Pakistan’s Surreal Election

Karl Marx famously said that history repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce. Years from now, Pakistan’s 2024 election—which happens Thursday—will be looked back on as a grim reminder that history can be both tragedy and farce at the same time.

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First, the farce. Pakistani officials are going out of their way to depict as wholly normal an election with a wildly distorted playing field, thanks to a relentless crackdown on former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his centrist Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, one of the largest and most popular in the country.

Authorities promise free, transparent, and peaceful elections. They’re hosting more than 100 foreign election observers and offering an “open door policy” for international election monitors. They speak of the 260 million ballot papers that have been printed—that’s 2,170 tons of paper for those keeping score at home—and delivered, by road and air, to the country’s 859 voting constituencies. “Now,” proclaimed Anwar ul Haq Kakar, head of the caretaker government charged with preparing the country for elections, on Tuesday, “it is the turn of the people of Pakistan to exercise their democratic right to vote.”

But the franchise of Pakistan’s 128 million eligible voters needs a big asterisk. The PTI isn’t banned, but court rulings have deprived the party of its cricket-bat electoral symbol, a major blow in a nation with a 40% percent illiteracy rate, and it can only field candidates as independents. Meanwhile, many top party leaders have been jailed, or pressured to switch parties or quit politics altogether. Others have gone underground. Khan has been imprisoned since August and was given three prison sentences, totaling 24 years, in the last week alone. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of PTI supporters have been jailed. Authorities have broken up street rallies they’ve tried to hold, and internet services have been disrupted when they convene activities online.

Read More: The Ultimate Election Year: Half of World Heads to Polls in 2024

With PTI having been severely cut down to size, there’s little intrigue about the electoral outcome. The center-right Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) is heavily favored to form the next government. But herein lies another aspect of the electoral farce. PML-N is led by Nawaz Sharif, a three-time former Prime Minister, and a top candidate to be Pakistan’s next premier. He’s also widely believed to be a preferred candidate of Pakistan’s powerful military. When Sharif, saddled with serious corruption charges, returned to Pakistan from four years of self-imposed exile in London last October, he magically avoided arrest and had many of his charges melt away. That can’t happen without military support.

But Sharif is no true friend of the military. Like many top Pakistani politicians, he rose to prominence with its backing, only to fall out with it multiple times during his previous periods in power. If the military pushes for Sharif to head the next government, it could be setting itself up for a fresh battle with a leader who has often refused to be the pliant premier that it prefers. That seems a strange, and potentially destabilizing, move for a military that’s emphasized the importance of prioritizing economic recovery in a country plagued with major foreign debt and a 24% inflation rate.

But then again, the military once viewed Khan as a favorite son, before falling out with him in catastrophic fashion in a dispute over the appointment of the head of the country’s intelligence agency. Khan became a Frankenstein’s monster for the military. But now it’s seemingly once again betting on the wrong horse, banking on Sharif’s extensive experience to help the country right its economic ship. That’s even as his past record, marked by sharp disagreements with the army—which in one case led to his removal in a coup and in another resulted in his disqualification from public office—suggests stormy seas ahead for civil-military relations. More political turmoil could imperil the economic stabilization that Pakistan so desperately needs.

And this brings us to Pakistan’s election as tragedy. It’s a sadly apt term, and not just because of the deadly election related-violence in recent days, including two attacks in Balochistan province on Wednesday that killed at least 22 people. The country is experiencing one of its darkest periods in decades. There’s the resurgent terrorism, severe economic stress, worsening border tensions with Iran and Afghanistan, increasingly destructive climate change effects as seen during thee catastrophic floods of 2022, and, not surprisingly, record levels of public skepticism about the government’s capacity to fix all these problems. There’s never been a more critical moment for a credible election. And yet, it will likely be more farcical than free and fair.

In this Pakistani tragedy, there are no heroes. Not the military and its allied political parties that have waged repressive campaigns against the PTI. Not the courts that have caved in to their pressure. And for that matter not Khan, who could have kept a low profile after his ouster and simply focused on preparing for elections, rather than making incendiary statements against the military and baselessly accusing the U.S., a critical Pakistani trade partner, of helping orchestrate his ouster. To be sure, that’s not in Khan’s nature. But his decision to indulge a personal vendetta and escalate his confrontation with the military is part of the reason why Pakistan is in the precarious political position it is today.

To its credit, the PTI has refused to give up. It’s fielding independent candidates, and using all manner of tactics—social media messaging, video screens hooked up in the middle of town squares, even AI-driven jailhouse speeches from Khan—to get people to vote. And yet, it’s investing so much energy and resources into an effort that—barring an electoral miracle—is seemingly destined to fail, which will only sharpen the grievances of an already-angry PTI base. And that, much like the election that the PTI so badly wants to win, is both tragedy and farce. 

source https://time.com/6692240/pakistan-election-tragedy-farce/

Biden Cracks Down on Deadly Soot Pollution

(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration is setting tougher standards for deadly soot pollution, saying that reducing fine particle matter from tailpipes, smokestacks and other industrial sources could prevent thousands of premature deaths a year.

Environmental and public health groups hailed the new Environmental Protection Agency rule finalized Wednesday as a major step in improving the health of Americans, including future generations. Industry groups warned it could lead to loss of manufacturing jobs and even shut down power plants or refineries.

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EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the rule would have $46 billion in net health benefits by 2032, including prevention of up to 800,000 asthma attacks and 4,500 premature deaths. He said the rule will especially benefit children, older adults and those with heart and lung conditions, as well as people in low-income and minority communities adversely affected by decades of industrial pollution.

The rule “really does represent what the Biden-Harris administration is all about, which is understanding that healthy people equal a healthy economy,” he told reporters Tuesday. “We do not have to sacrifice people to have a prosperous and booming economy.”

Read more: A New Study Shows How Seriously Air Pollution Can Affect Your Heartbeat

The rule sets maximum levels of 9 micrograms of fine particle pollution per cubic meter of air, down from 12 micrograms established a decade ago under the Obama administration.

The rule sets an air quality level that states and counties must achieve in the coming years to reduce pollution from power plants, vehicles, industrial sites and wildfires. The rule comes as Democratic President Joe Biden seeks reelection, and some Democrats have warned that a tough soot standard could harm his chances in key industrial states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Administration officials brushed aside those concerns, saying the industry has used technical improvements to meet previous soot standards and will be able to adapt to meet the new standard as well. Soot pollution has declined sharply in the past two decades, even as the U.S. gross domestic product has increased by more than 50%, Regan said.

“So we’ve heard this argument before, but the facts are well-established that these standards really will increase the quality of life for so many people, especially those who are disproportionately impacted,” he said.

Read more: How to Test Your Home’s Air and Make It Safer

Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, said the EPA was “putting public health first by requiring polluters to cut soot from the air we all breathe.”

Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club, said that opponents’ “resistance is a stark reminder that the fight for clean air and a healthier future is far from over.”

Industry groups and Republican officials said before the rule-making that a limit of 9 micrograms per cubic meter could sharply increase the number of U.S. counties in violation of the soot standard. Companies in those places would have difficulty obtaining permits to build or expand industrial plants.

Significantly lowering the standard for soot emissions “would threaten or prevent modernization projects and other major improvements to paper mills,” the American Forest and Paper Association said in a statement.

“As our industry modernizes paper mills, we’re improving air quality,” including reductions in particulate matter, the group said.

The paper lobby and other industry groups said in a letter to the White House that a lower soot standard could force companies to locate new facilities in foreign countries with weaker air-quality standards, thereby undermining the Biden administration’s economic and environmental goals.

“We urge you to ensure EPA maintains the existing fine particulate matter standards to ensure both continued environmental protection and economic growth,” 71 groups, led by the National Association of Manufacturers, said in an Oct. 31 letter to White House chief of staff Jeffrey Zients.

Read more: Climate Change Is Rolling Back American Progress on Air Pollution

The standard for particle pollution, more commonly known as soot, was set in late 2012 under Democratic President Barack Obama and left unchanged by Republican President Donald Trump, who overrode a scientific recommendation for a lower standard in his final days in office.

EPA scientists have estimated exposure at current limits causes the early deaths of thousands of Americans annually from heart disease and lung cancer, along with other health problems.

The new EPA rule would require states, counties and tribal governments to meet a stricter air quality standard for fine particulate matter up to 2.5 microns in diameter — far smaller than the diameter of a human hair.

The standard would not force polluters to shut down, but the EPA and state regulators could use it as the basis for other rules that target pollution from specific sources such as diesel-fueled trucks, refineries and power plants.

A 2023 report by the American Lung Association found that nearly 64 million Americans live in counties that experience unhealthy daily spikes in soot pollution and nearly 19 million live in counties that exceed annual limits for soot pollution. Most of those counties were in 11 Western states, the report said. People of color were 61% more likely than white people to live in a county with unhealthy air quality, the report said.

Bakersfield, California, displaced Fresno, California, as the metropolitan area with the worst short-term particle pollution, the report found. Bakersfield tied with Visalia in California’s San Joaquin Valley as the most polluted city for year-round particle pollution.

Wildfires in the western U.S. were a major contributing factor to increased levels of particle pollution, the report said. Six of the 10 cities with the most soot pollution were in California, and two more were in the West: Medford, Oregon and greater Phoenix.

source https://time.com/6692321/biden-stricter-standards-soot-pollution/

Trump Is Not Immune from Prosecution in 2020 Election Interference Case, U.S. Appeals Court Says

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals panel ruled Tuesday that Donald Trump can face trial on charges that he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election, rejecting the former president’s claims that he is immune from prosecution.

The decision marks the second time in as many months that judges have spurned Trump’s immunity arguments and held that he can be prosecuted for actions undertaken while in the White House and in the run-up to Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. But it also sets the stage for additional appeals from the Republican ex-president that could reach the U.S. Supreme Court. The trial was originally set for March, but it was postponed last week and the judge didn’t immediately set a new date.

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The trial date carries enormous political ramifications, with the Republican primary front-runner hoping to delay it until after the November election. If Trump defeats President Joe Biden, he could presumably try to use his position as head of the executive branch to order a new attorney general to dismiss the federal cases or he potentially could seek a pardon for himself.

The appeals court took center stage in the immunity dispute after the Supreme Court last month said it was at least temporarily staying out of it, rejecting a request from special counsel Jack Smith to take up the matter quickly and issue a speedy ruling.

Read More: How Trump Survived Decades of Legal Trouble: Deny, Deflect, Delay, and Don’t Put Anything in Writing

The legally untested question before the court was whether former presidents can be prosecuted after they leave office for actions taken in the White House related to their official duties.

The Supreme Court has held that presidents are immune from civil liability for official acts, and Trump’s lawyers have for months argued that that protection should be extended to criminal prosecution as well.

They said the actions Trump was accused of in his failed bid to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election to Biden, including badgering his vice president to refuse to certify the results of the election, all fell within the “outer perimeters” of a president’s official acts.

But Smith’s team has said that no such immunity exists in the U.S. Constitution or in prior cases and that, in any event, Trump’s actions weren’t part of his official duties.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the case, rejected Trump’s arguments in a Dec. 1 opinion that said the office of the president “does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass.”

Read More: Donald Trump’s Plan to Bury Nikki Haley in South Carolina

Trump’s lawyers then appealed to the D.C. appeals court, but Smith asked the Supreme Court to weigh in first, in hopes of securing a fast and definitive ruling and preserving the March 4 trial date. The high court declined the request, leaving the matter with the appeals court.

The case was argued before Judges Florence Pan and J. Michelle Childs, appointees of Biden, a Democrat, and Karen LeCraft Henderson, who was named to the bench by President George H.W. Bush, a Republican. The judges made clear their skepticism of Trump’s claims during arguments last month, when they peppered his lawyer with tough questions and posed a series of extreme hypotheticals as a way to test his legal theory of immunity — including whether a president who directed Navy commandos to assassinate a political rival could be prosecuted.

Read More: How Trump Took Control of the GOP Primary

Trump’s lawyer, D. John Sauer, answered yes — but only if a president had first been impeached and convicted by Congress. That view was in keeping with the team’s position that the Constitution did not permit the prosecution of ex-presidents who had been impeached but then acquitted, like Trump.

The case in Washington is one of four criminal prosecutions Trump faces as he seeks to reclaim the White House this year. He faces federal charges in Florida that he illegally retained classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, a case that was also brought by Smith and is set for trial in May. He’s also charged in state court in Georgia with scheming to subvert that state’s 2020 election and in New York in connection with hush money payments made to porn actor Stormy Daniels. He has denied any wrongdoing.

source https://time.com/6691929/trump-not-immune-prosecution-2020-election/

The Shortsighted Effort to Ban Cell-Cultivated Meat in Some States

Cell-cultivated meat—meat grown from animal cells rather than taken from slaughtered animals—seems to be the hottest topic in food right now. Everyone from veteran chefs to tech moguls seem eager to get involved. Lawmakers in a growing number of states, however, aren’t quite as jazzed about it. 

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At the end of January, Florida’s House and the Senate Agriculture Committee approved a bill introduced by Republican Rep. Danny Alvarez that would not only ban the production and sale of cell-cultivated meat, but would make it a second-degree misdemeanor. If the bill is passed by the state Senate, effective this summer the culinary crime would be punishable with a fine of up to $1,000, plus suspension or closure of the restaurant, store, or other business in question. Similarly, Arizona Republican Rep. David Marshall proposed a bill on Jan. 16  banning the sale of cell-cultivated meat. The bill would also allow Arizona business owners to sue cell-cultivated meat companies for damages to their profits. 

Other politicians are taking a less direct approach. Rather than banning the sale of cell-cultivated meat altogether, they’re disingenuously throwing obstacles in its way however they can. One tactic is to focus on labeling terminology under the guise of consumer protection.

Read more: The Case for Lab-Grown Meat

The USDA already approved two product labels that use “cell-cultivated” on June 21, 2023. Nevertheless, in recent months a handful of bills have emerged, attempting to restrict how this new food technology is labeled. One such bill was introduced in Nebraska last November and another was signed into law last September in Texas. And last month a panel within the Arizona state House of Representatives voted to approve a bill that would severely restrict the terminology cell-cultivated products can use in their labeling. Rep. Quang Nguyen’s (R-Ariz.) bill would disallow brands from describing cell-based products using any term that is “the same as or deceptively similar to a term that has been used or defined historically in reference to a specific meat food product or poultry product.”

The ostensible purpose of the bill, according to Nguyen, is consumer protection and transparency. He claims that he is not trying to hamper the sale of cell-cultivated meat. But intentional or not, the legislation creates an obvious hurdle for the industry. If it passes the state House, cell-cultivated meat brands selling in Arizona could be barred from labeling their products not just with words like “meat,” “poultry,” or “chicken” (even with the “cell-cultivated” qualifier), but possibly even with terms like “burger” or “nugget,” which refer more to the shape or composition of a dish than its ingredients. One can’t help but wonder exactly what terminology these Arizona Republicans would find acceptable. “Cell-cultivated sandwich disk,” maybe? Or perhaps, “cell-cultivated tubes and slabs”?

The politicians behind these sorts of preemptive measures, however, are betraying a number of American—and especially Republican—values. 

For one thing, the labeling laws are, arguably, methods of arresting free speech. They don’t actually protect consumers from dangerous or even misunderstood products, they just make a whole category of demonstrably safe food a little harder to sell. Attempts to flat-out ban cell-cultivated meat are even worse, taking away consumers’ rights to use their own judgement and freedom of choice in deciding how to feed their families. 

And for what reason? There have been no red flags about the healthiness of cell-cultivated meat for humans, despite what some public disinformation campaigns may have you believe. And American consumers are not as easily baffled as some of our representatives seem to think. We generally understand, for example, that peanut butter doesn’t contain butter and that ladyfingers are not actual human digits—this is one arena where people really don’t need government hand-holding to figure things out.

Read more: We Tasted The World’s First Cultivated Steak, No Cows Required

It’s hard to believe that these measures are really designed for “consumer protection,” especially when so many of the people supporting the legislation have expressed their actual motivation: money, and in the pockets of a select few. One Arizona Republican explicitly stated that his desire is to “protect” the cattle ranching industry; another Arizona representative is a cattle rancher himself. It doesn’t take a detective to realize that defending the status quo is really what it’s all about.

But interfering with the rise of cell-cultivated meat is almost certainly a bad economic decision in the long run. The idea of the government deciding to privilege one industry over another should already be abhorrent to free market Republicans on principle. Anyone who believes in capitalism should theoretically bristle at the thought of the government overriding the laws of supply and demand. If it’s a bad product for whatever reason, the people won’t want it and it will fail anyway, so the logic goes. If “real” beef is truly all-around better, what does the cattle industry have to fear? 

The states expressing hostility toward cell-cultivated meat are just limiting their own opportunities for economic growth. By all appearances, cell-cultivated meat will continue to grow in popular interest, and an innovation gap is going to develop between the states that support progress and those that reject it. 

Meanwhile, other countries like Israel, Singapore, and China are actively funding or otherwise supporting the development of cell-cultivated meat, perhaps out of recognition that factory farming—how 99% of meat is produced in the U.S.—is a nasty business. It’s responsible for 15% of greenhouse gas emissions; it produces antibiotic-resistant bacteria and zoonotic diseases; and it is unkind to animals, to say the least. Cell-cultivated meat sidesteps all these issues. If we seriously want America to continue to be a nation that leads in technology and innovation, we can’t continue draconically resisting change while other countries forge ahead. Even some of the world’s biggest meat conglomerates are developing cell-cultivated meat.

By refusing to change with the times, politicians may be helping local cattle ranchers in the short term, but in the long run their state may become economically stymied. At the end of the day, falling behind technologically is an unstrategic, reactionary response to the threat of something new and unfamiliar entering the world. It’s a betrayal of their own values, and they’re not doing the residents of their states any favors—they’re just hindering American progress.

source https://time.com/6691877/shortsighted-push-to-ban-lab-grown-meat/

7 Ways to Deal With Climate Despair

Forget climate anxiety: many people are in flat-out climate despair. About two-thirds of Americans (65%) report being worried about global warming, according to a January report from the Yale Program for Climate Communication. One in 10 say they’ve recently felt depressed over their concerns for the planet, and a similar percentage describe feeling on edge or like they’re unable to stop worrying about global warming.

No wonder more people are seeking care from climate-aware therapists. Some go to therapy to figure out whether they should have kids in the age of rapid climate change. Others are dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder from natural disasters or are burned out from advocacy work.

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But if the threat is existential, is there value in sorting out how you feel about it? “The very first step is full validation,” says Leslie Davenport, a climate psychology educator and author of books including Emotional Resiliency in the Era of Climate Change: A Clinician’s Guide. “Things like, ‘This makes so much sense, I hear you, I understand, let’s talk about this more.’” Understand that it’s not irrational to be full of worry, rage, fear, guilt, or grief when the planet’s on fire.

Here, climate-aware therapists share their most effective coping strategies for going from overwhelmed to empowered.

Talk about it.

Climate change tends to get the religion-and-politics treatment—people avoid talking about it, says Carol Bartels, a therapist based in Long Beach, Calif. “But we need to talk about it,” she adds. “We need to know that other people are feeling the same.”

Join a climate café—discussion spaces, both online and in-person, where people can talk freely about their fears and other feelings related to climate change. Or try the Good Grief Network, a peer-support group that follows a 10-step approach to help people process any type of grieving, including for the planet.

Use your connections.

Research suggests that the lonelier and more socially isolated someone feels, the higher their levels of climate distress. Finding your people can help. Join local land-restoration efforts, get involved with community gardening, or stop by your favorite park’s clean-up day. “A lot of the messaging we get is very individualist, like, ‘Stop driving so much,’” says Jenni Silverstein, a licensed clinical social worker based in Santa Rosa, Calif., an area that’s been ravaged by wildfires. “Those actions are valuable, but this is a collective situation, and collective responses are where we have power.” We accomplish more with others than we do by ourselves, she adds.

If you’re struggling to find a like-minded community, think about where you already have a foot in the door. If you work in the medical field, for example, ask your colleagues if they want to help start an initiative for reduced waste, Davenport suggests, or your department could oversee a new rooftop garden. “You have some influence—you’re already part of a community,” she says. “If each of us engaged in the places where we’re already active, it would make a huge difference.”

Analyze your carbon footprint.

Some people cope with climate distress by distancing themselves from the problem—they ignore it, hoping it will go away, says Dr. Lise Van Susteren, a psychiatrist in Washington, D.C., who co-founded the Climate Psychiatry Alliance. It’s more effective to “take the energy of all those emotions and redirect them into constructive action,” she says, and that starts with analyzing your own carbon footprint. Online calculators can help you determine the total amount of greenhouse gases generated by your actions. It can also be helpful to simply take inventory of your habits, Van Susteren points out: Could you walk or bike instead of driving to work? What about cutting CO2 emissions by taking the train instead of an airplane? “Be honest with yourself so you can understand both the opportunities and challenges,” she advises.

Share your views.

This is no time for humility. Make sure everyone around you knows what you’re doing to combat climate change, says Van Susteren. “What motivates people is not our independence—we follow the crowd.” Someone might not make green choices in the interest of future generations, but will do it if everyone else is. So post about your advocacy work or the trees you planted on Facebook, and tell whoever you’re standing next to at parties.

If you’re surrounded by people who don’t appear to prioritize the environment as much as you do, lead by example rather than trying to change their minds, Bartels advises. She grows fruits and vegetables and shares them with her neighbors, for example—even the ones who don’t care about climate-friendly lifestyles. If they ask about her garden, she explains how to get started. “Getting angry with people does zero good,” she says. “It’s important to keep the dialogue open. When we make enemies out of people who could be our allies, we’re making a grave mistake.”

Make it a family affair.

Some research suggests that climate change is especially affecting young people’s mental health. If your kids are coming to you with concerns, listen to and validate them, Van Susteren says. Then get imaginative about how your whole family can take action together. If your kids are young, “you’re not going to talk about climate tipping points, but you can say, ‘Let’s plant a garden, let’s clean up a park. Let’s show Mother Earth that we care about her.’”

Middle-schoolers like to do things with their community, she adds, so consider banding together to raise money to install solar panels at the school. Older teens might like to start or join climate clubs; if they express interest in going to a protest, ask if they’d like you to tag along, or if you can help them get there. “You can also have family meetings and say, ‘We’ve taken your feelings seriously, and we’ve decided as a family that these are some of the things we can do,’” Van Susteren suggests. For example, “‘That’s why we’re not going to fly off here or fly out there; we’re going to get a hybrid instead and drive through the Shenandoah and camp out and look at the stars.’” Brainstorm activities or changes that will help you all feel like you’re making a difference.

Get artsy.

Making art can help people regulate and work through their emotions, says Ariella Cook-Shonkoff, a psychotherapist based in Berkeley, Calif., who specializes in art therapy and eco-therapy. “You’re doing patterned, repetitive movements and getting into a flow state,” she says. “It’s calming.” Try it in the natural world—by sketching in front of the ocean or on a bench in the woods, for example.

She often challenges clients to use colors, shapes, and lines to express how they’re feeling at that moment. You might be surprised at what comes out on the paper; art is a way of tapping into thoughts you didn’t even realize you had, Cook-Shonkoff says. As you study your finished work and try to make sense of its meaning, you might gain a deeper understanding of how you’re really feeling. “You can start to distill those emotions and be able to communicate them with other people,” she says. “There’s a lot of dialogue that can happen.”

Savor time outside.

Spending time outside in green spaces benefits well-being—though Davenport acknowledges it can be complex. You go to your favorite lake, but it’s closed because there’s toxic algae growth caused by warm water. A hike in the woods in the dead of winter is lovely, but the unseasonable warmth unnerves you. “Love and grief are two sides of the same coin,” she says. It’s worth pushing through the challenging feelings, she says, “because doing so can renew your sense of why it’s important to fight for this.”

source https://time.com/6589649/climate-despair-how-to-cope/

Some Experts Want a New ‘Category 6’ For Stronger Hurricanes

A handful of super powerful tropical storms in the last decade and the prospect of more to come has a couple of experts proposing a new category of whopper hurricanes: Category 6.

Studies have shown that the strongest tropical storms are getting more intense because of climate change. So the traditional five-category Saffir-Simpson scale, developed more than 50 years ago, may not show the true power of the most muscular storms, two climate scientists suggest in a Monday study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They propose a sixth category for storms with winds that exceed 192 miles per hour (309 kilometers per hour).

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Currently, storms with winds of 157 mph (252 kilometers per hour) or higher are Category 5. The study’s authors said that open-ended grouping doesn’t warn people enough about the higher dangers from monstrous storms that flirt with 200 mph (322 kph) or higher.

Read more: What Do Hurricane Categories Actually Mean?

Several experts told The Associated Press they don’t think another category is necessary. They said it could even give the wrong signal to the public because it’s based on wind speed, while water is by far the deadliest killer in hurricanes.

Since 2013, five storms — all in the Pacific — had winds of 192 mph or higher that would have put them in the new category, with two hitting the Philippines. As the world warms, conditions grow more ripe for such whopper storms, including in the Gulf of Mexico, where many storms that hit the United States get stronger, the study authors said.

“Climate change is making the worst storms worse,” said study lead author Michael Wehner, a climate scientist at the Lawrence Berkley National Lab.

It’s not that there are more storms because of climate change. But the strongest are more intense. The proportion of major hurricanes among all storms is increasing and it’s because of warmer oceans, said University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy, who wasn’t part of the research.

From time to time, experts have proposed a Category 6, especially since Typhoon Haiyan reached 195 mph wind speeds (315 kilometers per hour) over the open Pacific. But Haiyan “does not appear to be an isolated case,” the study said.

Read more: Here’s Where All The Strongest Hurricanes Have Hit the U.S. in the Past 50 Years

Storms of sufficient wind speed are called hurricanes if they form east of the international dateline, and typhoons if they form to the west of the line. They’re known as cyclones in the Indian Ocean and Australia.

The five storms that hit 192 mph winds or more are:

— 2013’s Haiyan, which killed more than 6,300 people in the Philippines.

— 2015’s Hurricane Patricia, which hit 215 mph (346 kph) before weakening and hitting Jalisco, Mexico.

— 2016’s Typhoon Meranti, which reached 195 mph before skirting the Philippines and Taiwan and making landfall in China.

— 2020’s Typhoon Goni, which reached 195 mph before killing dozens in the Philippines as a weaker storm.

— 2021’s Typhoon Surigae, which also reached 195 mph before weakening and skirting several parts of Asia and Russia.

If the world sticks with just five storm categories “as these storms get stronger and stronger it will more and more underestimate the potential risk,” said study co-author Jim Kossin, a former NOAA climate and hurricane researcher now with First Street Foundation.

Pacific storms are stronger because there’s less land to weaken them and more room for storms to grow more intense, unlike the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean, Kossin said.

So far no Atlantic storm has reached the 192 mph potential threshold, but as the world warms more the environment for such a storm grows more conducive, Kossin and Wehner said.

Wehner said that as temperatures rise, the number of days with conditions ripe for potential Category 6 storms in the Gulf of Mexico will grow. Now it’s about 10 days a year where the environment could be right for a Category 6, but that could go up to a month if the globe heats to 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. That would make an Atlantic Category 6 much more likely.

MIT hurricane expert Kerry Emanuel said Wehner and Kossin “make a strong case for changing the scale,” but said it’s unlikely to happen because authorities know most hurricane damage comes from storm surge and other flooding.

Jamie Rhome, deputy director of the National Hurricane Center, said when warning people about storms his office tries “to steer the focus toward the individual hazards, which include storm surge, wind, rainfall, tornadoes and rip currents, instead of the particular category of the storm, which only provides information about the hazard from wind. Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale already captures ‘catastrophic damage’ from wind so it’s not clear there would be a need for another category even if the storms were to get stronger.”

McNoldy, former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Craig Fugate, and University of Albany atmospheric sciences professor Kristen Corbosiero all say they don’t see the necessity for a sixth and stronger storm category.

“Perhaps I’ll change my tune when a rapidly intensifying storm in the Gulf achieves a Category 6,” Corbosiero said in an email.

source https://time.com/6691881/why-some-experts-want-category-6-for-hurricanes/

An Experimental Weight-Loss Drug Shows Lasting Results in Early Study

An experimental weight-loss shot from Amgen Inc.—taken less frequently than wildly popular treatments from Eli Lilly & Co. and Novo Nordisk A/S—appears to keep weight off even after patients stop taking it.

Patients given a monthly injection of Amgen’s drug, dubbed MariTide, lost up to 14.5% of their body weight in just 12 weeks, according to a small, early-stage study published Monday in the journal Nature Metabolism. And some people kept the weight off for up to 150 days after stopping the drug, findings show.

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“That is really a remarkable and distinguishing characteristic of this molecule,” Narimon Honarpour, senior vice president of global development at Amgen, said in an interview.

Investors and analysts have been eagerly awaiting updates on Amgen’s shot since the Thousand Oaks, California-based company shared early results at a conference in 2022. The latest Nature Metabolism study offers the most detailed look yet at Amgen’s drug, which is now in mid-stage studies. Another readout is expected later this year.

Amgen’s drug works a bit differently than Wegovy or Zepbound. It’s what’s known as an antibody-drug conjugate, or ADC, a type of molecule more commonly used as a targeted cancer treatment. One part of the drug, an antibody, blocks the GIP receptor, while the other part, two peptides, mimics a gut hormone called GLP-1.

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Read More: What Happens When People Stop Taking the Weight Loss Drug Zepbound

“There’s something special about having them glued together the way they are on the same molecule,” said Saptarsi Haldar, vice president of cardiometabolic disorders at Amgen. The antibody component of the drug also allows it to stick around in the body longer than weekly weight-loss shots.

Amgen designed the drug specifically as a treatment for obesity, but is now testing it in patients with diabetes—the opposite of how weight-loss drugs came to be at Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk. The decision to inhibit GIP, rather than mimic it like Eli Lilly’s Zepbound, was based on insights gleaned from its expertise in human genetics.

“Those genes told us loud and clear that decreased activity of the GIP receptor was associated with decreased BMI, or body-mass index,” Haldar said. 

Amgen’s study, which enrolled 110 patients with obesity, was intended to assess MariTide’s safety and tolerability, but it revealed the drug’s dramatic effects on weight. Patients in one group were randomly assigned to receive a single dose of MariTide and were followed for 150 days, while another group of patients were given a dose every four weeks for three months.

Patients who received a single shot of the highest dose had lost up to 8.2% of their body weight after 92 days, suggesting the drug has a prolonged weight-loss effect, according to the study. 

Safety and side effects were similar to other GLP-1 drugs, findings show. Nausea and vomiting were the most commonly reported side effects and typically lasted for about 72 hours. Four patients in a group receiving the highest dose of the drug withdrew before getting a second shot due to mild gastrointestinal issues, according to the study.

Although the early results are promising, more studies are needed before the drug reaches patients. Honarpour said the results of the company’s mid-stage study are an important next step. Still, Amgen sees ample opportunities for newcomers like itself to enter the obesity market, and is also working on an oral weight-loss drug with results expected in the first half of the year.

source https://time.com/6691568/amgen-new-weight-loss-drug-maritide/