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Birth Defect Spike Linked to GMOs, Weaponized Police Drones Approved in US, Couple Feeds 4,000 Refugees on Wedding Day
August 31, 2015

Dear friends,

Birth Defect Link to GMOs

Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on the spike in birth defects on a Hawaiian island linked to pesticide spraying by GMO crop developers, the approval of a U.S. state law that allows police to operate drones armed with "non-lethal" weapons, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell's claim that extra terrestrials interfered with war activities to promote peace on Earth, and more.

Read also wonderfully inspiring articles on a Turkish couple that graciously fed 4,000 Syrian refugees instead of having a traditional wedding reception, a nonprofit that has begun using collection agency expertise to buy up and then freely cancel medical debt, how the Ben and Jerry's ice cream company managed to maintain its progressive social and environmental values despite being taken over by the multinational conglomerate Unilever, and more. You can also skip to this section now.

Each excerpt is taken verbatim from the major media website listed at the link provided. If any link fails, see this page. The most important sentences are highlighted. And don't miss the "What you can do" section below the summaries. By educating ourselves and spreading the word, we can and will build a brighter future.

With best wishes for a transformed world,
Mark Bailey and Fred Burks for PEERS and WantToKnow.info

Special note: WantToKnow.info was mentioned in an article on chemtrails in the most recent edition of the SF Weekly. For those familiar with HAARP, MIT's Technology Review has an article showing strange infrared emissions above the earthquake zone shortly before the devastating 2011 Fukushima quake. Another MIT article shows similar strangeness before the quake in Haiti. If you don't know about the alternative health website mercola.com, this article will educate you to this great work. Watch a fun and inspiring TEDx talk on how to shift your mind to have more happiness.

Quote of the week: "Every act is either an expression of love or a call for love." ~~ Course in Miracles

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Pesticides in paradise: Hawaii's spike in birth defects puts focus on GM crops
August 23, 2015, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/23/hawaii-birth-defects-pesticides-gmo

Pediatrician Carla Nelson ... waited for the ambulance plane to take the infant from Waimea, on the island of Kauai, to the main children’s hospital in Honolulu. It was the fourth [severe heart malformation] she had seen in three years. There have been at least nine in five years, she says, shaking her head. That’s more than 10 times the national rate. Corn that’s been genetically modified to resist pesticides [is] a major cash crop on four of [Hawaii's] six main islands. In Kauai, chemical companies Dow, BASF, Syngenta and DuPont spray 17 times more pesticide per acre than on ordinary cornfields in the US mainland. About a fourth of the total are called Restricted Use Pesticides because of their harmfulness. Just in Kauai, 18 tons – mostly atrazine, paraquat (both banned in Europe) and chlorpyrifos – were applied in 2012. The World Health Organization this year announced that glyphosate, sold as Roundup, the most common of the non-restricted herbicides, is “probably carcinogenic in humans”. When the spraying is underway ... residents complain of stinging eyes, headaches and vomiting. At these times, many crowd the waiting rooms of the town’s main hospital, which was run until recently by Dow AgroSciences’ former chief lobbyist in Honolulu. The chemical companies that grow the corn ... refuse to disclose with any precision which chemicals they use, where and in what amounts, but they insist the pesticides are safe. Today, about 90% of industrial GMO corn grown in the US was originally developed in Hawaii.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing GMO news articles from reliable major media sources.


First State Legalizes Taser Drones for Cops
August 26, 2015, The Daily Beast
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/26/first-state-legalizes-armed-drones...

It is now legal for law enforcement in North Dakota to fly drones armed with everything from Tasers to tear gas thanks to a last-minute push by a pro-police lobbyist. House Bill 1328 wasn’t drafted that way. The bill’s stated intent was to require police to obtain a search warrant from a judge in order to use a drone to search for criminal evidence. In fact, the original draft of Representative Rick Becker’s bill would have banned all weapons on police drones. Then Bruce Burkett of the North Dakota Peace Officer’s Association was allowed ... to amend HB 1328 and limit the prohibition only to lethal weapons. “Less than lethal” weapons like rubber bullets, pepper spray, tear gas, sound cannons, and Tasers are therefore permitted on police drones. Even “less than lethal” weapons can kill though. At least 39 people have been killed by police Tasers in 2015 so far. The Grand Forks County Sheriff’s Department ... is hiding a full accounting of how many drone missions they’ve flown since 2012. The FAA notes 401 drone “operations” performed by the Grand Forks County Sheriff’s Department from 2012 to September 2014, while [County Sheriff Bob] Rost and [drone pilot Al] Frazier maintain just 21 missions have taken place. “We don’t make a practice of snooping on people,” Rost said recently. However, Rost’s statement was followed by an admission that the sheriff expects drones to be used in criminal investigations in the near future. Few noticed when HB 1328 passed with a clause allowing them to be armed.

Note: For more along these lines, read about the increasing militarization of police in the U.S. after 9/11. Also, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about ""non-lethal weapons", or read about how sophisticated and deadly some of these weapons technologies can be.


Peaceloving aliens stopped nuclear war on earth, says retired astronaut
August 13, 2015, The Telegraph (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/11800079/Peaceloving-aliens-stopped...

Aliens flew to earth on peace missions to prevent nuclear war between America and the Soviet Union at the start of the Cold War, according to a former Nasa astronaut. Dr Edgar Mitchell has made a series of increasingly bizarre claims about extra terrestrial life. His status as the sixth man to walk on the moon - during the Apollo 14 mission in 1971 - gives his claims a ready audience. Now he says military top brass saw UFOs visiting Earth during weapons tests in the 1940s at American missile bases and the famous White Sands Proving Ground, in the New Mexico desert, where the world's first nuclear bomb was detonated in 1945. "White Sands was a testing ground for atomic weapons - and that's what the extra-terrestrials were interested in ... they wanted to know about our military capabilities," [Mitchell said]. "My own experience talking to people has made it clear the ETs had been attempting to keep us from going to war and help create peace on Earth." He claims other officers manning missile silos or Pacific bases back up his claims with stories of alien spacecraft shooting down test rockets mid-flight.

Note: For more, read Edgar Mitchell's testimony on a major cover-up of UFOs. Then explore the highly reliable resources presented in our UFO Information Center.


Many police departments spy on you without oversight. This must end
August 26, 2015, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/26/police-want-spy-without-oversight

Local police around the country are increasingly using high-tech mass surveillance gear that can vacuum up private information on entire neighborhoods. Many cops are ... purposefully hiding their spying from courts to avoid any scrutiny from judges. Two important news reports from the last week have shed light on the disturbing practices. The first investigation, done by USA Today’s Brad Heath, found: “In one case after another ... police in Baltimore and other cities used the phone tracker, commonly known as a stingray, to locate the perpetrators of routine street crimes and frequently concealed that fact from the suspects, their lawyers and even judges.” Stingrays are so controversial that some state legislatures have already passed laws restricting their use – which is exactly why police want to keep [their use] secret. The Wall Street Journal also reported last week about newer devices costing as little as a few hundred dollars [that] the police supposedly don’t think ... require a court order at all to use against potential suspects. These devices are handheld or can be attached to clothing. Not only are these cops violating the constitutional rights of defendants by spying on them without court orders, but, in some cases, they’re also allegedly dismissing felony cases involving potentially dangerous criminals, so they can prevent judges from ruling on whether their surveillance tactics are legal ... all to continue their blanket surveillance practices with minimal scrutiny.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about the erosion of privacy rights.


Feds sued over access to FBI records involving fake news story
August 27, 2015, CBS News/Associated Press
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/feds-sued-over-access-to-fbi-records-involving-fake-news-story/

The Associated Press sued the U.S. Department of Justice Thursday over the FBI's failure to provide public records related to the creation of a fake news story used to plant surveillance software on a suspect's computer. At issue is a 2014 Freedom of Information request seeking documents related to the FBI's decision to send a web link to the fake article to a 15-year-old boy suspected of making bomb threats to a high school. The FBI has used spyware before to pursue suspected criminals. AP strongly objected to the ruse, which was uncovered last year. AP General Counsel Karen Kaiser [wrote] in a 2014 letter to then-Attorney General Eric Holder, "It is improper and inconsistent with a free press for government personnel to masquerade as The Associated Press or any other news organization. The FBI may have intended this false story as a trap for only one person. However, the individual could easily have reposted this story to social networks, distributing to thousands of people, under our name, what was essentially a piece of government disinformation." In a November opinion piece in the New York Times, FBI Director James Comey revealed that an undercover FBI agent had also impersonated an AP reporter. AP's records request also seeks an accounting of how many times since 2000 the FBI has impersonated media organizations to deliver malicious software. In a response to AP, the FBI indicated it might take nearly two years to find and copy the requested records.

Note: According to The Guardian, the FBI forced an informant to hack into and compromise the computer systems of a major UK newspaper in 2011. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corruption in the intelligence community and the manipulation of mass media.


In Cold War, U.S. Spy Agencies Used 1,000 Nazis
October 26, 2014, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/us/in-cold-war-us-spy-agencies-used-1000-nazis.html?_r=0

At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, law enforcement and intelligence leaders like J. Edgar Hoover at the F.B.I. and Allen Dulles at the C.I.A. aggressively recruited onetime Nazis of all ranks. They believed the ex-Nazis’ intelligence value against the Russians outweighed what one official called “moral lapses” in their service to the Third Reich. The agency hired one former SS officer as a spy in the 1950s, for instance, even after concluding he was probably guilty of “minor war crimes.” In 1994, a lawyer with the C.I.A. pressured prosecutors to drop an investigation into an ex-spy outside Boston implicated in the Nazis’ massacre of tens of thousands of Jews in Lithuania. In 1980, F.B.I. officials refused to tell even the Justice Department’s own Nazi hunters what they knew about 16 suspected Nazis living in the United States. The bureau balked at a request from prosecutors for internal records on the Nazi suspects, memos show, because the 16 men had all worked as F.B.I. informants, providing leads on Communist “sympathizers.” Five of the men were still active informants. In all, the American military, the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and other agencies used at least 1,000 ex-Nazis and collaborators as spies and informants after the war, according to Richard Breitman, a Holocaust scholar at American University. The full tally ... is probably much higher. But many records remain classified even today, making a complete count impossible.

Note: What this article fails to mention is the Nazi doctors secretly used to teach the CIA mind control methods it perfected. Read an amazing, eye-opening summary on this. Then see the astounding declassified CIA documents on this program.


Nazis Helped Get Us To The Moon. The Reagan White House Helped Keep Them In The U.S.
November 8, 2014, Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/08/operation-paperclip_n_6123746.html

America’s Nazi transplants: scientists, academics and thinkers who were employed by the U.S. government, despite résumés full of horrid atrocities. Washington worked to protect them from the consequences of their horrible pasts. This information, revealed in detail for the first time in [Eric] Lichtblau’s book, “The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler’s Men,” traces the legal battles and moral struggles surrounding the ... Operation Paperclip program, which brought former Nazi scientists to America to bolster the nation’s scientific community. Among the Third Reich transplants was the late Wernher von Braun, considered a legendary NASA space scientist who ... oversaw Hitler’s Mittelwerk slave labor factory. Another was the late Dr. Hubertus Strughold, who is still considered the “father of space medicine." Strughold ... helped orchestrate science experiments on human guinea pigs at the Dachau concentration camp. Even while the White House and its intelligence agencies were quietly employing some of the Nazis’ best minds in the nation’s scientific circles, mostly in a Huntsville, Alabama, military community, the Justice Department was secretly building cases against them. A deal was struck that allowed [Arthur] Rudolph to renounce his American citizenship and go quietly back to Germany in 1984. He was never charged with a war crime. No other Paperclip scientists were prosecuted for their past atrocities or complicity in Nazi war crimes.

Note: What this article fails to mention is the Nazi doctors secretly used to teach the CIA mind control methods it perfected. Read an amazing, eye-opening summary on this. Then see the astounding declassified CIA documents on this program.


Lockheed Martin pays $4.7 million to settle charges it lobbied for federal contract with federal money
August 24, 2015, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2015/08/24/after-allegations...

The world’s largest defense contractor has agreed to pay $4.7 million to settle charges that it illegally used government money. Top executives for Lockheed Martin — who were being paid by the federal government to run Sandia National Laboratories — ran a fierce campaign to lobby [government] officials for a seven-year extension of their contract, [and] urged them to close the bidding to competition. To clinch the contract extension, Sandia labs officials hired high-priced consultants — including Heather A. Wilson, the former New Mexico congresswoman, who allegedly was paid $226,000. Wilson was not just on Lockheed’s payroll. From 2009 through 2011, she had consulting jobs for Lockheed and three other contractors managing the Energy Department’s national lab, charging taxpayers a total of $450,000. But the contractors could not document her work, said [Energy Department Inspector General Gregory] Friedman, whose staff found that the justification for the billing did “not meet even minimum standards” for federal payments.” Wilson ... left Congress in 2009. Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, called the deal a “slap on the wrist for the world’s biggest defense contractor to pay,” [and] wrote on the NuclearWatch blog Lockheed “engaged in deep and systemic corruption, including paying Congresswoman Heather Wilson $10,000 a month starting the day after she left office for so-called consulting services that had no written work requirements.”

Note: Lockheed Martin runs a breathtakingly big part of the United States. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corruption in government and in the corporate world.


Secret 'dark net' operation saves scores of children from abuse; ringleader Shannon McCoole behind bars after police take over child porn site
July 30, 2015, ABC News Australia
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-26/secret-anti-paedophile-operation-saves-children...

Scores of children have been saved from abuse after an elaborate sting by Queensland Police led to the identification and arrest of key members of a global online sex abuse network. Queensland's anti-paedophile taskforce Argos targeted an internet bulletin board which had 45,000 members. Users were ranked according to the volume and originality of the child exploitation material they uploaded to the site. The site, the name of which remains suppressed by the South Australian District Court, was administered by ... Adelaide childcare worker Shannon McCoole. This month, the Families SA employee was sentenced to 35 years in jail for sexually abusing at least seven children in his care and for transmitting child pornography on the internet. McCoole's victims were in state care, and were as young as 18 months old. With McCoole in custody, Queensland's Taskforce Argos then activated phase two of the operation. "Phase two was to take over the network," Detective Inspector Jon Rouse said. "Ultimately, you had a child sex offender network that was being administered by police." Two officers from Taskforce Argos secretly assumed the online identity of Shannon McCoole, working around the clock for 10 months to dismantle the paedophile ring and identify abusers. Detective Inspector Rouse said the sting resulted in the identification of paedophiles around the world. "US, Europe, United Kingdom. [It was] global," he said.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sex abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


No, You Do Not Have to Drink 8 Glasses of Water a Day
August 24, 2015, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/25/upshot/no-you-do-not-have-to-drink-8-glasses-of-water...

Every summer we are inundated with news media reports warning that ... otherwise healthy adults and children are walking around dehydrated, even that dehydration has reached epidemic proportions. Let’s put these claims under scrutiny. I was a co-author of a paper back in 2007 in the BMJ on medical myths. The first myth was that people should drink at least eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day. The source of this myth [may be] a 1945 Food and Nutrition Board recommendation that said people need about 2.5 liters of water a day. The sentence that followed closely behind ... read, “Most of this quantity is contained in prepared foods.” Water is present in fruits and vegetables. It’s in juice, it’s in beer, it’s even in tea and coffee. Before anyone writes me to tell me that coffee is going to dehydrate you, research shows that’s not true either. A significant number of advertisers and news media reports are trying to convince you otherwise. Bottled water sales continue to increase. More recent studies [continue] to declare huge numbers of children to be dehydrated. A 2012 study in the Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism [claimed] that almost two-thirds of French children weren’t getting enough water. Another in the journal Public Health Nutrition [declared] that almost two-thirds of children in Los Angeles and New York City weren’t getting enough water. The first study was funded by Nestlé Waters; the second by Nestec, a Nestlé subsidiary. There is no formal recommendation for a daily amount of water people need.

Note: The complete article above details how normal water consumption has been redefined by dubious science to appear insufficient. For more along these lines, see the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Health Information Center.


Key Articles From Years Past


Afghanistan Has Cost the U.S. More Than the Marshall Plan
July 31, 2014, Bloomberg Businessweek
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-07-31/afghanistan-has-cost-the-u-dot-s...

The U.S. has now spent more on the reconstruction of Afghanistan than it spent on the Marshall Plan, which resuscitated Europe after World War II. The Marshall Plan delivered $103 billion in today’s dollars to 16 European countries between 1948 and 1952. That has now been topped by congressional appropriations for reconstruction in Afghanistan, which so far have come to $109 billion in today’s dollars. The difference: The Marshall Plan helped Europe get back on its feet, while Afghanistan is a chaotic mess. The Marshall Plan comparison is the most striking fact in a depressing, 259-page quarterly report to Congress issued July 30 by John Sopko, the congressionally appointed special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction. One recent audit ... raised concerns about the army’s ability to account for some 465,000 U.S.-provided small arms. This quarter, Sopko’s report says, a local police unit cut the power lines from Kabul ... “in retaliation for not being paid for three months.” To cut costs, NATO plans to shrink the Afghan National Security Forces to less than 230,000 by 2017. But an independent assessment ... concluded that the forces will require more than 370,000 people. That would cost three times as much as the Afghan government’s entire domestic revenue. Afghanistan’s main exports are carpets and rugs, dried fruits, medicinal plants, opium, and gems. But Sopko observes, “opiates are not part of the licit economy, and gems are easy to smuggle, so their contributions to government revenue are limited.”

Note: By 2000, the Taliban had mostly stopped heroin production in Afghanistan. But once this country was under US control, illicit drug production surged to record levels and Afghanistan became a narco state. How much "reconstruction" money became the drug cartel money that kept big banks afloat in 2008?


Aliens exist, but NASA covers them up says astronaut
July 24, 2008, The Independent (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2453700/Aliens-exist-but-NASA-covers-them-up...

Dr Edgar Mitchell said he was aware of several UFO visits during his career, but each one had been covered up. The 77-year-old, who was a crew member of the Apollo 14 mission, said sources at the space agency had described aliens as resembling "little people who look strange to us". Dr Mitchell told Kerrang! Radio that human technology was "not nearly as sophisticated" as theirs and had they been hostile, he warned: "We would be been gone by now". He said: "There's not much question at all that there's life throughout the universe, we are not alone at all. I'm most assured about that. I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we've been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomena is real. It's been well covered up by all our governments for the last 60 years or so, but slowly it's leaked out and some of us have been privileged to have been briefed on some of it. I've been in military and intelligence circles, who know that beneath the surface of what has been public knowledge, yes – we have been visited. Dr Mitchell, along with Apollo 14 Commander Alan Shepard, still holds the record for the longest ever moonwalking session at nine hours and 17 minutes following their 1971 mission. Officials from NASA, were quick to play the comments down. In a statement, a spokesman said: "NASA does not track UFOs. NASA is not involved in any sort of cover up about alien life on this planet or anywhere in the universe.

Note: For more, read Edgar Mitchell's testimony on a major cover-up of UFOs. Then explore the highly reliable resources presented in our UFO Information Center.


Inspiring Articles


The Most Generous Bride on Earth: Couple Feeds 4,000 Syrian Refugees on Their Wedding Day
August 4, 2015, The Daily Beast
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/04/the-most-generous-bride-of-earth...

A couple in Turkey ... doled out food to 4,000 Syrian refugees for their wedding reception. The bride wore an elaborate white dress, with a tiara perched on her headdress, and the groom sported a white tuxedo with black trim. They stood behind large food trucks distributing meals to hungry Syrians. The couple had decided that instead of hosting their friends and family for a traditional banquet reception, they would feed the victims of a bloody civil war next door. The idea came from the groom’s father, who volunteers for a Turkish relief organization called Kimse Yok Mu (KYM). For the past few years, KYM has distributed daily meals to the thousands of impoverished Syrians who’ve flooded across the nearby border. He approached a representative of the organization and proposed that the family would cover part of the costs of feeding refugees for the day. His son ... was surprised by the prospect, but [was] soon won over. “When he told that to the bride she was really shocked because, you can imagine, as a bride you wouldn’t think about this — it’s all about you and your groom,” says Hatice Avci, the international communications manager for KYM. “In southeastern Turkey there is a real culture of sharing with people in need. They love to share their food, their table, everything they have. That’s why the bride also accepted. And afterwards she was quite amazed about it.” So, they arrived at KYM’s distribution center on Thursday to spend the day serving food and taking photographs with their grateful recipients.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


These Former Debt Collectors Decided to Ditch the Industry, Buy Up Medical Debt, and Forgive It
August 17, 2015, Yes! Magazine
http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/these-former-debt-collectors-decided-to-ditch...

When Paola Gonzalez received a phone call from RIP Medical Debt, she was certain what she heard was a mistake. A prank, maybe. The caller said a $950 hospital bill had been paid for in full. She wouldn’t have to worry about it again. “They wanted to pay a bill for me,” she said. “I was just speechless.” The 24-year-old student ... has lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease. “I can’t always work,” Gonzalez said. “I’ll be fine today and sick tomorrow. It’s really amazing that people would help out like this.” Gonzalez is one of many people who have had a debt paid by RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit founded by two former debt collectors, Jerry Ashton and Craig Antico, that buys debt on the open market and then abolishes it, no strings attached. In [its first] year, the group has abolished just under $400,000. On July 4, it launched a year-long campaign to ... abolish $17.6 million of other people’s debt. It works like this: typical collection agencies will buy debts from private practices, hospitals, and other collection agencies. The buyers often [purchase] a debt for pennies on the dollar while charging the debtor the full amount, plus additional fees. Antico and Ashton are plugged into the same marketplace. They buy the debt for around one percent of the amount it's worth. Then, they forgive it. Ashton worked in the debt collections business for more than 30 years. The industry treated debts as “commodities” and sold them for a profit while the debtor struggled to pay off the full amount. “That I find to be unconscionable,” says Ashton.

Note: Ashton was inspired to rethink debt by Rolling Jubilee, a program that came out of the Occupy Wall Street movement which similarly abolishes student loan debt.


How the Social Mission of Ben & Jerry’s Survived Being Gobbled Up
August 21, 2015, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/business/how-ben-jerrys-social-mission-survived...

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield founded their gourmet ice creamery in 1978 ... to make the world’s best ice cream, to run a financially successful company and to “make the world a better place.” When Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch consumer goods conglomerate, offered to buy the company in 2000 for a rich 25 percent premium ... they worried that Unilever would abandon the progressive aspects of the business. But as a public corporation, Ben & Jerry’s had a fiduciary duty to its shareholders. It agreed to a deal. Very quickly, some of their worst fears were realized. A production plant and a distribution center were shuttered. Sales representatives at headquarters were fired. But today ... Ben & Jerry’s [remains] as mission-driven as ever. The recipe for this amicable partnership was written into the acquisition agreement. Unilever established an “external board” charged with overseeing Ben & Jerry’s culture and social mission [that] does not report to any authority other than itself, nominates its own members, has the right to sue Unilever and will exist in perpetuity. Even with the external board in place, a question remained: How many of Ben & Jerry’s ambitious initiatives could a multinational like Unilever reasonably be expected to support? The answer, it turned out, was most of them. The company now offers its lowest-paid workers more than twice the national minimum wage. It uses only cage-free eggs. And recently, Ben & Jerry’s became a B Corporation, [to certify its] high social and environmental standards.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


On Rooftops of Paris, Expect Green Roofs and Solar Panels
August 19, 2015, Yes! Magazine
http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/france-green-roofs-law-solar-panels-20150819

Green rooftops will soon be sprouting up across France, thanks to a new law passed in March. New buildings in the country’s commercial zones - think shops, offices, and restaurants - must now have either solar panels or green roofs, meaning a growing medium such as soil and a covering of vegetation. The new rooftop vegetation will provide habitat for birds, absorb airborne pollutants, [retain] rainwater, and reduce the urban heat island effect whereby high concentrations of concrete buildings and asphalt increase air temperature. Green roofs could even improve worker productivity, with a recent study by the University of Melbourne finding that participants who took a 40-second break to look at a green roof were more focused and accurate when they got back to work compared to those who viewed a concrete roof. Similar green-roof bylaws exist in various cities around the world, including Tokyo, Toronto, Copenhagen, and Zurich. In Toronto ... all commercial and large residential buildings built since 2009 have been required to have at least 20 percent green-roof coverage. In Copenhagen and Zurich all new flat roofs, both private and public, must be vegetated. And since 2001, all new buildings in Tokyo larger than about 11,000 square feet are required to have at least 20 percent usable green-roof space. However, France is the first to introduce such legislation country-wide. The new law means that France’s urban and industrial skylines might look more like New York City’s booming rooftop farms and less like a concrete jungle.

Note: Don't miss the inspiring photos of innovative green roofs at the link above. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


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