Wednesday, June 12th, 2019
Sarah Butler, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: A very interesting healthy food trend is beginning to develop in Europe. Here is a window into what is happening; I see it as good news.
Jones Food’s vertical farm in Scunthorpe, which grows fresh herbs under lights in a warehouse.
Credit: Holly Challinor
Ocado is investing £17m in high-tech farming with the aim of growing herbs and other produce alongside its robot-run distribution centres around the world.
The online grocery specialist has bought a 58% stake in Jones Food, a “vertical farm” that grows 420 tonnes of basil, parsley and coriander a year in stacked trays under 12km (7.5 miles) of LED lights in a warehouse in Scunthorpe. The grower currently supplies businesses such as sandwich maker Greencore.
Duncan Tatton-Brown, finance director of Ocado, said the group could open at least 10 more similar farms within five years. He said it could take less than a year to build a Jones Food facility and the two companies were now considering how Ocado’s expertise in robotics and AI could be used to make Jones Food more efficient.
James Lloyd-Jones, chief executive of Jones Food, said the group’s Scunthorpe farm […]
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Wednesday, June 12th, 2019
Sarah Pulliam Bailey , - The Washington Post
Stephan: Here is an accurate look into the world of nearly 15 million Americans. I think it is important for the rest of us to understand what their world is like.
Houston-based Bible teacher Beth Moore, one of the most widely recognized evangelical women in America, has highlighted the issue of sexual abuse from her stage for years. With her thick Southern drawl, she has told audiences how she was abused as a child, often sliding her personal story into her larger message about Jesus.
As thousands of Southern Baptists prepare to arrive this week in Birmingham, Ala., for their annual meeting, many have expected for months that it would focus on questions of how to handle sexual abuse and coverups in their own churches. Moore is expected to be there, sitting on a panel on sexual abuse with several others, including the president of the Southern Baptist Convention.
But in the run-up to the meeting, Moore has become a focus of attention. In a recent response to a tweet, Moore, who has nearly a million Twitter followers, teasingly suggested that she was planning to preach on Mother’s Day. Except, as is her practice, Moore did not use the words “preach” or “sermon” to refer to the talk she gave on the holiday in front of the congregation at Bayou City Fellowship, where her son-in-law is pastor and she is a member.
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Wednesday, June 12th, 2019
Matthew Rozsa, - Raw Story
Stephan: The christofascist Red Value states are rapidly becoming foreign cultures to those of us who live in Blue value states. It is hard for me to imagine, particularly if you are a person of color, and a woman, what it is like to live in Alabama.
Republican Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signs the chemical castration bill
A controversial chemical castration law has been signed by Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey in an attempt by the state to reduce the number of sex crimes against minors.
“This bill is a step toward protecting children in Alabama,” Ivey said in a statement to CNN. The new law dictates that individuals convicted of sex crimes involving minors under the age of 13 must begin the process of chemical castration the month prior to being released from custody. Although offenders must pay for their own chemical castration, but they cannot be denied parole for their inability to afford the procedure.
The bill defines chemical castration as “the receiving of medication, including, but not limited to, medroxyprogesterone acetate treatment or its chemical equivalent, that, among other things, reduces, inhibits or blocks the production of testosterone, hormones, or other chemicals in a person’s body.”
The law also makes it clear that individuals required to use chemical castration risk losing their freedom should they stop doing so. The language states that […]
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Kiley Kroh, - Think Progress
Stephan: Right now we should be gearing up for climate change remediation as we geared up for World War II, by which I mean an all-hands effort coordinating both government, the corporate world, and the American populace.
Instead, we have a government actively trying to do everything it can to stop any effort to prepare for this civilization threatening reality, while the Democrats, by and large, seem to run around waving their hands in the air shouting the sky is falling.
Less drama more policy is what is required. Everything is going to depend on preparation.
Credit: Michael Tercha/Getty
The Trump administration is intensifying its effort to discredit climate science by recruiting a select group to try to cast doubt on the facts it doesn’t like — all under the guise of an official review.
President Donald Trump, who dismissed climate change as a “hoax” on the campaign trail, has filled his administration with people who would go to great lengths to stifle, obscure, and mock any evidence to the contrary. Even though the actual science regarding the effects of climate change has only grown more robust and stark during Trump’s time in office, the administration seems to be digging deeper into its proverbial hole in the sand — burying its head to shield itself from the reality of the world.
William Happer, the senior director of emerging technologies at the National Security Council, is advancing his plan to reexamine thoroughly-reviewed climate science and briefed Trump on it earlier this month, E&E News reported Friday. (This appears to be one of the only briefings related to climate policy […]
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Kitty Block, President and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and Humane Society International - truthout
Stephan: Trump and his minions are capable of almost anything that harms and degrades America's precious public lands, the heritage that one generation hands down to the next one -- or not, as long it enriches them and their friends. With Trump it is always "or not."
His sons like to kill big animals -- please don't call this a sport, there is no sport, just people with insecurity issues -- and it would not surprise me that they and others who think similarly lobbied for this stupid policy.
Brown bears fishing for salmon on the Moraine River on August 20, 2017, in Katmai National Park, Alaska.
Credit: Ronald C. Modra/Sports Imagery/Getty
A video featuring a father and son slaughtering a mother black bear and then her two screaming newborn cubs in their den has ricocheted around the world, drawing obvious comparisons to the killing of Cecil, the African lion, by a Minnesota dentist several years ago.
Sadly, the shocking brutality the two men displayed for the world to see could soon be sanctioned by this administration. The Department of the Interior proposes to make legal these and other venal trophy-hunting practices on more federal public lands in Alaska. In 2017, Congress and the president overturned a 2016 rule governing 76 million acres of National Wildlife Refuge System lands, and effectively prohibited the trophy hunting of hibernating black bears.
This administration has shown a penchant for supplicating itself to trophy hunters and trappers. At a time when most Americans regard trophy hunting with revulsion, the Trump administration plans to overturn two federal rules […]
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