Fighting fish fraud

You could be eating endangered fish without even realizing it

By: Julie M. Rodriguez

When you go out for sushi or visit a seafood restaurant, how sure can you be that you’re really getting what you’ve ordered? Last week, Oceana released some shocking findings: Around the world, an average of one in five samples of seafood is mislabeled.

The report examined 25,000 samples worldwide and reviewed more than 200 published studies from 55 different countries. Every continent was represented apart from Antarctica. The mislabeling was present in every part of the seafood supply chain, including retail, wholesale, distribution, import/export, packaging, processing, and landing.

That’s bad news for many reasons – mislabeling makes dining dangerous for consumers (not all of these species are considered suitable for human consumption), and difficult for people who are trying to avoid mercury exposure or who simply want to dine more sustainably. In most cases, cheap fish were being passed off as more expensive varieties.

But one of the most disturbing findings of the report was the fact that 16 percent of these samples were identified as endangered species. More than half the fish identified as substitutes have unknown population numbers, so that’s likely an underestimate.

One to watch

Latest position and storm track of Hurricane Matthew from the National Hurricane Center

Trump Was Born on Third Base

The stories politicians tell about their successes matter — including the ones they omit.

By Chuck Collins

Springfield News-Leader - June 6, 1990 via News of the Weird

Donald Trump was born on third base, but claims he hit a triple.

Throughout history, we’ve had many “born on third base” presidential candidates, including Mitt Romney, George W. Bush and now Trump. These politicians trumpet their business acumen, but reveal little about their privileged head starts.

This twisted narrative is dangerously misleading.

Trump campaigns on his business prowess, but understates the tremendous advantage of inheriting his father’s real estate empire, with its existing assets and financial and political connections. Even without that million-dollar loan, Trump was set-up for success.

Similarly, George W. Bush built his oil business and baseball team with networks of investors who were friends of the Bush dynasty. Yet he attributed his success to “results and performance.”

And in 2012 presidential candidate Romney told supporters that he’d “inherited nothing,” saying “Everything that Ann and I have we earned the old-fashioned way, and that’s by hard work.”  But this understates Romney’s extraordinary privileges.

No wonder Trump doesn’t want to release his tax returns – looks like he really doesn't pay ANY TAXES

Trump’s 1995 business failures cost ONE BILLION and likely led to little or no federal income tax payments for the past 20 years.

By Lauren McCauley, staff writer for Common Dreams

From Trump's 1995 tax return, showing a $915,729,293 tax loss on Line 18 which would have carried over until it was used up. Tax experts estimate that would have taken around 18 years, just from this one item. Since Trump has had several other major business failures since then, the odds are they were added in and made Trump tax-exempt even though he claims he's one of America's richest people (a claim never verified).

Amid the ongoing political uproar over Donald Trump's undisclosed tax records, the New York Times dropped a bombshell late Saturday when it reported that, due to a staggering loss of $916 million in 1995, it is possible that the Republican presidential nominee has not paid taxes in nearly two decades.

Times reporter Susanne Craig obtained three pages from Trump's 1995 tax returns—one page of a New Jersey nonresident return, one page of a Connecticut nonresident return, and a New York State resident income tax return—by way of an anonymous mailing, with a return address listed as Trump Tower.

The documents, verified by Trump's then-accountant Jack Mitnick, report a loss of $915,729,293 for that year. Tax experts hired by the Times confirmed that "tax rules that are especially advantageous to wealthy filers would have allowed Mr. Trump to use his $916 million loss to cancel out an equivalent amount of taxable income over an 18-year period."

Get one if Trump wins

From Fake Science

Could he pass?

Five Deadly Sins of Big Pharma

Gouging, Disposing, Gouging some more, stealing and cheating

By Paul Buchheit for Common Dreams

For Mylan, it was a perfect plan—diabolical, unstoppable. The company made changes in its anti-allergy EpiPen dispenser in 2009, enough to give it patent protection. 

Then, in 2012, it began to give away free pens to schools, gradually making school nurses at least partly dependent on them. 

Meanwhile the company was successfully lobbying for the "Emergency Epinephrine Act," commonly referred to as the "EpiPen Law," which encouraged the presence of epinephrine dispensers in schools. 

Most recently, after raising the price from $100 to $600, Mylan announced a half-price coupon, making itself appear generous even though the price had effectively jumped from $100 to $300.

This is capitalism at its worst, a greedy and disdainful profit-over-people system that leaves millions of Americans sick... or dead. These are the sins of the pharmaceutical industry.

“Give us the good stuff!”

Quality, not quantity, of diet is key to health of baby birds

Cornell University

  

In a new study that upends the way ornithologists think about a young bird's diet -- but won't shock parents used to scanning the nutritional profile of their children's food -- Cornell researchers have found that when it comes to what chicks eat, quality trumps quantity.

In recent decades, many aerial insectivores, such as tree swallows, have undergone steep population declines. Cornell researchers have demonstrated for the first time that the fatty acid composition in the tree swallow diet plays a key role in chick health and survival rates, potentially pointing to new ways to protect fragile bird species.

Another For-Profit College Folds

 ITT Tech's closing should be a warning to other institutions looking to rip-off students.

By Josh Hoxie

Picking the right college isn’t a fun process.

Whether you’re a high school student eyeing your next step or a bit older looking to improve your career, the cycle of researching dozens of schools, preparing lengthy applications, waiting to hear back, and then figuring out if you can even afford it seems endless.

But now, prospective students have one less option to choose from. And in this case, that’s a good thing.

ITT Technical Institute, the national chain of for-profit colleges, has shuttered its doors. The private company will shut down its 130 locations in 39 states, promptly ending education services for over 40,000 students.

The move comes after the Department of Education blocked ITT from accessing federal student aid programs, citing the school’s failure to meet the standards of accreditation for providing a quality education.

ITT is the second major for-profit college chain to close down, following Corinthian Colleges, which closed under similar circumstances in 2015. While this change will be tough for current students and recent graduates to sort out, the schools probably should’ve shut down a lot sooner.

Time to stop fooling around

Why You Really Must Get Behind Hillary, Now

By Robert Reich

For more cartoons by Tom Toles, CLICK HERE

Can we have a word? I continue to hear from many of you who say you won’t vote for Hillary Clinton because, you claim, (1) she’s no better than Donald Trump, or (2) even if she’s better, she’s still corrupt, and you refuse to vote for the “lesser of two evils,” or (3) you don’t want to reward the Democratic Party for corrupt primaries that gave the nomination to Hillary instead of Bernie Sanders.

Please allow me to respond.

(1) Anyone who equates Donald Trump with Hillary Clinton hasn’t been paying attention. 

Trump is a dangerous, bigoted, narcissistic megalomaniac with fascist tendencies who could wreak huge damage on America and the world. Hillary isn’t perfect but she’s able and experienced. There is simply no comparison.

I hate that thing

For more cartoons from Tom Tomorrow, CLICK HERE

Stay alive in the woods

Thousands of Homes Keep Flooding

Yet They Keep Being Rebuilt Again

Katherine Bagley, Yale Environment 360

The U.S. National Flood Insurance Program, which holds policies for more than 5 million homes, is $23 billion in debt after a string of natural disasters this century. As climate change further strains the program, analysts say it is time to shift its focus from rebuilding to mitigating risk.

More than 2,100 properties across the U.S. enrolled in the National Flood Insurance Program have flooded and been rebuilt more than 10 times since 1978, according to a new analysis of insurance data by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

One home in Batchelor, Louisiana has flooded 40 times over the past four decades, receiving $428,379 in insurance payments.

More than 30,000 properties in the program, run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have flooded multiple times over the years.

Those homes, known as “severe repetitive loss properties,” make up just 0.6 percent of federal flood insurance policies. But they account for 10.6 percent of the program’s claims — totaling $5.5 billion in payments.

France’s Waste-Not Experiment

Note new laws banning plasticware and requiring supermarkets to donate food.

By Jill Richardson

France has embarked on two experiments we should take note of. First, the nation just banned all non-biodegradable disposable plastic cups, plates, and utensils. Second, they passed a law requiring supermarkets to donate unspoiled food they don’t want to charities instead of throwing it away.

I used to work in a supermarket, so I’ve seen what gets thrown away. In fact, I’ve thrown good food away myself. Perfectly good loaves of bread, bagels, muffins, brownies, and pastries — I put it all in the trash.

Why? Because I was required to, and I didn’t want to lose my job.

A few times, I broke the store’s rules. I diverted food from the trash and snuck it out to give it to homeless people.

I heard various explanations from the staff for why we couldn’t donate the food. One coworker claimed the store didn’t want a huge line of homeless people out the front door if word got out that free food was available. But that doesn’t explain why we didn’t give the food to a shelter.

Dan Rather tells the media to stop giving Trump a free pass

Enough is enough.

By Dan Rather

For more cartoons by Tom Toles, CLICK HERE.

Donald Trump’s disdain, mockery, and antagonism of the press, whose freedoms are enshrined in the Bill of Rights and whose presence has provided ballast to our democracy since its inception, raises very serious questions about his fitness for the presidency of the United States.

For a long while, these thoughts have been coursing through my veins with concern and disbelief, and yet my abiding loyalty to the notion of fair, accurate and unbiased journalism held me in check from saying it out loud – much as I suspect it has muzzled the true feelings of many of my colleagues.

But we must remember that Donald Trump knows this and cynically plays the press corps’ deep desire for fairness to his undeserved benefit. The latest, barring the traveling press from covering an event and using them as ridicule in a speech, are but the most recent chapters in a novel full of outrageous acts. And this sentiment apparently extends to members of his own family as witnessed by his daughter Ivanka’s actions in an interview with Cosmo.