Are genetically modified crops "Franken-foods" or the answer to global hunger and climate change? That is the dilemma dividing Latin America, where vast quantities of GM crops are grown. Ecuador's constitution actually prohibits them and Peru recently voted for a 10-year moratorium.
Outside the US, no region has a greater expanse of agricultural land sown with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) than South America.
Together, Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay have roughly 120 million acres of GM crops, principally soybean, but also significant amounts of corn.
Advocates say they increase yields, allowing the world to feed a growing population, and will even help farmers adapt to climate change.
But critics have long warned of the dangers, both to the environment and human health, as well as the way so-called GMOs can make farmers dependent on the corporations that provide the seeds and complementary products.
Russian veterinary services decided to lift the ban on NK603 strain of GMO maize. The strain is approved for use both in feed for animals, and for the production of food for human.
The ban was put into place in September last year after a study linked Monsanto's weed killer Roundup and the NK603 strain of maize genetically modified to be resistant to the herbicide, to cancer in lab rats. This week the Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Rights Protection and Human Welfare (Rospotrebnadzor) reported the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences had performed safety assessment of GM maize NK603 tolerant to glyphosate, and the analysis of results of post-monitoring for the entire period of use of the product in the human diet.
The report said: "Chemical composition of corn genetically modified maize NK603 is equivalent to its conventional counterpart; CP4 EPSPS protein is neither toxic to humans nor is an allergen; medical and biological research of genetically modified maize NK603 conducted during its official registration in the Russian Federation reveals absence of any toxic, genotoxic, sensitisation, allergic and immune-modulating action, and compositional equivalence with its conventional counterpart."
OLYMPIA -- Sponsors of an initiative to require labeling of genetically modified foods have delivered about 350,000 signatures to the Secretary of State's office. An initiative to the Legislature requires at least 241,153 valid signatures of registered state voters to be certified. If the Legislature doesn't act on the measure, it will go on November's general election ballot.
Initiative 522 would require food and seeds produced through genetic engineering and sold in Washington to be labeled effective July 1, 2015.
The signature drive comes on the heels of a similar measure that was rejected by California voters in November. A pair of bills introduced in last spring's Washington Legislature never cleared the first committee of referral.
"We were not discouraged really at all," said Ellen Gray, whose Washington Sustainable Food and Farming Network was part of the coalition behind the petition drive. "The bills started the conversation."
Washington voters are in the avant-garde when it comes to policies on recreational marijuana and same-sex marriage. And now a grassroots campaign wants us to lead the country on food labeling.
Backers of legislative initiative 522 say they submitted 100,000 more signatures than needed for a measure that would require companies to clearly mark products containing genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.
Tom Stahl is a fourth-generation Washington wheat farmer with about 2,000 acres outside Waterville, north of Wenatchee. A few years ago, he heard that the seed giant Monsanto was developing genetically modified wheat.
At the same time, he says, several of Washington's key export markets, including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, were talking about the dangers of GMOs. Many of them now require labeling.
When Monsanto revolutionised agriculture with a line of genetically engineered seeds, the promise was that the technology would lower herbicide use - because farmers would have to spray less. In fact, as Washington State University researcher Chuch Benbrook has shown, just the opposite happened.
Sixteen years on, Roundup (Monsanto's tradename for its glyphosate herbicide) has certainly killed lots of weeds. But the ones it has left standing are about as resistant to herbicide as the company's Roundup Ready crops, which are designed to survive repeated applications of the agribusiness giant's own Roundup herbicide.
For just one example, turn to Mississippi, where cotton, corn, and soy farmers have been using Roundup Ready seeds for years - and are now struggling to contain a new generation of super weeds, including a scourge of Italian ryegrass.
"Fight resistant weeds with fall, spring attack," declares a headline in Delta Farm Press, a farming trade magazine serving the Mississippi river delta. The article's author, a Mississippi State University employee, lays out the challenge.
OLYMPIA - The state's voters are likely to be asked next ffice.all whether food that contains genetically modified organisms must say so on its label to be sold in Washington.
Supporters of a ballot measure to require such labels filed petitions with an estimated 350,000 signatures Thursday, more than 100,000 more than required to qualify an initiative to the Legislature. If the signatures pass inspection, it will be sent to the Legislature during the upcoming session.
Supporters like Chris McManus of University Place, who managed the signature drive, said the proposal is simply about informing the public.
Washington, D.C. - This summer, record temperatures and limited rainfall parched vast areas of U.S. cropland, and with Earth's surface air temperature projected to rise 0.69 degrees Celsius by 2030, global food production will be even more unpredictable, according to new research conducted by the Worldwatch Institute (www.worldwatch.org). Although agriculture is a major driver of human-caused climate change, contributing an estimated 25 to 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, when done sustainably it can be an important key to mitigating climate change, write report authors Danielle Nierenberg and Laura Reynolds.
Because of its reliance on healthy soil, adequate water, and a delicate balance of gases such as carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere, farming is the human endeavor most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. But agriculture's strong interrelationships with both climatic and environmental variables also make it a significant playerin reducing climate-altering emissions as well as helping the world adapt to the realities of a warming planet.
"The good news is that agriculture can hold an important key to mitigating climate change," said Reynolds, Worldwatch's Food and Agriculture Research Associate. "Practices such as using animal manure rather than artificial fertilizer, planting trees on farms to reduce soil erosion and sequester carbon, and growing food in cities all hold huge potential for reducing agriculture's environmental footprint."
Think Google ad targeting is crossing the line? Verizon filed a patent for a cable television box that uses sensors to record what you're doing and target you with specific advertisements that relate to your mood.
The telecom giant Verizon wants to know you better. Much better. The company just registered a patent for its DVR of the future. The set-top box would use a depth sensor, an image sensor, an audio sensor and a thermal sensor to determine what those watching television are doing. If a couple is having an argument in front of the TV, a marriage counseling ad may come up. If two people are cozying up, Verizon may put up an ad for contraceptives or a romantic getaway.
The sensors would also be able to detect where someone is looking. If the viewer is watching a certain ad, Verizon might use that as an indicator to play similar ads in the future.
"If detection facility detects one or more words spoken by a user (e.g. while talking to another user within the same room or on the telephone), advertising facility may utilize the one or more words spoken by the user to search for and/or select an advertisement associated with the one or more words," Verizon wrote in its application.
An Indiana hospital has fired eight employees, including at least three veteran nurses, after they refused mandatory flu shots, stirring up controversy over which should come first: employee rights or patient safety. The hospital imposed mandatory vaccines, responding to rising concerns about the spread of influenza.
Ethel Hoover wore all black on her last day of work as a nurse in the critical care unit at Indiana University Health Goshen Hospital. She said she was in "mourning" because she would have been at the hospital 22 years in February, and she's only called out of work four or five times in her whole career , she said. "This is my body. I have a right to refuse the flu vaccine," Hoover, 61, told ABCNews.com. "For 21 years, I have religiously not taken the flu vaccine, and now you're telling me that I believe in it."
More than 15,100 flu cases have been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since Sept. 30, including 16 pediatric deaths. Indiana's flu activity level is considered high, according to the CDC, which last month announced that the flu season came a month earlier than usual.
The Journal News of West Nyack, N.Y., has hired armed security guards to defend its offices after receiving a torrent of phone calls and emails responding to the paper's publication of the names and addresses of area residents with pistol permits.
RGA Investigations, a private security company, "is doing private security at on location at the Journal News as a result of the negative response to the article," according to a police report first obtained by the Rockland County Times (Nanuet, N.Y.) and shared with POLITICO. The guards "are armed and will be on site during business hours through at least January 2, 2013."
Last month, in the wake of last month's elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., the Gannett-owned Journal News published interactive maps showing the names and addresses of pistol permit holders in New York's Westchester and Rockland counties. Conservatives and gun rights advocates publicly protested the paper's move; on Monday, the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association called for a nationwide boycott of the paper's advertisers, calling it a "wanton act" that "has put in harm's way tens of thousands of lawful license holders."
Democrat Senator: "Mr. and Mrs. America... turn 'em all in." Infowars.com
December 31, 2012
Dianne Feinstein: "If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States, for an outright ban, picking up [every gun]... Mr. and Mrs. America, turn 'em all in."
We are being played; it's time we learned the game. Conservatives have their Constitution. Progressives have their Narrative. The current battle for America is between these two concepts, and each side uses different rules to fight it.
One set of rules is consistent with an unchanging objective: limited government and individual freedoms. The other side's rules are as fickle as their goals, which are never fully disclosed beyond the equivocal references to fairness and hyphenated forms of justice. They will have to remain vague and deny their true allegiances until a time when American voters will no longer squirm at the word "socialism."
And yet spotting them isn't that hard. As a bird is known by his feathers, socialists are known by their Game.
The senseless and horrific killings last week in Newtown, Connecticut reminded us that a determined individual or group of individuals can cause great harm no matter what laws are in place. Connecticut already has restrictive gun laws relative to other states, including restrictions on fully automatic, so-called "assault" rifles and gun-free zones.
Predictably, the political left responded to the tragedy with emotional calls for increased gun control. This is understandable, but misguided. The impulse to have government "do something" to protect us in the wake national tragedies is reflexive and often well intentioned. Many Americans believe that if we simply pass the right laws, future horrors like the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting can be prevented. But this impulse ignores the self evident truth that criminals don't obey laws.
The political right, unfortunately, has fallen into the same trap in its calls for quick legislative solutions to gun violence. If only we put armed police or armed teachers in schools, we're told, would-be school shooters will be dissuaded or stopped.
The Chicago Tribune has announced that starting in January, the Chicago-based paper and several other Tribune-owned papers will be dropping the Associated Press as its chief wire service.
Along with the Chicago paper, six other Tribune-owned papers will also be dropping the AP. Those papers are the Baltimore Sun; the Orlando Sentinel; the South Florida Sun-Sentinel; the Hartford Courant; the Morning Call of Allentown, Pennsylvania; and theDaily Press of Newport News, Virginia.
This news is unsurprising as the Tribune had already started to scale back use of the AP. As far back as 2008 the Trib began using Reuters' American wire content. Long-time Chicago media watcher Robert Feder says that switching to Reuters could save the Tribune as much as $5 million a year.
Forecasting isn't an exact science, but researches at the New England Complex Systems Institute may have come up with a formulaic approach that can help them to identify risk factors that contribute to political instability which may lead to riots and civil unrest similar to what we saw in the Middle East this year.
Their model is so accurate that they reportedly wrote a letter to the United States warning of imminent danger just days before the mid east and north African riots broke out:
On 13 December last year, the group wrote to the US government pointing out that global food prices were about to cross the threshold they had identified. Four days later, Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Tunisia in protest at government policies, an event that triggered a wave of social unrest that continues to spread throughout the middle east today.
Everywhere from FoxNews.com to CNBC.com, I suddenly see commentators warning of pending doom, economic collapse, and a new Great Depression. Welcome to my club. Perhaps America's politicians and economists should have paid attention to an entrepreneur and small businessman that has been warning of economic collapse and a new Great Depression publicly for over two years.
More importantly, none of the current commentaries mention the "why's" of this slow motion economic collapse...beyond the obvious -- mountains of deficit and debt. None of them mention the dysfunctional structure of the current U.S. economy and the massive changes in the work ethic and mindset of the average American.
I am a successful small businessman and a patriot who loves America and always sees its greatness. I am also an optimistic, positive thinker who always sees the glass half full. But not this time.
What if you were given a free ticket to live in a new country, where life expectancy was somewhere between 45 and 65 years of age, where you live with diseases, eat toxic food, cannot own a gun, and where you can be put in jail or murdered for talking bad about your government, would you laugh, tear the ticket in half, and say, no way?
What if your name and address were posted on a news site where anyone could look you up, so they could check out everything personal about you, including your medical records, your grades from schools, everywhere you have worked and where you work now, whether you own any weapons, if you've been arrested for speaking badly about your government, how many kids you have, their ages, where they go to school, pictures of them and you, and also anything you have purchased in the past few years? Would that be the most insane invasion of your privacy and rights to a personal, private life?
What if your medical records could be sold for profit and marketing?
Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) technology has taken off in recent years, and the police says it is the greatest innovation since fingerprints and DNA; the technology has changed the way police finds cars connected to crimes, but in the process it has upset many privacy advocates.
Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) technology has taken off in recent years, and the police says it is the greatest innovation since fingerprints and DNA. The technology has changed the way police finds cars connected to crimes, but in the process it has upset many privacy advocates.
The ALPR system currently being used in Greenfield, Wisconsin costs $18,700.
Two big events recently took place in the world of food: The Food and Drug Administration decreed that genetically engineered salmon wouldn't harm the environment and McDonald's announced that its McRib sandwich is back on the menu.
The FDA's announcement paves the way for the first approval of a genetically engineered animal for humans to eat - and it was met with a good deal of highly critical wailing and groaning by Consumer's Union, National Geographic and many other advocacy groups who are wary of genetically engineered food.
The McRib's return was greeted with a few snickers by late night comedians and overwhelmingly happy faces on the millions of Americans who eat at one of the 13,000 McDonald's restaurants from Maine to Hawaii every day. This, as my grandmother would have said in Yiddish, is "fakakta" - completely screwy.
