New York Times By KEVIN GRANVILLE Of all the changes coming to Francisco Baez's cramped corner grocery store in Newark's North Ward, he is most excited about the new scanner system at the two checkouts. But Newark officials, who are paying for the new equipment, are most interested in the new refrigeration units that will be installed near the front of the store. Those new refrigerators, to be filled with fresh fruits and vegetables, are part of a new effort by Newark -- with variations in other cities across the country -- to improve the diets of low-income residents. Until recently, small corner grocery stores were seen by public health officials as part of the obesity problem. The stores, predominantly family-owned, offered convenience, but the accent was on snack chips, canned goods and sugary drinks. Now, because they are often the sole source of groceries in areas with no full-size supermarket, the stores are becoming linchpins in public health campaigns.

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dailypress.com by Alexander C. Hart of Tribune Washington Bureau Washington -- A program to test pesticides to make sure they do not affect human hormone systems will be compromised by an Office of Management and Budget order allowing data from studies by pesticide companies to susbstitute for new studies, according to some scientists involved in developing the new program. Thirteen years ago Congress required the Environmental Protection Agency to screen pesticides for hormonal effects such as reproductive and developmental problems by 1999. Pesticides have been implicated in the appearance of male fish laying eggs in the Potomac River. But the program to test the chemicals on animals such as tadpoles and rats is only now set to begin, and some scientists say it is already being rendered ineffective.

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ScienceDaily Genetically modified squash plants that are resistant to a debilitating viral disease become more vulnerable to a fatal bacterial infection, according to biologists. "Cultivated squash is susceptible to a variety of viral diseases and that is a major problem for farmers," said Andrew Stephenson, Penn State professor of biology. "Infected plants grow more slowly and their fruit becomes misshapen." In the mid-1990s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved genetically modified squash, which are resistant to three of the most important viral diseases in cultivated squash. However, while disease-resistant crops have been a boon to commercial farmers, ecologists worry there might be certain hidden costs associated with the modified crops.

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Washington Post By Mara Lee On a sunny morning in July, Alicia Jabbar's tank top is wet with sweat along her spine from the nape of her neck to the small of her back. She climbs onto the horizontal ledges at the bottom of a metal stake next to an ankle-high tomato plant. Jabbar, who's wearing two ponytails under a baseball cap, has to use all of her body weight to push the stake into the earth. When she's done with a row, she stands on tiptoes in her running shoes to drop a metal cylinder with two handles on the top of each stake. Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang. The noise echoes off the trees. "Twelve more rows," she says.

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By Ari LeVaux, AlterNet If you believed a certain baby formula would make your child smarter, would you buy it? Infant formula manufacturers are banking that you would. That's why, since 2002, several companies have fortified their products with synthetic versions of DHA and ARA, long-chain fatty acids that occur naturally in breast milk and have been associated with brain development. The oils are produced by Martek Biosciences Corp. from lab-grown algae and fungus and extracted with hexane, according to the company's patent application. Hexane is a neurotoxin. A growing number of parents and medical professional believe these additives are causing severe reactions in some babies, and it has been repeatedly shown that taking affected babies off DHA/ARA formula makes the problems go away almost immediately. The FDA has received hundreds of letters to this effect by upset parents, even as products containing the additives are being marketed as better than breast milk.

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