Disasters

"During the International Criminal Court’s annual meeting, three nations threatened by climate change promoted a fifth international crime, called ecocide."

"HAROLD, Ky.—Along the winding, two lane road that leads to Tracy Neece’s mountain, there’s no hint of the huge scars in the hills beyond the oaks and the pines. "

"The calendar said December but the warm moist air screamed of springtime. Add an eastbound storm front guided by a La Nina weather pattern into that mismatch and it spawned tornadoes that killed dozens over five U.S. states."

"Rescuers were forced to crawl over the dead to get to the living at a Kentucky candle factory walloped by a tornado, part of an unusual cluster that killed dozens in the Midwest and South and flattened whole towns."

"When Cyclone Yaas slammed into her home in southwest Bangladesh in May, destroying it and sweeping away in the floodwaters the small amount of cash she had saved, Amina Begum had few options. Efforts to recover from four previous cyclones since 2009 had depleted her resources, and her husband's death five years ago left the burden of caring for their two children solely to her."

"The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is once again considering climate change in its strategic planning after a plan released during the Trump administration did not include it."

"Nearly two years into a coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 5 million people, every country, including the United States, remains dangerously unprepared to respond to future epidemic and pandemic threats, according to a report released Wednesday assessing the efforts of 195 countries."

"Starving manatees will soon be fed by hand in Florida, a rare ... intervention to save the marine mammals whose natural food is vanishing from the effects of pollution, state officials told Reuters."

"Democrats are proposing a potentially seismic shift in how the nation battles wildfires by dramatically increasing funding for efforts that aim to prevent blazes, rather than focusing on the tools to put them out."

"Since May 2021, people living in counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump during the last presidential election have been nearly three times as likely to die from COVID-19 as those who live in areas that went for now-President Biden. That's according to a new analysis by NPR that examines how political polarization and misinformation are driving a significant share of the deaths in the pandemic."