Quebec bird deaths stump wildlife officials
By JEAN-FRANCOIS RACINE, QMI AGENCY
Last Updated: January 7, 2011 3:19pm

MONTREAL — More than 80 pigeons have keeled over and died at a farm near Quebec City for unknown reasons, the latest in a string of mysterious animal deaths around the world.

Environmental officials in the province say there’s no connection to a similar case in Arkansas, but Sylvain Turmel is wondering why he’s been picking up dead pigeons for more than two weeks on his farm in Saint-Augustine-de-Desmaures.

The first dead bird was found on Dec. 18. He’s since found more bodies on his roof and inside the barn.

“I was stunned,” he said.

“I went to see my tenant to ask whether he’d been feeding them poison. He ended helping me pick up 25 corpses. In the time it took us to collect them, five more had fallen. Authorities thought it might be gas. But that’s not possible.”

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries said tests are currently being performed at the animal pathology lab in the provincial capital.

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Perfect timing, because what we need most is synthetic biological systems to pollute the remaining natural ones. I look forward to teaching my digital spawn about the berds and the biis

Scientists Construct Synthetic Proteins That Sustain Life
ScienceDaily (Jan. 7, 2011) — In a groundbreaking achievement that could help scientists "build" new biological systems, Princeton University scientists have constructed for the first time artificial proteins that enable the growth of living cells.

The team of researchers created genetic sequences never before seen in nature, and the scientists showed that they can produce substances that sustain life in cells almost as readily as proteins produced by nature's own toolkit.
"What we have here are molecular machines that function quite well within a living organism even though they were designed from scratch and expressed from artificial genes," said Michael Hecht, a professor of chemistry at Princeton, who led the research. "This tells us that the molecular parts kit for life need not be limited to parts -- genes and proteins -- that already exist in nature."


The work, Hecht said, represents a significant advance in synthetic biology, an emerging area of research in which scientists work to design and fabricate biological components and systems that do not already exist in the natural world. One of the field's goals is to develop an entirely artificial genome composed of unique patterns of chemicals.

"Our work suggests," Hecht said, "that the construction of artificial genomes capable of sustaining cell life may be within reach."
Nearly all previous work in synthetic biology has focused on reorganizing parts drawn from natural organisms. In contrast, Hecht said, the results described by the team show that biological functions can be provided by macromolecules that were not borrowed from nature, but designed in the laboratory.

Although scientists have shown previously that proteins can be designed to fold and, in some cases, catalyze reactions, the Princeton team's work represents a new frontier in creating these synthetic proteins.

The research, which Hecht conducted with three former Princeton students and a former postdoctoral fellow, is described in the online journal PLoS ONE, published by the Public Library of Science.

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Original report on fadsmashers
http://www.fadsmashers.com/5/post/2011/01/is-bird-apocalypse-focus-mere-msm-apocaporn-flu-fearmongering.html

'Very large' fish kill reported in bay
http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/green/bs-gr-fish-kill-bay-20110104,0,5624655.story

Thousands Of Fish Dead In Spruce Creek
http://www.wftv.com/news/26367953/detail.html

Scientists Create 52 Artificial Rain Storms in Abu Dhabi Desert

Hail, lightning and gales came through the state's eastern region this summer thanks to scientist-puppetmasters.
As part of a secret program to control the weather in the Middle East, scientists working for the United Arab Emirates government artificially created rain where rain is generally nowhere to be found. The $11 million project, which began in July, put steel lampshade-looking ionizers in the desert to produce charged particles. The negatively charged ions rose with the hot air, attracting dust. Moisture then condensed around the dust and eventually produced a rain cloud. A bunch of rain clouds.


On the 52 days it rained in the region throughout July and August, forecasters did not predict rain once.
While fascinating, this is not the first time scientists have attempted to mess with Mother Nature. China has been tinkering with cloud seeding for years, not always successfully.


Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/01/03/scientists-create-52-artificial-rain-storms-in-abu-dhabi-desert/#ixzz1AMA7QQGo

Researchers Find "Alarming" Decline in Bumblebees

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Four previously abundant species of bumblebee are close to disappearing in the United States, researchers reported Monday in a study confirming that the agriculturally important bees are being affected worldwide.

They documented a 96 percent decline in the numbers of the four species, and said their range had shrunk by as much as 87 percent. As with honeybees, a pathogen is partly involved, but the researchers also found evidence of inbreeding caused by habitat loss.

"We provide incontrovertible evidence that multiple Bombus species have experienced sharp population declines at the national level," the researchers reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, calling the findings "alarming."

"These are one of the most important pollinators of native plants," Sydney Cameron of the University of Illinois, Urbana, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.

In recent years, experts have documented a disappearance of bees in what is widely called colony collapse disorder, blamed on many factors including parasites, fungi, stress, pesticides and viruses. But most studies have focused on honeybees.

Bumblebees are also important pollinators, Cameron said, but are far less studied. Bumblebees pollinate tomatoes, blueberries and cranberries, she noted.


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FROM ABC NEWS (AUSTRALIA)

Floods driving food and commodity prices

TONY EASTLEY: The economic impact of the Queensland floods is being felt far beyond Australia.

The crisis is driving up prices of global commodities such as wheat, coal and sugar.

Rachel Carbonell reports.

RACHEL CARBONELL: Australia is one of the world's biggest exporters of wheat and coal, much of which comes from Queensland.

Managing partner at Top Third Ag Marketing in Chicago Mark Gold says the effect on Queensland's wheat crop is contributing to worldwide shortages and driving up prices every day.

MARK GOLD: We've gone from $ US7.05 a bushel to $ US8.63 a bushel of Kansas City wheat. So that's almost a 20 per cent, a little bit more than 20 per cent increase so it's been a direct correlation.

And really since, the big jump has come from really December first and today and we were up another 10 cents today. We went up more at one point but sold off a little bit.

You know the shortages around the world - you know it just seems like every year for the last three years now we've had one problem after another with one of the major wheat crops.

RACHEL CARBONELL: He says the price of sugar is also going up.

MARK GOLD: Your sugar cane crop has certainly been affected by the flooding there. We've seen sugar prices at very strong price. Not like we saw back at 1972 and 73 but we're at the highest prices we've been at roughly 20, 30 years out here.

So all of this is having an impact.

RACHEL CARBONELL: The availability of coal, particularly coal used in steel production around the world, is also being affected.

The Queensland Premier Anna Bligh told the 7.30 Report three-quarters of the state's coal fields are unable to operate and supply markets.

ANNA BLIGH: There is likely to be a significant long term effect of that, not only nationally but internationally.

Queensland supplies half of the world's coking coal needed in steel manufacture so there is a remarkable problem out there in the mining industry.

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From Global Research
The Gulf of Mexico is Dying
A Special Report on the BP Gulf Oil Spill

by Dr. Tom Termotto

It is with deep regret that we publish this report.  We do not take this responsibility lightly, as the consequences of the following observations are of such great import and have such far-reaching ramifications for the entire planet.  Truly, the fate of the oceans of the world hangs in the balance, as does the future of humankind.

The Gulf of Mexico (GOM) does not exist in isolation and is, in fact, connected to the Seven Seas.  Hence, we publish these findings in order that the world community will come together to further contemplate this dire and demanding predicament.  We also do so with the hope that an appropriate global response will be formulated, and acted upon, for the sake of future generations.  It is the most basic responsibility for every civilization to leave their world in a better condition than that which they inherited from their forbears.

After conducting the Gulf Oil Spill Remediation Conference for over seven months, we can now disseminate the following information with the authority and confidence of those who have thoroughly investigated a crime scene.  There are many research articles, investigative reports and penetrating exposes archived at the following website.  Particularly those posted from August through November provide a unique body of evidence, many with compelling photo-documentaries, which portray the true state of affairs at the Macondo Prospect in the GOM.

READ THIS ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE

FROM REUTERS


Special Report: A day without genetically altered orange juice

(Reuters) - For many Americans, few things seem more wholesome than a glass of fresh-squeezed Florida orange juice, the original "natural food." As former beauty queen Anita Bryant chirped more than four decades ago, in what remains a fondly remembered tagline: "A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine."

She wasn't talking about green oranges or genetically altered ones, but that was then.

We live in a "world of nasty bacteria now," says Calvin Arnold, a scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. An insect-borne bacterial disease that is ravaging Florida's citrus crop means the juice squeezed from the Sunshine State's fruit may soon come from trees that have had their genetic makeup modified.

The blight, commonly known as "greening," is the world's most destructive citrus disease.

GMO juice would likely be reviled by critics of the biotech industry as "Frankenfood." But Arnold and other experts say there simply may be no other choice in the battle against greening.

"It's the most serious disease threat that the Florida citrus industry has ever faced," said Arnold, a 67-year-old official with the USDA's Agricultural Research Service.

As the director of the U.S. Horticultural Research Laboratory in Fort Pierce, in the prime Indian River region of Florida's citrus belt, Arnold is on the frontlines of what he and others describe as an all-out push by the biotech industry, and geneticists in particular, to develop an effective weapon against greening.

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Wi-Fi Makes Trees Sick, Study Says
City trees are becoming sick from wireless radiation from local area networks and mobile phones, according to a European study.
By René Schoemaker , IDG News Nov 19, 2010 3:09 pm

Radiation from Wi-Fi networks is harmful to trees, causing significant variations in growth, as well as bleeding and fissures in the bark, according to a recent study in the Netherlands.

All deciduous trees in the Western world are affected, according to the study by Wageningen University. The city of Alphen aan den Rijn ordered the study five years ago after officials found unexplained abnormalities on trees that couldn't be ascribed to a virus or bacterial infection.

Additional testing found the disease to occur throughout the Western world. In the Netherlands, about 70 percent of all trees in urban areas show the same symptoms, compared with only 10 percent five years ago. Trees in densely forested areas are hardly affected.

Besides the electromagnetic fields created by mobile-phone networks and wireless LANs, ultrafine particles emitted by cars and trucks may also be to blame. These particles are so small they are able to enter the organisms.

The study exposed 20 ash trees to various radiation sources for a period of three months. Trees placed closest to the Wi-Fi radio demonstrated a "lead-like shine" on their leaves that was caused by the dying of the upper and lower epidermis of the leaves. This would eventually result in the death of parts of the leaves. The study also found that Wi-Fi radiation could inhibit the growth of corn cobs.

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