SUMMARY: The Gulf of Maine is known for lobsters, which form the foundation of an industry critical to the state’s economy. Due to climate change, the waters off southern New England have become too warm for the temperature-sensitive crustaceans, leaving Maine as the “sweet spot” for fishing them. But the Gulf’s own rising temperatures mean the lobster boom may not last forever. Miles O’Brien reports.
SUMMARY: The Philadelphia Eagles won their first Super Bowl championship Sunday, defeating the favored New England Patriots 41-33. Philadelphia fans took to the streets in celebration, climbing light poles and jumping off awnings. Bob Ford, columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer talks about the Eagles’ championship drought and Super Bowl MVP Nick Foles’ remarkable story.
SUMMARY: It was an unprecedented meeting of the minds and it happened at Harvard Medical School. The subject of April's confab? Medical cannabis. Researchers suspect cannabis can do so many things, from fighting cancer to easing concussions and Crohn's disease. There are still tight restrictions but weed is increasingly coming into the scientific mainstream. Science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports.
MILES O'BRIEN, Science Correspondent: It's a landmark place, and time, on the long road to bring medicinal marijuana into the scientific mainstream.
The New England Treatment Access, or NETA, dispensary in Brookline, Massachusetts, is housed in a Beaux-Arts bank building built in the 1920s, a cathedral of cannabis.
Paul Breeden has been coming here to treat chronic pain since the dispensary opened in February.
PAUL BREEDEN (NETA client): I have been praying for this day all my life. I have been fighting for this day all my life. I'm a son of a minister. I believe God created marijuana. Humans don't know how God works.
MILES O'BRIEN: Look at that thing.
NETA is a nonprofit, serving about 7,000 medical marijuana customers now. The goal is to supply 10,000 on an ongoing basis. Besides dried flowers and buds that can be smoked, they offer pills, vapor cartridges, creams, tinctures, brownies, chocolates and lozenges.
PAUL BREEDEN: It's really part of sort of the normalization of medical cannabis. The days of Ziploc baggies are over.
MILES O'BRIEN: Norton Arbelaez is a NETA consultant who turned to medical marijuana after he contracted a staph infection 10 years ago.
NORTON ARBELAEZ, New England Treatment Access: I had quite a bit of pain. I was prescribed opiate painkillers. And I made a decision, a very conscious decision to not take them. So, I had to find a way to medicate otherwise. I did some research, and cannabis seemed like a good choice for me.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): You almost never see employees hit the streets to save the job of their company’s president. But that scene is playing out in a most unusual battle in New England this summer, one involving a supermarket chain, a deep family feud, and set against the backdrop of big debates over wages, benefits, corporate profits and inequality.
Our economics correspondent, Paul Solman, has the story, part of his ongoing reporting Making Sense of financial news.
PAUL SOLMAN (NewsHour): In Tewksbury, Massachusetts, it was hellishly hot the other day, but that didn’t deter a holy ruckus.
MAN: Heavenly Father, thank you for giving us today as a new day, even though we find ourselves in the same situation as yesterday, without our true leader, Arthur Demoulas.
PAUL SOLMAN: That’s Arthur T. Demoulas, former president of Market Basket supermarkets, one of New England’s most successful retailers, with 71 stores, sales of $4.6 billion last year, 25,000 employees with above-average compensation and profit-sharing, and two million customers who enjoy below-industry prices.
But Arthur T. was fired in June by a board of directors controlled by Arthur S. Demoulas, who seems to think his cousin, Arthur T., was spending stockholder money too liberally. Neither cousin is giving interviews, but the basic fact is clear enough. The family-owned business has ground to a halt.
In mid-July, truck drivers and warehouse workers walked off their jobs, a non-union strike in support of their employee-friendly leader.
SUMMARY: In addition to negative consequences caused by overfishing and pollution, coral reefs face another major existential threat: increased acidity from warming oceans. Hari Sreenivasan reports from Florida about the dire outlook for coral reefs, as well as efforts and research to try and save them.
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): Next: the decline of coral reefs and the connections with rising levels of carbon dioxide.
New reports this week show there were nearly 38 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted around the globe last year. That, among other things, is having a very real effect in places like the Florida Keys.
Hari Sreenivasan traveled there recently and filed this report for our series Coping With Climate Change.
