Love is in the air in Iowa — or at least the diplomatic equivalent of it.
When Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping arrived in this small town late Wednesday, carefully chosen welcoming gifts were on hand, nostalgic remembrances were on everyone’s lips and hearts all around were ready for the wooing.
Officially speaking, Xi, who is expected to become China’s president next year, picked Iowa as the centerpiece of his U.S. tour because he visited here as a lowly provincial official in 1985 to learn about American agriculture.




The FDA won its two-year fight to shut down an Amish farmer who was selling fresh raw milk to eager consumers in the Washington, D.C., region after a judge this month banned Daniel Allgyer from selling his milk across state lines and he told his customers he would shut down his farm altogether.
Internal documents acquired by ThinkProgress Green reveal that the Heartland Institute, a right-wing think tank funded by the Koch brothers, Microsoft, and other top corporations, is planning to develop a “global warming curriculum” for elementary schoolchildren that presents climate science as “a major scientific controversy.”
A Republican supermajority has muscled two of the most restrictive anti-abortion bills in years through the Virginia House, including one that would all but outlaw the procedure in the state by declaring that the rights of persons apply from the moment sperm and egg unite.
Since 1996, 200 farmers have reported health problems to the agricultural branch of the French social security system that potentially are a result of pesticides.





























