PLANET IN PERIL

THE LANCET In their letter, Isaac I Bogoch and colleagues (Jan 23, p 335) 1 anticipated the international spread of Zika virus from Brazil through air traffic. Story here.

Agro Pages Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay announced that the Government of Canada is investing over $980,000 in research to help drive innovation and profitability in the canola industry. Story here. RELATED:  Field of Nightmares: Ottawa promotes the use of Roundup by Canadian Farmers, Letting Corporate Seduction Trump Scientific Evidence.

UN News Service In the wake of Tropical Cyclone Winston that struck the island nation of Fiji Saturday night, the United Nations Children's Fund ( UNICEF ) said it is on stand-by to provide emergency supplies and additional personnel to support the Government as it works to determine critical needs. Story here.

Earth. We Are One. The Story of Stuff Project, a campaign group, has just announced the pursuit of legal action towards Nestlé.  The lawsuit is over the extraction of groundwater in California as Nestlé has been doing, illegally, for its arrowhead brand.  This is considered to be a key contributor to the drought crisis within the state. More here.

Commmon Dreams 'Without shareholders expecting profits, public systems are less likely to cut corners on service,' says Food & Water Watch. Details here.

by Larry Powell As governments everywhere, including Canada's, sleep walk through the gathering storm - another epic tropical typhoon (hurricane) is poised to slam into Fiji.  Those we depend upon as "dot-connectors," who should be viewing everything through the prism of our climate crisis, continue to act like negligent criminals, believing that our survival depends, not on whether we steer our economy away from one that's addicted to fossil fuels, but how big the deficit should be, whether we should bomb a distant enemy overseas in yet another useless war, or bail out some deadbeat corporation which may or may not need it.  No deep-thinkers here.  How about this? 

Manitoba Co-Operator Four new barns will be built in 2016. Story here. This is how many factory barns there were in southeastern Manitoba in 2007. That's when the Clean Environment Commission warned that more industry growth would lead to "a significant increase" in the production of nitrogen and phosphorous, nutrients which contribute to the pollution of waterways. So....just how many are too many?

Common Dreams U.S. communities are shifting toward keeping their water infrastructure public, and that’s a good thing. But stopping water privatization is only the first step. Details here.

the guardian Studies have estimated there are now five trillion pieces of plastic in the world’s oceans. These include microplastics, which form as larger pieces break down.   Story here .

NATIONAL OBSERVER The pink salmon runs in Aniva Bay, once among the largest largest in the world, collapsed after Shell built its LNG facility on the Russian island of Sakhalin in the late 90s. Story here.

Greenpeace Canada In the days just prior to the Paris climate summit, the Quebec government quietly posted a devastating report on the ongoing ecological impacts from the oil spilt during the Lac Mégantic disaster. Entitled Train tragedy in Lac-Mégantic: Impact on fish communities of residual petroleum contamination of the Chaudière River , it details the ongoing impact of the oil that is still in the river system. Story here.