It's a Spooky Planet

👻 Happy Halloween! Here are the top stories on the world’s most pressing health and environmental disparities.

🍑 A SOUTHERN FLAIR

• The World’s Newest Carnivorous Plant Is a Red Sundew That ‘Death Hugs’ Its Insect Prey. Its Survival Depends on a Rare and Disappearing Florida Habitat (Luke Bowles, Smithsonian Magazine)

But one detail overshadowed them all. This sundew occurs only in a 12-by-16-mile patch of the Florida Panhandle, an area smaller than Chicago, earning it the unwanted title of the most range-restricted sundew in the United States. Now, scientists and conservationists are racing to protect this limited habitat before it becomes irrevocably damaged—or destroyed entirely. 

• CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — How Texas Could End Up Paying an Israeli Company Billions for Water ( Dylan Baddour and Arcelia Martin, Inside Climate News)

“It would be one of the more ambitious projects in U.S. history,” said Drew Molly, a former chair of the American Waterworks Association and chief water officer for the city of Houston. 

• Chattanooga, Tenn. – The fix for America’s terrible internet is hiding in Tennessee (Sara Herschander, Vox)

”There was a generation that built water systems and electric systems. There was a generation that built the roads,” [Christopher Mitchell, director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative] said. Today, however, “People are just afraid of the idea of the government being ambitious and doing what Chattanooga did.”

• NEW ORLEANS – Does It Matter If Our Fish Are Wild? (Boyce Upholt, Food and Environmental Reporting Network, in collaboration with the Southern Foodways Alliance)

The rules seem to be less about what the species needs and more about a changing view of the ocean: It’s seen less as a place where people should be working and more as a place where we should go and have fun. A wild, unspoiled paradise.

• DeSantis administration’s repeal of vaccine mandates faces mounting legal challenges (Laura Cassels, Florida Trident)
• ATLANTA – Georgia leaders call on EPA to curb diesel generator emissions at data centers (Kristi Swartz, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

🟠 TRACKING TRUMP

• BILLINGS, Mont. – Trump says he’s ending restrictions on climate-warming methane from oil drilling  (Matthew Brown and Mead Gruver, The Associated Press)

While previous regulations focused only on new oil and gas wells in the U.S., the Biden rule regulated existing wells. Operators also would have needed to plug leaking methane from smaller wells that produce just 6% of the nation’s oil and gas while accounting for up to half of all methane emissions from oil and gas fields.

• How much are Trump’s pro-coal policies costing us? (Jeff St. John, Canary Media)

“This is a lot of government support and intervention that’s going to benefit an industry much more than it will benefit the American public,” said Surbhi Sarang, EDF’s senior attorney for clean power. “[Coal plants] produce pollution, which will just cost communities more. And they’re an expensive form of energy that will cost communities more.” 

• Kennedy to Allow Broad Use of Unapproved Peptide Injections (Christina Jewett, The New York Times) 

“It does undermine the idea that you would test drugs for safety and effectiveness before they were widely made available,” said [Dr. Janet Woodcock, who retired in 2024 from the F.D.A. after 40 years in drug oversight]

• DES MOINES, Iowa – Iowa’s cancer problem is scrambling the midterms (Sarah Owermohle & David Wright, CNN)

“Nine months ago, there was no candidate talking about this except me, and now literally every candidate is featuring it in their campaign,” said Chris Jones, a long-time water quality advocate and now Democratic candidate for state agriculture secretary.

📰 WHAT ELSE WE'RE READING

• Americans’ fresh fruits and vegetables are increasingly coming from Mexico (Caitlin Gilbert and Rachel Roubein, The Washington Post)

“We don’t have a robust system in place to go verify that these foreign producers are following the rules,” said Sarah Sorscher, who directs regulatory affairs for the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest, “and that’s a big concern for anybody who eats food in America.”

• Man up, don't save the planet (Julius E. O. Fintelmann, The European Correspondent)

“In Northern and Western Europe, men are less likely to vote for green parties or parties that emphasise protecting the environment,” said Ingvild Zinober, a researcher studying the green gender gap at the European University Institute.

• Extreme weather is creating a perfect storm of misinformation (Jake Bittle, Grist)

“Disasters are, by their nature, very urgent and have a lot of uncertainty surrounding them,” said Amber Silver, a professor of emergency management at the University at Albany and an expert in disaster communications.

• PHILADELPHIA – Financial documents show the Academy of Natural Sciences Museum deficit may be less than a million (paywalled) (Peter Dobrin and Susan Snyder, The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Nonprofit experts contacted by The Inquirer said that’s a relatively small gap to cover.“ Given their donors, their legacy in the community, and the loss to the city, a raise of the amount would be something they could do on a ‘Friday afternoon,’” said arts consultant Nancy Burd.

• HSINCHU, Taiwan – Taiwan’s six-year hunt for China’s undercover chip labs (Kinling Lo, Rest of World)

 “Almost everyone in the industry would know or have heard of people who were approached or worked for Chinese companies,” said [John Chen, a board director at Taiwan-listed chip design company MicroIP].

• OTTAWA – First meeting in over 20 years between First Nations and First Ministers met with Divisions (Miles Morrisseau, ICT)
• Malaria Parasite Caught in the Act of Breaking and Entering (Joanna Thompson, Quanta Magazine)
• Trans health group's lawsuit over FTC subpoena is moot, US judge rules (Daniel Wiessner, Reuters)
• Tanzania celebrates first natural gas discovery in more than 10 years (Basillioh Rukanga, BBC)