From US News Washington Whispers:

In advance of a House hearing on the status of colony collapse disorder, the name given to the disappearing bee syndrome, some 21 House and Senate Democrats and Republicans will join Burt’s Bees and Häagen Dazs Wednesday at a conference to air the problems facing the bee. Right smack in the middle of National Pollinator Week, the event on Capitol Hill will feature lawmakers interested in the bee, like Sen. Hillary Clinton and House Agriculture Committee’s Rep. Dennis Cardoza, the nation’s bee man, the Agriculture Department’s Jeff Pettis, and supporters from Häagen Dazs and Burt’s Bees. Afterward, Häagen Dazs’s new vanilla honey bee ice cream will be served and Burt’s “Help Honey Bees” lip balm will be offered.

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“Continent-size” swath of trash in Pacific, via San Francisco Chronicle:

” In reality, the rogue bag would float into a sewer, follow the storm drain to the ocean, then make its way to the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch – a heap of debris floating in the Pacific that’s twice the size of Texas, according to marine biologists.

The enormous stew of trash – which consists of 80 percent plastics and weighs some 3.5 million tons, say oceanographers – floats where few people ever travel, in a no-man’s land between San Francisco and Hawaii.”

Full story

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