Hasta La Gadget!

WASHINGTON ― In 1952, London’s coal-fired factories and power plants spewed out so much pollution, a dense, acrid smog settled over the British capital, killing as many as 4,000 people.

Sixty-five years later, the United Kingdom is poised to complete its first full day without burning any coal to generate electricity, according to National Grid, the utility that operates the British power grid. The last coal-fired plant stopped running at 11 p.m. local time the day before, making Friday the country’s first day without coal since 1882.

The U.K. switches on coal-fired plants only when cleaner power stations can’t meet electricity demand. Over the last few days, coal has made up a sliver of Britain’s energy mix, according to data from Drax, the country’s biggest power station operator. 

Coal use historically plummets in the spring as warmer weather reduces the need for indoor heating. Coal has at times made up less than 1 percent of the mix, and even hit zero for more than 12 hours last year. But it has never remained at zero for 24 hours before.

“A decade ago, a day without coal would have been unimaginable, and in ten years’ time our energy system will have radically transformed again,” Hannah Martin, head of energy at Greenpeace UK, said in a statement. “The direction of travel is that both in the UK and globally we are already moving towards a low carbon economy.”

Renewable energy from Britain’s proliferating offshore wind turbine farms certainly helps. On Friday, wind energy provided slightly less electricity than nuclear power stations, according to GridWatch, a dashboard that tracks U.K. energy use in real time. But, as in the United States, coal has been largely supplanted by natural gas, a cleaner-burning fossil fuel extracted through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The controversial technique ― which ruptures bedrock with highly pressured, sand- and chemical-laced water deep underground, freeing the gas beneath ― has been met with fierce protests in the U.K. Public support for fracking fell to 37.3 percent last year, down from 58 percent in 2013, according to a YouGov poll for the University of Nottingham, which was released in October 2016.

Fracking sites usually leak methane, a greenhouse gas 40 times as potent as carbon dioxide, and the toxic chemicals used in the drilling process have been found in groundwater.

U.K. natural gas extraction increased by 3.6 percent last year, despite years of decline in the North Sea, the hotbed of British production. Net imports, meanwhile, soared by nearly 20 percent last year as the utility industry, weaning itself off coal, increased its use of gas by 39 percent, according to government figures. 

The British move away from coal mirrors a global trend as countries fight to reduce their carbon footprints, driven in part by the 195-country Paris Agreement. In November, Canada announced plans to virtually end the use of coal by 2030.  In January, smog-choked China canceled 103 new coal-fired power plants as part of a larger shift toward renewables. In February, Denmark generated enough wind energy to power its entire country for a day.

The U.S., by contrast, has moved to revive coal use. President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month instructing the Environmental Protection Agency to rewrite a sweeping Obama-era rule limiting emissions from coal-fired plants. The order also lifted a temporary moratorium on leasing federal lands to coal companies. On Thursday, EPA chief Scott Pruitt traveled to one of the country’s oldest coal-fired power plants, one week after he kicked off what critics call his “dirty energy tour” with a visit to a Pennsylvania coal mine. 

Trump, along with many other Republicans, have long blamed the decline of coal production on environmental regulations. But, as in the U.K., the industry has failed to compete with natural gas. Moreover, the string of coal producer bankruptcies over the past two years came after the companies placed big bets on continued Chinese demand for U.S. exports, which nose-dived as the Chinese economy began to slow after 2012.

Still, getting rid of coal hasn’t rid the U.K. of its air quality problems. In January, air quality in London reached levels worse than Beijing. Unlike the 1950s, however, motor vehicles and wood-burning fireplaces were to blame for the pollution.

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<span class="articleLocation”>(Reuters Health) – When a badly injured patient rolls into the emergency room, Dr. John Scott doesn’t ask to see proof of insurance. Instead, he immediately begins treatment.

Hospital care frequently saves patients from gunshots, stab wounds, crushing car accidents and other traumatic injuries. But Scott found in a new study that 7 out of 10 adult uninsured trauma patients suffer another debilitating injury: financial catastrophe.

“We’re getting better at trauma, and they’re going home financially ruined,” Scott said in a phone interview.

“Everyone in America’s at risk for an accidental injury, and not everyone’s protected from the financial consequences,” said Scott, lead author of the study and a surgery resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

The study, reported in Annals of Surgery, is the first to couple data on U.S. trauma admissions with Census Bureau data on income to evaluate the risks of catastrophic health expenses.

Researchers analyzed 117,502 hospital admissions for uninsured 18- to 64-year-olds admitted for trauma care from 2007 to 2011, before implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

Overall, half the patients had an estimated annual income below $40,867, and half had hospital charges of at least $27,420, not counting charges from doctors, who bill separately.

In other words, one unforeseen major injury could potentially cost well over half of someone’s annual income.

Previous studies have examined the impact of hospitalizations on so-called medical bankruptcies. But most who file for bankruptcy in the aftermath of medical crises are middle-class Americans with health insurance, the authors write, while the poorest uninsured often never declare bankruptcy.

To capture poorer uninsured Americans, Scott used the “catastrophic health expenditure” metric, which the World Health Organization uses to compare out-of-pocket expenses to income.

Scott defined catastrophic health spending as out-of-pocket health costs that were more than 40 percent of a patient’s income after they paid for food.

By that definition, nearly 71 percent of uninsured 18- to 64-year-old trauma patients – or more than 82,000 men and women – risk financial calamity every year.

Patients with the lowest incomes were at highest risk – 78 percent – of destitution. But even those with the highest incomes had a 53 percent risk of a medically induced fiscal catastrophe, the study found.

Dr. David Himmelstein, a professor at the City University of New York’s Hunter College School of Public Health, described the study as “quite sophisticated.” It “paints an extraordinarily disturbing picture of America’s vulnerability,” he said in an email.

“This study shows that someone who is in a car accident, or is mugged, or experiences sudden trauma for some other reason, risks being driven to financial ruin,” he added.

“In essence, unless you’re Bill Gates, you could be at risk of financial catastrophe if you fall seriously ill,” said Himmelstein, who was not involved with the study.

The uninsured are not the only ones suffering the consequences of catastrophic health expenditures, Scott said. When hospitals fail to collect, they pass the costs onto paying customers and health-insurance companies, he said.

“More uncompensated care leads to higher costs for everybody else,” he said.

“For clinicians, it’s important to consider the financial strain as a complication of trauma care. Survival is not the only measure of good care,” he said.

But when a patient asks him how much a CT scan will cost, he has no idea.

Scott’s message to lawmakers considering changes to the Affordable Care Act: “Financial catastrophe is a reality for tens of thousands of Americans who haven’t planned for it. They’re being cured, but being cured into destitution.”

“There’s nobody we turn away for emergency trauma care. We don’t check people’s insurance status. We don’t check their wallet,” he said. “If everybody is deserving of world-class trauma care, everybody is deserving of protection from financial catastrophe from that care.”

SOURCE: bit.ly/2oUGABo Annals of Surgery, online April 7, 2017.

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WASHINGTON ― The Justice Department on Friday warned nine jurisdictions that they could lose federal law enforcement grants unless they reassure the government that they’ll disclose information on the immigration status of the individuals they arrest.

The letters targeted so-called “sanctuary cities” that limit their interaction with federal immigration authorities. The letters were sent to officials in California, Chicago (as well as Cook County), New Orleans, Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Miami, Milwaukee and New York City. 

The letters were authored by Alan R. Hanson, the acting assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Justice Programs, which distributes Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant grants that support local law enforcement. They request that the jurisdictions validate that they are in compliance with a federal law stating that “a Federal, State, or local government entity of official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity of official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.”

Defining a “sanctuary city” is a difficult task, as The Huffington Post has previously reported. 

The law cited in the letters says jurisdictions cannot restrict immigration information, but doesn’t require proactive disclosure to federal authorities. Policies in some sanctuary cities relate to how the city responds to “detainer” requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with many of the cities refusing to continue to hold individuals who would otherwise be released unless ICE provides a warrant. Police share fingerprints taken at arrests with the federal government, including ICE, so nearly every jurisdiction in the country shares some type of information.

The letter states that the grant agreement with the Office of Justice Programs “makes clear” that they must document their compliance no later than June 30, 2017. “Failure to comply with this condition could result in the withholding of grant funds, suspension or termination of the grant, ineligibility for future OJP grants or subgrants, or other action, as appropriate,” the letters reads.

The Justice Department said in a press release that many of the jurisdictions were “crumbling under the weight of illegal immigration and violent crime.” The department cited the rise in murders in Chicago and said New York City ― which has seen record low levels of crime ― “continues to see gang murder after gang murder, the predictable consequence of the city’s ‘soft on crime’ stance.”

Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the National Day Labor Organizing Network, said the “DOJ’s attempt to scare local governments” would backfire.

“It will likely embolden lawmakers to pass policies that protect public safety, as opposed to criminalize and target large portions of its community,” Alvarado said in a statement. “In California, the CA Values Act, (Deleon, SB-54) does just that. Not only does it limit cooperation between immigration and local law enforcement, but it ensures that state and local institutions do not participate in Trump’s deportation agenda.”

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Russia’s Federal Security Service said on Friday that a gunman had burst into one of its regional offices in the far east of the country and opened fire, killing one of its employees and a visitor.

The region where the incident happened is close to China. The FSB, the successor organization to the Soviet KGB, said the attacker had been killed and that another person had been injured in the incident.

“An unknown person entered the reception of the FSB’s Khabarovsk regional branch and started shooting at people inside,” the FSB said in a statement.

The Site Intelligence Group, a U.S.-based monitoring service, said that Islamic State had claimed responsibility for the attack. It said that the claim of responsibility had been made through the militant group’s Amaq news agency.

That contradicted earlier media reports, which said the FSB believed the gunman was a nationalist. The TASS news agency cited an unnamed FSB official as saying that the gunman was a local resident and born in 1999.

The visitor who was killed and the one who was injured were from former Soviet states outside Russia, according to the security service.

Russia was this month shaken by a suicide bombing of the St Petersburg metro, which killed 16 people. The suspected suicide bomber and his alleged accomplices were from Central Asia.

The man Russian police believe was the suicide bomber had developed an interest in Islam and soon after traveled to Turkey, two people who knew him told Reuters.

(Reporting by Maria Tsvetkova and Denis Pinchuk; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

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Tom Cruise’s 2002 sci-fi flick “The Minority Report” was supposed to be a cautionary tale about how people can be convicted of crimes before they’re committed.

As chilling as that movie was, it’s a hell of a lot scarier starring Donald Trump, as this Funny Or Die spoof proves.

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