Survey shows US honey bee deaths increased over last year

By JULIANA BARBASSA – SAN FRANCISCO (AP)

 A survey of bee health released Tuesday revealed a grim picture, with 36.1 percent of the nation’s commercially managed hives lost since last year.

Last year’s survey commissioned by the Apiary Inspectors of America found losses of about 32 percent.

As beekeepers travel with their hives this spring to pollinate crops around the country, it’s clear the insects are buckling under the weight of new diseases, pesticide drift and old enemies like the parasitic varroa mite, said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, president of the group.

This is the second year the association has measured colony deaths across the country. This means there aren’t enough numbers to show a trend, but clearly bees are dying at unsustainable levels and the situation is not improving, said vanEngelsdorp, also a bee expert with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.

“For two years in a row, we’ve sustained a substantial loss,” he said. “That’s an astonishing number. Imagine if one out of every three cows, or one out of every three chickens, were dying. That would raise a lot of alarm.”

The survey included 327 operators who account for 19 percent of the country’s approximately 2.44 million commercially managed bee hives. The data is being prepared for submission to a journal.

About 29 percent of the deaths were due to Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious disease that causes adult bees to abandon their hives. Beekeepers who saw CCD in their hives were much more likely to have major losses than those who didn’t.

“What’s frightening about CCD is that it’s not predictable or understood,” vanEngelsdorp said.

On Tuesday, Pennsylvania’s Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff announced that the state would pour an additional $20,400 into research at Pennsylvania State University looking for the causes of CCD. This raises emergency funds dedicated to investigating the disease to $86,000.

The issue also has attracted federal grants and funding from companies that depend on honey bees, including ice-cream maker Haagen-Dazs.

Because the berries, fruits and nuts that give about 28 of Haagen-Daazs’ varieties flavor depend on honey bees for pollination, the company is donating up to $250,000 to CCD and sustainable pollination research at Penn State and the University of California, Davis.

Iraq Contractors Gone Wild, Your Tax Dollars at their disposal

Contractors Gone Wild

Theft, hookers, melting down Iraqi gold to make cowboy spurs—all in a day’s work for private military contractors in Iraq?

By Bruce Falconer – Mother Jones

Allegations of widespread mismanagement and corruption among private contractors in Iraq are nothing new; if anything, tales of cronyism, over-billing, and embezzlement have become so frequent that our national tolerance for them seems only to have increased as the Iraq War has drawn on. Even so, the testimony earlier this week of three whistleblowers before the Senate’s Democratic Policy Committee (DPC) stands out for the sheer outrageousness of their accusations—namely that U.S. private contractors looted Iraqi palaces and ministries, stole military equipment, fenced supplies destined for U.S. troops, and even operated a prostitution ring that may have contributed to the death of fellow contractor. Yet despite its focus on such salacious matters as sex and corruption, the session earned little media attention.

The first to testify was Frank Cassaday, a former KBR employee who worked as an ice plant operator in Fallujah in 2004 and 2005. “Ice was a very valuable commodity in Iraq that was regularly stolen and bartered for other goods,” he told the committee. He recalled how a convoy of U.S. Marines, in preparation for an operation that would take them outside the wire for several days, requested 28 bags of ice to keep their food fresh in the desert heat. They received only three. “The ice foreman was cheating the troops out of ice at the same time that he was trading the ice for DVDs, CDs, food, and other items at the Iraqi shops across the street,” Cassaday said. “This foreman would change the ice tally sheets at the distribution area I worked in to make it seem as though we had handed out more ice to the Marines than we actually did.”

Cassaday said he later observed his colleagues returning to KBR’s camp with equipment they had stolen from the U.S. military, including refrigerators, artillery round detonators, two rocket launchers, and about 800 rounds of small arms ammunition. After he informed the KBR camp manager of the thefts, Marines searched the camp with dogs to recover the stolen property. For his trouble, Cassaday said, KBR security officers jailed him in his tent for two days. He then spent another four days in “protective custody” before being transferred, against his will, to work in a laundry.

The practice of stealing equipment and supplies destined for the U.S. military was so pervasive that KBR employees invented a slang term to describe it: “drug deals.” But thefts were not limited to military supplies, said Linda Warren, another former KBR employee who testified at the hearing. Upon her arrival in Baghdad in 2004, she was shocked by the number of contractors involved in criminal activity. “KBR employees who were contracted to perform construction duties inside palaces and municipal buildings were looting,” she said. “Not only were they looting, but they had a system in place to get contraband out of the country so it could be sold on eBay. They stole artwork, rugs, crystal, and even melted down gold to make spurs for cowboy boots.” Like Cassaday, when she complained to her superiors about the thefts, she was punished. She said her vehicle was taken away, her movements were closely monitored, and her access to phones and the Internet were cut off. Eventually, she was transferred out of Baghdad.

Perhaps more shocking than any of this was the accusation from Barry Halley, a former project manager for Worldwide Network Services, a Washington, D.C.-based firm that was working on subcontract for DynCorp. According to Halley, his site manager in Iraq, who he said was employed by a “major defense contractor,” moonlighted as the leader of a prostitution ring serving American contractors in Iraq that indirectly caused the death of a colleague. “A co-worker unrelated to the ring was killed when he was traveling in an unsecure car and shot performing a high-risk mission,” he told the committee. “I believe that my co-worker could have survived if he had been riding in an armored car. At the time, the armored car that he would otherwise have been riding in was being used by a manager to transport prostitutes from Kuwait to Baghdad.” The prostitution ring was shut down when the company’s home office learned of it, but, Halley said, the manager who controlled it retained his job, moving on to work another contract in Haiti.

A theme running through all three witnesses’ testimony, aside from the pervasiveness of corruption among private contractors in Iraq, was that blowing the whistle on abuses rarely did any good. As is often the case with whistleblowers, speaking out was a shortcut to getting fired or demoted. “There’s a no-talk, no-speak policy in effect in Iraq about what goes on,” Halley said.

According to Cassaday, although contractors for KBR are trained to report irregularities, the practice is generally frowned on by managers in the field. “In Houston at the training camp that I was at for two weeks before we went over to Iraq, they told us that, ‘Our door is always open. If you have a problem, just come on in,’” he said. “But what they don’t tell you is there’s a back door to that office. If you come in and you complain about something, you’re going to be going out that back door. You’re going to either be transferred someplace you don’t want to be, or you’re going to be fired.”

Arriving nearly two weeks after the military awarded a 10-year logistical contract worth up to $150 billion to DynCorp, KBR, and a third firm, the DPC hearing was the thirteenth in a series designed to look into contractor fraud and abuse in the reconstruction of Iraq. Although, as a partisan committee, it has no powers to pass legislation, DPC members do refer allegations to the Department of Justice and the Pentagon’s Inspector General for further investigation, says Barry Piatt, the DPC’s communications director. Committee chairman Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota has been advocating for the creation of a permanent, bipartisan Wartime Contracting Commission to look into the types of accusations raised this week, but so far, says Piatt, Senate Republicans have blocked the measure. Until he is able to obtain the necessary 60 votes, Dorgan will continue to negotiate with the opposition in hopes of peeling away enough support to establish the commission. In the meantime, “the hearings that need to be done will be done,” says Piatt. “The Republicans won’t able to block that, and by continuing to do them, [Senator Dorgan] is showing the work that a committee like that would do.”

Hey Where did my cocktail go?

from www.ebaumsworld.com posted with vodpod

“Andean Arc” region comes to Life

Chile’s Chaiten Volcano One Of Scores Of Active Volcanoes In Region

ScienceDaily

The Chaiten volcano now erupting in southern Chile is one of 200 to 300 volcanoes in the “Andean Arc” region of Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Columbia considered active by volcanologists, some of which lie in much more densely populated areas, said a University of Colorado at Boulder geologist who has studied Chaiten.

While the public perception is that volcanoes that have not erupted in historic times are dormant, volcanologists consider any volcanoes that erupted during the last 10,000 years during the Holocene Period — including Chaiten — to be potentially active, said CU-Boulder geological sciences department Professor Charles Stern.

Stern said the pyroclastic flow and ash-fall deposits he and Chilean colleagues analyzed in 2004 indicate Chaiten last erupted about 9,370 years ago. “We consider the lifespan of Andean volcanoes to be about 1 million years, which is supported by this new eruption,” he said.

He said Chaiten, which started to erupt on May 2 and which “ramped up significantly” May 7, could bury the nearby town of Chaiten much like the Roman city of Pompeii was buried by tephra, or volcanic material, following the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D.

“There are 25 million to 30 million people that live very close to at least one of these potentially active volcanoes in the Andean Arc, including the cities of Quito and Santiago,” said Stern. “This is a good example of what could happen at any time in the region, and it is fortunate the Chaiten eruption is occurring in a pretty sparsely populated area.”

Only a few dozen of the 200 to 300 active volcanoes in the Andean Arc are actively monitored, said Stern. More than 25,000 people were killed by the eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano in Columbia in 1985, he said.

By the morning of May 6 Chilean authorities had evacuated more than 4,000 people from the region, including the population in the town of Chaiten six miles from the volcano and the town of Futaleufo, roughly 70 miles to the east near the Argentine border. The five-day eruption of Chaiten has sent a thick column of ash and smoke into the stratosphere moving east across Patagonia to the Atlantic Ocean.

“The volcano went into a higher state of activity this morning,” Stern. “What happens after today is anybody’s guess.”

In addition to covering towns and villages and polluting air and water, the ash fall will undoubtedly affect agricultural and ranching activities, Stern said. “Because there is relatively little precipitation in the region of Patagonia east of the volcano, it will take a long time to naturally wash the ash from the landscape.”

Stern and Jose Naranjo of the National Service of Geology and Mining, who published a 2004 paper in the journal “Geology of Chile,” used radiocarbon methods to date the last eruption of Chaiten and concluded the eruption generated layers of volcanic tephra on the surrounding landscape up to five feet thick. The same prehistoric eruption apparently created the two-mile-diameter crater where the current eruption is centered, the authors said.

Stern said the possibility of the Chaiten volcano affecting Earth’s climate is probably fairly low. “In to order to significantly affect the climate, a volcano has to put out a lot of sulfur dioxide aerosols into the stratosphere for an extended period, which then reflects sunlight away from the Earth,” he said. “Our data from Chaiten showed the last eruption was high in silica and low in sulfur.”

In contrast, the massive eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 cooled the global climate for about one year because of high sulfur dioxide emissions, he said. The eruption of Tambora in Indonesia in 1815 affected the world’s climate for about three years and caused what is known as the Year Without a Summer in 1816 by cooling Europe and North America with huge atmospheric sulfur dioxide emissions.

Fleeing Chile’s ”dormant” volcano | Video | Reuters.com

from www.reuters.com posted with vodpod

Land of Plenty for some

In Food Price crunch, more Americans seek help

By Missy Ryan – Reuters

BALTIMORE (Reuters) – Carolyn Stanley, a single mother with five children, receives $327 in food stamps each month to feed her family. With prices for staples like bread and cheese going ever higher, each month is harder than the last.

 She buys hot dogs over higher-quality meat and feeds her kids cereal, but even with other government support she often has to seek help from local churches and from friends.

 ”The food runs out somewhere within the middle of the month, or getting close to the end,” said Stanley, 49. “It is not easy. I pray.”

 While food inflation is causing tensions and riots around the world, even the affluent United States is being touched. Stories such as Stanley’s are becoming more common as Americans increasingly turn to food stamps and other programs to make ends meet.

 At a cost of about $39 billion to the U.S. Treasury, nearly one in 10 Americans — 28 million people — are expected next year to use food stamps, which would be the highest enrolment in the program apart from a spike after the Gulf Coast hurricanes of 2005.

 U.S. food prices are expected to rise by up to 5 percent this year, part of a global trend driven fueled by consumption in rapidly developing countries such as China, adverse weather, and the funneling of food crops to make biofuels.

 ”People don’t want to talk about hunger in America because that’s not supposed to have happened. Didn’t we take care of that a generation or two ago?” said Kevin McGuire, Food Stamp director for Maryland. “Well, not really.” The number of beneficiaries jumped 12 percent in Maryland from a year ago.

 MAKING ENDS MEET

 The crunch comes as the economy takes a sharp turn for the worse and many see the number of people receiving food stamps as advance indicator of an economic slump.

 Today, food stamp officials are not only watching more people apply for the benefits, they’re seeing more of them come from the working poor, people whose low-wage jobs still leave them eligible under the program’s strict income caps.

 ”Having a job isn’t enough anymore. Having two or three jobs isn’t enough anymore,” said Marcia Paulson, spokeswoman for Great Plains Food Bank in North Dakota, where nearly half the households on food stamps have at least one adult with a job.

 ”Our pantries are overwhelmed,” said Diane Doherty, director of the Illinois Hunger Coalition, which helps the needy find food assistance and sign up for food stamps.

 Doherty said people’s food stamps are running out more quickly due to higher prices — often within two weeks. More than ever are receiving stamps for the first time, she said.

“They’re just not able to make ends meet when they’re trying to raise a family on these meager salaries, with the cost of housing and now with the cost of gas,” she said.

 Maryland’s McGuire is one official who believes that the annual adjustments in food stamp dollars have been inadequate.

 Nationally, the average benefit per person early this year was about $100 per month — around $1 a meal.

 The government will adjust that payout in June, but people won’t see their benefits change until October.

Stanley, who receives no child support for her daughters, the youngest of whom is in the first grade, hopes that federal officials will act more quickly.

“If you’ve ever lived the crunch of that poverty level, you would understand that people need more,” Stanley said.

OUTREACH PARTLY BEHIND GROWING ROLLS

 Program officials are quick to stress that food stamps were never intended to make up a family’s entire food budget, and point to other programs that can help needy families — school lunches, after-school programs, and food banks.

 ”We firmly believe that no American should go hungry,” said Kate Houston, a deputy undersecretary at USDA.

 The growing rolls of food stamp beneficiaries is a mixed picture, Houston said, reflecting in part a success in reaching out to eligible people who hadn’t received help in the past.

 ”The program is designed to expand and contract based on economic conditions,” she said.

 House and Senate lawmakers, forging a final compromise on a giant agriculture law, now plan to add over $10 billion to the food stamp program over the next decade, raising the standard income deduction, boosting the minimum benefit to $14 a month, an increase of $4, and giving more to food pantry donations.

 Food stamp officials are counseling people on how to make their stamps last as long as possible — buying ground beef or other meat when it’s on sale and freezing it, for example.

 That may be cold comfort for people like Sandra Fowler, 42, a mother in suburban Chicago who recently applied for food stamps, and describes her situation as increasingly desperate.

 Fowler is months behind on mortgage payments on her house and is going through a messy divorce.

 ”It will feed my children, at least. I’ve been going to a food pantry, waiting in line. The choices are really limited — there might be some eggs, canned goods,” she said.

 Most experts predict that high crop and fuel prices will linger for at least two to three years, and sky-high oil and gasoline prices are unlikely to abate any time soon.

 Even in the country known as the ‘land of plenty,’ McGuire said, the cost crunch “affects literally at a gut level what’s going on” for the less fortunate. “We’re going to need to start stitching the safety net a little bit bigger.”

Orange County DA drops “wrongfully arrested” UNC student’s charges

From Independent Weekly

Tamara Tal has been cleared of charges of failure to disperse, according to a letter sent from Orange County Assistant District Attorney Jeffrey Nieman to Tal’s attorney, Al McSurely.

Nieman reportedly wrote in his letter that “the facts [are] insufficient for conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.” Tal had been arrested by Chapel Hill police and charged with “failure to disperse” at a demonstration last fall at a Burger King on Elliot Road. Tal, a member of Students for a Democratic Society, was among dozens of protesters rallying in support of raising the tomato pickers’ wages by one penny per pound. Burger King has stated it doesn’t have direct contact with the farm workers, but works through a purchasing agent.

Tal’s April 14 trial was postponed after the arresting officer called in sick.

“Assistant District Attorney Nieman’s decision clearly shows there was no justification for my arrest,” said Tal in a prepared statement. “I hope this sends a message to Officer Shehan and other police officers who would intimidate and harass peaceful protesters that justice and right will prevail in the end.” Tal added, “We won’t let rogue cops get in the way of our solidarity and support for the just struggle of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.”

Al McSurely commented, also in a prepared statement, “This is a great victory for the people, and for the First Amendment right to protest and demand redress of our grievances. We hope the Town of Chapel Hill has learned its lesson and will respect the First Amendment rights of its citizens.”

[Edited header and permalink 10/18/09]

Photos of Henderson event

Check out some photos of the Clinton event in Henderson , they got some great shots one of my favorites,  ”NBAF Too Dangerous for Plum Island NY Okay For North Carolina”.