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from Asia Times
LEAST BIASED, HIGH; News & Media Website based in Hong Kong
Covid-19 has driven home the fact that as the world market is crippled by the health crisis, Beijing has to count on self-sufficiency and call on its own people to spend their way out of trouble. President Xi Jinping has coined the term “internal circulation” to sum up his new drive to fire up domestic consumption, including the painful destocking for many manufacturers when export-oriented products must be sold at home. Some cadres appear to have been lulled into believing that pent-up demand is being unleashed amid a nationwide shopping binge, when cashed-up holiday crowds return to throng boutique stores and commercial precincts the moment they can get out and about again. An imminent post-Covid consumption boom soon became the consensus of Xi and other top leaders until the premier made a shocking revelation about how many Chinese had been living on a meager income. Li Keqiang gave a sobering reminder, at a press conference following the conclusion of this year’s parliamentary session in May, that roughly 600 million Chinese – half the population – were eking out a living with a monthly income of 1,000 yuan (US$150) or less in 2019.
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from Capital Press
The West's Ag Website
University of California Cooperative Extension researchers just completed a timely study showing cattle grazing is an essential tool in reducing wildfire — a tool they say should be expanded and refined. Recent record-shattering wildfires across California, Oregon and Washington have demonstrated the need for better fire control. Researchers say their study shows that without the 1.8 million beef cattle that graze California’s rangelands annually, the state would have hundreds to thousands of additional pounds per acre of fine fuels on the landscape, and this year’s wildfires would be even more devastating. Researchers say cattle grazing is underutilized on public and private lands and targeted grazing should be expanded.
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from Competitive Enterprise Institute
If only the FDA had done its job as a regulator, promulgating rules that promote compliance, a vibrant above-board market, and public health, an entire industry would not face extinction, the illicit market would have been kept at bay, and FDA itself would not be dealing with a paperwork nightmare. There were numerous ways the FDA could have changed the process to encourage industry to comply with regulations: Since most products in the vapor market are similar, it could have standardized applications or issued pre-approval for certain combinations of ingredients. The FDA could have given companies a clearer idea of the requirements to meet application standards and eliminated the need for each company to include superfluous information. And it could have created the “streamlined” pathway for small manufacturers that Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar promised it would create in January. But none of that happened and now time is up: For regulators, for the industry, and potentially for consumers. Whatever happens now to the industry and public health as a result of the FDA’s recalcitrance is on the agency’s conscience and regulatory report card.
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from DW News (Deutsche Welle)
Broadcasting & Media Production Company in Bonn, Germany
Demonstrations against the embattled regime of Alexander Lukashenko have continued in Minsk despite ongoing repression. Protesters were kettled and attacked by masked men not wearing insignias.
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from MyNorthwest.com
Media/News Company in Seattle
Wildfires and high winds on Monday were an especially bad combination in Whitman County south of Spokane. Much of the old railroad town of Malden – as well as an iconic bridge near Colfax – were destroyed by separate fires. Malden was founded around 1908, and named for Malden, Massachusetts. It became a “division point,” or regional headquarters, for the railroad known as The Milwaukee Road. Their full name was the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad, and they were the last to build a transcontinental route across Washington and the Cascades, decades after the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern had done so. At Malden, which was on the mainline between Puget Sound and Chicago, the Milwaukee Road built a sizable rail yard and a roundhouse – for locomotive maintenance and repairs – which meant jobs, money, and a reason-to-be for the pop-up town.
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from The North American Anglican
Media/News Company: "A journal of orthodox theology in the Anglican tradition"
Drew Keane: The classical Anglican practice of confirmation and its place in the process of Christian initiation was sharply criticized by the twentieth century liturgical movement. Since the promulgation of the 1979 Prayer Book it has frequently been called “a rite in search of a theology.” In fact, many contemporary Anglican liturgical scholars and theologians would like to see the rite altogether eliminated, despite popular attachment to it. I, however, think the rite not only has a theology, but a sound one presented in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, and will sketch out a case for it here. Despite the difficulties, Anglicans have generally regarded the special role of the episcopacy in confirmation to be a valuable aspect of the historic ministry of bishops and a positive benefit to the church.
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from Reason Magazine
Magazine in Los Angeles, California
Here's what we were told: An August motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, helped spread COVID-19 to more than a quarter-million Americans, making it the root of about 20 percent of all new coronavirus cases in the U.S. last month. So said a new white paper from the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, at least. And national news outlets ran with it. Not so fast. Let's take a look at what they actually tracked and what's mere speculation. According to South Dakota health officials, 124 new cases in the state—including one fatal case—were directly linked to the rally. Overall, COVID-19 cases linked to the Sturgis rally were reported in 11 states as of September 2, to a tune of at least 260 new cases, according to The Washington Post. There very well may be more cases that have been linked to the early August event, but so far, that's only 260 confirmed cases—about 0.1 percent of the number the IZA paper offers.
from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington
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HARRINGTON, Wash. – Seventy-six-year-old Jim Hoffman fought the smoldering fire Wednesday with a pitchfork. He was trying to keep the 130,000-acre Whitney Fire from crossing Seven Springs Dairy Road. Hoffman was born in 1944. By his third day, Hoffman was inside the dairy barn for which that road was named. “I saw a barn burning down that has been there since I was a teeny kid,” Hoffman said. “The worst thing I saw was a doe and two fawns that got circled. It killed them. This one, I think, is the worst fire I’ve ever seen here.” Hoffman looked out at the charred landscape that included 1,000 of his acres. He was trying with his pitchfork to save the 3,000 acres just across the road that his family relies on for winter pasture for his cattle. “If it burns up, we have to sell the cows or buy hay,” he said. Midway through his effort, a tanker truck arrived and helped put water on the fire. Hoffman pointed out that the same crews had done the same thing on the same spot the day before. Even at 76, Hoffman said he had little sleep. He was needed, he said, so he could direct fire crews in the dark so they didn’t drive into a ditch or over an embankment. Hoffman’s rescue effort was one of the many stops Wednesday for Craig Sweet, chief of the all-volunteer Lincoln County Fire District 5. Sweet’s crews have been battling the Whitney Fire since it started Monday when a power line came down on Hawk Creek Road. A driver couldn’t see the downed line and it sparked when the car’s windshield hit the wires, Sweet said. Pushed by gusts up to 45 mph, the fire quickly became an inferno that raced southwest. It crossed Highway 2 with the heavy smoke causing several collisions before officials closed the road. It jumped the highway and raced 12 miles before it turned west and ran another 27 miles, Sweet said.
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