A judge on Monday ordered Michigan’s top health official, Nick Lyon, to stand trial for involuntary manslaughter charges in two deaths linked to the Flint water crisis.

Michigan health director, 4 others charged with manslaughter over Flint water
Genesee District Judge David Goggins determined that there was probable cause that Lyon committed involuntary manslaughter against Robert Skidmore and John Snyder in 2015. The two men died during an outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease, which researchers have connected to the devastating use of improperly treated water in Flint starting in 2014.

One of the most popular ways of achieving a passive income is by creating and selling high-quality inexpensive products with the hope of eventually hooking consumers to expensive long-term subscriptions and services. For example, cell phone and cable companies promote unbeatable front-end deals but ultimately leave the consumer feeling frustrated with contracts they didn’t even realize they were getting themselves into. Big Pharma and other large consumer goods corporations use a similar strategy. Unassuming consumer products serve as cheap front-end items, eventually leading to chronic diseases which require future prescriptions as their expensive long-term passive income streams. Documented below are 10 harmful conflicts of interest between Big Pharma and a few of our most popular consumer goods corporations, all of which should be made illegal immediately.

Monsanto has made enemies all around the world with its toxic products and dirty business tactics, and now they’re finally having to answer for their misdeeds in courts of law across the planet. The firm has been facing a slew of high-profile lawsuits here in the U.S. filed on behalf of cancer patients who were exposed to their glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup, and now they’re set to face a big legal battle in Sri Lanka related to kidney disease deaths.

Frozen water has been discovered for the first time hiding in shadowy craters on the surface of the moon.

Scientists found ice in the lunar north and south poles, which they said could one day provide human visitors with a source of water that would allow for longer stays on the astronomical body.

Most of the ice was found in craters that never reach temperatures higher than -250F (-157C) because sunlight cannot reach them.

It goes without saying that when it comes to innovating and dreaming up new ideas, creative people do it best — and it’s probably because they see the world in a different way than everyone else does. Researchers have found that people who rank high in the “open” personality trait — that is, creative types who are more imaginative and adventurous — see and process visual information differently.

Plastic trash is littering the land and fouling rivers and oceans. But what we can see is only a small fraction of what’s out there.

Since modern plastic was first mass-produced, 8 billion tons have been manufactured. And when it’s thrown away, it doesn’t just disappear. Much of it crumbles into small pieces.

Scientists call the tiny pieces “microplastics” and define them as objects smaller than 5 millimeters — about the size of one of the letters on a computer keyboard. Researchers started to pay serious attention to microplastics in the environment about 15 years ago. They’re in oceans, rivers and lakes. They’re also in soil. Recent research in Germany found that fertilizer made from composted household waste contains microplastics.

And, even more concerning, microplastics are in drinking water. In beer. In sea salt. In fish and shellfish. How microplastics get into animals is something of a mystery, and Chelsea Rochman is trying to solve it.

Malthusian theory holds that depopulation (or zero population growth) is a necessity to control a species (namely humanity) that reproduces and consumes natural resources without limits. This is a “New Age” mantra adopted early on by Communists as far back as Marx and Lenin. The ball has been carried successively by Edward House and Woodrow Wilson, and further exacerbated by such “gems” as Kissinger, Bill Gates, Al Gore, and so forth. Much of the public and almost all of the youth (a recent poll taken showed young people prefer Socialism to Capitalism) have fallen for this mantra.

The “problem” for them is how to push it along quickly: war is one answer, and disease is another.

An archaeologist in Kansas believes that he has made a once-in-a-lifetime discovery after claiming to have unearthed a long-lost civilization in the Midwest.

Wichita State University Professor Donald Blakeslee believes he's found the massive lost city of Etzanoa, which has home to an estimated 20,000 people between 1450 and 1700.

Located in Arkansas City, Kansas, just a few miles from the Oklahoma border, Blakeslee says that freshly translated documents and an array of high-tech equipment may have led him to the mythical city.

Helen van Berkel checks into the Volcano House, Hawaii.

Getting there: It's about an hour's flight from Honolulu, followed by a 45-minute drive.

The check-in experience: A mimosa served at check-in quickly wipes away the dust of the road.

Price: About $455 a night. And worth it when it reopens. Volcano House sits in the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, where Kilauea has been erupting since May, closing the park and the house. The website says bookings are being taken but it will not reopen until September 15 at the earliest.

The accommodation: It's an old-style lodge, complete with occasionally creaky floors and stairs, sash windows and an open fire in the cosy lobby. Its old-fashioned decor adds to the elegance The facilities: It's old-school the whole way here: tiled showers and a sliding door to the walk-in wardrobe area.

Now we know exactly how Stratolaunch Systems plans to get satellites to orbit.

Stratolaunch, which was established by billionaire Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen in 2011, will employ four different satellite-toting vehicles, the company revealed today (Aug. 20).

All of them will blast their way to orbit after being dropped at altitude from a mother-ship plane — the largest aircraft ever built, with a wingspan of 385 feet (117 meters). [Stratolaunch Test Photos: The World's Largest Plane in Action]

"We are excited to share for the first time some details about the development of our own, proprietary Stratolaunch launch vehicles, with which we will offer a flexible launch capability unlike any other," Stratolaunch CEO Jean Floyd said in a statement. "Whatever the payload, whatever the orbit, getting your satellite into space will soon be as easy as booking an airline flight."

The death toll in Kerala rose on Monday to nearly 400 after its worst flood in a century, as authorities handed out medicine and disinfectants to ward off disease in thousands of relief camps.

Dozens of people are missing and 1.2 million are sheltering in the camps, state officials said, as the water receded and a huge clean-up gathered pace.
"The death toll has risen to 373," an official of the state's disaster management authority told Reuters. Kerala received rainfall more than 40 per cent greater than normal for the monsoon season, which runs from June to September.

Torrential rain in the last 10 days forced officials to release water from dozens of dangerously full dams.

The Indian government classified the floods as a "calamity of severe nature."
Kerala has pitched it as a national disaster, which if accepted by the central government, is likely to prompt greater commitments of funds for relief and rebuilding efforts.

Monsanto is receiving considerable global backlash after the agrochemical and seed giant was found guilty of malice and of covering the fact that their flagship product can cause cancer.

At issue is glyphosate, the active chemical ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup and Ranger herbicides. For years, evidence has been mounting that glyphosate is carcinogenic, which is quite alarming considering that it is the most widely used (and overused) agricultural chemical ever.

“Americans have applied 1.8 million tons of glyphosate since its introduction in 1974. Worldwide, 9.4 million tons of the chemical have been sprayed onto fields. For comparison, that’s equivalent to the weight of water in more than 2,300 Olympic-size swimming pools. It’s also enough to spray nearly half a pound of Roundup on every cultivated acre of land in the world.” ~Newsweek

Glyphosate, the world’s most popular herbicide, is at the center of international scrutiny after a San Francisco court on Friday decided in favor of a California school groundskeeper with terminal cancer.

The jury ruled that the plaintiff, Dewayne “Lee” Johnson, developed cancer from repeated exposure to Roundup, Monsanto‘s widely used glyphosate-based weedkiller, and ordered the company to pay $289 million in damages.

The landmark jury ruling, which could open the door for roughly 4,000 similar U.S. lawsuits against Monsanto, sparked outcry around the world.

A strong earthquake has cut power across the Indonesian island of Lombok and destroyed buildings as the tourist hotspot tries to recover from a temblor earlier this month that killed hundreds of people.

The shallow magnitude 6.9 quake that hit just after 10 p.m. Sunday was one of multiple powerful earthquakes in the northeast of the island that also caused landslides. The nighttime quake was followed by strong aftershocks.

An Associated Press reporter in Sembalun subdistrict, on the island’s northeast in the shadow of Mount Rinjani, said the latest quake caused panic, but many people were already staying in tents following the deadly quake in early August and its hundreds of aftershocks.

There was no immediate official information about casualties.

Pregnant women with higher levels of a banned pesticide that’s still found in many foods today are more likely to have children diagnosed with autism, a new study finds.

Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, or DDT, is an insecticide widely used after its development in the 1940s. It’s particularly known to help prevent malaria, typhus, and other insect-borne diseases. Of course, it was also extremely useful for farmers and anyone else who found themselves frequently bugged by insects. The pesticide became commonly used across the world, but by the late 1950s, its dangerous effects on the environment and wildlife began to come into light; consequently in 1972, as it became clearer that it was unhealthy for human exposure, the Environmental Protection Agency banned its use in America.

The latest 5-day forecast map for Lane shows the storm weakening but moving northwest by midweek, placing Oahu and Kauai in the track’s so-called “cone of uncertainty.”

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park has been closed for nearly 100 days due to unsafe conditions from seismic and explosive activity from the summit of Kilauea but there's no telling when the park will reopen.

It's going to be a long and most likely expensive one according to national park officials.

They took local media to look at park roads, buildings and Halemaumau crater to show us why.

"The last 100 days have been grueling," Jessica Ferracane, National Park Service said.

All 130 staff members at the park still have jobs, some are working on clean up and recovery at the Hawaii Island Park, others transferred to national parks on neighbor islands. But the closure of this park continues to take its toll on staff and the surrounding community.

In an interesting turn of events, The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has issued a ruling which will greatly increase the amount of marijuana that can be grown legally for research purposes. In the same report, the DEA announced that they will be attempting to reduce the production of problematic opioid pharmaceuticals.

The amount of marijuana that can be grown previously had been roughly 1,000 pounds, but will be increasing to 5,400 pounds in 2019.

According to the filing, these numbers are quotas that “reflects the total amount of controlled substances necessary to meet the country’s medical, scientific, research, industrial, and export needs for the year and for the establishment and maintenance of reserve stocks,” DEA said.

Scientists at Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park on Friday downgraded the threat from Kilauea Volcano from the highest level of a “warning” to a “watch” following three weeks of decreasing activity.

After Kilauea created panic and destruction when it began erupting May 3, destroying more than 700 homes in its path, there’s barely been a burp or rumble this month.

With a couple of exceptions, lava has stopped pouring into the ocean since Aug. 6. Since Aug. 2 the summit of Kilauea Volcano has not seen what’s called a “collapse event” in which an exodus of lava caused the walls of the summit to collapse, triggering seismic activity equal to 5.8-magnitude earthquakes.

And Kilauea’s notorious fissure 8 in the heart of the Leilani Estates subdivision, which unleashed a river of 2,000-degree lava that ran to the sea, “continues to calm down, cool down and quiet down,” said Tina Neal, scientist-in-charge of Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park.

Although he lost his medical license and his job, a Texas doctor who raped a patient won't face jail time. A jury sentenced Dr. Shafeeq Sheikh to 10 years of probation and a $10,000 fine Friday after convicting him of raping an incapacitated patient at Ben Taub Hospital in Houston in 2013. As a result of his conviction 46-year-old Sheikh will also have to register as a sex offender.

A female patient being treated for an acute asthma attack at Ben Taub Hospital in November 2013 reported being raped in her hospital room while under heavy sedation and tethered to machines, according to a local ABC News affiliate. The then-27-year-old woman told hospital staff and police that an unknown physician had entered her room and touched her breasts inappropriately during a chest exam. That same physician later returned to her bedside and sexually assaulted her on two other occasions during the night.

Is the day we’ve all been waiting for finally on the horizon? Monsanto and the EPA have been caught red-handed in the midst of a legal controversy. Unsealed court documents have shown that not only is the EPA severely lacking in the standards department, but that the federal agency colluded with one of the nation’s most menacing companies, Monsanto. And in doing so, the EPA helped to keep Monsanto’s star product, Roundup, on store shelves and safe from being reviewed for its cancer-causing effects.

Court documents show that the EPA declared that Roundup was safe for use without ever testing the entire formulation’s effects, and instead relied on the industry testing done on just the key active ingredient, glyphosate.

In early August, Trump’s administration released a new memo from the Fish and Wildlife Service stating that the 2014 version of the memo, out of Obama’s administration would be cancelled and the terms of the new memo would now be in place.

The memo was in reference to a GMO and neonicotinoid bans that put in place to help protect the bee population and wildlife refuges. The 2014 memo was a positive step forward as it was publicly stating, even at higher governmental levels, that GMOs were harmful to agriculture and wildlife, as were neonics. This initial memo was coined a GMO and neonics ban, even though the language in the memo doesn’t actually say that.

Before we continue, we recognize and have painstakingly covered, the dangers of neonicotinoid pesticides and GMOs on our environment and wildlife. We have called for an all-out ban, based on our research, numerous times over the last 6 years and still hold completely strong to that truth.

If California politicians have their way, soon all of the state’s public universities will be forced to dispense abortion pills to students.

The politicians and the abortion industry that backs their election campaigns insist that turning California’s university student health centers into abortion centers means “progress.” But what it really means is serious problems for both students and the universities, not to mention the destruction of more human lives.

There is almost a humor to it. Remember the time when even those who supported abortion could admit that it was such a grave option that it should be "rare?" Now they want to make it as available as Tylenol.

In 2016, Lake Mead water levels drop to new record lows (since it was filled in the 1930s) leaving Las Vegas facing existential threats unless something is done. Las Vegas and its 2 million residents and 40 million tourists a year get almost all their drinking water from the Lake and at levels below 1075ft, the Interior Department will be forced to declare a "shortage," which will lead to significant cutbacks for Arizona and Nevada.

And now, two years later, the situation appears to be getting worse as The Wall Street Journal reports, in a prediction released Wednesday, the Bureau of Reclamation, a multistate agency that manages water and power in the West, said there is a 52% probability that water levels will fall below a threshold of 1,075 feet elevation by 2020.

Slowing activity at Hawaii's Kilauea volcano has prompted scientists on Friday to downgrade their alert level for the mountain.

The U.S. Geological Survey issued a "watch" for Kilauea's ground hazards, down from a "warning."

But scientists say this doesn't mean the eruption, which has destroyed more than 700 homes since May, is over. Kilauea has paused for days, weeks and even months during previous eruptions.

Lava mostly stopped flowing on Aug. 6. There's a crusted-over lava pond inside a fissure cone and just a few spots where lava is entering the ocean.

The volcano's summit hasn't collapsed since Aug. 2. Sulfur dioxide emissions are the lowest they've been since 2007.

NASA is working hard to stop relying on Russian rocket engines, as said by Jim Bridenstine, the administrator of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

This is a result of the new sanctions on Russia announced by the Trump administration on August 8th. The sanctions were imposed due to the alleged use of chemical weapons against Russian ex-intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in the UK city of Salisbury in March.

By many metrics, what is happening on Hawaii island can be considered a natural disaster. But native Hawaiians I spoke to view this period not as one of pure destruction, but rather the logical continuation of their islands’ geological evolution — a time of deep cultural and personal reflection and realignment.

“The word we use is ‘inevitable,’” cultural ambassador, community organizer and former Miss Hawaii Desiree Moana Cruz said in reference to how best to describe Kilauea’s latest lava flow. “Not tragedy, not disaster. I certainly feel compassion for the people who have lost their homes — they’re my friends, family and also strangers. But again, we all know this is where we live. We — and I mean native Hawaiians — say, ‘Have you seen the pele?’ Pele is the Hawaiian word for lava in all its manifestations, passed down through ancient chants and dances.”

In the US, consumers usually assume that the water coming out of our taps has been thoroughly tested and is safe to drink.

But residents in more than 30 communities around the country have found out that's not the case.

In states including Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, and North Carolina, local water systems have been contaminated with toxic chemicals called PFAS, which stands for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances.

This class of artificial lab-grown chemicals doesn't break down in the environment, and instead remains intact in water, air, and bodies for thousands of years, according to the Associated Press. For that reason, they've become known as "forever chemicals."

Noted vaccine rights physician Dr. Bob Sears threatened with loss of license and receives almost three years of probation – after issuing exemption from vaccines

On June 27, 2018, the Medical Board of California ordered 35 months of probation for Orange County pediatrician Dr. Bob Sears, a leading voice in the vaccine rights community.

The complaint revolved around a note Dr. Sears had written exempting a 2-year-old from all childhood vaccinations.

The Doubs river flows normally in Franche-Comté, France. But since about a week or so, the river has totally dried up over a length of more than 1 km, between Pontarlier and Morteau, although precipitation has been abundant this winter and spring. The river has disappeared, and with it, the fauna and flora. Everything is dead. Two weeks ago, 13km of the Risle River in Normandy also disappeared underground in a large crater. According to geologists, this unprecedented event is due to large cracks and craters in the riverbed.

In a detailed white paper released today, AKA scientists and attorneys claim, “The FDA has also misled the DEA, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) with incomplete, inaccurate, extrapolated, and distorted information on adverse events and deaths allegedly associated with the use of kratom to encourage unwarranted legislative and regulatory restrictions on kratom at the federal, state, and local government levels.

The most egregious examples cited by AKA include cases where:

• The FDA failed to adequately disclose and account for material facts from the peer-reviewed Case Report of nine deaths in Sweden that were published in 2011 in the Journal of Analytical Toxicology. That report concluded the deaths were actually the result of adulteration of kratom powder with a toxic dose of O-desmethyltramadol.

Between 2011 and 2016, fracked oil and gas wells in the U.S. pumped out record-breaking amounts of wastewater, which is laced with toxic and radioactive materials, a new Duke University study concludes. The amount of wastewater from fracking rose 1,440 percent during that period.

Over the same time, the total amount of water used for fracking rose roughly half as much, 770 percent, according to the paper published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

"Previous studies suggested hydraulic fracturing does not use significantly more water than other energy sources, but those findings were based only on aggregated data from the early years of fracking," Avner Vengosh, professor of geochemistry and water quality at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment, said in a statement. "After more than a decade of fracking operation, we now have more years of data to draw upon from multiple verifiable sources."

The researchers predict that spike in water use will continue to climb.

The known carcinogen and infamous weed killing chemical glyphosate has just been found in breakfast foods marketed for children. A new study has discovered trace amounts of the most widely used herbicide in the country in oats, granolas, and snack bars.

Concern over glyphosate has continued to grow in the United States in recent years. Although the chemical may be safe in some amounts to spray on weeds if certain safety precautions are taken, it is probably a lot more dangerous if it’s ingested by a child. Most disturbing, however, is the fact that thirty-one out of 45 tested products had levels of glyphosate that were higher than what many scientists consider safe for children.