Conflict/Corruption

"The Trump administration announced an agreement with the Venezuelan government on Friday to develop a vast amount of Venezuela's oil reserves.

The U.S. government says it is entering into a joint venture with a private Venezuelan company, according to an official who spoke to NPR on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the deal. The Trump administration says the U.S. would get 55% of the oil from the joint venture. That's equivalent to about 65 billion barrels of oil that's under the ground.

"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is excluding two deaths reported by Pennsylvania from its weekly updates of a national measles death tally, a decision that came from new CDC director Erica Schwartz, according to three former and current officials familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation."

"The Trump administration is working to cut global health funding to developing nations by tens of billions of dollars by 2030, according to a new analysis of the secretive agreements U.S. officials have pursued with more than a dozen governments to date."

"The Trump administration on Friday moved to relax fuel efficiency standards for medium- and heavy-duty commercial trucks."

"The Tr ump administration is looking to change a portion of a 2023 federal climate report." "The administration proposed to reframe how the Fifth National Climate Assessment sees its worst-case scenarios after U.N. scientists said earlier this year that a worst-case scenario was not plausible."

"The Trump administration’s latest deal to cancel offshore wind projects and boost fossil fuel energy development instead is generating a huge payday for one of the president’s million-dollar donors."

"Many Venezuelans suspected that there was going to be a price to pay for President Trump’s brazen capture of their autocratic leader, Nicolás Maduro, who was arrested by U.S. forces in January. On Friday, that cost became clear when Mr. Trump announced that the U.S. would be taking majority control of a vast part of Venezuela’s oil reserves — national resources long considered by many in the country to be a birthright."

"For more than a year, the National Park Service has been quietly working to fulfill an unprecedented directive from Trump officials: Parcel off a corner of Yosemite National Park to give to a private developer."

"Dr. Adam Kalkstein is suing the U. S. Military Academy, where he was a professor of geography and the only climate scientist, after being fired." "After 17 years of teaching science at West Point, Dr. Adam Kalkstein says he was suddenly ordered last year to cut from his curriculum information about the human causes of climate change, according to a new lawsuit filed against the U.S. Military Academy."

"A handful of mega data center projects would emit over 100 million tons per year of greenhouse gases, an enormous amount roughly equal to the annual emissions of a mid-sized industrialized country."