One of the hottest food marketing trends these days involves adding live bacteria to dairy products as a way to boost health. A lawsuit challenges the health claims of Activia,a probiotic yogurt.Dannon claims Activia can help regulate your digestive system. Now lawyers have filed a class-action lawsuit against yogurt maker Dannon, one of the biggest sellers of ‘probiotic’ yogurts, saying the claims of a health benefit dupe consumers. The company’s Activia and DanActive line of yogurt products contain live bacteria and claim to help regulate digestion and boost the immune system. The suit, filed in United States District Court in California, seeks redress for consumers who purchased the yogurt products based on what it says are ‘bogus claims.” ‘Deceptive advertising has enabled Dannon to sell hundreds of millions of dollars worth of ordinary yogurt at inflated prices to responsible, health- conscious consumers,’ said Los Angeles attorney Timothy G. Blood, of the firm Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins. In response, Dannon issued a statement saying it ‘stands by the claims of its products and the clinical studies which support them.” ‘All of Dannon’s claims for Activia and DanActive are completely supported by peer-reviewed science and […]
For years, scientists have known that continents float around on the Earth’s surface like ice bergs on the ocean. But what happens deep beneath our feet? A new theory envisions graveyards for continents and a life cycle not unlike the weather. He dispenses with the usual Japanese greeting ritual. Business cards presented with both hands, bowing, drinking tea — there’s no time for such formalities. He has to explain the history of the planet, nearly five billion years, in just one hour. ‘Hi, I’m Shige,’ he says, waving his hands in the air. Then he dashes into his office, a researcher’s warren on the campus of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, jam-packed with piles of paper, hiking boots, posters, rock samples and a couch with a sleeping bag. Shige is an unbridled enthusiast, a pioneer and a brilliant polymath. Shige’s full name is Maruyama Shigenori. In Japan, it’s customary to refer to one’s family name first. Maruyama is a passionate collector who has gathered 160,000 minerals and exhibited them in a museum. He is also one of the world’s leading geophysicists. His academic articles rank among the most cited in his field, and his works are found […]
LAKE NORMAN, N.C. — Nuclear reactors across the Southeast could be forced to throttle back or temporarily shut down later this year because drought is drying up the rivers and lakes that supply power plants with the awesome amounts of cooling water they need to operate. Utility officials say such shutdowns probably wouldn’t result in blackouts. But they could lead to shockingly higher electric bills for millions of Southerners, because the region’s utilities may be forced to buy expensive replacement power from other energy companies. Already, there has been one brief, drought-related shutdown, at a reactor in Alabama over the summer. ‘Water is the nuclear industry’s Achilles’ heel,’ said Jim Warren, executive director of N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, an environmental group critical of nuclear power. ‘You need a lot of water to operate nuclear plants.’ He added: ‘This is becoming a crisis.’ An Associated Press analysis of the nation’s 104 nuclear reactors found that 24 are in areas experiencing the most severe levels of drought. All but two are built on the shores of lakes and rivers and rely on submerged intake pipes to draw billions of gallons of water for use in cooling […]
Climate change is occurring far more rapidly than even the worst predictions of the UN’s Nobel Prize-winning scientific panel on climate change, Al Gore said on Thursday. Recent evidence shows ‘the climate crisis is significantly worse and unfolding more rapidly than those on the pessimistic side of the IPCC projections had warned us,’ climate campaigner and former US vice-president Gore said. There are now forecasts that the North Pole ice caps may disappear entirely during summer months within five years, he told a gathering at the World Economic Forum in Davos. In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a massive report the size of three phone books on the reality and risks of climate change, its 4th assessment in 18 years. Global warming is a key theme at this year’s meeting of the world’s business and political elite in Davos.
China is facing its worst-ever power shortage as winter weather puts pressure on dwindling coal supplies. Officials say reserves are down to emergency levels with only enough coal to power the entire country for another eight days. According to state media the shortage amounts to nearly 70 gigawatts, equivalent to about the entire generating capacity of the United Kingdom. Across China 13 provinces including the southern industrial and export hub of Guangdong, have already begun rationing supplies, tiggering brown-outs across large areas. Coal provides 78 per cent of China’s energy needs, and the country is the world’s biggest producer and consumer of coal. In recent years the soaring demand for coal energy and the potential profits available has driven many mine owners to reopen illegal or unsafe mines, making China’s mining industry the deadliest in the world. In response the government has launched a series of crackdowns, closing mines across the country that fail to conform to basic safety standards and putting a further squeeze on supplies. But the demand for coal remains insatiable. As China’s economy surges ahead and its population gets richer – buying more fridges, heaters, air conditioners and […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
