Global warming to increase violent crime in the United States

Here’s something new for Trump to blame

University of Colorado at Boulder

People in the United States could see tens of thousands of extra violent crimes every year -- because of climate change alone.

"Depending on how quickly temperatures rise, we could see two to three million more violent crimes between now and the end of the century than there would be in a non-warming world," said Ryan Harp, researcher at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder and lead author of a new study published in Environmental Research Letters.

Republicans know Trump did it —

They just don’t care

Written by David Atkins / The Washington Monthly 

So it has come to this, as we all knew it would. Republicans in the Senate have decided to hold a sham trial without witnesses or evidence. It’s not because they don’t want to hear the truth, it’s because they already know the truth. They know the president is guilty, and they simply don’t care.

The few GOP senators who pretended at a conscience toward the end have predictably decided to throw in their lot with the majority of their conservative colleagues cravenly engaging in a coverup for the president, while pretending to be deeply offended at the suggestion that that is exactly what they are doing. 

And why? Because they fear the wrath of Trump’s base and his twitter feed more than they fear the voters or the judgment of history. And because they simply don’t care.

The House impeachment managers put on a masterful legal display, embarrassing Trump’s lawyers at every turn. It was an impressive feat blunted only by the fact that the case was so easy to make. 

Trump’s guilt is obvious on its face. He obstructed every witness, document and request–not something that innocent people do. His legal defense attempted to use this obstruction of direct witness testimony to claim that the only confirmations of his guilt came not from hearsay. And then former National Security Advisor John Bolton blew that defense out of the water via media reports. 

The case, then was open and shut.

DON'T touch that switch

What else is William Barr good for?

Why you need more Vitamin D in the winter

For one thing, less sunlight
Margherita T. Cantorna, Pennsylvania State University

Vitamin D is sometimes called the sunshine vitamin.
FotoHelin/Shutterstock.com 

Winter is upon us and so is the risk of vitamin D deficiency and infections.

Vitamin D, which is made in our skin following sunlight exposure and also found in oily fish (mackerel, tuna and sardines), mushrooms and fortified dairy and nondairy substitutes, is essential for good health.

Humans need vitamin D to keep healthy and to fight infections. The irony is that in winter, when people need vitamin D the most, most of us are not getting enough. So how much should we take?

Should we take supplements? How do we get more? And, who needs it most?

I am a medical microbiologist and immunologist who studies the functions of vitamin D in immune cells. My laboratory has been interested in figuring out why the immune system has vitamin D receptors that determine which cells can use vitamin D. In the immune system, vitamin D acts to improve your ability to fight infections and to reduce inflammation.

Add tongue exercise to your fitness routine

Losing tongue fat improves sleep apnea

University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

Losing weight is an effective treatment for Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA), but why exactly this is the case has remained unclear. 

Now, researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have discovered that improvements in sleep apnea symptoms appear to be linked to the reduction of fat in one unexpected body part -- the tongue.

Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure the effect of weight loss on the upper airway in obese patients, researchers found that reducing tongue fat is a primary factor in lessening the severity of OSA. The findings were published today in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

Still waiting for the Church to come clean

Catholic Leaders Promised Transparency About Child Abuse. They Haven’t Delivered.
By Lexi Churchill, Ellis Simani and Topher Sanders for ProPublica

It took 40 years and three bouts of cancer for Larry Giacalone to report his claim of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a Boston priest named Richard Donahue.

Giacalone sued Donahue in 2017, alleging the priest molested him in 1976, when Giacalone was 12 and Donahue was serving at Sacred Heart Parish. 

The lawsuit never went to trial, but a compensation program set up by the archdiocese concluded that Giacalone “suffered physical injuries and emotional injuries as a result of physical abuse” and directed the archdiocese to pay him $73,000.

Even after the claim was settled and the compensation paid in February 2019, however, the archdiocese didn’t publish Donahue’s name on its list of accused priests. Nor did it three months later when Giacalone’s lawyer, Mitchell Garabedian, criticized the church publicly for not adding Donahue’s name to the list.

Church leaders finally added Donahue to the list last month after ProPublica asked why he hadn’t been included. But that, too, sowed confusion. 

Despite the determination that Giacalone was entitled to compensation, Donahue’s name was added to a portion of the list for priests accused in cases deemed “unsubstantiated” — where the archdiocese says it does not have sufficient evidence to determine whether the clergy member committed the alleged abuse.

“To award a victim a substantial amount of money, yet claim that the accused is not a pedophile, is an insult to one’s intelligence,” said Garabedian, who has handled hundreds of abuse cases over the last 25 years. “It’s a classic case of the archdiocese ducking, delaying and avoiding issues.”
Donahue, in an interview with ProPublica, denied the allegation by Giacalone.

Over the last year and a half, the majority of U.S. dioceses, as well as nearly two dozen religious orders, have released lists of abusers currently or formerly in their ranks. The revelations were no coincidence: They were spurred by a 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report, which named hundreds of priests as part of a statewide clergy abuse investigation. 

To see the list for the Diocese of Providence, CLICK HERE.

Rhode Island tries investment leverage to resolve issues at private prison in Central Falls

Treasurer Magaziner urges Wyatt bondholder Invesco to address community concerns over prison

By  Steve Ahlquist

Rhode Island Treasurer Seth Magaziner has sent a letter to Invesco CEO Martin Flanagan, over concerns with the situation at the Donald D Wyatt Detention Facility in the City of Central Falls, Rhode Island.

Invesco runs Rhode Island’s CollegeBound Saver and CollegeBound 529 plans, and is also the majority bondholder for the Wyatt Detention Facility following the company’s merger with Oppenheimer in 2019.

Magaziner was approached by activists with AMOR (Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance) and agreed to meet with them to discuss their concerns. On January 29, Magaziner sent the following letter to Invesco:

Robbed by the Russian judges

Evidence

Same protection for one-tenth the cost

Surgical masks as good as respirators for flu and respiratory virus protection

UT Southwestern Medical Center

Researchers may finally have an answer in the long-running controversy over whether the common surgical mask is as effective as more expensive respirator-type masks in protecting health care workers from flu and other respiratory viruses.

A study published in JAMA compared the ubiquitous surgical (or medical) mask, which costs about a dime, to a less commonly used respirator called an N95, which costs around $1. 

The study reported "no significant difference in the effectiveness" of medical masks vs. N95 respirators for prevention of influenza or other viral respiratory illness.

Bag it

Environmental Groups Support Latest Bag Ban Bill

By TIM FAULKNER/ecoRI News staff. Lots of videos in Tim's original article (click the title link to see)

Dave McLaughlin of Clean Ocean Access put it best when he described the latest bill for a statewide ban on plastic shopping bags: “It’s like a test. You want a 98 but you’ll take a 91,” he said after a Jan. 29 hearing for a Senate bill that drew near uniform support from environmental groups.

McLaughlin and others from local environmental organizations were pleased that the legislation included the so-called “stitched-handles provision” that prevents retailers from substituting thick plastic bags for the traditional thin-film retail bags and calling them reusable.

The Plastic Waste Reduction Act doesn’t impose a fee on paper bags and contains a uniformity provision, or preemption clause, that prevents communities from enacting stricter bans in place of the state mandate.

Last year, the lack of a fee and, to a greater extent, the inclusion of a preemption clause soured groups such as Clean Water Action, the Conservation Law Foundation, and Clean Ocean Access and members of Gov. Gina Raimondo’s Task Force to Tackle Plastics, an initiative that failed to secure any directives last year.

Task force member Kate Weymouth, vice president of the Barrington Town Council, recounted at the recent Senate hearing how back in 2015 Barrington had to revise its bag ban after CVS, Shaw’s, and Talbots used a loophole to hand out thick plastic bags to local shoppers. 

This corporate sleight of hand prompted concern that national chains and their friends in the plastic bag and petrochemical industries would skirt the terms of a statewide bag ban.

But Weymouth and others noted that the proposed statewide ban is one of the strongest in the nation, and, after failing last year, that passing the bill is more important than securing every pro-environment provision.

Put away that jelly roll

Belly fat linked with repeat heart attacks

Sophia Antipolis

Heart attack survivors who carry excess fat around their waist are at increased risk of another heart attack, according to research published today in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).

Prior studies have shown that abdominal obesity is an important risk factor for having a first heart attack. But until now, the association between abdominal obesity and the risk of a subsequent heart attack or stroke was unknown.

“Patients are typically put on a stringent medical treatment regimen after their first attack to prevent second events (called secondary prevention),” said study author Dr. Hanieh Mohammadi of the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden.

Science is on Greta's side

Children to bear the burden of negative health effects from climate change

University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

For more cartoons  by Ted Rall, CLICK HERE.

The grim effects that climate change will have on pediatric health outcomes was the focus of a "Viewpoint" article published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation by Susan E. Pacheco, MD, an expert at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).

Pacheco, an associate professor of pediatrics at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth, along with professors from Johns Hopkins Medicine and the George Washington University, authored a series of articles that detail how increased temperatures due to climate change will negatively affect the health of humanity. 

In the article authored by Pacheco, she shines a light on the startling effects the crisis has on children's health before they are even born.

The Senate’s make-believe trial of Donald Trump

In my 40 years as a lawyer, I’ve never seen a trial flout the basic requirements for fairness so brazenly.

By Mitchell Zimmerman 

President Trump is on trial.

As in a real trial, charges have been asserted: the House alleges high crimes and misdemeanors. A judge presides: Chief Justice John Roberts sits in his fine black robe at the head of the chamber. 

There are prosecutors (the House impeachment managers) and defense counsel (Trump’s “A-team” of lawyers).

And pursuant to our Constitution, the jurors — the members of the Senate — have sworn an oath to render “impartial justice” at the end of the trial.

So, it looks like a trial. Except that in my 40 years as a lawyer, I’ve never seen a trial that corruptly flouted the basic requirements for fairness as brazenly as this one.

In a real trial, any juror who admitted conspiring with the defendant would be unceremoniously ejected from the jury. 

Yet Republican Senate leader and sworn-to-be-impartial juror Mitch McConnell openly proclaims on television, “Everything I do during this, I’m coordinating with White House counsel.”

Only in Alice in Wonderland would we expect a verdict prior to jury deliberations —  or a juror like Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who announced his vote before the trial began: “I am trying to give a pretty clear signal I have made up my mind. I’m not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here.”

Still more bizarre is a “trial” where the jurors refuse to consider evidence. Ten Republican Senators proposed to dismiss the case without any proceedings, and McConnell is against having witnesses testify or produce documents.

A trial without evidence — the testimony of witnesses and documents — is a travesty of justice.