Credit: Mapping Specialists

A stunning 12 million people could be displaced by flooding in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta within half a century, according to new research led by Philip Minderhoud, a geographer at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Minderhoud and his colleagues arrived at that surprising conclusion after analyzing ground-based measurements of the Mekong’s topography that the Vietnamese government shielded from Western scientists  for years. The results, published today in Nature Communications, show the Mekong’s elevation over sea level averages just 0.8 meter, which is almost two meters lower than commonly quoted estimates based on freely available satellite data.

The ground-truthed projection more than doubles the number of Vietnamese living in low-lying areas that will be inundated by encroaching seas, with some underwater in only a few decades. And Torbjörn E. Törnqvist, a geologist at Tulane University, who was not involved with the study, says the implications extend beyond the Mekong to similarly threatened deltas throughout the developing world. “My hope is that these findings will wake people up to the fact that we’re dealing with […]

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Europe’s third major heat wave.

Summers in Europe are much hotter than they used to be and winters aren’t nearly as cold as they once were. And, the continent is warming much faster than climate models had once projected. That is the disturbing takeaway from a new study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Credit: npr

Advocates, lawyers, doctors, and lawmakers said the blanket policy change was made without any consideration of the potentially disastrous health affects it will have on children and adults whose home countries don’t have treatment for HIV, muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, leukemia, and other diseases. “Can anyone imagine the government ordering you to disconnect your child from life-saving care — to pull them from a hospital bed — knowing that it will cost them their lives?” said Anthony Marino, head of immigration legal services at the Irish International Immigrant Center.

Boston Globe: ‘Our Government Has Issued Them A Death Sentence’: Children Receiving Treatment At Boston Hospitals Face DeportationSeverely ill immigrants, including children with cancer, cystic fibrosis, and other grave conditions, are facing deportation under a change in Trump administration policy that immigration advocates are calling cruel and inhumane. The policy change will affect at least a dozen children receiving treatment at Boston hospitals and potentially thousands of additional immigrants across the country, according to lawyers and advocates. All had been granted “medical […]

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Children born to U.S. service members and government employees overseas will no longer be automatically considered citizens of the United States, according to policy alert issued by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on Wednesday.

Previously, children born to U.S. citizen parents were considered to be “residing in the United States,” and therefore would be automatically given citizenship under Immigration and Nationality Act 320. Now, children born to U.S. service members and government employees, such as those born in U.S. military hospitals or diplomatic facilities, will not be considered as residing in the U.S., changing the way that they potentially receive citizenship.

The change in policy was first reported by San Francisco Chronicle reporter Tal Kopan.

According to USCIS, previous legislation also explicitly said that spouses of service members who were living outside the U.S. because of their spouses were considered residing in the U.S., but “that no similar provision was included for children of U.S. armed forces members in the acquisition of citizenship context is significant.”

That is one of the reasons why USCIS has now decided that those children are not considered […]

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