By Jennifer Baker, IDG News. In a major victory for the campaign against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), the European Parliament’s trade committee rejected by a vote of 21 to 5 a plan to send the proposed accord to the European Court of Justice (ECJ). This means that the European Parliament vote on ACTA will not be delayed 1 1/2 years and could happen as early as June 2012.
Continue reading →Press Release, Prometheus Radio Project | FCC. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has decided to open the airwaves to Low Power FM (LPFM) stations; this will allow for the first new urban community radio stations in the U.S. in decades. The FCC will start to accept applications as early as Fall 2012.
Continue reading →By Andrew Nikiforuk, The Tyee. Hydraulic fracturing was identified by the U.S. as an earthquake trigger as early as 1990, and scientists have long known that injection of fluid where the Earth’s crust lies closest to faults and fractures can cause earthquakes.
Continue reading →By Vaclav Havel, in: The Natural World as Political Problem – Essays on Modern Man (Prague: Edice Expedice, Vol. 188, Feb 1984).
Continue reading →By Orfilio Peláez, Granma. Three Cuban cave painting sites were discovered in a nature reserve in Imías municipality, Guantánamo province, in February 2012, by the Cuban Speleological Society. A use of the color red, found in these paintings, is rare and presumed to be linked to important events in the lives of the original pre-Columbian inhabitants.
Continue reading →Provided by Paralegal.net | Commentary by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. This enlightening info-graphic describes the little known history of Hollywood’s birth as a pirate and attaches some startling numbers to the movie industry’s greed. A brief discussion is included about copyright laws and how they have changed since the mid-1970’s.
Continue reading →By Jan Salick, Missouri Botanical Garden | Staff, e! Science News. Mountains are considered sacred by both the Yanesha of the upper Peruvian Amazon and Tibetans of the Himalayas. They excel in promoting plant biodiversity. For example, the Yanesha grow over 200 varieties of cassava.
Continue reading →By Raúl Zibechi, La Jornada | English translation by Chiapas Support Committee. What is happening in Latin America in relation to water, land, and biodiversity is something more than a succession of local conflicts. The struggle for the commons is at the top of the agenda in the entire region. (English | Spanish)
Continue reading →By Staff, MercoPress. Residents of the towns of Famatina and Chilecito, in Argentina, led a huge march that arrived on Thursday March 1, 2012, at their governor’s office in La Rioja – the provincial capital – to call for a halt to Canadian firm Osisko’s open-pit gold mining project.
Continue reading →By Roger Clark, Arizona Republic. Environmentalists, Native Americans, and Arizonans welcomed a 20-year ban by the U.S. Interior Secretary on Jan 9th on new uranium claims on a million acres of public land around the Grand Canyon National Park because mining activities would have violated sacred sites, polluted the river and aquifer, created relatively few short-term jobs, and principally benefited foreign companies. The ban was challenged with a lawsuit on Monday Feb 27th by the National Mining Association.
Continue reading →By Rashid Haider, Haiti Chery. Prof. Richard A. Finkelstein, an eminent microbiologist and Nobel-Prize nominee for his pioneering studies on cholera, advises that for cholera “the best solution resides in providing safe drinking water and sewage disposal.” In Dec 2010, alarmed by the oral vaccination plans for Haiti, he wrote to the health officials, including Jon Andrus, the Deputy Director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) that the proposed use of Dukoral was “a useless and expensive waste of resources.” This vaccine was not adopted, but a campaign immediately started for the use of Shanchol, another questionable oral cholera vaccine. (English | French)
Continue reading →By Staff, Seed Daily | Commentary by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Scientists have managed to grow flowering plants from the 30,000-year-old flesh of a fruit retrieved from squirrel burrows in the same layer as the bones of animals from the Late Pleistocene Age.
Continue reading →Julio Godoy, IPS, Tierramérica | Enrique Gili, IPS | Commentary by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. The world’s tuna populations, and particularly bluefin tuna, are being overfished to extinction. Despite numerous violations for overfishing, vessels fly flags of convenience, change their names, swap crews and continue to operate. (English | Spanish)
Continue reading →By Alice Trudelle, Warsaw Business Journal | By Staff, The Slovenia Times | Commentary by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. “I was wrong,” said Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, who announced that he wrote to his party not to back ACTA in the EU Parliament in its current form. A protest by Anonymous is underway.
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