Wednesday is the deadline for hunters to apply for 2021 North Dakota pronghorn and tundra swan licenses.
Applicants can apply online at the North Dakota Game and Fish Department website,gf.nd.gov.
Game and Fish is making1,720 pronghorn licenses available, down slightly from last year. The department’sannual survey indicated an 8% decrease in pronghorn numbers from last year, likely due to drought.
The pronghorn license fee is $30 for hunters age 16 and older, and $10 for those under 16. Only North Dakota residents are eligible to apply.
The bow-only portion of this year’s pronghorn season is from noon on Sept. 3 through Sept. 26. Eligible hunters can use guns or…
A gray wolf is seen in Yellowstone National Park.In response to multiple new laws aimed at reducing Montana’s wolf population, state officials have rolled out regulation proposals for wildlife commissioners to consider later this month.National Park Service
Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks reported roughly 25,000 public comments were submitted ahead of next week’s Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission meeting. About 19,000 comments were form letters that generally opposed killing wolves or the proposed methods, according to agenda materials. About 90% of non-form letter comments also opposed killing wolves or expressed ethical or conflict concerns. About 1,000 comments could be identified as submitted…
More than 40% of Nevada is classified as being in an “exceptional drought,” the definition of which states that “ecosystem viability is threatened.”
While Nevada has the third-most species at risk of extinction in the United States, wildlife managers continue to allow the unlimited trapping of vulnerable and critical species such as beavers, otters and bobcats — not to mention all the non-target animals trapped.
Wildlife have endured unprecedented drought for years, and it is my expectation that the Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW) do all that it can to maintain populations under such stress. Instead, motivated by a small population of trappers and outdated values, NDOW ignores evidence of population declines and continues to promote reckless killing on over 59 million acres of public land. There are no arguments for economic contributions to conservation — trappers contribute less…
Across the internet, a cottage industry has sprung up to accommodate people who say they won’t get vaccinated for either personal or religious reasons.TAP TO UNMUTE
Aug. 10, 2021, 10:18 AM PDT / Updated Aug. 11, 2021, 4:59 AM PDTBy The Associated Press
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. — As the delta variant of the coronavirus sweeps across the United States, a growing number of colleges and universities are requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination for students to attend in-person classes. But the new mandate has opened the door for those opposed to getting the vaccine to cheat the system, according to interviews with students, education and law enforcement officials.
Both faculty and students at dozens of schools interviewed by The Associated Press say they are concerned about how easy it is to get fake vaccine cards.
Across the internet, a cottage industry has sprung up to accommodate people who say they won’t get vaccinated for either personal or religious reasons.
An Instagram account with the username “vaccinationcards” sells laminated COVID-19 vaccination cards for $25 each. A user on the encrypted messaging app, Telegram, offers “COVID-19 Vaccine Cards Certificates,” for as much as $200 apiece.
An increasing number of inquiries to these sites and similar ones appear to be from those who are trying to get fake vaccination cards for college.
A Reddit user commented on a thread about falsifying COVID-19 vaccination cards, saying, in part, “I need one, too, for college. I refuse to be a guinea pig.”
On Twitter, one user with more than 70,000 followers tweeted, “My daughter bought 2 fake ID’s online for $50 while in college. Shipped from China. Anyone have the link for vaccine cards?”
According to a tally by The Chronicle of Higher Education, at least 675 colleges and universities now require proof of COVID-19 inoculations. The process to confirm vaccination at many schools can be as simple as uploading a picture of the vaccine card to the student’s portal.
In Nashville, Vanderbilt University places a hold on a student’s course registration until their vaccine record has been verified unless they have an approved medical accommodation or religious exemption.
The University of Michigan says it has a system in place to confirm employee and student vaccinations. A spokesman for the college told the AP the school has not encountered any problems so far with students forging their COVID-19 vaccination record cards.
But Benjamin Mason Meier, a global health policy professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, questions how institutions can verify those records.
“The United States, unlike most countries which have electronic systems in place, is basing its vaccination on a flimsy paper card,” he said.
Meier tweeted last week that he spoke with several students who were worried about the accessibility of fraudulent vaccine cards and that they knew a fellow student who had submitted one to the university.
“There need to be policies in place for accountability to make sure that every student is operating in the collective interest of the entire campus,” he said.
In a statement to the AP, UNC said it conducts periodic verification of documents and that lying about vaccination status or falsifying documents is a violation of the university’s COVID-19 community standards and may result in disciplinary action.
“It’s important to note that UNC-Chapel Hill has not found any instances of a student uploading a fake vaccine card. Those claims are simply hearsay at this point,” the school said.
But other university staff and faculty have expressed their concern over the alleged forgery of vaccine cards. Rebecca Williams, a research associate at UNC’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, said while she is concerned by these claims, she isn’t surprised.
“This is why I think the development of a reliable national digital vaccine passport app is very important for the sake of all the organizations and businesses that want to require proof of vaccination for employees, students, or business patrons,” Williams said.
The AP spoke with several students across the country who did not want to be identified but said they were aware of attempts to obtain fake cards.
Some school officials acknowledge that a foolproof system is impossible.
“As with anything that potentially requires a certification, there is the possibility for an individual to falsify documentation,” said Michael Uhlenkamp, a spokesman for the chancellor’s office at California State University. The school system, which is the largest in the nation, oversees about 486,000 students each year on 23 campuses.
Dr. Sarah Van Orman, the chief health officer at the University of Southern California and COVID-19 task force member for the American College Health Association, said college campuses are especially challenging environments to control the spread of COVID-19 since tens of thousands of students move into campus from all over the world. But even if students falsify their vaccination status, it may have limited impact, she said.
“I think that the numbers of students who would do that would be so very small that it wouldn’t affect our kind of ability to get good community immunity,” Orman said.
In March, the concern over fake COVID-19 vaccination cards prompted the FBI to issue a joint statement with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services urging people not to buy, create or sell fabricated vaccine cards.
The unauthorized use of the seal of an official government agency such as HHS or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is a federal crime that carries a possible fine and a maximum of five years in prison.
In April, a bipartisan coalition of 47 state attorneys general sent a letter to the CEOs of Twitter, Shopify and eBay to take down ads or links selling the bogus cards.
Many of the sites have blacklisted keywords related to fake cards, but places to buy the documents are still popping up on messaging apps, chat forums and the dark web.
Sellers on websites such as Counterfeit Center, Jimmy Black Market, and Buy Express Documents list COVID-19 vaccine cards, certificates and passports for sale, some costing €400 Euros or about $473.49.
An advertisement on the website Buy Real Fake Passport reads vendors can produce fake vaccination cards by the thousands, if not tens of thousands, based on the demand.
“It is hiding under our noses. If you want it, you can find it out,” said Saoud Khalifah, founder and CEO of scam-detecting software Fakespot. “If we are seeing signs where things like Lollapalooza and other festivals are getting fake cards to gain entrance, the trend is just going to continue into these universities.”
In July, the U.S. Department of Justice announced its first federal criminal fraud prosecution involving a fake COVID-19 immunization and vaccination card scheme. Juli A. Mazi, 41, a naturopathic physician in Napa, California, was arrested and charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of false statements related to health care matters.
Court documents allege she sold fake vaccination cards to customers that appeared to show that they had received Moderna vaccines. In some cases, the documents show Mazi herself filled out the cards, writing her own name, and purported Moderna “lot numbers” for a vaccine she had not in fact administered. For other customers, she provided blank CDC COVID-19 vaccination record cards and told each customer to write that she had administered a Moderna vaccine with a specified lot number.
Requiring vaccinations to attend class at colleges and universities has become a contentious political issue in some states. Public colleges in at least 13 states including Ohio, Utah, Tennessee and Florida cannot legally require COVID-19 vaccinations due to state legislation, but private institutions in those same states can.
Among the states introducing and passing bills barring educational institutions from mandating COVID-19 vaccines, infringement on individual rights or liberties is often cited as the main concern.
But according to a statement released by the American College Health Association and other educational organizations, these restrictions impede on universities’ abilities to operate fully and safely.
“The science of good public health has gotten lost in some of the decisions that have been made in some places,” Orman said. “It has not always been held up by our political leaders.”
Some college students have taken to social media platforms like Twitter and TikTok to voice their outrage over other students possessing fraudulent vaccine cards.
Maliha Reza, an electrical engineering student at Pennsylvania State University, said it is mind-boggling that students would pay for fake vaccination cards when they could get the COVID-19 vaccine at no cost.
“I’m angry about that, like there is more anger than I could describe right now,” Reza said. “It’s dumb considering the vaccine is free and it is accessible across the country.”
Fake Covid-19 vaccination cards worry college officials
Across the internet, a cottage industry has sprung up to accommodate people who say they won’t get vaccinated for either personal or religious reasons.TAP TO UNMUTE
Aug. 10, 2021, 10:18 AM PDT / Updated Aug. 11, 2021, 4:59 AM PDTBy The Associated Press
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. — As the delta variant of the coronavirus sweeps across the United States, a growing number of colleges and universities are requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination for students to attend in-person classes. But the new mandate has opened the door for those opposed to getting the vaccine to cheat the system, according to interviews with students, education and law enforcement officials.
Both faculty and students at dozens of schools interviewed by The Associated Press say they are concerned about how easy it is to get fake vaccine cards.
Across the internet, a cottage industry has sprung up to accommodate people who say they won’t get vaccinated for either personal or religious reasons.
An Instagram account with the username “vaccinationcards” sells laminated COVID-19 vaccination cards for $25 each. A user on the encrypted messaging app, Telegram, offers “COVID-19 Vaccine Cards Certificates,” for as much as $200 apiece.
An increasing number of inquiries to these sites and similar ones appear to be from those who are trying to get fake vaccination cards for college.
A Reddit user commented on a thread about falsifying COVID-19 vaccination cards, saying, in part, “I need one, too, for college. I refuse to be a guinea pig.”
On Twitter, one user with more than 70,000 followers tweeted, “My daughter bought 2 fake ID’s online for $50 while in college. Shipped from China. Anyone have the link for vaccine cards?”
According to a tally by The Chronicle of Higher Education, at least 675 colleges and universities now require proof of COVID-19 inoculations. The process to confirm vaccination at many schools can be as simple as uploading a picture of the vaccine card to the student’s portal.
In Nashville, Vanderbilt University places a hold on a student’s course registration until their vaccine record has been verified unless they have an approved medical accommodation or religious exemption.
The University of Michigan says it has a system in place to confirm employee and student vaccinations. A spokesman for the college told the AP the school has not encountered any problems so far with students forging their COVID-19 vaccination record cards.
But Benjamin Mason Meier, a global health policy professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, questions how institutions can verify those records.
“The United States, unlike most countries which have electronic systems in place, is basing its vaccination on a flimsy paper card,” he said.
Meier tweeted last week that he spoke with several students who were worried about the accessibility of fraudulent vaccine cards and that they knew a fellow student who had submitted one to the university.
“There need to be policies in place for accountability to make sure that every student is operating in the collective interest of the entire campus,” he said.
In a statement to the AP, UNC said it conducts periodic verification of documents and that lying about vaccination status or falsifying documents is a violation of the university’s COVID-19 community standards and may result in disciplinary action.
“It’s important to note that UNC-Chapel Hill has not found any instances of a student uploading a fake vaccine card. Those claims are simply hearsay at this point,” the school said.
But other university staff and faculty have expressed their concern over the alleged forgery of vaccine cards. Rebecca Williams, a research associate at UNC’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, said while she is concerned by these claims, she isn’t surprised.
“This is why I think the development of a reliable national digital vaccine passport app is very important for the sake of all the organizations and businesses that want to require proof of vaccination for employees, students, or business patrons,” Williams said.
The AP spoke with several students across the country who did not want to be identified but said they were aware of attempts to obtain fake cards.
Some school officials acknowledge that a foolproof system is impossible.
“As with anything that potentially requires a certification, there is the possibility for an individual to falsify documentation,” said Michael Uhlenkamp, a spokesman for the chancellor’s office at California State University. The school system, which is the largest in the nation, oversees about 486,000 students each year on 23 campuses.
Dr. Sarah Van Orman, the chief health officer at the University of Southern California and COVID-19 task force member for the American College Health Association, said college campuses are especially challenging environments to control the spread of COVID-19 since tens of thousands of students move into campus from all over the world. But even if students falsify their vaccination status, it may have limited impact, she said.
“I think that the numbers of students who would do that would be so very small that it wouldn’t affect our kind of ability to get good community immunity,” Orman said.
In March, the concern over fake COVID-19 vaccination cards prompted the FBI to issue a joint statement with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services urging people not to buy, create or sell fabricated vaccine cards.
The unauthorized use of the seal of an official government agency such as HHS or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is a federal crime that carries a possible fine and a maximum of five years in prison.
In April, a bipartisan coalition of 47 state attorneys general sent a letter to the CEOs of Twitter, Shopify and eBay to take down ads or links selling the bogus cards.
Many of the sites have blacklisted keywords related to fake cards, but places to buy the documents are still popping up on messaging apps, chat forums and the dark web.
Sellers on websites such as Counterfeit Center, Jimmy Black Market, and Buy Express Documents list COVID-19 vaccine cards, certificates and passports for sale, some costing €400 Euros or about $473.49.
An advertisement on the website Buy Real Fake Passport reads vendors can produce fake vaccination cards by the thousands, if not tens of thousands, based on the demand.
“It is hiding under our noses. If you want it, you can find it out,” said Saoud Khalifah, founder and CEO of scam-detecting software Fakespot. “If we are seeing signs where things like Lollapalooza and other festivals are getting fake cards to gain entrance, the trend is just going to continue into these universities.”
In July, the U.S. Department of Justice announced its first federal criminal fraud prosecution involving a fake COVID-19 immunization and vaccination card scheme. Juli A. Mazi, 41, a naturopathic physician in Napa, California, was arrested and charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of false statements related to health care matters.
Court documents allege she sold fake vaccination cards to customers that appeared to show that they had received Moderna vaccines. In some cases, the documents show Mazi herself filled out the cards, writing her own name, and purported Moderna “lot numbers” for a vaccine she had not in fact administered. For other customers, she provided blank CDC COVID-19 vaccination record cards and told each customer to write that she had administered a Moderna vaccine with a specified lot number.
Requiring vaccinations to attend class at colleges and universities has become a contentious political issue in some states. Public colleges in at least 13 states including Ohio, Utah, Tennessee and Florida cannot legally require COVID-19 vaccinations due to state legislation, but private institutions in those same states can.
Among the states introducing and passing bills barring educational institutions from mandating COVID-19 vaccines, infringement on individual rights or liberties is often cited as the main concern.
But according to a statement released by the American College Health Association and other educational organizations, these restrictions impede on universities’ abilities to operate fully and safely.
“The science of good public health has gotten lost in some of the decisions that have been made in some places,” Orman said. “It has not always been held up by our political leaders.”
Some college students have taken to social media platforms like Twitter and TikTok to voice their outrage over other students possessing fraudulent vaccine cards.
Maliha Reza, an electrical engineering student at Pennsylvania State University, said it is mind-boggling that students would pay for fake vaccination cards when they could get the COVID-19 vaccine at no cost.
“I’m angry about that, like there is more anger than I could describe right now,” Reza said. “It’s dumb considering the vaccine is free and it is accessible across the country.”
Wildlifeofficials inWisconsinmeet Wednesday to consider a 130-animal limit for the state’s fall wolfhunt, saying they want to protect the population after hunters killed almost twice as many wolves as allotted during a rushed spring season.
The state Department of Natural Resources’ policy board was scheduled to take up the proposal in Milwaukee, with the vote certain to be contentious.
Wolves have always been a touchy subject in Wisconsin. Farmers and residents across northern Wisconsin contend wolves menace their pets and livestock and hunting is the only way to control them. Conservationists counter that the population is too small to sustain hunting. The fight grew even more intense after hunters this spring…
In a “worst-case scenario,” the temperature could reach as high as 111 F (44 C) in some parts of western Oregon by Friday before a weekend cooldown, the National Weather Service in Portland, Oregon, warned this week. It’s more likely temperatures will rise above 100 F (38 C) for three consecutive days, peaking around 105 F (40.5 C) on Thursday.All-Time Records Fall As A Heat Wave Roasts The Northwest U.S.June 28, 2021
Across the internet, a cottage industry has sprung up to accommodate people who say they won’t get vaccinated for either personal or religious reasons.TAP TO UNMUTE
Aug. 10, 2021, 10:18 AM PDT/UpdatedAug. 11, 2021, 4:59 AM PDTByThe Associated Press
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. — As the delta variant of thecoronavirussweeps across the United States, a growing number of colleges and universities are requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination for students to attend in-person classes. But the new mandate has opened the door for those opposed to getting the vaccine to cheat the system, according to interviews with students, education and law enforcement officials.
Both faculty and students at dozens of schools interviewed by The Associated Press say they are concerned about how easy it is to get fake vaccine cards.
Across the internet, a cottage industry has sprung up to accommodate people who say they won’t get…
(CNN)Slashing carbon dioxide emissions is critical to ending the climate crisis. But, for the first time, the UN climate change report emphasized the need to control a more insidious culprit: methane, an invisible, odorless gas with more than 80 times more warming power in the near-term than carbon dioxide.According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the concentration of methane in the atmosphere is higher now than any time in at least 800,000 years.With Earth rapidly approaching the 1.5-degree-Celsius threshold above preindustrial levels, scientists say methane emissions need to be reduced fast. Charles Koven, a lead author of the IPCC report, said this is due to methane’s incredible warming power.
If the world stopped emitting carbon dioxide tomorrow, Koven said, global temperatures wouldn’t begin to cool for many years because of how long the gas stays in the atmosphere. Reducing methane is the easiest knob to turn to change the path of global temperature in the next 10 years, he said.
Want to stay updated on the latest space and science news?We’ve got you.Sign Me UpBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.But proponents for this new “cleaner” gas missed a dangerous threat: that it could leak, unburned, into the atmosphere and cause significant warming.Methane can leak from oil and natural gas wells, natural gas pipelines and the processing equipment itself. According to data from the US Energy Information Administration, the US has thousands of active wells for natural gas, millions of abandoned oil and gas wells, about two million miles of natural gas pipelines, and several refineries that process the gas.One in three Americans lives in a county with oil and gas operations, posing climate and public health risks, according to a report by the Environmental Defense Fund.Until recently, tracking the location and magnitude of methane leaks was difficult. Now, infrared cameras and advanced satellites can estimate methane emissions around the globe, giving scientists and regulators insight into what’s being released from facilities.Climatologists at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration previously told CNN that pernicious changes in the climate system will only intensify unless people stop using fuels that burn and leak greenhouse gases like methane.”For carbon dioxide, we’ve always known about power plants and smokestacks and things like that; but with methane, until recent years, we didn’t understand how much an influence a small number of large sources have really had,” Robert Jackson, professor of environmental science at Stanford University, told CNN. “We didn’t understand how long the tail was and how important the super-emitters were for reducing emissions.”The latest IPCC assessment highlights that scientists now have a better understanding of how much methane is being released by human activity like agriculture and the fossil fuel industry, and how much it contributes to the climate crisis.https://ix.cnn.io/dailygraphics/graphics/20210524-methane-emissions-country-horz/index.html?initialWidth=680&childId=responsive-embed-20210524-methane-emissions-country-horz&parentTitle=Scientists%20say%20limiting%20methane%20could%20seal%20our%20fate%20on%20climate%20change%20-%20CNN&parentUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2021%2F08%2F11%2Fus%2Fmethane-climate-change%2Findex.htmlAround the world, fossil fuels, agriculture and coal mining are skyrocketing methane emissions. Nonetheless, the production and sources vary by region. In the North America, a majority — 14% of total methane emissions — come from the oil and gas production followed by livestock at 10%. In China, coal mining is the biggest methane driver, contributing 24% to total emissions.Though agriculture is a major source of methane, Jackson said the emissions from farming and food production would be harder to tackle.”There are only certain things we can do with cattle,” Jackson said. “We can either ask people to stop eating beef or we can try and give cattle feed additives to change the microbes in the chemistry of their guts. But that’s not easy to do for billions of cattle around the world.”The International Energy Agency estimate that the oil and gas industry around the world can reduce methane by 75% using the technology already available. It also estimates that 40% of the emissions could be reduced without extra costs, since the natural gas captured could then be sold.Flaring at a natural gas processing facility in North Dakota.Climate activists like Lisa DeVille, a member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, are urging policymakers to make stringent methane reductions. The Bakken oil field in North Dakota surrounds the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, where DeVille lives, with nearly 1,000 oil and gas wells that scientists found in 2016 was leaking 275,000 tons of methane per year.”This means the land that is part of my identity as an Indigenous woman has been turned into a pollution-filled industrial zone,” DeVille said. “This is unacceptable.”As the co-founder of the grassroots group Fort Berthold Protectors of Water and Earth Rights, DeVille is tackling environmental regulations head-on. In 2018, the organization successfully sued the Trump administration’s Bureau of Land Management for rolling back a critical methane waste prevention rule.Global temperatures are now at 1.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, according to the report, and the planet is already seeing the impact in the form of extreme fire behavior, severe flooding, relentless drought and deadly heat waves.The IPCC report makes clear that stopping methane emissions is key to slowing the planet from reaching 1.5 degrees. Scientists say world leaders need to act immediately in tackling all greenhouse gas emissions, and not just carbon dioxide.
Climate scientists have done their bit. Now the pressure is on leaders for COP26.Rick Duke, senior director and White House liaison for John Kerry, President Biden’s special climate envoy, told CNN in a press call that reducing methane, and methane leaks, is a top priority for the Biden administration.”There’s been incredible largely behind-the-scenes effort already to prepare to move faster and more comprehensively to cut methane domestically, at the same time that we’re addressing this as a diplomatic imperative,” Duke said.
Already, pressure is mounting. In June, DeVille discussed tribal issues, particularly slashing methane emissions and transitioning to clean energy quickly and equitably, with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan.”What we do in the next few years will determine what kind of world we have, what kind of world we leave for our children,” said DeVille, who is now seeking to meet with Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to discuss similar issues. “We must rapidly switch to clean energy, stop fossil fuel carbon pollution, and then methane leaks.”
CNN’s Drew Kann and John Keefe contributed to this report.
A German nurse is being investigated for allegedly injecting thousands of people with a placebo instead of the coronavirus vaccine.
Based on witness testimony, police investigator Peter Beer said there was “a reasonable suspicion” that the rogue medical professional had administered shots of saline solution to up to 8,600 patients who were slated to receive the COVID jab,Reuters reported.
“I am totally shocked by this episode,” Sven Ambrosy, a local councilor, said of the alarming switcheroo, which reportedly occurred in March and April in Friesland…
Flaring at a natural gas processing facility in North Dakota.Climate activists like Lisa DeVille, a member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, are urging policymakers to make stringent methane reductions. The Bakken oil field in North Dakota surrounds the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, where DeVille lives, with 
