Midday open thread: 3,000 cities have high lead levels; Portland bans fossil fuel infrastructure
Today’s comic by Matt Bors is Political hacks talk Russia hacks:
• 3,000 U.S. cities have lead poisoning rates two to four times higher than Flint, Michigan.
• Ilse Hogue bows out of the running for DNC job. Among other things in her lengthy statement she says:
I am proud of the work that our NARAL team and members did this election cycle. We fought like our lives depended on it, because for so many it does. Organizations like mine, who have achieved a great affinity with our members, have a vital role to play while the party rebuilds. While I was at MoveOn, for instance, we were able to mobilize opposition to the war in Iraq ahead of the party and sow the seeds of the change election of 2006. We’ve learned time and again that where durable social movements authentically connect with cyclical electoral efforts, we make gains. It happened in Nevada this cycle, where NARAL was part of a successful effort to make a clean sweep of that state ballot, winning back both state legislative chambers in the process. It happened in North Carolina, where social movements threw their weight behind the effort to oust an entrenched governor.
• Mexico City fireworks blast kills 31 and puts 47 in hospital, many with severe burns:
The San Pablito fireworks market was especially well stocked for the holidays and bustling with hundreds of shoppers when a powerful chain-reaction explosion ripped through its stalls, killing at least 31 people and leaving dozens more badly burned.
The third such blast to ravage the market on the northern outskirts of Mexico’s capital since 2005 sent up a towering plume of smoke that was lit up by a staccato of bangs and flashes of light.
• How your cup of tea explains the universe.
• Portland, OR, just banned virtually all new dirty energy infrastructure:
On December 14, the city council in Portland, Oregon, voted unanimously to set “the first stone in a green wall across the West Coast,” in the words of Mayor Charlie Hales. He was referring to a groundbreaking new zoning ordinance that effectively bans all new fossil fuel export infrastructure within the city’s limits—including new port facilities for shipping coal, and holding tanks for oil and natural gas—and prevents existing facilities from expanding. The vote marks a hard-fought victory for local activists and environmental groups. And, in anticipation of the Trump administration’s pro-fossil fuel agenda, it signals to other cities that innovative action to counter climate change is still possible at a local level.
• Genetics study shows Inuits of the circumpolar world likely have Denisovan genes:
In the Arctic, the Inuits have adapted to severe cold and a predominantly seafood diet. After the first population genomic analysis of the Greenland Inuits, a region in the genome containing two genes has now been scrutinized by scientists: TBX15 and WARS2. This region is thought to be central to cold adaptation by generating heat from a specific type of body fat, and was earlier found to be a candidate for adaptation in the Inuits. [...]
To perform the study, they used the genomic data from nearly 200 Greenlandic Inuits and compared this to the 1000 Genomes Project and ancient hominid DNA from Neanderthals and Denisovans. The results, published in the advanced online edition of Molecular Biology and Evolution, provide convincing evidence that the Inuit variant of the TBX15/WARS2 region first came into modern humans from an archaic hominid population, likely related to the Denisovans.
• On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin recounts complaints of Dems bringing knives to gunfights, but puts the importance of teamwork above all. Joan McCarter knows Trumps can never stay blind to emoluments. And Trump’s doctor is even more wigged out than we thought.