Новости за 29.12.2021

It’s rare that Democrats and Republicans agree on much, but in political circles there’s a pretty widespread agreement on what the 2022 midterm elections will be: an undeniable shellacking for the Democratic Party. The common expectation is that Democrats will lose their small majority in the House of Representatives and face a knife fight to keep control of the Senate. There’s plenty of historical evidence that the party that controls the White House will win congressional seats and perhaps even control of some governors’ mansions. Читать дальше...

Much like the previous year, 2021 was a constant deluge of news: much of it bad (failed insurrection, the persistence of a deadly pandemic, etc.), some of it good (vaccines, boosters, etc.), and almost all of it overwhelming. It was a year of grim milestones, such that the phrase “grim milestone” itself became a cliché incapable of capturing the breathtaking devastation wrought by phenomena such as the pandemic and natural disasters.

In December 2008, a coal plant in Tennessee experienced a dike breach which led to the largest industrial spill North America has ever seen. In the middle of the night, more than 7.3 million tons of coal ash sludge barreled into neighboring homes and waterways. Coal ash, the toxic byproduct made from producing coal energy, is chock full of radioactive uranium and poisonous heavy metals including arsenic, chromium, mercury, and lead.