Monsanto, the maker of the world’s most popular weed killer Roundup, could soon be facing an unrelenting flood of lawsuits from people who got cancer from their product.

On Tuesday, a federal judge decided to allow three expert witnesses to give their testimony pertaining to Roundup’s carcinogenicity. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria ruled that the three experts could testify, and he even went so far as to say that their opinions were not “junk science.” The judge will be presiding over more than 400 of the lawsuits against Monsanto.

In his opinion, Chhabria wrote: “So long as an opinion is premised on reliable scientific principles, it should not be excluded by the trial judge; instead the weaknesses in an unpersuasive expert opinion can be exposed at trial, through cross-examination or testimony by opposing experts.”

A federal appeals court says the Trump administration endangered public health by keeping the top-selling pesticide chlorpyrifos (clor-PEER-i-fos) on the market despite extensive scientific evidence that even tiny levels of exposure can harm babies' brains.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to remove chlorpyrifos from sale in the United States within 60 days.

After months of spewing hot lava into residential neighborhoods and into the sea, it appears that Hawaii's Kilauea volcano may be taking a pause after a slowdown in activity since the weekend.

The U.S. Geological Survey said in a series of updates since Sunday that there was been a "significant reduction" in lava from fissure 8, which fed a channelized lava flow that reached the Pacific Ocean.

"It is common for eruptions to wax and wane or pause completely," the USGS said Tuesday. "A return to high levels of lava discharge or new outbreaks in the area of active fissures could occur at any time."

In a historic first, a California Jury is now deliberating whether Monsanto's Roundup weed killer gave a school groundskeeper terminal cancer, after lawyers for both sides delivered their closing arguments on Tuesday.

Groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson is one of more than 5,000 plaintiffs across the United States who claim Monsanto’s glyphosate-containing herbicides, including the widely-used Roundup, cause cancer. His case, the first to go to trial, began in San Francisco’s Superior Court of California four weeks ago. -Reuters

On Tuesday, Johnson's attorney Brent Wisner urged jurors to hold Monsanto liable and slap them with a verdict that would "actually change the world" - after arguing that Monsanto knew about glyphosate's risks of cancer, but decided to ignore and bury the information.

Ending a five-year moratorium, the Trump administration Wednesday took a first step toward opening 1.6 million acres of California public land to fracking and conventional oil drilling, triggering alarm bells among environmentalists.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management said it’s considering new oil and natural gas leases on BLM-managed lands in Fresno, San Luis Obispo and six other San Joaquin Valley and Central Coast counties. Meanwhile, activists in San Luis Obispo are pushing a ballot measure this fall to ban fracking and new oil exploration in the county.

Relying on skill and strength to raise up skyscrapers and spruce up homes, construction workers routinely face difficult and dangerous working conditions. Now a Massachusetts study has identified an overlooked hazard linked to their jobs: fatal opioid overdoses.

The report by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health found that nearly a quarter of overdose deaths in a five-year period occurred among people, mostly men, who work in construction. Farmers and fishermen also had higher-than-average rates of overdose deaths.

The common factor: Workplace injuries occur frequently in these occupations.

BREAKING NEWS: NC BAR SUES VACCINE RIGHTS ATTORNEY IN CLASSIC WITCH HUNT!

In a recent update, Mr. Kennedy reported on some of the actions of Judge Bolanos that seemed to suggest that the judge could be potentially biased in favor of Monsanto by not allowing some key evidence, some of which seems to contradict what another judge, Judge Curtis Karnow, seemed to rule was admissible in pre-trial hearings.

Dangerous, deadly and destructive wildfires have churned through California in the summer of 2018. Here are some dramatic views of these blazes from high above as seen by astronauts and cosmonauts in space. In this image: Cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev posted four photos of the California wildfires, as seen from the International Space Station, on Twitter on Aug. 7, 2018.

In 2012, an 18-year-old Dutch entrepreneur told a TEDx audience he was designing a device to clean-up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Boyan Slat's idea sounded like a novel concept that would quickly succumb to the insurmountable logistical issues of cleaning up 1.6 million square kilometres of plastic in deep, remote, open ocean.

However, six years on Mr Slat's organisation The Ocean Cleanup is about to test a 120-metre section, ahead of deploying the first 600-metre system to the Northern Pacific Ocean later this year.

We eat it in our food and spray it on our gardens and allotments. It is all over our parks and farmers’ crops.

Roundup is the UK’s most widely used weedkiller and globally the most popular in history.

When the U.S. company Monsanto launched the product in 1974, its marketing men proclaimed it to be a technological breakthrough that killed almost every weed without harming humans or the environment.

But since the Nineties, the safety of Roundup — and its active ingredient glyphosate — has been challenged by studies that suggest that the weedkiller is linked to serious conditions including liver and kidney disease, infertility, birth abnormalities and cancer.

In what could possibly be the world’s largest agricultural feat, Canadian farmer Travis Heide is in the process of converting his 40,000-acre farm entirely to organic.

Heide’s farm is large enough to produce 2,200,000 bushels of wheat per year. Although he has been mostly quiet about his transition to organic, his company Organics Canada Ltd. is set to boom as he will begin producing oats, lentils, peas, wheat and hemp all organically.

Currently, the farm is half-organic and half-conventionally grown, but by 2020 Travis plans to convert his entire farm to organic.

The Trump administration is making another incremental move toward lower drug prices, opening up a new part of Medicare to well-established competitive pressures.

The big picture: "Step therapy" allows insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) to set up a system under which patients have to start with a cheaper drug first, switching to a higher-cost alternative only if they need to.

Step therapy is common in private insurance and in Medicare’s coverage for the kinds of drugs you pick up at a pharmacy.
Now, the administration is allowing the use of step therapy for some drugs that are administered at a doctor’s office — which are some of the most expensive drugs on the market.

A medical doctor in France, Dr. Gérard Delépine, an oncologist, has published an analysis of the HPV vaccine Gardasil on the independent news site, Agora Vox, showing how increased rates of Gardasil vaccinations are actually correlated with a higher rate of cervical cancer.

The analysis was published as an Open letter to parliamentarians, and to all citizens in response to a recent meeting between French President Emmanuel Macron and “thirty leaders of the world’s largest pharmaceutical groups,” and to the call among some politicians to make the HPV vaccine Gardasil mandatory in France.

Pointing out that Gardasil only targets 2 to 5% of the 200 known strains of the human papillomavirus, Dr. Delépine explains that there is no evidence that Gardasil protects against cancer.

Instead of reducing the risk of invasive cancer of the cervix, HPV vaccines keep it at a high level or increase it!

The Sun has an immense impact on every facet of life on our planet. As the hot, glowing ball of gas that sits in the center of our solar system, it influences all life on Earth and plays a major role in existing conditions on our neighboring planets as well.[1] The Sun has been worshiped by many cultures as a god, and for good reason. Without the intense energy and heat provided by it, life could not exist.

But the Sun also holds many secrets—and some of them are quite dangerous. In fact, a handful have our scientists legitimately worried! Here are ten rather terrifying dangers of our Sun that have some scientists more than a little bit concerned.

The popularity of tobacco is likely owed to nicotine, one of its potent ingredients. Nicotine is an alkaloid that in lesser doses produces a relaxing and stimulating effect, and increases the level of dopamine and serotonin, which probably accounts for its addictive properties. In higher doses it can be harmful. Even though labeled addictive, its benefits seem to outweigh the risks. In fact, it seems to have no more health risks than caffeine.

The confusion about nicotine comes from anti-smoking activists who equate nicotine and smoking. Nicotine is an anti-inflammatory agent and has been shown, among other things to prevent and treat Alzheimer’s, as well as delay the onset of Parkinson’s disease.

In South Florida this summer, one ecological scourge has piled on top of another.

First came the red tide, a flotilla of microorganisms that dyed the sea rust and eventually stretched out along 100 miles of the Gulf Coast. Oxygen-starved fish, eels, dolphins and turtles littered beaches, in numbers too vast to count. In one marina, so many fish went belly up that they appeared to pave a walkway across the water.

The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory reports that earthquakes have reduced at Kilauea summit and the lava flow from Fissure 8 has no movement in the channel.

Motorists on Highway 11 between the 28 and 32 mile marker are advised to stay on the pavement, be alert for changing roadway conditions, and drive with caution. Motorcyclists and bicyclists should proceed with extreme caution.

Hurricane Hector is still a powerful Category 4 storm as it continues moving westward across the Central Pacific.

The latest forecast at 5 a.m. Monday said the hurricane intensified slightly, packing maximum sustained winds of 145 mph with higher gusts. The storm was moving west at 15 mph.

According to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center, the center of the storm was located about 930 miles east of Hilo or 1,135 miles east-southeast of Honolulu.

Forecasters said Hector will move in the west-northwest direction through Tuesday, followed by a westward motion Tuesday evening through Friday.

Forecasters also noted that hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 30 miles from the center, and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 100 miles.

At least 91 people were killed when a 6.9-magnitude earthquake and strong aftershocks rocked Indonesia's resort islands of Bali and Lombok on Sunday, causing people to rush out of homes, hotels and restaurants.

Another 200 were injured, Indonesian authorities said. The number of victims is expected to increase, according to Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the head of Indonesia's disaster management department.

Hundreds of people have been taken to local hospitals and thousands of homes have been damaged, said Arifin Muhammad Hadi, head of disaster management of the Indonesian Red Cross Society.

The deadly quake was 31 kilometers (19 miles) deep and struck near Loloan on the north end of Lombok. It was also felt on Bali to the west.

In 2015, the UK Government’s Air Quality Expert Group (AQEG) wrote a report citing the increase of national pollution emissions that would be caused by proposed shale development in Britain.

Before the report was finally published this week, Public Health England, UK’s official body for the improvement of the nation’s health and wellbeing, always concluded that “the risks to public health from exposure to emissions from shale gas extraction are low if operations are properly run and regulated.”

Now, the AQEG report warns that

“Impacts on local and regional air quality have the potential to be substantially higher than the national level impacts, as extraction activities are likely to be highly clustered. Studies in the US have shown significant impacts on both local air quality and regional ozone formation, but similar studies have not yet been undertaken for the UK.“

Today more than 40 million adults in the United States suffer from anxiety, and it is the most common mental illness in the United States.
Overdose deaths involving benzodiazepines — such as Xanax, Librium, Valium and Ativan, drugs commonly used to treat anxiety, phobias, panic attacks, seizures and insomnia — have quadrupled between 2002 and 2015, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The trend is being fueled by a 67 percent rise in prescriptions.
The market for benzos, as they are called, is expected to reach $3.8 billion in the U.S. by 2020, reports Zion Market Research.

Are you being lied to or misled? Environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason certainly thinks so and has provided much supporting evidence. She has been campaigning against the agrochemical industry for many years (all her work can be accessed here) and has borne witness to the destruction of her own nature reserve in South Wales, which she argues is due to the widespread spraying of glyphosate in the area.

In 2016, she wrote an open letter to journalists at The Guardian newspaper in the UK outlining how the media is failing the public by not properly reporting on the regulatory delinquency relating to the harmful chemicals being applied to crops (read it here). Her assertion was that not only humans and the environment are silently being poisoned by thousands of untested and unmonitored chemicals, but that the UK media are silent about the agrochemical industry’s role in this.

Two new studies from Europe have found that the number of farm birds in France has crashed by a third in just 15 years, with some species being almost eradicated. The collapse in the bird population mirrors the discovery last October that over three quarters of all flying insects in Germany have vanished in just three decades. Insects are the staple food source of birds, the pollinators of fruits, and the aerators of the soil.

The Trump administration has revoked Obama-era regulations limiting the use of pesticides in the National Wildlife Refuge System (NRWS), Fish and Wildlife Service Deputy Director Greg Sheehan said in a memorandum.

"Realizing that farming practices will continue into the foreseeable future within the NWRS… we must ensure that we are appropriately making use of farm practice innovations as we actively manage farm areas," Sheehan wrote in the memorandum obtained by The Hill.

The Department of Interior determined that the rule enforced by the previous Obama administration made it harder for refuges to meet their goals. The Obama administration argued in the past that chemicals pose risk to butterflies and birds and disturb the balance in the environment.

The Trump administration has revoked Obama-era regulations limiting the use of pesticides in the National Wildlife Refuge System (NRWS), Fish and Wildlife Service Deputy Director Greg Sheehan said in a memorandum.

Meanwhile, US Environmentalists said Friday that lifting the restriction poses a grave threat to pollinating insects and other sensitive creatures relying on toxic-free habitats afforded by wildlife refuges, Reuters reported.

"Industrial agriculture has no place on refuges dedicated to wildlife conservation and protection of some of the most vital and vulnerable species," Jenny Keating, federal lands policy analyst for the group Defenders of Wildlife was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Mars is the focus of many international space missions as humans increasingly look to the red planet as a future home.

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has stated his intentions to detonate two fusion bombs on the planet to change its atmosphere, making it hospitable for humans.

According to the SpaceX CEO, the detonations would fill the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, triggering an intentional climate change to make it habitable.

Professor Andrew Coates, a physicist at University College London, describes Musk's ambitious plans as 'science fiction'.

Three decades ago, Robert T. Fraley helped invent the genetically modified seeds that have become a $17 billion global industry and ushered in a new era of agricultural productivity. So it’s little surprise that this longtime Monsanto Co. executive doesn’t want the crops dubbed Frankenfood, which is what critics like to call them.

Fraley retired in June as Monsanto’s chief technology officer but says he will continue to be an evangelist for the scientific advancements that he says turbo-charged harvests and helped farmers stay a few steps ahead of Mother Nature. GMOs have become Fraley’s legacy, and he’s convinced the world will need more such innovations to keep pace with the demand for more food as populations and incomes grow.

The space agency on Friday (Aug. 3) announced nine men and women who will launch on the first crewed test flights and missions of new commercial spacecraft built and operated by The Boeing Company and SpaceX.

The eight active NASA astronauts and one former astronaut-turned-corporate crew member will launch on Boeing CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX Dragon capsules to the International Space Station beginning in 2019. The missions will mark the first crewed launches from U.S. soil since the end of the space shuttle program seven years ago.

JESSE TUNISON: Well Volcano village is really, for the most part, about two miles line of sight from the summit of Kilauea volcano. So certainly it is quite the hotspot but fortunately for us we are not near any of the lava that is going into the ocean about 4000 feet down below us, at the ocean, 30 miles away.

DON WISEMAN: So the lava is going down the other side of the mountain?

JT: Yeah indeed.

DW: And the attraction for a village so high on the mountain is presumably for tourism reasons?

JT: Yeah everything from cafes to fine dining, we have art galleries - some of the best in the nation, doing everything from glasswork to fine painting, woodworks, ceramics, everything and anything that you can think of. In the first month our income went down by 90%.

Officials on Hawaii's Big Island, where the Kilauea volcano has been spewing huge amounts of lava for months, are bracing for the possibility that frequent earthquakes will cut off a major highway.

Emergency officials dealing with the eruption are turning their focus to the aptly named village of Volcano, where dozens of small earthquakes shake the ground every hour as Kilauea undergoes dramatic changes. The summit caldera is also collapsing, causing even larger temblors almost daily.

Officials are worried about cracks and holes in Highway 11, a 45-minute lifeline connecting a rural district with Hilo, the island's biggest city. The alternative, driving around the state's largest island, can take up to three hours.

"It's the only road going through that section of the island," said state Sen. Russell Ruderman. "We have to find a way to keep it open."

DRAMATIC footage has shown the moment a cow rescued from the path of lava flowing from Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano is helicoptered to safety – while in another daring mission, a pilot managed to transport a cockpit full of cats out of the danger zone.