Growing Controversy Over GMO Bananas in Uganda

Kiggundu works with the National Agricultural Research Organization (NARO), an Ugandan government agency developing genetically modified bananas.  The new plants are meant to be resistant to black sigatoka and banana bacterial wilt, which has been wiping out vast swaths of the country’s crop.

But the issue has created a firestorm among Ugandan activists, with many claiming genetically modified organisms would be dangerous to human health, the environment and the livelihoods of small-scale farmers.

Giregon Olupot, a soil biophysicist at Kampala’s Makerere University, has been an outspoken critic of the technology.

“There are a range of options that risk to be wiped [out], just by this technology," said Olupot.  "With bananas, tissue culture has worked well to engineer healthy plants.  You then take these plants to a clean garden and maintain field hygiene.  Why are we not giving emphasis to that technology?” Read more >>

Fukushima Plant Admits Radioactive Water Leaking To Sea

Fukushima I nuclear power plant before the 2011 explosion. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A Japanese utility said Monday its crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is likely leaking contaminated water into sea, acknowledging for the first time a problem long suspected by experts.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, also came under fire Monday for not disclosing earlier that the number of plant workers with thyroid radiation exposures exceeding threshold levels for increased cancer risks was 10 times what it said released earlier.

The delayed announcements underscored the criticisms the company has faced over the Fukushima crisis. TEPCO has been repeatedly blamed for overlooking early signs, and covering up or delaying the disclosure of problems and mishaps.

Company spokesman Masayuki Ono told a regular news conference that plant officials have come to believe that radioactive water that leaked from the wrecked reactors is likely to have seeped into the underground water system and escaped into sea. Read more >>

Contaminated Water Leaking into Ocean for Two Years at Fukushima

Shunichi Tanaka, the head of the Nuclear Regulation Authority in Japan, and the country’s chief nuclear regulator announced on Wednesday, that the nuclear power plant at Fukushima, has been leaking contaminated water into the ocean for the two years since the accident that saw three of the plants six reactors suffer a meltdown.

The problem stems from the fact that ground water is leaking into the basement of the damaged reactors, and becoming contaminated, and whilst that water is being pumped out and stored in huge tanks on site, the inflow has not yet been stopped, meaning that ever more ground water enters the basement and becomes contaminated.

Tanaka explains that neither his staff, nor those working for the plant’s operator have discovered where the leaks are coming from, and therefore have not been able to stop them.

Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the power plants operator, has constantly denied that any of that water heas been leaking into the Ocean, but in the last few days it has switched its position and finally admitted that it can’t actually say for sure that the water is not leaking into the sea. Read more >>

Crack forces shutdown of North Carolina nuclear reactor

A quarter-inch crack in a reactor sensor at the Shearon Harris nuclear plant in southwest Wake County has forced Duke Energy to take the plant offline, officials said Thursday.

No radioactive material leaked from the plant, and public health and safety is not in danger, spokeswoman Kim Crawford said.

"There are no indications that there was any leakage," Crawford said. "We made the conservative decision to take the unit offline and make the repair."

Crawford said she couldn't say how long the reactor would be out of commission, but she said the utility has plenty of capacity and wouldn't need to purchase electricity from outside sources to meet demand.

"We're not anticipating any issues," she said. "While our plant is offline, we'll continue to serve our customers."

Shearon Harris provides power to about 550,000 customers, and industry sources said not operating the reactor could cost Duke about $1 million a day. Read more >>

Scientists: Plants communicate with one another through microscopic sound waves

A study published Tuesday in the scientific journal BMC Ecology reveals that plants are able to communicate with each other even when light, scent and touch have been removed from the equation, leading scientists to speculate that there’s a wholly different mechanism they use to encourage each other’s growth.

Specifically, scientists suggested that plants might be communicating with microscopic sound waves that travel underground as a “signaling mechanism,” letting other plants know their presence and to plan accordingly.

It’s long been known that planting basil near other species can tend to encourage its neighbor’s growth, and it’s not new that plants communicate with each other through shade, chemical smells, root structures and other forms of touch.

What scientists at the University of Western Australia were looking at specifically is if there’s any other ways that plants communicate, and what they found is astonishing. By planting chili pepper next to basil, then separating them from all known methods of plant interaction, the chili plant still grew as if it knew the basil was there. Read more >>

Mass layoffs at Caterpillar in Belgium

On Thursday the management of the US construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar announced that it was laying off 1,400 workers at its plant in Gosselies, Belgium, which has a total workforce of 3,700. In addition, 190 temporary contracts will not be renewed. In two French plants a further 200 jobs are to be axed.

The plant in Gosselies began operation in 1965 and mainly produces hydraulic excavators and wheel loaders for the European market. The job cuts will have devastating consequences for the city and the entire industrial region of Charleroi. Following the closure of numerous factories, unemployment in the area is around 20 percent.

The company management justified the mass layoffs by citing weak economic growth in Europe. “More fundamentally,” however, are the high costs of production in Belgium, a statement said. “At the moment it would be cheaper for us to import machines to Europe from other group sites than to produce them at Gosselies.”

“These measures though painful are nonetheless to regain competitiveness,” declared the managing director of Caterpillar Belgium, Nicolas Polutnik. The cuts were the only way to secure the existence of the plant beyond 2015, he argued. Read more >>

Campbell Soup Shutting Down Sacramento Plant; 700 Jobs Being Cut

The Campbell Soup plant in Sacramento is closing as of July 2013 as the company says it is taking steps to “improve supply chain productivity,” according to a company release. Employees were told of the closure during a 6 a.m. meeting Thursday at the plant.

“We employ about 700 people at the Sacramento plant and unfortunately those jobs will be eliminated,” said Campbell Soup Company spokesperson Anthony Sanzio. “This is a tough day for the company, for the employees. No one likes to do this.” The company says the Sacramento plant, built in 1947, is the oldest in its network and has the highest production costs on a per-case basis.

Many of the employees at the plant have worked there their entire lives, and several told CBS13 they had no idea what they’d do next. “This is devastating, really devastating,” worker Valerie Starr said. “A lot of us have been working here for years and we’re at that age where it’s hard to find other jobs.” Read more >>

Toxic plutonium seeping from Japan's nuclear plant

Image via WikipediaHighly toxic plutonium is seeping from the damaged nuclear power plant in Japan's tsunami disaster zone into the soil outside, officials said Tuesday, as the government grew frustrated by missteps in the effort to stabilize the overheated facility.

Safety officials said the small amounts of plutonium found at several spots outside the complex were not a risk to humans but support suspicions that dangerously radioactive water is leaking from damaged nuclear fuel rods -- a worrying development in the race to bring the power plant under control.
"The situation is very grave," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters Tuesday. "We are doing our utmost efforts to contain the damage."

A tsunami spawned by a magnitude-9.0 earthquake March 11 destroyed the power systems needed to cool the nuclear fuel rods at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex, 140 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo.
Since then, three of the plant's six reactors are believed to have partially melted down, and emergency crews have grappled with everything from malfunctioning pumps to dangerous spikes in radiation that have sent workers fleeing.

Radiation seeping from the plant has made its way into produce, raw milk and even tap water as far away as Tokyo, prompting some nations to halt imports from the region. Residents within a 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius of the plant have been urged to leave or stay indoors. More...