Reading archive 2021-08-31

Protests to boycott Nellie’s Sports Bar created summer-long ‘joy space’ for Black LGBTQ community

NEW video shows moment leading up to woman dragged by hair at Nellie's Sports Bar

Hillary Clinton’s ‘deplorables’ speech shocked voters five years ago — but some feel it was prescient

Reading archive 2021-08-30

D.C.'s sports betting app keeps underperforming, with lots of finger-pointing about what’s to blame - "Companies running sportsbooks near stadiums like Nationals Park pay licensing fees to the city of $500,000 for five years. But Jordan said the fees, which are set in D.C. law, have proved to be too low to cover the expense of performing background checks and regularly inspecting the sportsbooks: From January 2020 through June 2021, the office took in just over $2 million in licensing fees but spent more than $3.6 million regulating the industry, Jordan said."

Opinion: Inside the mind of someone who won’t take a fully approved vaccine

How this after-school program achieved a high vaccination rate in a Black neighborhood where most young adults are unvaccinated

The false claim that the fully-approved Pfizer vaccine lacks liability protection - "These claims are false, based on a misunderstanding of the law, as Malone acknowledged after we contacted him."

Fear and anticipation on the streets of Kabul as Afghans adapt to Taliban rule

Reading archive 2021-08-27

Wife hospitalized for covid gets home to find husband dead from the same virus: ‘It was like walking into a horror movie’ - "Neither Ron, who died of covid-19 complications, nor Lisa had been vaccinated, Lisa said. Both had agreed they would wait longer to schedule their shots."

Vaccine conspiracy theorists become even more desperate after full FDA authorization The claim is that the FDA somehow didn’t really fully authorize the Pfizer vaccine. It’s built on nonsense, experts say. - "Chris Beyrer, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School Public Health, noted that the existing Pfizer vaccines that have been produced and purchased can’t legally be overlabeled with the Comirnaty branding, even as they are the same thing."

Lawyer for Afghan girls’ robotics team tells Oklahoma woman to stop taking credit for rescue

Opinion: D.C.'s landlords are powerless to address the Wild West atmosphere in their properties

Fox helped turn Herschel Walker into a Senate candidate. Republicans are panicking.

Reading archive 2021-08-26

Opinion: It is time to deal with the nation’s vexing increase in homicides

Opinion: D.C.’s Metro must up its game. The region’s prosperity depends on it.

Seven Capitol Police officers sue Trump, right-wing groups over injuries from Jan. 6 riot

Taliban spokesman says ‘no proof’ bin Laden was responsible for 9/11 attacks

Maggie Haberman and the never-ending Trump story

Officer who shot Ashli Babbitt during Capitol riot breaks silence: 'I saved countless lives': In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Lt. Michael Byrd said he opened fire only as a “last resort” after the rioters failed to comply with his commands.

Reading archive 2021-08-25

Rapper Boosie Badazz: Lil Nas X Pushes Gay Identity on Children

Opinion: Why J.D. Vance may be just the kind of phony GOP voters are looking for - "For instance, the substance-free centrism that is so important in Washington is a particularly shallow approach to politics, since it doesn’t have any real goals or vision; it just wants to be at the fulcrum of power, which it now is due to the narrow margins Democrats hold in both houses."

The viral Milk Crate Challenge has left people injured. Doctors are begging them to stop.

Harris, in Vietnam, gets a dose of China’s challenge to the U.S.

Biden receives inconclusive intelligence report on covid origins: The report falls short of concluding whether the coronavirus jumped from animal to human, or might have accidentally escaped from a lab in China

Opinion: Democrats just launched a missile at the GOP’s fortress of minority rule

Texts show William Barr congratulated Trump's impeachment lawyer as his first Senate trial wrapped up: 'You are a STAR'

‘I’m still not planning to get it’: FDA approval not swaying some vaccine holdouts Skeptics who were waiting on regulators now say they have new doubts

Reading archive 2021-08-24

Gus Kenworthy Trains for His Last Olympics — and Hollywood

Got The Climate Change Blues? Try Delawning

How journalism saved ‘Jeopardy!’ from an unworthy host after an utter failure of corporate vetting

Planting Trees Encourages Cloud Formation—and Efficiently Cools the Planet: New study examines cooling effect of clouds produced by deciduous forests under pressures of climate change

CIA Director William Burns held secret meeting in Kabul with Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar

A group of moms on Facebook built an island of good-faith vaccine debate in a sea of misinformation: As social media giants struggle to crack down on false claims about covid, ordinary users are finding ways to reach vaccine skeptics — and win them over. [ed. note: facebook.com/groups/vaccinetalkforum and reddit.com/r/changemyview/]

Facebook News Consumers Less Likely to Be Vaccinated, Survey Finds

Conservative Bill Kristol endorses McAuliffe in race for Virginia governor

Reading archive 2021-08-23

Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine wins full FDA approval, potentially persuading the hesitant to get a shot: The licensing is a landmark event that could have major effects, experts said.

Portland protests descend into violence as opposing groups clash with paintballs, weapons, chemical spray

Group of South Florida doctors stage walkout in protest of unvaccinated COVID patients

Trump and top ally get booed by the monster Trump’s GOP created

A mysterious sickness blinding birds has disappeared as suddenly as it arrived

Hospitals and Insurers Didn’t Want You to See These Prices. Here’s Why.

Reading archive 2021-08-22

Facebook says post that cast doubt on covid-19 vaccine was most popular on the platform from January through March: The social-media platform’s Saturday evening acknowledgment comes after a lengthy internal debate over whether to share data.

As covid-19 surges in Mississippi, some people are ingesting an unproven livestock dewormer

Reading archive 2021-08-21

Pakistan’s mission to plant 10 billion trees across the country, in photos: A province first pledged to plant 1 billion trees in 2015. The initiative was so successful that the country is now in the midst of a 'Ten Billion Tree Tsunami’ to fight climate change.

Reading archive 2021-08-20

Forgotten Landscapes: Bringing Back the Rich Grasslands of the Southeast: Native prairie and savanna once covered vast areas of the U.S. Southeast from Maryland to Texas, but agriculture and sprawl have left only small patches remaining. Now, a new initiative, driven by scientists and local communities, is pushing to restore these imperiled grassland habitats. - The Southeast is one of North America’s great, but forgotten, grassland regions. Its native prairies and savannas have been reduced by more than 90 percent since the first Europeans arrived, almost 100 percent in many areas. Yet the remaining scraps include more grassland plants and animals than the Great Plains and Midwest combined — a big part of the reason why the Southeast coastal plain, the flat, low-lying portion of the region that extends inland from the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean, was designated the latest of the world’s 36 biodiversity hotspots in 2015.

U.S. officials reviewing possibility Moderna vaccine is linked to higher risk of uncommon side effect than previously thought - "But the CDC’s vaccine advisers, at a June 24 meeting, said that getting covid-19, the illness caused by the virus, puts someone at far greater risk of heart inflammation and other serious medical problems than the risk of developing myocarditis from vaccination."

Amid a global banana crisis, Puerto Rico’s abundant biodiversity offers a taste of hope - "Colombian workers for the United Fruit Company, now Chiquita, went on strike in 1928 and were gunned down by the Colombian army, at the behest of U.S. business interests in the region."

The Washington, DC region has built too much housing in the wrong places - "Large employment centers and transit infrastructure are durable features of the built environment that persist for many decades. Therefore, a climate-friendly growth strategy for the region would concentrate new housing, retail, and services around these existing locations."

‘World’s Worst Invasive Weed’ Sold at Many U.S. Garden Centers: Banned by federal and state regulators, many invasive plants are still being sold at garden centers, nurseries and online retailers nationwide

Opinion: Do we even care about the health of the Chesapeake Bay?

Opinion: Maryland Gov. Hogan could save the Chesapeake - "The certification of Conowingo Dam on the Susquehanna River, the gateway to the Chesapeake Bay, is still in question. The last time the opportunity presented itself was before it was known that structures negatively impact our environment and that altering the natural flow of major rivers leads to a slow degradation of the resource we treasure and want to protect."

Opinion: The D.C. Council should stop allowing private entities to take over public parks and buildings - "Leasing buildings and properly scaled playing fields to private schools seems at best poor planning and at worst a slap in the face to D.C. families who send their kids to public schools and support our public education system. Prioritizing the desires of a few elite private schools over the very real needs of DC public school students and DC taxpayers should not continue. The D.C. Council should introduce and pass legislation this fall closing this loophole and protecting D.C.’s playing fields and buildings."

Opinion: Go-go music is finally getting the recognition it deserves in D.C.

‘I’m begging you. ... Take that shot.’: As covid-19 surges in unvaccinated Alabama, the intimate conversations between doctors and patients have taken on a new urgency

Reading archive 2021-08-19

Attack of the Superweeds: Herbicides are losing the war — and agriculture might never be the same again. - Superweeds — that is, weeds that have evolved characteristics that make them more difficult to control as a result of repeatedly using the same management tactic — are rapidly overtaking American commodity farms, and Palmer amaranth is their king.

...

The weeds in the test plot were resisting some weed killers their ancestors had never seen.

HARRY STINE TAKES OFF THE GLOVES REGARDING DICAMBA: STINE SAYS DICAMBA HAS DAMAGED U.S. AGRICULTURE MORE THAN ANYTHING IN HIS LIFETIME.

North Texas doctor’s group retreats on policy saying vaccination status to be part of care decisions: This would have been a big change in health care, and it was all outlined in a memo obtained by the Watchdog.

“A Smile With Sharp Teeth”: Mike Richards’s Rise to ‘Jeopardy!’ Host Sparks Questions About His Past: The ‘Jeopardy!’ host search is finally over. New reporting reveals that concerns about Richards and the show’s selection process remain.

Reading archive 2021-08-18

A mom of 4 who died of covid days after her husband makes one final wish: ‘Make sure my kids get vaccinated’

‘Please Don’t Leave Us Behind. We Will Be Great Americans.’: An interview with a U.S.-trained Afghan Air Force pilot, now hiding from the Taliban.

Durham grand jury explores theory someone presented FBI with fabricated evidence in 2016 Russia probe

With the Taliban now in control, here’s what Afghans are seeing in Kabul

The U.S. could be on the verge of a productivity boom, a game-changer for the economy: Rapid adoption of robots and artificial intelligence during the pandemic combined with a rebound in government investment is making some economists optimistic about a return of a 1990s economy with widespread benefits

Google’s new ‘time crystals’ could be a breakthrough for long-awaited quantum computers: Researchers say a new type of matter may hold the key to computers with more processing power

An Alabama doctor watched patients reject the coronavirus vaccine. Now he’s refusing to treat them.

Reading archive 2021-08-17

72 hours at Camp David: Inside Biden’s lagging response to the fall of Afghanistan

She was the only member of Congress to vote against war in Afghanistan. Some called her a traitor.: Rep. Barbara Lee faced death threats, insults and hate mail after she voted against a broad authorization used to carry out the war in Afghanistan - "The reaction to her vote was furious, reflecting the strong emotions of the day. The Wall Street Journal called her a 'clueless liberal' and asked if she was anti-American. The Washington Times called her 'a long-practicing supporter of America’s enemies.' The phones in her office were turned off after they were flooded with calls, The Post wrote, and she received so many death threats that for a time she had a police detail protecting her.

...

"Lee spent weeks explaining her vote in op-eds and interviews. She wasn’t a pacifist, she said, and she wasn’t against President George W. Bush responding to the terrorist attacks with military force. But she thought it was an abdication of Congress’s power to declare war, and she didn’t want to give a president a 'blank check' to start a war with no fixed goal or end date."

Angry Letters to the One Member of Congress Who Voted Against the War on Terror: Barbara Lee was the lone dissenter in the post-9/11 vote authorizing military force. Many called her a traitor. But her constituents shared her concerns—and history has vindicated them. - "'The middle part of the country—the great red zone that voted for Bush—is clearly ready for war,' Andrew Sullivan wrote that week in a Sunday newspaper column. 'The decadent left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead—and may well mount a fifth column.'" [ed. notes: what a piece of shit, from 2014]

Reading archive 2021-08-16

Afghan security forces’ wholesale collapse was years in the making - "In fact, according to documents obtained for the forthcoming Washington Post book 'The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War,' U.S. military officials privately harbored fundamental doubts for the duration of the war that the Afghan security forces could ever become competent or shed their dependency on U.S. money and firepower."

Afghanistan’s military collapse: Illicit deals and mass desertions - "The Taliban capitalized on the uncertainty caused by the February 2020 agreement reached in Doha, Qatar, between the militant group and the United States calling for a full American withdrawal from Afghanistan. Some Afghan forces realized they would soon no longer be able to count on American air power and other crucial battlefield support and grew receptive to the Taliban’s approaches."

The Afghan debacle lasted two decades. The media spent two hours deciding whom to blame.

‘Outsider’ Buttigieg plays a skillful inside game, positioning himself for the future

Reading archive 2021-08-15

Afghanistan Meant Nothing

Reading archive 2021-08-14

Opinion: Maryland can’t save the Chesapeake Bay alone - "Ninety percent of Chesapeake Bay waters flow from the Susquehanna River, yet Pennsylvania and New York seem incapable of making the necessary changes on their own."

Opinion: A car-free Rock Creek Park could become the Central Park of D.C. - "Pre-pandemic, up to 8,000 cars per weekday turned upper Beach Drive into a highway for commuting into D.C., emitting air pollution and limiting recreational usage of the park. None of that aligns with Congress’s original vision for Rock Creek."

‘Why Omaha?’: DHS bets on Nebraska as the future of terrorism research

Thousands of specially bred honeybees mysteriously went missing. The beekeeper wants answers.

Reading archive 2021-08-13

Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw told supporters Trump lost to Biden. The Republican was heckled and called a RINO.

Mass Afghan government surrenders as Taliban fighters overrun three key cities in sweeping territorial gains

As Taliban widens its grip, Afghans reckon with life under militant rule

‘Why did my friend get blown up? For what?’: Afghanistan war veterans horrified by Taliban gains

Reading archive 2021-08-12

California man charged with spear-gun killing of children

A QAnon-obsessed father thought his kids would destroy the world, so he killed them with a spear gun, FBI says

Voting Machine Tampering Is Coming From Inside The MAGA House: Colorado County Clerk Tina Peters May Have Committed The Very Crime She Accused The Left Of Committing

What If The House Of Representatives Had More Than 435 Seats?: See how adding more seats makes Congress more representative

A GoFundMe topped $200,000 after a woman said she and her kids faced eviction. Then, their real mom came forward.

Mississippi’s Hospital System Could ‘Fail’ In 10 Days, UMMC Warns As Feds Rush In

Mississippi braces for ‘failure’ of hospital system due to covid-19 surge and lack of ICU beds

The spectacular implosion of Mike Lindell

Opinion: CNN’s Brian Stelter continues shilling for Chris Cuomo

Deceptions and lies: What really happened in Afghanistan

The grand illusion: Hiding the truth about the Afghanistan war’s ‘conclusion’

A plant-based diet is the best way to avoid heart disease, according to a new report

Reading archive 2021-08-11

Why we shouldn’t give in to climate despair: A sweeping assessment by more than 200 scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change paints a picture of a planet in dire straits, but the report also contains crucial reasons for hope

A German nurse injected patients with saline instead of coronavirus vaccines, sparking fury

CNN fires three who turned up to work unvaccinated against coronavirus

D.C. wants changes to maglev train proposal, citing downtown disruptions and increased traffic: The District’s comments signal doubts that the train line would be a good fit, but don’t take a stance on the project

Reading archive 2021-08-10

Billionaire-backed mining firm to seek electric vehicle metals in Greenland

Special Report: Millions of abandoned oil wells are leaking methane, a climate menace

Nickelodeon’s Generational Divide: At the height of its power, Nickelodeon helped shape pop culture for almost two decades. While the network was ubiquitous for anyone who lived through the era, the way it was experienced was far from universal.

Senate approves bipartisan, $1 trillion infrastructure bill, bringing major Biden goal one step closer: Democrats along with 19 Republicans approved the public-works package in a Tuesday morning vote, teeing it up soon for the House

All population growth in U.S. driven by minorities, upcoming census data is likely to reveal

Reading archive 2021-08-09

Antiabortion activists at Supreme Court cite an unlikely authority for overturning Roe v. Wade: Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Sturgis Motorcycle Rally revs up, drawing thousands and heightening delta superspreader fears

Florida offers school vouchers for families angry with mask mandates while judge temporarily blocks ban in Arkansas

Democrats head home with a clearer message for voters as they try to avoid a repeat of the 2010 midterm disaster

The Cheapo Olympics Are Coming: The 2024 Summer Games in Paris will feature a big change: a modest price tag.

At Blizzard, groping, free-flowing booze and fear of retaliation tainted ‘magical’ workplace

Opinion: Trump’s coup attempt grows even more worrisome as new details emerge

Opinion: Shocking new Trump-DOJ revelations should shape the Jan. 6 investigation

A rape allegation at China’s Alibaba spurs furor over sexual assault, binge drinking

Florida church reeling after six members die within 10 days amid spike in cases

Visitors enter Montana mines filled with radon as a therapy for their ills

Judge asks why Capitol rioters are paying just $1.5 million for attack, while U.S. taxpayers will pay more than $500 million

Humans have pushed the climate into ‘unprecedented’ territory, landmark U.N. report finds: U.N. chief calls findings ‘a code red for humanity’ with worse climate impacts to come unless greenhouse gas pollution falls dramatically - "Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen to levels not seen in 2 million years, the authors state. The oceans are turning acidic. Sea levels continue to rise. Arctic ice is disintegrating. Weather-related disasters are growing more extreme and affecting every region of the world."

Billionaire James Murdoch building “recreational retreat” in Nascall Bay: A Globe and Mail article has confirmed that the 445 acre property in Nascall Bay was purchased by billionaire media mogul James Murdoch [ed. note: the super rich have apocalypse bunkers in New Zealand]

Reading archive 2021-08-08

A Black community in Northeast D.C. is surrounded by industrial pollution. The city plans to add more.: Brentwood residents are opposed to a school-bus terminal in the area, and the city has denied the neighborhood’s request for an environmental impact assessment

Legal U.S. marijuana is pouring into Mexico. It’s pricey, popular and has names such as ‘Bubba Kush.’

Marjorie Taylor Greene fans cheered low vaccination rate in Alabama, which tossed 65,000 doses

Masks, comfortable clothes likely to linger after pandemic, Post-Schar School polling finds

Reading archive 2021-08-06

Unpaid caregivers: How America treats women caring for paralyzed partners: These women care for their paralyzed partners full time. Most states refuse to pay them.

D.C. parking, traffic tickets snowball into financial hardships: Traffic and parking tickets are issued more often in Black neighborhoods than White ones, according to D.C. data analyzed by The Washington Post. Advocates for changing the District’s fees and fines system say the disparities criminalize poverty.

They rejected coronavirus shots in vaccine-rich countries. In the hospital, they changed their minds.

Reading archive 2021-08-05

Northwest D.C. ‘NIMBYs’ fight proposal over new schools

A critical ocean system may be heading for collapse due to climate change, study finds: ‘The consequences of a collapse would likely be far-reaching’ - "Studies suggest that toward the end of the last ice age, a massive glacial lake burst through a declining North American ice sheet. The flood of freshwater spilled into the Atlantic, halting the AMOC and plunging much of the Northern Hemisphere — especially Europe — into deep cold. Gas bubbles trapped in polar ice indicate the cold spell lasted 1,000 years. Analyses of plant fossils and ancient artifacts suggest that the climate shift transformed ecosystems and threw human societies into upheaval."

How Provincetown, Mass., stress-tested the coronavirus vaccine with summer partying and delta

Nearly 200 doctors clash with school district that refuses to mandate masks

Buoyed by rising nationalism, China’s keyboard warriors take aim at Olympic athletes

Peter Doocy and Jen Psaki’s daily clashes have become a White House briefing room ritual

A Texas GOP leader railed against vaccines and masks. Then he died of covid.

GamerGaters inundated her with death threats. Now some are apologizing — and she forgives them.

Reading archive 2021-08-04

Opinion: How many violence-prevention programs are enough for D.C.?  - "The National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, in partnership with the Public Welfare Foundation, recently published an analysis of the various violence-reduction programs — close to 70 — funded and at work in the city. The report concluded, 'many of these programs and services may be uncoordinated, disjointed, and unintentionally serving a duplicative client base. All the while, those at the highest risk and need appear to not be connected to needed services.'"

Tens of millions of people have been moving into flood zones, satellite imagery shows: A new study finds that the proportion of people living in flood zones has grown dramatically, and could be the ‘tip of the iceberg’

Virtually all emperor penguin colonies doomed for extinction by 2100 as climate change looms, study finds - "An emperor penguin colony in the Antarctic’s Weddell Sea was effectively wiped out in 2016 because of record-low sea ice and early ice breakup, Jenouvrier said. More than 10,000 chicks are thought to have drowned when the sea ice broke up before they were ready to swim. A British Antarctic Survey base in the area has been mothballed in recent years, partly because of fears the nearby ice could soon calve one or more giant icebergs into the ocean, the BBC reported."

Reading archive 2021-08-03

"Broke" and abandoned: Rudy Giuliani is reportedly now getting the cold shoulder from Trump

Accused Bucks Capitol rioter once assaulted an ex with pizza and tried to drown her, feds say in bid to keep him locked up: The 2011 incident was just one of a history of violent attacks against women prosecutors detailed against Ryan Samsel, of Bristol, who now says he was brutally beaten in a D.C.-area jail.

Focus is important to productivity. But it’s daydreaming that makes us happy. - "Still, daydreaming doesn’t always make us happy or creative. If we rehash past mistakes or replay social flubs during a mind-wandering session, or if mind-wandering keeps us from fulfilling our goals, we could become depressed."

Scientists expected thawing wetlands in Siberia’s permafrost. What they found is ‘much more dangerous.’: A 2020 heat wave unleashed methane emissions from prehistoric limestone in two regions stretching 375 miles, study says

New restrictions sweep China as officials race to contain delta outbreak

Prominent Belarusian activist Vitaly Shishov, who helped others flee Lukashenko regime, found dead in Ukraine

Belarusian Olympic sprinter says she was pressured to leave Tokyo after criticizing her country’s Olympic officials

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed seeks to cut influential clerics down to size

The Secret Source Who Helped Fuel Trump’s Big Lie: A Dallas information-technology consultant, code-named Spider, believes that the New World Order stole the 2020 election. - "During our conversations, he outlined a form of grievance politics that reached new prominence in the Trump era, telling me that the most marginalized people in America are 'white Christians,' and that the New World Order was stoking fears about racism and white supremacy in order to 'balkanize' U.S. society."

Reading archive 2021-08-02

Announcing a New Plan for Solving the Mystery of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena: The newly organized Galileo Project will use a three-pronged approach to replace unreliable eyewitness reports with reproducible scientific observations

What Trump got right

A battle of green against green in this Texas community

‘I should have gotten the damn vaccine,’ woman says fiance texted before he died of covid-19

Vaxed, waxed, but definitely not relaxed: Welcome to the pandemic swerve - "The best way to describe what we’re going through right now is the prisoner’s dilemma, says Gretchen Chapman, a professor of psychology who studies vaccination decision-making at Carnegie Mellon University. Vaccines, as with the classic game theory model, provide a collective reward when everyone cooperates, though individuals may have personal incentives not to cooperate. If not enough individuals cooperate, then the people who did the right thing suffer the consequences."

Opinion: The GOP scamming of rural Trump voters continues. A new study shows the latest. - "It has long been central to Republican mythology that Democrats have nothing but seething contempt for the rural and small-town inhabitants of the Real American Heartland. Republicans sometimes pair this with vile lies about Democratic proposals that would deliver economic benefits to those regions, turning their residents against them.

...

"The new analysis from the Niskanen Center finds that the expanded child allowance — which has started delivering up to $300 per child per month to most U.S. households with children — will shower outsize benefits on residents of rural and less populous states and will deliver a disproportionately large relative boost to their local economies."

Oak-mite bites: Cicadas may have left D.C. region an itchy gift

Red Brain, Blue Brain: Evaluative Processes Differ in Democrats and Republicans

Reading archive 2021-08-01

Opinion: Biden cannot sit back and let our democracy sink. He’s now showing us he gets that.

When Masks Become Trash: Look around and you’ll start to notice America’s discarded face coverings everywhere

‘Honeybees are voracious’: is it time to put the brakes on the boom in beekeeping? The number of beehives in Britain’s cities is growing rapidly, putting pressure on native bees ‘that really need our help’, say scientists and experienced beekeepers