Environment

Forests Saved by Pollution Problem

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Private forest owners in California are making green — in both the environmental and financial senses — by reducing their carbon footprint, according to a San Francisco Chronicle story. The Garcia River and Van Eck forests are selling carbon offsets to support environmentally friendly initiatives after a state- sponsored nonprofit granted them permission to do so. Carbon offsets are voluntary payments to invest in renewable energy programs and counter greenhouse gas-producing activities — and unlike other offset programs, participating forest owners must abide by rigorous standards by promising to preserve the land for permanent forest use. They must also verify the amount of carbon stored in the trees and to store more than they are legally required. Garcia Rivers offsets their largest customer, utility company PG&E, who in turn charge their ratepayers up to $10 per metric ton of carbon dioxide emissions.

Public Health

PTSD Hits the British Armed Forces

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Roughly 24,000 British veterans returning from duty in Iraq or Afghanistan are now battling the UK’s criminal justice system and constituting nine percent of the prison population, according to reports. The U.K.’s Telegraph reported the findings of three separate studies sponsored by the National Association of Probation Officers and other veteran support groups. Research from 2001 to 2004 along with the case histories of 74 veterans showed that the majority of violent offenses committed by veterans is fueled by drug and alcohol abuse, the result of untreated post-traumatic stress disorder. With 8,000 veterans currently in custody, concerned citizens argue that the Ministry of Defense is doing too little to screen recently discharged servicemen and women for early signs of mental illness. The Ministry says it utilizes “robust systems” to treat and prevent PTSD with pre- and post-deployment screenings, and subsequent access to counseling.

World

Journalist Slaying Stirs up Trouble in Russian Hinterland

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Hundreds of protestors packed the streets of a Russian city on Monday after a critic of the Kremlin was arrested and killed by police. Magomed Yevloyev, the owner of a Web site in the rebellious Ingushetia region, was arrested on Sunday at an airport after getting off the same flight as the Moscow-supported leader of the region, according to the BBC. Soon afterwards, he was shot in the head and dumped near a hospital, where he later died from his injuries, the BBC reported. According to the London Telegraph, Ingushetia has been the scene of a number of deadly attacks in recent months, as a low-level Islamist insurgency has targeted local officials. The region has a stormy history with the nearby South Ossetia region, where Russia has supported a breakaway region against the Georgian government, and, the Telegraph reports, Russia’s recent war with Georgia has further destabilized the situation.

Democracy & Civics

In South America, Land Rights go Native

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[UPDATE: A December 15, 2008, court ruling found in favor of the indigenous plaintiffs.]
A group of new reports finds that land-rights battles in South America may be tipping in favor of indigenous peoples. In Brazil, the Supreme Court is deciding on the right of Amazon natives to live in their ancestral homelands. Inter Press Service, a left-leaning advocacy news outlet, reports that the 11-member court has asked for more time to investigate whether a 1.7-million hectare reserve allotted to natives in the Amazon region was taken illegally by wealthy rice farmers. Already one judge voted in favor of the natives, describing the farmers’ residency as “an unlawful possession.” The remaining judges will decide by the end of the year, but conflict over land ownership is ongoing and in some cases has turned violent.

Democracy & Civics

San Francisco's 'Black Exodus' Gathers Steam

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A new study has found that African Americans are abandoning San Francisco in droves, faster than any other U.S. city. The black population has decreased from 13.4 percent in 1970 to 10.9 percent in 1990 and comprises 6.5 percent of San Francisco’s population in 2005 — the latest year figures were available. The task force also projects the numbers to fall still further, to 4.6 percent by 2050. Speakers at a hearing in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood said that the findings are just the latest in a series of reports dating back to the 1970s, and validated their fears about an “black exodus” that could almost eliminate the city’s African American population. Critics blamed the problem on a dearth of economic opportunity and African-American culture, combined with skyrocketing housing prices driven by gentrification.

World

Dark Side of the Green Revolution

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It was the chemically supplemented Green Revolution of the 1960s that helped India end its cycles of famine. Yet a series of new reports reveal a dark side to dependence of pesticides, fertilizers and irrigation, including disease, environmental decline and social decay, the latter often driven by bad government planning. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that health problems previously unheard of are proliferating in the northwestern Punjab state — ground zero for the Green Revolution in India, and known as the nation’s breadbasket. Local medical clinics and health officials speak of a surge in cancer, muscular disorders in teens, early menstruation in young girls, lower sperm counts and more frequent stillbirths. According to the BBC, new questions have also emerged about the Green Revolution’s long-term ability to support ever-growing human populations.

Democracy & Civics

India's Recipe for school success? Add three eggs

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In India, there apparently is such a thing as a free lunch. The World Press Review reports that the government has mandated the world’s largest lunch program to keep 140 million public school students in the classroom. An estimated 2.1 million Indian children die before age 5 each year, and malnutrition is also blamed as one of the causes of India’s high dropout rate. Yet since the hot-lunch program debuted, the dropout rate for students 14 or younger has decreased from 32 million in 2001 to 7.6 million today, while overall enrollment figures and nutrition levels have increased. A government official said the program helped lower the elementary school dropout rate from 12 percent to two percent between 2002 and 2007.

Democracy & Civics

Businesses Decry Paid Sick Leave Push in California, Ohio

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A bill working its way through the state legislature would make California the first state to mandate paid sick leave for employees. In Ohio, citizens will take the matter into their own hands with a vote on the Healthy Families Act, a public referendum on the November ballot that would require businesses with 25 or more employees to provide at least seven days of paid sick leave for employees. California’s AB 2716 would affect more than 5.4 million workers who don’t receive sick leave from their job, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, and was inspired by an ordinance passed by the city’s board of supervisors that took effect in February 2007. If passed, the bill would provide one day of sick leave for every 30 hours worked, the Sacramento Bee reported, and the state’s department of industrial relations would enforce it at a cost of about $600,000 per year. Small businesses do get a small break — firms with fewer than 10 employees would only have to grant employees five day of paid sick leave per year, while businesses with more employees are required to provide as many as nine days.

Economy

Will Mobile Phones Vault the Digital Divide?

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Inexpensive mobile technology is opening doors in the developing world for communities that have previously been shut out of the information revolution due to the high cost of desktop computers. Mobile devices are increasingly used to provide financial information and business services to low-income communities, as well as to report human rights abuses or drive political campaigns in emerging democracies. Writing for India’s Business Standard, Guruduth Banavar said cell phone use in India has exploded past 200 million subscribers, with 7.5 million new users added monthly, while cell phone users in Africa are expected to number 600 million by 2011. The numbers have already surpassed traditional land-line telephones, Banavar said, and sales of mobile phones in India have rocketed past personal computer sales. Mohammad Yunus, a Nobel laureate for his work developing microlending programs for the developing world, is developing a new program in India to offer mobile payment and banking services via cell phone.

World

Hindu and Muslim Conflicts Rock Kashmir

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In the biggest demonstration in almost twenty years, tens of thousands of Muslims gathered in Indian Kashmir’s main city in mid-August following the fatal shooting of 22 protesters by Indian police. According to Agence France-Presse, one of the dead was a senior Kashmiri separatist, Sheikh Abdul Aziz, whom one demonstrator was quick to lionize. “He is our hero — he has laid a fresh foundation for our freedom struggle with his martyrdom,” demonstrator Ayub Laway said. The unrest began in June when a piece of land was given to a Hindu trust. When Muslims — the majority population in the Kashmir valley — protested, the government rescinded the land offer.