Новости за 07.07.2022

On a sunny afternoon six weeks ago, a group of botanists who had spent years scouring Far West Texas for a long-lost oak species finally found their bounty. And this Thursday, they announced it to the world: Quercus tardifolia officially still exists—as one lone tree.

Just days after President Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act into law on June 25—the first major gun reform bill in three decades—a 21-year-old man with a semiautomatic assault-style rifle opened fire on a Fourth of July parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois. He killed seven people and injured dozens more.

President Joe Biden received some blowback from liberals over the past week for a reported deal that he struck with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Under the alleged terms of these strange bedfellows’ compact, Biden would nominate a specific candidate of McConnell’s choosing to a federal district-court judgeship in McConnell’s home state of Kentucky. In exchange, McConnell would stop blocking two of Biden’s nominees for federal prosecutor positions in the state.

The Amazon rainforest was razed last year at the fastest rate in fifteen years. This year could be even worse. A number of factors, both domestic and international, are conspiring to make the fate of the Amazon a central issue in the world’s fourth-largest democracy, as Brazilians prepare to head to the polls in October.