The lifting of the moratorium could open some 70 million hectares to logging – an area roughly the size of France – and its impacts would be catastrophic. With or without a “sustainability” label, the logging of the Congo Basin is a nightmare for the rule of law and a constant threat to local people.

For millions of people who depend on the forest for their livelihoods, including Indigenous Peoples, selling it off to multinationals has meant land grabs, displacement and destitution. And bulldozing the rainforest will likely mean less rain.

The Congo Basin forest is estimated to contribute more than half of the annual precipitation in Sub-Saharan Africa, an area already facing a plethora of droughts and extreme heat waves.

One of the things the EU ambassadors the Minister is schmoozing ought to remind her is that no one appears to know exactly who these multinationals are.

Nearly six months after the launch of an EU-funded legal review of logging titles, the lead auditor reported this month that his team still hasn’t been able to pull together a list of titles… He hasn’t yet glimpsed a “so-called existing” list; what there is is “very incomplete.” Ève Bazaiba took her time to sign the team’s mission order, until two months after an intervention by the EU ambassador.

Over 40 Congolese and international NGOs are still waiting for a reply to their 23 September letter to donors, warning of the impending catastrophe.

In the letter they were told that lifting the moratorium in DRC, home to about 60 per cent of the Congo Basin forest, would remove the last shreds of credibility from COP15 on biodiversity in Kunming and from COP26 on climate in Glasgow.

The Congo Basin forest has more than 600 tree species and 10,000 animal species, including forest elephants, lowland gorillas, bonobos, and okapi. Its vegetation is estimated to contain between 25-30 billion tons of carbon, equivalent to about four years of global anthropogenic emissions of CO2. Increased logging might mean greater risk of yet another pandemic.

Source: Green Gold: Billion Dollar Question for Congo Rainforest | Inter Press Service

The Miami Herald’s editorial board published a scathing rebuke of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Monday, writing that he is descending into “anti-vaxx Crazyville” after he called a special legislative session to pass new laws aimed at undermining federal COVID-19 vaccine requirements for workers.

“We thought things couldn’t get much worse in DeSantis’ handling of the pandemic, but we were wrong — then we were wrong again. Just when you think he’s done enough to undermine our chances of exiting a pandemic that has killed nearly 60,000 Floridians, he has a new trick up his sleeve,” the Herald wrote in an op-ed.

The newspaper criticized DeSantis’s proposed law that would make businesses liable for medical harm resulting from mandatory vaccines, pointing out that millions of vaccines have been administered in the U.S. without issue. It also took issue with taxpayer funds being used to send lawmakers to Tallahassee to attend a “special session for this nonsense.”

Source: Miami Herald: DeSantis descending into ‘anti-vaxx Crazyville’ | TheHill

Source: Covid: Masks mandatory for everyone in the Commons – except MPs – BBC News

Source: Covid: FDA officials back Pfizer jab for children over five in US – BBC News

Infection rates peaked 24 days after the last game (21.8%; 95% CI, 6.4% to 37.3%) and then fell until day 30, when the difference between participating and nonparticipating counties was no longer significant (17.1%; 95% CI, –0.6% to 34.7%).

“The findings of this cross-sectional study suggest that social gatherings among unvaccinated students were associated with increased COVID-19 infections (in this scenario, slowing the previous downward trend and briefly increasing) in a university’s community beginning 8 days after the event, which corresponds with the 75th percentile of time to symptom onset,” she wrote.

The researcher cautioned that states vary in how they test for and report COVID-19 infections and that universities competing in March Madness may have increased surveillance testing during and after the tournament, leading to higher case counts than in other counties.

“This study identifies an urgent gap in evidence on the risk of COVID-19 spread at social gatherings among university students, although the increase in transmission was brief,” she wrote. “This increase in transmission may have been brief because of increases in the vaccination rate of university students during this time or because some students may have completed their semester before the end of the study period.”

Source: Study links March Madness parties to more county COVID cases | CIDRAP

One fired agent in Texas with 10 years in the Border Patrol posted an image of Pepe the Frog, “a symbol of the alt-right and white supremacy,” and doctored images of President Joe Biden touching U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., the report said. The other, California-based agent, who was at the agency for 20 years and was disciplined in 2005 for undisclosed reasons, published homophobic memes and a doctored image of then-President Donald Trump raping a member of Congress. The report doesn’t name the lawmaker but Ocasio-Cortez has said she was depicted being raped on the Facebook group, named “I’m 10-15. Source: 2 border agents are fired for offensive Facebook posts

The now 71-year-old president of Tompkins Conservation and her late husband Doug Tompkins were attempting a feat of conservation never before done on such a large scale, spending more than $345 million to buy large swaths of land in Chile and Argentina, restore the grasslands, the forests, and the waterways — and then give them back to the people.

In 2018 and 2019, Kris Tompkins finished this chapter of her life’s work by handing over nearly one million hectares to the Chilean government. This was added to the four million hectares of their own land that formed five new national parks and enlarged three existing ones. A contract with the Chilean government assures that Tompkins Conservation stays involved for the next ten years to guide and support the ecosystem restoration. In Argentina, Kris signed over her land under the condition it would remain protected for at least 99 years, thus creating or significantly enlarging six national parks. Her gifts at the time marked the largest private land donation in history and helped conserve a total of 14.7 million acres of land and 30 million marine acres.

Source: How One Woman Protected Millions of Acres – RTBC