Smoke from Northwest wildfires fills skies over much of the nation
PHILADELPHIA — Shrouds of smoke from wildfires in the Pacific Northwest again are congesting the skies over much of the nation — and they are forecast to persist at least well into Wednesday.
While smoky haze from distant wildfires isn’t all that unusual, said Tom Kines, senior meteorologist with AccuWeather Inc., “to have it this thick, it doesn’t happen very often.”
Air-quality alerts were in effect on both sides of the Delaware, with health officials advising those with heart or lung issues to eschew strenuous outdoor activity. However, the fact that the smoky veil will remain so high in the atmosphere should mitigate the health impacts, said Kines.
Canadian fires were concentrated Wednesday along the British Columbia-Washington border, and the massive “Bootleg Fire” has engulfed close to 400,000 acres of woodlands in south-central Oregon, forcing evacuations, the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center reported.
Prevailing upper-air winds were exporting the smoke all the way to the Atlantic seaboard and were likely to continue to do so Wednesday, according to the National Centers for Environmental Prediction.
The smoke was stacked in a roughly two-mile layer, five to seven miles above the surface, said Patrick O’Hara, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Mount Holly.
If you think you’re smelling smoke, you’re not necessarily hallucinating: A subtle odor might be detectable on occasion, he said, as some of the particles could mix down close to the surface.
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
Greene suspended from Twitter over ‘misleading’ vaccine information
Georgia Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was suspended from Twitter for 12 hours for violating rules on spreading vaccine misinformation.
Greene, who has been vocally opposed to vaccines, mask mandates and other public health measures intended to quell the coronavirus pandemic, crossed a line when she tweeted false information over the weekend, causing them to be labeled “misleading,” CNET reported Monday.
In her tweets, she stated that the virus is only dangerous to obese people, or those over age 65. She also alluded to false claims of health problems causes by the vaccine, including high death rates.
“We took enforcement action on the account …(@mtgreenee) for violations of the Twitter rules, specifically the COVID-19 misleading information policy,” a Twitter spokesperson said Monday.
Continuing to share misinformation about COVID-19 via Twitter could get her permanently banned, CNN reported.
The ban came after the White House pushed back against social media platforms that are enabling such misinformation to spread.
“I am urging all Americans to help slow the spread of health misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond,” U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy wrote in an advisory last week. “Health misinformation is a serious threat to public health. It can cause confusion, sow mistrust, harm people’s health, and undermine public health efforts. Limiting the spread of health misinformation is a moral and civic imperative that will require a whole-of-society effort.”
—New York Daily News
Poway synagogue shooter pleads guilty to murder, attempted murder
SAN DIEGO – A former nursing student pleaded guilty in San Diego Superior Court on Tuesday to shooting congregants at a Poway synagogue on the last day of Passover in 2019, killing one person and injuring three others, including a child.
John T. Earnest, now 22, admitted charges of murder and attempted murder in a plea deal that spares him a potential death sentence. He pleaded guilty to all the charges he faced, including an arson charge for setting fire to an Escondido mosque a month before the attack on the synagogue, and he admitted that both acts were hate crimes.
As a result of his plea, Earnest will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 121 years to life and another 16 years.
He is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 30 in San Diego Superior Court.
In addition to the case the District Attorney's Office brought in state court, Earnest was indicted in federal court, where he is facing hate crimes charges and more.
Earnest has signed a conditional plea agreement in the federal prosecution that has been submitted to the office of U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, attorneys said in early June. The terms of that plea offer have not been disclosed, nor have attorneys said publicly if those terms have been accepted.
The federal case had stalled somewhat over the past year as the court awaited a decision on whether the Department of Justice would be seeking the death penalty. Federal prosecutors have until Aug. 30 to let the judge know if they plan to seek execution.
—The San Diego Union-Tribune
Rural children at greater risk for self-inflicted gunshot wounds, study says
CHICAGO — Children and teens from rural areas are nearly 40% more likely to land in the emergency room for self-harm than their big-city counterparts, according to a new study published in the Journal of Pediatrics.
And when it comes to self-inflicted firearm injuries, the difference is even more pronounced.
Rural youth in the study were three times more likely to be treated in the emergency room for self-inflicted gunshot wounds than their urban counterparts.
“More attention needs to be given to youth mental health, including earlier diagnosis, and more resources need to be invested in rural areas,” said study co-author Dr. Jennifer Hoffmann, a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Lurie Children’s Hospital.
“(And) it’s important that more messaging goes out about safe firearms storage.”
The study, based on a database containing 33 million emergency room visits in 37 states during 2016, didn’t examine the reasons for the higher rates of self-harm by firearms in rural America, but Hoffmann offered several potential explanations based on previous studies, among them that rural households are more likely to contain guns.
The study used a representative sample of ER visits by young people ages 5 to 19, to estimate that nearly 300,000 young people visited the emergency room due to suicidal thoughts and/or self-harm in 2016.
—Chicago Tribune
