Dr. Raymond Burse, the interim president of Kentucky State University, has given up more than $90,000 from his yearly salary, the Lexington Herald-Leader reports.

The money from the pay cut will instead go to university employees earning minimum wage, improving the hourly rate from $7.25 an hour to $10.25.

This is not a publicity stunt,” Burse told the Herald-Leader. “You don’t give up $90,000 for publicity. I did this for the people. This is something I’ve been thinking about from the beginning.”

Burse served as Kentucky State’s president between 1982 and 1989 before working for 17 years as an executive for General Electric Co. Upon returning to the university for this stint as interim president, Burse immediately began considering ways to improve the working conditions for other university employees.

“My whole thing is I don’t need to work,” Burse told the Herald-Leader. “This is not a hobby, but in terms of the people who do the hard work and heavy lifting, they are at the lower pay scale.”

Burse’s salary dropped from $349,869 to $259,745. The decision to increase the hourly minimum wage for university employees will continue beyond Burse’s tenure as interim president, as the university is expected to adopt the rate […]

No Comments

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been taken over by an outside organization. RootsAction has launched a campaign demanding a Congressional investigation.

The organization is called Monsanto.

Monsanto is, of course, the world’s largest biotech corporation. These are the people who brought us Roundup weed killer and the resulting superweeds and superbugs, along with growth hormones for cows, genetically engineered and patented seeds, PCBs, and Agent Orange — which Monsanto now wants us to use as herbicide on genetically engineered corn and soybeans.

This chemical company — responsible for environmental disasters that have destroyed entire towns, and a driving force behind the international waves of suicides among farmers whose lives it has helped ruin — has monopolized our food system largely by taking over regulatory agencies like the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

A recent study links Roundup to autism, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s.

While Hungary has just destroyed all Monsanto genetically engineered corn fields, the USDA takes a slightly different approach toward the chemical giant. The USDA has, in fact, never denied a single application from Monsanto for new genetically engineered crops. Not one. Not ever.

The takeover has been thorough. Monsanto’s growth hormones for cows have been approved by Michael Taylor, a former Monsanto lobbyist […]

No Comments

MINNEAPOLIS — Kristy Allen and Mark O’Rourke are bee ambassadors with deceptively similar messages. Allen, founder of a small business called the Beez Kneez, pedals through the Twin Cities selling honey from a bike trailer and handing out lawn signs that read, “Healthy bees, healthy lives.” O’Rourke, a seed-treatment specialist for Bayer Crop Science, travels the country with sleek interactive displays to promote the company’s insecticides and its views on honeybee health.

Allen wears a helmet with bobbing antennae. O’Rourke sports a bee-yellow shirt with the Bayer logo.

But behind their cheery outfits, they are polar opposites in an intensifying national conflict over what’s killing the hardworking insect that has become a linchpin of the American food system.

In a struggle that echoes the scientific discord over climate change, both are striving to win public support in a fight over the pervasive use of pesticides and the alarming decline of bees. Whoever sways the public could influence the fate of the honeybee long before scientists or regulators render a verdict. “Perception becomes reality,” said David Fischer, director of pollinator safety for Bayer AG, a leading manufacturer of the insecticides under debate. “We are a science-focused company. But that’s not going to convince beekeepers […]

No Comments

WASHINGTON, D.C. — College graduates who carry a high amount of student debt appear to face long-term challenges that stretch beyond just their finances. A new analysis of Americans who graduated college between 1990 and 2014 shows that graduates who took on the highest amounts of student debt, $50,000 or more, are less likely than their fellow graduates who did not borrow for college to be thriving in four of five elements of well-being: purpose, financial, community, and physical.

Percentage of U.S. College Graduates Thriving in Five Elements of Well-Being, by Amount of Student Loan Debt

Although graduates with no student loan debt are slightly more likely than their indebted peers to be thriving socially, the differences are not statistically significant.

Gallup finds the starkest differences among these groups in the areas of financial and physical well-being. Higher debt signifies lower likelihood of thriving in these two areas of well-being. Graduates who went the deepest into debt to obtain their college degree, for instance, are far less likely to be thriving than graduates who took out no debt, by 15 percentage points in financial well-being and 10 points in physical well-being. The pattern is similar for graduates’ sense of purpose, although those who […]

No Comments

Tuvalu’s coastline consists of white and sandy beaches, green palm trees and mangroves. It is hard to imagine that anybody would want to leave this small island nation, located between Australia and Hawaii, voluntarily. But Tuvalu has become the epicenter of a landmark refugee ruling that could mark the beginning of a wave of similar cases: On June 4, a family was granted residency by the Immigration and Protection Tribunal in New Zealand after claiming to be threatened by climate change in its home country, Tuvalu. The news was first reported by the New Zealand Herald on Sunday.

The small Pacific island nation sits just two meters above sea level. If the current sea level rise continues, experts believe the island might disappear in approximately 30 to 50 years. Tuvalu shares this existential threat with many other island nations and coastal regions, which have struggled for years to raise international awareness about their tragic plight. Predictions for climate change-induced displacement range widely from 150 to 300 million people by 2050, with low-income countries having the far largest burden of disaster-induced migration, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center.

Those threatened by sea-level rise, droughts or other natural catastrophes face an epochal […]

No Comments