Category Archives: Northeastern

Forget Germany. Refugees in Croatia First Have to Figure Out Where the Hell They Are.

by JaredVfirixnsir Posted on September 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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Information has been a lifeline for refugees on the route into Europe, with many of them trading updates and tips via WhatsApp while moving from country to country. But in Croatia this week, the information seemed to dry up.

“Where are we?” asked Mohammed, an elderly man from the Syrian city of Aleppo. He and three other men had just stepped off a bus in a cornfield near Šid, a town in northeastern Serbia, after a quick and confusing trip from Greece. They were a 15-minute walk from Croatia, the next step on their trip, but none of them had any clue what country they were in.

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Forget Germany. Refugees in Croatia First Have to Figure Out Where the Hell They Are.

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A Year Ago Today, ISIS Announced Its Plan to Create an Islamic State

by Jay Walker Posted on June 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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Today marks one year since ISIS, AKA the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, announced that it was officially changing its title to the Islamic State and would establish a Sunni Muslim caliphate in Syria and Iraq. The declaration arrived a few weeks after the insurgent group grabbed international attention by capturing Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, after American-trained soldiers abandoned their posts and weapons. Over the past year, the so-called Islamic State has recruited 20,000 foreign fighters, gained control of 50 percent of Syria and large swaths of Iraq, and gained a reputation for relentless brutality.

A year in, the so-called Islamic State is “neither winning nor losing,” says Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, an analyst at the Middle East Forum who monitors jihadist groups. What’s happening with ISIS is “indicative of a long war, with an ebb and flow on different fronts.” The group has become more organized and increasingly appears like a more conventional government now that it’s formed a bureaucracy to administer captured territory. It’s also expanded its influence internationally and inspired lone-wolf attacks in the West. While some argue that ISIS is weakening, Al-Tamimi notes, “People shouldn’t kid themselves about how long this is going to last. This will span years, if not decades.”

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A Year Ago Today, ISIS Announced Its Plan to Create an Islamic State

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Beijing’s Air: Now Slightly Less Deadly

by MayaCoy245660 Posted on April 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Finally, there might be some good news for people inhaling Beijing’s famously filthy air: It’s getting a bit cleaner, according to a new analysis released by Greenpeace today. Pollution levels in the Chinese capital have shown significant improvements, due in part to strict new pollution controls, says the environmental group, which based its analysis on new government numbers.

Beijing’s concentration of the fine airborne particles known as PM2.5—the toxic brew of industrial exhaust and chemicals that contribute to smog—declined by more than 13 percent in the first quarter of 2015 compared to the same period last year, according to the study. Cities in the neighboring province of Hebei, home to extensive heavy industries like steel production, saw their PM2.5 concentrations decrease by an average of 31 percent. Xi’an, the capital of a major coal-producing province, slashed its concentrations by 48 percent, according to the figures supplied by Greenpeace.

Why such steep declines in pollution over the past year? It’s important to keep in mind how awful the starting point was. 2014 was an especially terrible period for skies across China’s northeastern provinces, resulting in unfavorable comparisons to a nuclear winter. The air got so bad that in March 2014, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang declared “war” on smog. A year earlier, my colleague Jaeah Lee and I traveled to China to investigate its push to develop natural gas, and we saw for ourselves the extent of the environmental catastrophe playing out across the country:

While there’s room for some optimism in the new numbers, the picture painted is still pretty grim: 90 percent of the 360 Chinese cities studied by Greenpeace failed to meet the national air quality standard (that number hasn’t shifted since Greenpeace analyzed similar data from 2014). Forty percent of the cities registered air pollution levels that were twice the national standard. And even in Beijing, there’s a long way to go. The World Health Organization recommends a maximum daily concentration of 25 micrograms per cubic meter of PM2.5. That makes Beijing’s average concentrations of more than 90 micrograms per cubic meter alarmingly high.

Still, it’s a step in the right direction. “I think these trends are very positive,” said Angel Hsu, an assistant professor at Yale University who studies China’s environmental performance. But she warned that any statistics emanating from the Chinese government—the source of the pollution data analyzed by Greenpeace—should be taken with a grain of salt. “When you talk about any Chinese data, you’re always a little bit suspicious,” said Hsu, who was not involved in the Greenpeace study.

Hsu attributes the drop in Beijing’s pollution in part to the new air quality controls—the “most comprehensive to date,” she said—enacted by the city’s government, which placed curbs on vehicle use as part of a $21 billion effort to slash pollution levels 25 percent by 2017. “On the vehicle side, I think that has been potentially driving air improvement in Beijing,” Hsu said.

Last month, Beijing shut down the third of four coal-fired power plants inside the city in an effort to clear the air, though Hsu is more doubtful that the drop in pollution levels can be directly tied to reduced coal use: “Perhaps that could also be a source of the drop in PM2.5, but I’m very, very cautious about the coal consumption numbers,” she said, referring to China’s official numbers.

While Hsu said Beijing “can serve as a model for what other cities can do,” she also warned that marginal improvements in one big city could simply be pushing the problem further out into the country, as industry seeks other cities in which to set up shop.

It’s a concern Greenpeace shares. “Armed with this information, the government must now ensure that pollution is not simply relocated to other regions, and that the same strict measures enacted in cities like Beijing are actually enforced across the country,” said Zhang Kai, a Greenpeace climate and energy official, in an emailed statement.

Clean air will continue to be a crucial matter for China’s image on the world stage, as Beijing once again pitches itself as a great place to host an Olympic games—this time, the 2022 winter games. Organizers of the bid recently said $7.6 billion will be spent to fight smog.

Beijing’s reported improvement in air quality comes amid a well-publicized efforts to tackle the problem, directed from the upper echelons of the Communist Party, which sees the pall of smog across the county as a threat to the economy and to social stability for a population increasingly anxious about the environment. Awareness of the problem is on the rise: Under the Dome, a searing documentary about China’s pollution crisis, went viral in March. It attracted hundreds of millions of views before China’s official censors began playing a cat-and-mouse game of trying to ban its various online incarnations.

There’s good news elsewhere, too. Bloomberg reported over the weekend that China has recently scrapped a number of small coal plants, avoiding the release of 11.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. That has helped the country cut its emissions for the first time in a decade, according to Bloomberg.

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Beijing’s Air: Now Slightly Less Deadly

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Climate change is messing with leaves, and leaves are messing back

by LaraeMcDonagh Posted on March 4, 2015

leaf on, leaf off

Climate change is messing with leaves, and leaves are messing back

By on 3 Mar 2015commentsShare

Climate change is a lot like Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid. Or rather, it is like an evil, disembodied Mr. Miyagi looming over the globe, whispering “Leaf on. Leaf off. Leaf on. Leaf off. Don’t forget to breathe.”

Basically, a new study published yesterday in the journal Nature Climate Change shows that vegetation patterns around the world are shifting thanks to climate change. Between 1981 and 2012, the timing of leaf emergence (“leaf-on”) and death (“leaf-off) apparently “changed severely” on 54 percent of the planet’s land surface. That means leaf life-cycles around the world are changing — which could, in turn, mean more changes to the global climate.

The specific forces behind these shifts could be a variety of things — local precipitation changes, temperature changes, shifts in atmospheric CO2, etc. — but one thing’s for sure: As much as climate change can mess with vegetation, vegetation can mess right back. Among climate-altering capabilities, plants have the power to tweak cloud formation, to change the amount of sunlight reflected away from the earth, and to alter heat exchange between the land and the atmosphere. Plus, subtle changes in vegetation can also mess with ecosystems: Some bird and insect species have already felt the effects of these changes as their life-cycles have fallen out of sync with the plants around them, according to Steven Higgins, one of the researchers behind the study.

Higgins and his colleagues point out that previous studies analyzing the effects of climate change on global vegetation have focused on net plant productivity, rather than life-cycle changes. And while net productivity is a useful measure of carbon sequestration capabilities, it “masks important details of the nature of change.”

That’s why, using satellite images, the researchers decided to take a look at those more subtle changes. Overall, the changes were widespread but inconsistent. Some places saw longer growing seasons with earlier “leaf-on” times, others saw later “leaf-off” dates. Parts of northeastern Argentina experienced earlier growing seasons and longer wet seasons. Savannas in some parts of the world behaved differently than savannas in other parts of the world. You get the idea. Overall, 95 percent of land surface experienced some change.

So damn you, evil Mr. Miyagi, with your calm, knowing voice and your cryptic ways. Stop toying with us!

Source:
Severe changes in world’s leaf growth patterns over past several decades revealed

, University of Otago.

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Climate change is messing with leaves, and leaves are messing back

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Here’s How Countries All Over the World Are Making Polluters Pay

by bestleanmusclesupplementwix Posted on February 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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Solving climate change is essentially an economic problem: How do you force companies and consumers to pay for the damage caused by the fossil fuels they consume?

Let me explain: Without a price on carbon emissions, big polluters don’t pay for the greenhouse gases that they release into the atmosphere. The real cost of that pollution is borne by the planet in the form of global warming. So one of the most common strategies for reducing emissions is “cap-and-trade”: Polluters purchase or bid on a limited number of permits, which allow them to emit a certain amount of CO2. A regulated market is then created in which permits can be bought and sold. The cost of the permits—in other words, the carbon price—creates an incentive to reduce carbon pollution.

A new report out this week from the Berlin-based International Carbon Action Partnership shows that in the decade since the first major carbon trading program was adopted by the European Union, cap-and-trade systems have enjoyed remarkable popularity around the world—becoming the mechanism of choice for governments who want to act on climate change. The graphic below gives you a sense of just how widespread these markets have become:

What’s also remarkable is the economic clout that these jurisdictions carry, something that will continue to increase:

China’s national carbon program will start in 2016, but it already has several test programs up and running, together representing the world’s second largest carbon market, after the European Union:

Asia is fast becoming a global hub for carbon trading, as you can see from the maps below, which show the total number of programs around the world either in place, under consideration, or currently in development:

Each cap-and-trade program is different—there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, say the authors of the report. All of the programs cover CO2, but some take on other greenhouse gases, such as refrigerants. The programs also differ in the number of industries covered. Nearly all cover heavy industry, but only three cover aviation, for example. Here’s a snapshot of that diversity:

The report’s authors say that the fact that each country can tailor solutions to its own economy is one of the great strengths of cap-and-trade. “Flexibility is certainly one reason why emissions trading has become such an appealing tool for policy-makers,” said ICAP’s Co-Chairs—Jean-Yves Benoit, head of carbon markets at the Québec Environmental Ministry, and Marc Allessie, head of the Dutch Emissions Authority—in a statement.

But that means “harmonizing”—that is, joining the disparate trading systems into a global market—is now a big challenge. Quebec and California have already linked their systems, as have Tokyo and Saitama in Japan.

In the United States, President Barack Obama proposed a cap-and-trade system in 2009, but the plan died in the Senate. Efforts to develop a federal program have all but been abandoned in favor of regulations dished out by the EPA. There’s no sign of that changing any time soon. Still, some US states have adopted their own systems. In addition to California’s program, a group of northeastern states participate in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. And Washington state is actively considering a cap-and-trade program, as well.

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Here’s How Countries All Over the World Are Making Polluters Pay

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Attention GOP Presidential Candidates: Winter Does Not Disprove Global Warming

by Shawn75Imwhebm Posted on January 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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Snow is falling across the Northeast, and millions of people are preparing for a massive blizzard. Due to the extreme winter conditions, my colleague at Climate Desk has issued the following advisory:

It may seem obvious to you that the existence of extreme winter weather doesn’t negate the scientific fact that humans are warming the planet. But that’s probably because you aren’t a climate change denier who’s contemplating a run for the GOP presidential nomination.

Last year, for example, Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) weighed in on the issue. “It is really freezing in DC,” Cruz said during a speech on energy policy, according to TPM. “I have to admit I was surprised. Al Gore told us this wouldn’t happen!” Cruz said the same thing a month earlier, according to Slate: “It’s cold!…Al Gore told me this wouldn’t happen.”

And here’s former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee on his Fox News show, after a major blizzard back in December 2009:

Which brings us to a couple of Republicans who are probably not going to run for president but who have nevertheless generated headlines recently by suggesting they might. Here’s Donald Trump, during a cold snap last year:

And here’s a 2012 Facebook post from former Gov. Sarah Palin, citing extremely cold winter temperatures in her home state of Alaska:

If you’re a regular Climate Desk reader, you already know why all this is wrong. You understand the difference between individual weather events and long-term climate trends. You probably even know that according to the National Climate Assessment, winter precipitation is expected to increase in the northeastern United States as a result of climate change. But if you’re a Republican who wants to be president, please pay close attention to the following video:

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Attention GOP Presidential Candidates: Winter Does Not Disprove Global Warming

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The Biggest News Stories of 2014, in Photos

by JacquieSpencer Posted on December 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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It’s been a tumultuous year marked by civil war in Syria and Ukraine, the spread of the Islamic State in the Middle East, massive protests against police violence in the United States, air disasters for Southeast Asian airlines, a spirited campaign for control of Congress, and major policy announcements via executive order by President Obama. Here a look back at some of the best images from the year’s major news stories.

January 25: A protester hurls a Molotov cocktail during a clash with police in Kiev, Ukraine. Sergei Grits/AP

January 31: Palestinians line up for food in Yarmouk, a refugee camp in Damascus, Syria. UNRWA/AP

March 22: Relatives of passengers on Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 shouted their demands at reporters after Malaysian government representatives left a briefing in Beijing. The airplane has still not been found. Ng Han Guan/AP

April 3: A Spanish officer assists a migrant who fainted atop a fence that divides Morocco from the Spanish enclave of Melilla. Thousands of sub-Saharan migrants live illegally in Morocco, and regularly try to enter Melilla in the hope of later making it to the Spanish mainland. Santi Palacios/AP

April 12: Supporters of rancher Cliven Bundy fly the American flag in celebration after the US Bureau of Land Management released the family’s cattle onto public land near Bunkerville, Nevada. Armed backers of rancher Bundy lived along a state highway in southern Nevada for almost three weeks following an armed standoff with the BLM, which had rounded up the cattle saying Bundy owed $1.1 million in grazing fees and penalties. Jason Bean/Las Vegas Review-Journal/AP

April 16: A South Korean rescue team and fishing boats try to rescue passengers of the sinking ferry Sewol off the country’s southern coast. The ferry capsized with 476 people aboard, many of them students—and 307 died. South Korea Coast Guard/Yonhap/AP

May 9: Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a parade marking Russia’s forcible annexation, two months earlier, of much of Crimea, previously Ukrainian territory. Ukraine and NATO quickly condemned the victory lap. Ivan Sekretarev/AP

May 12: This image from a video by Nigeria’s Boko Haram terrorist network shows missing girls the group abducted from the northeastern town of Chibok. More than 200 schoolgirls were kidnapped by Boko Haran in April. They were forced to convert to Islam and married off to the group’s members. AP

May 16: Supporters write congratulatory messages for India’s Prime Minister-elect Narendra Modi at his party’s headquarters in New Delhi. Modi’s victory, the most decisive in more than a quarter century, swept the long-dominant Congress party from power. Manish Swarup/AP

May 24: Richard Martinez, whose son Christopher was killed in a mass shooting in Isla Vista, California, lashed out at the NRA and politicians who support the group. The previous day, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger killed six people and wounded 13 before killing himself. Jae C. Hong/AP

June 15: A helicopter circles over the Shirley Fire near Lake Isabella, California. The fire ultimately burned 2,645 acres and caused more than $12 million in damage. It was just one of 5,597 wildfires that altogether burned more than 90,000 acres, according to Cal Fire. Stuart Palley/ZUMA

June 18: Immigrant children who crossed the US/Mexico border without a parent sleep in a holding cell at a Customs and Border Protection processing facility in Brownsville, Texas. Eric Gay, Pool/AP

July 8: Brazil midfielder Fernandinho reacts after Germany scores its third goal during the World Cup semifinals. Germany humiliated the host nation with a 7-1 victory before eliminating Argentina in the final to win its fourth World Cup title. Natacha Pisarenko/AP

July 14: Palestinians who fled their homes under heavy bombardment by Israel take refuge at a UN-run school in Gaza City. Many such schools came under attack during the seven weeks of fighting between Israel and Hamas. Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto/ZUMA

July 17: NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo restrains Eric Garner with a chokehold in this still from an eyewitness video. Garner died shortly afterward, and a grand jury decision not to indict the officer sparked massive protests across the nation. YouTube

July 19: Emergency workers carry a body bag from the site of a Malaysia Airlines crash near the eastern Ukrainian village of Hrabove. Ukraine accused Russian separatist rebels of shooting down the plane, a charge the rebels deny. Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

July 29: Israeli soldiers, family, and friends mourn Sgt. Sagi Erez, killed in combat after militants used a tunnel to sneak into Israel from Gaza. Ariel Schalit/AP

August 13: A demonstrator throws a teargas container back at riot police in Ferguson, Missouri, where the killing of an unarmed black man by a police officer set off weeks of street protests. Robert Cohen/St Louis Post-Dispatch/TNS/ZUMA

August 14: US servicemen discuss the deconstruction of a command operation center in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province. On October 26, after 13 years, America, Britain, and Australia formerly ended Afghan combat operations. Cpl. John A. Martinez Jr./U.S. Marine Corps

August 26: A pro-Russian rebel patrols through the rubble of a market damaged by shelling in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine. Mstislav Chernov/AP

August 28: A worker prepares to remove the corpse of an Ebola victim in Unification Town, Liberia, part of the most severe outbreak since the virus was discovered. Kieran Kesner/Rex /ZUMA

Mid-September: Businessman Jon Gamble near Dunblane on the eve of a Scottish independence referendum. On September 18, a majority of the voters chose to remain part of the United Kingdom. Andrew Milligan/PA Wire/AP

September 23: Air Force Maj. Gena Fedoruk and 1st Lt. Marcel Trott take off in a KC-135 Stratotanker as part of a mission to conduct airstrikes on Islamic State positions in Syria. Senior Airman Matthew Bruch/U.S. Air Force

September 27: Riot police use pepper spray on pro-democracy activists who forced their way into Hong Kong government headquarters, challenging Beijing’s decision to backpedal on promised democratic reforms. Apple Daily/AP

October 20: An airstrike by a US-led coalition in Kobani, Syria, as seen from a hilltop near the Turkey-Syria border. Kobani and the surrounding areas has been under assault by Islamic State extremists since mid-September. Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

November 4: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell casts his ballot at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky. He easily won a sixth term. J. Scott Applewhite/AP

December 8: Protesters rallying against police violence and the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner at the hands of police, stop traffic on Interstate 80 in Berkeley, California. Noah Berger/AP

December 20: In Havana, members of the so-called Cuban Five celebrate a recent exchange of imprisoned spies, part of a historic agreement to restore relations between the United States and Cuba. Ramon Espinosa/AP

December 26: A protester in Mexico City displays painted hands and the number 43, signifying the number of students taken from a rural teachers college and handed over to a drug gang to be killed, according to an investigation by Mexican government authorities. Marce Ugarte/AP

December 27: The casket of NYPD officer Rafael Ramos is carried from a church in Queens after funeral services. Ramos and his partner, Officer Wenjian Liu, were shot to death in Brooklyn on December 20 by a man, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who said it was in retaliation for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Brinsley later killed himself. Julio Cortez/AP

December 29: Indonesian Air Force officials study a map during search and rescue efforts for the missing AirAsia flight QZ8501. Wreckage from the plane, along with dozens of floating bodies, were found in the Java Sea on December 30. Sijori Images/ZUMA

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The Biggest News Stories of 2014, in Photos

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California Voters Helped Kick Off the Prison Boom. They Just Took a Huge Step Toward Ending It.

by JacobRaphael Posted on November 5, 2014

Mother Jones

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Voters in the birthplace of mass incarceration just gave it a major blow. With California’s passage of Proposition 47, which reclassifies nonviolent crimes previously considered felonies—think simple drug possession or petty theft—as misdemeanors, some 40,000 fewer people will be convicted of felonies each year. Thousands of prisoners could be set free. People with certain kinds of felonies on their records can now apply to have them removed.

The state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates the reforms will save California hundreds of millions of dollars annually, money that will be reinvested in school truancy and dropout prevention, mental health and substance abuse treatment, and victim services.

The proposition’s passage represents a pendulum swing: Just two decades ago, California overwhelmingly passed a three-strikes ballot initiative that would go on to send people to prison for life for stealing tube socks and other minor offenses. Last night, the state’s voters turned back the dial.

The new law requires the savings from reducing prison rolls to be reinvested into other areas that could, in the long-term, further reduce the prison population. Take dropout prevention: Half of the nation’s dropouts are jobless, and according to a 2006 study by the Gates Foundation, and they are more than eight times as likely to get locked up.

The same goes for increased funding to aid the mentally ill. In California, the number of mentally ill prisoners has doubled over the last 14 years. Mentally ill inmates in state prisons serve an average of 15 months longer. Lockups have become our country’s go-to provider of mental health care: the nation’s three largest mental health providers are jails. There are ten times as many mentally ill people behind bars as in state hospitals. Sixteen percent of inmates have a severe mental illness like schizophrenia, which is two and a half times the rate in the early 1980s. Prop 47 will provide more money for mental health programs that have been proven to drop incarceration rates. For example, when Nevada County, California started an Assisted Outpatient Treatment program, average jail times for the mentally ill dropped from 521 days to just 17.

Keeping drug users out of prison and putting more money into drug treatment is probably the most commonsense change that will come out of the measure. Sixteen percent of state prisoners and half of federal prisoners are incarcerated for drug offenses. Yet there is growing evidence that incarceration does not reduce drug addiction. And while 65 percent of US inmates are drug addicts, only 11 percent receive treatment in prison. Alternatives exist: a pilot project in Hawaii suggested that drug offenders given probation over being sent to prison were half as likely to be arrested for a new crime and 70 percent less likely to use drugs.

California’s vote comes at a time when it seems more and more Americans are questioning how often—and for how long—our justice system incarcerates criminals. Last year, a poll of, yes, Texas Republicans showed that 81% favored treatment over prison for drug offenders. The passage of Prop 47 is yet another example that prison reform is no longer a partisan issue. The largest single backer of the ballot measure was Bradley Wayne Hughes Jr., a conservative multimillionaire who has been a major financial supporter of Republicans and Karl Rove’s American Crossroads. His donation of $1.3 million was second only to contributions from George Soros’s Open Society Policy Center.

The passage of Prop 47 might inspire campaigners to put prison on the ballot in other states. It might also push lawmakers to realize they can ease the penal code on their own without voters skewering them for letting nonviolent people out of prison—and keeping them out.

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California Voters Helped Kick Off the Prison Boom. They Just Took a Huge Step Toward Ending It.

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Rate of Mass Shootings Has Tripled Since 2011, Harvard Research Shows

by LarhondaFUQC Posted on October 15, 2014

Mother Jones

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(Click to enlarge)

Editor’s note: The authors are scholars from the Harvard School of Public Health; this article details their independent research, which is based on the mass shootings data Mother Jones has collected and published since 2012.

In June, following gun attacks in California and Oregon, President Obama remarked that mass shootings are “becoming the norm.” But some commentators claim that mass shootings are not on the rise. So which is it?

Have mass shootings become more common?
According to our statistical analysis of more than three decades of data, in 2011 the United States entered a new period in which mass shootings are occurring more frequently. Our analysis used data compiled by Mother Jones on attacks that took place in public, in which the shooter and the victims generally were unrelated and unknown to each other, and in which the shooter murdered four or more people. (An incident with four or more homicide victims was the threshold count for mass killing established by the FBI a decade ago; a federal law signed by President Obama in 2013 defined the threshold as three or more victims killed.)

So why do we keep hearing in the media that mass shootings have not increased?
This view stems from the work of Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox, who has long maintained that mass shootings are a stable phenomenon. (“The growing menace lies more in our fears than in the facts,” he has said.) But Fox’s oft–cited claim is based on a misguided approach to studying the problem: The data he uses includes all homicides in which four or more people were murdered with a gun. His analysis, which counts the number of events per year, lumps together mass shootings in public places with a far more numerous set of mass murders that are contextually distinct—a majority of which stem from domestic violence and occur in private homes. Fox’s annual count and use of overly broad data including many types of mass killings fail to detect the recent shift in public mass shootings.

Our method and how it works
We used a Statistical Process Control (SPC) method that analyzes the time interval between each incident. This is more effective than counting the annual number of incidents because it is more sensitive to detecting changes in frequency when the number of events per year is small, as is the case with public mass shootings. SPC methods were first developed for industry, to identify changes in the process underlying a specific problem, so that root causes of that problem could be better assessed. This approach has proved effective in healthcare, for example, helping to reduce surgical errors. For the method to work, it is crucial to analyze events that are qualitatively similar. In other words, to assess the rate of public mass shootings it is necessary to exclude mass killings that are qualitatively distinct, like those taking place in private homes.

What our analysis reveals
As the chart above shows, a public mass shooting occurred on average every 172 days since 1982. The orange reference line depicts this average; data points below the orange line indicate shorter intervals between incidents, i.e. mass shootings occurring at a faster pace. Since September 6, 2011, there have been 14 public mass shootings at an average interval of less than 172 days. A run of nine points or more below the orange average line is considered a statistical signal that the underlying process has changed. (A nine-point run below the average is about as likely to occur by chance as flipping a coin nine times and getting heads nine times in a row—the probability is less than 1 percent. The 14-point run we see here is even more unlikely to have occurred by chance.) The standard interpretation of this chart would be that mass shootings, as of September 2011, are now part of a new, accelerated, process.

Because the chart signals that a new process started around September 2011, we can divide the chart at that point to analyze each phase separately. In the first 29-year phase, mass shootings occurred every 200 days on average. In the subsequent three-year phase, mass shootings occurred every 64 days on average:

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What does the new FBI report on mass gun violence show?
In late September, the FBI released a study showing an increase in the frequency of “active shooter” cases between 2000 and 2013. The FBI analyzed 160 cases, which it defined as any incident in which shooters are “actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people” in a public place, regardless of the number of casualties. Our analysis of the FBI’s data using the SPC method corroborates the FBI’s findings that “active shooter” incidents have become more frequent.

Our analysis further reveals that the FBI data overlaps closely with the Mother Jones data. The FBI’s data set contains 44 cases in which four or more people were murdered; as the chart below shows, the process underlying this set of events shifted between late 2011 and early 2012, with mass shootings occurring more frequently since.

The FBI and Mother Jones used similar criteria. Both studies excluded mass killings in private homes related to domestic violence as well as attacks stemming from drug and gang-related activity, and both included certain attacks involving more than one shooter. The discovery methods for collecting data differed to some degree, with the FBI using various law enforcement records and reports in addition to media reports, which were the main source of the Mother Jones data. That the results of the two studies are so similar reinforces our finding that public mass shootings have increased.

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So mass shootings have become more frequent. What now?
Though we now know that public mass shootings have been occurring more often, the reasons why have yet to be identified. However we come to understand the complex factors that drive these events, it is unlikely that this recent shift is the result of social and cultural factors that have remained relatively constant over the past decade—such as the prevalence of mental illness. While many mass shooters had mental health problems, as the Mother Jones data shows, there is no reason to believe that there has been an increase in mental illness rates in the last several years that could help explain the rise in mass shootings. (In fact, federal research on the prevalence of severe mental illness shows a decrease in recent years.) As we search for answers with the common goal of diminishing mass shootings, studying them effectively remains key, not least for gauging the success of any policies aimed at reducing the frequency and toll of these events.

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Rate of Mass Shootings Has Tripled Since 2011, Harvard Research Shows

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Did Crazy Luck Help Cigarette Makers Sidestep These Gruesome Warning Labels?

by CandiceKuefer Posted on September 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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Talk about luck.

Back in 2009, Congress passed landmark legislation directing the US Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco products, which according to the Centers for Disease Control kill at least 480,000 Americans each year—more than were killed in battle in all of our foreign wars combined. Among the agency’s early moves was a ban on candy- and fruit-flavored cigarettes, which were assumed to attract children.

Judge Richard J. Leon

Over the past five years, however, cigarette and e-cigarette companies have filed three major lawsuits against the Food and Drug Administration to halt the imposition of rules intended to make their products less appealing to consumers—and less accessible to kids.

The three cases, which involved, among other things, graphic warning labels, FDA oversight of e-cigarettes, and the use of menthol, were all decided in the industry’s favor by Richard J. Leon, a US District Court judge in Washington, DC, whose rulings have demonstrated concern about government overreach and a tone of deep skepticism toward the FDA’s legal positions. “Please! This conclusion defies common sense,” he wrote, dismissing one of the agency’s arguments.

Given how cases are normally assigned, the fact that Leon was assigned to all three is extraordinary—and extraordinarily good luck for the industry, which currently, for example, remains free of federal restrictions on selling candy-flavored e-cigarettes to children.

How extraordinary? Well, the District Court assigns cases randomly among its regular judges, plus several senior judges with reduced caseloads. According to the court, there were 13 regular judges on hand when two of the cases were filed, and 9 regular judges available when the third was filed. The odds of the cases being randomly assigned to any one judge—1 in 13, 1 in 13, and 1 in 9—put the chance of a single judge drawing all three FDA cases at 1 in 1,859. With senior judges in the draw, the odds would be even more remote.

Just an unlikely coincidence, court officials say. Nothing more. It would be “indefensible,” said Greg Hughes, the court’s chief deputy clerk for operations, for anyone to bend the assignment rules. The situation “does stretch the bounds of credulity,” he acknowledged, but the complaints were indeed randomly assigned. “That’s what the system’s telling me, and I have to put faith in the system.”

The court does have a “related case” process: The filing lawyer is supposed to inform the court when the case in question is closely related to another case under the court’s jurisdiction. Also, a judge who is randomly assigned a case may request its transfer to a colleague who has handled a very similar case in the past. But court officials told me that neither of those things happened with the FDA cases, and my review of the docket supports that.

Judge Leon joined the court in 2002 after being nominated by President George W. Bush. He is considered something of a maverick conservative, and has come down hard on federal agencies in other cases. In December 2013, for instance, he ruled that the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of phone records of United States citizens is probably unconstitutional. It’s unclear whether another judge would have ruled differently in the FDA cases—two of which have been held up on appeal. (An appeal of the third case is pending.)

Leon declined to be interviewed for this story, as did officials with the FDA and Justice Department—which represents the agency in court. Tobacco industry lawyers either did not return my calls or declined to be interviewed.

But the tobacco control advocates I reached were somewhat incredulous. It seems “very, very strange that somebody who has demonstrated a sustained hostility to the federal regulation of tobacco products keeps getting assigned to these cases,” said Richard Daynard, a Northeastern University law professor and chairman of the Boston-based Tobacco Products Liability Project. “It certainly leaves one wondering what is going on.”

Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, told me that the impact of these rulings has been “enormous.” Leon “has fundamentally altered the FDA’s authority and ability to carry out its congressional mandate,” he said. “It has had a direct effect on what has happened with e-cigarettes, and the fact that the United States still has among the weakest warning labels in the entire world.”

“But,” Myers added, “there is no evidence of wrongdoing. You can’t point to anything. I wish I could.”

Legal authorities had to agree. “The odds are long,” said Andrew Bradt, an assistant professor and expert on litigation procedure at the UC-Berkeley School of Law, “but I would have no basis for saying there’s any shenanigans going on.”

Alan B. Morrison, a George Washington University law professor with extensive litigation experience in the DC District Court, concurred that the odds were “quite astounding.” But given the outcome of the appeals to date, he doubts anything happened that “is evil or malicious or affecting outcome.”

Leon’s decisions have stymied federal oversight in the following areas:

E-cigarettes: In 2009, the FDA tried to halt a shipment of e-cigarettes into the US on the grounds that the products—which produce nicotine vapor without burning tobacco—were unapproved drug-delivery devices. E-cigarette marketers sued the agency. In January, 2010, Judge Leon issued an injunction saying the FDA lacked authority to regulate e-cigarettes as drug-delivery devices because the marketers weren’t making therapeutic claims. The ruling was affirmed on appeal.

Almost five years later, e-cigarettes (along with similar devices called “vape” pens or hookah pens that can be used to ingest nicotine) are still exempt from FDA oversight. Although the vapors e-cigarettes produce appear to be less harmful than tobacco smoke, nicotine is extremely addictive. Health officials fear kids who get hooked using the devices may well graduate to smoking.

Indeed, according to a recent CDC study, more than a quarter of a million middle and high school students who had never smoked said they had used e-cigarettes in 2013. And because the devices are unregulated, they aren’t bound by federal age limits, bans on kid-friendly flavorings, or advertising restrictions. In April, the FDA finally issued a proposed rule that would give it the authority to regulate e-cigarettes as tobacco products (as opposed to drug-delivery devices), but that rule won’t become final until next year at the earliest.

Graphic Warning Labels: The 2009 antismoking legislation directed the FDA to create bold pictorial warnings for cigarette packs that would replace the small text warnings that have been unchanged since the 1980s. Seventy-four countries and territories around the world require such graphic warnings, according to survey data from the Canadian Cancer Society, but the United States, with the world’s biggest tobacco control program, still doesn’t have them.

In June, 2011, the FDA ordered the use of nine rotating warnings designed to cover 50 percent of cigarette packages. The images included things like diseased lungs and a cadaver on an autopsy table.

Five tobacco companies, including RJ Reynolds and Lorillard—the second and third leading cigarette makers—filed a lawsuit claiming the mandate violated their First Amendment rights. Judge Leon sided with the companies, ruling that the labels were “more about shocking and repelling than warning,” and amounted to an “impermissible expropriation of a company’s advertising space for Government advocacy.” A federal appeals court upheld the decision in August 2012.

The FDA has gone back to the drawing board to develop new warnings that will pass legal muster. But officials aren’t saying when they will be proposed.

Menthol Cigarettes: The 2009 tobacco control act also directed the FDA to create an expert panel—the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee to study whether menthol cigarettes pose more of a risk to public health than non-menthol brands. In a July 2011 report, the panel concluded that menthol, which anesthetizes the throat against the harshness of the smoke, likely makes it easier for teens and young adults to take up smoking.

Lorillard and RJ Reynolds sued to invalidate the report, complaining that several panel members had conflicts of interest because they had served as consultants to pharmaceutical companies developing smoking cessation products and had served as witnesses in anti-tobacco lawsuits.

This July, Judge Leon ruled that panel members Neal Benowitz and Jack Henningfield, both renowned addiction experts, and Dr. Jonathan Samet, an editor on several Surgeon General reports, had conflicts that “fatally tainted” the panel and the menthol report. He ordered the FDA to reorganize the committee, and forbade it from considering the panel’s findings. The agency has filed a notice of appeal.

A version of this story was published concurrently by FairWarning.org, a nonprofit investigative news organization focused on public health, safety, and environmental issues.

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Did Crazy Luck Help Cigarette Makers Sidestep These Gruesome Warning Labels?

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