A Delaware state court has awarded summary judgment to John Deere & Co. in an asbestos action, finding that the plaintiff had failed to present sufficient evidence to support his assertion that he was injured by asbestos fibers in the defendant’s product. [node:read-more:link]
An appeals court panel on Tuesday approved a lower court's plan for distributing $380 million left over from the U.S. government's loan discrimination settlement with American Indian farmers and ranchers six years ago. The decision wasn't unanimous, however, with one of the three judges arguing that Congress should have had a say. President Barack Obama's administration agreed in 2011 to pay $680 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed in 1999 by Indian farmers who said they were denied loans for decades because of government discrimination. [node:read-more:link]
The federal government says an Arizona farm has kept temporary Mexican workers in squalid conditions and paid some of them only a fraction of what they are owed. The Department of Labor filed a lawsuit against G Farms in El Mirage, located just northwest of Phoenix, last week. A judge was scheduled to hear arguments on Tuesday.The department says that G Farms housed about 70 workers here on a visa in a dangerous and unsanitary encampment composed of school buses, semitrailers, a cargo container and an open-air shed. [node:read-more:link]
Religious beliefs involving the use of pesticides are part of a dispute over noxious weeds on a 2,000-acre organic farm in Oregon that has attracted the attention of organic food supporters. [node:read-more:link]
hen discussing countries that have undergone astonishing economic transformations -- as, most notably, China has over the past few decades -- observers usually credit success to industrialization. After all, that’s the visible consequence of rapid growth: Where sleepy fishing villages once lay, ports and factories and high-speed rail networks spring up. The people who lived in those villages are in turn far more productive, working in those factories and shipping goods to the rest of the world through those ports. [node:read-more:link]
If I asked you, “Who do you trust?” you would probably name a friend or family member — unless the topic is nutrition. Odds are your nearest and dearest are not your most trusted sources for nutrition information, even though there’s an excellent chance that you rely on them to decide what to eat. [node:read-more:link]
The agricultural company Southern Gardens Citrus in Clewiston, Florida, applied to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) in February for permission to use an engineered version of the citrus tristeza virus (CTV) to attack the bacterium behind citrus greening. This disease has slashed US orange production in half over the past decade, and threatens to destroy the US$3.3-billion industry entirely. [node:read-more:link]
Recreational boating organization BoatUS criticized one of America's top ethanol trade associations, the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA), for a new advertising campaign published on the Ethanol Producer Magazine's website. The campaign, tied to the start of boating season, supports the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), a 2005 law which BoatUS said mandates the blending of biofuels such as corn-ethanol into our gasoline. Groups have long opposed this legislation and made attempts for change. [node:read-more:link]
Virginia became the first state since President Donald Trump abandoned rules to reduce power plant emissions to begin drafting rules to replace the federal mandate.At a press conference on Tuesday morning, Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) ordered state air regulators to propose rules by the end of the year to scale back carbon dioxide emissions from the utility sector and increase renewable energy investments throughout the state. “This should be done on the federal level,” McAuliffe told HuffPost by phone ahead of the announcement. [node:read-more:link]
The company that owns a gas well linked to a fatal home explosion in Colorado said Tuesday it will permanently disconnect other pipelines in the area like the one blamed in the explosion.Anadarko Petroleum, which owns the well, did not say how many pipelines would be disconnected. But the company has said it operates more than 3,000 similar wells in northeastern Colorado.Fire investigators have said unrefined, odorless natural gas from a severed 1-inch (2.5-centimeter) pipeline seeped into a home in the town of Firestone, causing the April 17 explosion that killed two people. [node:read-more:link]
