Monsanto's Roundup, containing the active ingredient glyphosate, has been tied to more health and environmental problems than you could imagine. Similar to how pesticides have been contributing to the bee decline, Monsanto's Roundup has been tied to the decrease in the population of monarch butterflies by killing the very plants that the butterflies rely on for habitat and food. What's been shown to be an even greater threat to the population, though, is Monsanto's Roundup Ready corn and soybeans.

Exposing the "No Harm" Mantra

The myth that Fukushima radiation levels were too low to harm humans persists, a year after the meltdown. A March 2, 2012 New York Times article quoted Vanderbilt University professor John Boice: "there's no opportunity for conducting epidemiological studies that have any chance for success - the doses are just too low." Wolfgang Weiss of the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation also recently said doses observed in screening of Japanese people "are very low."

Views like these are political, not scientific, virtually identical to what the nuclear industry cheerleaders claim. Nuclear Energy Institute spokesperson Tony Pietrangelo issued a statement in June that "no health effects are expected among the Japanese people as a result of the events at Fukushima."

In their haste to choke off all consideration of harm from Fukushima radiation, nuclear plant owners and their willing dupes in the scientific community built a castle against invaders - those open-minded researchers who would first conduct objective research BEFORE rushing to judgment. The pro-nuclear chants of "no harm" and "no studies needed" are intended to be permanent, as part of damage control created by a dangerous technology that has produced yet another catastrophe.

But just one year after Fukushima, the "no harm" mantra is now being crowded by evidence - evidence to the contrary.

The 9.0 magnitude earthquake and the subsequent tsunami that devastated Japan's east coast exactly one year ago were not supposed to happen. At least if seismic hazard maps are not cheating. But can modern science really predict such disasters?

­As Joel Achenbach noted quite rightly in his Washington Post article, Earth paid no heed to scientific orthodoxy. And while geologists were theorizing, a massive slab of our planet's crust moved 55 meters (180 feet) eastwards. It lifted the ocean bed almost 5 meters up (15 feet), and that brought all the might of the waters of the Pacific upon Japan's eastern coast.

The Tohoku area of Japan's main island of Honshu suffered the most. The quake and the tsunami killed about 20,000 people and wiped out entire towns in several coastal prefectures. And yet no other consequence of this natural catastrophe inflicted so much horror around the world as the Fukushima nuclear crisis.

When the tsunami hit the Tohoku area, the destruction it caused led to wide-scale power outages. The latter caused failure of cooling systems of the Fukushima nuclear power plant and, eventually, a meltdown of the radioactive fuel inside the plant's nuclear reactors.­

Progress Energy's chief nuclear officer announced this week that every U.S. nuclear plant will add an extra layer of emergency equipment this year to deal with unforeseen natural disasters - such as earthquakes, tornadoes and even meteor strikes.

The announcement comes just ahead of the one-year anniversary of Japan's Fukushima disaster.

But nuclear watchdogs immediately expressed skepticism that the industry effort would do much good. Critics warned instead that unless the new machinery and equipment were safeguarded, the costly upgrades would likely be disabled by the same catastrophe if it obliterated a nuclear plant's primary emergency equipment.

Jim Scarola, Progress Energy's chief nuclear officer, said Friday that nuclear plants in this country will be adding pumps, generators and other safety equipment to deal with a total loss of onsite power, which led to Japan's nuclear crisis.

A rare tornado blew roofs off homes and left other damage in its path through the Hawaiian communities of Lanikai and Enchanted Lake on Oahu, weather officials confirmed Friday.

A National Weather Service team surveying damage and talking to witnesses determined a waterspout came ashore and was reclassified as a tornado in Lanikai about 7:30 a.m. The 20-yard-wide tornado traveled about 1.5 miles in 15 minutes to Enchanted Lake with wind speeds reaching 60 to 70 mph before dissipating, officials said.

Hawaii, known for its famous sunshine, has been hit with unusually harsh weather for about a week.

A 30-minute hail storm on Friday in Oahu was "unprecedented ," Tom Birchard, senior meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Honolulu, told the Associated Press. Some of the hail stones have been unusually large for the islands -- the size of marbles and discs more than a half inch long, weather.com reported.

At least 145 people are missing and "presumed dead" after an avalanche hit a remote village in Afghanistan's northeastern Badakhshan province last week, the United Nations said Saturday.

Afghan officials had earlier in the day put the death toll from a series of avalanches in the province's Shekay district at 56.

The UN said an avalanche in the area on March 4 claimed 50 lives and warned of severe flooding over coming weeks due to melting snow.

Afghanistan's harshest winter in 15 years has claimed scores of lives, with the avalanches taking the toll to more than 90 in the mountainous province of Badakhshan alone, according to officials.

Rescue teams have so far been unable to reach the disaster-hit areas.

"Access to Dispay village is possible only by road from neighbouring Tajikistan but it has been severely hampered by snow-blocked roads," the UN's Office of the Humanitarian Coordinator for Afghanistan said in a statement.

"Helicopter access is not possible as there is a high risk of triggering further avalanches."

A tourist has captured on camera the frenzied rescue of a pod of beached dolphins on a beach north of Rio de Janeiro.

The footage shows over 20 dolphins trapped in the surf and thrashing their flippers in distress.

Realising the dolphins' plight, a dozen beachgoers began to pull the dolphins back into deeper water by their tails.

A town in northern Australia has been invaded by more than 250,000 bats, prompting warnings of a potentially fatal disease related to rabies.

The Centre for Disease Control (CDC) warned residents in Katherine to stay away from the fruit bats, which could carry the Australian Bat Lyssavirus.

The disease can be transmitted to people if they are bitten or scratched.

Authorities have closed down the main sports ground in the town 300 km south of Darwin in the Northern Territory.

The colony of fruit bats - little red flying foxes - arrived in the town late last month. In recent days numbers have begun to fall but large numbers continue to roost on the outskirts of town, reports the BBC's Phil Mercer.

They are one of the least attractive of all fish species and are normally found lurking in oceans and rivers.

But when part of New Zealand was hit by a 'weather bomb' recently, a number of eels suddenly sprung up in some surprising locations.

Residents in one street in Masterton, Wellington, were left shocked to discover dozens of the slimy creatures swimming in large puddles and gutters in the road.

People could be spotted in the streets attempting to help the eels back into deeper water as a number became stranded on the side of the road.

It follows days of appalling weather in the region.

"The most difficult thing of all is to see is what is right in front of your eyes." Goethe.

As we approach the tragic one-year anniversary of Fukushima's multiple nuclear reactors' accident on March 11, that initially affected the entire Japanese population, we now know that this nightmare has engulfed all of us. Let us also not forget that this is the third nuclear attack on the Japanese (the first two were Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Given what has not been done to ensure public safety, we cannot think of it any other way. From the very first day, there were lies and a massive cover-up of the extent of the destruction and the inherent radioactive dangers - not just from Japanese officials and TEPCO corporate reports, but also from the US. The Mark 1 reactors, built by General Electric, have design flaws. There are many of these same-designed reactors in the US.

A year later, much of the corruption, deceit, and careless practices have been documented extensively here at Global Research - while mainstream news continues Orwellian doublespeak. Last month, in a rare but very belated mainstream account, CBS News reported that after the tsunami and nuclear accident: "The normal lines of [government] authority completely collapsed in Japan." See this.

Early on, even essential radioactive monitoring was shut down. In May 2011, the prestigious Norsk Institute's online site was blocked from the US. They had been monitoring on a daily basis the worldwide radioactive contamination to which we were all - and continue to be - exposed. Conveniently, any early radiation monitoring in the US was inconsistent, with numerous sites supposedly not working for one or another reason. Then the so-called "acceptable" radiation levels in food were raised in the US and EU.