Marijuana isn't actually very green, it turns out. Cannabis is the most energy-intensive crop in the U.S., Politico reports — though it needn't be. Grown in warehouses, marijuana production can require 2,000 watts of electricity per square meter, versus about 50 watts for lettuce, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found. But marijuana grows great outdoors — it is called "weed" for a reason — in some areas of the country, especially Northern California and Southern Oregon.
"Because cannabis remains federally illegal, and the federal government regulates interstate commerce, none of the legal cannabis grown in Oregon or California can cross state lines," Politico's Natalie Fertig and Gavin Bade write. "Instead, each new state that legalizes recreational marijuana must also grow enough to meet consumer demand in that state. This would be like every state in America being required to grow all of the oranges consumed each year by its residents, rather than simply buying them from Florida."
Some states and cities require indoor cannabis operations to use energy-efficient LED grow lights or take other steps to mitigate carbon emissions, but "reducing the environmental impact of cannabis in state-siloed markets is not simple — or cheap," Politico says. Allowing the country to buy marijuana grown outdoors on the West Coast may not be a perfect solution either, though, since cannabis also takes water to grow, and water is a critically scarce commodity in Northern California and Southern Oregon.
El Salvador has gone crypto.
President Nayib Bukele's Bitcoin Law received 62 out of 84 votes in El Salvador's Congress on Wednesday morning, rendering it legal tender in a global first.
In addition to the U.S. dollar, El Salvadorians can use the cryptocurrency to pay for goods and services, send money from abroad, and pay taxes. Per the law, the exchange rate will be freely established by the market. But bitcoin has been known to be volatile, as a single tweet from Elon Musk can cause drastic change in value.
The Bitcoin Law says the state will provide necessary training to help the population — 70 percent of which does not have access to traditional financial services — use bitcoin.
"In the short term, this will generate jobs and help provide financial inclusion to thousands outside the formal economy," Bukele said.
The price of bitcoin rose 5 percent after the vote, NBC News reports. The CEO of digital payments application Strike, which is partnering with El Salvador, called Bukele's proposal a "shot heard 'round the world for bitcoin." The law goes into effect in 90 days.
Halo Trust, a United Kingdom-based international humanitarian landmine-clearing charity, announced Wednesday that 10 of its workers were killed and 16 others injured in an attack in Afghanistan's Baghlan province.
The Afghan government blamed the Taliban for the killings, but the group denied responsibility, and Halo Trust's CEO told BBC "the local Taliban group came to our aid and scared the assailants off." He said it's not clear who the attackers were, though BBC reports that even if the perpetrators are unknown, "the aim is clear." A survivor of the attack reportedly said the gunmen asked the workers if any of them were from the Hazara minority, a Shia community, before opening fire, indicating the motive was to further spark ethnic tensions.
Halo Trust, which BBC notes mostly hires local people, received an outpouring of support in wake of the news. Read more at BBC.
Almost a third of Republican voters believe it is "at least somewhat likely" that former President Donald Trump will be reinstated to the presidency later this year, a new Morning Consult and Politico survey shows. Of that 29 percent, 17 percent believe a 2021 reappointment to be "very likely."
Morning Consult
That such a "sizable minority" of Republicans discredit President Biden's win suggests Trump's claims of widespread election fraud have had a very significant "electoral and political impact," Morning Consult writes. The former president's so-called "big lie" coupled with the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection may have actually undermined Americans' faith in U.S. democracy on both sides of the political spectrum. Over three-quarters of surveyed voters — 77 percent — believe American democracy is currently being threatened. When sorted by party, 77 percent of Democrats and 82 percent of Republicans report feeling that the "world's oldest continuous democracy is at risk."
Morning Consult.
Morning Consult and Politico surveyed 1,990 registered voters between June 4-7, 2021. Results have a margin of error of 2 percentage points. See more results at Morning Consult.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are shooting down a report that they never asked the queen about naming their daughter in her honor — and they're reportedly issuing a legal threat over the claim.
A BBC report on Wednesday cited a Buckingham Palace source as saying that Queen Elizabeth II "was not asked by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex about naming their daughter Lilibet," the queen's nickname since she was a kid. Harry and Meghan announced the birth of their second child, Lilibet "Lili" Diana Mountbatten-Windsor, on Sunday.
A spokesperson for the Duke of Sussex, however, denied this report to CNN, saying Harry did speak to the queen about it.
"The Duke spoke with his family in advance of the announcement," the spokesperson told CNN. "In fact, his grandmother was the first family member he called. During that conversation, he shared their hope of naming their daughter Lilibet in her honor. Had she not been supportive, they would not have used the names."
The BBC report cited a source close to the Sussexes as saying that Harry spoke to the queen before his daughter's birth and "would have mentioned the name," but the report added that a Palace source disputes this.
Now, The Daily Beast reports that "lawyers acting on behalf of the former royals issued a legal threat," citing a British newspaper source as saying that "a rare legal warning had gone out to the papers advising them not to repeat the allegation."
San Francisco's average of 13.7 new COVID-19 infections per day "is what herd immunity looks like," Dr. George Rutherford, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California, San Francisco, told The Guardian.
Rutherford is one of several experts who believe San Francisco is the first major U.S. city to achieve the long sought-after goal. "You're going to have single cases, but they're not going to propagate out," he said.
It's not entirely clear what the actual threshold is for herd immunity, but 68 percent of the northern California city's eligible residents are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and 80 percent have received at least one shot, The Guardian reports. Those numbers are certainly in the neighborhood of scientists' herd immunity estimates, some of which are as high as 90 percent, based on inoculations alone. When coupled with natural infections, it appears the coronavirus may have a hit a wall in San Francisco.
The city has some natural advantages, The Guardian notes, including the fact that it has a relatively small population of children (no vaccines have been approved for anyone younger than 12), and it's a compact place, geographically speaking, which "has allowed teams of health workers to go door-to-door to reach" people who may not otherwise have been willing or able to get their shots. Read more at The Guardian.