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Catastrophic floods leave over 120 dead in Europe, many more still missing.

In Germany, the death toll climbed to 103 as of Friday afternoon local time, with many more people still missing. In Belgium, a national day of mourning has been set for July 20 for the victims of the severe weather in recent days.

Devastating flash floods due to intense rainfalls have swept through several western European countries in the past few days, killing more than one hundred and causing damages.
Some countries in Western Europe received up to two months worth of rainfall in two days, with Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg strongly affected, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported on Friday.
In parts of western and southern Germany, towns and communities were hit by catastrophic flash floods after heavy and continuous rainfall this week.
As of Friday afternoon local time, the death toll climbed to 103 in the country, with many more people still missing, according to local authorities. The federal states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate were hit particularly hard, with 43 people and 60 people killed respectively.
A large number of people are still missing. The district of Ahrweiler alone currently estimates about 1,300 missing people, while around 3,500 are being treated in care facilities.
Germany’s Ministry of Defence has issued a military disaster alert on Friday, deploying more than 850 soldiers for rescue work and the number is increasing.
“Extreme precipitation such as the heavy rains that flooded parts of western Germany this week is likely to become more frequent due to global warming,” said German expert Stefan Rahmstorf, head of Earth System Analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). Catastrophic floods leave over 120 dead in Europe, many more still missing.

In Belgium, a national day of mourning has been set for July 20 for the victims of the severe weather in recent days. Twenty-one people died and 18 were reported missing on Friday after flash floods that saw rivers burst their banks in the south and east of the country.
In the town of Verviers, near the city of Liege, disastrous floods submerged the city center, upturning cars and damaging homes and shops along the high street.
The heavy downpours in the Belgian provinces of Luxembourg, Namur, Liege and Limbourg match what climate models predict for when the Earth warms up, suggesting direct links with global warming, the Belgian weekly Le Vive reported on Friday. Catastrophic floods leave over 120 dead in Europe, many more still missing.

In neighboring Netherlands, 10,700 people have been evacuated in Venlo in the north of the southern Dutch province of Limburg on Friday, as a precaution due to the high water level and the fear of flooding.
The Dutch government has formally assessed the flood in Limburg as a disaster, allowing victims to obtain clarity about whether their damage will be reimbursed by the government if their insurance does not cover it.
Dutch King Willem-Alexander visited the city and called the situation in Limburg “heartbreaking.”
In Switzerland, maximum flood warnings have been issued in central parts of the country due to persistent rainfall. As of Friday, Lake Lucerne, Lake Thun and Lake Biel have remained at the highest flood warning level (5) after continued and intense rainfall throughout the week.
The Swissinfo website reported that the major cities such as Basel and Bern are also facing high flood risks, with the River Aare reaching a flow rate of 540 cubic meters per second, nearing the 600 level recorded in the major floods of 2005.
France’s meteorological service warned on Friday that the continuous rainfall is soaking the soil, putting France at risk of flooding. Currently, 13 provinces in northern and eastern France have been placed on orange alert for floods.
The European Union’s Civil Protection Mechanism has been activated to tackle the heavy floods.

Published : July 17, 2021

By : Xinhua

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Damian Lillard denies trade request but has plenty of questions about the Blazers plans

As Damian Lillard prepares to head for the Tokyo Olympics with USA Basketball, he made it clear Friday that he wants the Portland Trail Blazers to display “more urgency” and a clearer commitment to pursuing a championship.

The six-time all-star guard, who has been the subject of trade speculation since the Blazers were eliminated from the playoffs last month, denied a report that he plans to request a trade “in the coming days,” but also repeatedly expressed a desire for a more assertive approach from his organization.

During a virtual news conference from Las Vegas following Team USA’s practice, Lillard called that report, published by TrueHoop on Friday morning, “not true” and said that he expects to remain in Portland next season.

“A lot of things are being said,” Lillard said. “It hasn’t come from me. I haven’t made any firm decision on what my future will be, so it’s really no need for anybody else to speak for me.”

The 31-year-old Lillard has spent his entire nine-year career with the Blazers, leading Portland to the playoffs in each of the past eight seasons. In 2019, he signed a four-year, $196 million supermax extension that runs through the 2024-25 season. If Lillard does proceed with a trade request, he would likely emerge as this summer’s most-coveted superstar because of a weak free agency class and Kawhi Leonard’s recent ACL surgery.

Despite his consistent track record of winning and his long-term contract, Lillard has reached a professional crossroads. Since the 2018 death of Blazers owner Paul Allen, an obsessive basketball fan with limitless resources thanks to his Microsoft fortune, the franchise has favored small maneuvers over splashy moves. The Blazers are now owned by Jody Allen, Paul Allen’s sister, who has steadfastly remained behind the scenes.

Blazers General Manager Neil Olshey has chosen not to move guard CJ McCollum and has resisted going all-in for a marquee player via trade, leaving Lillard without an all-star teammate since LaMarcus Aldridge left via free agency after the 2015 season. Persistent injuries to key players have only increased the burden on Lillard, who averaged 28.8 points, 4.2 rebounds and 7.5 assists per game this season. Portland has lost in the first round of the playoffs in four of the past five seasons. The Blazers have reached the Western Conference finals once but gotten no further since Lillard arrived in Portland in 2012.

“[We need to] be more urgent about what our next step is and how we move forward,” Lillard said. “We have a lot of pride about making the playoffs all these years. We’re not a bad team. We’re a winning team.

“But we’ve reached that point where it’s not enough. Do we actually want to win it all? Is that what we’re shooting for? We’ve got to do things to show that. We’ve got to put action behind that desire to win at that level.”

Lillard’s call for assertiveness is understandable given the amount of prominent playoff teams recently boosted by recent trades. The Milwaukee Bucks are in the Finals after acquiring Jrue Holiday, the Phoenix Suns are in the Finals after acquiring Chris Paul and the Brooklyn Nets emerged as title favorites after landing James Harden before falling in the second round having been beset with injuries. The Denver Nuggets, who eliminated the Blazers, acquired Aaron Gordon in a key trade deadline move.

Following the season, Olshey pinned the team’s playoff exit and poor defense on coaching, rather than personnel, and noted that it is difficult for small-market teams to compete for top talent. After the Blazers parted with longtime coach Terry Stotts, Olshey said that starters Lillard, McCollum, Robert Covington and Jusuf Nurkic were all “absolutely” returning for the 2021-22 season.

The Blazers then tabbed Los Angeles Clippers assistant coach Chauncey Billups, a longtime Olshey favorite, as Stotts’s replacement. That hiring prompted substantial backlash from fans and some media because of a sexual assault allegation levied against Billups in 1997.

Lillard, who expressed frustration weeks ago that fans called him out about Billups’s hire, said Friday that a coaching change wasn’t sufficient. Billups, 44, has no previous NBA head coaching experience and spent just one season as a Clippers assistant.

“I don’t disagree that maybe Chauncey can really change our team and make us a better team and get us going in that direction,” Lillard said. “But I think if you look at our team as it is going into next season, I don’t see how you can say, ‘This is a championship team. You just need a new coach.'”

The criticism of Billups’s hiring and questions about the Blazers’ vetting process have further complicated Portland’s summer. While introducing Billups to the Portland media, a Blazers staffer abruptly cut off a question to Billups about the assault allegation. Olshey also refused to divulge specifics about the organization’s background investigation into the incident, which occurred during Billups’s rookie season with the Boston Celtics, saying that such information was “proprietary.”

Subsequent reporting by Oregon Public Broadcasting revealed that the Blazers did not contact Billups’s accuser during their investigation. A Blazers spokesperson later told Willamette Week that the organization had ended an 11-year professional relationship with a private investigator linked to the investigation after it was revealed that he had shared pornographic material on his Twitter account.

Now, the Blazers’ front office must juggle that external pressure with a new round of internal pressure from the team’s franchise player.

“Right now, I’m not sure what I’m going to do,” Lillard said. “What I can say is, my intentions and my heart is set on being in a Trail Blazers uniform for my entire career. But over time, you want to win it all. I want to win it at all in a Trail Blazers uniform, but we all need to be making strides towards that.”

Published : July 17, 2021

By : The Washington Post · Ben Golliver

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Calling DACA unlawful, judge halts applications

WASHINGTON – A federal judge in Texas has largely halted an Obama administration initiative that grants work permits and reprieves from deportation to undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children – calling the program “unlawful” even as he allowed the more than 600,000 young people already in it to keep their protected status.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen sided with Texas and other states in his ruling that President Barack Obama, a Democrat, overstepped his executive authority when he created the program.

Hanen’s ruling called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, an “illegally implemented program” and said “the public interest of the nation is always served by the cessation of a program that was created in violation of law.”

He prohibited the Department of Homeland Security from approving new applications, issued a permanent injunction vacating the memo that created DACA in 2012 – when President Joe Biden was vice president – and remanded the issue to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for reconsideration.

The Biden administration had no immediate response to Friday’s ruling. But the long-awaited knockdown spurred a political outcry and intensified pressure on the White House and Congress to pass an immigration measure this year.

Immigrants brought to this country as children, known as “dreamers,” are among the most sympathetic of the 11 million immigrants in the United States illegally. Still, Republican and Democratic lawmakers have been unable to agree on whether to grant them legal status despite months of negotiations.

Democrats are considering whether to use a budget reconciliation measure to take that action, a move that would require only a simple majority vote in the evenly divided Senate.

In statements Friday, both Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., vowed to press forward on legislation that would ensure dreamers have a pathway to citizenship. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard Durbin, D-Ill., who has sponsored legislation for the past 20 years to grant dreamers citizenship – without success – said Congress had “found excuses to put off this decision” for too many years.”Congress will now act quickly – with or without the party of Donald Trump – to allow these Americans to finally become citizens,” Durbin said Friday.

Congressional Democrats and advocates for immigrants called Friday for the government to appeal Hanen’s ruling, which Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., described as “cruel.”

“To current #DACA recipients, you are safe here,” she said on Twitter. “To our young immigrants, we will not stop our work until every Dreamer is treated as they are: American.”

But Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, called on Democrats to vote on a proposal he and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., floated earlier this month to Durbin, who has sponsored legislation for the past 20 years to grant dreamers citizenship – without success.

Cornyn and Tillis said they propose “targeted legislation” that would offer permanent legal status to “active participants” in DACA, and opined that anything broader is not “politically viable.”

“Now will Senator Durbin schedule debate and vote on a bill that will provide DACA recipients some certainty?” Cornyn said in a tweet after the ruling.

Google, which employs DACA recipients and is one of many companies that have defended their right to stay in the United States, condemned the ruling, saying “we are very disappointed by today’s decision.”

To qualify for DACA, immigrants must have been under age 31 as of June 15, 2012, when the program was created, arrived in this country before turning 16, and resided in the United States since mid-2007. They also must have pursued studies or enlisted in the military, and passed a criminal-background check.

Those criteria left out thousands of immigrants whom the White House has said it hoped to legalize this year. Most DACA recipients are from Mexico, but they hail from all over the world, including South Korea, the Philippines, Uganda and New Zealand. They include software engineers, teachers, and doctors and nurses working the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic.

Republican officials from Texas and several other states had called for an “orderly wind down” of the program in their lawsuit, arguing that it was unlawful and burdened states with costs for health care, education and law enforcement.

But Hanen said he recognized that legions of young immigrants and their communities need the program, and would not wrest it from them as the Biden administration attempts to correct its deficiencies.

“Hundreds of thousands of individual DACA recipients, along with their employers, states, and loved ones, have come to rely on the DACA program,” Hanen, an appointee of President George W. Bush, a Republican, wrote in the ruling. “Given those interests, it is not equitable for a government program that has engendered such a significant reliance to terminate suddenly. This consideration, along with the government’s assertion that it is ready and willing to try to remedy the legal defects of the DACA program indicates that equity will not be served by a complete and immediate cessation of DACA.”

Hanen directed the Department of Homeland Security to post a notice within three calendar days saying that “a United States District Court has found the DACA program to be illegal and that, though applicants may continue to submit applications, the Government is prohibited from granting such applications.”

He said his order was a “reasonable” decision that took into consideration the competing interests of dreamers and states such as Texas that had argued that the program granted people work permits who could then get driver’s licenses and compete with Americans for jobs.

“Not a surprise, just a painful reminder that we need to stop relying on temporary immigration fixes,” said Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., who is the lead Senate sponsor of the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, Biden’s blueprint to create a path to citizenship for many undocumented immigrants. “Congress must seize the moment.”

Advocates for immigrants said the ruling would once again upend the lives of people who have lived in the United States for much or most of their lives and consider it their home.

“If you can renew, you still have the lingering question of: Until when?” said José Muñoz, spokesman for United We Dream, the nation’s largest immigrant youth-led organization, and himself a DACA recipient. He estimated that tens of thousands of first-time applicants will be shut out of the program, endangering their plans to attend school or apply for driver’s licenses so they can legally drive.

“It’s beyond time for Congress to act,” Muñoz said. “We need a path to citizenship.”

The Trump administration attempted to terminate DACA starting in 2017, with a wind-down plan that would have ended the program by 2020. Federal courts blocked the effort.

In June 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration had not properly considered the impact of rescinding DACA in 2017, and ordered the administration to start again – without weighing in on the legality of the DACA program.

Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that is defending DACA in the Texas lawsuit, expressed hope for the program on Friday since the Supreme Court has never declared the program unlawful.

But he said the immigrants deserve permanent residency and not the “ongoing cruel roller coaster that our nation has placed DACA recipients on.”

Saenz said his organization will decide in the next few days whether to appeal.

Published : July 17, 2021

By : The Washington Post · Maria Sacchetti

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Fairfax schools adopt protections for trans students

In a win for transgender students and advocates, Virginias largest public school system has adopted guidelines granting children access to restrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identities and requiring school staffers to address transgender students by their preferred names and pronouns.

The school board of Fairfax County Public Schools in Northern Virginia voted unanimously Thursday night to approve a revised version of its “Student Rights and Responsibilities” document, which outlines expectations for student behavior. The new rules also mandate that all students receive “safe and equitable access to all school . . . facilities and activities” and that students have “the right to non-disclosure of gender identity and/or sexual orientation.”

Moreover, the guidelines state that internal, school-generated lists of students – such as in the honor roll, yearbooks and school newspapers – must identify transgender children by their preferred names and pronouns. The new rules mark the first time the document has ever explicitly affirmed rights and protections for transgender students, said Karl Frisch, the first openly LGBTQ member of Fairfax’s school board.

“This was the right thing to do [and] long overdue,” Frisch said. “But it will not sweep away the pain and hurt transgender and other gender-expansive students have experienced for years at the hands of careless peers or adults who should know better.”

Before the meeting, parents, educators and activists held passionate dueling protests – one against critical race theory and the other in support of Fairfax students generally and transgender rights specifically – that attracted controversy when one protesting parent filmed a Fairfax NAACP leader, Michelle Leete, apparently wishing death to her opponents. Leete wrote in an email Friday that what she meant to say was she hopes her opponents’ ideals die out.

Northern Virginia recently has become a major battleground in America’s culture wars over transgender rights. Research suggests there are about 4,000 transgender youths between ages 13 and 17 in Virginia and shows that transgender youth are far more likely to attempt suicide.

Some recent developments have been triumphs for transgender rights supporters. For example, Fairfax adopted its new policy on transgender students in accordance with a 2020 state law requiring that school districts treat transgender students according to their gender identities, in part by permitting these children to use sex-specific facilities and sports teams. And in late June, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a high-profile legal battle over the rights of transgender students in Virginia, effectively handing a victory to those who believe transgender students should be able to use bathrooms that match their gender identities.

But a potent backlash is also building – in part from White, Christian, conservative parents, who see the updated treatment of transgender students as infringing on their religious beliefs and forcing teachers to lie to children. Many are also dissatisfied with the idea that transgender female students would be allowed to compete on sports teams, which they argue is unfair to athletes assigned female at birth.

Two conservative groups are suing the Virginia Department of Education to block implementation of the transgender guidelines statewide. And in Loudoun County Public Schools, Fairfax’s neighbor, a Christian teacher recently sued the school system, arguing he should not be forced to call transgender students by their pronouns given his beliefs.

A June school board meeting in Loudoun ended in an arrest after raucous parents – some of whom showed up to protest transgender rights – refused to quiet down.

At Thursday’s meeting in Fairfax, Frisch introduced the vote on the district’s transgender guidelines by referencing the uproar.

“In recent months, school board meetings in neighboring counties have descended into chaos as extremists attempt to deny these students their very existence,” Frisch said. “To the gender-expansive and transgender students and their families who have witnessed these attacks . . . I am sorry. You deserve much, much better.”

The Fairfax meeting saw its own controversy, however, when parents, educators and activists held dueling protests ahead of the start of the meeting.

Some were there for a “STOP CRT” rally – to fight what they see as the infiltration of critical race theory into schools. The theory is an academic framework that holds racism is systemic and perpetuated in present-day American institutions, laws and policies.

Critics say they see the theory’s influence in many schools’ recent efforts to seek more equal academic and disciplinary outcomes and create a welcoming environment for all students by doing things like adding more diverse viewpoints to school curriculums and holding bias trainings for employees. Some parents allege school districts are actually teaching students critical race theory, a charge that school officials throughout Northern Virginia have repeatedly denied.

In Fairfax, critical race theory opponents – many of whom are Asian parents – see a particularly noxious manifestation of the theory in the school system’s recent updates to admissions at its flagship magnet school, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. The revisions, meant to boost diversity by eliminating a $100 application fee and admissions test, led to the most diverse class in the school’s history, but also drove down the percentage of Asian students by a large margin.

Those who support the school system’s equity initiatives and its new guidelines for transgender students showed up for their own rally, meant to offset the STOP CRT event. Leete, one of the speakers, gave a speech that is now drawing heavy criticism.

Videos circulating online show Leete calling the critical race theory opponents “anti-education, anti-teacher, anti-equity, anti-history” and a long string of other negatives ending in, “anti-live-and-let-live people.”

She then added, “Let them die,” generating applause at the time – and later, serious blowback online, especially from conservative voices such as the official account of the Fairfax GOP. In a tweet about Leete’s speech, the county’s GOP committee called her a “hard leftist” spouting “hateful, incendiary rhetoric.”

The speech also drew broader backlash. On Friday evening, the Virginia Parent Teacher Association – for which Leete serves as vice president of training – tweeted out a statement condemning her remarks. The statement called Leete’s comment a “disturbing choice of words” and said “that statement does not reflect the values of Virginia PTA.” The news release also said that Virginia PTA board members will undergo “sensitivity training” over the summer to ensure officials “remain mindful of . . . the impact of the words we use.”

In an statement emailed to The Washington Post on Friday, Leete wrote that her “Let them die” comment was only ever meant to refer to “the ideals that show a disregard and lack of support for our teachers who have a truly difficult job to do even without a pandemic.”

Leete sent The Post a written copy of her speech, which read, “Let them (ideals) die.” That sentence was followed in the document by a paragraph in which Leete instructed herself to “ad lib – referring to ideals that would have schools open during a pandemic, guns in schools, not supporting teachers . . . etc.”

In her email Friday, Leete added, “I will certainly admit, it was ineloquently stated and with a pause for the applause, the timing was off.”

Published : July 17, 2021

By : The Washington Post · Hannah Natanson

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Oregons Bootleg Fire is torching an area larger than NYC. Firefighters are scrambling to contain it.

The fast-moving Bootleg Fire in southern Oregon has scorched an area thousands of acres larger than New York City – prompting new evacuations and increasing concerns over thinning resources as the state enters the highest level of wildfire preparedness.

The conflagration is one of thousands of wildfires torching areas as far east as Minnesota, signs of another potentially dire fire season.

“We are seeing conditions that we usually see in mid-August,” said Alison Green, public affairs director for the Oregon Office of State Fire Marshals. “It’s been extreme fire behavior over the last week that has created conditions that are certainly challenging.”

As of Friday, the Bootleg Fire was the largest in the country and one of nine burning in Oregon. Some 28 miles away from Klamath Falls, it had scorched 241,497 acres, with 7% of the flames contained by a team of almost 2,000 firefighters, according to the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center.

Since igniting July 6, flames have moved up to three miles per day, fueled by dry timber and fanned by 15 to 20 mph winds, said Ryan Berlin, a Bootleg Fire Zone 1 information officer. The fire’s cause remains under investigation.

The fire’s rapid pace and substantial growth have worried officials that it could merge with the smaller Log Fire, eight miles southwest of Summer Lake.

“It’s a pretty good possibility because the Log Fire yesterday blew up also,” Berlin said.

Another concern is the extreme weather surrounding the fire. It has generated a pyrocumulus cloud, what NASA has deemed “the fire-breathing dragon of clouds.” The vertical plume generated by intense pressure and dry conditions spreads embers and pollutants and “creates erratic fire behavior for firefighters to contend with,” Green said.

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality issued an air-quality advisory Friday for parts of Harney, Lake and eastern Klamath counties due to smoke from the plumes.

The Bootleg Fire’s expansion has destroyed 117 outbuildings and 67 residences in Klamath County, said Holly Krake, a spokeswoman for the Bootleg Fire Incident Management Team. The fire is still raging in Lake County, home to a population of more than 7,000 residents, and the damage is being assessed, she said.

As of Friday, Krake said, some 2,000 residents across both counties had been evacuated, with over 5,000 residences threatened by the growing flames.

With an unprecedented wildfire season underway, the American Red Cross has opened four shelters throughout the state, said Chad Carter, the organization’s Oregon regional communications director. He said they are prepared to open more if needed.

“We are all planning for this to be a prolonged event this summer,” he said. “We’ve got several shelters open right now, and we’ll continue to adjust based on the need throughout the summer.”

The Bootleg Fire comes at a time when Oregon has moved into Preparedness Level 5 (PL5) – the highest level of wildfire preparedness – which is determined by a combination of factors, including burning conditions, fire activity and resources available, said Robin DeMario, a public affairs specialist at NWCC.

That designation is reached when resources are beginning to stretch thin, raising the possibility of them getting exhausted, she said. Usually, states enter this level by the wildfire season’s peak in August.

“Here at the NWCC our records go back to 2006, and since then this is the earliest a level five has occurred,” DeMario said.

Oregon is part of a national trend that points to a potentially harrowing wildfire season.

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According to National Interagency Fire Center data, 34,596 wildfires have broken out in the United States so far this year – the most in the January to July time period since 2011. Additionally, 2,364,643 acres have burned, slightly up from last year’s total at this point.

Across the country, 17,718 firefighters are battling to control the flames – almost triple the number of personnel since the month began, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

In her July 14 annual fire season letter, Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen directed all “red-carded” employees – those qualified to assist in fire operations – to be made available for dispatching.

“This means all hands on deck,” said Riva Duncan, a retired fire staff officer for the U.S. Forest Service. “That has downstream consequences on all the other program areas. So it’s not a good place to be this early in the fire season.”

For Duncan, who also serves as secretary-treasurer for the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters – a group that advocates for the well-being of Federal Wildland Fire personnel – this reality underscores a catastrophic fusion of seasons “lasting longer, starting earlier and ending later” with resources dwindling out.

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“We’re now at a tipping point where we’re seeing a really bad problem with staffing and retention, coupled with another very catastrophic fire season,” Duncan said.

With federal firefighters leaving to work for state agencies that offer better pay – or sometimes dropping out of the career altogether – frustrations have mounted and finally sounded the alarms at the federal level.

On Tuesday, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee finalized language in the bipartisan Energy Infrastructure Act – a legislative package that would authorize over $100 billion to invest the country’s infrastructural needs.

Of the 48 amendments to the bill that were adopted, Sen. Joe Manchin III’s, D-W.Va., Amendment 65 seeks to increase the base salary of federal wildland firefighters – a move welcomed by the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters.

“It’s definitely a step in the right direction to make sure that we’re retaining the skilled and expert workforce that we need to combat these ever-growing fires,” said Jonathon Golden, a special adviser to this advocacy group and former wildland firefighter.

The proposed legislation might not come into effect in the near future, but Golden said it could still provide a much-needed positive impact: a “morale booster” for the men and women that are currently on the line.

“Looking at this season, we’re definitely going to need it,” he said.

Published : July 17, 2021

By : The Washington Post · María Luisa Paúl

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Republican governor says anti-vaccine rhetoric is killing people and denounces propaganda

The Republican governor of Utah on Thursday decried “propaganda” spread against coronavirus vaccines, warning that those discouraging immunization are “killing people.”

“We have these – these talking heads who have gotten the vaccine and are telling other people not to get the vaccine,” Gov. Spencer Cox said in response to a reporter’s question about anti-vaccine rhetoric coming in large part from the political right. “That kind of stuff is just, it’s ridiculous. It’s dangerous, it’s damaging, and it’s killing people. I mean, it’s literally killing their supporters. And that makes no sense to me.”

Cox’s sharp words at a news conference came as some lawmakers and other prominent Republicans fan doubts about the coronavirus vaccines or speak about them with outright hostility, framing efforts to promote the shots as unwelcome incursions from big government.

Members of Congress have derided “door-to-door” outreach; a host at the conservative network Newsmax recently declared vaccines “against nature”; and audience members at a conservative conference cheered last weekend when a speaker said the United States missed its immunization goals. Those in counties won by President Joe Biden are more likely to be fully vaccinated than those in counties won by former president Donald Trump, the Kaiser Family Foundation found this month.

Most covid-19 deaths now occur among the unvaccinated, something Cox underscored as true for Utah. Yet recent polling shows that 29% of Americans say they are unlikely to get their shots, with most of those people saying they definitely will not. That’s a slight uptick from three months earlier when 24% said they were unlikely to get vaccinated.

Asked about anti-vaccine messages Thursday, Cox said they are “harmful” and that “it does concern me deeply.” He said he sees the coronavirus vaccines as a key accomplishment of the Trump administration and believes the herculean effort to develop them in less than a year will go down as “one of the greatest achievements of medicine in human history.”

Trump has taken credit for that accomplishment and got vaccinated, although not in public like other leaders such as Biden and former vice president Mike Pence, a Republican.

“I don’t think we can take credit for getting the vaccine and then tell people that there’s something wrong with the vaccine,” Cox said Thursday.

He used the news conference to plead with residents – again – to get their shots. “We know why the cases are going up. We know why hospitalizations are going up. And it’s just because we need more people to get vaccinated.”

Cox is not the only Republican official to express frustration over vaccine messaging from the right. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, this week said that “politicizing vaccinations is moronic” and asked aloud why supporters of Trump are resistant.

“President Trump and his supporters take credit for developing the vaccine,” he said, according to the Deseret News. “Why the heck won’t they take advantage of the vaccine they received plaudits for having developed?”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters this week that he is a “huge fan of vaccinations” and “perplexed by the difficulty we have in finishing the job” of immunizing the country. “We need to keep preaching that getting the vaccine is important.” he said.

But when asked about GOP colleagues such as Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who have fueled doubts about the vaccines, McConnell declined to criticize and said he could only speak for himself.

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy highlighted the threat of misinformation on covid-19 at a White House news briefing this week, where he said he has lost 10 family members to the disease. He accused tech companies of allowing falsehoods to “poison our information environment with little accountability to their users.”

With Biden joining Murthy’s criticisms Friday, Facebook spokesperson Dani Lever said that the tech giant is “helping save lives” and that “more than 2 billion people have viewed authoritative information about COVID-19 and vaccines on Facebook, which is more than any other place on the internet.”

Conservative media’s framing of the vaccines came into this spotlight this week after Newsmax prime-time host Rob Schmitt – a former Fox News co-host – said on air that he was neither “anti-vaxxer” nor “pro-vaxxer.”

“I feel like a vaccination in a weird way is just generally kind of going against nature,” he said. Newsmax later told The Washington Post that the network “strongly supports President Biden’s efforts to widely distribute the covid vaccine.”

The popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson has called himself “pro-vaccine” but also suggested that “maybe it doesn’t work and they’re simply not telling you that.”

Utah has seen its coronavirus cases, deaths and hospitalizations drop significantly with vaccination but tick up in recent weeks, according to data tracked by The Washington Post. A state website seeks to dispel misinformation about the shots: “COVID-19 vaccines don’t change your DNA.” “COVID-19 vaccines don’t contain microchips or tracking devices.” “COVID-19 vaccines have not been linked to infertility or miscarriage.”

With at least one dose for 66.5% of adults, Utah is more than 10 percentage points ahead of the country as a whole. Among American adults, 48.4 are fully vaccinated, according to Post tracking. Biden originally set a goal of giving at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine to 70% of adults by July 4.

Published : July 17, 2021

By : The Washington Post · Hannah Knowles

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40003344

Asean Covid-19 cases and related deaths hit record numbers

Southeast Asia reported a record number of new Covid-19 cases and deaths on Friday, collated data showed.

Asean added 93,745 new patients on Friday, higher than Thursday’s 93,143, while 1,784 people died, up from the previous day’s 1,549.

The number of Covid-19 cases crossed 5.94 million across the region, and the death toll rose to 113,556.

Indonesia, which reported 54,000 new cases, received one million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine on Friday as part of the total 50 million doses the government has purchased. The next lot of 4 million doses will be delivered within next month, and then 3.7 million doses per month until the end of 2021. The balance 30 million doses will be delivered next year. The country has been using Sinovac as the main vaccine, accounting for around 90 per cent of all vaccine it has procured.

Indonesia also signed a contract with Pfizer to deliver 50 million doses of vaccine within this year to combat the rising infections.

Malaysia’s ministry of public health on Friday allowed China’s Sinopharm and Johnson and Johnson vaccines for use in the country under special conditions. The announcement came one day after the ministry had announced that it would stop giving the Sinovac vaccine when the stock depletes, as the country has procured adequate quantities of other vaccines.

Published : July 17, 2021

By : THE NATION