Posted: May 9, 2012
The UK government has banned self-defense expert and former US Navy Seal Tim Larkin from entering the country after Larkin planned to hold seminars instructing people how to protect themselves against rioters and criminals.
"Tim Larkin tried to board a plane from his home in Las Vegas on Tuesday, but was given a UK Border Agency letter saying ?his presence here was not conducive to the public good," reports BBC News.
The banning order reflects how the coalition government is continuing the previous Labour Party's policy of discouraging British citizens from using any kind of self-defense whatsoever given the fact that private ownership of firearms is all but completely outlawed.
http://www.prisonplanet.com
Posted: May 9, 2012
CARSON CITY - Nevadans will soon see driverless cars being tested on streets and highways.
Google received the first license Monday from the state Department of Motor Vehicles to test the autonomous vehicles. It is believed to be the first such license issued in the country.
The 2011 Legislature passed the first law in the nation to permit testing of driverless cars. But state regulations require a person behind the wheel and one in the passenger's seat during tests.
http://www.lasvegassun.com
Posted: May 8, 2012
SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) - A Colorado teen is upset with screeners at Salt Lake City International Airport. The type one diabetic says TSA agents were abrupt, rude and were responsible for breaking her $10,000insulin pump. A pump she has to have to survive.
Savannah Barry is mad and on a mission. She wants travelers to be warned before they walk through TSA security. "They need to get with the program and have some education across the board for TSA." After participating in a DECA conference in Salt Lake City with several classmates last week, Savannah, who is a type one diabetic and wears an insulin pump 24 hours a day, says she ran into TSA agents who were not prepared to deal with her medical situation. "I went up to the lady and I said, I am a type one diabetic. I wear an insulin pump. I showed her the pump. I said, what do you want me to do? I usually do a pat down - what would you recommend?"
Read the full article: http://www.abc4.com
Posted: May 8, 2012
Nearly 15 percent of people worldwide believe the world will end during their lifetime and 10 percent think the Mayan calendar could signify it will happen in 2012, according to a new poll.
The end of the Mayan calendar, which spans about 5,125 years, on December 21, 2012 has sparked interpretations and suggestions that it marks the end of the world."Whether they think it will come to an end through the hands of God, or a natural disaster or a political event, whatever the reason, one in seven thinks the end of the world is coming," said Keren Gottfried, research manager at Ipsos Global Public Affairs which conducted the poll for Reuters."Perhaps it is because of the media attention coming from one interpretation of the Mayan prophecy that states the world 'ends' in our calendar year 2012," Gottfried said, adding that some Mayan scholars have disputed the interpretation.
Read the full article:
http://www.reuters.com
and
a related article on our site:
http://www.naturalnews.com
Posted: May 8, 2012
America's obesity epidemic is so deeply rooted that it will take dramatic and systemic measures - from overhauling farm policies and zoning laws to, possibly, introducing a soda tax - to fix it, the influential Institute of Medicine said on Tuesday.
In an ambitious 478-page report, the IOM refutes the idea that obesity is largely the result of a lack of willpower on the part of individuals. Instead, it embraces policy proposals that have met with stiff resistance from the food industry and lawmakers, arguing that multiple strategies will be needed to make the U.S. environment less "obesogenic."
Read the full article: http://www.reuters.com
Posted: May 8, 2012
LINCOLN, Neb. - Beef Products Inc. will close processing plants in three states this month because of the controversy surrounding its meat product that critics have dubbed pink slime, a company official said Monday.About 650 jobs will be lost when the plants close on May 25 in Amarillo, Texas; Garden City, Kansas, and Waterloo Iowa, company spokesman Rich Jochum said. A plant in South Sioux City, Neb., will remain open but run at reduced capacity.
The South Dakota-based company blamed the closures on what it said were unfounded attacks over its lean, finely textured beef. During its processing, bits of beef are heated and treated with a small amount of ammonia to kill bacteria. The filler has been used for years and meets federal food safety standards.
But the company suspended operations at the three plants in March amid public uproar over the filler. BPI has declined to discuss financial details, but has said it took a "substantial" hit after social media exploded with worry over the product and an online petition seeking its ouster from schools drew hundreds of thousands of supporters.
Read the full article: http://www.freep.com
Posted: May 8, 2012
Kellogg?s Kashi natural cereal uses some genetically modified ingredients. That was enough to convince an organic grocer in Portsmouth, Rhode Island to pull the brand from his store?s shelves.
Then, a photo of a sign displayed on one of the empty shelves explaining what had happened quickly went viral, lighting up the Web. Kellogg Co. (K)'s Kashi unit responded last week with a video on Facebook (FB) defending its use of the ingredients. By then, however, the noise level was rising, with some online groups threatening a boycott. It was just the latest skirmish in an escalating Internet-
based uprising. Facebook, Twitter and petition sites like Change.org have birthed a brand of consumer activism that lets people rally supporters under a common cause at breakneck speed.
The tactic has caught on in a big way, taking on one company after another, putting practices under a spotlight: bug extracts at Starbucks Corp. (SBUX), livestock antibiotics at Cargill Inc. and the treatment of animals by McDonald's Corp. (MCD)
"It used to be the most power you had was writing your congressman" and waiting, said Amanda Hitt, director of the food integrity campaign at the Government Accountability Project, a Washington-based public advocacy group. "Now petitions are becoming an especially powerful tool."
Read the full article: http://www.bloomberg.com
Posted: May 8, 2012
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned manufacturers of food and cosmetics that while they do not need to prove their products are safe before bringing them to market, they are still legally responsible for the products they manufacture.
It said nanotechnology, which allows the manipulation of materials on a sub-microscopic scale that has to be measured in nanometers, was still an emerging science.
In two draft guidance documents for the food and cosmetics industries, the agency said that such technology has a broad range of potential applications in the packaging of food or in altering the way that cosmetics look and feel.
Aimed at food manufacturers using nanomaterials in food ingredients, particularly colour additives, and at cosmetics makers who use them to add shine and texture, the guidelines warn that any changes in manufacturing processes should be thoroughly investigated for potential health and safety implications before bringing products to market.
Such significant changes may affect the identity of food substances, affect their safety, or their regulatory status, or warrant a regulatory submission to the FDA, the guidelines warn.
Read the full article: http://www.healthcare-today.co.uk
Posted: May 8, 2012
DARPA is at it again. This time, theDefense Advanced Research Projects Agency has announced plans to create nanochips for monitoring troops health on the battlefield.
Kate Knibbs at Mobiledia reports the sensors are targeted at preventing illness and disease, the two causes of most troops medical evacuations.
What seems like a simple way of cutting costs and increasing efficiency has some people concerned that this is the first step in a "computer chips for all" scenario.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com
Posted: May 8, 2012
Government mouthpiece and well known Keynesian economist Paul Krugmanmakes the case for monetary easing and Fed intervention by claiming that the rising cost of food and gas has nothing to do with the Federal Reserve or the free money they've dished out to banks, both foreign and domestic, to the tunes of not billions, but tens of trillions of dollars.
The fact of the matter is that since its very inception the Federal Reserve has played the key role in the destruction of our currency with a dollar today being worth just 5% of what it was in 1913.
Read the full article: http://www.prisonplanet.com
Posted: May 8, 2012
The TSA has released security footage of an incident that occurred two weeks ago at San Antonio International Airport involving a Congressman who refused to allow a screener to touch his genitals.
The video clips, obtained by San Antonio TV station KENS 5, show Texas Rep. Francisco Canseco being singled out for an enhanced pat down. As the TSA screener reaches for Canseco's private parts, the Congressman is seen swatting away the screener's hand.
The video then shows TSA officials and San Antonio police officers swarming around Canseco, before he is finally patted down by another screener and allowed to leave for his flight.
"The agent was very aggressive in his pat-down, and he was patting me down where no one is supposed to go," Canseco, who describes himself as a "limited-government conservative", told KENS 5 news.
"It got very uncomfortable so I moved his hand away. That stopped everything and brought in supervisors and everyone else." Canseco added.
Read the whole article: http://www.prisonplanet.com
Posted: May 8, 2012
An increasing number of medical professionals are refusing to receive vaccinations, raising red flags among populations that are subjected to government pressure to receive them. In this new report, researchers examine the low rates of compliance among Israeli nurses and found that their trust in health authorities was low following the unwarranted hysteriasurrounding the H1N1 influenza pandemic. As a result, the nurses who were questioned did not see the importance of being role models for the public and demanded the autonomy to decide whether to receive vaccinations, differentiating between their professional role and their personal lives.
With the improvements inhygiene, nutrition, sewage and water treatment, infectious disease became statistically irrelevent during the 20th century while adverse reactions and diseases like autism have skyrocketed within countries that vaccinate. Until vaccine manufacturers and government agencies produce studies that prove thatvaccines are worth the risk, it appears that the nurses' skepticism is warranted.
Read the article: http://www.omsj.org
Posted: May 7, 2012
By the time the next Farm Bill expires in five years, 125,000 American farmers will have retired. This fact may well be the biggest threat to national food security, but you wouldn't know it if you've been following this year's Farm Bill hearings.
Instead, the conversation is about "managing risk" for the Big Five commodity crops (i.e. crop insurance, subsidies, and margins for large agricultural interests) and not about the challenges to our food system as a whole. The recent House Committee on Agriculture's Farm Bill "Field Hearings" were dominated by established farmers, with little if any time for new farmers to talk about their needs. Here in New York's Hudson Valley, a group of beginning farmers considered a trip to the Saranac Lake to participate in one of these hearings, but decided against it when we learned that there would be no time to add our experiences to the chosen panelists. Beginning farmers like us didn't fare much better in similar Senate hearings.
Read the full article: http://grist.org
Posted: May 7, 2012
Over the past decade, the number of Americans who support the environmental movement has declined, with supporters increasingly split along partisan lines. On the other hand, most Americans strongly support developing clean energy, believe that climate changeis an important issue, and regularly engage in behaviors that are good for the environment. At least that?s what we've told the researchers.
Gallup recently found that 83 percent of Americans want more government support for clean energy. Yale and George Mason University researchers found [PDF] that 72 percent of Americans believe that global warming should be a government priority. And another Gallup poll found that three out of four Americans regularly engage in environmentally friendly behaviors.
Read the full article: http://grist.org/green-jobs/dont-call-me-an-environmentalist/
Posted: May 7, 2012
RENO, Nev. The Great Depression-era program the Department of Agriculture uses to kill coyotes, mountain lions and other predators that threaten livestock is outdated, illegal and a waste of federal money, conservationists say in a new lawsuit.
Wildlife Services, an agency under USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS, has refused for nearly two decades to conduct the environmental reviews necessary to justify the mass killings with traps, snares, poisons and aerial gunning, according to lawyers for WildEarth Guardians based in Sante Fe, N.M.
They are asking in a lawsuit filed Monday that a federal judge in Nevada shut down the agency that spent $127 million in 2010 to exterminate more than 5 million animals.
"We want the court to ban its poisons, silence its guns, and pull up its traps because it's a horrendous misuse of our tax dollars to slaughter the nation's bears, wolves, coyotes, and myriad other species," said Wendy Keefover, the group's director of carnivore protection.
Read the full story: http://m.cbsnews.com/fullstory.rbml?catid=57425857&feed_id=999&videofeed=999
Posted: May 7, 2012
Gardening is a wonderful hobby if you enjoy watching fruits, vegetables and flowers grow and produce delectable foods or beautiful flowers.
Enjoying nature including a variety of birds, pollinators, bugs (good and bad), and other small animals that venture into the yard is a wonderful part of gardening.
Read the full article: http://grandparentsplus2.wordpress.com/tag/national-wildlife-federation/
Posted: May 7, 2012
In recent years, the incidence of hypospadias, a congenital malformation of the penis, has doubled. Leading health experts blame this surge on a family of toxic chemicals called endocrine disruptors, which attack the hormone system.
Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times, has written about the expanding evidence that hypospadias and other birth defects in people and wildlife that may be linked to the daily bombardment of endocrine disruptors in household goods, pesticides and other man-made products.
"Shouldn't our government be as vigilant about threats in our grocery stores as in the mountains of Afghanistan?" Kristof asks.
Yes, it should.
Reforming the process by which the Environmental Protection Agency reviews and approves chemicals for commercial use is an issue that generates passionate advocacy. All Americans are exposed to toxic chemicals every single day - even before we are born. And, as Kristof points out, some of these chemicals have the potential to severely undermine our children's health and their futures.
Read the full article:
http://www.enviroblog.org/2012/05/new-york-times-kristof-lays-out-the-case-against-endocrine-disruptors.html
Posted: May 7, 2012
With the abundant geothermal potential of the United States, what are the biggest barriers to tapping into that renewable energy source?
Leslie Blodgett, Editor-in-Chief of
Geothermal Energy Weekly answers:
"As with other renewable energy technologies in the United States, growth in geothermal energy production is affected by the uncertainty over how long current federal policies will continue to support new development.
This uncertainty affects geothermal planning timelines more than other renewables, as geothermal projects tend to have higher upfront risks and costs and take longer to build. While new geothermal projects will continue to be built, industry growth and the role of U.S. companies in vibrant world markets will hinge on consistent, long-term federal policy support.
Read the full article:
http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/ask-experts-why-hasnt-united-states-tapped-geothermal-power-more.html
Posted: May 4, 2012
Dr. Angela Agrios, ND writing on behalf of the California Naturopathic Doctors Association representing all California NDs:
"Our bill is being heard on Monday and we need extra letter writing and phone call support to make sure this Bill makes it out of the Senate and NDs are allowed to continue performing nutritional IM and IV therapy in the state of California. For information on how to help visit the SB1446 tab on the Calnd.org website. I can also forward directions for letter writing and calling if that would be
helpful."
To support this bill, please visit: http://www.calnd.org
Posted: May 4, 2012
Scientists developing genetically modified wheat are asking campaigners not to ruin their experimental plots, but come in for a chat instead. The trial at Rothamsted Research in Harpenden, Herts, uses wheat modified to deter aphids, an insect pest.
The protest group Take the Flour Back has vowed to "decontaminate" the site unless the research is halted.The scientists say the GM plants could benefit the environment as they will reduce pesticide use.But the campaigners say the GM trial presents "a clear risk to British farming".Rothamsted's wheat contains genes that have been synthesised in the laboratory - an approach that is becoming more commonplace than transferring genes from other organisms, as technology develops.
Read the full story here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17906172
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