People & Population

"Legal action aims to force criminal justice department to air condition prisons, where 85,000 are at risk of heat illnesses"

"Peru’s reclusive Mashco Piro ethnic group recently used bows and arrows to attack loggers suspected of encroaching on their territory in the Amazon, according to a regional Indigenous organization."

"A famine-stricken camp in Sudan's conflict-torn Darfur region is facing a significant new influx of displaced people while floods threaten to contaminate water and sanitation facilities, according to satellite imagery published on Friday."

"More than 300,000 Americans moved to flood or fire-prone counties last year, according to data from the real estate company Redfin."

"Driven by prolonged drought and inconsistent public water delivery, many Mexico City residents are turning to rainwater. Pioneering company Isla Urbana, which does both nonprofit and for-profit work, has installed more than 40,000 rain catchment systems across Mexico since the company was founded 15 years ago. And Mexico City’s government has invested in the installation of 70,000 systems since 2019, still a drop in the bucket for the sprawling metropolis of around 9 million."

"After wildland firefighter Ben McLane fought California’s deadliest fire, he started second-guessing his line of work. The November 2018 Camp Fire near Paradise had killed 85 and leveled 18,000 homes. McLane was used to hiking steep terrain and digging endless fire breaks. He was accustomed to the spectacle of entire hillsides of pine and fir aflame. He wasn’t used to this scale of devastation — or feeling he’d worked in vain. Meanwhile, he rarely saw his family, and couldn’t fathom affording a house. Was firefighting worth it?"

"When Hurricane Idalia struck Florida last summer, a tree fell straight through a trailer occupied by a migrant-farmworker family in Hamilton County. They couldn’t afford to move, even temporarily, so the family of six just picked up the things they could salvage and continued to live around the rotting tree."

"Brian Harrington entered the Illinois Department of Corrections system in 2007 at age 14, sentenced to 25 years in prison. ... He remembers the toilet water being brown—and sometimes the drinking water, too. He recalls the tap water’s sewer smell and the black specks swirling, then settling, in his cup."

"Peter Dykstra – newsman, provocateur, friend and former publisher of EHN – passed away Wednesday."

"A federal appellate court has effectively blocked EPA from swift enforcement of stricter regulations on a Louisiana synthetic rubber manufacturer that has featured prominently in the Biden administration’s campaign to target pollution in the area often dubbed “Cancer Alley.”