Wildfire smoke blankets US cities with air pollution again

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Tuesday 07.25.23

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By Alexandra Meeks

Smoke rises from the Burgess Creek wildfire in British Columbia, Canada, on Saturday.

Air quality

Smoke from more than 1,000 fires burning across Canada is noticeably drifting into the US again. The pollution from the smoke is threatening residents' health in several cities including Chicago, Minneapolis and Detroit — which are now ranked in the top 20 most polluted cities in the world, according to global pollution tracker IQAir. The blanket of hazy skies follows a belt of Canadian wildfire smoke that stretched across the US last week, triggering air quality alerts for more than a dozen states from Montana to Vermont, with some smoke reaching as far south as Alabama. The US will likely continue to see the downwind effects of Canada's prolonged wildfires as the country continues to experience its worst fire season on record.

Immigration

The Justice Department is suing the state of Texas as Gov. Greg Abbott refuses to remove floating barriers his administration constructed in the Rio Grande. Abbott has argued the barriers are intended to deter migrants from crossing into Texas from Mexico, but his measures have disrupted US Border Patrol operations and put migrants at risk of drowning. In the lawsuit, the DOJ specifically alleges that Texas and Abbott, a Republican, violated the Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Act by building a structure in US water without permission from the US Army Corps of Engineers. However, Abbott is pushing back defiantly, saying in a Fox News interview on Monday that he plans to "take this lawsuit all the way to the United States Supreme Court."

Emmett Till

President Joe Biden will establish a new national monument today honoring Emmett Till, the Black teenager whose murder in 1955 helped galvanize the civil rights movement. The monument will be centered in Illinois and Mississippi, the states where Till was from and killed, respectively. The designation will come amid a national debate over how to teach painful facts about American history in public schools. Some Republican-led states have enacted new standards that critics say sanitize history, including the realities of slavery and of racist violence. Biden will officially name the monument at a White House event later today, which would have been Till's 82nd birthday.

Taxes

American taxpayers no longer have to fear the IRS showing up unannounced at their door. The IRS is ending a decades-old practice of having revenue officers visit households and businesses to help them resolve their account balances by collecting unpaid taxes and unfiled tax returns. The agency said Monday it is making the change due to growing safety concerns for both employees, who are increasingly dealing with hostile taxpayers, and Americans, who are contending with an increase of scam artists posing as IRS agents. Typically, tens of thousands of unannounced visits take place each year. Under the new policy, less than a few hundred visits are expected to occur in special circumstances involving the seizure of assets, for instance.

Israel

Israel's parliament on Monday passed a law stripping the Supreme Court of its power to block government decisions, despite six months of protests over the controversial plan. The bill passed by a vote of 64-0 in the Knesset after opposition lawmakers walked out of the chamber as the vote was taking place. Analysts are calling the measure the most significant shakeup to the court system since the country's founding. Video showed Israeli police firing water cannons at anti-government protesters as they formed human chains. Meanwhile, the White House called the vote "unfortunate," emphasizing it will "continue to support the efforts of President Herzog and other Israeli leaders as they seek to build a broader consensus through political dialogue."

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50 million

That's approximately how many people in the US will see temperatures top 100 degrees this week, forecasts show. This comes as doctors across the nation are dealing with an uptick in heat-related illnesses, such as heat exhaustion and heatstroke. Temperatures are particularly dangerous in Arizona, where doctors have reported a spike in patients that have been burned just by falling on the ground.

I'm not aware of any new communications.

— State Department spokesperson Matt Miller, saying Monday that North Korea has remained silent on the American soldier that crossed into North Korea last week. Court documents showed that Pvt. Travis King, believed to be the first US soldier to cross into North Korea since 1982, had a history of assault, was facing disciplinary action and was meant to return to the US the day before the incident. His motive for crossing the demarcation line is still a mystery.

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