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Tomato Grower Drops Suspect Pesticides |
Ag-Mart Produce, the giant Florida tomato grower at the center of an investigation involving three deformed babies born to fieldworkers, announced Friday it will no longer use pesticides that have been linked to birth defects. In a few days, agricultural investigators in Florida and North Carolina are expected to issue pesticide-related notices of violation against the company. Officials would not elaborate on their findings. full story |
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Oil Puts Orangutans at Risk |
Demand for palm oil, which is widely used in processed foods, is driving the orangutan towards extinction by speeding the destruction of their forest habitat, Friends of the Earth said on Friday. The environmental campaigners said Asia's only great ape could be wiped out within 12 years unless there was urgent intervention in the palm oil trade, which was also linked with human rights abuses.
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Is Bush Out of Control? |
Buy beleaguered, overworked White House aides enough drinks and they tell a sordid tale of an administration under siege, beset by bitter staff infighting and led by a man whose mood swings suggest paranoia bordering on schizophrenia. They describe a President whose public persona masks an angry, obscenity-spouting man who berates staff, unleashes tirades against those who disagree with him and ends meetings in the Oval Office with “get out of here!” full story |
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The Wind and the Fury |
Katrina's ferocity left many people asking whether the monster storm came from mere chance or from something more long lasting—global warming. Although hurricane numbers and intensities are known to vary naturally, with some years producing many violent hurricanes and others hardly any, Hurricane Katrina isn't the only exceptionally destructive event in recent memory. full story |
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Katrina Leaves a Toxic Nightmare |
Hurricane Katrina is rapidly becoming the worst environmental calamity in U.S. history, with oil spills rivaling the Exxon Valdez, hundreds of toxic sites still uncontrolled, and waterborne poisons soaking 160,000 homes. New Orleans' flooded neighborhoods are awash with dangerous levels of bacteria and lead, and with potentially harmful amounts of mercury, pesticides and other chemicals.
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World Environmental Leaders
Pledge to Protect Great Apes |
Governments from 27 nations joined scientists, environmental organizations, and representatives of business, industry, and communities Friday in signing the world's first Declaration on Great Apes known as the Kinshasa Declaration. The signing came on the final day of the week long Great Ape Survival Project (GRASP) Conference, where delegates gathered from around the world to formulate plans to protect threatened great ape populations in Africa and Asia. full story |
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America's Dark Underbelly |
Hurricane Katrina has exposed America's cursed underbelly, its multitudes of poverty-stricken and hopeless, forgotten by a government bent on offering tax breaks to the wealthy. Already, there are suggestions Katrina could help swing a social pendulum back in the U.S., a pendulum that has swung in favour of less tax, smaller government and cutbacks on entitlement programs since the late '60s, a philosophy that flourished with the 1980 inauguration of Ronald Reagan.
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Conservationists Warn Great Apes Face Extinction |
Poaching, logging and disease will soon wipe out the last of the world's great apes unless new strategies are devised to save humankind's closest relatives, conservationists said. From Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria in Africa to the islands of Borneo and Sumatra in Asia, scientists fear populations of gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans could disappear within a generation without urgent action.
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