Storing Heat Energy Offers $300B Opportunity to Cut Carbon Emissions
Portland Protests Continue for 39th Consecutive Day ; Flying Snakes Need to Wriggle to Glide ; and More Picks
Energy Companies Cancel $8B Appalachian Trail Pipeline Project (DonkeyHotey)
The author writes, “Duke Energy Corp. and Dominion Energy Inc., the companies behind the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, announced Sunday that they were shutting down the project ‘due to ongoing delays and increasing cost uncertainty which threaten the economic viability of the project.’ The pipeline was set to be built under the Appalachian Trail, through West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina. For years, environmentalists fought back against its construction over the potential threats to endangered species in the area and the destruction of nature.”
‘Torture’ Case Could Cost Iowa Taxpayers $5M in Legal Fees (Dana)
From the Iowa Capitol Dispatch: “In March, U.S. District Judge Stephanie Rose held the state liable for violating the constitutional rights of children at the [Boys State Training School in Eldora], which houses troubled youth ordered there by the courts. She also ordered that a monitor be appointed to oversee a broad array of court-ordered comprehensive reforms at the school. In her decision, the judge said the school, run by the Iowa Department of Human Services, violated the U.S. Constitution by providing inadequate mental health care, misusing solitary confinement, and using what she called a ‘torture’ device — a restraint known as the ‘wrap,’ which holds children immobile.”
Law Was Supposed to Make Florida’s Criminal Justice Data Transparent. It Failed. (Dana)
The author writes, “The new database built by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement would give the public individual case data, reporting defendants’ bond amounts and their charges. It would tell us how many people are in jails and prisons. It would tell us which state attorneys were dropping charges and which ones were enhancing them. … [A law passed in 2018] called for cooperation between police agencies, clerk’s offices, prosecutors, public defenders and a myriad of other agencies. The law was designed to expose systemic biases. But it had a shortcoming: It trusted one agency to handle the data, and that agency, FDLE, wasn’t ready.”
Portland Protests Continue for 39th Consecutive Day (Reader Steve)
The author writes, “Sunday marked the 39th consecutive day of protests in Portland since the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd. Hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of people have protested in Portland in nightly rallies and demonstrations. Protesters gathered outside the Multnomah County Justice Center in downtown Portland just before 10 p.m., as construction workers boarded up the ground floor windows of the federal courthouse, videos from the demonstration showed.”
Vietnam v. Covid: The Champion of the World (Chris C.)
From Courthouse News: “No one has died of Covid-19 in Vietnam, a nation of 100 million people.”
In Midst of COVID Chaos, One Latin American Nation Gets It Right (Chris C.)
The author writes, “Uruguay has become an oasis in the middle of a Covid-19 storm. Despite sharing a border with Brazil, a coronavirus epicenter, the nation hasn’t had more than 100 active cases at any point for almost a month. In all, it’s reported just 932 confirmed cases since the pandemic began and 27 deaths. Next door, Argentina has had over 62,000 cases. And in Brazil, to the North, infections have totaled a staggering 1.34 million.”
Flying Snakes Need to Wriggle Through the Air to Glide (Mili)
The author writes, “Using high-speed photography and a computer model of snakes in flight, researchers at Virginia Tech found that if the snakes didn’t wiggle, they wouldn’t be stable in the air. It takes a combination of side-to-side and vertical motions, along with the snake flattening its body into a triangular, instead of round, shape for a snake to catch enough air to reach its destination.”
