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Skyharbour Resources Ltd. (SYH:TSX.V; SYHBF:OTCQX; SC1P:FSE) announced it has entered into an agreement with Hatchet Uranium Corp. to acquire interest in several of its projects. One analyst says the "spotlight" is on uranium juniors as the energy transition drives a heightened demand for power sources.

American and Mexican families play with a seesaw installation at the border near Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, in July 2019. London's Design Museum recognized the project with an award for best design of 2020.; Credit: Luis Torres/AFP via Getty Images

An art project that turned the border wall at the U.S.-Mexico border into the temporary base for pink seesaws – inviting children on each side to come play together – has won the London's Design Museum award for best design of 2020.

"We are totally surprised by this unexpected honor," said Ronald Rael, who designed the project with fellow architect Virginia San Fratello. They share the award, he said, with the Ciudad Juárez, Mexico-based art collective Colectivo Chopeke.

"That's amazing," San Fratello said in a video feed announcing the prize. The seesaw installation won both the overall prize and in the transportation category.

"Most importantly, it comes at a time when we are hopeful for change and that we start building more bridges instead of walls," Rael added.

"The Beazley Designs of the Year are the Oscars of the design world," said Razia Iqbal, a journalist who chaired the Design Museum's panel of judges. The award, she noted, highlights work that pushes boundaries of creativity and innovation.

The metal wall was meant to be a stark barrier dividing the U.S. and Mexico, the centerpiece of President Trump's aggressive immigration policies. But in one spot, it became a junction point instead – a fulcrum for a series of seesaws that let children in the two countries share a playground toy.

The project, officially named Teeter-Totter Wall, was first installed in July 2019 when workers slid steel beams through the slats of the border near El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez.

"For the first time, children from both El Paso, Texas, and the Anapra community in Mexico were invited to connect with their [neighbors], in an attempt to create unity at the politically divisive border," the museum said.

"Everyone was very happy and excited to engage the seesaws," Rael told NPR at the time. The installation went smoothly, turning an idea that had been growing for 10 years into a reality.

"It was peaceful and fun — a day at a park for the children and mothers of Anapra," Rael said.

"The project resonated with people around the world in a way that we didn't anticipate," San Fratello said when the award was announced. "It speaks to the fact that most people are excited about being together, and about optimism and about possibility and the future. And the divisiveness actually comes from the minority."

Rael is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley; San Fratello teaches at San José State University.

The seesaw project was chosen out of more than 70 nominees from dozens of countries, including a customized "stab-proof vest" that the artist Banksy designed for musician Stormzy.

Also considered: the gray and red rendering of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Commissioned by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and designed by Alissa Eckert and Dan Higgins, the famous sphere, with its menacing clusters of crowns, won the design award in the graphics category.

The Impossible Burger 2.0 won in the crowded product category, which also included Lego Braille bricks and a self-sanitizing door handle.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Halima Aden attends the premiere of Netflix's Travis Scott: Look Mom I Can Fly at Barker Hangar on Aug. 27, 2019, in Santa Monica, Calif.; Credit: Rich Fury/Getty Images

For Halima Aden, the decision to walk away from a career as the world's first hijab-wearing supermodel was fairly clear cut. She's felt used for so long, she says — by the modeling industry and by UNICEF, the organization she was photographed by as a child in a refugee camp in Kenya and later served as an ambassador for.

Aden has been featured on the covers of Vogue, Elle and Allure magazines. And she walked the runway for Rihanna's Fenty Beauty and Kanye West's Yeezy.

She tells Morning Edition host Rachel Martin she wanted to be a role model for young girls while being true to herself, but she wasn't accomplishing either. Modeling, she realized, was in "direct conflict" with who she is.

"I'm not a cover girl, I'm Halima from Kakuma," she says. "I want to be the reason why girls have confidence within themselves, not the reason for their insecurity."

Aden was raised in the Kakuma refugee camp in northwestern Kenya. She and her family moved to Minnesota in 2004 when she was 7.

It was there her journey as a model began, competing for Miss Minnesota USA in 2016, seeking a scholarship. She finished in the semifinals, and says from there, modeling "fell from the sky" into her lap.

Interview Highlights

You saw [modeling] not just as a chance to wear gorgeous clothes and to have your photo in magazines but also as a way to help people.

Growing up in America, not seeing representation, not seeing anybody who dressed like me look like me, it did make me feel like, wow, what's wrong with me, you know? And I'm sure if I had if I would have had representation growing up, I would have been so much more confident to wear my hijab, to be myself, to be authentic. But to be that person, to grow up and be on the cover of magazines, I've covered everything from Vogue to Allure, some of the biggest publications in fashion. And yet I still couldn't relate personally to my own image because that's not who I really am. That's not how I really dress. That's not how my hijab really looks. And, you know, fashion, it can be a very creative field, and I completely appreciate that. But my hijab was just getting spread so thin that I knew I had to give it all away, give it up. I'm not a cover girl. I am Halima from Kakuma. I want to be the reason why girls have confidence within themselves, not the reason for their insecurity.

When you say your hijab was being kind of styled out of existence, what passed for a hijab as you were walking down those runways?

Everything. Oh, my goodness. I had jeans at one point on my head as a hijab. I had Gucci pants styled as a turban. It just didn't even make sense, and I felt so far removed from the image itself.

During the pandemic you decided to walk away from fashion and UNICEF. Was it a complicated decision?

I'll be honest with you, the feelings that I've had towards the fashion industry and UNICEF, it was just multiplying as the years went on, so it was just festering. You know, because the fashion industry is very known to use these young girls and boys while their young, age 14 to like 24, I think is the average career of a model. And then they just replace them and move on to a newer model. And same with UNICEF. They've been photographing me and using me since the time I was a baby in a refugee camp. I remember getting those headshots taken and it made me feel, it's very dehumanizing. And so I wanted to show UNICEF, too. How does it feel to be used? It's not a good feeling. And so let's stop using people.

What are you going to do [next]?

For me right now, I don't know what's next. And that's OK. That's OK, because I'm young and I have time to figure it out. And I'm grateful. I'm grateful to the people that I've met. I'm grateful to the agents that I worked with. I'm grateful for the experiences I was able to have these last four years. But at the same time, I just am also grateful that I don't have to do that anymore because it was in direct conflict with who I am as an individual, as a human being.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

From left, jazz musician Louis Armstrong in Rome in 1968, Janet Jackson at the Essence Festival in New Orleans in 2018, and Nas at the Essence Festival in 2019. Works by each of these musicians are among 25 recordings being inducted to the National Recording Registry.; Credit: /AP

What do Janet Jackson, Ira Glass, Kermit the Frog, Nas and Louis Armstrong have in common?

These musicians, interviewers, and frogs are behind songs and other recordings to be inducted into the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry on Wednesday.

The Library of Congress announced the 25 titles picked this year are considered "audio treasures worthy of preservation" based on their cultural, historical, or aesthetic importance to the nation's heritage.

Janet Jackson's album "Rhythm Nation 1814;" Louis Armstrong's performance of "When the Saints Go Marching In;" Patti Labelle's song "Lady Marmalade;" Nas' record "Illmatic," Kool & the Gang's "Celebration;" and Kermit the Frog's "The Rainbow Connection" are now part of the collection of more than 550 other titles.

"The National Recording Registry will preserve our history through these vibrant recordings of music and voices that have reflected our humanity and shaped our culture from the past 143 years," Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden said in a statement Wednesday.

The recordings, stretching from 1878 to 2008, were chosen out of 900 nominations from the public, Hayden said.

"This American Life" is the first podcast to join the registry. The 2008 episode co-produced with NPR News telling the story of the subprime mortgage crisis will be added to the collection.

"When we put this out as a podcast, turning a radio show into a podcast, we did literally nothing to accommodate it," host Ira Glass said in a statement shared by the Library of Congress. "And my theory is that podcasting is most powerful for the same reason that radio is the most powerful. That is, when you have a medium where you're not seeing people, there's just an intimacy to hearing somebody's voice."

The inclusion of Kermit the Frog's "The Rainbow Connection" deeply touched the Muppet.

"Well, gee, it's an amazing feeling to officially become part of our nation's history," Kermit said in a statement. "It's a great honor. And I am thrilled — I am thrilled! — to be the first frog on the list!"

The song was included in the 1979 "The Muppet Movie" performed by Jim Henson as Kermit the Frog, and written by Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher.

Williams said the song is about the "immense power of faith."

"We don't know how it works, but we believe that it does," Williams said. "Sometimes the questions are more beautiful than the answers."

Under the terms of the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, the Librarian of Congress selects 25 titles each year that are at least 10 years old.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Amazon has made a deal to purchase MGM for $8.5 billion.; Credit: /SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Editor's note: Amazon is among NPR's financial supporters.

Amazon has made a deal to buy Hollywood studio MGM for almost $8.5 billion. It's the second-largest acquisition for the company after purchasing Whole Foods.

The tech company already runs a film studio, Prime Video streaming service, and video game streaming site Twitch. But the MGM deal is its biggest move into entertainment. Amazon will get the rights to the Golden Age studio's film and television library.

The announcement was made Wednesday morning by the two companies. In a statement, Amazon's senior vice president of Prime Video and Amazon Studios, Mike Hopkins, emphasized the intellectual property value of MGM's vast holdings, which go back to the 1920s. "The real financial value behind this deal," Hopkins said, "is the treasure trove of IP in the deep catalog that we plan to reimagine and develop together with MGM's talented team."

With its mascot lion roaring logo, MGM made such movie classics as Singin' In the Rain and 2001: A Space Odyssey. MGM also owns the EPIX cable channel and runs a TV studio that produced The Handmaid's Tale and Fargo.

MGM also splits the highly lucrative James Bond movie franchise with a family that holds creative control of the 007 movies. According to Variety, as of 2020 the 24 films released so far in the series have generated $16.3 billion in global ticket sales, adjusted for inflation.

In all, MGM's catalog includes more than 4,000 films — including such pop-culture staples as Moonstruck, Legally Blonde, Rocky, The Pink Panther, The Silence of the Lambs and Poltergeist — and 17,000 television shows. Access to those movies and shows will certainly augment Amazon's Prime Video offerings, particularly at a time when other studios and networks have created their own platforms to reach consumers, such as HBO Max, Paramount+ and Disney+. As of last month, there were more than 200 million Amazon Prime account holders worldwide, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos told Variety.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that the deal for $8.45 billion includes taking on MGM's current debts. The deal has not yet closed, an Amazon spokesperson noted to NPR, and is subject to regulatory approvals. The company is already facing antitrust inquiries in both the U.S. and Europe.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

#FreeBritney activists protest outside the Los Angeles Superior Court during one of Britney Spears' hearings this April.; Credit: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images

Pop star Britney Spears hasn't been in charge of her personal life or her finances for 13 years — that's how long she has been in a court-dictated legal arrangement called a conservatorship.

But on Wednesday, the artist will be speaking directly, albeit from a remote location, to a Los Angeles Superior Court judge about her situation. What exactly she intends to say in her appearance and what her goals might be are anyone's guess.

Before then, here's a quick look at what conservatorships are and why they exist, the specifics of Spears' arrangements, the #FreeBritney movement and what Spears and others have said publicly — and privately — about her conservatorship.

What is a conservatorship, and why does one get put in place?

Typically, legal and financial conservatorships are arranged for people who are unable to make their own decisions in their own best self-interest, such as in the case of an elderly person or someone with some kind of cognitive impairment.

Why does Britney Spears have one?

The exact reasons that the 39-year-old Spears is under a conservatorship have not been publicly disclosed. She lost her autonomy 13 years ago, in 2008, after apparently suffering a mental health crisis.

During the time that Spears has lived under this arrangement, though, she has released four albums (two of which, 2008's Circus and 2011's Femme Fatale, achieved platinum sales); appeared as a judge on both The X Factor and American Idol; and had a four-year residency in Las Vegas that reportedly grossed close to $138 million. Those accomplishments don't exactly line up with the typical profile of someone unable to look after themselves.

What does Spears' conservatorship cover?

Essentially, it controls all the major aspects of Spears' life, including decisions regarding her financial, medical and personal well-being. The conservators also oversee visitation arrangements with her two teenage sons, who are under the full custody of her ex-husband, Kevin Federline.

According to Forbes, Spears' current net worth is around $60 million.

Who controls Spears' conservatorship?

Up until recently, both the financial and personal arms of the conservatorship were controlled by Spears' father, Jamie Spears.

In 2020, her lawyer, Samuel D. Ingham III, stated in a filing that Spears "strongly opposed" her father as conservator and that she refused to perform if he remained in charge of her career. Spears asked the court for her father to be suspended from his role as conservator. (He had temporarily stepped away in 2019 for health reasons.)

In February, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny overruled an objection from Jamie Spears to having a third party help look after his daughter's financial affairs. A wealth-management company, Bessemer Trust, is now a co-conservator for the financial side of Spears' situation. But Jamie Spears is still the main conservator for all other aspects of Spears' arrangement.

Why is Spears planning to talk to the court now?

Back in April, Spears' legal team asked Penny to allow her to speak to the court directly about the conservatorship, and they agreed that June 23 would be the date for this to happen. At the time, Ingham did not disclose why Spears wants to speak or what she intends to say.

Has Spears ever asked for the conservatorship to end?

Up until now, Spears has never voiced a desire for the conservatorship to be removed completely — at least not publicly. In a court filing, she has stated that the conservatorship "rescued her from a collapse, exploitation by predatory individuals and financial ruin" and allowed her to "regain her position as a world class entertainer."

But on Tuesday afternoon, The New York Times reported that it had obtained confidential court records that purport to show that Spears has opposed the conservatorship privately for years. The Times quoted a 2016 report from a court investigator assigned to Spears' case, in which the investigator wrote that Spears told her that the conservatorship had "become an oppressive and controlling tool against her" and that she wanted the arrangement to end quickly.

According to the Times, Spears told the court in 2019 that the conservatorship had forced her into a stay at a mental health facility, as well as into making public performances against her will. The article further reported that the conservatorship had dictated Spears' friendships, her dating life and her spending habits, even preventing her from refinishing kitchen cabinets according to her taste.

As early as 2014, the article states, Spears wanted to consider removing her father from his prime role in the conservatorship, citing his reportedly heavy drinking.

Does Spears herself support the #FreeBritney movement?

Certain Spears fans have organized themselves into a grassroots movement — #FreeBritney — to help Spears regain autonomy over her life. The dynamics between Spears and her dedicated #FreeBritney fans are murky, as are her various declarations on social media.

In a court filing last September, her lawyer, Ingham, wrote: "At this point in her life when she is trying to regain some measure of personal autonomy, Britney welcomes and appreciates the informed support of her many fans."

On the other hand, Spears to date has never publicly asked to be released from the conservatorship and regain her autonomy — which is the main goal of #FreeBritney.

A very sympathetic New York Times television documentary, Framing Britney Spears, debuted on FX in February. The project reckons with the way the media, comedians and the music industry itself characterized Spears during her ascent to global fame and during her later, very public struggles — and it also profiles some #FreeBritney activists.

After it aired, Spears wrote on Instagram: "My life has always been very speculated [sic] ... watched ... and judged really my whole life !!! ... I didn't watch the documentary but from what I did see of it I was embarrassed by the light they put me in ... I cried for two weeks and well .... I still cry sometimes !!!!"

Some #FreeBritney supporters don't believe Spears writes her own Instagram messages, leaving them to speculate about the pop star's true feelings. But Spears reportedly told TMZ in April that she writes her own captions.

What's next for Britney Spears?

Unclear. In an Instagram video posted last week, a visibly jittery Spears professed to be answering fans' most burning questions, including her shoe size and her favorite business trip (answer: "a trip to Italy [to] Donatella Versace. ... She fined [sic] and dined us").

The last question Spears put forward to herself was a crucial one: Would she ever return to the stage again?

"I have no idea," she said. "I'm having fun right now. I'm in transition in my life, and I'm enjoying myself."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

A judge has denied Britney Spears' request to remove her father, Jamie Spears (left), as a co-conservator.; Credit: /AP

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge signed an order Wednesday denying Britney Spears' request to have her father, Jamie Spears, removed from the financial aspects of her conservatorship.

Judge Brenda Penny denied the request, which was first filed by Spears' attorney, Samuel D. Ingham III, last November. The judge's decision comes after the singer appeared in court last Wednesday to make a direct appeal to the court. In that emotional statement, Spears said that she was being exploited and "bullied" by the conservatorship — and specifically, by her father.

Until recently, both the financial and personal arms of the conservatorship were controlled by Spears' father, Jamie Spears.

Last year, Ingham stated in a filing that Spears "strongly opposed" her father as conservator, and that she refused to perform if he remained in charge of her career.

In February, Judge Penny allowed a wealth-management company, Bessemer Trust, to come in as a co-conservator for the financial arm of Spears' arrangement. Jamie Spears remains the main conservator for all other aspects of Spears' conservatorship.

The next hearing in the case is currently scheduled for July 14. It is possible that Spears will submit a petition for the conservatorship to be terminated. In her comments to Judge Penny last week, Spears said that she had been unaware that she could take such an action. "I didn't know I could petition the conservatorship to end it," she said. "I'm sorry for my ignorance, but I honestly didn't know that."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

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The permit center is in the process of adding QR Codes to the permit hard card.  The following is an explanation about how the code works from Steve Lackey.   By Steve Lackey Along with the use of smartphones and other related devices, QR Codes are becoming quite popular and useful.  Called “Quick Response Codes”, they store [...]

The convergence of voice, video and data is old news today, but when it happened it changed the world.  New possibilities became available for the delivery of services like phone, movies and entertainment. All this was enhanced with the flood of small mobile devices.  And now, we love being able to use our smartphone to [...]

A photo of La Soufrière erupting Friday in St. Vincent. The blast could be sending ash as far as Jamaica and South America.; Credit: Zen Punnett/AFP via Getty Images

La Soufrière, the highest peak on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, began to explosively erupt Friday morning, forcing thousands to evacuate as ash and smoke filled the sky.

And a larger eruption may be on the way.

Richard Robertson, a geologist with the University of the West Indies Seismic Research Centre, said the volcano is in its explosive eruption phase. The initial explosion of dust and debris St. Vincent experienced Friday is likely just the beginning.

"The explosive eruption has started and it is possible you could have more explosions like these," he said during a press conference. "The first one is not necessarily the worst one, the first bang is not necessarily the biggest bang this volcano will give."

Ralph Gonsalves, the prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, ordered residents on the northern side of the island to evacuate Thursday out of the red volcano danger zone. The Associated Press reported some 16,000 people were forced to flee their homes.

Soot and ash fell throughout the night, blanketing neighborhoods and streets across the island Saturday morning. Robertson said the ash is expected to fall for the next handful of days, possibly even weeks.

The dome of the volcano, which is about 3,100 feet long and more than 820 feet wide, was destroyed in Friday's eruption, catapulting 460 million cubic feet of debris into the atmosphere. The ash could reach as far as Jamaica and parts of South America, Robertson said.

The last time La Soufrière had a major eruption was in 1979, which lasted several weeks. This eruption, Robertson said, "will more than likely be a bigger eruption than 1979 was." He added, "We don't know how much material is down there that wants to come out."

The fine ash particles, which are difficult to clean up, pose a respiratory risk, especially for people with underlying issues. Robertson recommended that individuals who have decided to stay on the island do their best to clean the ash before it settles or gets wet.

With more potential eruptions looming, Robertson advised residents to move as far south as possible. La Soufrière could be heard rumbling and grumbling throughout the night, he said, from the sound of magma moving inside the volcano.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Vehicles are covered with ash coming from the St. Vincent eruption of La Soufrière volcano, on the outskirts of Bridgetown, Barbados, on Sunday.; Credit: Chris Brandis/AP

Conditions on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent have worsened, as La Soufrière volcano continues to push ash and debris into the atmosphere. Dozens of individuals have been rescued from the northern part of the island after refusing to evacuate last week. Officials are warning anyone still in the red and orange zones to flee as the mountain presents a new danger to anyone still in the area.

There is evidence of pyroclastic flows, an avalanche of super-heated gas and debris traveling as fast as more than 120 miles per hour along the mountainside, in the areas around the volcano, University of the West Indies Seismic Research Center's lead scientist Richard Robertson said in a Sunday news conference. These flows are the most dangerous trait of the volcano, he said, as opposed to a slow-moving river of lava.

As La Soufrière continues to explosively erupt, ash and debris are launched into the air. Sometimes there isn't enough force behind the materials to continue upwards and the ash plume collapses on itself and it shoots back down, Robertson said. These clouds of gas can reach scalding-hot temperatures and carry car-sized boulders as the flows make their way through valleys along the mountain. Once the pyroclastic flows hit the coast, the sea water begins to boil and the clouds pick up speed, racing across the surface of the water and away from land until they run out of energy.

"These flows are really moving masses of destruction," Robertson said. "They just destroy everything in its path. Even if you have the strongest house in the world, they will just bulldoze it off the ground."

These flows can happen as the volcano goes through periods of explosive activity and venting. Every hour-and-a-half to 3 hours, Robertson explained, La Soufrière rumbles and produces tremors as the mountain vents more ash. This activity can create pyroclastic flows anywhere on the volcano, threatening anyone who didn't evacuate last week.

During the news conference, St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said the coast guard has rescued dozens of people from the northern part of the island since the volcano started to erupt Friday morning. The areas closest to the volcano were ordered to be evacuated last week, but some people decided to stay, putting rescuers at risk.

"I'm pleading with persons, please, it's past the hour to get out," Gonsalves said. "And we will still have to try and get you out."

Some 16,000 people have already evacuated, The Associated Press reported, about 3,200 of whom have fled to 78 government-run shelters.

Robertson said things will likely get worse before they get better. Instruments monitoring the eruption have shown no sign of activity dying down. The volcano, he explained, is showing a similar pattern to the volcano's eruption in 1902 that killed about 1,600 people.

"That means it's probably, unfortunately, going to cause more damage and destruction to St. Vincent," Robertson said.

But the volcano isn't just affecting the people of St. Vincent. The winds have carried ash all the way to Barbados, about 120 miles east. Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley said the country needs to prepare itself for weeks of ashfall and harsh times.

"As bad as it is, it can be worse, and that's the first thing that we need to recognize," she said in a news conference Sunday. "We are living in uncertain times."

Dr. Erouscilla Joseph, director of the UWI Seismic Research Center, said the winds that carry the debris east over the island can then also circle back around, blanketing the island with more ash from the west.

"Unfortunately, the worst case scenario is this can go on for weeks because of the changes and the dynamics of this system," Joseph said. "We have to keep monitoring the seismicity associated with the volcano and advise based on that."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., speaks during an event in 2018. Apple is one of 310 companies calling on the Biden administration to slash carbon emissions.; Credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

More than 300 businesses have signed an open letter calling on the Biden administration to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States to at least half of 2005 levels by 2030. That would nearly double a previous target set by former President Barack Obama in 2015, who pledged a 25 to 28% reduction by 2025.

The United States is not currently on track to meet either goal.

The signatories include some of largest companies in the United States, including Walmart, Apple, McDonald's and Starbucks. "A bold 2030 target is needed to catalyze a zero-emissions future, spur a robust economic recovery, create millions of well-paying jobs, and allow the U.S. to 'build back better' from the pandemic," the letter said, echoing the president's economic recovery slogan.

A 50% reduction target would put the Biden administration in line with what groups such as the United Nations and National Academies of Science say is necessary to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change.

In a March statement calling for the same reductions target, the environmental advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council said such a plan would "help pull the country out of the pandemic-induced recession by putting millions of Americans to work" and inspire more ambitious international climate action ahead of a major United Nations climate conference this November.

Like President Joe Biden's campaign promise to guide the United States to carbon-neutrality by the middle of the century, a 50% emissions reduction target would require steeper emissions cuts than the country has ever achieved.

In 2019, greenhouse gas emissions were approximately 13% below 2005 levels, a decrease of just 1.8% from the previous year.

The Biden administration has identified climate action as one of its top four priorities and has named prominent, experienced Washington insiders, including former Secretary of State John Kerry and former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, to oversee climate policy efforts at the White House.

As NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben has previously reported, activists on the left are cautiously optimistic about the administration's climate plan after expressing doubts about Biden's climate record during the Democratic primary.

Sunrise Movement, a youth-led climate group that champions the Green New Deal, gave candidate Biden's initial climate plan an "F" grade. Now, the group's executive director Varshini Prakash is publicly celebrating his administration's latest climate-focused $2 trillion infrastructure bill — including its commitment to spend 40% of the infrastructure plan's money on disadvantaged communities and launch a jobs program called the Civilian Climate Corps.

New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told NPR earlier this month that she feels that Biden has ultimately come around to the side of progressives on climate issues. She said: "As much as I think some parts of the party try to avoid saying 'Green New Deal' and really dance around and try to not use that term, ultimately, the framework I think has been adopted."

The emphasis on climate comes as a sharp departure from the Trump administration, which withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement and set no emissions reductions targets.

Signatories to the Paris deal, which Biden rejoined on the day he was sworn into office, are all required to set these targets — formally known as nationally determined contributions, or NDCs.

The agreement also encourages nations to revise their goals every five years, in hopes that the proposals become more ambitious as the cost of environmental reform goes down.

Since the Paris agreement was first agreed to in 2015, though, just fifty of the deal's nearly 200 signatories have submitted revised targets. A recent U.N. analysis of international climate action found that many countries were doing far too little to reduce emissions for the world to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

So far, the White House has not indicated exactly how ambitious their plan will be. An announcement is expected in the coming days as the White House prepares for its Earth Day climate summit with world leaders, scheduled for Thursday, April 22.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The United States and China, the world's two biggest carbon polluters, agreed to cooperate to curb climate change with urgency, just days before President Joe Biden hosts a virtual summit of world leaders to discuss the issue.

The agreement was reached by U.S. special envoy for climate John Kerry and his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua during two days of talks in Shanghai last week, according to a joint statement.

The two countries "are committed to cooperating with each other and with other countries to tackle the climate crisis, which must be addressed with the seriousness and urgency that it demands," the statement said.

China is the world's biggest carbon emitter, followed by the United States. The two countries pump out nearly half of the fossil fuel fumes that are warming the planet's atmosphere. Their cooperation is key to a success of global efforts to curb climate change, but frayed ties over human rights, trade and China's territorial claims to Taiwan and the South China Sea have been threatening to undermine such efforts.

Meeting with reporters in Seoul on Sunday, Kerry said the language in the statement is "strong" and that the two countries agreed on "critical elements on where we have to go." But the former secretary of state said, "I learned in diplomacy that you don't put your back on the words, you put on actions. We all need to see what happens."

Noting that China is the world's biggest coal user, Kerry said he and Chinese officials had a lot of discussions on how to accelerate a global energy transition. "I have never shied away from expressing our views shared by many, many people that it is imperative to reduce coal, everywhere," he said.

Biden has invited 40 world leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, to the April 22-23 summit. The U.S. and other countries are expected to announce more ambitious national targets for cutting carbon emissions ahead of or at the meeting, along with pledging financial help for climate efforts by less wealthy nations.

It's unclear how much Kerry's China visit would promote U.S.-China cooperation on climate issues.

While Kerry was still in Shanghai, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng signaled Friday that China is unlikely to make any new pledges at next week's summit.

"For a big country with 1.4 billion people, these goals are not easily delivered," Le said during an interview with The Associated Press in Beijing. "Some countries are asking China to achieve the goals earlier. I am afraid this is not very realistic."

During a video meeting with German and French leaders Friday, Xi said that climate change "should not become a geopolitical chip, a target for attacking other countries or an excuse for trade barriers," the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

On whether Xi would join the summit, Le said "the Chinese side is actively studying the matter."

The joint statement said the two countries "look forward to" next week's summit. Kerry said Sunday that "we very much hope that (Xi) will take part" in the summit but it's up to China to make that decision.

Biden, who has said that fighting global warming is among his highest priorities, had the United States rejoin the historic 2015 Paris climate accord in the first hours of his presidency, undoing the U.S. withdrawal ordered by predecessor Donald Trump.

Major emitters of greenhouse gases are preparing for the next U.N. climate summit taking place in Glasgow, U.K., in November. The summit aims to relaunch global efforts to keep rising global temperatures to below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) as agreed in the Paris accord.

According to the U.S.-China statement, the two countries would enhance "their respective actions and cooperating in multilateral processes, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement."

It said both countries also intend to develop their respective long-term strategies before the Glasgow conference and take "appropriate actions to maximize international investment and finance in support of" the energy transition in developing countries.

Xi announced last year that China would be carbon-neutral by 2060 and aims to reach a peak in its emissions by 2030. In March, China's Communist Party pledged to reduce carbon emissions per unit of economic output by 18% over the next five years, in line with its goal for the previous five-year period. But environmentalists say China needs to do more.

Biden has pledged the U.S. will switch to an emissions-free power sector within 14 years, and have an entirely emissions-free economy by 2050. Kerry is also pushing other nations to commit to carbon neutrality by then.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks to the media about the cruise industry during a press conference at PortMiami in April. DeSantis faces criticism for failing to do all he could on Florida's biggest environmental threat: climate change.; Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Brick by brick, the stucco shell of a new flood-resilient public works building is taking shape blocks from the beach, the most visible sign yet of a small community's enormous task staving off the rising sea.

"This is actually the highest point in the city," Satellite Beach City Manager Courtney Barker said, adding that right next door to the new public works building will be a new fire station.

It's a close-knit community established by rocket scientists south of Kennedy Space Center, on a low-slung barrier island between the Atlantic Ocean and Indian River Lagoon.

By 2040, community leaders expect significant impacts associated with climate change. Already flooding is a problem, and beach-front homes perch precariously atop a sand dune left exposed after a series of storms and hurricanes washed away a sea wall.

The needs are great, and in Gov. Ron DeSantis, Barker sees a potential ally.

"At least he talks about climate change as actually being real, so that's good," she said. "And he's putting money toward it so that's encouraging."

But Barker also feels DeSantis is doing only part of the job.

"We desperately need to grow up as a state and realize that we need to get our emissions down," Barker said.

Since his election in November 2018, DeSantis is making good on some of his environmental promises, including what he likes to call "resilience," a new buzzword for climate adaptation. But as the governor prepares for a reelection bid in 2022, and is seen as a potential Republican frontrunner for the presidency in 2024, DeSantis faces criticism for failing to do all he could on Florida's biggest environmental threat: climate change.

Some of his critics acknowledge that the $1 billion Resilient Florida plan he announced in January could be a first step toward helping some communities pay for adaptation. But critics also point out that DeSantis has done almost nothing to put Florida on a path to scaling back the state's heavy reliance on fossil fuels.

"I would give him probably a C-minus," said former Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, who served from 2007 to 2011, and now represents St. Petersburg in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat.

Crist still gets plaudits from environmentalists for his administration's climate initiatives, including a cap-and-trade system to curb carbon emissions and an executive order that was intended to put the state on a path to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050. But those were basically abandoned by Gov. Rick Scott, the Republican now serving in the U.S. Senate.

Crist, who switched parties and this week announced he is running for governor in 2022, said DeSantis should be "encouraging renewables such as wind energy, solar energy, and particularly solar. I mean, my goodness, we're the Sunshine State."

DeSantis' press office declined to make the governor available for an interview and did not respond to written questions.

In comments at two press conferences earlier this year, the governor cited his support for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on water projects and Everglades restoration as evidence of his environmental credentials, while promising to double down on funding for coastal resilience.

Florida needs "to tackle the challenges posed by flooding, intensified storm events [and] sea level rise," he said. "When you look at how an insurance market would view property insurance, and to see that Florida is leading and trying to get ahead of some of these impacts, we think it'll be a very smart thing to do."

Lawmakers have had their own ideas on how to handle climate threats, and have passed two bills that, when taken together, are similar to DeSantis' Resilient Florida proposal.

"It's not exactly as he said he wanted it, but it's close," said Jonathan Webber, deputy director of Florida Conservation Voters. "These are policies that need to happen. It would have been better if they happened 20 years ago."

"I am not a global warming person"

In his 2018 campaign, DeSantis appealed directly to supporters of former President Donald Trump, such as in this ad where he tells one of his children to "build the wall" with toy blocks. The environment was a major issue in that election.

Residents were grappling with a toxic red tide and blue-green algae crisis that made beaches and waterways unsafe, and left marine-life belly-up.

In recent years Floridians have also experienced deadly, devastating consequences of back-to-back major hurricanes.

All the while, advocates were highlighting likely links between the state's environmental woes and global warming.

Florida's climate challenges are among the biggest in the country. Beyond those related to hurricanes intensified by climate change, they include sea level rise, extreme heat, drought and increasing health threats from mosquito-borne diseases.

By its own numbers, the DeSantis administration predicts that with sea level rise, $26 billion in residential property statewide will be at risk of chronic flooding by 2045.

But in 2018, DeSantis let voters know that he had clear limits when it came to climate change.

"I am not in the pews of the church of the global warming leftists," DeSantis told reporters at one 2018 campaign stop. "I am not a global warming person. I don't want that label on me."

Early plaudits from environmentalists

Once in office, DeSantis won early plaudits for directives aimed at cleaning up water and helping Florida adapt to climate change. He appointed the first state resilience officer and the first chief scientist, and ordered Florida's Department of Environmental Protection to make sure its decisions were based on the best available science.

In 2019, they approved of DeSantis' order to his environmental regulators to oppose fracking, but he since has failed to get his Republican colleagues in the legislature to pass a statewide fracking ban, something he advocated for during his campaign. The state's oil and gas industry does not currently use fracking as a drilling method, but environmentalists are worried it might start doing so, resulting in water pollution.

Environmental groups also praised DeSantis in 2020 when the governor announced the state was backing a plan to buy 20,000 acres of the Everglades to prevent oil development there.

And they did the same when DeSantis backed spending $166 million in settlement money Florida received from Volkswagen on electric vehicle charging stations and cleaner electric buses. The money, part of a larger $14.7 billion settlement, came after the German automaker was caught lying about its cars' diesel emissions.

"Everyone was optimistic," said Susan Glickman, the Florida director for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. "I kept hearing an opening on climate."

Two years later, though, Glickman and other advocates are assessing DeSantis' climate record much like this: He's done more than previous Governor Scott, but that's not saying much.

DeSantis quietly replaced his chief science officer in March with Mark Rains, a professor, and chair and director of the School of Geosciences at the University of South Florida. But he never has replaced his chief resilience officer after she left for the Trump administration after only a few months in the position.

"Missing in action" on renewables

In many ways, it's what DeSantis hasn't done that defines his climate record. He has chosen not to use his bully pulpit to advocate for a clean-energy future, like his Democratic Party counterparts in the Southeast states of North Carolina and Virginia, or like the mayors of Orlando and Tampa.

DeSantis has also been "missing in action" in debate over bills this year in the Florida legislature that would undermine local government efforts to transition to clean energy, said Webber, with the Florida Conservation Voters group.

One such bill, that has passed the House and Senate and awaits DeSantis' consideration, would ban local governments from restricting fuel sources. The oil and gas industry has supported such measures around the country. They aim to block the push by climate activists to ban natural gas hook-ups in new buildings, and electrify them instead to reduce carbon emissions.

Of course, electrification only reduces emissions if it's powered by renewable energy. But Florida has no requirement that utilities provide a certain amount of that. Solar power accounts for only about 2.5% of the electricity produced by utilities, while they rely on fossil fuels for about 84%.

When DeSantis had a chance to appoint someone to the state's powerful Florida Public Service Commission, a regulatory body with a big say in state energy policy, he chose the Florida chairman of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group known for its support of fossil fuels.

"We are very frustrated by the messaging, and the lack of acknowledgement of the root of the problem of all these issues," said Yoca Arditi-Rocha, executive director of The CLEO Institute, a nonprofit that focuses on climate science education.

"We need to acknowledge the warming temperatures and the rising seas are a result of our warming climate," she said. "We cannot adapt our way out of it. We need to aggressively tackle mitigation."

"What places can we not save?"

In Satellite Beach, Courtney Barker, the city manager who welcomes the governor's help with adapting to climate change, also wants to see him tackle the emissions side of the equation.

Besides moving the public works building and fire station to higher ground, the community is fortifying its system of flood control. Barker said the community needs more funding opportunities from the state.

"We're looking for assistance in helping us engineer our way out of it," she said.

Marine and climate scientist Jeff Chanton, of Florida State University, thinks there's too much emphasis on sea walls, which can cause beach erosion and destroy tidal zones vital to marine life, including crabs and turtles.

"An ideal governor would try to lessen the impacts of growth in this state, especially along our coastlines," he said.

Before her departure, Julia Nesheiwat, DeSantis' chief resilience officer, characterized the state's infrastructure as "outdated" in a report, and called its resilience strategy "disjointed."

For Thomas Ruppert, an attorney and coastal planning specialist with Florida Sea Grant, DeSantis' emphasis on hardening infrastructure ignores that — for some communities — the investments will be futile in staving off the inevitable.

"Ultimately, what we really need is to start talking seriously [about] what places can we not save? And what is an exit strategy? Because we have no idea," Ruppert said.

Barker hopes it doesn't come to that in Satellite Beach, where she grew up.

"It's personal to all of us, because I think everyone can look at their own hometown, and you can't imagine being anywhere else."

This story is a collaboration between Inside Climate News and WMFE Orlando, a member of ICN's National Reporting Network-Southeast.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

A rollercoaster that once sat on the Funtown Pier in Seaside Heights, N.J., rests in the ocean on Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2012 after the pier was washed away by superstorm Sandy.; Credit: Julio Cortez/AP

When Hurricane Sandy swept up the eastern seaboard in 2012, it left a trail of damage from Florida to Maine. Subways were inundated in New York City. Hurricane-force winds tore across New Jersey. Blizzard conditions walloped Appalachia.

The hurricane — also known as Superstorm Sandy — caused an estimated $70 billion in damages in the U.S., mostly from flooding. And while scientists have long believed that some of the carnage was attributable to a warming climate, it's been unclear just how much of a role human-caused warming played in the storm's impacts. New research, published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, puts a dollar amount on some of those damages and it's a startling figure.

Using flood maps and sea-level rise measurements, researchers found that human-induced sea-level rise caused an estimated $8 billion in excess flooding damage during Hurricane Sandy and affected an additional 70,000 people.

"I often hear people say when we're trying to help them adapt to increasing coastal flooding, 'Well, it's not going to happen in my lifetime, the sea-level rise won't happen in my lifetime,'" said Philip Orton, a co-author of the study from the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. "But it's already happening to people. It's already here."

Sea levels at the tip of Manhattan have risen about 8 inches since 1950, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Estimates range for how much additional sea-level rise is likely to occur, but on average, the expectation is that by mid-century water levels could rise by more than a foot in New York City, compared to the year 2000.

In worst case scenarios, in which humanity does not significantly cut its climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions and the world's ice sheets rapidly melt, sea levels could rise by more than 6 feet by the end of the century, putting hundreds of millions of people at risk worldwide.

Higher water levels mean more areas are susceptible to flooding, storm surge and other problems associated with hurricanes, as well as more chronic flooding from high tides.

The Biden administration has made addressing climate change one of its top priorities. It's proposed a major reconfiguration of the nation's energy and transportation sectors to cut the country's outsized contribution to global warming, with the goal of making the U.S. carbon neutral by the year 2050. Accomplishing that feat will require major federal investments and likely bipartisan support. It's unclear if the administration will be able to procure the latter.

The new study, which joins a growing body of broader attribution science, aims to quantify the cost of inaction and business as usual. Similar studies found that climate change fueled the strength of Hurricane Harvey, increased the risk of Australia's recent unprecedented fire season and contributed to a record-breaking heatwave in Europe.

Scientists have debated whether Hurricane Sandy was made more intense by a warming climate, but it's difficult to know. Generally, there's agreement in the scientific community that hotter global temperatures and warmer ocean waters will lead to more rapid intensification of hurricanes.

Quantifying exactly how much those climatic differences affected a storm like Sandy is difficult. That's why Orton and the team of researchers focused their efforts on sea-level rise, where there's a bevvy of good data. They used that data to model the impacts of Hurricane Sandy in a world without climate change and found the estimated $8 billion difference.

"Increasingly we have the tools to simulate these events and study and quantify the impact of climate change on people's lives," Orton said. "People's lives were dramatically changed by Hurricane Sandy and a lot of them don't realize it had to do with climate change at all."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The Biden administration is opening the West Coast to offshore wind. Companies have largely focused on the East Coast, like this wind farm off Block Island, Rhode Island.; Credit: Don Emmert/AFP via Getty Images

The Biden administration plans to open the California coast to offshore wind development, ending a long-running stalemate with the Department of Defense that has been the biggest barrier to building wind power along the Pacific Coast.

The move adds momentum to the administration's goal of reaching 100% carbon-free electricity by 2035, coming just weeks after the country's first large-scale offshore wind farm was approved off the coast of New England. Today, the country has just a handful of offshore wind turbines in the Atlantic Ocean, with around a dozen wind farms being developed in federal waters off the East Coast.

"It's an announcement that will set the stage for the long term development of clean energy and the growth of a brand new made-in-America industry," says national climate adviser Gina McCarthy. "Now we're thinking big and thinking bold."

The agreement identifies two sites off Central and Northern California with the potential to install massive floating wind turbines that could produce 4.6 gigawatts of electricity, enough to power 1.6 million homes.

Interest in offshore wind on the West Coast has grown for years, especially with California's own ambitious goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The deep waters off the coast have the potential to produce a significant amount of energy.

But the Defense Department has largely objected to the idea, since the Navy and Air Force use the area for training and testing operations. In response to the growing interest, the Navy released a map in 2017 putting large swaths of California waters off limits.

In 2018, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management solicited interest from wind developers. But negotiations with the Department of Defense have been slow going ever since, effectively blocking wind development off California.

Tuesday's announcement outlines a compromise for a 399-square-mile area off Morro Bay, a site that's appealing to renewable energy companies because of existing transmission lines nearby that once service a retired power plant. It also identifies a location off Humboldt County in Northern California.

"It's our view that the world faces a grave and growing climate crisis," says Dr. Colin Kahl, undersecretary of defense for policy. "Climate change is both a threat to the Department of Defense's operations around the world and an existential challenge to our ability to maintain resilience here at home."

Another key site, just offshore from the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, was not included in Tuesday's deal. California's last-remaining nuclear plant is scheduled to completely close by 2025, freeing up more potential transmission lines for offshore wind.

The Biden administration has set a goal of jump-starting the country's offshore wind sector with 30 gigawatts of projects by 2030. Those wind farms will foster tens of thousands of jobs, according to the White House, between renewable energy installers, manufacturers and steelworkers.

"This is a major breakthrough — a major advancement that will allow California to start planning for its carbon-free electricity goals with offshore wind firmly in the picture," says Nancy Rader of the California Wind Energy Association, who also pointed to the challenges. "Offshore wind development off the coast at Morro Bay and Humboldt will require a major port facility in each area to construct the floating platforms and assemble the turbines that will require continued proactive planning by the state and federal governments."

Still, the areas identified in the agreement may not be enough for hitting the administration's clean electricity goal, as well as California's. The state is planning to get 100% of its electricity from zero-emission sources by 2045. To reach that, renewable energy needs to triple statewide with offshore wind playing a key role, reaching 10 GW, according to a recent state analysis. Tuesday's deal could provide just half of that.

A potential lease auction for the offshore wind sites could be held in mid-2022. But the projects will still have to negotiate concerns about the potential impacts on California's fishing industry and shipping channels, as well as any environmental concerns about sensitive ecosystems.

"Far too many questions remain unanswered regarding potential impacts to marine life which is dependent on a healthy ecosystem," says Mike Conroy of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations. "The fishing industry has been told these areas work best for offshore wind developers; but no one has asked us what areas would work best for us."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

How many oceans are there? It's National Geographic official now: There are five.; Credit: Alexander Gerst/ESA via Getty Images

Most of us learned about the world's oceans in elementary school. There's the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Indian and the Arctic.

Now, there's a sea change ahead.

Thanks to National Geographic, you'll soon see a fifth ocean on your maps. It's now officially recognizing the Southern Ocean, the waters swirling around Antarctica, marking the first time the organization has made such a change since it started drawing up maps over a century ago.

On World Ocean's Day earlier this week, National Geographic announced the distinction, which many scientists and researchers have unofficially acknowledged for decades.

"Traditionally, there have been the four [oceans] defined primarily by land masses," Alex Tait, National Geographic Society geographer, tells NPR's All Things Considered. "We think it's important to add this fifth ocean region because it's so unique and because we want to bring attention to all areas of the ocean."

National Geographic has produced maps, atlases and globes since 1915. But this is the first time they're drawing up a new map that will recast the oceans.

The move catches up with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recognition of the Southern Ocean in 1999, when it earned approval from the U.S. Board on Geographic Names.

The change made waves for experts already familiar with the area. For instance, it caught Cassandra Brooks, an assistant professor in environmental studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, off-kilter.

"To be completely honest with you, I was rather surprised because I had always thought of the Southern Ocean as its own ocean," says Brooks. "I think most of the scientists who work down there really understand how the Southern Ocean is its own thing."

But the Southern is special, according to Brooks, who's spent more than 15 years of her career studying the Antarctic. It's defined by the powerful Antarctic Circumpolar Current, a critical flow that she says helps regulate the Earth's climate.

Brooks says she thinks about the Southern Ocean as "lungs" or "the heart." The ocean is "pumping water throughout the world's oceans," she says.

Both Tait and Brooks hope that this new recognition will create more awareness for a region that's often forgotten.

"Antarctica is so far away that most people don't think about it on a day to day basis. They're not seeing how important it is to literally all of our survival," says Brooks.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Washington State Department of Agriculture entomologist Chris Looney displays a dead Asian giant hornet, a sample sent from Japan and brought in for research last year in Blaine, Wash.; Credit: Elaine Thompson /AFP via Getty Images

Murder hornets. They're back.

Authorities in Washington state have announced that they've confirmed the first U.S. report this year of an Asian giant hornet, or Vespa mandarinia, in a town north of Seattle.

"Basically the only information we have is that a slightly dried out, dead specimen was collected off of a lawn in Marysville," said Sven Spichiger, managing entomologist with the state agriculture department, during a press conference.

"There really isn't even enough information to speculate on how it got there or how long it had been there," Spichiger added.

Because of its withered condition and the fact that male giant hornets don't typically emerge until July, agriculture officials believe the hornet discovered in early June was likely from a previous season and just recently found.

So-called "murder hornets" are native to Asia but have been spotted in Washington state and Canada over the past two years. The sting of the Vespa mandarinia can be life-threatening to humans, and the killer insects are known to wipe out the colonies of their fellow bugs, particularly honey bees.

According to genetic testing of the specimen discovered in Washington this month, the dead hornet was not the same as the other giant hornets discovered in North America since 2019. The hornet's coloration, which indicates it came from southern Asia, also suggested it arrived in "probably a separate event" than the ones previously known, Spichiger said.

But he emphasized that that was not necessarily cause for alarm.

"I want to very much clarify that a single dead specimen does not indicate a population," Spichiger said.

Washington agriculture officials are now setting murder hornet traps in the area of the discovery and are encouraging "citizen scientists" to do the same.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Gloria Majiga-Kamoto, an activist from Malawi, is one of six recipients of the 2021 Goldman Environmental Prize. Majiga-Kamoto has been instrumental in implementing Malawi's ban on thin plastics.; Credit: /Goldman Environmental Prize

For Gloria Majiga-Kamoto, her great awakening to plastic pollution started with goats.

She was working for a local environmental NGO in her native Malawi with a program that gave goats to rural farmers. The farmers would use the goat's dung to produce low-cost, high-quality organic fertilizer.

The problem? The thin plastic bags covering the Malawian countryside.

"We have this very common street food, it's called chiwaya, and it's just really potato fried on the side of the road and it's served in these little blue plastics," Majiga-Kamoto says. "So because it's salty, once the goats get a taste of the salt, they just eat the plastic because they can't really tell that it's inedible. And they die because it blocks the ingestion system — there's no way to survive."

The goats were supposed to reproduce for the program, with the goat kids going on to new farmers. But because of plastic deaths the whole goat chain started falling apart.

"It was a lot of expectation from the farmers waiting to benefit. So you had this farmer who had this one goat and then they lost it. And that means that in that chain of farmers, that's obviously affected quite a number of farmers who won't get their turn."

For Majiga-Kamoto, her experience at the NGO with the plastic-eating goats was the moment it all changed. All of a sudden she started noticing how plastics were everywhere in the Malawian environment and food system — affecting people's livelihoods and health.

The fish in Lake Malawi were eating plastic trash. The country's cows were eating plastic. Researchers found that in one Malawi town 40% of the livestock had plastic in their intestines.

"We're choking in plastics," Majiga-Kamoto says, "And so what it means is that in one way or the other, we as humans are consuming these plastics."

Majiga-Kamoto was also seeing how plastics contributed to the growth of disease. Huge piles of plastic trash were blocking off Malawi's many waterways, creating pungent breeding grounds for mosquitoes that carry malaria and for bacteria that cause cholera.

The 30-year-old says she remembers a time when Malawians didn't rely so much on thin, single-use plastic. "I remember back in the day when we'd go to the market and buy things like fish, like dried fish, you'd get it in newspapers."

But thin plastics have taken off in the last decade or so as new manufacturers sprung up in Malawi, selling products like thin plastic bags at cheap prices that made them affordable and accessible even in the most undeveloped parts of the country. A 2019 UNDP funded report found that Malawi produces an estimated 75,000 tonnes of plastic a year, with 80% reportedly single-use plastic. Single-use plastic refers to bags, straws and bottles that can't be recycled, and thin plastic refers to plastic that's under 60 microns in thickness.

The proliferation of this thin plastic waste led to the Malawian government's 2015 decision to ban the production, distribution and importation of single-use thin plastic. But before the ban could go into full effect, Malawi's plastics manufacturing industry filed an injunction at the country's High Court. The ban stalled.

When Majiga-Kamoto and a group of her fellow environmental NGO-workers and activists heard about the injunction they were angry and frustrated. "It sort of caught our interest to say, 'Wait a minute, you mean that there's actually people in our society who think that this is not a problem and that we should actually continue to live this way?'"

Galvanized, Majiga-Kamoto led a group of local environmental activists and NGOs to actually implement the single-use plastics ban, organizing marches on the judiciary where the decision would be decided. She kept her job at her NGO, the Centre for Environmental Policy and Advocacy, and did this work on her own time.

She rejected the plastic industry's argument that the ban would hurt Malawi's economy — and even debated an industry lobbyist on TV.

Finally in 2019, after multiple injunctions filed by the plastics industry, the High Court ruled in favor of the single-use thin plastic ban. The following year the Malawian government began closing down illegal plastic manufacturers.

Last week Majiga-Kamoto was named one of the six winners of the 2021 Goldman Environmental Prize for her work on this issue. Michael Sutton, executive director of the Goldman Environmental Foundation, says Majiga-Kamoto's fight with the plastic lobby epitomizes the spirit of the prize. "She mustered the troops, the grassroots communities, to take on the government and big industry and won several times," Sutton says, "She not only won the ban in law, but is now holding the government's feet to the fire to enforce it."

And Majiga-Kamoto isn't letting up her pressure to uphold the single-use plastic ban anytime soon. Although she is trying to get some summer vacation time with her family — that is, if she isn't interrupted.

"I was just at the lake a couple of weeks ago and we were there just enjoying the beautiful lake and along come these pieces of plastic." Three plastic bags floated up closer to her, her son and her niece as they played in the water.

Majiga-Kamoto grabbed for the bags.

"My family was laughing to say, 'You shouldn't be working! You're at the lake!' And I'm like, 'But I can't just leave them in there!'"

Julia Simon is a regular contributor to NPR's podcasts and news desks focusing on climate change, energy, and business news.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: /Courtesy of TED

Part 3 of TED Radio Hour episode: An SOS From The Ocean

In 1998, Alasdair Harris went to Madagascar to research coral reefs. He's worked there ever since. He explains the true meaning of conservation he learned from the island's Indigenous communities.

About Alasdair Harris

Alasdair Harris is a marine biologist and the founder of the organization Blue Ventures. His organization seeks to catalyze and sustain locally-led marine conservation in coastal communities around the world.

His work focuses on rebuilding tropical fisheries and working with coastal people to increase their sources of income.

Harris holds a PhD in tropical marine ecology, and an honorary doctorate of science from the University of Edinburgh.

This segment of TED Radio Hour was produced by Matthew Cloutier and edited by Sanaz Meshkinpour. You can follow us on Twitter @TEDRadioHour and email us at TEDRadio@npr.org.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

• Salary negotiable for applicants with prior law enforcement, detention, or corrections experience.  
• Shift deferential of $2 an hour provided for night shift.
• Detention Officers with advanced degrees and specific law enforcement certificates will receive extra pay. 
• A salary increase is given annually upon a successful performance review (dependent upon budget availability).
• Bilingual extra duty pay is provided upon successful completion of testing (dependent upon budget availability). 
   

As search and rescue efforts at the site of the Surfside, Fla., condo collapse stretch into day nine, officials have said that the number of confirmed fatalities has risen to 20, while the number of people unaccounted for has dropped from 145 to 128.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told reporters Friday that one of the two fatalities recovered overnight was the 7-year-old daughter of a firefighter for the city of Miami.

"It goes without saying that every night since this last Wednesday has been immensely difficult for everybody, particularly the families that have been impacted," Levine Cava said. "But last night was truly different and more difficult for our first responders. These men and women are paying an enormous human toll each every day, and I ask that all of you please keep all of them in your thoughts and prayers."

"They truly represent the very best in all of us, and we need to be there for them as they are here for us," she said.

The number of people who have been accounted for has grown to 188, officials also confirmed Friday. In many cases, detectives followed leads regarding individuals who were unaccounted for but then reached them and discovered they were safe.

They even discovered additional family members who were safe and who could have been in the building, and added them to the tally of accounted for individuals.

Officials have not yet released the names of all of the dead and missing people, and asked Friday that the privacy of the families be respected.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Wearing a rainbow sequin gown she designed herself in honor of Pride Month, Kataluna Enriquez made history last weekend when she was crowned Miss Nevada USA — the win will make her the first openly transgender contestant to compete in the upcoming Miss USA pageant this fall.

"My win is our win," she posted afterward on her Instagram in a message to the LGBTQ community. "We just made history. Happy pride."

Enriquez, who was also Miss Nevada USA's first trans contestant, beat out 21 other women for the top spot. She will represent the Silver State at the 2021 Miss USA pageant that will be held on Nov. 29 in Tulsa, Okla., where she will have a chance to be crowned Miss USA and advance to the Miss Universe pageant.

If crowned Miss USA, Enriquez will become the second trans contestant to compete for Miss Universe, after Angela Ponce, who represented Spain in the 2018 Miss Universe pageant. The pageant began allowing transgender contestants in 2012.

Enriquez began competing in pageants in 2015. Unable to afford custom designer gowns that fit her body at the time, she began designing her own to wear for competitions and eventually started her own line, Kataluna Kouture (@katalunakouture). In March, Enriquez became the first trans woman to win Miss Nevada's preliminary pageant, Miss Silver State USA.

The journey has not been easy, and Enriquez has faced discrimination. While competing in a pageant outside of Nevada, she had not been given a roommate when pageant organizers learned she was trans. A doctor had also been sent to certify that she was a woman before she could continue.

But Enriquez told NPR's Weekend All Things Considered that her determination to make history was what motivated her to keep competing.

"I had a purpose and I had a dream," she said. "I wanted to compete on the Miss USA stage. When I was young, I always wanted to see someone on the Miss USA stage — someone like me. And it just happened to be that I was the person that I needed to make history."

As she prepares for the Miss USA pageant, Enriquez said she plans to advocate for equality and mental health.

"My win is not just a win for the trans community," she said. "It's a win for all women to be represented."

Kalyani Saxena and Tinbete Ermyas produced and edited the audio version of this story. Josie Fischels produced for the web. Josie Fischels is an intern on NPR's News Desk.

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An American flag flies from a crane on July 4th next to the Champlain Towers South condo building, where scores of victims remain missing more than a week after it partially collapsed.; Credit: Lynne Sladky/AP

Preparations continue in Surfside, Fla. for the demolition of a portion of the Champlain Towers South still standing after much of the building collapsed in the early morning hours on June 24.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told reporters on Sunday that bringing down the remainder of the collapsed condominium in a controlled fashion is crucial to the safety of search and rescue teams.

Those teams have paused their work so demolition can take place. Levine Cava said officials are still unsure of a specific time that the demolition will occur.

"Our top priority is that the building can come down as soon as possible — no matter what time that occurs — and safely as possible," Levine Cava said at a morning news conference.

The number of confirmed dead from the collapse remains at 24. The number of people unaccounted for remains at 121.

Preparations for the demolition come as Tropical Storm Elsa is tracking towards southern Florida. The storm is expected to hit the area Monday and Tuesday.

The instability of the building could be made worse by the storm, which is expected to bring strong winds and rain at the beginning of the week. Mayor Levine Cava said that as soon as the demolition has occurred, search and rescue efforts are expected to resume.

Ahead of Elsa's arrival in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued a state of emergency Saturday for 15 counties, including Miami-Dade.

On Sunday, he expressed optimism that the Surfside area may be spared from the worst of the storm.

"We could see some gusts, but it has tracked west over the last day and a half — more so than the initial forecast," he said. "So, we'll just keep watching that."

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SURFSIDE, Fla. — Crews used explosives late Sunday night to demolish the remaining structure at Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Fla.

The heavily damaged condo building was knocked down at about 10:30 p.m. Eastern time.

The targeted blast caused the tower to fold and crumble, sending a large plume of dust and debris over a section of the beachside community. A crowd watching from a distance prayed as the building came down.

Before the structure was leveled, Miami-Dade County police urged residents who live nearby to remain indoors and shelter in place.

Miami-Dade County officials said removing the tower was an essential step so search and rescue teams could resume scouring the rubble pile for victims of the disaster.

Officials suspended recovery efforts on Saturday because of concerns about the danger posed by the unstable building.

"It will be safe to resume the search activities very shortly after the blast and that's when we'll resume it," said Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava at a press conference Sunday evening.

Demolition of the tower was also accelerated because of Tropical Storm Elsa, which could hit South Florida with high winds and heavy rains as early as Monday.

Search efforts had been ongoing since the morning of June 24, when much of the 12-story condo complex suffered a "progressive collapse" and dozens of apartments were reduced to rubble in a matter of seconds.

The number of confirmed dead from the disaster remains at 24, with the number of people unaccounted for at 121.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., told reporters Sunday the demolition of the remaining tower added to the sorrow for families who lived in the complex, destroying homes and possessions.

"So often demolitions of buildings are a spectacle, it's almost like a show," Schultz said. "This demolition is a tragic situation."

Local officials assured former residents and the public that everything possible had been done to rescue pets left behind in the structure.

"Folks can be comfortable we're not leaving anyone behind, including our beloved pets," Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett told reporters.

Multiple investigations are already underway into the cause of the collapse.

Documents acquired by NPR from an anonymous source show the condo association's board received warnings from an engineering firm beginning in 2018 that the structure needed extensive repairs.

A memo sent by the association to Champlain Towers South residents ahead of a May 2021 board meeting acknowledged the "desperate needs of the building."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Rescue workers move a stretcher containing recovered remains at the site of the collapsed Champlain Towers South condo building in Surfside, Fla., on Monday. Rescuers have recovered three more bodies and officials say the demolition of the building will accelerate search efforts.; Credit: Lynne Sladky/AP

Miami-Dade County mayor Daniella Levine Cava said on Monday morning that three more victims have been recovered from the ruins of the collapsed condo tower in Surfside, Fl., bringing the total death toll so far to 27.

Cava added that the demolition of the rest of Champlain Towers South "was executed exactly as planned" the previous evening, and that it would now allow rescue teams to work on a section of the collapsed building that was previously inaccessible. She noted that 118 individuals remain unaccounted for.

"Truly, we could not continue without bringing this building down," Cava said. "The area closest to the building was not accessible, due to the enormous risk to the team of first responders, because of the instability of the building."

According to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the newly accessible section of rubble is also from a part of the building where many bedrooms were located, and may contain the remains of many victims. The building collapsed in the middle of the night.

Authorities had been concerned that an approaching tropical storm might topple the standing part of the building onto the section that had already collapsed. That would have been a massive setback in the search for victims and for clues to the cause of the disaster.

Tropical Storm Elsa now appears to be tracking further to the west, and is more likely to hit the west coast of Florida, rather than the site of the disaster. But officials at the National Weather Service say the storm's course still could change.

Cava acknowledged that demolishing people's homes "is a devastating decision" and said that "our teams are doing everything possible to help those who lost their home begin to rebuild."

She said that authorities are working with insurance companies and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to streamline claims and help those who've lost homes and property.

One animal rescue volunteer had gone to court to stop the demolition of the rest of the tower, asking the court to allow more time to rescue pets that might still be trapped inside. The judge denied the motion.

Cava said in her Monday briefing that Miami-Dade rescue teams had already gone through parts of the building that were still accessible, "searching in closets and under beds" to find missing pets.

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When a promising new drug to treat obesity was approved by the Food and Drug Administration for sale in the U.S. last month, it was the first such treatment to gain approval since 2014.

In clinical trials, weekly injections of semaglutide — or Wegovy, as it's been branded -- helped people drop an average of 15% of their body weight. That's an average of about 34 pounds over 16 months, before their weight plateaued, a far greater weight loss, obesity specialists say, than achieved with other drugs on the market. At least as important, Wegovy raised none of the alarm bells with the FDA or obesity doctors that it might trigger serious side effects of the sort experienced by some people taking fen-phen or some previous medical treatments for obesity.

But with a price tag for Wegovy of $1,000 to $1,500 a month, a very big question remains: Will insurers cover its significant cost for the many millions of people like Marleen Greenleaf, who might benefit?

Greenleaf grew up on the island of Trinidad, where her entire family paid little heed to what they ate and paid a high medical price, she says: "My husband has diabetes, my sister has diabetes, my brother has diabetes."

Since then, she's tried — and failed — at numerous diets, says Greenleaf, now 58 and an administrator at a charter school in Washington, D.C. Then, in 2018, she signed up for the clinical trial of a new drug — a once-weekly shot that changes the way her brain signals hunger.

A drug that finally stops her cravings

She noticed the change soon after her first injection of Wegovy: "For me, there was something that triggered in my brain to tell me that I was not hungry," she says. No more fierce cravings for the chocolate chip cookies she adores. Without the cravings she was able to slow down and reconsider the foods she'd been reaching for.

"I also wanted to eat healthier," she says. "I was looking at options, reading labels, looking at the calories — not just the calories, but also the sugar."

Over the 68-week research trial, Greenleaf dropped 40 pounds. Her blood pressure fell, which meant she qualified to donate her kidney to her husband, who was on dialysis.

"It was one of the best gifts of life that I could have ever given," she says.

But after that study ended, Greenleaf regained some of the weight. Wegovy is considered a long-term, possibly lifelong medication to treat chronic obesity. In the pre-marketing clinical studies, weight loss topped out at a total average weight loss of 15-18%, even as people continued to take the drug. And, as was the case with Greenleaf, once they stopped getting the weekly injections some of that weight came back.

Now, Greenleaf wants to resume the Wegovy shots.

"My only challenge actually is getting the insurance company to approve it," she says.

Reimbursement for obesity drugs' cost is patchy

Insurance coverage, it turns out, is a giant question — not just with Wegovy, but with obesity drugs in general. Some private insurers do include some prescription obesity drugs in the list of medicines they'll cover; it's too early to tell whether Wegovy will make those lists. Many doctors and patients are optimistic, because it is a higher dose of an existing diabetes medication called Ozempic, which is often covered by insurers.

A few select state Medicaid programs will cover medications that treat obesity, in some circumstances. But, significantly, Medicare does not cover obesity drugs — and many private insurers typically follow Medicare's lead.

Yet the demand for a good treatment is there, says Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, a leading obesity researcher at Harvard. She was not involved in conducting the Wegovy clinical trial, but closely followed it. "I'm excited about it," she says, because of the dramatic weight loss.

The drug acts on the brain so people eat less and store less of what they eat. That helps address the excess weight as well as helping with numerous related diseases of the liver or heart, for example.

Why the FDA has been slow to approve obesity treatments

There is a long history of drugs that have looked like promising treatments for obesity, then failed. Decades ago, amphetamines, were prescribed, until their addictive properties became apparent. In the 1990s, the combination of fenfluramine and phentermine — administered as the diet drug fen-phen — was heavily marketed, only to later be pulled from the market for causing heart valve problems.

Those experiences and others have made physicians skeptical.

"In obesity medicine field, we've learned to be cautiously optimistic each time we have a new medication that looks promising," says Dr. Ihuoma Eneli, director of the Center for Healthy Weight and Nutrition at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, who was not involved in the study of Wegovy.

So far, Eneli does not see any obvious concerns with the class of drugs that includes Wegovy, and calls the results so far "very promising." Wegovy is similar to another drug made by Novo Nordisk — Saxenda — which has been on the market since 2014, and which Eneli occasionally prescribes to her pediatric patients who are struggling with obesity.

In clinical research studies, the primary side effects reported after taking Wegovy affected the digestive system: nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, constipation, abdominal pain or intestinal infections.

Eneli says such side effects and their frequency are milder than the problems that have arisen in the past. That good safety profile may mean the drug is "less likely to come up with unanticipated risks," she says.

But, the new drug will be of little use, she and other doctors who treat obesity say, if it's not also affordable for patients.

"Before I even bring up that drug with my patients, I'm looking to see which insurance they are having on the left side of my screen — because that will determine whether I bring it up," Stanford, the Harvard physician, says. "If it's out of reach, like I said, I won't bring it up."

Stanford says her patients on existing obesity medications do extraordinary things to keep their coverage so they can afford to stay on the drugs.

"Several nurses here at the hospital that are my patients stayed working — they were supposed to retire — so they could stay on their injectable medication," Stanford says,"because that's how beneficial it was to them."

Why some are willing to pay out of pocket

Some people, like David Scheesley, 42, says he would consider paying for Wegovy, even if he had to pay the full sticker price. The Hanford, Calif., correctional officer has tried since 2019 to lose weight on various diets — low-fat, all-meat, all-vegetable — without success. His weight has led to other health concerns — with his blood fats and his heart — which makes Scheesley think of his 5-year-old son.

"I want to see him for a lot of years; I don't want to have a stroke," he says. "I don't want to have diabetes. I want to be there for him. So, for me personally, that [monetary cost] is not astronomical, if it can give me some more time."

Novo Nordisk, the company that makes Wegovy, is in talks with insurers, and acknowledges that ensuring health insurance coverage of its drug is critical. The challenge, says Douglas Langa, executive vice president of Novo Nordisk North America, is getting doctors, patients, and politicians to recognize obesity as a disease — and that therefore insurance should cover the cost of medicine to treat it.

"There's a medical component to [obesity] that needs to be recognized; this is a disease state like we should be treating any other disease state," Langa says. He says about 40% of private insurers cover Saxenda, the similar weight-loss medication the company makes.

Langa tells insurance companies this, making the case for why prescriptions for Wegovy should be covered. His company is also heavily lobbying Congress to pass legislation to allow Medicare to cover obesity medications. It makes sense from a financial perspective, he argues, because obesity is the root disease underlying so many other diseases.

"We do believe insurers understand that [untreated obesity] is a gateway into 60 other health conditions," Langa says. The need is hard to ignore, he adds. More than 100 million people in the U.S. alone struggle with obesity.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Author Ta-Nehisi Coates, seen here in 2019, will join the faculty of Howard University.; Credit: Mary Altaffer/AP

Less than a week after trustees at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill belatedly voted to grant tenure to New York Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones, Howard University announced Hannah-Jones will instead be joining its faculty.

Howard, the prestigious historically Black university in Washington, D.C., also announced it is hiring writer and Howard alumnus Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of Between the World and Me.

Their positions were funded by nearly $20 million in donations from the Knight Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Ford Foundation, as well as an anonymous donor.

The funding establishes the Knight Chair in Race and Journalism, a tenured position to be held by Hannah-Jones.

Hannah-Jones, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her 1619 Project, will also establish the Center for Journalism and Democracy, which the university says will train aspiring journalists in "the investigative skills and historical and analytical expertise needed to cover the crisis our democracy is facing."

The news is a blow to UNC, which has had its reputation damaged by its handling of Hannah-Jones' appointment to an endowed professorship at its journalism school. For months, trustees declined to consider granting her tenure, a highly unusual move considering her tenure was backed by the relevant academic leaders.

Some of the opposition came from Walter Hussman, an Arkansas newspaper publisher and alumnus whose $25 million donation to the UNC's journalism school led to its being named for him.

As NPR's David Folkenflik reported, Hussman said "he was given pause by some prominent scholars' criticism that Hannah-Jones distorted the historical record in arguing that the protection of slavery was one of the Founding Fathers' primary motivations in seeking independence from the British."

Amid the turmoil, other Black faculty members at UNC said they were considering leaving the university, and students protested on behalf of Hannah-Jones.

The university's student body president Lamar Richard penned an open letter last month to the UNC community, saying the university is unprepared for the reckoning that's required, and "[u]ntil this rebirth occurs, Carolina is not deserving of your talents, aspirations, or successes."

Hannah-Jones had said she would not accept UNC's offer without tenure, which UNC's Trustees finally approved in a 9-4 vote.

But the messy and contentious process spoiled it for her.

"Look what it took to get tenure," Hannah-Jones said, noting that every other chair of the position dating to the 1980s had been granted tenure, and that all were white. Hannah-Jones received unanimous approval from the faculty during the tenure process.

"And so to be denied it, and to only have that vote occur on the last possible day, at the last possible moment, after threat of legal action, after weeks of protest, after it became a national scandal – it's just not something that I want anymore," she told CBS This Morning.

Hannah-Jones said she never wanted her hiring to become a public scandal — she was simply hoping to give back to her beloved alma mater. And instead, she said, it became "embarrassing" to be passed over for tenure. She said she was never told by UNC-Chapel Hill's chancellor, provost or trustees why her tenure was not taken up in November or January.

The veteran journalist reportedly had offers from a number of universities after the botched process at UNC. So how did she pick Howard?

She said one of her few regrets was not going to Howard as an undergraduate. And she traced her choice to join its faculty to her own story, beginning as a second-grader bused to a white school.

"I've spent my entire life proving that I belong in elite white spaces that were not built for Black people," she told CBS. "I decided I didn't want to do that anymore. That Black professionals should feel free, and actually perhaps an obligation, to go to our own institutions and bring our talents and resources to our own institutions and help to build them up as well."

She said she won her battle for fair treatment at UNC, "but it's not my job to heal the University of North Carolina. That's the job of the people in power who created this situation in the first place."

Hannah-Jones said she's trying to raise even more money for Howard, and that she's eager to join the faculty this summer.

"To be able to bring that type of resources to a university that always punches above its weight, I'm so excited," she said. "Something great came out of this."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Crews searching the building collapse site in Surfside, Fla., have discovered four more victims since Monday, bringing the death toll to 32. Authorities have identified 26 of the bodies.

Another 113 people were unaccounted for, though local officials said they had only been able to confirm that about 70 of those people were in the building at the time of the collapse nearly two weeks ago.

Detectives are continuing to follow up on reports submitted about possible victims in the partial collapse, but in some cases they have been unable to reach those who submitted the tips in the first place.

"People call anonymously. People call and don't leave return phone numbers. People call with partial information, not enough to really secure whether that person may or may not have been in the building," Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told reporters on Tuesday.

Some of the reports of possible victims are also incomplete, she said, including a name but no apartment number or no date of birth.

Levine Cava urged people who are missing loved ones to communicate with local authorities. She said there may also be victims of the collapse who have not been reported missing.

The rescue effort stopped briefly overnight due to lightning from a passing storm. Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said high winds were hampering the cranes moving heavy debris from the collapse site.

Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez said Florida has declared a state of emergency ahead of Tropical Storm Elsa, which is expected to reach hurricane strength before making landfall Wednesday morning on the state's west coast.

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Sonata Software announced that its Unified Enterprise Mobility Platform, Halosys, has been enhanced with additional features that boost optimization and usability

In the country, autonomous mobility will probably mean robotic tractors rather than robotic cars, and if tractor maker Escorts has its way, they could get here sooner than thought.

The Akshaya Patra Foundation reduced the process time taken from planning the menu to delivery to schools by using mobility solution and automation.

Chip shortages are rippling through industry after industry, preventing companies from shipping products from cars to game consoles and refrigerators.

"The Commission made binding commitments offered by T-Mobile CZ, CETIN and O2 CZ that will keep the benefits of network sharing whilst removing technical and financial disincentives to unilateral deployments and limiting information exchange, all to the benefit of Czech mobile user," Commission Vice-President Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.

Supporting this massive surge, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), an entity for operating retail payments and settlement systems, has provided the backbone and the infrastructure to help in the faster adoption of digital systems that has deepened financial inclusion.

The idea was discussed by Andy Lee, the chief executive of its Foxtron electric vehicle venture, in the presence of Foxconn chairman Young Liu and a cluster of states at a meeting organised last month when Liu was visiting India, they said. Foxtron is also looking to manufacture EVs in India.

Panelists in a discussion on ‘Mobility Megatrends 2050’, highlighted that in the next decade, with electrification, autonomous driving, smart and connected infrastructure, modal diversity, and mobility that is integrated, resilient, shared, and sustainable – powered by disruptive business models, will transform and shape up of the automotive industry. The industry is racing towards a new world, driven by sustainability and changing consumer behaviour, encompassing electric vehicles, autonomous cars, mobility fleet sharing, and always connected.

“The technology services industry, at some level, is recession proof,” Premji said at the company’s 76th annual general meeting on Tuesday. “In good times, clients spend on new initiatives and business transformation and serving customers digitally. They focus on reducing costs when times are not so good,” he said addressing a question on inflation concerns.

Oil prices have whipsawed between concerns over supply as Western sanctions on Russian crude and products over the Ukraine war disrupt trade flows, and worries that central bank efforts to tame inflation may trigger a demand-destroying recession.

​So, we think that now we are entering into earnings season with this business update and particularly the banking sector should do well, both PSU and private banks.

With the advent of disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and data analytics, banks across the world are embracing a new era of innovation to enhance their services and improve customer experiences. These innovations are empowering banks to provide personalized, efficient, reliable, and secure financial solutions to their customers.

Reliance Jio Infocomm is set to sign a $1.7bn deal with Nokia this week to purchase 5G network equipment. This follows the $2.1bn worth of equipment ordered by the Indian telecom operator from Ericsson in its attempt to roll out 5G across India this year. The company has already purchased 5G spectrum and plans to invest $25bn in 5G infrastructure, making its standalone mode the sole holder of the 700 MHz band in the country.