Sunday, December 27th, 2015
Sean Adl-Tabatabai, - Your News Wire
Stephan: SR published an initial story about Professor Séralini's study, and I have also covered the viscious attacks to which he has been subjected by corporations whose profits are tied to GMOs.
Well, as this report describes Séralini has won out. Here's the story. It's not over yet, but my takeaway is avoid GMO foods, and particularly see that children don't eat them.
Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini
A court has ruled that French Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini was correct when he concluded that GMO food, when fed to rats, caused serious health problems including tumors.
Now, Prof. Séralini is in the news again – this time for winning a major court victory in a libel trial that represents the second court victory for Séralini and his team in less than a month.
On November 25, the High Court in Paris indicted Marc Fallous, the former chairman of France’s Biomolecular Engineering Commission, for “forgery” and the “use of forgery.” The details of the case have not been officially released.
But according to this article from the Séralini website, Fallous used or copied the signature of a scientist whose name was used, without his agreement, to argue that Séralini and his co-workers were wrong in their studies on Monsanto products, including GM corn.
A sentencing for Fallous is expected in June 2016.
Second Court Victory Reached
This was the second such court victory for the professor’s team, following a November 6 victory in a defamation lawsuit over an […]
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Sunday, December 27th, 2015
Alejandro Davila Fragoso, - Climate Progress
Stephan: Beginning now, and from now on, how individual states respond to climate change is going to determine what life will be like for people living in those states in the coming years. Frankly, if I lived in a Red Value state, with a governor like Scott Walker, Sam Brownback, Bobby Jindal, or the new governor of Kentucky, particularly if I had young children, I would move. Within 10-15 years, maybe less, it is going to be very difficult to get your money out of property in those states. Especially if it is coastal. Here is the latest report on the inland state of Montana. It is not a happy story.
A Montana lake
Credit: Matt Volz/AP
Global warming could severely hamper the outdoor economy of the nature rich state of Montana, a new study by the state’s oldest conservation organization found. Thousands of jobs and about a billion dollars in earnings may be at jeopardy in the coming decades, the group found.
As many as 36,000 jobs and slightly over a billion dollars in labor earning could be lost in the next 35 years if greenhouse gas emissions don’t decline, according to the study commissioned by Montana Wildlife Federation. The study looked at the potential impact of a 5 degree Fahrenheit increase on a wide array of recreational activities, from sports fishing and hunting to skiing and state parks, but found the greatest potential for job loss in cattle raising and agriculture.
The economic effect of climate change is substantial but may not represent the total cost on the state’s quality of life, the study’s author said.
“We were really conservative in our estimates,” Thomas Power, professor emeritus in the economics […]
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Sunday, December 27th, 2015
David K. Li, - New York Post
Stephan: Obesity has become a huge health problem in the U.S. and elsewhere, particularly in Red Value state, where it literally takes years off of people's lives. Big new genetic research may offer some help. Here's the story.
Credit: BBC
Here’s good news for big eaters fighting the battle of the budge — the “DNA diet’’ is on the way.
By 2020, genome-specific diets could help people lose weight even if they’ve tried one plan after another with no success, researchers report in the journal Obesity.
“Although a genetic basis for obesity and body composition has been well established, family and twin studies also provide evidence that a person’s genetic makeup plays a role in response to weight loss or gain,” the researchers wrote.
Scientists have made huge strides in recent years connecting DNA to weight struggles, according to researchers.
“I think within five years, we’ll see people start to use a combination of genetic, behavioral and other sophisticated data to develop individualized weight-management plans,” said lead author Molly Bray, a geneticist and professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Texas at Austin.
Couch potatoes note: The DNA diet alone will not make you lose weight — you’ll still have to exercise.
But such a diet could give people new hope in finding the right foods to keep […]
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Sunday, December 27th, 2015
Texas Tribune, - Texas Tribune/The Raw Story
Stephan: There is a special kind of self-mutilating craziness in Texas. I don't know if it is the low IQ of the legislators and governor, or their obsession with Rightist ideology and theology, or something else entirely. But Texas really know how to wound itself. This is the latest example, very hard to believe, but oh so true.
HIV blood test
Amid an ongoing battle over Planned Parenthood’s participation in the state Medicaid program, Texas health officials are cutting off funding to a Planned Parenthood affiliate for an HIV prevention program.
In a notice received by Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast late Monday, an official with the Department of State Health Services informed the Houston-based provider that it would not renew its contract for HIV prevention services.
The long-standing grant, which funds HIV testing and prevention services, was set to expire on Dec. 31, according to the notice which was obtained by The Texas Tribune.
“There will be no further renewals of this contract,” a DSHS official wrote in the notice to Planned Parenthood.
By ending Planned Parenthood’s contract, the state is cutting off almost $600,000 in annual funding, which the health care provider used for HIV testing and counseling, condom distribution and referral consultations.
Through the grant, which Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast has received since 1988, the organization served individuals with HIV in five counties in the Houston area. Since 2014, the grant has funded […]
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Saturday, December 26th, 2015
Steven Rosenfeld, National Political Writer - Alternet (U.S.)
Stephan: I am not surprised at the rise of Islamophobia, given the relentless corporate media machine's endless hate and fear campaign, particularly the echo chamber of the right. This is how the Japanese internment camps were justified. This is how racism works.
Nor am I surprised that the racist White theocratic fantasy cult that has become the Republican Party is more Islamophobic than the rest of American society, as this report describes. What does surprise and dismay me is that the leading Republican Presidential candidates do not see the geopolitical disaster that must follow if we as a country alienate 1.6 Muslims, 23% of the human race. The United States vs the Muslims. You really think that's a good idea?
Certainly it is very profitable for the small group of corporations that live on war. But it is the antipod to policies creating wellness.
And as for being killed by a terrorist: You are more likely to be struck by lightning, and much more likely to be killed by a gun fired by another American, than you are to be killed by a Muslim terrorist.
Credit: Shutterstock/ A. Katz
Democrats and Americans under age 35 are much more open to accepting Syrian war refugees and are much less Islamphobic than Republicans and older Americans, a new national poll finds, underscoring the country’s fear-based partisan divides.
Seventy-four percent of Democrats would accept Syrian refugees, while 82 percent of Republicans and 51 percent of independent voters 51 would not, a Quinnipiac University poll reported this week. Similarly, 79 percent of Democrats reject Republican frontrunner Donald Trump’s proposal to ban all foreign Muslims from entering the country, while 51 percent of Republicans and 67 percent of independent voters support it. Tellingly, 84 percent of people under age 35 also reject Trump’s ban.
Partisan differences on Islam and Muslims are not new, as other national pollsters like Pew Research Center found. However, what’s striking about the Quinnipiac results is that along with Republicans’ widespread distrust of Muslims and stated fears of Islamic fundamentalists leading terrorist attacks in America, Republicans are much more willing to go to war with ground troops in the Middle […]
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