| Biden commits to cutting US greenhouse gas emissions in half; 314,000 new Covid cases in India break a global record. Tonight's Sentences was written by Greg Svirnovskiy. | | | | | | | Biden hosts global Earth Day summit on climate change | | | | | Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images | | - At a virtual Earth Day Summit attended by 40 international leaders Thursday, President Joe Biden announced a formal commitment to reducing US greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent of their 2005 levels by 2030. It's nearly double the target set by the Obama administration in 2015. [USA Today / Deirdre Shesgreen]
- It's part of a vision from the Biden camp of a future in which the US leads the world in clean energy jobs. They're aiming to create jobs in fields like battery assembly and electrical grid laying. But Republicans are convinced limiting gas emissions would take jobs away from Americans, despite the growth in clean-energy jobs globally. [CNN / Betsy Klein]
- Leading governments are taking actionable steps as scientists warn that the Earth is inching ever closer to an eventual temperature rise of 1.5 degrees above preindustrial levels. [New York Times / Lisa Friedman]
- It's not just the US taking these climate steps. The European Union on Wednesday came to an agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 55 percent from 1990 levels by 2030. The 27-country bloc is planning on becoming the world's first carbon-neutral continent; it hopes to get there by 2050. [Associated Press / Raf Casert]
- World leaders are welcoming America back to the forefront on climate change, but acknowledging that the reality of US politics makes it difficult to know who will be leading the way in 2024. [Associated Press / Ellen Knickmeyer, Matthew Daley and Christina Larson]
| | | India breaks records with new Covid-19 cases | | - India recorded 314,000 new cases of Covid-19 on Thursday, surpassing global records and reaching a positive test rate as high as 30 percent in Delhi. While a Covid-19 resurgence was all but inevitable after India's strict lockdown ended last year, the size and scope of new cases in recent weeks has been blamed in part on government inaction. [CNN / Jessie Yeung and Vedika Sud]
- Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has continued to tour the country and hold rallies for his 2022 reelection campaign, on Saturday held a maskless, outdoor rally in West Bengal. That same day, 234,000 cases were recorded in India. It's a number that's only risen since. [The Guardian / Hannah Ellis-Petersen]
- India has now recorded 16 million Covid-19 cases, the second-highest total in the world, and has only vaccinated a tiny portion of its population despite being home to the Serum Institute, the world's top vaccine producer by quantity. India's 184,000 Covid related deaths are behind only the US, Mexico, and Brazil. [Bloomberg / Bhuma Shrivastava and Upmanyu Trivedi]
- But all these counts are likely the tip of the iceberg. Epidemiologists believe the real case count could be 10 to 30 times higher than observed counts, because of weak testing apparatuses outside India's largest cities. A December serological survey found 21 percent of Indians were carrying Covid-19 antibodies. [The Economist]
- It's a bit of a mystery. Scientists believed new Covid-19 waves in Indian cities would be partially slowed by immunity among those previously infected. [Scientific American / Smriti Mallapaty]
| | | | | | | New data from the New England Journal of Medicine appears to confirm that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines pose no serious risks for pregnant women. | | | [CNN / Lauren Mascarenhas and Jessica Firger] - Pope Francis met with the Prime Minister-Designate Saad al-Hariri of Lebanon in the Vatican, as Lebanon continues to grapple with an economic crisis that has cost the local currency 90 of its value and plunged over half the population into poverty. [Associated Press / Nicole Winfield]
- The war-torn country of Syria received 203,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccines from the United Nations' Covax program today. These doses will go to frontline health workers in government controlled areas and regions held by Kurdistan in the north, a part of the UN's plan to inoculate 20 percent of the country by year's end. [Reuters / Suleiman Al-khalidi].
- Indonesian authorities are searching for a submarine that likely sank too far down into the ocean to be retrieved. The ship runs out of oxygen Saturday, and there are 53 people stranded aboard. [CNN / Masrur Jamaluddin]
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