The race to build the world's largest solar power plant is heating up. California-based energy company SolarReserve announced plans for a massive concentrated solar power (CSP) plant in Nevada that claims to be the largest of its kind once built.

SolarReserve CEO Kevin Smith told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the $5 billion endeavor would generate between 1,500 and 2,000 megawatts of power, enough to power about 1 million homes. That amount of power is as much as a nuclear power plant, or the 2,000-megawatt Hoover Dam and far bigger than any other existing solar facility on Earth, the Review-Journal pointed out.
http://www.ecowatch.com/worlds-largest-solar-project-nevada-2041546638.html?xrs=RebelMouse_fb

A contingent from the Ohio State Highway Patrol left Dayton this morning to assist North Dakota officials with security in protests over a pipeline.

Thirty-seven Ohio troopers from all over the state are en route to the site, officials said this morning.
http://www.whio.com/news/crime--law/ohio-troopers-headed-pipeline-protest/VL0ZLYFviTQAqXvYJnVaKK/

Twenty years ago, Europe largely rejected genetic modification at the same time the United States and Canada were embracing it. Comparing results on the two continents, using independent data as well as academic and industry research, shows how the technology has fallen short of the promise.

An analysis by The Times using United Nations data showed that the United States and Canada have gained no discernible advantage in yields — food per acre — when measured against Western Europe, a region with comparably modernized agricultural producers like France and Germany. Also, a recent National Academy of Sciences report found that “there was little evidence” that the introduction of genetically modified crops in the United States had led to yield gains beyond those seen in conventional crops.

At the same time, herbicide use has increased in the United States, even as major crops like corn, soybeans and cotton have been converted to modified varieties. And the United States has fallen behind Europe’s biggest producer, France, in reducing the overall use of pesticides, which includes both herbicides and insecticides.
One measure, contained in data from the United States Geological Survey, shows the stark difference in the use of pesticides. Since genetically modified crops were introduced in the United States two decades ago for crops like corn, cotton and soybeans, the use of toxins that kill insects and fungi has fallen by a third, but the spraying of herbicides, which are used in much higher volumes, has risen by 21 percent.

By contrast, in France, use of insecticides and fungicides has fallen by a far greater percentage — 65 percent — and herbicide use has decreased as well, by 36 percent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/business/gmo-promise-falls-short.html?_r=1

When serious drift issues began popping up around the Mid-South in late June, dicamba immediately became the prime suspect.

The reason? Monsanto’s Roundup Ready 2 Xtend soybean seed had been approved for planting in 2016. However, the company’s new dicamba formulation with lower volatility had not. In fact, no dicamba product has been approved for use with the Xtend technology.

It turns out the ban didn’t stop farmers – many desperate to control problem pigweeds – from spraying various dicamba products on the crop. The full consequences of those actions won’t be known until harvest but regulatory officials in several states cite a rough figure of 200,000 affected acres in the Arkansas, the Missouri Bootheel and Tennessee.

http://gmwatch.org/news/latest-news/17301-farmer-murders-farmer-in-dispute-over-dicamba-herbicide-drift

In a joint statement, the World Health Organization and UNICEF said Wednesday that the groups' vaccination program in Idlib and Deir Ezzor provinces has been halted as a team of experts try to get to the bottom of the situation. A spokesman for the WHO, the public health arm of the United Nations, said a preliminary investigation suggests the deaths can be attributed not to a criminal act but simple human error.
The WHO spokesman, Christian Lindmeier, said early reports suggest medics may have accidentally mixed a high-dose muscle relaxant into the vaccine powder instead of the designated serum.
"Apparently, in the same fridge ... where the vaccines were stored, there was also a muscle relaxant," Lindmeier explained Thursday to CNN, adding the vaccine itself likely wasn't contaminated. "The muscle relaxant vial looks like the same vial as the vaccine."
This explanation may not do much right now to blunt the agony and anger of those who saw children die this week in Syria's Idlib province. Some distressed parents and local authorities have demanded not only an investigation, but that the medical personnel involved be put on trial, according to Mohamad Alkanash, an anti-Assad activist in the town of Jarjanaz.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/18/world/meast/syria-measles-vaccination-deaths/

In recognition of the central role played by Indigenous women in the resistance effort, the Women's Earth & Climate Action Network, International (WECAN) interviewed women leaders of Standing Rock and allied Indigenous Nations, recording their experiences, visions and calls to action for social and ecological justice. Their voices are critical not only for the wisdom, solutions and pointed analysis that they offer, but also because of the direct, violent impacts of the fossil fuel industry that are often borne disproportionately on the bodies of Indigenous women.

Dakota Access pipeline: Native Americans allege cruel treatment

Gonzales said she spent 36 hours behind bars and was now facing multiple charges, including criminal trespassing and conspiracy with fire. Police also impounded her motor home, she said, with all of her belongings.

“I don’t have any clothes or anything,” she said, sitting in a hotel room in a local casino, where she and others were recovering from what they described as traumatic jail experiences.

Gonzales, who lives in Olympia in Washington state and has been at the camp for three months, said she was arrested while praying. “They slammed us on to the ground,” she said.

She said she was particularly upset by the way police repeatedly searched her and other Native American women.

“He searched me everywhere, touched everywhere,” she said, adding that the experience has been emotionally draining. “I was just crying. I couldn’t physically stop myself.”

After a night of chaotic clashes with police on the front lines in a months-long protest, Native American activists complained about the force wielded to drive protesters from the path of a pipeline they contend will desecrate tribal lands and put their lone source of drinking water at risk.

Protesters said that those arrested in the confrontation had numbers written on their arms and were housed in what appeared to be dog kennels, without bedding or furniture. Others said advancing officers sprayed mace and pelted them with rubber bullets.

“It goes back to concentration camp days,” said Mekasi Camp-Horinek, a protest coordinator who said authorities wrote a number on his arm when he was housed in one of the mesh enclosures with his mother, Casey

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-north-dakota-pipeline-20161028-story.html

For the past several years, many drought-stricken farms in California's Central Valley, which produces 40 percent of the nation's fruits and vegetables, have been increasingly irrigating their crops with wastewater -- a practice the US Department of Agriculture does not restrict.

Now a new report by the Environmental Working Group says that this wastewater is possibly tainted with toxic chemicals, including chemicals that can cause cancer and reproductive harm. Farmers in Kern County have irrigated some 95,000 acres of food crops with billions of gallons of oil field wastewater, according to the report, which is based on an analysis of state data.

Actually, oil companies have been quietly selling wastewater for irrigation in California for decades, but it's only in recent years that the matter has become public knowledge. In the past, the state required regular testing for only a handful of pollutants to satisfy permit requirements for use of wastewater on agriculture. This is the first time we are getting a detailed look at the makeup of the toxic cocktail that could be lurking in the water.

According to state data, oil companies operating in California have reported that recycled wastewater sold to Kern County irrigation districts since 2014 contained more than 20 million pounds and 2 million gallons of dozens of toxic chemicals. These chemicals included 16 that the state classifies as carcinogens or reproductive toxicants. Levels of the chemicals were not measured and a full assessment of what exactly is in this water is pretty much impossible because the companies have withheld the identity of almost 40 percent of the chemicals as so-called trade secrets.
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/38168-oilfield-wastewater-used-to-grow-food-in-california-may-contain-toxinshttp://www.truth-out.org/news/item/38168-oilfield-wastewater-used-to-grow-food-in-california-may-contain-toxins