THIS AFFECTS YOU - Rollbacks: Climate Change, Birth Control and **Update: this was voted DOWN: End of Visa-Free European Travel), Medicaid Recipients in Jeopardy and Russia Admits Election interference. That's a lot of stuff to take in... and it's all not good thanks to the new leadership. Last year at this time, people in the U.S. didn't realize how fortunate they were. Now, sadly, we do.
WELCOME BACK
TO THE THIRD WORLD (IN SCIENCE)-President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement on climate change to reduce planet-warming
emissions (There are 200 countries that signed it). Now, the U.S. joins Syria and Nicaragua in ignorance. (Don't believe Trump's rant that it's not good for the U.S.- EVEN EXXON said the U.S. Needs to Stay in it!) .*Fortunately, some cities and a few states (mostly along the coasts) are banding together to continue to adhere to pollution reductions).
FYI - CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL AND HAS BEEN HAPPENING - The industrial age has pushed warming way past it's natural point. NOAA, NASA and government agencies around the world have been studying it and seeing it. Ice coverage disappearing, sea levels rising, global temperatures increasing, extreme droughts, more flooding, stronger thunderstorms and hurricanes, more tornado outbreaks. READ THE SCIENCE HERE: http://www.noaa.gov/climate
WHAT THE IMPENDING BIRTH CONTROL ROLLBACK MEANS FOR YOU "The Trump
administration is on the verge of rolling back a federal rule that requires
most employers to cover birth control in their health insurance plans at no
cost to women. The White House Office of Management and Budget posted on its
website that it is reviewing an interim final rule that would allow religious
employers to deny contraception coverage to their female employees.
'THE FATE OF 16.8 MILLION MEDICAID ENROLLEES... RESTS ON 20 GOP SENATORS FROM 14 STATES' The stakes are especially high for this group of lawmakers, as they represent the states that accepted federal funding to expand Medicaid. [HuffPost]
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
'THE FATE OF 16.8 MILLION MEDICAID ENROLLEES... RESTS ON 20 GOP SENATORS FROM 14 STATES' The stakes are especially high for this group of lawmakers, as they represent the states that accepted federal funding to expand Medicaid. [HuffPost]
PUTIN: MAYBE THERE WAS RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE IN THE ELECTION AFTER ALL "Shifting from his previous blanket denials, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested on Thursday that 'patriotically minded' private Russian hackers could have been involved in cyberattacks last year that meddled in the United States presidential election."
**GOOD NEWS UPDATE 6/5/17- THE EU decided NOT to End Visa-Free Travel For Americans
The European Commission said on Tuesday that it would not start requiring Americans to obtain visas for travel to the European Union, at least for now.
Right
now, United States citizens generally do not need visas to enter any of
the union’s 28 member nations, but citizens of five of those nations —
Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Poland and Romania — need visas to travel to
the United States. European impatience with the American visa policy has been building for
years. The commission considered proposals a year ago to end visa-free
entry for Americans and Canadians, but it concluded then that doing so
would “have significant negative impacts in a wide range of policy
areas, notably on external relations, trade, tourism and the E.U.’s
economy.”
UPDATED STORY: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/02/world/europe/eu-visas-united-states.html?_r=0 Video- 2016 was the hottest year on record: https://youtu.be/s3RWTTtPg8E
Published on Jan 18, 2017
2016
was the hottest year on record, continuing a decades-long warming
trend. Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS)
analyzed measurements from 6,300 locations and found that Earth’s
average surface temperature has risen about 2.0 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1
degrees Celsius) since the late-19th century, largely a result of human
emissions into the atmosphere. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
