Dear Reader:

Worldometer, Sept 17: over 30 million cases and getting closer to a million deaths worldwide. Getting closer to 7 million cases and over 201 thousand deaths in the U.S, over 40 thousand new cases and 1,151 new deaths in the U.S. yesterday.

Over 5 million cases and over 84 thousand deaths in India, a record high of almost 98 thousand new cases and 1,139 new deaths yesterday.

Yesterday, a record high of almost 12 thousand new cases were reported in Spain, 239 new deaths; close to 10 thousand new cases in France; a record high of more than 6 thousand new cases in Israel, almost 4 thousand new cases in the U.K., over 2 thousand new cases in Germany, over 1,500 new cases in the Netherlands, 1,450 new cases in Italy, 944 new cases in Canada,  40 new cases in Australia, zero new cases in China.

AP Associated Press, Sept 16: “BERLIN (AP) — Satellite images show that smoke from wildfires in the western United States has reached as far as Europe, scientists said Wednesday…smoke from the fires had traveled 8,000 kilometers (almost 5,000 miles) through the atmosphere to Britain and other parts of northern Europe…’The scale and magnitude of these fires are at a level much higher than in any of the 18 years that our monitoring data covers, since 2003,’ Mark Parrington, a senior scientist and wildfire expert at Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, said.”

anita