Outside the Outbreak: Sen. Romney wins award, beloved author dies

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Romney gets Profile in Courage Award for impeachment vote

FILE – In this Oct. 15, 2020 file photo, Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, speaks during a news conference near Neffs Canyon, in Salt Lake City. Romney was named the winner of the Profile in Courage Award on Friday, March 26, 2021, for splitting with his party and becoming the only Republican to vote to convict former President Donald Trump during his first impeachment trial. “I’m very appreciative of the honor, but also humbled by it,” Romney told NBC’s “Today” show in an interview aired Friday. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney was named the recipient of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award on Friday for splitting with his party and becoming the only Republican to vote to convict former President Donald Trump during his first impeachment trial.

The award was created by the family of the late president to honor public figures who risk their careers by embracing unpopular positions for the greater good, and is named after Kennedy’s 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Profiles in Courage.”

“Sen. Romney’s commitment to our Constitution makes him a worthy successor to the senators who inspired my father to write ‘Profiles in Courage,'” Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline Kennedy, said in a statement from the JFK Library Foundation. “He reminds us that our Democracy depends on the courage, conscience and character of our elected officials.”

In shift, oil industry group backs federal price on carbon

FILE – This Sunday, April 10, 2011 picture shows a rig and supply vessel in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Louisiana. Thirteen states sued the Biden administration Wednesday, March 24, 2021 to end a suspension of new oil and gas leases on federal land and water and to reschedule canceled sales of offshore leases in the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska waters and western states. The Republican-leaning states, led by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, seek a court order ending the moratorium imposed after Democratic President Joe Biden signed executive orders on climate change on Jan. 27. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

The oil and gas industry’s top lobbying group on Thursday endorsed a federal price on carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming, a reversal of longstanding policy that comes as the Biden administration has pledged dramatic steps to address climate change.

The American Petroleum Institute, whose members include ExxonMobil, Chevron and other oil giants, announced the shift ahead of a virtual forum Thursday by the Interior Department as it launches a months-long review of the government’s oil and gas sales.

API also called for fast-tracking commercial deployment of long-sought technology to capture and store carbon emissions, as well as federal regulation of methane emissions from new and existing oil and gas wells, after strongly resisting such regulations proposed by the Obama administration.

After 100 years, California condor could return to northwest

FILE – In this June 21, 2017, file photo, a California condor takes flight in the Ventana Wilderness east of Big Sur, Calif. The endangered California condor could return to the Pacific Northwest for the first time in 100 years. The San Francisco Chronicle says the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to allow the release of captive-bred giant vultures into Redwood National Park as early as fall 2021. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

The endangered California condor could return to the Pacific Northwest for the first time in 100 years.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to allow the release of captive-bred giant vultures into Redwood National Park as early as this fall to create a “nonessential experimental population” for California’s far north, Oregon and northwestern Nevada, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Wednesday.

The project will be headed by the Yurok tribe, which traditionally has considered the California condor a sacred animal and has been working for years to return the species to the tribe’s ancestral territory.

Beloved children’s author Beverly Cleary dies at 104

FILE – In this April 19, 1998 file photo, Beverly Cleary signs books at the Monterey Bay Book Festival in Monterey, Calif. The beloved children’s author, whose characters Ramona Quimby and Henry Huggins enthralled generations of youngsters, has died. She was 104. Cleary’s publisher, HarperCollins, announced her death Friday, March 26, 2021. In a statement, the company said Cleary died in Carmel, California, her home since the 1960s, on Thursday. No cause of death was given. (Vern Fisher/The Monterey County Herald via AP, File)

Beverly Cleary, the celebrated children’s author whose memories of her Oregon childhood were shared with millions through the likes of Ramona and Beezus Quimby and Henry Huggins, has died. She was 104.

Cleary’s publisher HarperCollins announced Friday that the author died Thursday in Carmel Valley, California, where she had lived since the 1960s. No cause of death was given.

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