USA: The best, most disgusting reporting on food safety
By Blair Hickman in ProPublica. The recent brouhaha over pink slime (and other lovely mass meat production processes) is only the beginning. Here’s our roundup of some standout reporting about the food on your plate. This is a multifaceted, perennial topic. If you think we missed any, we’re happy to hear suggestions. Please...
Disposal of fracking wastewater could pose environmental hazard
A recent study by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) shows that the oil and gas industry are creating earthquakes. New information from the Midwest region of the United States points out that these man-made earthquakes are happening more frequently than expected. While more frequent earthquakes are less of a problem for regions like the […]
Australian billionaire announces replica Titanic
Australian billionaire mining magnate Clive Palmer has announced plans to build a fleet of luxury cruise ships, including a replica of the famous RMS Titanic. Palmer has announced his new company Blue Star Line Pty Ltd has commissioned a close replica of the Titanic from CSC Jinling Shipyard in China. Construction would...
PANAMA: Poor but not forgotten thanks to online videos
Coco Solo was once a United States Navy submarine base on the Panama Canal Zone, near Colón, Panama. Today, Coco Solo is the home of some of the poorest, most marginalized Panamanians. In 2008, Reuters published a story about the “poverty and decay” in Coco Solo, where John McCain (then Republican presidential...
SWEDEN: Controversy over 'racist cake' art piece...created by black artist
News website grioo.com reports that on April 15, 2012, Swedish Culture Minister, Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth, attended a exhibition preview at Museum of Modern Art of Stockholm to celebrate ‘World Art Day'. The highlight of the show seems to have been the tasting of the ‘Painful Cake' representing the body of an African woman, ...
PAKISTAN: Stop dumping on us!
Globalization is often touted as the solve it all solution of the problems this world faces today. However there are several very highly toxic effects of globalization as well. For instance these seemingly dissipating borders means that the western world has been and even now is engaged in dumping its plastic and medical waste...
US: "I am Trayvon Martin"
On February 26, 2012, George Zimmerman, a ‘Neighborhood Watch Volunteer' in Sanford, Florida, USA, shot and killed 17 year-old Trayvon Martin while the latter was coming out of a store with freshly-purchased candy. George Zimmerman confessed to the police that he shot Trayvon in the chest. According to the 911-recording of ...
JAPAN: Surfers, fishermen, and radiation
Journalist Lisa Katayama and filmmaker Jason Wishnow are documenting the lives of people dealing with radiation in a post-earthquake Japan. In We Are All Radioactive, they are including 50% footage made by themselves in the areas around Fukushima Power Plant that had a meltdown after the earthquake and tsunami in March...
Russian scholars call on Medvedev and Putin to defend Bhagavad Gita
Twenty leading Russian scholars urged Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister, President-elect Vladimir Putin to step in and take the ongoing Bhagavad Gita trial in the Siberian city of Tomsk under "personal control", saying it "discredits Russia's cultural and democratic credentials in the eyes of the civilized...
Kony video incites anger among some Ugandans
Anyone following online citizen media closely this month, would inevitably have come across the heated global debate over the Invisible Children viral campaign to stop Ugandan war criminal and rebel army leader Joseph Kony. While the Kony 2012 campaign certainly received the attention it sought, many Ugandans and Africans...