METHANE EMISSIONS REACH RECORD
Global emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, soared to a record high in 2017, the most recent year for which worldwide data are available, researchers said Tuesday.
And they warned that the rise — driven by fossil fuel leaks and agriculture — would most certainly continue despite the economic slowdown from the coronavirus crisis, which is bad news for efforts to limit global warming and its grave effects.
The latest findings, published on Tuesday in two scientific journals, underscore how methane presents a growing threat, even as the world finds some success in reining in carbon dioxide emissions, the most abundant greenhouse gas and the main cause of global warning.
Ole Miss moves Confederate statue from prominent campus spot.
JACKSON, MISS.»A Confederate monument that’s long been a divisive symbol at the University of Mississippi was removed Tuesday from a prominent spot on the Oxford campus, just two weeks after Mississippi surrendered the last state flag in the U.S. with the Confederate battle emblem.
The marble statue of a saluting Confederate soldier was taken to a Civil War cemetery in a secluded area of campus. Students and faculty have pushed the university for years to move the statue, but they have said in recent weeks that their work was being undermined by administrators’ plan to beautify the cemetery.
A draft plan by the university indicated that the burial ground will have a lighted pathway to the statue.
New data show an “extraordinary” rise in U.S. coastal flooding.
WASHINGTON» Parts of the United States saw record levels of high-tide flooding last year as rising seas brought water farther into coastal homes and infrastructure, government scientists reported Tuesday.
The increase in high-tide flooding along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts since 2000 has been “extraordinary,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported, with the frequency of flooding in some cities growing fivefold during that time. That shift is damaging homes, imperiling the safety of drinking water, inundating roads and otherwise hurting coastal communities.
Justice Ginsburg treated in hospital for possible infection. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was being treated for a possible infection and was expected to stay in the hospital for a few days following a medical procedure, the Supreme Court said in a statement Tuesday.
The court said that the 87-year-old Ginsburg went to a hospital in Washington on Monday evening after experiencing fever and chills. She then underwent a procedure at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore on Tuesday to clean out a bile duct stent that was placed last August when she was treated for a tumor on her pancreas.
The statement said the justice “is resting comfortably and will stay in the hospital for a few days to receive intravenous antibiotic treatment.”