Новости за 09.08.2021

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released the first, nearly 4,000-page installment of its Sixth Assessment Report. The report, from a working group of over 200 scientists, distills the current consensus about the physical science of climate change from 14,000 peer-reviewed studies. This consensus is grim: None of the emissions scenarios this report highlights see warming kept below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). Heat waves previously seen only twice in a century will soon hit every six years... Читать дальше...

Of all the many provisions jammed into the 2,700-page bipartisan infrastructure bill that’s teetering ever closer to passage, an unlikely one has come to dominate the news in recent days: cryptocurrency taxes. A brief item nestled in the bill would aim to raise about $28 billion over 10 years, mostly by extending financial reporting requirements for digital assets to brokers and trades of more than $10,000. The crypto tax quickly became the subject of two dueling proposed amendments, as well as... Читать дальше...

This spring, when Libby Gonzales arrived in Austin, Texas, with her mother, Rachel, and her little sister, Cecilia, she was already a veteran of the state’s legislative sessions; this would be her third. The first time, she testified against laws meant to ban her from girls’ bathrooms in school. Now she was facing bills to block her access to lifesaving health care and to criminalize her medical providers and her parents. Libby is 11.

Quiz time: What is the current amount of the federal budget deficit?

I’ll give the answer at the end of this column. For now, what you need to know is that it’s massive. Like, yuge. It’s pandemic-related, of course; it’s not even all Donald Trump’s fault, although his tax cuts for corporations and the rich didn’t help.

I ask because something fascinating and nearly unprecedented, at least in terms of our recent political history, just occurred. The Senate is about to pass the infrastructure bill. Читать дальше...

Last week, beleaguered Amazon workers and organizers received a rare gift from the government—two, in fact. The National Labor Relations Board released a ruling stating that Amazon officials had unlawfully interfered with the union election at a warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, and recommended that the election, which recorded 1,798 votes against unionization and 738 in favor, should be held again. A second NLRB ruling declared that Amazon had also unlawfully interfered in union organizing at a facility in Staten Island... Читать дальше...

It is a bit strange to refer to the relationship between a soccer player and the club that pays him more than £150 million a year as “romantic.” It is stranger still when that player has spent much of the last few seasons glowering on and off the field, understandably upset with the team’s financial mismanagement, disastrous acquisitions, humiliating European defeats, and general incompetence—as well as its decision to allow his best friend to leave, for a pittance, to join a rival that would then win the league. Читать дальше...

In the year since the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer, and the mass protests that followed, Confederate monuments have come down with astonishing speed. According to a February 2021 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which keeps the most exhaustive database of Confederate symbols nationwide, 94 monuments were taken down in 2020—nearly twice as many as in the four years prior combined. Even the removal of 54 monuments between 2015 and 2019 was a notable break from the past. Читать дальше...