BEIJING, June 13 (Xinhuanet) — Like a modern-day Pompeii, the streets and buildings of Prypyat stand frozen by a disaster. But, unlike the eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago, Prypyat was destroyed by a manmade – and thus preventable – catastrophe.

Weeds and gray desolation are all that thrive in this once-bustling community, which housed the workers of Chernobyl’s doomed nuclear power plant, whose devastating meltdown 26 years ago still inflicts physical and socioeconomic harm on many in Ukraine and nearby countries.

Back then, the world was, for an instant, shocked by the folly of nuclear technology. But, as with Hiroshima, Three Mile Island, and last year’s Fukushima meltdown in Japan, the spike in global dismay was all too fleeting.

This myopia is a symptom of steady population growth, coupled with consumption-driven economies and ever-increasing demand for cheap energy. But the risks clearly outweigh the alleged benefits. While nuclear energy’s advocates often claim that there have been only two major calamities, a very different picture emerges if we consider other ‘accidents’ that caused loss of human life or significant property damage.

Between 1952 and 2009, at least 99 nuclear accidents met this definition worldwide, at a cost of more than US$20.5 billion, […]

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You know how sometimes you get into a high-stakes conversation and you think of the perfect things to say after it’s over? Well, here’s a factoid I wish I had dropped during last week’s interview with Terry Gross on her NPR show Fresh Air: ‘The number of chickens produced annually in the United States has increased by more than 1,400 percent since 1950 while the number of farms producing those birds has dropped by 98 percent.’

Those startling numbers and many more appear in a new report from a group called Georgians for Pastured Poultry, an alliance that includes pastured-based poultry farms, chefs, the Sierra Club, and an environmental law firm called GreenLaw. (Hat tip to the excellent Maryn McKenna.) The report reads like the black book of industrial chicken farming-a kind of dossier of the ills of rounding up billions (yes, billions) of birds into tight spaces and fattening them as quickly as possible.

It’s easy to understand why some Georgians might come together to promote alternative forms of chicken production. The poultry industry has alighted upon Georgia in a way it hasn’t any other individual state. According to the report, which is lavishly footnoted and was prepared with the […]

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North Dakota voters rejected proposals to institute religious freedom law and repeal all property taxes during Tuesday’s primary election.

The defeats are a blow to conservative leaders, who had hoped North Dakota would become the first state to repeal property taxes and the 28th to implement a religious freedom law. Both proposals attracted strong opposition from moderate and progressive groups statewide, with fears that the religious freedom proposal could legalize child abuse, domestic violence, ritual animal sacrifice and the marriage of 12-year-old girls.

With 62 percent of the returns counted, the secretary of state’s office showed the religious freedom referendum — Measure 3 — losing 65 percent to 35 percent. Property tax repeal — Measure 2 — was being defeated 78 percent to 22 percent. The margins remained roughly the same through the counting.

The religious freedom referendum was pushed by the North Dakota Family Alliance and the state Catholic Conference, who said that the measure would protect religious groups from government mandates, including contraception insurance requirements. Opponents said the wording of the proposal could lead to people being able to say that child abuse, domestic violence, marriage to children and animal abuse were religious practices. Proponents dismissed those arguments and also said […]

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MINNEAPOLIS — The playground taunt about ‘sittin’ in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g’ spells out the conventions of adulthood: ‘First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage.’

That may be changing.

Fewer middle-class women follow what one study calls the ‘success sequence’ of education, work, marriage and childbearing. They may get married, but only later, and not have children. Increasingly, they are having children, but postponing the wedding.

The recession’s financial stresses did nothing to slow the trend. If anything, the retreat from marriage is spreading from the least affluent Americans ‘into the solid middle of the middle class,’ according to the 2010 study, ‘When Marriage Disappears,’ by the National Marriage Project, at the University of Virginia.

Becca Bijoch, 25, feels no societal pressure to marry. ‘I think it’s definitely different than it’s ever been before, probably even in the past 10 years,’ said Bijoch, who works for a public relations firm in Minneapolis.

‘Not feeling that pressure gives me the opportunity to focus on my career and have more great life experiences I might not be able to have if I was in a serious relationship.’

It isn’t just young women who are wary that plunging into marriage could derail careers […]

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Virginia House Delegate Christopher Stolle (R) might be on the right-wing fringe when it comes to climate science, but at least he’s helping fellow lawmakers temper the tea party’s reaction to costly government studies on the matter.

In a legislative dust-up earlier this year, according to reporter Scott Harper, writing for The Virginian-Pilot, Stolle told Virginia State Senator Ralph Northam (D) that the terms ‘climate change

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