Budget Plan, Climate Crisis, Military Vaccines: Your Monday Evening Briefing

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Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Monday.

The nonbinding blueprint calls for an expansion of Medicare to include dental, hearing and vision benefits, the formation of a Civilian Climate Corps, and funding to establish universal pre-K and grant free community college tuition for two years. The spending would be fully paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy, large inheritances and corporations.

The plan does not appear to address raising or suspending the debt ceiling, which the Congressional Budget Office said the country would hit in October or November.

2. Devastating effects from global warming are now unavoidable, a major new scientific report found.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of scientists convened by the U.N., concluded that nations have delayed curbing their fossil-fuel emissions for so long that they can no longer stop global warming from intensifying — but there is a window to avert far greater perils.

“We can expect a significant jump in extreme weather over the next 20 or 30 years,” said Piers Forster, a climate scientist who helped write the report. Here are five takeaways.

The Pacific Northwest — including near where the Dixie Fire is burning in California — will be under an excessive heat watch this week. Stifling heat will also be found across portions of the Great Lakes region, the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast.

The Dixie Fire, which has burned nearly 490,000 acres and is now California’s second largest wildfire on record, was only 21 percent contained as of Sunday night. Catastrophic wildfires were also burning in Greece and Turkey.

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott faced withering criticism for his refusal to enact a statewide mask mandate while he prohibited local officials from doing so in their own communities. The Dallas school district defied that ban by requiring masks for anyone on school property.

And Canada reopened its borders to fully vaccinated citizens and residents of the U.S. for the first time since March 2020. But the reopening is only one way: U.S. officials have said they would not immediately reciprocate.

The U.S. response has been muted, and the Biden administration has made it clear that America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan is over.

5. Electric cars still cost much more than gasoline vehicles.

That’s going to make it hard for President Biden’s goal for 50 percent of all new cars sold in the country to be battery-powered by the end of the decade. Sales in the U.S. are less than 4 percent now, a far lower rate than in China and Europe, which offer more generous incentives.

Automakers and their suppliers have steadily reduced the cost of batteries, which are the main reason electric vehicles are expensive. But it will probably take several years or more for them to achieve parity with gasoline vehicles.

The Biden administration wants to invest billions of dollars to build charging stations and to lower the vehicles’ cost. But the bipartisan infrastructure bill in the Senate does not expand incentives for E.V. purchases, and would authorize only $7.5 billion for chargers, half of Biden’s original request.

6. It’s a terrible time for saving money.

In an upside-down world of financial markets, expected returns after inflation are at record lows.

The combination of high inflation, strong economic growth and very low interest rates has meant that “real” interest rates are lower than they have ever been in modern times, writes our senior economic correspondent Neil Irwin.

“For people who are risk-averse, they have to get used to the worst of all possible worlds,” said Sonal Desai, the chief investment officer of Franklin Templeton Fixed Income. “Which is watching their little pool of capital go down in real terms year after year after year.”

7. The atomic-bomb cover-ups.

Japan insisted that the atomic bomb’s invisible rays at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 led to waves of sudden death and lingering illness. The U.S. denied that charge.

Charles Loeb, a Black war correspondent whose articles were distributed by the National Negro Publishers Association, defied the American military’s propaganda, telling how bursts of deadly radiation had sickened and killed the Japanese.

Another reporter, William Laurence, a science writer for The New York Times, aided the U.S. effort to misinform. A recent book by the nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein documents how the reporter known as “Atomic Bill” became an apologist for the military and a serial defier of journalistic ethics.

8. This plant has an appetite for insects.

Western false asphodels, which sprout in the Pacific Northwest, produce flowering stems covered in sticky hairs. It was generally believed that the hairs were part of the plant’s defense strategy, killing insects that might attack the leaves and flowers.

But research showed it was actually digesting the insects, making it the world’s newest and most unexpected carnivorous plant.

The study raises the intriguing possibility that there are other plant species — perhaps even familiar ones — whose insect-digesting ways haven’t yet been noticed.

9. Eating colorful fruits and vegetables may be good for your brain.

A new study found that flavonoids — which give plant foods their bright colors — may help curb the forgetfulness and mild confusion associated with advancing age.

Higher intakes of brussels sprouts, strawberries, winter squash and raw spinach were most highly associated with better scores on a test of subjective cognitive decline. The effects of onions, apple juice and grapes were also significant, but weaker.

“These are the foods you should be eating for brain health,” said Dr. Thomas Holland, a researcher at the Rush Institute for Healthy Aging.

10. And finally, the right way to tickle a rat.

Researchers in Australia tickled the rodents every day for a month to see if it would improve their emotional well-being. It did. Because happy animals lead to improved research outcomes, contented rats mean better well-being for patients.

There are three proper, scientific ways to tickle a rat. Here’s one: Tickle the rat between its front legs and on its chest while applying a firm, constant pressure to keep the rat on its back.

“It’s fun,” said one certified rat tickler at the University of Wollongong. “The last step is you flip them and let them go, and they’ll turn around and come straight back.”

Have an amusing evening.

Shelby Knowles compiled photos for this briefing.

Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern.

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