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Happy Hump Day! We’re still basking in the glow of our Online Journalism Award win at The Xylom HQ; you can support our award-winning accountability reporting (and this newsletter!) by making a tax-deductible donation here.

Here are the top stories on the world’s most pressing health and environmental disparities, including what’s next for retailers in the first country to ban single-use plastic bags:

Best regards,
Alex Ip
Publisher and Editor

🦇 NEW: A Bangladeshi Fashion Brand Is Charging for Paper Bags. Can It Change How People Shop?

Bangladeshi fashion retailer Aarong is charging for paper bags and using the proceeds for environmental projects. Its experiment offers clues about whether small interventions can change consumer behavior.

This story was produced by The Xylom and co-published by Daily Waadaa, a Dhaka-based news platform. Read more here.

🍑 A SOUTHERN FLAIR

• GEORGIA — This State Is Spending More on Lethal Injections. A Law Tries to Keep the Details Secret. (Max Blau, ProPublica)

  “You wouldn’t have to pay this much money if the lethal injection process was an acceptable one,” said Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor who is an expert on the death penalty. “The process itself is so problematic that a lot of money has to be paid.”

• HOMESTEAD, Fla. — In South Florida, a Crackdown on Overdue Electricity Bills Coincides With Peak Summer Heat, ICE Enforcement (Erin Douglas, Inside Climate News)

  In 2025, Homestead only recorded 68 “shut-offs,” which typically means the address was disconnected due to nonpayment. […] This year, in March through mid-August, more than 1,300 customers in Homestead have been disconnected for nonpayment or returned payment, according to data provided by Crystal Ollivierre, the assistant city manager who oversees Homestead Public Services.

• JACKSON, Mississippi — Constitution Doesn’t Cover Right to Clean Water, Court Rules (Jacqueline Thomsen, Bloomberg Law)

  [Judge Kurt] Engelhardt said while the residents raised a right to bodily integrity, that right applies in instances like sexual assault by a police officer and forced medication of prisoners. Mismanagement of a water system, he said, is “wholly different.”

  And while the Supreme Court has found some due process rights to fall under the common-law right to informed consent, Engelhardt said those cases don’t include a right to accurate information from public officials.

• ATLANTA — Georgia has no peers for data center construction. It now leads the US. (Zachary Hansen, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

  • Read more: Judge refuses to block Arkansas news reporting on Google data center energy documents (Dan Mangan, CNBC)

• FARMVILLE, Va. — Rural Virginia communities face real and lingering consequences from labor and delivery unit closures (Anastasiia Carrier, Charlottesville Tomorrow)

🟠 TRACKING TRUMP

• Screwworm Cases Are Going Down. Experts Are Suspicious (Tyler Spence, The Washington Sun, formerly known as NOTUS)

  “It’s very strange,” a former longtime USDA official who worked for the department’s plant and animal health department told NOTUS. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense, biologically.”

• The Trump EPA Is a Toothless Friend of Polluting Industries, Analysis Shows (Peter Aldhous, Inside Climate News)

  “From the beginning this administration particularly has been on a focused effort to dismantle environmental protection,” said Christine Todd Whitman, who served as EPA administrator under Republican President George W. Bush and is now co-chair of the centrist Forward Party. “Very early on, they got rid of a lot of the enforcement officers and compliance officers so there’s no one there to truly enforce the way they have in the past.”

• Disasters Didn’t Discriminate. Humans Did – in Memphis, Gary, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. (Kate Amistoso, The Emancipator)

  “ [FEMA] does not take into account historical racism’s role in determining market values,” [Matt Plaus, a business and policy scholar,] said. “Without responding to this reality, FEMA perpetuates the cycle of systemic racism. By failing to consider historically racist policies’ effect on the market, FEMA reinforces the effects of those racist systems. As a result, historically disadvantaged communities do not receive adequate funding to rebuild properly.”

  • Read more: Inside the failed mission to eliminate FEMA (Rebecca Hersher, NPR)

• INDIA — Vantara works with lobbyist tied to Trump Jr. and pro-hunting groups (Spoorthy Raman, Mongabay)

  The zoo, which claims to be an animal rescue facility with about 2,000 species, came under scrutiny after media reports surfaced that it allegedly acquired endangered animals illegally. A report by CITES, the global treaty that regulates commercial international trade in endangered wildlife, flagged irregularities in some of its animal imports. Vantara has denied wrongdoing and India’s top court dismissed similar allegations after an investigation last year.

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🗺️ WHAT ELSE WE'RE READING

• United Nations talks in Mongolia expose growing drought crisis as climate impacts worsen (Sibi Arasu, The Associated Press)

  Countries left Ulaanbaatar without resolving one of the talks’ key issues — whether to create a legally binding global drought agreement — postponing a decision until the next round of talks in Egypt in two years. The issue had already been deferred at the previous meeting two years ago.

• ROTRIAK, South Sudan — Living on the Edge of South Sudan’s Toxic Floodplains (Buster Kirchner and Marco Simoncelli, New Lines Magazine)

  Every morning, Anna walks into the surrounding wetlands to collect untreated water and harvest water lilies and edible roots to feed her children. She said that before they arrived, they didn’t know the area was polluted. “I saw it with my own eyes. There was a black film on the surface. But we had nothing else to drink.”

• BUFFALO, N.Y. — State stymies Buffalo’s efforts to combat lead poisoning (Geoff Kelly, InvestigativePost)

  “It’s a huge disincentive,” Louis Petrucci, the city’s permits and inspections commissioner, told Investigative Post.

  “How are we going to obtain compliance when the state pushed the goalpost down the road?”

• Gen Z is using ‘polyester’ as an insult. It’s actually a throwback. (Kate Yoder, Grist)

  “TikTokkers just seem to be leaning into the ‘inauthentic’ and ‘low-quality’ edge of that meaning,” said Kory Stamper, a lexicographer and author.

• A Doctor Sued 700 Patients for Debts; 81 Were Arrested. Now He’s a Senator. (Sarah Kliff, The New York Times)

• Let’s Remember Some Publications That Said We Would Get To Mars By 2026 (Sabrina Imbler, Defector)

• Almost half of world’s farmers poisoned by pesticides every year, experts find (Pippa Neill, The Guardian)
  

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