Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/316099392?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Sunday, June 30, 2013
Wedding day for 91 year old
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) - Saturday was a wedding day for 91 year old Springfield educator and civil rights leader Chester Gibbs. He married 81 year old Lorraine Collins in Springfield's historic Bethel AME church.
Chester Gibbs had been a Massachusetts commission against discrimination commissioner and school committeeman in the 1960s and 1970s.
Lorraine Collins had also been active in the civil rights movement here in Western Massachusetts.
Dozens of well wishers filled the 165 year old Church.
Chester Gibbs spoke with 22News about the future. ??Well it's been a long time coming I'm looking forward to it. Some obstacles and God made it possible for us to be together for the rest of our lives,? said Gibbs.
Chester Gibbs has been a widower since 2011 when his wife of 59 years, Lucille Gibbs, passed away.
Source: http://www.wwlp.com/dpp/news/local/hampden/wedding-day-for-91-year-old-chester-gibbs
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Saturday, June 29, 2013
State Dept. identifies American killed in Egypt
JERUSALEM (AP) ? The State Department has identified the American killed in Egypt during violent clashes between government supporters and opponents.
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, traveling with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in the Middle East, says Andrew Pochter was killed Friday in Alexandria. The department has issued a warning advising Americans to defer nonessential travel to Egypt because of the continuing violence there.
Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, says in a statement on its website that Pochter was a 21-year-old student from Chevy Chase, Md., working in Egypt as an intern for a non-profit education organization.
The State Department says the young American was killed while photographing battles between supporters and foes of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. Details were not available.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/state-dept-identifies-american-killed-egypt-084749398.html
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Why People Aren't Buying into Organic Food Products
Although the organic market has grown, it is still a small slice of the pie
PURE MARKETING: Changing perceptions about just how much healthier organic foods are than nonorganic foods are impacting the growth of the sector. Image: iStockPhoto
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Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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Dear EarthTalk: I understand that, despite the popularity of organic foods, clothing and other products, organic agriculture is still only practiced on a tiny percentage of land worldwide. What?s getting in the way??Larry McFarlane, Boston
Organic production may still represent only a small fraction of agricultural sales in the U.S. and worldwide, but it as been growing rapidly over the last two decades. According to the latest global census of farming practices, the area of land certified as organic makes up less than one percent of global agricultural land?but it has grown more than threefold since 1999, with upwards of 37 million hectares of land worldwide now under organic cultivation. The Organic Trade Association forecasts steady growth of nine percent or more annually for organic agriculture in the foreseeable future.
But despite this growth, no one expects organic agriculture to top conventional techniques any time soon. The biggest hurdle for organics is the added cost of sustainable practices. ?The cost of organic food is higher than that of conventional food because the organic price tag more closely reflects the true cost of growing the food,? reports the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF). ?The intensive management and labor used in organic production are frequently (though not always) more expensive than the chemicals routinely used on conventional farms.? However, there is evidence that if the indirect costs of conventional food production?such as the impact on public health of chemicals released into our air and water?were factored in, non-organic foods would cost the same or as much as organic foods.
Other problems for organic foods include changing perceptions about just how much healthier they are than non-organics. ?Many devotees of organic foods purchase them in order to avoid exposure to harmful levels of pesticides,? writes Henry I. Miller in Forbes. ?But that?s a poor rationale: Non-organic fruits and vegetables had more pesticide residue, to be sure, but more than 99 percent of the time the levels were below the permissible, very conservative safety limits set by regulators?limits that are established by the Environmental Protection Agency and enforced by the Food and Drug Administration.?
He adds that just because a farm is organic doesn?t mean the food it produces will be free of potentially toxic elements. While organic standards may preclude the use of synthetic inputs, organic farms often utilize so-called ?natural? pesticides and what Miller calls ?pathogen-laden animal excreta as fertilizer? that can also end up making consumers sick and have been linked to cancers and other serious illnesses (like their synthetic counterparts). Miller believes that as more consumers become aware of these problems, the percentage of the agriculture market taken up by organics will begin to shrink.
Another challenge facing the organic sector is a shortage of organic raw materials such as grain, sugar and livestock feed. Without a steady supply of these basics, organic farmers can?t harvest enough products to make their businesses viable. Meanwhile, competition from food marketed as ?locally grown? or ?natural? is also cutting into organic?s slice of the overall agriculture pie.
Organic agriculture is sure to keep growing for years to come. And even if the health benefits of eating organic aren?t significant, the environmental advantages of organic agriculture?which are, of course, also public health advantages?make the practice well worth supporting.
CONTACTS: Organic Trade Association, www.ota.com; OFRF, www.ofrf.org.
EarthTalk? is written and edited by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of E - The Environmental Magazine (www.emagazine.com). Send questions to: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe. Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/~r/sciam/chemistry/~3/hvBFJuqq1eA/article.cfm
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Friday, June 28, 2013
It's complicated: Lots to sort out on gay marriage
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Two landmark Supreme Court rulings that bolster gay marriage rights don't remove all barriers to same-sex unions by a long shot. Where gay couples live still will have a lot to do with how they're treated.
Some questions and answers about Wednesday's court rulings:
Q: Can you boil down these two big rulings ? 104 pages in all ? to the basics?
A: In one case, the court said legally married gay couples are entitled to the same federal benefits available to straight couples. In the other, it cleared the way for gay marriages to resume in California, where voters banned them in 2008.
Q: What type of benefits are we talking about?
A: More than you'd expect. There are more than 1,000 federal laws in which marital status matters, covering everything from income and inheritance taxes to health benefits and pensions. In states where gay marriage is legal, same-sex couples may actually be looking forward to filing their income taxes next April ? married, filing jointly.
Q. Why does it matter where a gay couple lives?
A: Even with Wednesday's ruling, where legally married gay couples live still may affect the federal benefits they can obtain, at least for now. Social Security survivor benefits, for example, depend on where a couple is living when a spouse dies. If that happens in a state that bans or does not recognize the union, it's not for sure that the surviving spouse will be entitled to the payments. Immigration law, meanwhile, only looks at where people were married, not where they live. It's complicated.
Q: What does the U.S. marriage map look like right now?
A: It's a patchwork. Same-sex marriage is legal in 12 states and the District of Columbia ? representing 18 percent of the U.S. population. When gay marriage resumes in California, the figure will jump to 30 percent. Twenty-nine other states have constitutional amendments that ban gay marriage. Six states have laws that ban it. Two states neither allow gay marriage nor ban it.
Q: How many same-sex couples in the U.S. have been legally married?
A: The numbers are squishy. The Pew Research Center estimates there have been at least 71,000 legal marriages since 2004, when Massachusetts became the first state to legalize them, but says there are almost certainly more. The Williams Institute, a UCLA-based think tank, says approximately 114,000 couples are legally married and more than 108,000 are in civil unions or registered domestic partnerships. In California alone, 18,000 same-sex couples were married during the 142-day period when gay unions were legal there in 2008.
Q: What's all this talk about DOMA?
A: DOMA is the federal Defense of Marriage Act, enacted in 1996. The court on Wednesday struck down a section of that law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman for purposes of federal law. That's what had denied legally married gay couples access to a host of federal benefits and programs that are available to straight couples.
Q: Why all of the focus Wednesday on California?
A: The second case that the court addressed related to a 2008 state ballot proposition that added a ban on gay marriage to the California Constitution. The court didn't rule on the merits of that ballot proposal, but it left in place a trial court's declaration that the proposition is unconstitutional. That means same-sex weddings could resume in California in about a month, although a federal appeals court there said it may continue to bar gay marriages even longer if proponents of Proposition 8 ask for a rehearing.
Q: What more could the Supreme Court have done?
A: Tons. It could have given gay Americans the same constitutional right to marry as heterosexuals. Instead, it sidestepped the looming question of whether banning gay marriage is unconstitutional.
Q: What's President Barack Obama's take on all of this?
A: He welcomed the ruling striking down part of the Defense of Marriage Act and directed Attorney General Eric Holder to make sure federal laws are in sync with the ruling. (Obama, who endorsed gay marriage last year, broke with his Republican and Democratic predecessors and declined to defend the law in court.) Already, the Defense Department says it is beginning the process to extend health care, housing and other federal benefits to the same-sex spouses of members of the military.
Q: How does the public feel about gay marriage?
A: Public support has grown dramatically in the last few years, with a majority now favoring legal marriage for gay couples. There's even broader support for extending to gay couples the same legal rights and benefits that are available to married straight couples. An Associated Press-National Constitution Center poll last fall found 63 percent favored granting gay couples the same legal benefits straight couples had. And 53 percent favored legal recognition of same-sex marriages.
Q: What happens next?
A: Supporters of gay marriage will keep pressing to legalize same-sex unions in all 50 states. That means more battles in individual states, and more visits to the Supreme Court.
___
Follow Nancy Benac on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/nbenac
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/complicated-lots-sort-gay-marriage-204458634.html
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BlackBerry CEO Confirms No BB10 Update For The Aging PlayBook Tablet
Here's a Friday morning PSA for you BlackBerry PlayBook owners: if you were feverishly clutching your tablet in hopes that BlackBerry would finally update it with a shiny new OS, you can finally put them down. BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins just confirmed during the company's Q1 earnings call that the BlackBerry 10 won't be coming to your aging doodad. Tough break, folks.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/CL83eqPTJ3I/
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Thursday, June 27, 2013
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