standoff, according to the Ohio State Highway Patrol. […]
NBC News, citing law enforcement, is reporting the suspect has been identified as Ricky Walter Shiffer who was at the Jan. 6 riots.
Although a possible motive for the breach has not been released, the incident comes a day after FBI director Christopher Wray warned of online threats against agents and the Justice Department after the agency searched … Mar-a-Lago…
NBC News
Armed man who was at Capitol on Jan. 6 is fatally shot after firing into an FBI field office in Cincinnati
The man who fired a nail gun into an FBI field office in Cincinnati on Thursday before he was killed by officers was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, officials said.
Two officials familiar with the matter identified the suspect as Ricky Walter Shiffer. […]
Shiffer was seen at the Capitol on Jan. 6, although it's unclear whether he breached the building, said three people aiding law enforcement who saw him in photos. Shiffer frequently posted about going to the Capitol on social media.
In the days after the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, Trump's compound in Palm Beach, Florida, he appeared to post multiple times on Trump's social media platform, Truth Social.
In one comment, he appeared to call on people to prepare for "combat." In another, his apparent account said users should kill FBI agents "on sight."
Los Angeles Times
With California expected to lose 10% of its water within 20 years, Newsom calls for urgent action
With California enduring historic drought amplified by global warming, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday released a new plan to adapt to the state’s hotter, drier future by capturing and storing more water, recycling more wastewater and desalinating seawater and salty groundwater.
The governor’s new water-supply strategy, detailed in a 16-page document, lays out a series of actions aimed at preparing the state for an estimated 10% decrease in California’s water supply by 2040 because of higher temperatures and decreased runoff. The plan focuses on accelerating infrastructure projects, boosting conservation and upgrading the state’s water system to match the increasing pace of climate change, securing enough water for an estimated 8.4 million households.
“The hots are getting a lot hotter. The dries are getting a lot drier,” Newsom said. “We have to adapt to that new reality and we have to change our approach.”
AFP via Barron’s
Rainwater Unsafe To Drink Due To Chemicals: Study
Rainwater everywhere on the planet is unsafe to drink due to levels of toxic chemicals known as PFAS that exceed the latest guidelines, according to a new study by Stockholm University scientists.
Commonly known as 'forever chemicals' because they disintegrate extremely slowly, PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) were initially found in packaging, shampoo or makeup but have spread to our entire environment, including water and air.
"There is nowhere on Earth where the rain would be safe to drink, according to the measurements that we have taken," Ian Cousins, a professor at the university and the lead author of the study published in Environmental Science and Technology, told AFP.
El País
Night of terror in Mexico raises alarm bells in US over narco violence
“Seek secure shelter.” That was the recommendation for staff of the United States consulate in Guadalajara after the Mexican city descended into violence, with local authorities reporting multiple road blockades, burning vehicles and shootouts. The security alert was issued late on Tuesday in response to the night of terror that followed the attempted capture of a regional leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). The drug cartel fought back against the Mexican army in the states of Jalisco and Guanajuato, blocking roads and setting fires to cars.
Five were arrested, and one alleged gang member died in the clashes, according to figures provided by the governor of Jalisco, Enrique Alfaro, on Wednesday. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the narco violence was in response to an army operation in the middle of a conclave of two criminal gangs. Security forces were deployed for several hours until they were able to reestablish control. By noon, the US Consulate had withdrawn the security alert, although it said it “continued to closely monitor the situation.” […]
The White House has issued travel warnings for 30 of the 32 states of Mexico.
EuroNews
Belarus denies reports of 8 explosions at airbase that 'often' hosts Russian jets Access to the comments
The Belarusian military on Thursday denied reports of explosions overnight near a military airfield in the Gomel region of southeastern Belarus, not far from the border with Ukraine.
"On 10 August, near 23:00 (20:00 GMT), during a control run, a vehicle caught fire after its engine was replaced," the Belarusian defence ministry said in a statement.
"The fire was quickly brought under control. No one was injured," the statement said.
Reuters
Zelenskiy tells officials to stop talking about Ukraine's tactics
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday told government officials to stop talking to reporters about Kyiv’s military tactics against Russia, saying such remarks were “frankly irresponsible”. […]
“War is definitely not the time for vanity and loud statements. The fewer details you divulge about our defence plans, the better it will be for the implementation of those defence plans,” Zelenskiy said in an evening address.
“If you want to generate loud headlines, that’s one thing - it’s frankly irresponsible. If you want victory for Ukraine, that is another thing, and you should be aware of your responsibility for every word you say about our state’s plans for defence or counter attacks.”
The Atlantic
Imperiled by Russian invaders, private citizens are stepping forward to do what Ukraine’s government cannot.
[…] The Russian strategy toward Ukraine is designed to demoralize and demotivate. It works. Except when it doesn’t.
For the languor of Odesa is the backdrop, not the story: Not everyone there is afflicted with apathy, anxiety, or the fear of losing. On the contrary, even in this strange moment, when time doesn’t seem worth measuring, some people are intensely busy. Across the city, students, accountants, hairdressers, and every other conceivable profession have joined what can only be described as an unprecedented social movement. They call themselves volonteri, and their organizations, their crowdfunding campaigns, and their activism help explain why the Ukrainian army has fought so hard and so well, why a decade-long Russian attempt to co-opt the Ukrainian state mostly failed, even (or maybe especially) in Russian-speaking Odesa.
In a paralyzed landscape, in a stalled economy, in a city where no one can plan anything, the volonteri are creating the future. They aren’t afraid of loss, siege, or occupation, because they think they are going to win.
The Kyiv Independent
Occupied Ukrainian plant becomes epicenter of Russia’s nuclear blackmail
Anticipating a Ukrainian counter-offensive in the country’s south, Russia is turning the six-reactor Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in occupied Enerhodar into a ticking time bomb.
Repeated Russian shelling from within the plant’s territory, causing one of the reactors to shut down, has put the entire complex’s safety at stake.
The city of Enerhodar, occupied by Russia since March 4, lies on the bank of the Dnipro River at the edge of Russian-controlled parts of Zaporizhzhia Oblast.
Russia has been constantly shelling Ukrainian positions across the river from Enerhodar and accused Ukraine of firing back. Ukrainian authorities have had none of it, saying it's Russian forces causing fires at the site by using indiscriminate fire.
EUobserver
Kosovo PM warns of renewed conflict with Serbia
Kosovo prime minister Albin Kurti warned of possible armed conflict with Serbia, following heightened border tensions with Belgrade over the past month.
"We should not exclude that these aggressive policies of Belgrade could also turn into an assault against Kosovo in one way or the other," Kurti told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday (10 August).
Pristina wants ethnic Serbs living in Kosovo to use car number plates issued by Kosovo. But the same Serbs do not recognise Kosovo, triggering legacy grievances from the war in the 1990s.
Deutsche Welle
Finland is building the world's first permanent disposal site for nuclear waste
It's inconceivable to people in most parts of the world that anyone would actively want to live near a nuclear waste site. But in the western Finnish town of Eurajoki, there's no NIMBYism ("Not In My Backyard") as the municipality actually campaigned against other cities to have the disposal site located there, next to the existing Olkiluoto nuclear power plant.
Authorities determined that this area had best mix of a bedrock of public support and actual bedrock to become spent nuclear fuel's final resting place, almost half a kilometer underground.
Mayor Vesa Lakaniemi explains that being home to three reactors and the repository — called Onkalo, which means "little cave" in Finnish — provides long-term security for his residents. Real-estate taxes from the nuclear site bring in about 20 million euros per year, almost half the municipality's annual revenue.
AFP via rfi
Low Rhine deepens Germany's energy crisis
A hot, dry July made worse by climate change has raised the risk that the German economy could run aground as sinking Rhine waters make shipping along the river harder.
The prospect of severe, longer-term limits to traffic spells a new headache for the industries lined up on the river's banks and threatens to further strain Germany's efforts to wean itself off Russian energy imports as coal counts among key cargo moved on the waterway. […]
As Berlin turns to mothballed coal power capacity to plug the gap after Russia curtailed its energy deliveries, the Rhine has taken on added significance as a key artery for coal transport.
The Guardian
The impact of drought in England: water restrictions, fire risks and farming hardship
England is likely to be declared officially in drought on Friday, a move that will allow water companies to impose tough restrictions on water use as temperatures remain high across swathes of the UK. […]
With temperatures likely to reach 36C in some places over the weekend, England is experiencing its driest nine-month period since 1976. South-east England received less than 10% of its usual amount of rainfall in July, making it the driest July since 1935. Rainfall has been at about 74% of its long-term average since last November. […]
Climate experts said the drought had been predicted for some time. Mike Rivington, a senior scientist at the James Hutton Institute in Scotland, said: “The scale of heatwaves and droughts we’re currently experiencing has been projected by climate research for many years now. What we are seeing is a clear signal of what the future is going to be like.”
France24
Heatwaves threaten marine life as Mediterranean reaches record temperature
France has seen searing temperatures in successive heatwaves over the past few weeks, but it’s not only on land that temperatures are insufferably high. The Mediterranean Sea’s surface temperature reached a record high 30.7°C in late July, and marine heatwaves are becoming increasingly common because of climate change – with dramatic consequences for biodiversity.
As Europe battles wildfires and record drought on land, rising sea temperatures pose another kind of threat. On July 24, the temperature in the Mediterranean reached a peak of 30.7°C off the coast of Alistro in eastern Corsica, according to the Keraunos meteorological observatory. The next day, in the bay of Villefrance-sur-Mer – an idyllic beach town a few miles from Nice – a researcher at the local oceanographic laboratory recorded a temperature of 29.2°C.
“It’s unprecedented,” said the researcher, Jean-Pierre Gattuso. The Mediterraean’s temperature is usually between 21° and 24°C at this time of year.
Mongabay
Climate change and overfishing threaten once ‘endless’ Antarctic krill
[…] Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) are not “limitless,” as they were once described in the 1960s; they’re a finite resource under an increasing amount of pressure due to overfishing, pollution, and climate change impacts like the loss of sea ice and ocean acidification. While krill are nowhere close to being threatened with extinction, the 2022 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicated that there’s a high likelihood that climate-induced stressors would present considerable risks for the global supply of krill.
“Warming that is occurring along the Antarctic Peninsula and Scotia Sea has caused the krill stocks in those areas to shrink and the center of that population has moved southwards,” Kim Bernard, a marine ecologist at Oregon State University, wrote to Mongabay via email while stationed in the Antarctic Peninsula. “This tells us already that krill numbers aren’t endless.”
Concerns are amassing around one place in particular: a krill hotspot and nursery at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula known as “Area 48,” which harbors about 60 million metric tons of krill. Not only has this area become a key foraging ground for many species that rely on krill, but it also attracts about a dozen industrial fishing vessels each year. The amount of krill they catch has been steadily increasing over the years
The World
People in Istanbul see their rents double as inflation soars
[…] This summer, Turkish inflation reached levels not seen since the 1990s, and nowhere is it more clear than in the rental market. Tenants are seeing their rents double, or even triple, in just one year.
In an effort to prevent mass evictions, the government has put a temporary ban on landlords raising rents more than 25% per year until July of next year, but few appear to be following the rule, according to renters, real estate agents and others.
“No one is following the 25% rule,” said real estate agent Hüseyin Daşçı. “I’m a renter myself, and my rent went up 40%. And who would say anything?”
Al Jazeera
In Kenya, pending election results keep the nation in suspense
It has been two days since voting ended in Kenya’s closely contested presidential election but for many citizens of the country, it feels like much longer.
“I am very anxious,” said Jacqueline Adhiambo, a 31-year-old resident of Eldoret, in western Kenya. “When I wake up in the middle of the night, I have to fight to desire to check my phone or turn on the television.”
Adhiambo, a voter registered in Eldoret, a stronghold of its most famous son, Deputy President and presidential candidate William Ruto, left her town for the capital, Nairobi, on the eve of the August 9 election. She was worried that violence could break out if Ruto lost to his closest competitor, Raila Odinga.
That line of thinking was critical to a 64 percent turnout in Tuesday’s election – a drop from almost 80 percent in 2017.
South China Morning Post
Taiwan drills: PLA sends in extra troops to back up Eastern Theatre Command
PLA air force personnel from around the country were deployed to support drills led by the Eastern Theatre Command against Taiwan, with more troops expected to be deployed for regular joint combat training, according to observers. […]
“It’s essential for air force squadrons in the Southern and Northern theatre commands, as well as warships overseeing the Yellow Sea and South China Sea in the North and East fleets, to work together with the Eastern Theatre Command in the event of a Taiwan contingency,” said Song Zhongping, a former PLA instructor, said.
“A possible war over Taiwan is a complicated and comprehensive operation of A2/AD [anti-access and area-denial], requiring the air force and warships from the three theatre commands to share different roles in their tasks to stop foreign military interventions from the south and north.”
The Sydney Morning Herald
‘Wishful thinking’: Taiwan rejects China’s one country, two systems plan for the island
Taiwan rejects the “one country, two systems” model proposed by Beijing in a white paper published this week, the self-ruled island’s foreign ministry said on Thursday.
Only Taiwan’s people can decide its future, ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou told a news conference in Taipei, the capital.
China was using US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei as an “excuse to create a new normality to intimidate Taiwan’s people,” Ou added.
In its first white paper on Taiwan in two decades, released on Wednesday, the China state council proposed imposing Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” policy on Taiwan and said it would not renounce the use of force to take the island.
Southeast Missourian
Dog lost for two months found in Perry County's Tom Moore caves
On Saturday, while exploring the Tom Moore cave system in Perry County, Missouri, a group of cavers came across a lost dog alone in the dark.
Gerry Keene was with a group of experienced cavers, five of them children. The plan was to go from the Berome Moore entrance and move through a mile of caves and emerge at the Tom Moore entrance. However, about 20 minutes after entering the cave, the group found the dog.
He said the dog was just lying there in the main passage and appeared to have given up.
"She's in the pitch black, and the poor baby wouldn't even move for us at first," Keene said. "But once she had been in the light for a bit, she started to get energized."
Ars Technica
FCC cancels Starlink’s $886 million grant from Ajit Pai’s mismanaged auction
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has rejected Starlink's application to receive $885.51 million in broadband funding, essentially canceling a grant awarded by the FCC during then-Chairman Ajit Pai's tenure.
Starlink was tentatively awarded the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) grant in December 2020. But the satellite provider still needed FCC approval of a long-form application to receive the money, which is intended for areas with little or no high-speed broadband access.