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Climate change has rewritten the script for disasters, leaving communities vulnerable to weather patterns that don’t abide by schedules or the rules of past behavior. As a result, hundreds of thousands of emergency responders are facing unprecedented challenges —from burnout to post-traumatic stress disorder to tighter budgets — as they battle hurricanes, windstorms, wildfires, floods and other natural disasters that are more frequent and intense than those in the past. (Montgomery, 9/4)

Gov. Gavin Newsom blasted supporters of a measure to increase jail time for thieves and drug users, saying Wednesday their argument that it will lead to more treatment is wrong. In recent weeks, supporters of the measure, which will appear as Proposition 36 on California ballots in November, have said it will usher in an era of “mass treatment.” (Bollag, 9/4)

Baltimore has won a 7.5 million lawsuit against the e-cigarette company, Juul, the most recent of three settlements against predatorial drug manufacturers in the past year. The city sued Juul Labs in 2020, accusing them of using deceptive marketing tactics aimed at children and teens by offering flavored vaping pens without disclosing their high nicotine content. (Adeolu, 9/4)

Utah's highest court on Wednesday appeared reluctant to revive a lawsuit by young people alleging the state was violating their right to life under the state's constitution by adopting laws that contribute to climate change by promoting fossil fuel development. (Raymond, 9/4)

When social worker Jules Martinez met one teen client, it seemed like the boy had given up: He’d dropped out of school, started selling drugs and stopped speaking with his mother. He’d been hospitalized multiple times for aggression and suicidal ideation and, as it later came out, was developing schizophrenia. The teen and his mother, like a number of Hispanic Utahns, struggled to find health care that took into account their language, cultural background and experiences several years after immigrating to the United States. (Chapman Gonzalez, 9/4)

A New York judge has ordered one of the city’s most prominent guardianship companies to return thousands of dollars to an elderly woman for the court-mandated care and oversight it failed to provide her. Supreme Court Justice Lee Mayersohn wrote in an Aug. 8 decision that the company, New York Guardianship Services, billed Judith Zbiegniewicz monthly but provided “minimal services, if any” for years, including at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. (Pearson, 9/5)