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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington
The Boston Tea Party was not about tea. It was a political protest against perceived overreach by an out-of-touch monarch into the affairs of individuals without their consent. A small group decided they had been pushed one step too far and tangibly registered their objections by brewing a shipload’s worth of tea in Boston Harbor. Likewise the pushback on COVID-driven mandates is not primarily about mRNA vaccines. It’s a Boston Tea Party moment when an overbearing executive branch of government has pushed a significant number of public employees and health care professionals one step too far.
The Ford-Corkscrew Fire in Stevens County grew to 15,000 acres by Thursday morning with 14% containment, but some relief may be in sight from lighter winds, rain and lower temperatures. The fire “has experienced extreme fire behavior since its start, including intense spotting and high rates of spread,” fire officials said. It’s also been threatening critical infrastructure, including cell phone towers.
In the midst of a brutal month for school administrators, Kyle Rydell has maintained his sense of perspective. Rydell, superintendent of the West Valley School District, is dealing with the same challenges as his colleagues around the state. On top of concerns over critical race theory and sex education, superintendents are getting squeezed from every side over mask and vaccine mandates issued by Gov. Jay Inslee.
There are more people hospitalized for COVID-19 in Spokane County – and Washington state – than ever before in the pandemic. The majority of those people are unvaccinated. In Spokane , more than 90% of patients hospitalized with the virus are unvaccinated, according to hospitals and the health district. The delta variant has led to a statewide surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations. Hospitals were already quite full, however, and most facilities were also experiencing staff shortages and clogs in the state health care system before the surge began in late July.
Through a $14.6 million National Institute on Aging grant, a Washington State University-led project will work to battle disparities associated with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia in Native populations. The outreach in the next five years will involve American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander groups across the U.S., including Washington state-based tribes and populations such as the Marshallese. Although culturally and geographically diverse, Native populations share “an unequal burden of conditions such as hypertension, Type 2 diabetes and low socioeconomic status that make dementia more likely,” a WSU news release said. Life expectancy within Native groups is increasing, raising concerns that Alzheimer’s and dementias might become a public health crisis.
A proposed energy project in south-central Idaho would more than double the amount of wind energy produced in the state, and U.S. officials said Thursday that they are taking comments on the plan. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is taking comments on the 1,000-megawatt project proposed by Magic Valley Energy that would include 400 wind turbines up to 740 feet high, taller than any in the state. The Lava Ridge Wind Project would be built in parts of Jerome, Lincoln and Minidoka counties and power upward of 300,000 homes.
On July 8, President Joe Biden stood in the East Room of the White House and delivered a clear message to the Afghans who served the U.S. government as interpreters and in other roles critical to the United States’ 20-year military presence in their country. “There is a home for you in the United States if you so choose,” Biden said, “and we will stand with you just as you stood with us.” But after the Taliban’s swift takeover of Afghanistan ended with the fall of Kabul on Sunday, the U.S. government’s promises to the Afghans who supported its two-decade experiment in nation building appear increasingly hard to keep and reflect a government that hasn’t reckoned with the full impact of its hasty withdrawal.
The fight over redrawing political maps is just ramping up in state legislatures and nonpartisan commissions around the country. But both Republicans and Democrats already are planning for major showdowns in the courts. For months, Democrats and Republicans have been laying the groundwork for a complex, 50-state legal battle over the once-a-decade process of redistricting. Both parties are preparing for a changed legal climate – where federal courts are newly hostile to claims of unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering and state courts could create a patchwork of rulings. And it will all play out in a tightened timeframe, thanks to pandemic-related delays.
U.S. officials launched a review Thursday of climate damage and other impacts from coal mining on public lands as the Biden administration expands its scrutiny of government fossil fuel sales that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. The review also will consider if companies are paying fair value for coal extracted from public reserves in Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Utah and other states, according to a federal register notice outlining the administration’s intents. Coal combustion for electricity remains one of the top sources of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, even after many power plants shut down over the past decade because of concerns over pollution.
Dry and windy weather dogged firefighters’ efforts to contain destructive fires that are devouring the bone-dry forests of drought-stricken Northern California on Thursday. An estimated 11,000 firefighters were on the lines of more than a dozen large wildfires that have destroyed hundreds of homes and other buildings, forced thousands of people to flee communities and filled skies with smoke.
The day before he was supposed to start fourth grade, Francisco Rosales was admitted to a Dallas hospital with COVID-19, struggling to breathe, with dangerously low oxygen levels and an uncertain outcome. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, thought his frightened mother, Yessica Gonzalez. Francisco was normally healthy and rambunctious. At 9, he was too young to get vaccinated, but most of the family had their shots. She had heard kids rarely got sick from the coronavirus.
Tourists and servers alike dance atop tables and in the aisles at one restaurant on the “Redneck Riviera,” a beloved stretch of towns along the northern Gulf Coast where beaches, bars and stores are packed. Yet just a few miles away, a hospital is running out of critical care beds, its rooms full of unvaccinated people fighting for their lives.
Educated young women, former U.S. military translators and other Afghans most at-risk from the Taliban appealed to the Biden administration to get them on evacuation flights as the United States struggled to bring order to the continuing chaos at the Kabul airport. President Joe Biden and his top officials said the U.S. was working to speed up the evacuation, but made no promises how long it would last or how many desperate people it would fly to safety. “We don’t have the capability to go out and collect large numbers of people,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters Wednesday, adding that evacuations would continue “until the clock runs out or we run out of capability.”
As President Donald Trump’s administration signed a peace deal with the Taliban in February 2020, he optimistically proclaimed that “we think we’ll be successful in the end.” His secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, asserted that the administration was “seizing the best opportunity for peace in a generation.” Eighteen months later, President Joe Biden is pointing to the agreement signed in Doha, Qatar, as he tries to deflect blame for the Taliban overrunning Afghanistan in a blitz. He says it bound him to withdraw U.S. troops, setting the stage for the chaos engulfing the country. But Biden can go only so far in claiming the agreement boxed him in. It had an escape clause: The U.S. could have withdrawn from the accord if Afghan peace talks failed. They did, but Biden chose to stay in it, although he delayed the complete pullout from May to September.
If you are immunocompromised, you should get your third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine when you can, doctors say. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention authorized third doses of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines for those who are moderately to severely immunocompromised. This includes people being treated for cancer, organ and stem cell transplant recipients, those taking high-dose corticosteroids, HIV patients and patients with moderate to severe immunodeficiency. ,,, The third dose is different from a booster dose, according to the CDC, which might become available later this fall to all fully vaccinated people when vaccines have potentially waned in effectiveness.
Amtrak is resuming Coast Starlight service between Los Angeles and Seattle on Aug. 23. Service on the Coast Starlight route was suspended for several weeks due to wildfire damage in Northern California, according to the company. Coast Starlight is widely regarded as one of the most spectacular of all train routes with scenery that includes peaks of the Cascade Range and Mount Shasta, lush forests and long stretches of the Pacific Ocean, Amtrak said in a release.
Micron Technology (Nasdaq: MU) is one of the leading manufacturers of DRAM (dynamic random access memory) products used in consumer PCs and mobile devices, and its products are increasingly being used in cloud server, industrial and other enterprise markets. DRAM makes up nearly three-quarters of Micron’s total revenue. Micron is also a leading supplier of the NAND flash storage devices used in solid-state drives (SSDs), which make up 24% of its business.
It’s early, but fisheries managers are concerned. The 2021 summer steelhead run on the Columbia and Snake rivers started July 1 and is one of the worst on record. Through Monday, 21,892 steelhead had been counted at Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River and just 494 at Lower Granite Dam on the Snake River. The count on the Columbia is second worst only to 1943 when 20,293 had been recorded passing the dam as of Aug. 16. “Back then they harvested a large percentage of the steelhead before they hit the dams. One could argue at least for this date, this is the worst steelhead run past the Bonneville area ever,” said Joe DuPont, regional fisheries manager for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game at Lewiston.
More than 100 people gathered outside of Spokane Fall Community College Friday to honor the change of George Wright Drive to Whistalks Way. The street was named in honor of the U.S. Army general George Wright who committed genocide against the Yakama, Spokane, Palouse and Coeur D’Alene tribes throughout the fall of 1858. The Spokane City Council unanimously voted to change the name last December.
Washington state agriculture workers have discovered their first Asian giant hornet nest. It was found Thursday morning north of Seattle near the Canadian border not far from where a resident saw a live Asian giant hornet on Aug. 11, The Bellingham Herald reported. State agriculture staff then netted, tagged with a tracker and released three hornets, according to a news release from the Washington State Department of Agriculture. One slipped out of the tracking device, another hornet was never located and one eventually led the team to the nest, officials said. ... Officials hope to destroy any nests by mid-September, before the colony would start creating new reproducing queens.
38 whitetail deer in eastern Washington dead from deadly hemorrhaging diseases, including bluetongue
Two viral and drought-related diseases have killed 38 whitetail deer in Eastern Washington. Two whitetail deer near Davenport, Wash., tested positive for bluetongue and epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD) this week. Meanwhile, 36 deer near Colfax are believed to have died from EHD.
As a result of human action, over the past half-century the Atlantic Ocean has been relentlessly consuming Atafona, part of the Sao Joao da Barra municipality that is 155 miles from Rio de Janeiro’s capital and home to 36,000 people. Due to climate change, there is little hope for a solution. Instead, Atafona will slip into the sea. The Paraiba do Sul River, which originates in neighboring Sao Paulo state, brings sediment and sand to Atafona where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean. Its flow was mostly diverted in the 1950s to provide water to the growing capital, which weakened Atafona’s natural barrier to the ocean, said Pedro de Araújo, materials technology professor at the Fluminense Federal Institute.
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