April, 19 2011, 02:07pm EDT

Sierra Club Tests Hundreds Nationwide for Levels of Toxic Mercury in their Bodies
Americans Call for EPA to Protect Their Health from Air-Polluting Coal Plants
WASHINGTON
Over the past two months, the Sierra Club has conducted tests in more than 30 cities across the United States to help concerned moms and others find out how much toxic mercury is in their bodies. The Sierra Club's nationwide hair testing program aims to raise awareness of the dangers of mercury, a potent neurotoxin which coal-fired power plants emit into the air, falling into our waterways as rain or snow, then building up in fish and the people that consume fish. Mercury is excreted through hair, so a hair sample is a way to show the amount of mercury that has been in a person's body over a few months.
Toxic mercury is especially dangerous to the health of young women, children and developing fetuses, and even small amounts of mercury exposure has been linked to developmental disorders and learning disabilities. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), at least 1 in 12 - and as many as 1 in 6 - American women of childbearing age have enough mercury in their bodies to put their baby at risk.
"As a mom, mercury pollution is truly scary," said Mary Anne Hitt, Director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign and mother of a young daughter. "We need to stop Big Coal from dumping mercury and other toxic air pollution into our air and water."
Sierra Club mercury hair testing events have been held in salons, public squares, and college campuses in more than 18 states, including PA, KY, MI, NH, OK, WV, PA, TX, NJ, MT, WI, NV, MN, CA, VA, IN, MA, AK. Event highlights include:
- A large mercury hair testing event organized by Sierra Club members and the local "Stop Titan" coalition in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, near the site of a proposed cement plant that could increase toxic mercury pollution in the community.
- A Sierra Club partnership event with the Moapa band of Pahuites, a Native American tribal community in Nevada whose population does not eat lots of fish, but lives within mile of the dirty Reid Gardner coal plant.
- College student-led mercury hair testing events at the University of Oklahoma, Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas.
While the Sierra Club mercury tests are still being processed by the University of Georgia Marine Extension Service laboratory in Brunswick, GA, initial confidential results show that a substantial number of test participants have mercury levels above the threshold the EPA considers safe.
"It's very disturbing to find out my mercury levels are high," said Jenn Burdette, a mother of two who had her hair tested in Wrightsville Beach. "I am conscientious about my seafood consumption, and it makes me wonder where else I'm being exposed to mercury in the environment."
On March 16, the EPA proposed a strong air quality standard to protect Americans against life-threatening air pollution such as mercury, arsenic and other air toxics from power plants, which are currently allowed to emit this hazardous pollution without national limits. Dirty coal-fired power plants are the number one source of mercury pollution in the United States, emitting more than 130,000 pounds of toxic mercury pollution in the year 2009 alone, according to Environment America.
The hair testing events are part of an effort to raise awareness about the strong, proposed protection for mercury from the EPA and to help generate supportive comments asking the EPA to enact strong federal protections to keep Big Coal and corporate polluters from making us sick. A thorough air toxics safeguard will protect public health, prevent disease and avoid hospitalizations, all while creating new jobs installing air pollution control equipment. According to EPA, the new protection will save as many as 17,000 lives and prevent 120,000 cases of childhood asthma.
The Sierra Club is the most enduring and influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. We amplify the power of our 3.8 million members and supporters to defend everyone's right to a healthy world.
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Gaza Mourns Beloved Child Singer Hassan Ayyad, Killed in Israeli Airstrike
The 14-year-old boy was one of numerous children slain by Israeli bombing since Monday in what UNICEF has called "the most dangerous place in the world to be a child."
May 06, 2025
A famed 14-year-old singer was among scores of Palestinians killed by Israel Defense Forces airstrikes across the Gaza Strip since Monday as bombing and starvation fueled by Israel's ongoing siege continued to ravage the coastal enclave.
Hassan Ayyad—who was known for his songs about life and death in Gaza during Israel's genocidal assault and siege—was killed in an IDF airstrike on the Nuseirat refugee camp. Video shared widely on social media showed Ayyad singing in a haunting voice, sometimes accompanied by his father, Alaa Ayyad.
"The child who sang of death has now joined those he mourned."
"Gaza is dying, blind in the eyes of America," Ayyad intones in one clip. "With the warplanes, we tasted the flavor of death, an airstrike from land and sea. They blocked the crossings—people are dying from hunger. Bear witness, world, to what they've done."
Reacting to the boy's killing, Alaa Ayyad told Palestinian journalist Essa Syam that "Hassan was my heat, my soul, my son... my only son."
"What can I tell you about Hassan? Hassan is everything," Ayyad continued. "I ask everyone to pray for mercy for his soul."
Responding to Ayyad's killing, Gaza journalist Mahmoud Bassam wrote Monday on the social media site X that "Hassan was martyred moments ago in an Israeli airstrike, raising the death toll to over 60 since dawn."
"The child who sang of death has now joined those he mourned—his farewell was as noble as his words," Bassam added.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Tuesday that at least 22 people including numerous children were killed and more than 50 others wounded when Israeli airstrikes targeted a school-turned-shelter, this one in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.n
"The Bureij massacre is a heinous war crime that requires the prosecution of the occupation's leaders in international courts as war criminals," Hamas, which rules Gaza and led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, said in a statement.
More than 185,000 Palestinians have been killed, wounded, or left missing by Israel's 578-day assault and siege on Gaza. Most of the territory's more than 2 million inhabitants have also been forcibly displaced, often multiple times, while mass starvation is rampant due to Israel's tightened blockade.
Israeli officials said Monday that U.S. President Donald Trump does not object to Operation Gideon's Chariots, a full-scale invasion, conquest, and ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip that Israel is expected to launch after Trump visits the Middle East later this month.
On Tuesday, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said he envisions Gaza "entirely destroyed" and ethnically cleansed of its more than 2 million inhabitants.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Monday that Israeli forces have killed at least 16,278 children in Gaza since October 2023—a rate of one child killed every 40 minutes. The ministry said it has recorded 57 children who have died from malnutrition amid Israel's "complete siege" of Gaza, which has fueled mass starvation and illness and is part of an International Court of Justice genocide case against Israel led by South Africa.
Last year, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres added Israel to his so-called "List of Shame" of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts. This, after the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) called Gaza the "world's most dangerous place to be a child."
A 2024 survey of more than 500 Gazan children conducted by the Gaza-based Community Training Center for Crisis Management and supported by the War Child Alliance
found that nearly all children in the embattled Palestinian enclave believed their death was imminent—and nearly half said they wanted to die.
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Sanders Raises Alarm Over GOP Crypto Bill Designed to 'Enrich Trump and His Billionaire Backers'
"Congress is moving quickly to pass the GENIUS Act, which may make a bad situation much worse," said Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
May 06, 2025
As the Republican Senate majority leader plows ahead with a plan to hold a vote on a cryptocurrency bill, Sen. Bernie Sanders is planning a Wednesday conversation with industry experts regarding the proposed legislation, which his office warns would "enrich Trump and his billionaire backers."
The Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act would create a regulatory framework for a type of cryptocurrency called stablecoins. Sanders' (I-Vt.) office said in a Tuesday statement that the bill "threatens the stability of our financial system" and "makes it easier for President [Donald] Trump and his family to continue to engage in corrupt dealmaking enabled through their cryptocurrency, to the great benefit of themselves and their tech oligarch backers."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), another critic of the GENIUS Act, has argued it could facilitate illicit activity and provide little protection for consumer funds.
In February, the advocacy group Consumer Reports warned that the bill lacked consumer protections and could inadvertently allow large tech companies to enter the banking space, as in create currencies, without being subject to the same scrutiny that is applied to traditional banks.
"Under the Trump administration, we have seen a coordinated effort to boost the cryptocurrency industry to directly benefit President Trump and his oligarch allies," said Sanders on Tuesday. He also highlighted that Trump this week promoted a scheduled private dinner for the top holders of the $TRUMP meme coin, effectively soliciting purchases of the crypto token that now accounts for a substantial portion of his net worth.
Also, a stablecoin launched by Trump's World Liberty Financial crypto venture is going to be used by an investment firm backed by the government of Abu Dhabi to complete a $2 billion business deal, according to The New York Times.
"If that's not a troubling form of corruption, I don't know what is," said Sanders of the two cases.
The latest revelations regarding Trump and cryptocurrency appear to have diminished the GENIUS Act's chances of passage, according to The American Prospect.
The GENIUS Act had enjoyed support from a handful of Democratic senators, but a number of them backed off from supporting the bill in its current form over the weekend, writing in a statement that they wanted to see stronger provisions on anti-money laundering, national security, and other issues. "But reading between the lines, it was clearly the Trump corruption that soured them," the Prospect reported.
Sanders said that "in the face of this corruption, you might hope that Congress would step in to clamp down on corruption. Instead, Congress is moving quickly to pass the GENIUS Act, which may make a bad situation much worse."
Axiosreported Tuesday afternoon that Warren and another GENIUS Act critic, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), will introduce the End Crypto Corruption Act on Tuesday. The proposal would bar the president, vice president, members of Congress, and their immediate families from issuing digital assets, like stablecoins, perAxios.
Sanders' conversation will be with Sacha Haworth, the executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, a group aimed at reining in Big Tech, and Corey Frayer, the director of investor protection at the Consumer Federation of America, a consumer research and advocacy organization.
The conversation will be livestreamed on his Facebook, X, and YouTube, and through Act.tv.
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Pakistan Retaliates After Indian Missile Strikes Kill Child
"The world cannot afford a military confrontation between India and Pakistan," said a spokesperson for the United Nations secretary-general.
May 06, 2025
This is a developing story… Please check back for possible updates...
Pakistan retaliated after Indian missile strikes killed at least three people, including a child, and wounded a dozen others early Wednesday local time—further escalating tensions between the two nuclear-armed nations that have risen since last month's Kashmir massacre.
Karachi-based Geo Newsreported that "Pakistan shot down two Indian Air Force (IAF) jets early Wednesday in retaliatory strikes following Indian missile attacks on cities in Punjab and Azad Kashmir," which is administered by Pakistan.
Citing security sources, the outlet added that Pakistan's military also "destroyed an Indian Army brigade headquarters" and launched a missile strike that "wiped out an enemy post in the Dhundial sector of the Line of Control" in Kashmir.
Pakistan's Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, director general of Inter-Services Public Relations, said that "Pakistani armed forces are giving a befitting response to Indian aggression."
Before the retaliation, the Indian Ministry of Defense said in a statement that "India has launched Operation Sindoor, a precise and restrained response to the barbaric Pahalgam terror attack that claimed 26 lives, including one Nepali citizen."
India has blamed Pakistan for the April 22 attack in which armed militants killed tourists in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, while the Pakistani government has called for a "neutral" probe.
The Indian ministry claimed Wednesday that "focused strikes were carried out on nine terrorist infrastructure sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, targeting the roots of cross-border terror planning."
"Importantly, no Pakistani military facilities were hit, reflecting India's calibrated and nonescalatory approach," the ministry added. "This operation underscores India's resolve to hold perpetrators accountable while avoiding unnecessary provocation."
A spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said that the U.N. chief "is very concerned about the Indian military operations across the Line of Control and international border. He calls for maximum military restraint from both countries."
"The world cannot afford a military confrontation between India and Pakistan," the spokesperson added, according toReuters.
Guterres has repeatedly expressed concern about mounting tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors since last month.
"Now is the time for maximum restraint and stepping back from the brink," he said Monday. "Make no mistake: A military solution is no solution. And I offer my good offices to both governments in the service of peace. The United Nations stands ready to support any initiative that promotes de-escalation, diplomacy, and a renewed commitment to peace."
Asked about the escalation at the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump said: "It's a shame... I just hope it ends very quickly."
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