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UN’s weather agency: 2022 was nasty, deadly, costly and hot

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:24:41 GMT

Looking back at 2022’s weather with months of analysis, the World Meteorological Organization said last year really was as bad as it seemed when people were muddling through it. And about as bad as it gets — until more warming kicks in.Killer floods, droughts and heat waves hit around the world, costing many billions of dollars. Global ocean heat and acidity levels hit record highs and Antarctic sea ice and European Alps glaciers reached record low amounts, according to the United Nations’ climate agency’s State of Global Climate 2022 report released Friday.While levels have been higher before human civilization, global sea height and the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and methane in the air reached highest modern recorded amounts. The key glaciers that scientists use as a health check for the world shrank by more than 1.3 meters (51 inches) in just one year and for the first time in history no snow survived the summer melt season on Switzerland’s gla...

Toyota’s new president vows to step up electric vehicle push

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:24:41 GMT

TOKYO (AP) — Toyota’s new president Koji Sato has promised what he called an aggressive shift on “electrification,” while acknowledging criticism that Japan’s top automaker has fallen behind in actual volumes of electric vehicles sold compared to its rivals. “We like to see that as people cheering Toyota on,” to play catchup in electric cars, Sato told reporters Friday at Toyota Motor Corp.’s Tokyo headquarters.“If we look at in practical terms of the situation today, we have done a great deal in reducing carbon emissions,” he said, defending the automaker’s record on other gas-sipping technologies. Toyota is a leader in hybrids, which have both a gasoline engine and electric motor, and Sato stressed that different markets have varying powertrain needs, with emerging markets being slower to adopt pure electric vehicles. But he said pure electric vehicles allow for more software functions because of their connectivity and other features, stressing that Toyota’s electric vehicle...

Russia's air force accidentally bombs its own city

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:24:41 GMT

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's military acknowledged that a bomb accidentally dropped by one of its warplanes caused a powerful blast in a Russian city not far from Ukraine's border, injuring two and scaring local residents.Belgorod, a city of 340,000 located about 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of the Russia-Ukraine border, has faced regular drone attacks during Russia's current military operation in Ukraine. Russian authorities blamed the earlier strikes on the Ukrainian military, which refrained from directly claiming responsibility for the attacks.The explosion late Thursday was far more powerful than anything Belgorod residents had experienced before. Witnesses reported a low hissing sound followed by a blast that made nearby apartment buildings tremble and shattered their windows.It left a 20-meter (66-foot) -wide crater in the middle of a tree-lined boulevard flanked by apartments, damaged several cars and threw one vehicle onto a store roof. Two people were injured, and a third perso...

18 states, including IL, urge recall of Kia, Hyundai cars due to high rate of thefts

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:24:41 GMT

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Attorneys general in 18 states, including Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, urged the federal government Thursday to recall millions of Kia and Hyundai cars because they are too easy to steal, a response to a sharp increase in thefts fueled by a viral social media challenge.Some Kia and Hyundai cars sold in the United States over the last decade do not have engine immobilizers, a standard feature on most cars that prevents the engine from starting unless the key is present.Videos circulating on the social media service TikTok have shown how people can start Kia and Hyundai models by using only a screwdriver and a USB cable. In Los Angeles, thefts of Hyundai and Kia cars increased by about 85% in 2022, now accounting for 20% of all car thefts in the city, according to the California attorney general's office.These social media-inspired thefts have often ended in tragedy, with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration blaming the stolen car tren...

Racial gap in US stroke deaths widened during pandemic

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:24:41 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — The longstanding racial gap in U.S. stroke death rates widened dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, government researchers said Thursday.Stroke death rates increased for both Black and white adults in 2020 and 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study. But the difference between the two groups grew about 22%, compared with the five years before the pandemic.“Any health inequity that existed before seems to have been made larger during the pandemic," said Dr. Bart Demaerschalk, a stroke researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix who was not involved in the new study. “This is another example of that.”During a stroke, something blocks or reduces blood flow to part of the brain or a blood vessel in the brain bursts. It can result in brain damage or long-term disability and is the nation's fifth leading cause of death.Until about a decade ago, the U.S. stroke death rate was falling because of improved treatment and reduced smoking r...

Americans bought almost 60 million guns during the pandemic

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:24:41 GMT

One-fifth of U.S. households purchased guns during the pandemic, a national arming that exposed more than 15 million Americans to firearms in the home for the first time, academic studies show. Americans purchased nearly 60 million guns between 2020 and 2022, according to an analysis by The Trace, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that tracks gun violence. Yearly gun sales are running at roughly twice the level of 15 or 20 years ago.  All the new weapons may be fueling a historic surge in gun deaths, which reached record highs during the same period.  “It’s a totally different type of gun ownership now,” said John Roman, a senior fellow in the Economics, Justice and Society Group at NORC, a research organization based at the University of Chicago.  “It’s not a rifle stored away somewhere that you take out twice a year to go hunting. It’s a handgun, probably a semiautomatic handgun, that you keep in your bedside table or in your glove compa...

APD: Woman stabbed on CapMetro bus, man detained

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:24:41 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) – Austin Police said a man was detained Friday morning after stabbing a woman on a CapMetro bus in downtown Austin. According to police, officers were called to the bus at the corner of 5th Street and North Lamar Boulevard just before 2 a.m. INDEPTH: CapMetro updates plans to develop police force Police say the victim was taken to the hospital with a non-life-threatening injury. The woman and the man did not know each other, according to police.

QUIZ: How many of these native Texas flowers can you name?

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:24:41 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- Every spring, polychromatic flowers pop up along Texas roads making our commutes just a little more pleasant.While some Texas wildflower's peak has already passed, others are still thriving. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin said people can expect to see many well-known Texas wildflowers from March through May. QUIZ: Do you know Texas’ official state symbols? There are over 5,000 species of wildflowers growing throughout the Lone Star State. Take the quiz below to see if you can accurately name eight of them. Sorry, you are using an unsupported browser. This page will not display correctly. Please click here to upgrade to a newer browser. /**/If you aced this test, try out this Texas-centric quiz.

Inger Burnett-Zeigler: Stress is a silent killer for pregnant Black women

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:24:41 GMT

“We don’t take walk-ins,” the receptionist at my obstetrician-gynecologist’s office at a large academic medical center told me when I showed up without an appointment on a Friday afternoon and asked to be seen by a nurse.I was close to 28 weeks pregnant. I’d suffered severe headaches throughout my pregnancy. For the past several days, my feet and ankles had been so swollen that I could not lace up my sneakers. The night before, while receiving an award, I was so short of breath that I had trouble speaking.The prior weekend, I phoned the nurse on call and told her my blood pressure had been gradually increasing. She believed my symptoms to be a “normal” part of pregnancy and told me to call back if my blood pressure rose over 140/90. I’d just received a blood pressure reading of 142/94 at a medical appointment that wasn’t pregnancy-related.As a Black woman older than 40 and as a health disparities researcher, I knew that I met sev...

5 things to know this Friday, April 21

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:24:41 GMT

ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) — Self-help writer Edmond Mbiaka believes, "Every single day is a good day no matter how bright or dark it is because it always brings an opportunity to start a positive beginning in your life." The weather this afternoon will certainly pave the way for that kind of progress—Meteorologist Jill Szwed went so far as to call it, "a fantastic Friday." Get the latest, news, weather, sports and community events delivered right to your inbox! Hundreds gathered in Fort Hardy Park on Thursday, for a candlelight vigil in memory of Kaylin Gillis. Also, in Colonie, the town board unanimously approved body cameras for the police department. All this and more, in today's five things to know. 1. Silent candlelight vigil for Kaylin GillisHundreds of people gathered in silence at Fort Hardy Park Thursday night to remember Kaylin Gillis, whose life was taken too soon. Silent candlelight vigil for Kaylin Gillis 2. Colonie police to don body cameras in new programThe Colonie ...