Links

https://weather.com/science/space/news/2018-08-07-green-incredible-hulk-comet-panstarrsAug. 7, 2018
Remnants of a green comet nicknamed the "Incredible Hulk" will zip by Earth this week, offering stargazers a view of a dust cloud at least twice the size of Jupiter. 
Discovered in September 2017, PanSTARRS C/2017 S3 reportedly broke up in late July as it approached the sun. The remaining dust cloud will make its closest approach to Earth on Tuesday, coming within 70.4 million miles (113.4 million kilometers) of the planet, Sputnik News reports.
The best time to view the comet in the Northern Hemisphere will be Tuesday and Wednesday. As the dust cloud approaches the sun, it will become less visible in the sky, astronomers say.
On Tuesday night, scattered showers and thunderstorms may hinder the view in portions of the East, Midwest and central Plains. The best areas for viewing will be from the northern Plains into much of the West, where partly cloudy to mostly clear skies are expected. However, views in some areas of the West may be impacted by smoke, says weather.com meteorologist Linda Lam.
On Wednesday night, areas from the East into the southern Plains and Southwest will see clouds, showers and thunderstorms, but clouds shouldn't impede viewing in the upper Midwest to the West Coast. 
The only real chance for a view of the comet in the Southern Hemisphere will be just before dawn Aug. 15. 


https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-attacks-media-to-undermine-negative-stories-60-minutes-interview-2018-5
May 22, 2018
"At one point, he started to attack the press," Stahl told the audience at a journalism awards event at the Harvard Club in Manhattan on Monday evening. "There were no cameras in there."
"I said, 'You know, this is getting tired. Why are you doing it over and over? It's boring and it's time to end that. You know, you've won ... why do you keep hammering at this?'" Stahl went on. "And he said: 'You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so that when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.'"


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/04/world/europe/europe-heat-wave.html
Aug. 4, 2018
In Northern Europe, this summer feels like a modern-day version of the biblical plagues. Cows are dying of thirst in Switzerland, fires are gobbling up timber in Sweden, the majestic Dachstein glacier is melting in Austria.
In London, stores are running out of fans and air-conditioners. In Greenland, an iceberg may break off a piece so large that it could trigger a tsunami that destroys settlements on shore. Last week, Sweden’s highest peak, Kebnekaise mountain, no longer was in first place after its glacier tip melted.
Not only is much of northern and western Europe hotter than normal, but the weather is also more erratic. Torrential rains and violent thunderstorms have alternated with droughts in parts of France. In the Netherlands, a drought — rather than the rising seas — is hurting its system of dikes because there is not enough fresh water countering the seawater.
The preliminary results of the Oxford study found that, in some places, climate change more than doubled the likelihood of this summer’s European heat wave.
“That’s really the sign of climate change: We have heat waves that aren’t necessarily more intense but that are more and more frequent.”
It used to be winter storms that closed down airports and delayed flights. But this summer in the northern German city of Hannover, the 50-year-old runways buckled in the 93-degree heat and travelers were delayed for hours.
In Switzerland, where the herds are led to the high pastures in summer to graze, the drought has stranded cows without water. Farmers have turned to the country’s helicopter association and the Swiss Air Force to transport tens of thousands of gallons of water every week to keep the herds alive.
“Even if we respect the Paris climate accord and manage to stabilize the temperatures at two degrees higher than in the preindustrial era, the level of the sea will continue to rise for many hundreds of years. There are coastal cities that are already condemned,” Mr. Bréon said.


https://www.marketwatch.com/story/wilbur-ross-alleged-to-have-siphoned-more-than-120-million-from-associates-forbes-report-2018-08-07
Aug. 7, 2018
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross could rank “among the biggest grifters in American history,” according to a Forbes report that details claims he wrongly siphoned or “outright stole” millions of dollars from former business associates.
The magazine spoke with 21 people who know Ross, who formerly headed private-equity company WL Ross & Co. All told, Forbes said, the allegations come to more than $120 million in aggregate value.


https://www.10tv.com/article/maryland-mom-tested-positive-opiates-after-eating-bagel
Aug. 7, 2018
A Maryland woman has discovered that eating a poppy seed bagel before giving birth carries serious consequences.
Elizabeth Eden told WBAL-TV in Baltimore she was in labor in April when a doctor told her she had tested positive for opiates and she had been reported to the state. The test result meant Eden's daughter had to stay in the hospital for five days while her mother was assigned a case worker.
Eden said she had learned in a school health class that eating poppy seeds could cause a false positive.
After acknowledging the bagel defense, the case worker closed Eden's file.
The Federal Institute for Risk Assessment writes that until food manufacturers reduce morphine levels in poppy seeds, it advises against excessive consumption, particularly during pregnancy.


https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/russian-than-democrat-shirts/
Aug. 5, 2018
Why two men were wearing t-shirts which read “I’d Rather Be a Russian Than a Democrat” while attending a rally for President Trump
[It immediately was passed around on Facebook as an example of the stupidity of Trump followers, that they meant it literally. I wondered if it might be anti-Trumpers having a joke.]
Pelzer identified the two men as James Alicie and Richard M. Birchfield and reported that the two men decided to attend the rally because they had never seen a U.S. president in person.
Alicie and Birchfield offered some advice for Democrats:
The two friends from the city of Delaware said they came out to the rally because they’ve never seen a president in person before. Asked about their shirts, Alicie (left) said he didn’t understand why Trump is getting so much criticism about Russia when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama weren’t similarly scrutinized. Asked what he would tell Democrats, Alicie said, “To jump on board this train and give him a chance.”
[So they apparently didn't mean it literally. I would say the reason Trump is getting so much more criticism is that he acts in such a way to deserve it.]


https://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/how-warmer-arctic-could-intensify-extreme-weather
April 22, 2018
Is there a link between the vanishing Arctic sea ice and extreme weather?
Some prominent climate researchers think so. That’s because warming temperatures in the Arctic are altering the behavior of the polar jet stream, a high-altitude river of air that drives weather patterns across the globe. As the winds that propel the jet stream weaken, storms, droughts, and extreme heat and cold move over continents at slower rates, meaning bad weather can stick around for longer.
Eli Kintisch reports aboard the Norwegian research vessel Helmer Hanssen about how changing conditions at the top of the world could be impacting weather far away.


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/05/business/bankruptcy-older-americans.html
Aug. 5, 2018
For a rapidly growing share of older Americans, traditional ideas about life in retirement are being upended by a dismal reality: bankruptcy.
The signs of potential trouble — vanishing pensions, soaring medical expenses, inadequate savings — have been building for years. Now, new research sheds light on the scope of the problem: The rate of people 65 and older filing for bankruptcy is three times what it was in 1991, the study found, and the same group accounts for a far greater share of all filers.
Driving the surge, the study suggests, is a three-decade shift of financial risk from government and employers to individuals, who are bearing an ever-greater responsibility for their own financial well-being as the social safety net shrinks.
The transfer has come in the form of, among other things, longer waits for full Social Security benefits, the replacement of employer-provided pensions with 401(k) savings plans and more out-of-pocket spending on health care. Declining incomes, whether in retirement or leading up to it, compound the challenge.
Not only are more older people seeking relief through bankruptcy, but they also represent a widening slice of all filers: 12.2 percent of filers are now 65 or older, up from 2.1 percent in 1991.
The jump is so pronounced, the study says, that the aging of the baby boom generation cannot explain it.
Although the actual number of older people filing for bankruptcy was relatively small — about 100,000 a year during the period in question — the researchers said it signaled that there were many more people in financial distress.
“The people who show up in bankruptcy are always the tip of the iceberg,” said Robert M. Lawless, a law professor at the University of Illinois and another author of the study.
By 2013, the average Medicare beneficiary’s out-of-pocket spending on health care consumed 41 percent of the average Social Security check, according to Kaiser, which also estimated that the figure would rise.
A little more than a third of the older filers who answered the researchers’ questionnaire said that helping others, like children or older parents, had contributed to their seeking bankruptcy protection. Marc Stern, a bankruptcy lawyer in Seattle, said he had seen the phenomenon again and again.


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/07/german-couple-who-sold-son-to-paedophiles-on-darknet-jailed
Aug. 7, 2018
A German woman has been sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison for selling her young son on the darknet to abusers, in a case that has horrified the country and raised questions about its child protection services.
The 48-year-old woman and her partner, 39, a convicted paedophile, were convicted of forced prostitution, rape, sexual and physical abuse, humiliation, and bondage in almost 60 separate identified acts.
The partner was given a 12-year prison sentence plus a preventative detention order, which will effectively keep him in prison for life. Six other men, including a Spanish man, a Swiss citizen and three German men who had paid the couple to abuse the boy, now 10, were given sentences of between eight and 10 years.
The court in the south-western city of Freiburg heard that the abuse had been going on for two years. The mother had threatened her son with foster care if he reported it.
Others on trial included a 44-year-old German who was given access to rape the boy but was prevented by the mother from carrying out his wish to kill him.
https://www.npr.org/2018/08/07/636293545/german-couple-convicted-of-selling-child-on-the-darknet
The court also ordered the couple to pay 42,500 euros (about $49,100) to the boy and a young girl who was also a victim, The Associated Press reported.
The boy is now 10 years old, according to German media


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/07/ex-irish-president-vatican-sought-deal-to-keep-church-archives-closed
Aug. 7, 2018
The Vatican sought a deal with the Irish state in 2003 to keep church archives closed, according to former president Mary McAleese.
The approach from the Vatican came at a time when two statutory inquiries were under way into child abuse involving the Catholic church.
Survivors of Catholic church abuse in Ireland demand papal meeting
McAleese said the matter was raised with her during a private meeting with a high-ranking Vatican official while she was on a state visit to Italy.
It was “one of the most devastating moments of my presidency”, she told the Irish Times.
According to McAleese’s account, Angelo Sodano, then Vatican secretary of state, “indicated he would like, and the Vatican would like, an agreement with Ireland, a concordat with Ireland”.
Cardinal Angelo Sodano of Italy, formerly Vatican secretary of state, is said to have indicated he would like an agreement with Ireland. Photograph: Stefano Rellandini/Reuters
She added: “I asked him why and it was very clear that it was because he wanted to protect Vatican and diocesan archives. I have to say that I immediately said the conversation had to stop.
McAleese claimed that Sodano was asking for an agreement under which the Irish state would have no access to church documents.
Child abuse was endemic in institutions run by the church and its affiliates for decades. When evidence of it began to emerge in the 1990s, the church sought to cover up the scale of the scandal. The church’s complicity in the abuse of children is a major reason for its diminished moral authority in Ireland.


https://www.theguardian.com/us/environment
Aug. 7, 2018
Plumes of smoke towered over flame-engulfed mountains in northern California on Monday evening as thousands of firefighters grappled with the largest wildfire in state history.
At 443.4 sq miles and growing, the blaze is already larger than New York and approaching the size of Los Angeles. The fire surpassed this size of the Thomas Fire, which broke out in 2017.
As of Monday afternoon, the Mendocino Complex fire had destroyed a total of 87 residences and 82 other structures, and forced thousands to evacuate. News agencies have reported seven deaths so far in blazes across California.
About 14,000 firefighters, including inmate volunteers, are battling 18 major blazes burning thousands of sq miles.


https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/06/domino-effect-of-climate-events-could-push-earth-into-a-hothouse-state
Aug. 7, 2018
A domino-like cascade of melting ice, warming seas, shifting currents and dying forests could tilt the Earth into a “hothouse” state beyond which human efforts to reduce emissions will be increasingly futile, a group of leading climate scientists has warned.
The authors of the essay, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, stress their analysis is not conclusive, but warn the Paris commitment to keep warming at 2C above pre-industrial levels may not be enough to “park” the planet’s climate at a stable temperature.
“I do hope we are wrong, but as scientists we have a responsibility to explore whether this is real,” said Johan Rockström, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre. “We need to know now. It’s so urgent. This is one of the most existential questions in science.”
Rockström and his co-authors are among the world’s leading authorities on positive feedback loops, by which warming temperatures release new sources of greenhouse gases or destroy the Earth’s ability to absorb carbon or reflect heat.


http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/400836-voters-reject-missouri-right-to-work-law
Aug. 7,2018
Missouri voters on Tuesday solidly rejected the state’s right-to-work law, which would have allowed workers to opt out of paying mandatory union fees as part of their contract. 
The Associated Press called the results shortly before 11 p.m., with 63 percent of voters opposing the state law that had not yet gone into effect. Roughly 37 percent of voters supported the law, with 54 percent of precincts reporting as of 10:50 p.m. EST.
The state’s general assembly passed the law last year, according to The Kansas City Star. Then-Gov. Eric Greitens (R) later signed the measure, but it was not enacted because a coalition of labor groups petitioned to put it to a vote.