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The media messing up
The Hunter Biden story has done a total 180 but the MSM is in denial
As usual, Dan Froomkin nails it.
By Dan Froomkin in Press Watch:
The Hunter Biden impeachment drama has been transformed by the revelation that the most essential witness for the GOP is a pathological liar and Russian intelligence asset.
The story is no longer whether Joe Biden committed high crimes and misdemeanors by maintaining relations with his ne’er-do-well son. In fact, there has never been any credible evidence to support that conclusion.
The real story is that the ludicrous Republican impeachment investigation has now been exposed as a Russian intelligence op. This, even as Republicans do Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bidding by blocking support for Ukraine and only a few short years after Trump aides welcomed Russian moves to help the Trump campaign in 2016.
But the political reporters at our most esteemed newsrooms who went to great lengths to portray the Biden impeachment investigation as a serious inquiry seem unable to change gears.
I’m not surprised. It would require them to admit they were wrong. They don’t do that.
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Good news from my corner of the world
Oregon ‘right to repair’ bill passes state Senate
“Right to repair” legislation is getting support around the nation and has been passed in several states. It ultimately needs to be mandated on the federal level.
From Oregon Public Broadcasting:
On Tuesday morning, the Oregon state Senate approved Senate Bill 1596, the “right to repair” bill, and...Oregon Democratic lawmaker [Sen. Janeen Sollman]’s wish became one step closer to a reality. The measure would ensure equipment manufacturers like Apple and Google provide both repair tools and information to independent repair shops, giving consumers more opportunities to fix their electronic devices. Sollman, of Hillsboro, has been pushing the policy since 2021.
The lawmaker noted in written testimony that Oregonians trash an estimated 4,800 cell phones every day, which puts toxic heavy metals like lead, mercury and cadmium into landfills. “This is a win for consumers and for the environment,” Sollman said in a statement. “Oregonians deserve to have affordable and sustainable options for repairing their electronics instead of throwing them away or replacing them.”
Sollman said she believes the measure would also help “close the technological divide” by allowing schools or other institutions to refurbish their technology and give it a longer lifespan.
Oregon’s public universities reach deal with union representing thousands of classified workers
This is excellent news. BTW, “classified workers” are employees who don’t require certification, including paraprofessionals (like teaching assistants and research assistants), office/clerical staff, as well as other classified staff, such as custodians, bus drivers, and business managers.
From Oregon Public Broadcasting:
Bargaining representatives for Oregon’s seven public universities and the union that represents classified workers came to an agreement this week. The deal impacts more than 4,500 employees. It gives several raises over two years, starting with a 6.5% pay increase in April. They will also receive a one-time $1,500 payment and get Veteran’s Day off.
Steve Clark, the bargaining communications director for Oregon’s public universities, said the deal balanced employee’s increased cost of living with budgeting concerns. “The bargaining teams reached agreement after months of discussion, months of negotiation,” he said, “And they gave it their all, and once again achieved a resolution that served both the employees of the universities and certainly students education.”
Johnny Earl, chair of the union’s higher education bargaining team, said the deal will come as a relief to many members who have struggled to make ends meet amidst worsening inflation. He said the pay increases and immediate payment will make a significant difference to those on the bottom of the university’s pay scale.
“Some of our members have had to take on second jobs, many who work in food service, those that have kids, or are single-parent households,” he said. “Some have had to go on food stamps.”
If employees vote to ratify the deal in the next few weeks, it will be in effect until 2026.
The deal covers classified workers at the University of Oregon, Oregon State University, Western Oregon University, Eastern Oregon University, Portland State University, Southern Oregon University and the Oregon Institute of Technology.
The cities stripping out concrete for earth and plants
The article mentions other places where depaving is being welcomed, including cities in Ontario, Canada, Belgium and France. But the original inspiration for these efforts is Depave in Portland.
From BBC:
On a hot July day, Katherine Rose picked up a sturdy metal pole and jammed it under the tempting lip of a pre-cut concrete slab. Rose, communications and engagement director at Depave, a non-profit in Portland, Oregon, was sweating in the heat – but she was going to win this fight.
The grubby, rectangular section of urban crust in front of her was about to move. Pushing down on her metal bar, applying it like a lever, she eased the concrete covering up and away. Now sunlight could fall once again on the ground below. A mess of gravel and dirt that was, to Rose, just bursting with potential.
"It feels like you're liberating soil," she says, recalling the summer gathering where she and around 50 volunteers removed roughly 1,670 sq m (18,000 sq ft) of concrete from the grounds of a local church. "It's envisioning and fully realising a dream that I think we all have," says Rose. The dream, that is, of bringing nature back into our midst.
The idea of depaving, sometimes known as desealing, is a simple one – replace as much concrete, asphalt and other forms of hard landscaping as possible with plants and soil. It's been around since at least 2008, when the Depave group in Portland was founded. Proponents say depaving allows water to soak into the ground, which reduces flooding in times of heavy rain – aiding the "sponginess" of cities. Native plants help wildlife cling on in urban spaces, and by planting trees you can increase shade, protecting residents from heatwaves. Injecting city streets with greenery may even improve people's mental health, too. ✂️
[Depave] says it has depaved more than 33,000 sq m (360,000 sq ft) of asphalt in Portland alone since 2008 – an area equivalent to nearly four and a half football pitches. The work is "joyous", says Rose, because it unites enthusiastic local volunteers. They get a safety briefing and then muck in together.
9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Rejects GOP State Senators’ Argument for Keeping Their Jobs
For those of you who have been following the story of the Oregon Republican state senators trying to worm their way out of complying with the successful ballot measure banning them from running for office after they walked out for six weeks, here’s the latest news. Fortunately, this brings the whole sorry mess to a satisfying conclusion
From Willamette Week:
[On February 29th,] the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals...rejected an appeal by Republican state senators who said an amendment to the Oregon Constitution limiting legislative walkouts violated their federal First Amendment rights.
Sens. Dennis Linthicum (R-Klamath Falls) and Brian Boquist (I-Dallas) argued that Measure 113, which voters approved in 2022 to deter legislative walkouts, stopped them from exercising their constitutional right to disagree with the Democratic majority and to do so by refusing to show up for floor votes. By failing to appear for floor votes in 2023, senators, including Linthicum and Boquist, deprived the chamber of the two-thirds attendance required for a quorum.
Measure 113 established a threshold: Lawmakers who recorded 10 or more unexcused absences would be prohibited from seeking reelection. Ambiguity in the wording of the amendment that followed from the measure’s passage led to a separate legal challenge in state court. The Oregon Supreme Court ruled in that case Feb. 1, deciding that although the language was ambiguous, the intention of the framers of the measure and voters was clear: 10 unexcused absences meant a lawmaker could not run for reelection.
Linthicum and Boquist chose a different argument in federal court. They claimed that walking out was simply an exercise of their personal right of free speech. U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken found against the senators late last year, so they appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The three-judge appellate panel, which included two noted conservatives—Judge Jay Bybee, who as a U.S. assistant attorney general wrote a 2002 memo justifying torture for President George W. Bush, and Judge Daniel Bress, who clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia—didn’t buy that justification.
“Actions have consequences,” the three judges’ unanimous opinion states. “When those actions might be described as expressive in nature, the First Amendment sometimes protects us from the repercussions that follow. This is not one of those instances.”
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Good news from around the nation
The economy is roaring. Immigration is a key reason.
Of course, the article also notes that “immigration remains an intensely polarizing issue in American politics. Fresh survey data from Gallup showed Americans now cite immigration as the country’s top problem, surpassing inflation, the economy and issues with government.”
That’s why we need to broadcast this good news far and wide!
From The Washington Post (gift link):
Immigration has propelled the U.S. job market further than just about anyone expected, helping cement the country’s economic rebound from the pandemic as the most robust in the world.
That momentum picked up aggressively over the past year. About 50 percent of the labor market’s extraordinary recent growth came from foreign-born workers between January 2023 and January 2024, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of federal data. And even before that, by the middle of 2022, the foreign-born labor force had grown so fast that it closed the labor force gap created by the pandemic, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
Immigrant workers also recovered much faster than native-born workers from the pandemic’s disruptions, and many saw some of the largest wage gains in industries eager to hire. Economists and labor experts say the surge in employment was ultimately key to solving unprecedented gaps in the economy that threatened the country’s ability to recover from prolonged shutdowns.
“Immigration has not slowed. It has just been absolutely astronomical,” said Pia Orrenius, vice president and senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. “And that’s been instrumental. You can’t grow like this with just the native workforce. It’s not possible.”
Connecticut says it will become first state to cancel medical debt for many residents
Every state should be doing this. RIP Medical Debt makes it possible.
From CNN:
Connecticut will cancel roughly $650 million in medical debt for an estimated 250,000 residents this year, Gov. Ned Lamont announced Friday, saying it is the first state to provide this type of relief. The effort will liberate many residents from “the cloud” over their heads and give them more freedom to buy a home, start a business or continue with their education, Lamont told CNN. That will help them strengthen their financial standing in a state with a large wealth gap.
“It’s a debt that you had no control over,” Lamont told CNN. “It’s not like you overspent. You get hit by a health care calamity.”
Residents whose medical debt equals 5% or more of their annual income or whose household income is up to 400% of the federal poverty line, or about $125,000 in 2024, are eligible. Those who qualify do not need to apply – they will receive letters in the mail saying their debt has been eliminated as soon as this summer. More than 1 in 10 Connecticut residents have medical debt in collections.
Lamont first announced the initiative, which was included in Connecticut’s most recent budget, on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Friday.
The state will leverage $6.5 million in Covid-19 funds from the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act to satisfy the debt. It will contract with a nonprofit group that buys medical debt from hospitals and eliminates it for much less than what’s owed.
$1 billion donation eliminates tuition at New York medical school, changing students’ lives
As Future Crunch put it, “[This is] what you're actually supposed to do with a billion dollars.” Are any of the multi-billionaires paying attention??
From PBS:
First year student Samuel Woo had been considering a career in cardiology so he would be able to pay off his medical school debt until the announcement this week of a generous donation that will remove tuition fees at his New York City school. Now, without the fear of crippling student debt, the 23-year-old whose parents emigrated from South Korea said Tuesday that he can afford to pursue his dream of providing medical services to people living on the streets. ✂️
Ruth Gottesman, a former professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the widow of a Wall Street investor, announced Monday that she is donating $1 billion to the school in the Bronx. The gift means that four-year students immediately go tuition free, while everyone else will benefit in the fall. ✂️
The donation is notable not just for its size — possibly the largest to any U.S. medical school, according to Montefiore Einstein, the umbrella organization for Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Montefiore Health System — but also because the school is located in one of the most impoverished parts of the city and the state of New York.
“There are people here in the Bronx who are first generation, low-income students who really want to be doctors and want to pursue medicine and want to practice here, but just aren’t able to have the opportunity, whether that’s financial reasons or lack of resources,” Woo said. “I’m hoping that the free tuition helps alleviate some of the pressure of those students and encourages them to think of medicine as, you know, a potentially acceptable field.”
Utah aims to have all no-kill animal shelters by 2025
Best Friends Animal Society is located in southern Utah, so it makes sense that Utah is the first state they’ve partnered with in their quest to end all shelter deaths for dogs and cats by 2025. It’s encouraging that the Republican governor of Utah is on board.
Utah is aiming to become the first no-kill state in the west by 2025.
Gov. Spencer Cox declared on Tuesday that 2024 is “No-Kill Shelter Year” in partnership with Best Friends Animal Society, a national organization working to end shelter deaths for cats and dogs by 2025.
Of the 58 shelters in Utah, 46 have reportedly already reached no-kill status, which Best Friends Animal Society defines as at least 90% of cats and dogs coming into the shelter being saved.
If the goal is achieved, Utah would be the first no-kill state in the west and the biggest No-Kill state in the country.
The organization says some ways to help their no-kill goal include adopting and fostering pets, trap-neuter-vaccinate-return programs for outdoor cats and spaying or neutering pets.
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Good news from around the world
France makes abortion a constitutional right
Vive la France!!
From BBC:
France has become the first country in the world to explicitly include the right to abortion in its constitution.
Parliamentarians voted to revise the country's 1958 constitution to enshrine women's "guaranteed freedom" to abort. The overwhelming 780-72 vote saw a standing ovation in the parliament in Versailles when the result was announced.
President Emmanuel Macron described the move as "French pride" that had sent a "universal message". However anti-abortion groups have strongly criticised the change, as has the Vatican.
Abortion has been legal in France since 1975, but polls show around 85% of the public supported amending the constitution to protect the right to end a pregnancy. And while several other countries include reproductive rights in their constitutions - France is the first to explicitly state that an abortion will be guaranteed.
It becomes the 25th amendment to modern France's founding document, and the first since 2008.
Following the vote, the Eiffel Tower in Paris was lit up in celebration, with the message: "My Body My Choice".
On ‘Alternative Walking Tours,’ Formerly Homeless People Share Their Perspectives
This is a wonderful program that so far exists only in four UK cities. I’d love to see it established in the U.S. to help more people understand both the struggles and the skills of homeless individuals.
From Reasons to Be Cheerful:
After struggling with alcohol addiction for over 10 years — during which his 20-year banking career and 30-year marriage both collapsed — it was a presentation in a rehab center in 2019 that became the catalyst for Miles to turn his life around.
The presentation was by Invisible Cities, an organization which, since its inception in 2016, has trained 118 formerly homeless people to become tour guides. It’s a creative way of giving them not only a new income stream, but also a new sense of purpose — and skillset, too.
“This helped fill a void after I finished rehab,” says Miles, who has withheld his name for privacy reasons. “This was the opportunity that first helped me back on to a path of a ‘normal’ life again, and having a purpose. I probably wouldn’t be where I am today without the opportunity Invisible Cities gave me. I’ll always be grateful for that.”
Invisible Cities’ guides specialize in unique topics that reflect their own personal story — such as a city’s LGBTQI history, notable women, protest culture, ties to witchcraft or how crime and punishment has evolved — in the UK cities of Edinburgh, York, Cardiff, Glasgow and Manchester.
Invisible Cities provides training for guides to create these “alternative walking tours,” as well as in public speaking and customer service skills. The organization is then responsible for marketing the tours and taking bookings. Participants pay up to £15 (around $19 US), which is split between the guide and Invisible Cities to support their efforts in recruiting more guides who have experienced homelessness.
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Good news in medicine
CBD shown to more effectively ease anxiety compared to THC
This study was published in the journal Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research.
From Medical News Today:
A new study finds that CBD-dominant forms of cannabis appear to have significant anti-anxiety properties. The findings add to a growing body of research suggesting the potential mental health benefits of using CBD. ✂️
Anxiety disorders are experienced each year by 40 million Americans over the age of 18. Many studies have looked at using cannabis to help treat anxiety disorders, but robust evidence on efficacy is lacking. For [this] study, researchers wanted to compare the effects of CBD versus THC on anxiety symptoms. They examined a sample of 300 people, with 42 people who had never ingested any cannabis and 258 who had occasionally. The non-users with reported symptoms of anxiety served as a control group, with the remaining participants divided into three groups.
One-third smoked a product that was 24% THC, with just 1% CBD. The second group smoked a product with 24% CBD and 1% THC. A third group smoked a cannabis flower with a one-to-one relationship between the two compounds: 12% CBD and 12% THC. All cannabis users purchased their own product from dispensaries, according to researchers’ requirements. Individuals were not instructed on their frequency of cannabis use. During the 4-week trial period, the researchers traveled to participants’ homes.
To track short-term, acute changes in anxiety immediately after smoking, the researchers employed the Profile of Mood States Elation, Tension, and Paranoia sub-scales and the Addiction Research Center Inventory intoxication scale. To assess less acute changes to anxiety levels, the Patient Global Impression of Change scale and the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale were used.
At the end of the study period, all four groups reported some reduction in anxiety, although the non-cannabis group showed the least improvement. The THC-dominant group also did not exhibit significant anti-anxiety effects. The CBD-dominant group showed the most profound improvement. In addition, unlike the other two groups, participants did not experience tension or paranoia, as did members of the other cannabis groups.
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Good news in science
How did life on Earth begin? The chemical puzzle just became clearer.
Cutting edge research is now providing some answers to a question humans have been asking for millennia.
From The Washington Post (gift link):
People have long scratched their heads trying to understand how life ever got going after the formation of Earth billions of years ago. Now, chemists have partly unlocked the recipe by creating a complex compound essential to all life — in a lab.
Like making the ingredients of a cake, researchers have successfully created a compound critical for metabolism in all living cells, which is essential for energy production and regulation. The pathway, which has evaded scientists for decades, involved relatively simple molecules probably present on early Earth that combined at room temperature over months. The discovery provides support to the idea that many key components for life could have simultaneously formed early on and combined to make living cells. ✂️
Although organisms differ wildly in appearance, they are made from the same basic chemical building blocks, called primary metabolites, which are directly involved in cell growth and development. Examples include amino acids that help build proteins and nucleotides that make up RNA and DNA.
The new lab experiment focused on the origins of another primary metabolite: coenzyme A, which sits at the heart of metabolism across all domains of life (as one of its many functions). For instance, the compound plays a vital role in releasing energy from carbohydrates, fats and proteins in organisms that require oxygen, but it also serves metabolic functions in lifeforms that don’t need oxygen, like many bacteria.
Specifically, [Matthew] Powner [senior author of the research paper] and his team were looking to re-create a particular fragment of the coenzyme A molecule called pantetheine. Pantetheine is the functional arm of coenzyme A, often getting transferred and enabling other chemical reactions in our body to occur. This limb is called a co-factor and acts as an “on” switch — without it, the coenzyme would be unusable. ✂️
...the new discovery shows that many of life’s building blocks could have been created simultaneously from the same basic chemicals and conditions, producing proteins, RNA and other components at once. In fact, the team’s previous studies used similar conditions and reactions to create nucleotides (which help create DNA) and peptides (which help form proteins). These building blocks could have come together, reacted with one another and ultimately led to the origin of life.
More Than 100 New Species Found on Underwater Mountains in South Pacific, Researchers Say
These creatures are simply fascinating! My favorites are the plump pink cutie with the flapping “ears” and the luminescent blue and gold snake-like creature.
From ABC7 Chicago:
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Good news for the environment
Could Wild Horses Help Fight Wildfires?
Using wild horses to keep grasses and vegetation in check to prevent wildfires would be the most wonderful win-win ever.
From Reasons to Be Cheerful:
With his nonprofit [Wild Horse Fire Brigade], [William E.] Simpson is proposing a large-scale solution to several issues that have long been the subject of furious debate across the American West: He wants to free the roughly 60,000 horses that are currently kept in Bureau of Land Management (BLM) corrals and relocate them strategically to the nation’s more than 110 million acres of designated wilderness and other open land, where they could keep grasses and vegetation in check as keystone herbivores. “They naturally protect forests, wildlife, watersheds and wilderness systems,” he says. “Keeping wild horses in captivity is like keeping the fire department in jail during fire season.”
While the climate crisis has increased temperatures and fire danger, studies show that the steep decline of large herbivores such as deer and wild horses contributed to the abundant growth of grasses and brush that fuels fires’ devastation. Simpson calls his proposal a win-win-win: “Taxpayers save money, wildfires are kept in check, and the horses get to live wild.” ✂️
Simpson undertook a five-year-study to show that wild horses are significantly more beneficial for the flora than livestock because unlike cows or sheep, “wild horses will move through an area much faster than invasive species livestock do. This behavior allows the grasses and plants to recover quickly from the light grazing-browsing.”
Simpson picks up dried horse manure to demonstrate that wild horses naturally distribute the seeds of native plants across wilderness areas, while ruminant cattle and sheep don’t because they digest them.
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Good news for and about animals
Brought to you by Rascal and the beautiful spirits of Rosy and Nora.
Critically Endangered Parrot Bounces Back in Huge Conservation Victory
Rascal is delighted to share the news that the population of these sweet little parrots is growing.
From Science Alert:
Over 80 critically endangered parrots have returned to their breeding ground in Tasmania – the highest number in 15 years. Only 3 wild female orange-bellied parrots (Neophema chrysogaster) returned from their annual migration to the Australian mainland in 2016. The species was almost declared functionally extinct, despite decades of dedicated breeding programs and research into the colorful bird's conservation. And while their numbers finally seem to be heading in the right direction, there's still a long way to go.
"It's a huge team effort," [said] wildlife biologist Shannon Troy, explaining how volunteers have been crucial to helping researchers figure out how to aid these difficult birds that have seemed stubbornly set on becoming extinct. For years, releasing captive-bred birds mysteriously failed to effectively boost the species' numbers in the wild. Most youngsters have not been surviving the journey between their summer breeding ground in Melaleuca Tasmania, and their warm, winter foraging sites on the southern coastal salt marshes of mainland Australia.
Orange-bellied parrots are one of only three parrot species that undergo the perilous task of a long distance migration, a task that requires a certain level of fitness. Just 58 of the 139 birds that left Melaleuca made it back last year, but this is higher than previous years. ✂️
Researchers like Troy have been managing the birds down to every single individual and every nest. Meanwhile, several institutes...have assisted with captive breeding and release programs since 2013. An army of volunteers help monitor the birds at Melaleuca, watching out for predators and health issues. All this close attention provides scientists with rare detailed data for endangered species management.
With continued hard work and a lot of luck, these challenging animals could yet be rescued from the brink. ...every lesson orange-bellied parrots can teach us could help save countless other struggling species, too.
All pets go to heaven. She helps them do it at home.
In a pretty amazing coincidence, this story appeared in my inbox on Sunday, two days after our wonderful vet came to our house to help Rosy on her journey.
From The Washington Post (gift link):
Pet adoption spiked during the pandemic, with nearly 1 in 5 American households taking animals in and spending far more on them than pet owners did decades ago. With more beasts in our lives — as companions, as emotional support animals, as the beneficiaries of pet trusts — it only makes sense that their owners want their final moments in their lives to be as peaceful and painless as possible.
That’s where Meyers comes in. Working with Lap of Love, a company that provides veterinarian referrals for at-home pet euthanasia, she travels from house to house in the D.C. region offering grieving families’ animals what the word euthanasia means: “good death.” In four years, she has euthanized 1,500 animals: cats, dogs, rabbits, rats. Some had been with their owners since childhood. Some had traveled the world with them. Some were their owner’s sole companion.
Meyers has observed death rituals that include praying, burning incense, wrapping a deceased pet’s body in a white sheet, and opening a window for a pet’s spirit to exit. She has listened to owners read poems or letters to their pets and cried along with them.
“When people hear what I do for living, it sounds sad,” Meyers says. “But it’s strangely rewarding. … You give pets a peaceful experience. It’s a final gift.” … In-home euthanasia can be easier on animals and their owners than office appointments with other sick animals and their distressed owners crowded around.
“Many times, people will comment how a human family member passed, and it was so painful at the end, and this is peaceful by contrast,” she says. They tell her, she says, that they wish they could go the same way.
Conservation Dogs: How Pups Are Protecting the Planet
Is there anything that dogs’ amazing noses can’t do?
From GoodGoodGood:
There are a lot of amazing working dogs in the world: Medical alert dogs, seeing-eye dogs, bomb-sniffing dogs, rescue dogs — you name it. They live to serve, and we live to love them. But there’s a category of working dogs you may not have met before: Conservation dogs. ✂️
Working Dogs For Conservation (WD4C) is the world’s leading conservation dog organization, based in the rugged plains of Missoula, Montana. Building upon techniques like narcotics and cadaver detection, as well as search and rescue, the organization pioneered the use of dogs’ extraordinary sense of smell to protect wild places. WD4C has a pack of over 25 dogs, each with a different combination of specialty scents and duties.
There’s Belgian Malinois Fenix who works with scouts in North Luangwa National Park to locate and confirm the safety of the park’s rhinos; or Tobias, a Labrador Retriever who works in Glacier National Park at watercraft check stations, searching for invasive Quagga and Zebra Mussels. Not to mention Seamus, a border collie who helps monitor and eradicate noxious weeds in Montana and has found evidence of the endangered San Joaquin kit fox in California.
Nearly all dogs in the pack have been rescued from shelters, and while their work is invaluable, their high-energy needs are met every day in the wild, and at the end of the day, they get to curl up in safe, loving homes.
WD4C’s dogs work in three continents to end wildlife trafficking (dogs are trained to detect ammunition, guns, poisons, snares, ivory, rhino horn, and pangolin scales), spot invasive species, monitor endangered species with other conservation groups, and even contribute to environmental justice, helping identify contaminants in Indigenous communities.
Library Fees? No Problem. Just Show Us Your Cat Photos.
A delightful story, though it does have too many cat puns for my taste.
From The NY Times (gift link):
Finally, there is something cats can do for humans.
The Worcester Public Library in Worcester, Mass., announced that through the end of March, people who have lost or damaged a book or other borrowed items can bring a photograph, drawing, or magazine clipping of a cat, and get their library cards reactivated.
The library calls the program March Meowness, a way for the system of seven branches to forgive (or is that fur-give?) members of the community who misplaced a book or damaged a borrowed item, and then never went back to avoid paying for it.
In just a few days, the program has already generated hundreds of returns, multiple postings of random cat photographs on the library’s Facebook page, and photographs and drawings pinned on a growing “cat wall” in the main building.
The local NPR affiliate, WBUR, described it as a “never be-fur tried initiative,” and urged patrons to hurry and “act meow.” So far the response, WBUR said, has Jason Homer, the executive director of the library, “feline good.” ✂️
If you don’t have a cat? No problem. One cat-less 7-year-old boy, who never returned a “Captain Underpants” book, had his library card reactivated after the staff gave him paper and crayons to sketch one.
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