MicroHawk's NewsScan

Comforting Words for Young Workers | NationofChange

The numbers may be right, but is the worry warranted? Time always will tell, but let's say this: Lots of shaky assumptions go into predicting how well today's young will live, starting with defining what it means to live well. It may be that today's young people end up living better, way better, than their parents — and by several measures, not just money.

via www.nationofchange.org

“We Aren’t Fighting Poverty Here, We’re Improving the Quality of Life” | Inter Press Service

SINANCHÉ, Mexico, Mar 6 2013 (IPS) - The residents of San Crisanto, a small communal village nestled in an idyllic setting in the southeastern Mexican state of Yucatán, have learned that valuing and protecting natural resources can generate employment and income.

The San Crisanto initiative, which combines ecotourism and other economic activities, is a model for other communities located along Mexico’s Caribbean coast, which is rich in biodiversity but exposed to unpredictable weather hazards.

via www.ipsnews.net

America’s Unsustainable Inequality | NationofChange

Say what you will, Marx had a point.  We have to attack the natural tendency of a capitalist economy to produce the seeds of its own destruction – namely unsustainable inequality.  Only mass protests, a groundswell, on a scale that hasn't happened in this country since the Vietnam War will make that happen.  Or maybe not. 

via www.nationofchange.org

A Deadly Disorder at the EPA - In These Times

Bayer asked EPA officials to allow clothianidin on the market—before tests on the pesticide’s environmental impact had been completed. The EPA agreed. And thus began another chapter in the EPA’s sad history of protecting not the environment, but corporate interests.

via inthesetimes.com

'Citizens' Revolution' Wins Out in Ecuador: Leftist President Correa Secures Third Term | Alternet

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa secured yesterday his third term in office by a landslide, after vowing to radically deepen his project of citizens’ revolution by making the changes achieved thus far “irreversible”, fully achieving the goals of eradicating poverty, transforming the model of production and consolidating the “rule of the people”.

via www.alternet.org

How One 75-Year-Old Soybean Farmer Could Deal a Blow to Monsanto’s Empire Today | NationofChange

Victor “Hugh” Bowman has been battling the corporation since 2007, when Monsanto sued him for violating their patent protection by purchasing second-generation GM seeds from a grain elevator. An appeals court ruled in favor of Monsanto, and despite the Obama administration’s urging to let the decision stand, the nine justices will hear Bowman make his case today.

via www.nationofchange.org

These Laws Make Me Want to Gag | NationofChange

Do you have a right to know where that steak on your plate came from?

Should it be legal to photograph chicken farms and dairy cows?

Big Agriculture says you don’t and it shouldn’t. Armies of Big Ag lobbyists are pushing for new state-level laws across the country to keep us all in the dark. Less restrictive versions have been law in some states since the 1980s, but the meat industry has ratcheted up a radical new campaign.

via www.nationofchange.org

Why the Nuclear Industry Is Beginning to Collapse | Alternet

Two more atomic dominoes have hit the deck.

At least a half-dozen more teeter on the brink, which would take the US reactor count under 100.

But can we bury them before the next Fukushima erupts?

And will we still laugh when Fox “News” says there’s more sun in Germany than California?   

via www.alternet.org

Affordable fuel cells closer: Synthetic molecule first electricity-making catalyst to use iron to split hydrogen gas

To make fuel cells more economical, engineers want a fast and efficient iron-based molecule that splits hydrogen gas to make electricity. Online Feb. 17 at Nature Chemistry, researchers report such a catalyst. It is the first iron-based catalyst that converts hydrogen directly to electricity. The result moves chemists and engineers one step closer to widely affordable fuel cells.

via www.sciencedaily.com

Bill Moyers: Why U.S. Internet Access is Slow, Costly and Unfair | Alternet

BILL MOYERS: You’ve heard me before quote one of my mentors who told his students that “news is what people want to keep hidden; everything else is publicity.” That’s why two books are rattling the cages of powerful people who would rather you not read them. Here’s the first one. Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age by Susan Crawford. Read it and you’ll understand why we Americans are paying much more for internet access than people in many other countries and getting much less in return. That, despite the fact that our very own academics and engineers, working with our very own Defense Department, invented the internet in the first place.

via www.alternet.org