That honey you stir into your tea or drizzle on your toast may not be the pure and natural product you think it is. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports today that in spite of the sweetness-and-light image most people have of honey, the industrial honey trade is rife with contaminated products, faulty safeguards, organized crime and deliberately disguised products. This a great piece of journalism from the P-I, well worth the long read through the main story by Andrew Schneider.
Honey's path from hive to market can take many turns, including some that disguise its true origin.
According to the P-I, honey from China often is rerouted through other countries that have little to no native honey industry. Among the other disturbing findings in the article is that when American honey packers do find that the honey they buy is contaminated, the honey goes back to the producer. (Any guesses as to what a producer willing to ship bad honey once is going to do with this returned product?) None of this is helped by the fact that there is no federal definition of honey. The P-I follows up with at least one more story tomorrow: “Experts say there’s no such thing as ‘organic’ honey made in America, but that hasn’t stopped the industry from putting it on the market.”
Black teens have become murderers at an alarmingly greater rate in the past several years, according to a new study.
The San Francisco Chronicle buried the story, leaving it to the AP to cover. But in according to the Boston Globe, the study showed that murders committed by black males younger than 24 rose by 79 percent in San Francisco from 2000-2001 to 2006-2007.
The Northeastern University study put this as the fifth-highest increase among the 28 cities studied. Some cities showed a decrease, such as New York’s 21 percent decline, and murders overall have declined nationwide.
Blame for the increase depends on who you ask, apparently, with some observers attributing it to a decline in federal funding for urban youth programs, others saying it’s due to the disintegration of black family structure and still others saying it’s because federal money for law enforcement dried up. In any case, it’s a sad and disturbing trend that shouldn’t be ignored. As one person in the Globe’s story put it, even if you think this story is about someone else, all taxpayers are affected by the drain on resources represented by each homicide case.
Success! My Spot.Us pitch for a story about San Francisco’s Muni express bus service, and why Muni doesn’t run more express buses, is now fully funded.
Thanks to all the sponsors who signed on to support this story — and, by extension, the concept of crowd-funded journalism. Thanks also to Spot.Us honcho Dave Cohn. Without his efforts, I’d still be in the fundraising stage.
I’m really pleased to be able to get moving on the legwork for this story, which I expect to start in January, and I have ideas for several other stories I think would fit in well on Spot.Us.
I’m really pleased to report that I’ve almost reached full funding for my story about San Francisco’s Muni express bus service on spot.us!
Muni may be watching its funding get yanked out from under it right now, but that makes it even more important for Muni to run well with the resources still available. And clearly, people are interested in why Muni doesn’t run more expresses to serve the needs of daily commuters. As of the afternoon of Dec. 11, my story pitch for crowd-funded journalism site spot.us was just $60 away from full funding.
.@rnaglejr, 1 prob w new RT is it's less obvious where they come from. Here's a solid summation of other problems: http://bit.ly/9PQRU5 minutes ago
RT @Scobleizer: Like I expected, new Twitter RT feature widely hated. They shouldn't have called it RT. It's a copy of FriendFeed's likes. 12 minutes ago
I'm sure that'll be possible, @devanieangel, but dunno how many will choose to do that way. Guess I see it as solution in search of problem. 2 hours ago
Posted by Tom Prete 
Posted by Tom Prete 
Posted by Tom Prete 
