In a bid to make up for a shortfall of high-quality nutritious food, some Canadian food banks are growing their own produce — and even farming fish. The Mississauga Food Bank recently launched AquaGrow Farms, where tilapia is being raised in tanks and lettuce is raised through hydroponics, or without soil. [node:read-more:link]
This time, suspicion is being buttressed by some economists with a proposition not too dissimilar to Laughlin’s: that immigrants could sap America’s vitality by bringing inferior cultural traits from their dysfunctional home countries to erode American social norms. It’s an unsettling assertion. It is laid out with striking candor by Paul Collier, the noted British development economist from Oxford, in his 2013 book “Exodus: How Migration Is Changing Our World” (Oxford University Press). “Migrants bring their culture with them,” he wrote. [node:read-more:link]
Less than a year after legislators approved a bill defining how municipal bodies should treat agritourism, the New Hampshire Senate is considering another bill that would completely remove local regulation on the issue. During a Senate Public and Municipal Affairs Committee hearing, the bill’s primary sponsor, Sen. Bob Giuda, argued that the law passed in 2016 didn’t go far enough to protect the commercial interests of farmers. “We are allowing our local communities ... to define commerce in our state,” he said. [node:read-more:link]
Speaking to reporters after meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, President Donald Trump yesterday downplayed the extent of changes he will seek in U.S./Canadian trade as he looks to re-negotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). "We'll be tweaking it, we'll be doing certain things that are going to benefit both of our countries," Trump said at a joint news conference with Trudeau on Monday. "It's a much less severe situation than what's taken place on the southern border. [node:read-more:link]
As more and more states use “big data” for everything from catching fraudsters to reducing heath care costs, some highway patrols are tapping it to predict where serious or fatal traffic accidents are likely to take place so they can try to prevent them. [node:read-more:link]
The Iowa Department of Natural Resources will hold a second special harvest in northeast Iowa to collect deer that can be tested for chronic wasting disease. The state hopes to collect up to 300 samples from mature deer in Clayton County from Saturday to March 5. The state asks hunters, who will receive special scientific licenses, to focus on an area about 10 miles west of Elkader. It's the second special harvest this year. [node:read-more:link]
The Illinois Soybean Association (ISA) checkoff program is launching a new Roadway and Bridge Improvement Calculator, an online service intended to help local communities better plan road and bridge projects. Simple, customizable and fast, the calculator will allow communities to save time and money during budgeting and planning stages so that more financial resources can be put toward the actual improvement of roads and bridges. Wagner acknowledges county and city engineers, town officials and others need to consider many factors when planning road and bridge projects. [node:read-more:link]
Legislation introduced in Springfield could boost efforts to attract bio-based businesses to Decatur and Central Illinois.The legislation introduced by state Sens. Chapin Rose, R-Mahomet, and Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, would provide incentives to produce and sell new renewable products made from biomass and other renewable sources. The potential exists for Decatur to be at the center of a new $20 billion biotechnology industry, Rose said. “The potential for jobs is here,” Rose said. “We have something no one else has to offer. [node:read-more:link]
The privatization of a state program that transports poor Texans to medical appointments has cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars more while serving fewer than half as many people, according to a Legislative Budget Board report that some officials tried to withhold from the public. [node:read-more:link]
A new study on how ocean currents transport floating marine debris is helping to explain how garbage patches form in the world's oceans. Researchers developed a mathematical model that simulates the motion of small spherical objects floating at the ocean surface. [node:read-more:link]
