“Another tank overturned and a fracking chemical warehouse flooded…” As alarmed citizens report the damage to each other out West, is anybody listening?
For years, concerned residents, activists and scientists from Texas, Pennsylvania and other fracked states have sounded the warning bell against fracking in floodplains. The 30-foot wall of water displacing Colorado residents right now is worsened by the fires which took out trees which would have otherwise lessened this extreme flood.
Colorado flood disaster: hundreds of fracking well pads underwater
Renowned Scientists Declare Human Activity the Root of Global Warming
The statement comes from 12 members of the recently established Earth League, which describes itself as “a voluntary alliance of leading scientists and institutions dealing with planetary processes and sustainability issues.”
They say that if humans continue with business as usual, using fossil fuels and pumping out excessive amounts of greenhouse gases, the world will be on track for a planet that is four degrees Celsius warmer by the end of this century, or even earlier.
Monsanto Spends Millions to Defeat Washington GMO Labeling Initiative
With the help of a $4.6 million check from the biotech giant Monsanto and millions more from other out-of-state corporate interests, the campaign to defeat a Washington state ballot initiative in November to label groceries that contain genetically engineered ingredients has outraised the initiative's supporters by nearly three times, according to campaign data released last week.
The campaign for Washington ballot Initiative 552 is already looking a lot like last year's Proposition 37 campaign in California, where biotech and agribusiness interests outspent organic food producers and grassroots labeling supporters by nearly 5 to 1 in a high-profile battle over labeling genetically engineered groceries in the Golden State. (Genetically engineered products are also known as Genetically Modified Organisms, or GMOs.)
The Other American Gulag: Bagram Prison's Legal Black Hole Locks Detainees in Nightmarish Limbo
Ayaz was 15 when he traveled to Afghanistan, from his native Pakistan, to take a job in a restaurant.
He had been there a few weeks when American soldiers entered, asked for him by name, and took him away. That was in 2004. It was the start of a six-year nightmare. Ayaz was held first at a military base, and then at the notorious Bagram prison. To this day, he does not understand why he was detained, but believes a co-worker falsely accused him of being a terrorist in exchange for a reward.
I'm a college graduate who had to go on food stamps
When I first heard a friend of mine from college was on food stamps, I was shocked. We were both recent graduates of a top liberal arts college, and I could not fathom that someone from my school was in such a "desperate" situation. Not long after, I was on food stamps as well.
The past year since I left graduate school has pretty much been: job application, job application, job application, interview, rejection, another job application, temp work, job application, another temp job, more job applications. For nearly eight months, I was unable to secure opportunities that weren't sporadic or temporary, making it difficult to pay rent and buy food.
Cyber security: The new arms race for a new front line
In the eastern New Jersey suburbs, a train carrying radiological material is barreling toward a small town, and it is up to Pentagon cyber-operators to derail it. The town is the kind of idyllic whistle-stop hamlet where residents socialize at a cafe with complimentary Wi-Fi while surfing FaceSpace, a social networking site.
But danger lurks all around. Terrorists are using the open Wi-Fi connection to hack into the laptop of a patron who works at the hospital down the street. They plan to find the hospital codes stored in his computer to access the mayor's medical records, in which they will change the dosage of a prescription the mayor refills regularly in an effort to poison him.
Pacific Ocean takes perilous turn
Katharina Fabricius plunged from a dive boat into the Pacific Ocean of tomorrow. She kicked through blue water until she spotted a ceramic tile attached to the bottom of a reef.
A year earlier, the ecologist from the Australian Institute of Marine Science had placed this small square near a fissure in the sea floor where gas bubbles up from the earth. She hoped the next generation of baby corals would settle on it and take root.
Judge urged to accept Halliburton's guilty plea
Halliburton Energy Services and Justice Department prosecutors have urged a federal judge to approve a plea deal that calls for the Houston-based company to pay a $200,000 fine for destroying evidence after BP's 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
In a court filing Thursday, Halliburton and prosecutors said the company's agreement to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge imposes "fair, just, and appropriate corporate punishment" and reflects its "full, truthful and ongoing cooperation" with the government's spill probe.
U.S. District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo will decide whether to accept the deal at a hearing in New Orleans scheduled for Sept. 19.
Nevada Dumps 1,500 Mental Patients Via One-Way Greyhound Ticket to California
A new lawsuit filed by the city of San Francisco on behalf of the state of California alleges that over the past five years, the state of Nevada has dumped 1,500 mental patients onto other states by putting them them on Greyhound busses and sending them over state lines with no prior arrangements with families or other mental hospitals once they arrive.
According to the federal class action lawsuit that the city of San Francisco is spearheading, nearly all of the patients bussed to California need continuous medical care—none of which Nevada state arranged, and all of which cost the city of San Francisco at least $500,000.
Page 323 of 1154
