Breaking Waves: Ocean News

State is US’s largest user of pesticide that is virtually proven to cause Parkinson’s disease California is banning paraquat, a highly toxic, controversial herbicide used across millions of acres of American cropland. Public health advocates characterize it as a deadly substance that is virtually proven to cause Parkinson’s disease. It is already outlawed in more than 70 countries, including China, the UK and the EU. Yet in the US, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reapproved it for use in 2021 and 2024. Continue reading...

The dangers of AI become clearer every day. Why are we still acting as if we have no choice about our future? Rather than producing jobs, the US economy actually lost 23,000 jobs in July, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released on Friday. In addition, May and June’s job numbers were revised downward, showing a combined 103,000 fewer jobs than previously reported. As if this weren’t bad enough, wage growth has also slowed. Average hourly earnings rose by just 0.1% from June. Continue reading...

Firms in England and Wales seek to fund measures including supporting new homes and datacentres Business live – latest updates Millions of households in England and Wales face higher bills after water companies were given the green light to spend £3.4bn more than planned, including to support new homes and datacentres. The new spending will come on top of the £104bn programme of investment approved by the regulator that had already meant water bills will rise by 36% over the second half of the decade. Continue reading...

This summer’s extreme weather and wars in Iran and Ukraine have made our need for food stockpiles more pressing than ever When a business makes long-term plans, they call it prudence. When a government makes long-term plans, they call it communism. Any sustained state intervention attracts the prefix “Soviet-style”, and triggers vicious attacks across the billionaire media. So governments have developed a bias against long-term thinking. This may explain why we no longer maintain strategic food reserves. In Britain, where soils have parched, market analysts warn that we’re facing the most severe food security crisis in decades. In normal years, crop failures at home don’t threaten our security, thanks to global trade. This is one of the reasons why hunger and famines are rarer and less deadly than they used to be. But this is not a normal year, because the problem is now global. Continue reading...