Canadian wildfires prompt New York air quality alert
The air quality index (AQI) is predicted to be above 100 in much of New York state on Saturday, and could reach 135. Alerts are also in place for parts of New England.The AQI measures the severity of pollution in the air and categorises health risks. The higher the number, the more unsafe the air is to breathe. This is not the first time US authorities have issued air quality alerts because of smoke from the Canadian wildfires.In mid-July, a similar alert was issued for Chicago, with additional precautions advised for babies and the elderly.The political implications of the wildfire smoke have also reached Washington.Earlier in July, six members of Congress wrote to the Canadian ambassador complaining that smoke from wildfires was making it difficult for Americans to enjoy their summer.There are currently more than 550 active fires in Canada, with the most concentrated in the province of Manitoba, according to authorities. 6.1 million hectares (15 million acres) of land has been burnt across the country in the past year.May and June were particularly destructive months in western Canada, with roughly 30,000 people forced to evacuate in the provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, where local administrations declared a state of emergency.Scientists have consistently linked the intensifying wildfire seasons to climate change.Canada is believed to be warming at twice the global average rate, and its Arctic regions are heating up at nearly three times the global rate, scientists have warned.
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Reuters
11 minutes ago
- Reuters
US National Weather Service to restore hundreds of jobs cut under Trump
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The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
‘Impossible to rebuild': NIH scientists say Trump cuts will imperil life-saving research
Last week, the office of management and budget (OMB) revealed plans to freeze all outside funding for National Institutes of Health research this fiscal year, but reversed course later that day, leaving the scientific community in a state of whiplash. A senior official at the NIH who spoke on condition of anonymity said this was just the latest in a 'multi-prong' approach by the Trump administration to destroy American scientific research. In July, the National Cancer Institute, which is part of the NIH, updated its website to reflect Trump administration plans to significantly cut cancer research spending as well. Since January, the administration has been cancelling NIH grants, in some cases targeting other specific research areas, such as HIV treatment and prevention. 'It's really, really bad at NIH right now,' said the official, who added that researchers working outside the NIH have been unaware of the severity of the situation until recently, even though they have also faced funding upheaval since the winter. 'The Trump administration is, for the first time in history, substantially intervening inside NIH to bring it under political control,' the official said. 'That's what we saw this week with the OMB freeze on funding.' 'I think the core of it is that they want to destroy universities, or at least turn them into rightwing ideological factories,' the official said, since the majority of the NIH's grants are distributed to researchers in universities, medical schools and similar institutions. In 2021, JD Vance gave a speech entitled The Universities Are the Enemy. The official said they were alarmed at how little universities are fighting back – many have settled with the administration, which has 'gotten Columbia to completely knuckle under. One of America's most significant universities and a place that is a worldwide magnet for talents. Same thing at Penn. Now they're going after UCLA.' Institutions such as the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have also stayed on the sidelines, refusing to sufficiently resist Trump, the official said. If the administration does manage to freeze NIH funding, it will push to rescind the funds permanently using a rescission motion, the official said. This type of motion only requires a simple majority of 50 votes to pass the Senate, instead of the supermajority necessary to beat a filibuster. Republicans would have enough votes to 'ram through these motions to effectively cut the budget without Democrats in Congress weighing in. It's an ongoing disaster.' Researchers at the many universities where the administration has frozen funding, such as Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, are starting to feel the gravity of the situation, said the official. Carole LaBonne, a biologist at Northwestern, said 'university labs are hanging by a thread', explaining that even though the OMB reversed its decision to freeze outside NIH funding, 'the baseline reality is not much better'. Other recent changes at the NIH include allocating research grants all at once rather than over multiple years, so that fewer projects are funded. Reductions in cancer research funding also mean that only 4% of relevant grant applications will move forward. 'This will effectively shut down cancer research in this country and destroy the careers of many scientists. This is devastating,' LaBonne said. The extreme uncertainty surrounding scientific research is also negatively affecting scientists' mental health. 'I do not know any faculty who are not incredibly stressed right now, wondering how long they will be able to keep their labs going and if/when they will have to let laboratory staff go,' LaBonne said. 'It also very hard to motivate oneself to write grants, a painstaking and time-intensive processes, when there is a 96% chance it will not be funded.' Ryan Gutenkunst, who heads the department of molecular and cellular biology at the University of Arizona, said: 'The chaos at NIH is definitely freaking [faculty and students] out and wasting huge amounts of emotional energy and time. We were emailing about the latest pause, only to find it unpaused hours later.' Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion The senior NIH official found last week's events unsurprising, they said: 'They're throwing everything at the wall to stop NIH from spending. What struck me was that many of my colleagues at universities were like, 'Oh, my God, they're stopping grants.' And it really seemed to activate people in a way that I hadn't seen before, whereas a lot of us at NIH thought, 'Oh, they just did another thing.'' Science is an engine for American economic dominance, and scientific clusters such as Silicon Valley could not exist without federal funding, the official said. 'Once you break them, it will be impossible to rebuild them. We're on the path to breaking them.' LaBonne said she worried about the impact on progress in cancer specifically. 'My own research touches on pediatric cancers. Forty years ago more than 60% of children diagnosed with cancer would have died within five years of diagnosis. Today there is a 90% survival rate. We should not put progress like that in danger,' she said. Although many major scientific institutions have complied with the administration, grassroots organizations and individual scientists, including those within the NIH, are finding ways to resist. The senior NIH official said they were most hopeful about grassroots organizers who are resisting the Trump administration openly, rather than relying on older strategies such as litigation and negotiations with Congress. For example, Science Homecoming, a website to promote science communication, is encouraging scientists to get the word out about the importance of federal funding to their home towns. The Bethesda Declaration, signed by 484 NIH staff, directly accused NIH director Jay Bhattacharya of 'a failure of your legal duty to use congressionally appropriated funds for critical NIH research. Each day that the NIH continues to disrupt research, your ability to deliver on this duty narrows.'
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
People who get ‘Obamacare' health insurance are set to see premiums jump by 18%, study finds
People who receive health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, are set to see their premiums jump by 18 percent, according to analysis of preliminary insurance rates. Under Obamacare, people who may not have health insurance through their employer but are not eligible for Medicaid can purchase health care on state exchanges. If they earn an income below a certain threshold they could be eligible for tax credits. The hike in insurance premiums is due to rising healthcare costs, inflation, uncertainty over federal policy changes and, potentially, President Donald Trump's tariffs, according health policy think tank KFF. The think tank analyzed filings from 312 insurers across 50 states and Washington, D.C. to state regulators detailing their expectations and rate changes for Obamacare plans for 2026. The increase in the median premium is more than double last year's 7 percent proposed increase and is the largest rate change health insurers have requested in five years, the think tank found. 'Tariffs could potentially put upward pressure on the costs of pharmaceuticals and medical supplies, driving premiums upward in 2026,' the report summarized. 'However, there is considerable uncertainty about how these trade policies will impact medical pricing, and insurers vary in how (or if) they factor tariffs into their rate development.' Tax credits for the Affordable Care Act will expire at the end of the calendar year unless Congress intervenes. Insurers also cited this is a factor in higher premium rates. 'The expiration of enhanced tax credits will lead to out-of-pocket premiums for ACA marketplace enrollees increasing by an average of more than 75 percent, with insurers expecting healthier enrollees to drop coverage,' KFF's report said. 'That, in turn, increases underlying premiums.' Experts warned that the increase in premiums is going to 'shock' a lot of Americans. 'I think there's going to be a lot of sticker shock of people who aren't following this debate in Congress and are going to be stunned by just how much their rates go up, because the premiums will increase substantially,' Jonathan Oberlander, a professor of social medicine at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, told The Independent. 'They might not get employer-sponsored health care, but they're like realtors or entrepreneurs or small business owners or Uber drivers,' one former Capitol Hill aide who now works in health care told The Independent. 'These folks – going to the exchanges trying to purchase their health insurance, they're on the precipice of seeing a big cost of living increase.'
