Canadian, U.S. Agencies Approve Genetically Engineered B.C. Apples as Safe

Winnipeg Free Press

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Health Canada have approved non-browning Arctic Apples for commercial sale in Canada. Story here.

Everyone bow down to the gods of bio-tech! 
They have saved us from a fate worse than death - 
the browning apple! PinP photo.

Journalism as Subversion

by Chris Hedges - OpEd News 

The assault of global capitalism is not only an economic and political assault. It is a cultural and historical assault. Global capitalism seeks to erase our stories and our histories. Its systems of mass communication, which peddle a fake…Story here.

Bark Beetles Are Decimating Our Forests. That Might Actually Be a Good Thing.

MotherJones

They gobble up trees and send politicians into a frenzy. But do the bugs know more about climate change than we do? Story here.

Related: Only “Heroic Efforts” Will Spare Earth’s Mighty Boreal Forest From the Worst Ravages of Climate Change - Experts.  

Malathion Can Kill Insects And Glyphosate Can Kill Weeds But They Can Also Give You Cancer: WHO

TECH TIMES

A "crop-duster" sprays a crop near Neepawa, Manitoba. PinP photo.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization (WHO), reveals that the malathion insecticide and glyphosate herbicide are potentially carcinogenic. Story here.

Related: "Field of Nightmares. Ottawa continues to embrace the widespread use of Roundup on Canadian farms by letting corporate seduction trump scientific evidence."

Is the "Dubious Duo" of Fracking & Earthquakes More Common in Canada Than we Know? PinP Wonders...

by Larry Powell

PinP has learned that, years before “fracking” was blamed for a significant earthquake in northern Alberta early this year, a whole series of somewhat smaller quakes was happening in the Horn River Basin of northeastern BC, where fracking reached a peak some four years ago. 

Researchers representing the Geological Survey of Canada and the BC Oil and Gas Commission reviewed seismographs from the area from 2002 to 2011. They conclude there is a “high likelihood of a physical relationship” between the quakes and the fracking. They detected only 24 local quakes in the Basin in ’02 and ’03, before fracking began. But, by 2011, when fracking peaked, that number had jumped to 131. And so had the magnitude - from 2.9 (on the Richter scale) before fracking, to 3.6 afterward.

Then this past January, Alberta’s energy regulator blamed fracking for an earthquake in the northern part of that province, near Fox Creek. According to the CBC, it was “of 4.4 magnitude, severe enough to cause minor damage.” It was described as the worst quake of its kind ever attributed to fracking.

Fracking is another term for “hydraulic fracturing.” It’s a technique used in the energy industry. Water and chemicals are injected under tremendous pressure into underground shale formations, forcing the natural gas in them to the surface. Groups such as Physicians for Social Responsibility, have expressed a host of concerns about the practice, including the toxic nature of the chemicals which are suspected of polluting underground wellwater. Fracking has spread to many areas of the world over the past decades, including Canada. 

The research relating to the BC events was published recently in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences. But it is not believed to have been widely reported in the mainstream media as yet. 

Which begs the question, just how many other earthquakes linked to fracking may already be occurring in Canada, which we haven't even heard about yet?

Stay tuned!

City of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada to Review WHO Report on Malathion

CBC News

A World Health Organization agency says that the insecticide is 'probably carcinogenic' to humans. Story here.

Why Keep Fossil Fuel in the Ground. (Video - go full-screen)