OUR PICKSWildfire Problem Growing Beyond Our Ability to Tame It | Add-on Spawns a New Era of Machine Guns | Vaccination Against Fake News, and more
· Imprecise U.S. Heat Death Counting Methods Complicate Safety Efforts
Even when it seems obvious that extreme heat was a factor, death certificates don’t always reflect the role it played
· Inexpensive Add-on Spawns a New Era of Machine Guns
Popular devices known as “switches” are turning ordinary pistols into fully automatic weapons, making them deadlier and a growing threat to bystanders.
· Our Wildfire Problem Is Growing Beyond Our Ability to Tame It
Global warming means the scale of the wildfire problem is quickly growing far beyond our capacity to respond
· Barrels of Drinking Water for Migrants Walking Through Texas Have Disappeared
Barrels of life-saving water that a human rights group had strategically placed for wayward migrants traveling on foot had vanished
· Pentagon Revamping DC’s National Guard Over Its Jan. 6 Response
A key sticking point is who would be in control of the D.C. Guard
· Man Pleads Guilty to Sending Bomb Threat to Arizona Election Official
The man made the threat online and searched for the official’s address and name with the words “how to kill,” according to prosecutors
· Two Months in Georgia: How Trump Tried to Overturn the Vote
The Georgia case offers a vivid reminder of the extraordinary lengths Mr. Trump and his allies went to in the Southern state to reverse the election
· Fast Living and Foreign Dealings: An F.B.I. Spy Hunter’s Rise and Fall
Charles McGonigal had a family, a house in the suburbs and an influential job as a counterintelligence leader in New York. Federal prosecutors suggest it wasn’t enough for him.
· This Psychologist Wants to Vaccinate You Against Fake News
Controlled exposure to misinformation can help protect people from falling for it in the future, according to new research
· Philadelphia Teen Charged with Planning National Terrorist Attack
Unnamed 17-year-old, was in contact with a global terrorist group affiliated with al Qaeda
Imprecise U.S. Heat Death Counting Methods Complicate Safety Efforts (AP / VOA News)
Even when it seems obvious that extreme heat was a factor, death certificates don’t always reflect the role it played. Experts say a mishmash of ways more than 3,000 counties calculate heat deaths means we don’t really know how many people die in the U.S. each year because of high temperatures in an ever-warming world.
That imprecision harms efforts to better protect people from extreme heat because officials who set policies and fund programs can’t get the financial and other support needed to make a difference.
Inexpensive Add-on Spawns a New Era of Machine Guns (Ernesto Londoño and Glenn Thrush, New York Times)
More and more pistol rigged with a small and illegal device known as a switch. Switches can transform semiautomatic handguns, which typically require a trigger pull for each shot, into fully automatic machine guns that fire dozens of bullets with one tug.
These makeshift machine guns — able to inflict indiscriminate carnage in seconds — are helping fuel the national epidemic of gun violence, making shootings increasingly lethal, creating added risks for bystanders and leaving survivors more grievously wounded, according to law enforcement authorities and medical workers.
The growing use of switches, which are also known as auto sears, is evident in real-time audio tracking of gunshots around the country, data shows. Audio sensors monitored by a public safety technology company, Sound Thinking, recorded 75,544 rounds of suspected automatic gunfire in 2022 in portions of 127 cities covered by its microphones, according to data compiled at the request of The New York Times. That was a 49 percent increase from the year before.
Our Wildfire Problem Is Growing Beyond Our Ability to Tame It (Jennifer Balch, Washington Post)
Global warming means the scale of the wildfire problem is quickly growing far beyond our capacity to respond. For example, under the terms of the bipartisan infrastructure law, nearly $81 million will go to reducing hazardous fuels and boosting restoration efforts in forests and rangelands. That’s a worthy undertaking — and it sounds like a lot — but it will treat only 2 million acres of wildland this year, a fraction of what remains untreated. (Cont.)
