July 24, 2021

Conservative radio host, former vaccine skeptic ill with Covid-19

A conservative radio host in Tennessee who expressed skepticism about Covid-19 vaccines and was unvaccinated is hospitalized in critical care with the disease, his station announced Friday.

Phil Valentine, who hosts a show bearing his name on WWTN-FM in Nashville, contracted the coronavirus a little more than a week ago and is battling pneumonia, his family said in a statement posted on Twitter.

“He is in the hospital in the critical care unit breathing with assistance but is NOT on a ventilator,” the family said. “Phil would like for his listeners to know that while he has never been an “anti-vaxer” he regrets not being more vehemently “Pro-Vaccine”, and looks forward to being able to more vigorously advocate that position as soon as he is back on the air, which we all hope will be soon.

"Phil & his family would like for all of you to know that he loves ya’ll and appreciates your concern, thoughts & prayers more than you will ever know. Please continue to pray for his recovery and PLEASE GO GET VACCINATED!”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/conservative-radio-host-former-vaccine-skeptic-ill-covid-19-n1274889

July 21, 2021

Top U.S. Catholic Church official resigns after cellphone data used to track him on Grindr and to ga

Source: Washington Post

The top administrator of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops resigned after a Catholic media site told the conference it had access to cellphone data that appeared to show he was a regular user of Grindr, the queer dating app, and frequented gay bars.

Some privacy experts said that they couldn’t recall other instances of phone data being de-anonymized and reported publicly, but that it’s not illegal and will likely happen more as people come to understand what data is available about others.

Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill has since last fall been the general secretary of the USCCB, a position that coordinates all administrative work and planning for the conference, which is the country’s network for Catholic bishops. As a priest, he takes a vow of celibacy. Catholic teaching opposes sexual activity outside heterosexual marriage.



Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2021/07/20/bishop-misconduct-resign-burrill/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3433384%2F60f84b259d2fda945a1005ab%2F5bc97fa5ae7e8a50f8217d42%2F29%2F70%2F60f84b259d2fda945a1005ab

July 21, 2021

Anti-LGBTQ activist who tried to stop vaccine distribution dies of COVID-19

A rightwing, anti-LGBTQ activist who tried to stop her state from distributing coronavirus vaccines has died due to complications from COVID-19.

Linda Zuern of Bourne, Massachusetts passed away last week at age 70 at a hospital in Boston. She had to be flown to the hospital due to her severe case of COVID and was in a coma at the end of her life, breathing through a ventilator. She was not vaccinated against coronavirus, according to people who knew her.

Zuern went to South Dakota to visit her mother and, when she was returning to Massachusetts, both she and her mother developed COVID-19 symptoms. Her mother survived.

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2021/07/anti-lgbtq-activist-tried-stop-vaccine-distribution-dies-covid-19/

July 18, 2021

Amazon Rainforests Are Now Releasing More Carbon Than They Absorb

For generations, Amazonia, which spans more than two million square miles, was a reliable carbon sink, meaning that it naturally absorbed high levels of carbon dioxide from the air, and it played an important role in keeping the global environment stable.

Findings from the nearly decade-long research project, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, suggest that deforestation and fire, among other factors, have dramatically undercut the Amazon's ability to absorb heat-trapping carbon emissions from the atmosphere.

"The Amazon is a carbon source. No doubt," Luciana Gatti, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research who led the study, said in an interview with environmental news site Mongabay. "By now we can say that the budget for the Amazon is 0.3 billion tons of carbon per year [released] into the atmosphere. It's a horrible message."

Gatti said that were it not for the emissions from man-made fires, the southeastern part of the Amazon could have continued to be a "carbon sink," meaning it absorbs more CO2 than it lets out. The region is now at a "tipping point," Gatti said. But when faced with the question of whether these disastrous effects could be reversed if we started now, she answered, "I don't know."
https://www.npr.org/2021/07/15/1016469317/parts-of-the-amazon-rainforest-are-now-releasing-more-carbon-than-they-absorb

July 14, 2021

Daily Covid Cases Triple Across Southern California

COVID-19 is rebounding across Southern California, swelling the numbers of infections and hospitalizations and prompting fresh calls for residents to get vaccinated.

While their overall numbers remain relatively low compared with the pandemic’s earlier high-water marks, Orange, San Diego and San Bernardino counties have all seen their daily case averages more than triple over the past two weeks — mirroring a trend in Los Angeles County, data compiled by The Times show.

Fourteen days ago, Orange County was reporting a weekly average of about 48 new cases per day. Now, the figure is 150. During that same time, averages grew in San Diego County from 92 cases per day to 344; in San Bernardino County from 55 cases per day to 215; and in L.A. County from 298 cases per day to 983.

https://ktla.com/news/local-news/covid-19-cases-and-hospitalizations-rebound-in-o-c-other-socal-suburbs/

July 2, 2021

UNC board approves tenure for journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones after uproar

Trustees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill voted Wednesday to grant tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones, after weeks of controversy over why the university initially chose to hire the award-winning journalist as a professor without that level of job protection.

The board’s 9-to-4 vote in favor of tenure came after a lengthy closed-session meeting on the final day of the terms of several members of the public university’s board of trustees. It also came a day before Hannah-Jones had originally been set to start working for UNC.
...
Hannah-Jones is best known for conceiving the 1619 Project for the New York Times, an initiative to reexamine American history and the consequences of slavery from the year enslaved African people arrived in colonial Virginia.

Last year Hannah-Jones won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary for the essay she wrote for the project. She has won numerous other professional honors, including a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant. She holds a master’s degree from the UNC journalism school and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/06/30/hannah-jones-unc-tenure-vote/