Chinese workers and engineers at a tunnel being created near Vang Vieng, Laos, as part of a $6 billion Chinese rail project that will connect eight Asian countries.
Credit Adam Dean for The New York Times
VANG VIENG, Laos — Along the jungle-covered mountains of Laos, squads of Chinese engineers are drilling hundreds of tunnels and bridges to support a 260-mile railway, a $6 billion project that will eventually connect eight Asian countries.
Chinese money is building power plants in Pakistan to address chronic electricity shortages, part of an expected $46 billion worth of investment.
Chinese planners are mapping out train lines from Budapest to Belgrade, Serbia, providing another artery for Chinese goods flowing into Europe through a Chinese-owned port in Greece.
The massive infrastructure projects, along with hundreds of others across Asia, Africa and Europe, form the backbone of Read the Full Article
Stephan: Water is destiny. That is the undeniable truth of personal life, and geopolitics. And it effects take forms we are only now beginning to recognize. Here is what I mean.
A mysterious kidney disease is striking down laborers across the world and climate change is making it worse.
Credit: Pixabay
By 10 am in the sugarcane fields outside the town of Tierra Blanca in El Salvador, the mercury is already pushing 31°C. The workers arrived at dawn: men and women, young and old, wearing thick jeans, long-sleeved shirts and face scarves to prevent being scorched by the sun’s rays. They are moving quickly between rows of cane, bending, reaching, clipping and trimming in preparation for harvesting the crop in the weeks to come. In the scant shade, old Pepsi and Fanta bottles full of water swing from tree branches, untouched. Gulping only the thick air, the workers won’t stop until noon, when their shift is over.
Among them is 25-year-old Jesús Linares. His dream, he explains in English, was to be a language teacher, but like many Salvadoran children he went to work to help support his parents and siblings. Aged eight, he learned to hide in the towering canes whenever the police sought out […]
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Mary Landers, - Savannah Morning News
Stephan: It is beginning to dawn on coastal counties that even though their state legislature and the federal government may say climate change and sea rise are a hoaxes to end capitalism and make American socialist, or some other equally pathetic fantasy, people along the coasts have to live the reality.
As a result in local papers, I am beginning to see local research and discussions about climate change, sea rise, and migrations. Here is an example of what I mean. If you read SR regularly it will all sound very familiar.
Coastal residents won’t be the only ones affected by rising seas this century, a new study out of the University of Georgia suggests.
“Sea level rise is currently framed as a coastal hazard, but the migratory effects could ripple far inland,” UGA demographer Matt Hauer wrote in a study published recently in Nature Climate Change. “My results show the importance of accounting for future migrations associated with climate change in long-range planning processes for disaster management, transportation infrastructure, land-use decisions, and so on.”
The study looked at likely migration to and from every U.S. county and metropolitan area in the face of a sea level rise scenario of 1.8 meters, or nearly six feet, by the year 2100. That’s higher than the current rate of about a foot a century but less than the latest worst case scenario of 2.5 meters predicted in a January technical report from the National […]
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Jessica Huseman, - Pro Publica
Stephan: Donald's Trump's contempt for science, and for the regulatory duties of government agencies that are supposed to protect Americans, knows no bounds. He has appointed a climate denier to head EPA, fired the Surgeon General, and appointed a Big Pharma hack to head FDA.
Now, for chief scientist for the United States Department of Agriculture, the individual who is supposed to oversee the science and safety of the products farmers use, and the food everyone in the U.S. eats, and that the nation ships to the rest of the world, he is appointing a grossly obese, ignorant, climate denier, alt-right radio host with no science training at all. But he's very loyal to Trump, which seems to be all that is required as a qualification.
President Trump and his probable appointee Sam Clovis.
Credit: Charisma News
The USDA’s research section studies everything from climate change to nutrition. Under the 2008 Farm Bill, its leader is supposed to serve as the agency’s “chief scientist” and be chosen “from among distinguished scientists with specialized or significant experience in agricultural research, education, and economics.”
But Sam Clovis — who, according to sources with knowledge of the appointment and members of the agriculture trade press, is President Trump’s pick to oversee the section — appears to have no such credentials.
Clovis has never taken a graduate course in science and is openly skeptical of climate change. While he has a doctorate in public administration and was a tenured professor of business and public policy at Morningside College for 10 years, he has published almost no academic work.
Clovis is better known for hosting a conservative talk radio show in his native Iowa and, after mounting an unsuccessful run for Senate in 2014, becoming a fiery pro-Trump advocate on television.
Clovis advised Trump on agricultural issues during his […]
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, - CBS News/Associated Press
Stephan: Trump's contempt for ordinary people is no where more in evidence than his decision to delay the regulations to assure the nutritional quality and safety of school lunches for children promulgated by Michelle Obama. Here's the story,
Michelle Obama in the White House Garden — a lasting tribute to the food movement.
Credit: Chip Somodevilla
WASHINGTON — Michelle Obama on Friday criticized a Trump administration decision to delay federal rules aimed at making school lunch healthier, saying kids will end up “eating crap” instead.
Mrs. Obama told a health conference in Washington that more nutritionally sound school meals are needed since millions of kids nationwide eat federally subsidized breakfast and lunch at school. Without mentioning President Trump by name, she urged parents to think about the government’s recent decision and to “look at motives.”
“You have to stop and think, ‘Why don’t you want our kids to have good food at school? What is wrong with you and why is that a partisan issue?” Mrs. Obama said. “Why would that be political?”
“Moms, think about this. I don’t care […]
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