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More cases of chikungunya, a painful virus spread by mosquitos, are being reported across the country. The Centers for Disease Control has listed a total of 497 cases in the U.S. in 35 states, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, 197 locally transmitted. Examiner.com reports that other state and local health agencies noted 40 cases, bringing the total to 537. The outbreak is due to a recent epidemic that started late last year in the Caribbean. The first two locally transmitted stateside cases were reported in Florida late last week. "The arrival of chikungunya virus, first in the tropical Americas...

President Obama is hoping his latest executive action will create lots of buzz. Obama signed a presidential memorandum on Friday ordering the federal government to develop a plan for protecting pollinators such as honey bees, butterflies, birds and bats in response to mounting concerns about the impact of dwindling populations on American crops. "The problem is serious and requires immediate attention to ensure the sustainability of our food production systems, avoid additional economic impact on the agricultural sector, and protect the health of the environment," Obama said in the memo, which was sent to Cabinet secretaries and agency heads. According...

President Obama on Friday announced plans to save endangered honey bees and other pollinators, for the first time ordering a probe into new types of pesticides that some local governments and 15 European Union nations have restricted or banned. The long-awaited plan creates a “Pollinator Health Task Force” that has 180 days to come up with a plan to save bees, butterflies and other pollinators. The goal is to rid fields of harmful pesticides while planting food for the bugs, even on military bases an along railroad tracks. Virtually every Cabinet department will be included on the task force. A...

E.G. Vallianatos’ complaints about the heavy influence that large corporations wield over the U.S. government and environmental policy won’t be news to anyone who follows the debates over genetically modified crops or the ingredients in popular cosmetics. What is surprising and depressing in “Poison Spring,” however, is when that influence began, especially over the regulation of pesticides. According to Vallianatos, even at the dawn of the Environmental Protection Agency, when Republicans and Democrats alike claimed to be green champions, corporations were working within the agency to undermine public health and safety and protect themselves, not the planet. …

One of America’s earliest food crops – almonds – is also one of the most important for commercial beekeepers. Almonds depend on bees for pollination, but the explosive growth of this bumper crop taxes the very honeybees the industry needs to thrive. California’s Central Valley produces over 80% of the world’s almonds, valued at over $4 billion in 2012. The boom is poised to continue, with new food products and expanding overseas markets increasing demand to the point that no young almond trees are available for purchase until 2016. Demand for almonds translates into demand for pollination. So every year...

The Environmental Protection Agency is seeking to strengthen 20-year-old standards aimed at protecting farmworkers from toxic pesticides. The changes proposed Thursday would bar anyone 16 and younger from handling the most toxic pesticides and require no-entry zones around and in treated fields to protect workers from drift and fumes. …

Four pesticides commonly used on crops to kill insects and fungi also kill honeybee larvae within their hives, according to new research. Scientists also found that N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone -- an inert, or inactive, chemical commonly used as a pesticide additive -- is highly toxic to honeybee larvae.

GM Debate Not Settled, Say European Scientists Controversy erupts after World Food Prize awarded to Monsanto By Justina Reichel, Epoch Times | October 24, 2013 In the wake of biotech giants Monsanto and Syngenta being awarded the World Food Prize, a European coalition of scientists is challenging claims that the debate around genetically modified foods is settled and that GM foods are safe. The European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility, which consists of more than 90 scientists, academics, and physicians, released a statement Monday in response to “sweeping claims” that GM products are safe. “We strongly reject...

In an essay "Freedom of the Press" George Orwell wrote presciently about the dangers of a press too bound to prevailing orthodoxy to print anything else: "Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news -- things which on their own merits would get the big headlines -- being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that "it wouldn't do" to mention...

MARTIN COUNTY — Algae found in the St. Lucie River is toxic, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection confirmed Tuesday. Martin County health officials have warned residents to stay out of the water. Check back for developments. Read more: http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/region_martin_county/toxic-algae-confirmed-in-st-lucie-river-health-officials-warn-to-stay-out-of-water#ixzz2bEpjxEuk

Shortly after 50,000 bees were found dead in an Oregon parking lot (read more here), a staggering 37 million bees have been found dead in Elmwood, Ontario, Canada.Dave Schuit, who runs a honey operation in Elmwood has lost 600 hives. He is pointing the finger at the insecticides known as neonicotinoids, which are manufactured by Bayer CropScience Inc. The loss comes after the planting of corn. Neonicotinoid pesticides are used to coat corn seed with air seeders, which result in blowing the pesticide dust into the air when planted. The death of millions of pollinators was studied by Purdue University....

Fifty thousand bumblebees will be honored in a memorial this weekend at the Wilsonville Target where a majority of the insects died. State officials directly linked the die-off to trees that had been sprayed with the insecticide Safari. Rozzell Medina, of Portland, said on the Facebook page that the event will "memorialize these fallen lifeforms and talk about the plight of the bees and their importance to life on Earth."

Europe is on the brink of a landmark ban on the world's most widely used insecticides, which have increasingly been linked to serious declines in bee numbers. Despite intense secret lobbying by British ministers and chemical companies against the ban, revealed in documents obtained by the Observer, a vote in Brussels on Monday is expected to lead to the suspension of the nerve agents. Bees and other insects are vital for global food production as they pollinate three-quarters of all crops. The plummeting numbers of pollinators in recent years has been blamed on disease, loss of habitat and, increasingly, the...

Rats or Humans? Inside Saddam's Extermination Plant(August 29, 2002)This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/ He was introduced as director of research and development at Falluja, one of the remote factories where the United States claims Saddam Hussein could be making chemical and biological weapons. Asked if he had worked on any of Saddam's chemical weapons programs, Dr Mohammed Frah played a straight bat: "In the early 1980s I worked for five years on the chemical and biological programs at Al-Muthanna." This is the name of a critical centre in Saddam's weapons program - a huge pesticide complex that produced...

Yet more top-quality research shows current regulation is woefully inadequate in protecting the creatures that pollinate much of our food. Here we go again. Yet more research has been published in the world's most prestigious, peer-reviewed journals showing that extremely widely-used pesticides have very damaging effects on bees, yet the only response from the government is inaction. The new paper, published in Nature, shows that bumblebees foraging naturally and exposed to realistic doses of pesticides suffer in two key ways. First they are about twice as likely to die: two-thirds of the bees are lost when exposed to two pesticides...

Join us for this special GMO Awareness radio show! On Saturday, October 13, 2012 at 8:40 a.m. (PST). Deborah Whitman will be talking about some of the health affects of GMO Food and how you can protect yourself and your family.

A European Union court has annulled a Commission decision rejecting two environmental groups’ request for an internal review of a pesticide regulation. The General Court’s decision on 14 June called into question the narrow wording of the regulation that obliges the EU’s institutions to protect the rights of civil society to participate in environmental decision-making. The plaintiffs in the case—Stichting Natuur en Milieu, a Dutch environmental foundation, and Pesticide Action Network Europe, a group that campaigns against the use of chemical pesticides—welcomed the outcome. François Veillerette, who heads the Pesticide Action Network, urged the commission to accept the decision and...

The Brand names include Havoc, Talon, Contrac, Maki, Ratimus and d-CON Mouse Pruf II. The EPA now is moving to curb widespread use of these rodenticides, starting next June. That move, however, could be short-circuited by a lawsuit filed by the multinational corporation the sells d-CON products. Pesticide manufacturers, applicators and health officials say controlling rats is an important public health goal because they can spread a number of diseases, including hemorrhagic fever, leptospirosis, salmonellosis and rat bite fever.

A California man at odds with state regulators regarding whether his worm-waste products are pesticides is taking his fight to court. George Hahn of Cardiff, who was fined $100,000 last year by the state Department of Pesticide Regulation for allegedly selling unregistered pesticides, claims in Sacramento Court his products are made from all-natural ingredients and should not have to be registered, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Monday. Hahn said his products -- Worm Gold, Worm Gold Plus and Tree Rescue Solution, are made from worm feces, sometimes called castings -- are fertilizers that improve the soil and help plants grow....

June 2, 2010 Dear Senator Johanns, Quoting your recent e-mail update: "I'm disappointed in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)'s proposal today to further regulate our farmers and ranchers by subjecting pesticide applicators to new and duplicative requirements under the Clean Water Act. It ignores long-established laws already in place to regulate pesticides and will further burden producers, yet it will have virtually zero environmental benefit." Senator Johanns, I am compelled to wonder what heights your "disappointment" shall reach when America no longer is distinct among the nations; when that utterly peculiar design of its founders – a republic whose government...