Monthly Archives: <span>December 2020</span>

Vaccine Carrots or Sticks? Businesses Grapple With Getting Employees Inoculated

HOUSTON — U.S. workers could soon face choices such as free COVID-19 shots and a cash bonus if all get immunized, or those unwilling to be vaccinated get reassigned or even lose their jobs. Those options are being studied by …

Fears and Tension Mount for Commuters Still Heading to Work

NEW YORK (AP) — One by one, the fears creep in as Aura Morales rides the bus to her job at CVS in Los Angeles. A passenger boards without a mask but she doesn’t dare confront him. More riders board …

Spain: 3 Dead in Inferno Of Building Occupied by Squatters

BADALONA, Spain (AP) — Firefighters in northeastern Spain found three bodies in an abandoned industrial complex occupied by migrants and other squatters that caught fire and partially collapsed, while ongoing emergency work assisted by sniffer dogs and drones on Thursday …

The Stormy, Fiery Year When Climate Disasters Wouldn’t Stop

Nature struck relentlessly in 2020 with record-breaking and deadly weather- and climate-related disasters. With the most named storms in the Atlantic, the largest-ever area of California burned by wildfires, killer floods in Asia and Africa and a hot, melting Arctic, …

Beirut Silos At Heart Of Debate About Remembering Port Blast

BEIRUT (AP) — Ghassan Hasrouty spent most of his life working at the silos in Beirut’s port, unloading grain shipments to feed the country even as fighting raged around him during the 1975-90 civil war. Decades later, he perished under …

Top Court Upholds Governor’s Sweeping Virus Emergency Orders

BOSTON (AP) — Gov. Charlie Baker did not overstep his authority when he issued sweeping orders to close businesses and limit gatherings to control the spread of the coronavirus, the highest court in Massachusetts said in a ruling released Thursday. …

Analysts Say Cat Models Would Encourage Wildfire Mitigation Measures

Predictive modelers told California regulators on Thursday that the state’s antiquated rules for calculating wildfire risk when setting property insurance rates discourage innovative mitigation measures that could ultimately reduce losses. Nancy P. Watkins, a principal and consulting actuary for Milliman, …

A Year of Heat and Fire Accelerated the Arctic’s Transformation

Back when Donald Perovich, an engineering professor at Dartmouth and member of the MOSAiC Arctic research team, conducted his first sea-ice field experiment in the region in 1979, he and his colleagues didn’t study ice because they were worried about …

High Tide Floods Venice as Dike-On-Demand Wasn’t Activated

High tides flooded St. Mark’s Square in Venice on Tuesday, propelled by winds that were stronger than predicted, and an experimental system of inflatable barriers wasn’t activated to prevent water from invading the lagoon city. The system, while still in …

Cybersecurity Firm FireEye Says it Was Hacked by Nation State

BOSTON — Prominent U.S. cybersecurity firm FireEye said Tuesday that foreign government hackers with “world-class capabilities” broke into its network and stole offensive tools it uses to probe the defenses of its thousands of customers, who include federal, state and …