Thursday, September 30th, 2010
GARDINER HARRIS, - The New York Times
Stephan: If you have a baby, or know someone who does, please take this to heart, or pass it along.
Infant sleep positioners that are used to keep babies on their backs and protect them from sudden infant death syndrome have led 12 children to suffocate in the past 13 years and should no longer be used, federal officials said Wednesday.
Officials warned against using any products that have extensive foam, memory foam or significant cushioning in cribs.
Most of the infants suffocated after rolling from a side position to a stomach position. In addition to the reported deaths, the government has received dozens of reports of infants who were placed on their backs or sides in sleep positioners, only to be found later in potentially hazardous positions within or next to the sleep positioners.
The two main types of infant sleep positioners are flat mats with side bolsters or inclined mats with side bolsters.
Both types of sleep positioners typically claim to help keep infants on their backs and reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, but the Food and Drug Administration has never approved these products as safe. And the government said it was unaware of any scientific studies demonstrating that infant positioners prevented death or were proven to prevent suffocation or other life-threatening harm.
‘To date, there is no […]
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Thursday, September 30th, 2010
SPENCER ACKERMAN, - WIRED
Stephan: This is so reminiscent of the behavior of the final epoch of the Roman Empire it gives me chills. And it is worth mentioning that I am travelling from Whidbey to San Francisco, writing this from a motel room, after seven hours of driving. It has made me acutely aware of how shoddy our infrastructure has become. We have endless billions for war, but nothing for our own needs. It is really quite insane.
Get ready to meet America’s new mercenaries. They could be the same as the old ones.
A new multibillion-dollar private security contract to protect U.S. diplomats is ‘about to drop
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Thursday, September 30th, 2010
DANIEL TENCER, - The Raw Story
Stephan: For over a decade I have been writing about the growth of the American Gulag, and its toxic effects on society (See SR archives). Here is the latest on this national self-mutilation trend. Certainly we need prisons, all societies do. But when matters rise to this level, where the warehousing of human beings is a major industry it is a sign of deep social dysfunction.
The US’s exceptionally high rate of incarceration is causing economic damage not only to the people behind bars but to their children and taxpayers as a whole, a new study finds.
The study (PDF) from the Pew Research Center’s Economic Mobility Project, released Tuesday, reports that the US prison population has more than quadrupled since 1980, from 500,000 to 2.3 million, making the US’s incarceration rate the highest in the world, beating former champions like Russia and South Africa.
This means more than one in 100 Americans is in prison, and the cost of prisons to states now exceeds $50 billion per year, or one in every 15 state dollars spent — a figure the study describes as ‘staggering.’
According to the authors, one in every 28 children in the US has a parent behind bars — up from one in 125 just 25 years ago. This is significant, the study argues, because children of incarcerated parents are much likelier to struggle in life.
A family with an incarcerated parent on average earns 22 percent less the year after the incarceration than it did the year before, the study finds. And children with parents in prison are significantly likelier to be expelled from school […]
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Thursday, September 30th, 2010
TECHNEWS DAILY STAFF, - LiveScience
Stephan: I have often heard both skeptics and proponents alike question: How many electric cars would it actually take to make a difference? Here's an answer.
Electric car drivers, start your motors. Replacing 30 percent of all U.S. vehicles with electric versions would provide the single best way to cut U.S. reliance on foreign oil and slash emissions, according to a new study.
The move to electric vehicles would cut U.S. oil use by 2.5 million barrels a day, on top of the 3 million barrels-per-day savings expected from new fuel efficiency standards. Emissions would also fall by 7 percent, as opposed to just 4 percent under a proposed national renewable portfolio standard that requires more energy production from sources such as wind and solar.
Of course, current electric vehicles can’t be driven as far as their gas-fueled counterparts before requiring a recharge. But there’s a wide range of electric cars hitting the streets that will give any would-be owner some choice about their cleaner rides.
The results came from a Rice University policy paper presented at a Sept. 27-28 conference titled ‘Energy Market Consequences of an Emerging U.S. Carbon Management Policy.’ Researchers aimed to ‘clarify and debunk common myths that currently plague the U.S. energy- and climate-policy debate.’
For instance, a carbon tax of about $30 per ton could actually increase U.S. dependence on foreign suppliers of liquefied natural […]
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Wednesday, September 29th, 2010
STEVE CONNOR, - The Independent (U.K.)
Stephan: This is the latest report in a long term trend showing how corporate virtual states despoil the environment. Add this bit to the already extant problem of hormones and antibiotics polluting American waterways, and it is not hard to see why we see 'superbugs' and girls having menarche at eight and nine years of age.
It is worth noting that I cannot find a single major media source in the U.S. covering this story. I had to go to the U.K. to find a decent account of these events.
An insecticide used in genetically modified (GM) crops grown extensively in the United States and other parts of the world has leached into the water of the surrounding environment.
The insecticide is the product of a bacterial gene inserted into GM maize and other cereal crops to protect them against insects such as the European corn borer beetle. Scientists have detected the insecticide in a significant number of streams draining the great corn belt of the American mid-West.
The researchers detected the bacterial protein in the plant detritus that was washed off the corn fields into streams up to 500 metres away. They are not yet able to determine how significant this is in terms of the risk to either human health or the wider environment.
‘Our research adds to the growing body of evidence that corn crop byproducts can be dispersed throughout a stream network, and that the compounds associated with genetically modified crops, such as insecticidal proteins, can enter nearby water bodies,’ said Emma Rosi-Marshall of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York.
GM crops are widely cultivated except in Britain and other parts of Europe. In 2009, more than 85 per cent of American corn crops were genetically […]
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