July 2023 – Page 2 – The Tarbabys Blog

The Mojave Desert is burning in California’s biggest fire of year, torching Joshua trees

Los Angeles Times

The Mojave Desert is burning in California’s biggest fire of year, torching Joshua trees

Grace Toohey, Alex Wigglesworth – July 31, 2023

An air tanker making a fire retardant drop over the York fire in Mojave National Preserve on Saturday, July 29, 2023. — An air tanker drops fire retardant over the York fire in the Mojave National Preserve on Saturday. (R. Almendinger / National Park Service)

California’s biggest wildfire of the year — burning through delicate Joshua Tree forests along the California-Nevada border — is an unusual desert blaze being fueled in part by the rapid growth of underbrush from this winter’s record rains.

The York fire had scorched 77,000 acres as of Monday, with no containment. After first being observed Friday, the blaze has spread mainly across the Mojave National Preserve in eastern San Bernardino County, but recently jumped into western Nevada. No evacuations have been issued as a result of the fire, which is burning in mostly remote areas.

“It’s a public misconception that the desert doesn’t burn, but we’re seeing right here that that’s not case,” said Sierra Willoughby, a supervisory park ranger at Mojave National Preserve. “They’re not as rare as we would hope them to be.”

Just 10 days before this wildfire was spotted in the New York Mountains area of the Mojave National Preserve, park officials warned of extreme fire risk for the federally protected desert, banning all open flames.

“Even though we had a good moisture year with the [winter] season, the very high temperatures that came in July were a concern for our fire folks,” Willoughby said.

Southern California’s wet winter and cool spring helped foster increasing levels of invasive grasses and underbrush in the Mojave and Colorado deserts, federal officials said, which has made the region exceptionally susceptible to brush fires this summer as those plants dry out.

This year’s climate patterns have provided a “more continuous fuel bed” than is typical for desert ecosystems, UCLA climatologist Daniel Swain said on Twitter.

“Big fires in the desert are entirely consistent with the fire season outlook for 2023,” Swain wrote, noting that poses a major concern for ecologists and desert conservationists.

Fire regimes tend to vary on a gradient from climate-limited, in which there is an abundance of fuel but conditions are often too wet to carry fire, to fuel-limited, in which the climate is generally conducive to fire but there is usually not enough vegetation to carry it.

For this reason, forecasters had called for a less active fire season in California’s higher-elevation forests, which are dense but remain moist from the wet winter. But at lower elevations, the rains helped more grasses grow, and then several weeks of high temperatures caused the vegetation to dry out — or cure — priming it to become wildfire fuel.

Already, a June 10 wildfire burned more than 1,000 acres in the Pleasant Valley area of Joshua Tree National Park. Invasive grasses played a role in stoking that fire, known as the Geology fire, which burned in an area populated by Joshua trees, Mojave yucca, creosote and senna, park officials said.

“Most of the deserts in the southwestern U.S. are fairly fuel-limited in dry years, so there was that kind of natural fire break between plants or keeping it confined to relatively small areas,” said Christopher McDonald, a natural resources advisor at UC Cooperative Extension.

But after a year of above-average rainfall, there’s more fuel connecting perennial shrubs and Joshua trees, which enables fire to spread among the plants, he said. Hot, windy conditions further primed vegetation to burn.

Joshua trees and other desert plants have limited natural defenses to fires, officials said, and would struggle to recover from such blazes.

The extent of the plants and animals at risk in the York fire are still under investigation, Willoughby said, noting that the blaze has already burned through Joshua tree, juniper and pinyon pine groves. Stephanie Bishop, a National Park Service public information officer and a spokesperson for the York fire, said endangered tortoises that live in the region also could be harmed.

“What we’ve seen is fires go through these areas and take out quite a bit,” Willoughby said. The York fire is burning in some of the areas that last saw flames in 2005 from the Hackberry Complex fire , which eventually burned more than 70,000 acres. Willoughby said many of the forests harmed in that blaze 18 years ago still have not recovered.

Read more: California wildfires map

The 2020 Dome fire, which burned more than 40,000 acres across the southwestern California desert — including in the national preserve, but in a different area from the York fire — destroyed an estimated 1 million Joshua trees. Crews and volunteers are trying to replant and revitalize those groves.

In the Eastern Mojave, the heavy winter rains stoked the growth of native grasses, including big galleta, said ecologist Laura Cunningham, California’s director at the Western Watersheds Project and co-founder of conservation group Basin and Range Watch. The area doesn’t have as many invasive grasses, such as red brome and cheatgrass, which are more common in low-creosote deserts, but it does have a big Sahara mustard problem, which could be adding to the fuel, she said.

Some models suggest that increased global temperatures as a result of climate change are bringing more rain to the Mojave desert, fueling grass growth and the risk of lightning strikes, Cunningham said. On top of that, more humans traveling into desert areas increases the risk of sparks — from a bullet glancing off a rock while someone is target shooting or a chain dragging on the pavement while someone is hauling a trailer, she said.

The New York Mountains in the Mojave National Preserve have an enormous density of rare plants, including blue blossom, manzanita and uncommon chaparral shrubs, that could be devastated by fire, she said.

“In those desert areas, the mountains are like sky islands, they call them,” she said — they rise from the “sea” of the hot desert floor that surrounds them and host dramatically different populations of plants and animals.

She thinks the vegetation and plants will recover from the fire, but probably very slowly — too slowly for one person to witness in their lifetime, she said.

“It’s kind of sad because it won’t be when we can see it,” she said. “We can watch it recover slowly, but those old-growth Joshua tree woodlands and shrublands, we won’t see those again in our lifetimes.”

California’s other big fire of the year — the Bonny fire, which has charred 2,300 acres in Riverside County — is also burning across some arid landscapes as well as through the mountains. It has forced 122 people to evacuate their homes, with almost 800 structures threatened, according to officials with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The Bonny fire, burning south of Anza, was 20% contained as of Monday morning. One structure has been destroyed, and at least one firefighter was injured in the effort to control the flames. Almost 2,000 personnel are working that blaze, which began Thursday. Its cause is under investigation.

Winds remain a major concern for both fires, officials have said.

A challenging weekend of high winds up to 30 mph sparked dangerous fire whirls that pushed the York fire across the Mojave National Preserve, said Bishop, a spokesperson for the York fire and a National Park Service public information officer. The weather overnight into Monday had improved slightly, with winds that were not as strong and some precipitation, which allowed for some groundwork and minimal fire growth, she said.

A monsoonal influence in the area could produce more of that helpful precipitation, but that pattern typically comes with heavy winds, officials said, and the test of the hot desert heat remains.

“The biggest challenge today that they’re going to be dealing with is limited visibility due to thick smoke,” Bishop said, noting that visibility has dropped to one mile in some areas.

Federal, state and local firefighting teams are battling the York fire, with more than 260 personnel assigned, officials said. The fire has also moved into the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument, which is Bureau of Land Management land, Willoughby said.

What ignited the fire remains under investigation, but Bishop said it was determined to have started on private land within the preserve.

Cunningham expressed concern for area residents — as people live in Fourth of July Canyon, right next to Caruthers Canyon, where there are inholdings within the preserve. The fire is also spreading toward Nipton and Searchlight, she said.

“Today is going to be a windy monsoonal stormy day, so we’ll see,” she said. “This ain’t over till it’s over.”

Big fires in the Mojave Desert are “unfortunately becoming a greater concern,” McDonald said.

“Historically, in general, deserts tended to burn fairly infrequently,” he said. “And that’s one of the reasons why you have a lot of these long-lived plants that can grow into big giant Joshua trees, or saguaros in the Sonoran Desert. But as more and more invasive plants, especially invasive grasses, have grown in desert areas, they’re able to carry fire and burn those long-lived plants and cause a change in the fire regime.”

An increase in fire can also lead to a shifting of habitats into something new, Cunningham said.

“If there are too many fires that happen in the same place over and over again, that can eliminate Joshua trees and other plants and turn it into some other type of vegetation,” she said. “So that’s definitely a concern. And again, if temperatures get hotter, that can cause vegetation to sort of migrate upward in elevation or more northerly.

“We know climate change is impacting the earth, so we have to really protect these special places now — really try to maintain them in a resilient way,” she added. “If there’s going to be a fire, we have to help them recover. They will restore themselves, but we can maybe speed up the process by preventing other fires in those same locations, maybe actively planting some seeds out there to help the plants regrow.”

Fulton County DA says work is done in Trump probe and ‘we’re ready to go’

CNN

Fulton County DA says work is done in Trump probe and ‘we’re ready to go’

Sara Murray, CNN – July 30, 2023

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis reaffirmed in a local news interview that she will announce charging decisions by September 1 in her investigation into efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election result, while applauding the ramped-up security measures around the local courthouse.

“The work is accomplished,” Willis told CNN affiliate WXIA at a back-to-school event over the weekend. “We’ve been working for two and half years. We’re ready to go.”

Willis has previously signaled in letters to local officials and those providing security that she would make any charging announcements between July 31 and the end of August. She laid out a variety of security provisions her team plans to take beginning Monday.

Willis’ latest commitment to that time frame comes after a judge scheduled an August 10 hearing on the Trump team’s efforts to disqualify Willis, a Democrat, from the case, toss much of the evidence she has collected and remove another judge in Fulton County from presiding over the case.

In the local news interview, Willis also praised the Fulton County sheriff after barricades recently went up around the county courthouse in anticipation of what the sheriff’s office referred to as “high profile legal proceedings.”

“I think that the sheriff is doing something smart in making sure that the courthouse stays safe,” Willis said. “I’m not willing to put any of the employees or the constituents that come to the courthouse in harm’s way.”

Willis said that people may not be happy with her upcoming announcements and “sometimes when people are unhappy, they act in a way that could create harm.”

‘I’m not wanted’: Florida universities hit by brain drain as academics flee

The Guardian

‘I’m not wanted’: Florida universities hit by brain drain as academics flee

Joseph Contreras – July 30, 2023

<span>Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images</span> — Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images

With the start of the 2023-24 academic year only six weeks away, senior officials at New College of Florida (NCF) made a startling announcement in mid-July: 36 of the small honors college’s approximately 100 full-time teaching positions were vacant. The provost, Bradley Thiessen, described the number of faculty openings as “ridiculously high”, and the disclosure was the latest evidence of a brain drain afflicting colleges and universities throughout the Sunshine state.

Governor Ron DeSantis opened 2023 with the appointment of six political allies to the college’s 13-member board of trustees who vowed to drastically alter the supposedly “woke”-friendly learning environment on its Sarasota campus. At its first meeting in late January, the revamped panel voted to fire the college president, Patricia Okker, without cause and appoint a former Republican state legislator and education commissioner in her place.

Over the ensuing weeks, board members have dismissed the college’s head librarian and director of diversity programs and denied tenure to five professors who had been recommended for approval.

In a statement given to 10 Tampa Bay about faculty vacancies that was issued earlier this month, NCF officials said that six of the openings were caused by staff resignations and one-quarter of the faculty member departures “followed the changes in the New College board of trustees”. One of those resignations was submitted by Liz Leininger, an associate professor of neurobiology who says she started looking for an exit strategy as soon as she learned about the DeSantis appointments in the first week of 2023.

The 40-year-old scientist joined the New College faculty in 2017, drawn by the opportunities of living near her ageing parents on Florida’s Gulf coast and working closely with undergraduates at a relatively small school where total student enrollment hovers around 700. But as the Republican-controlled Florida legislature passed a series of bills over the last two years that sought to curtail academic freedom and render a professor’s tenure subject to review at any time, Leininger witnessed first-hand the devastating effects of the new laws on her colleagues’ morale.

“All of the legislation surrounding higher education in Florida is chilling and terrifying,” said Leininger, who is rejoining the biology department at St Mary’s College in Maryland this fall where she had been teaching before moving to central Florida. “Imagine scientists who are studying climate change, imagine an executive branch that denies climate change – they could use these laws to intimidate or dismiss those scientists.”

The new laws have introduced a ban on the funding of diversity, equity and inclusion programs at Florida’s public colleges and universities, withdrawn a right to arbitration formerly guaranteed to faculty members who have been denied tenure or face dismissal, and prohibited the teaching of critical race theory, which contends that inherent racial bias pervades many laws and institutions in western society, among other changes.

In the face of that and other legislation backed by DeSantis and Republican lawmakers that has rolled back the rights of Florida’s LGBTQ+ community, many scholars across the state are taking early retirement, voting with their feet by accepting job offers outside Florida or simply throwing in the towel with a letter of resignation.

Students protest at New College of Florida, one of Ron DeSantis’s particular targets. Photograph: Rebecca Blackwell/AP

Hard figures for turnover rates will not be available until later this year, and none of the other 11 state-run universities are expected to match New College’s exceptionally high percentage of faculty vacancies.

A spokesperson for the office of State University System chancellor, Ray Rodrigues, issued a statement asserting that the “State University System of Florida has not received any concerns from our member institutions indicating turnover this year has been any higher than previous years. Turnover occurs every year.”

But Andrew Gothard, the state-level president of the United Faculty of Florida labor union, predicts a loss of between 20 and 30% of faculty members at some universities during the upcoming academic year in comparison with 2022-23, which would signify a marked increase in annual turnover rates that traditionally have stood at 10% or less.

James Pascoe moved to the Gainesville campus of the University of Florida in 2018, the same year that DeSantis was first elected governor. Three years later, the Dallas native started looking for jobs elsewhere when new disclosure requirements made it more difficult for Pascoe to apply for grants. An unsuccessful attempt by the DeSantis administration to prohibit three University of Florida colleagues from testifying as expert witnesses in a voting rights case raised more alarm bells in Pascoe’s mind.

Then came the passage of legislation in March 2022 that banned the discussion of gender identity and sexuality with elementary school students between kindergarten and the third grade. Pascoe and his male partner began to worry about their future eligibility for adopting children in an environment that was becoming increasingly hostile to gay couples in their judgment.

“It was becoming clear that the university was becoming politicized,” the 33-year-old assistant professor of mathematics said. “When I was waiting to hear back on job applications, they started passing all these vaguely anti-gay, anti-LGBTQ+ laws. The state didn’t seem to be a good place for us to live in any more.”

In the summer of 2022, Pascoe accepted a comparable position at Drexel University in Philadelphia. His partner followed suit by joining the biology department at Haverford College in a nearby suburb.

The prevailing political climate in Florida has complicated efforts to recruit qualified scholars from outside the state to fill some vacancies. Kenneth Nunn served on a number of appointment committees during the more than 30 years he spent on the faculty of the University of Florida’s law school. He said the task of persuading highly qualified applicants of color to move to Gainesville has never been more difficult under a governor who, earlier this year, prohibited a new advanced placement course in African American studies from being taught in high schools.

DeSantis came under renewed criticism this month when the state department of education issued guidelines recommending that middle school students be taught about the skills slaves acquired “for their personal benefit” during their lifetimes in bondage.

“Florida is toxic,” noted Nunn, one of the few Black members of the law school faculty who says he chose to retire last January in part because of the legislated ban on the teaching of critical race theory. “It has been many years since we last hired an entry-level African American faculty member. They’re just not interested in being in a place where something with the stature of critical race theory is being denigrated and attacked.”

The 65-year-old Nunn will be teaching law in the fall in Washington DC as a visiting professor at Howard University, one of the nation’s leading historically Black colleges and universities.

“I could have stayed in a place where I’m not wanted and tough it out,” he adds. “Or I could retire and look for work elsewhere.”

In the end, Nunn says, concerns about his professional career and even his own physical safety made that decision a relatively easy one.

Why Republicans can’t get out of their climate bind, even as extreme heat overwhelms the US

CNN

Why Republicans can’t get out of their climate bind, even as extreme heat overwhelms the US

Analysis by Ella Nilsen, CNN – July 30, 2023

Deadly heatwaves are baking the US. Scientists just reported that July will be the hottest month on record. And now, after years of skepticism and denial in the GOP ranks, a small number of Republicans are urging their party to get proactive on the climate crisis.

But the GOP is stuck in a climate bind – and likely will be for the next four years, in large part because they’re still living in the shadow of former president and 2024 Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.

Even as more Republican politicians are joining the consensus that climate change is real and caused by humans, Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric has driven the party to the right on climate and extreme weather. Trump has called the extremely settled science of climate change a “hoax” and more recently suggested that the impacts of it “may affect us in 300 years.”

Scientists this week reported that this summer’s unrelenting heat wave would have been “virtually impossible” were it not for the planet-warming pollution from burning fossil fuels. They also confirmed that July will go down as the hottest month on record – and almost certainly that the planet’s temperature is hotter now than it has been in around 120,000 years.

Yet for being one of the most pressing issues of the 21st century, climate is rarely mentioned on the 2024 campaign trail.

“As Donald Trump is the near presumptive nominee of our party in 2024, it’s going to be very hard for a party to adopt a climate-sensitive policy,” Sen. Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah, told CNN. “But Donald Trump’s not going to be around forever.”

When Republicans do weigh in on climate change – and what we should do about it – they tend to support the idea of capturing planet-warming pollution rather than cutting fossil fuels. But many are reticent to talk about how to solve the problem, and worry Trump is having a chilling effect on policies to combat climate within the party.

“We need to be talking about this,” Rep. John Curtis, a Republican from Utah and chair of the House’s Conservative Climate Caucus, told CNN. “And part of it for Republicans is when you don’t talk about it, you have no ideas at the table; all you’re doing is saying what you don’t like. We need to be saying what we like.”

Extreme weather changes GOP minds

With a few exceptions, Republicans largely are no longer the party of full-on climate change denial. But even as temperatures rise to deadly highs, the GOP is also not actively addressing it. There is still no “robust discussion about how to solve it” within the party, said former South Carolina Rep. Bob Inglis, who now runs the conservative climate group RepublicEn, save for criticism of Democrats’ clean-energy initiatives.

“The good news is Republicans are stopping arguing with thermometers,” Inglis told CNN. Still, he said, “when the experience is multiplied over and over of multiple days of three-digit temperatures in Arizona and record ocean temperatures, people start to say, ‘this is sort of goofy we’re not doing something about this.’”

Meanwhile, the impacts of a dramatically warming atmosphere are becoming more and more apparent each year. Romney and Curtis, two of the loudest climate voices in the party, both represent Utah – a state that’s no stranger to extreme heat and drought, which scientists say is being fueled by rising global temperatures.

“There are a number of states, like mine, that are concerned about wildfires and water,” Romney said, adding he believes Republican governors of impacted states have been vocal about these issues.

Sen. Mitt Romney is one of a handful of Republicans who wants the party to get proactive on climate solutions. - Francis Chung/POLITICO/AP — Sen. Mitt Romney is one of a handful of Republicans who wants the party to get proactive on climate solutions. – Francis Chung/POLITICO/AP

Utah and other Western states are looking for ways to cut water use to save the West’s shrinking two largest reservoirs, Lakes Powell and Mead. And even closer to home, Utah’s Great Salt Lake has already disappeared by two-thirds, and scientists are sounding alarms about a rapid continued decline that could kill delicate ecosystems and expose one of fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the nation to toxic dust.

“I think the evidence so far is that the West is getting drier and hotter,” Romney told CNN. “That means that we’re going to have more difficulty with our crops, we’re going to have a harder time keeping the rivers full of water. The Great Salt Lake is probably going to continue to shrink. And unfortunately, we’re going to see more catastrophic fires. If the trends continue, we need to act.”

An issue ‘held hostage’

While Republicans blast Democrats’ clean energy policies ahead of the 2024 elections, it’s less clear what the GOP itself would prefer to do about the climate crisis.

As Curtis tells it, there’s a lot that Republicans and Democrats in Congress agree on. They both want to further reform the permitting process for major energy projects, and they largely agree on the need for more renewable and nuclear energy.

As the head of the largest GOP climate caucus on the Hill, Curtis’ Utah home is “full solar,” he told CNN, and is heated using geothermal energy.

While at a recent event at a natural gas drilling site in Ohio, as smoke from Canada’s devastating wildfire season hung thick in the air, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was asked how he would solve the climate crisis. He suggested planting a trillion trees to help offset the pollution created by burning fossil fuels – a bill House Republicans introduced in 2020. The measure has not yet passed the House and has an uncertain future in the Senate.

Rep. John Curtis, a Utah Republican, said his home is decked out in solar panels and geothermal energy. - Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg/Getty Images — Rep. John Curtis, a Utah Republican, said his home is decked out in solar panels and geothermal energy. – Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg/Getty Images

But the biggest and most enduring difference between the two parties is that Republicans want fossil fuels – which are fueling climate change with their heat-trapping pollution – to be in the energy mix for years to come.

Democrats, meanwhile, have passed legislation to dramatically speed up the clean energy transition and prioritize the development of wind, solar and electrical transmission to get renewables sending electricity into homes faster.

On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Democrats want to pass more climate legislation if they take back a full majority in Congress. He later told CNN the GOP is “way behind” on climate and there’s been “too little” progress on the party’s stances.

“I think we’d get a lot more done with a Democratic House, a Democratic president and continuing to have a Democratic Senate,” Schumer told CNN. “Unfortunately, if you look at some of the Republican House and Senate Super PACs, huge amounts of money come from gas, oil and coal.”

Even though Curtis and Romney are aligned on the party needing to talk about climate change, they differ on how to fix it. While Curtis primarily supports carbon capture and increased research and development into new technologies, Romney is one of the few Republicans speaking in favor of a carbon tax – taxing companies for their pollution.

“It’s very unlikely that a price on carbon would be acceptable in the House of Representatives,” Romney said. “I think you might find a few Republican senators that would be supportive, but that’s not enough.”

The idea certainly doesn’t have the support of Trump, or other 2024 candidates for president, and experts predict climate policy will get little to no airtime during the upcoming presidential race.

“Regrettably, the issue of climate change is currently being held hostage to the culture wars in America,” Edward Maibach, a professor of climate communication at George Mason University and a co-founder of a nationwide climate polling project conducted with Yale University, told CNN in an email. “Donald Trump’s climate denial stance will have a chilling effect on the climate positions of his rivals on the right — even those who know better.”

Even if climate-conscious Republicans say Trump won’t be in the party forever, Inglis said even a few more years may not be enough time to counteract the rapid changes already happening.

“That’s still a long way away,” Inglis said. “The scientists are saying we can’t wait, get moving, get moving.”

Just what does home insurance cost in Florida? Estimates vary widely, and new state data might surprise you

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Just what does home insurance cost in Florida? Estimates vary widely, and new state data might surprise you

Ron Hurtibise – July 30, 2023

Just what does the average Florida homeowner pay for property insurance? Good luck figuring that out based on wildly varying estimates quoted across the media.

About the only thing everyone agrees on is that the state’s insurance rates have been rising sharply. Insurers say they need higher premiums to offset mounting losses from hurricane claims, severe weather events, high rates of litigation, and resulting increases in the cost of reinsurance — insurance that insurers must buy to make sure they can pay all claims after a disaster.

Reforms enacted in 2022 to curtail costs from litigation are expected to eventually stabilize premium costs, but that hasn’t happened yet.

Meanwhile, online insurance aggregators publish estimates that are all over the map.

Policygenius says average Florida homeowners pay $2,442 for home insurance.

Bankrate says $1,981 — but that’s just to insure the dwelling and doesn’t include other vital elements like liability coverage, loss of use, or personal property.

Insurify crunched numbers from 10 Florida ZIP codes and estimated average homeowners are paying a whopping $7,788 this year.

For a report comparing insurance costs across the nation, USA Today estimated that Floridians pay an average of $2,389.

And Insurance Information Institute, an industry-funded nonprofit organization, estimated Florida’s average home insurance premium was $4,321 last October and $6,000 currently.

Which number is closest to what Florida homeowners are actually paying? It’s impossible to say because the estimates are calculated based on “proprietary methods,” said Mark Friedlander, corporate communications director for the Insurance Information Institute.

Insurance agents in South Florida say their clients are paying on the high side of the estimated range of average premiums.

Yet, recently released data by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation include figures that some might find surprisingly low in comparison to the higher estimates.

The state’s most recent data comes from insurers themselves — sent to OIR each quarter under a law enacted in May 2022.

The data sent by insurers was used to create county-by-county estimates of premiums paid to insure single-family homes, Those estimates were included in the office’s twice-yearly Property Insurance Stability Report released in early July.

State data shows average rates are lower

The report found that on March 31:

Homeowners in 48 of Florida’s 67 counties paid estimated average premiums between $2,000 and $2,999. Averages were below $2,000 in four counties — Sumter, Marion, Baker and Hernando.

Average premiums were in the $3,000s in seven counties: Lee, Okeechobee, Escambia, Okaloosa, Gulf, Pinellas, and Indian River.

Residents of three counties — Walton, Franklin, and Collier — paid average premiums in the $4,000s.

And homeowners in the five southernmost counties — Martin, Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade, and Monroe — paid average premiums of more than $5,000.

In fact, average premiums in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade exceeded $5,500 while homeowners in Monroe, which includes the Florida Keys, paid an average $7,584.

Premium amounts calculated by the Office of Insurance Regulation preceded rate hikes tied to higher reinsurance rates that insurers secured as hurricane season began on June 1. Renewal prices charged after companies secured their reinsurance rates will reflect the higher costs. That means the next six-month report will likely reflect significant rate increases.

Missing from the twice-yearly report is a statewide average premium.

The Sun Sentinel tallied data in a separate release by the office of company-level data that includes numbers of policyholders per coverage category and corresponding direct written premium totals. Direct written premiums are the total dollar amount of all premiums paid to the company by its policyholders. Dividing the number of policyholders into the direct written premium data reveals the average premium charged by the company.

Dividing the total number of policyholders into the total direct written premium total for all Florida-regulated insurance companies reveals Florida’s average homeowner insurance premium on March 31 was $3,134.

How many homeowners in Florida’s five southernmost counties would like to be paying that right now?

Probably all clients of Fort Lauderdale-based insurance agent Phil Portnoy, who works at Donna Carrara Insurance Agency.

“The average I’ve seen from private insurers is anywhere from $6,000 to $10,000 for, say, $350,000 in coverage,” Portnoy said last week. “I’ve seen renewals down in Pinecrest for as much as $17,000 for a million in coverage and as much as $27,000 for a Palm Beach County intracoastal renewal of $1 million in coverage.”

Al Mendez, partner in Mendez & Associates Insurance in Pembroke Pines, says his average policies range from $4,200 to $6,000 to insure homes in the tri-county region with replacement costs of $300,000 to $500,000.

Mendez calls the current state of the insurance market — with rate increases of 25% to 70% over each of the past three years — “the worst I’ve experienced” in 30 years in the industry.

Some of his clients have seen increases of 100% to 200%, he said. “Florida is now the most expensive state to live in,” he said.

South Florida insurance costs are higher

Mark Friedlander of the Insurance Information Institute said he stands by his organization’s estimates that statewide average premiums increased from $4,231 last fall to $6,000 this year as “verified as accurate by numerous third parties, including insurers and insurance agents.”

As Friedlander is a popular source of insurance information, the $6,000-a-year estimate has shown up in stories by numerous national publications about Florida’s insurance crisis.

Two weeks ago, Friedlander said, “a Barron’s reporter verified our premium data with numerous industry analysts and confirmed its accuracy.”

Insurify, Policygenius and USA Today each used insurance data from a single source — Quadrant Information Services — to produce different estimates.

Chase Gardner of Insurify, which calculated an average estimate of $7,788 for Florida, said the company developed its estimates by using average costs in 10 zip codes “representative of each state’s population distribution.” Zip codes with larger populations were weighted more heavily in calculating the average, he said, which may explain why his company’s estimates were so much higher that Insurify’s and Bankrate’s numbers.

“Even though we both collected Florida data from Quadrant Information Services, prices vary a lot depending on where you live in the state,” Gardner said. “For example, we found that average prices were closer to $2,000 to $3,000 per year or less in northern, inland parts of the state, whereas prices could skyrocket to more than $10,000 per year in southern coastal cities like Miami.”

Friedlander said that the Insurance Information Institute’s estimates looked only at private sector policies and excluded policies sold by the insurer of last resort, state-owned Citizens Property Insurance Corp.

Citizens insured 719,347 single-family homes for an average premium of $3,254 in the first quarter of 2023, the state data shows.

That’s high from a statewide perspective but low for South Florida.

In March 2022, Citizens produced a chart that showed its average premium in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade, where 52% of its policyholders are located, was $4,196 — 28% less than the $5,856 combined average of 13 competitors selected for the comparison.

Ultimately, the only home insurance cost estimates that matter are the ones offered to you to cover your home for the upcoming year. And at least for the near future, they’re continuing to increase, agents say.

Ron Hurtibise covers business and consumer issues for the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

Doctor: What I didn’t know until I got skin cancer

CNN – Opinion

Doctor: What I didn’t know until I got skin cancer

Opinion by Susannah Hills – July 29, 2023

Editor’s Note: Susannah Hills is a pediatric airway surgeon and assistant professor and vice chair of the Department of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at the Columbia University Medical Center. The opinions expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion at CNN.

As a practicing physician, my life revolves around caring for my patients, helping them stay healthy, educating them about diseases and picking up on the signs of health concerns that need to be addressed. A few weeks ago, however, it became painfully obvious that I had missed the signs of my own major health issue.

Dr. Susannah Hills - John Abbott — Dr. Susannah Hills – John Abbott

To my surprise, I was diagnosed with skin cancer on my scalp. The diagnosis of basal cell cancer, and the fact that I ignored it for so long, have really made me pause to reflect on my own health habits and some common misconceptions about skin cancer.

For over a year, I thought I had an irregular patch of skin behind my left ear. It was covered by my hair, so it was easy to ignore. I watched this skin peel and scab. I thought it was eczema, which I have had for many years, put hydrocortisone didn’t help. I finally went to the dermatologist, much later than I should have considering my medical background, and I had a biopsy. Basal cell cancer. Another was found on my neck right after that.

I was bewildered. I thought I had been protecting myself from sun exposure so carefully. I spend most of my waking hours indoors at the hospital and still I wear sunscreen every day. I hardly have time for sunbathing and on those rare occasions when I’m in the sun for an extended time, I try to cover up.

As it turns out, my skin cancer has probably been brewing for decades, the result of genetics and basking in the sun many years ago. Damage from the sun’s UV rays is cumulative, increasing the risk of cancer over time. Just five blistering sunburns among 15- to 20-year-olds can increase the risk of melanoma by 80% and two other skin cancers, squamous cell carcinoma and basal cell carcinoma, by 68%, according to research published in Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention. So, I’m probably seeing effects of my early years at the beach now.

My mother also had multiple skin cancers, so my risk of getting one myself was significantly higher. When there is a family history of skin cancer, the risk of early-onset basal cell cancer is more than doubled, per the journal Cancer Epidemiology, the risk of squamous cell cancer is increased four-fold, according to the journal Dermatologic Surgery, and the risk of melanoma is increased by 74%, as reported in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

Still, it seemed so strange to me that my skin cancer showed up on my scalp, underneath a covering of hair. Wouldn’t sun-exposed areas like my nose, forehead, or chin be more susceptible?

With a little research, I discovered that 13% of skin cancers involve the scalp, according to an article in the Journal of the German Society of Dermatology. Skin cancer can show up in all kinds of unusual spots — the eyelids, palms of the hands and soles of the feet. And with the popularity of gel manicures, which use direct UV light to the hands and nails, there is increasing risk of skin cancers in the cuticles and beneath the nails.

Skin cancers can also happen in all types of skin. Malignancies are far more common in light complexions, but cancer of skin with darker pigmentation is often caught later, with higher mortality rates. Everyone is at risk.

Now more than ever, developing good sun protection habits is so important because the risk of developing skin cancer is escalating at an alarming rate. It is estimated by the American Academy of Dermatology that one in five Americans will develop skin cancer in their lifetime, and rates of nonmelanoma skin cancer have increased 33% across the globe since 2007, according to JCO Global Oncology. Many experts attribute this trend to factors such as climate change, global warming and increased exposure to harmful UV rays. Despite this mounting risk, our efforts in skin cancer prevention and early detection are woefully inadequate, with too many people failing to get regular skin exams.

It is up to each of us to develop good sun protection habits early and to learn when to seek medical care for unusual skin changes. Irregularities like changes in color, irregular borders of moles and freckles, skin wounds that don’t seem to heal and areas of chronic peeling or scabbing should never be ignored. An exam should be done every year to monitor unusual skin changes, or if you are at higher risk for developing skin cancer.

This summer, protect yourself. Slather on that sunscreen, wear a hat and seek shade whenever possible. And that peculiar patch of skin you’ve been ignoring? Don’t put off getting it checked out any longer. I learned the hard way that anyone can get skin cancer and it can show up where you least expect. The earlier you catch it, the better your odds, so go see your doctor. I’m glad I did.

US intelligence report says China likely supplying tech for Russian military

Reuters

US intelligence report says China likely supplying tech for Russian military

Kanishka Singh and Michael Martina – July 27, 2023

The flags of the United States and China fly in Boston

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – China is helping Russia evade Western sanctions and likely providing Moscow with military and dual-use technology for use in Ukraine, according to an unclassified U.S. intelligence report released on Thursday.

The assessment by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was published by the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

China has repeatedly denied sending military equipment to Russia since Moscow’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“The PRC is providing some dual-use technology that Moscow’s military uses to continue the war in Ukraine, despite an international cordon of sanctions and export controls,” the ODNI report said.

“The customs records show PRC state-owned defense companies shipping navigation equipment, jamming technology, and fighter jet parts to sanctioned Russian Government-owned defense companies,” the report said.

It also said China has become “an even more critical partner” of Russia after Moscow invaded Ukraine last year.

ODNI said China and Russia had increased the share of bilateral trade settled in China’s yuan currency, and both countries’ financial institutions are expanding their use of domestic payment systems.

China has increased it importation of Russia energy exports, including oil and gas rerouted from Europe, the report said.

ODNI cited much of the information to media reports. It added: “The Intelligence Community lacks sufficient reporting to assess whether Beijing is deliberately inhibiting United States Government export control end-use checks, including interviews and investigations, in the PRC.”

Earlier this month, French President Emmanuel Macron’s top diplomatic adviser Emmanuel Bonne said China was delivering items that could be used as military equipment to Russia, although not on a massive scale.

U.S. officials have previously raised concern about transfers of “dual-use equipment” from China to Russia. However, they have repeatedly said they have yet to see evidence of the transfer of lethal assistance for Russia’s use on the battlefield.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh and Michael Martina in Washington; Editing by Caitlin Webber and Daniel Wallis)

China defends trade with Russia after the US says equipment used in Ukraine might have been exported

Associated Press

China defends trade with Russia after the US says equipment used in Ukraine might have been exported

July 28, 2023

FILE – Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning gestures during a press conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing, on July 26, 2023. The Chinese government defended its dealings with Russia as “normal economic and trade cooperation” Friday, July 28, after a United States intelligence report said Beijing possibly provided equipment used in Ukraine that might have military applications. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)More

BEIJING (AP) — The Chinese government defended its dealings with Russia as “normal economic and trade cooperation” Friday after a United States intelligence report said Beijing possibly provided equipment used in Ukraine that might have military applications.

The Biden administration has warned Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s government of unspecified consequences if it supports the Kremlin’s war effort. The latest report cited Russian customs data that showed Chinese state-owned military contractors supplied navigation equipment, fighter jet parts, drones and other goods, but didn’t say whether that might trigger U.S. retaliation.

“China has been carrying out normal economic and trade cooperation with countries around the world, including Russia,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning. She said Chinese-Russian cooperation “neither targets a third party nor is it subject to interference and coercion by a third party.”

Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin declared before the February 2022 invasion that their governments had a “no-limits” friendship. Beijing says it is neutral in the war, but it has blocked efforts to censure Moscow in the United Nations and has repeated Russian justifications for the attack.

China is an “increasingly important buttress” for Russia, “probably supplying Moscow with key technology and dual-use equipment used in Ukraine,” said the report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, referring to equipment that can have both civilian and military applications.

China has stepped up purchases of Russian oil and gas, which helps Putin’s government offset lost sales after the United States, Europe and Japan cut off most purchases of Russian energy. Beijing can do that without triggering Western sanctions on its own companies, but Washington and its allies are frustrated that it undercuts economic pressure on Moscow.

China rejects Western trade and financial sanctions on Russia because they weren’t authorized by the U.N. Security Council, where Beijing and Moscow have veto power. However, China has appeared to avoid directly defying those sanctions.

“We have also consistently opposed unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction that have no basis in international law and have not been authorized by the Security Council,” said Mao.

Coronavirus is back, but how worried should you be?

Yahoo! News

Coronavirus is back, but how worried should you be?

Parts of the country are seeing an uptick, and hospitalizations are rising nationwide.

Alexander Nazaryan, Senior W. H. Correspondent – July 28, 2023

A cluster of people in face masks come in and out of a COVID-19 vaccine clinic. — People at a COVID-19 vaccine clinic in Los Angeles on Aug. 5, 2022. (Xinhua via Getty Images)

Dr. Bob Wachter was an expert who diligently practiced what he preached. For three years, the prominent University of California at San Francisco physician advocated masking and vaccination for those who, like him, wanted to avoid the coronavirus, as well as the mysterious, long-lasting symptoms known as long COVID.

When Wachter’s wife contracted the coronavirus last year when they were on a trip to Palm Springs, Calif., together, he still managed not to get sick — even after they sat next to each other in the car on the nine-hour trip back home.

But Wachter’s luck ran out earlier this month, when he finally contracted the coronavirus. To make matters worse, he fell in the bathroom while battling flulike symptoms and was hospitalized for stitches.

Wachter wrote on Twitter that he wanted his experience to serve as a “teachable moment,” a reminder that “Covid’s still around [and] it can still be pretty nasty.”

Not only is the coronavirus still around, but it appears to be returning in parts of the United States.

Read more from Yahoo News: Is the COVID pandemic really over?

A summer mini-spike

An overcrowded airport lounge with lines of travelers in the background. — Weary holiday travelers wait for air traffic to resume at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Va., on June 30. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)

Washington was not especially rattled by the infections, but the cases are a reminder that the virus lingers. Students competing in the Solar Car Challenge in Orange County, Calif., for instance, saw the race disrupted this month after about two dozen competitors tested positive for COVID-19.

When the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, visited the White House earlier this month, several members of his delegation tested positive for COVID-19. In North Carolina, Gov. Roy Cooper also caught the coronavirus this month. These do not appear to be isolated incidents.

Wastewater analysis in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Wachter lives, shows increasing levels of the coronavirus. Los Angeles is seeing a similar trend.

“There’s no doubt compared to our nadirs, or the stability that we’ve enjoyed, that there’s a slight increase in test positivity,” California’s health secretary, Dr. Mark Ghaly, told the Los Angeles Times this week.

While most people aren’t locking down or sending kids home from summer camp, the virus appears to be causing a vibe shift. “The U.S. has experienced increases in COVID-19 during the past three summers, so it’s not surprising to see an uptick,” CDC spokeswoman Kathleen Conley told Yahoo News.

In previous coronavirus waves, colder weather drove people indoors and allowed the pathogen to spread. Extremely hot weather could have the same effect. “We are in a very warm year, and people are spending a lot of time indoors,” infectious disease expert Dr. Luis Ostrosky told the Wall Street Journal. “People are congregating in air-conditioned settings, and that is providing an opportunity for transmission.”

Most institutions that had reported coronavirus cases with online trackers are no longer producing daily updates, making both local and national trends difficult to spot. For its part, the CDC drastically scaled back its own tracking in May.

‘Clearly rising,’ but nothing like the past

A pedestrian waits at an intersection by a COVID-19 testing site. — A COVID-19 testing site on a sidewalk in Manhattan in December 2022. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

According to the Centers for Disease Control, COVID-19 hospitalizations rose by 10% in the week of July 15, as compared to the previous week, from 6,444 hospitalizations to 7,109.

“Risk of getting infected is still fairly low, but clearly rising now,” Dr. Tatiana Prowell, a Johns Hopkins oncologist, wrote on Twitter. “Be aware.”

Masking continues to be an easy means of protection, especially when traveling or gathering in crowded settings like concert venues or sports arenas. And many people have neglected to update their vaccines, meaning that they lack some protection from the ever-evolving disease. The latest spike could be driven, in part, by an Omicron subvariant known as Arcturus.

According to the CDC, only 17% of the American population has received the bivalent booster introduced last fall.

“At this time, CDC’s genomic surveillance indicates that the increase in infections is caused by strains closely related to the Omicron strains that have been circulating since early 2022,” CDC’s Conley told Yahoo News.

Those are the very strains the bivalent booster was created to target. The Food and Drug Administration is also preparing an updated booster shot that should be available in September.

Moving on

A woman in a hat and face mask on a sidewalk. — A pedestrian in a face mask in New York City on July 6. (Amr Alfiky/Reuters)

During the Delta spike in the summer of 2021, nationwide hospitalizations for COVID-19 topped 100,000. A year later, the Omicron wave hospitalized 16,000 people across the country.

Today’s figures are much smaller by comparison. And as of the week of July 22, there had been 166 deaths from COVID-19 across the United States — a far cry from the 26,000 weekly deaths recorded in the U.S. in the first week of 2021.

Those at high risk for severe outcomes should make sure they’re up to date on boosters and know where to access treatment if they contract the virus, Dr. Leana Wen, a professor at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health, told Yahoo News.

Between vaccination and multiple infections, the overwhelming majority of Americans have some immunity. Many have thus simply accepted the coronavirus as a part of life.

“The pandemic, for all intents and purposes, now is gone,” Donald Yealy, chief medical officer of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, told the Washington Post several weeks ago.

But, he cautioned, “the virus isn’t gone yet.”

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito gives a middle finger to Congress

Insider

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito gives a middle finger to Congress: ‘No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.’

Madison Hall and Azmi Haroun – July 28, 2023

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito spoke to The Wall Street Journal about congressional oversight.
“No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court,” he said.
The statement comes after months of news reports of ethical impropriety by members of the high court.

After months of news reports documenting instances of Supreme Court justices breaking judicial ethical standards and Democratic lawmakers pushing for a code of conduct to be implemented, conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito revealed in an interview that he doesn’t believe that Congress has any authority to tell the court what to do.

“Congress did not create the Supreme Court,” Alito said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “I know this is a controversial view, but I’m willing to say it. No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.”

He added that while he can’t speak for the other justices, he thinks it’s “something we have all thought about.”

The comments perturbed at least two Democratic members of Congress.

Following the article’s publication, Rep. Ted Lieu took to Twitter to remind Alito that Congress does have some oversight of the Supreme Court.

“Dear Justice Alito: You’re on the Supreme Court in part because Congress expanded the Court to 9 Justices,” Lieu tweeted. “Congress can impeach Justices and can in many cases strip the Court of jurisdiction. Congress has always regulated you and will continue to do so. You are not above the law.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse also noted on Twitter that he believes that Alito is part of what he called a “captured court.”

One of the authors of the article who interviewed Alito, David B. Rivkin, is litigating a tax case, Moore v. US, in front of SCOTUS during the court’s next term.

SCOTUS did not immediately return Insider’s request for comment.

In April, GOP mega-donor Harlan Crow and SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas first faced scrutiny related to the 20 years worth of undisclosed trips Crow is accused of gifting to Thomas, per ProPublica. The outlet later reported that Crow purchased Thomas’ mother’s house and allowed her to live there without paying rent.

In response, Thomas — who asked for an extension to file his financial disclosure forms this year — said that at the time he wasn’t aware that he was meant to disclose the trips with Crow.

Crow claimed to the Dallas Morning News that the revelations about his relationship with Thomas were a “political hit job.”

In June, ProPublica unearthed that Alito had taken a luxury fishing trip with GOP billionaire Paul Singer, who later had cases before the court. Alito claimed that they never discussed cases on the trip, on which he boarded Singer’s private plane.

Congress has probed Crow’s and Thomas’s relationship, as well as Alito’s dealings, asking for a detailed disclosure of the gifts bestowed to Supreme Court justices.

A group of judges, the Committee on Financial Disclosure, is investigating Thomas and SCOTUS disclosure rules, while Senate Democrats have mounted a separate attempt to investigate Thomas and impose a code of ethics on the court.