Getting Warmer: Climatologists in New Zealand say the country has recorded its warmest winter ever, about 1.3 C warmer than average. That’s 2.34 degrees Fahrenheit.

  Scientists have measured an increased level of carbon dioxide in the air down there. Snowfall at lower elevations was well below average, often replaced by rain.

  Here in the US, Louisiana and the East Coast are still drying out after Hurricane Ida, a powerful storm fed by global warming and climate change. President Biden is scheduled to tour storm-damaged areas today in New York and New Jersey.

  On top of these events, a coalition of 220 of the world’s leading medical and public health journals issued an urgent joint editorial saying, “The greatest threat to global public health is the continued failure of world leaders to keep the global temperature rise below 1.5° C and to restore nature.”

  They say, “The science is unequivocal: a global increase of 1.5° C above the pre-industrial average and the continued loss of biodiversity risk catastrophic harm to health that will be impossible to reverse.”

  The editorial goes on to say, “Higher temperatures have brought increased dehydration and renal function loss, dermatological malignancies, tropical infections, adverse mental health outcomes, pregnancy complications, allergies, and cardiovascular and pulmonary morbidity and mortality.”

Do Not Collect $300: Expanded unemployment benefits that have kept Americans fed and housed during the pandemic expired yesterday for 7.5 million people as the Delta variant of the coronavirus puts a thumb on the economic recovery. Another three million people will lose their $300 weekly unemployment supplement.

  Republican politicians, employers, and some economists have argued that the generous unemployment benefits have discouraged many people from going back to work. Just about any employer looking for lower-paid labor will tell you they’ve been unable to compete with the unemployment checks.

  Also hitting the people on the bottom rung of the economy, the nationwide eviction moratorium expired just over a month ago putting 11 million renters in danger of being put out of their homes. Whether the two events will cause a rush of job applications or a homeless crisis will play out over the next weeks and months.

The Spin Rack: The US has surpassed 40 million cases of Covid-19. Forty-seven percent of the population is not fully vaccinated. — The entire board of the Time’s Up feminist organization, including television producer Shonda Rhimes and actress Eva Longoria, is stepping down as a result of  some members taking the side of former NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo and trying to discredit one of his accusers in his sexual harassment scandal. The organization is devoted to fighting sexual harassment. In a parallel development, Alphonso David, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, was fired after the discovery that he also had advised Cuomo on how to handle the accusations. — In the wake of the new restrictive Texas abortion law, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department will protect people trying to obtain or provide abortions in Texas. The Texas law bans abortions after six weeks, which is before many women even know they are pregnant.

The Obit Page: Michael Williams, the scar faced actor who played the fearsome street vigilante Omar Little who robbed drug dealers in HBO’s “The Wire,” has been found dead in his Brooklyn penthouse of a possible drug overdose. He was 54.

  Williams was a professional dancer before he was an actor. He also played Chalky White, a leader in the black community of Atlantic City in the series “Boardwalk Empire” about politics and corruption. Over his career, Williams received five Emmy nominations, including one for the awards this month.

  He had a scar running down the center of his forehead, across the bridge of his nose, and down his right cheek as the result of a razor cut sustained in a street fight. 

  Williams had struggled with drugs. Early on he squandered his earnings from“The Wire” and for a time ended up living out of a suitcase. — Jean-Paul Belmondo, the sexually simmering French actor with a cigarette perpetually clinging to his lips often compared to Americans Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando, and James Dean, has died at home in Paris at age 88.

  Belmondo was 28 when he broke out in the 1961 Jean-Luc Godard movie, “Breathless.” His thing was playing tough, unsentimental outsiders. He was a French James Dean.

  He was not movie-star handsome. He had a big nose, thick lips, and bags under his eyes even as a young man. But put it all together, he had striking looks. Bosley Crowther described him in The NY Times as “a hypnotically ugly new young man.” He became a French icon.

Be Afraid: A national Emerson College Poll found that if Donald Trump and Joe Biden were to go head-to-head in the 2024 election, Trump would be slightly favored to win with 47 percent against Biden’s 46 percent.

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