State officials in Colorado and Washington say they are struggling to prepare health and safety guidelines for recently legalized recreational marijuana.
Marijuana, like other agricultural commodities, is subject to mold, mites and pesticide residue in raw form, and salmonella and other safety risks in prepared form, NBC News reported Friday.
Colorado, Washington deal with marijuana health, safety standards
Bob Alexander: The Frog and the Scorpion
The origin of the story, The Frog and the Scorpion, might go back to the ancient Sanskrit traditions collected in the Panchatantra, but I first heard the tale while watching a bootleg copy of the 1955 Orson Welles film, Mr. Arkadin forty years ago.
A frog and a scorpion meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, “How do I know you won’t sting me?” And the scorpion says, “Because if I do, I will drown too.”
Palestinian Christians battle Israel barrier route
Palestinians in this Christian village are hoping the new pope can succeed where others have failed — pressing Israel to drop plans to build a stretch of its West Bank separation barrier through their picturesque valley.
Since Vatican properties are affected, residents have appealed to the Roman Catholic Church to use more of its significant influence in the Holy Land to reroute the barrier, even as local Catholic leaders hold a special protest Mass in threatened orchards each week.
Advocates want abortion ban lifted for Peace Corps volunteers
f a Peace Corps volunteer is raped and becomes pregnant as a result, she has to pay for an abortion herself, because the federal government refuses to cover the cost.
Yet victims of rape or incest or women whose health is endangered by a pregnancy have long received insurance coverage for abortions if they work for the Peace Corps, along with other federal employees, federal prisoners and women on Medicaid. In January, women in the military got the same access.
Fracking Truck Sets Off Radiation Alarm At Pennsylvania Landfill
A truck carrying drill cuttings from a hydraulic fracturing pad in the Marcellus Shale was rejected by a Pennsylvania landfill Friday after it set off a radiation alarm, according to published reports. The truck was emitting gamma radiation from radium 226 at almost ten times the level permitted at the landfill.
The MAX Environmental Technologies truck was first quarantined at the landfill, which is operated by MAX, and then sent back to the fracking pad—Rice Energy’s Thunder II pad in Greene County—to be redirected to a site that can accept higher levels of radiation.
Prairie2: This is the end, Hold your breath and count to ten....
A Big Box Store owned sweat shop in Bangladesh collapsed into a twisted pile yesterday, 90 known dead and hundreds still missing. When I say the Walmarts of the world own these sweat shops, I mean it in an economic sense, not in the paper fiction consisting of layers of corporate ownership that they hide behind to evade criminal responsibility. If you or I did the things the Walton family have done behind the bureaucracy of their corporate holdings we would never see the light of day again.
That's not to say they are the only ones doing this, the decriminalization of mergers & acquisitions by the Reagan Adm has put most of the world's corporate holdings in the hands of sociopaths.
At Senate Hearing, Yemeni Says U.S. Drone War Terrifying Civilians, Empowering Militants
I have met with dozens of civilians who were injured during drone strikes and other air attacks," al-Muslimi states. "I have met with relatives of people who were killed as well as numerous eyewitnesses. They have told me how these air strikes have changed their lives for the worst."
On one occasion, he met a man who described how "he stood helplessly as his 4-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter died in his arms on the way to the hospital." The man's house was targeted by mistake. He reported on another strike that killed 40 civilians and spoke to a 12-year-old boy who cried while describing being afraid of the drones buzzing overhead every night.
‘Four little girls’ of Birmingham remembered 50 years later
It’s been nearly 50 years since four young girls were killed after members of the Ku Klux Klan planted a bomb at their Sunday school in Birmingham, Ala., simply because of the color of their skin.
But five decades later, lawmakers have moved one step closer to posthumously awarding the “four little girls,” as they are known by some, with the Congressional Gold Medal, proving that their memory remains seared into our national consciousness.
Too-Big-to-Fail Bill Seen as Fix for Dodd-Frank Act’s Flaws
“Too-big-to-fail” legislation unveiled in Washington today is needed to rein in the biggest U.S. banks because the Dodd-Frank Act has failed to guard taxpayers against future bailouts, the bill’s sponsors said.
The four largest banks -- JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co -- “are nearly $2 trillion larger than they were” before getting U.S. aid to help them weather the 2008 credit crisis, Senator Sherrod Brown said in a news conference today.
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