After a four-day hiatus, around 14 members of Salinas’ homeless population and their advocates resumed their vigil in front of city hall Friday night. The demonstrators say the move is in response to city officials’ inaction following last week’s sweep of homeless encampments in Salinas’ Chinatown.
Featured online and on Page 1 of print edition.
The stunning rocks and caves of the newly designated Pinnacles National Park are expected to draw crowds, and the city of Soledad wants to be ready for them.
For more than 125 years, the world has held its collective breath every Feb. 2 as a six-pound rodent from Punxsutawney, Pa., predicts the weather. While Punxsutawney Phil has gained a national celebrity usually reserved for television stars, real weather experts say the groundhog’s predictions are hogwash.
Two local agriculture gurus presented on the challenges of cover crops to a packed room of organic farmers Friday at the EcoFarm Conference in Pacific Grove. Cover cropping is a practice where specially chosen crops are planted during the off-season to help revitalize a field’s soil. At the end of the season, the cover crops are chopped down or, in the case of non-organic farming, killed with herbicide to release the gathered nutrients back into the soil.
More than 1,500 ecology-minded farmers, marketers and activists from across the country will gather next week at the 33rd EcoFarm Conference in Pacific Grove with a goal of promoting fair and sustainable farming systems. The yearly event of workshops, lectures and social gatherings is put on by the nonprofit Ecological Farming Association.
Story on A1 of newspaper's print edition.
Monterey County certainly won’t be making the honor roll of tobacco regulation this year. The American Lung Association published its annual “State of Tobacco Control” report card on Tuesday, and every city in the county received an “F” rating.
2012 was a big year for science. From tiny particles to worlds millions of miles away, there were a lot of science stories worth reading. Here is a compilation of the top five of the year, according to the point-score given by users of Reddit.com. For each major story I’ve made a useful infographic to give you some neat facts about that topic. Here’s to hoping 2013 is an even better year for science!
Canadian officials say a recent E. coli outbreak in their country was caused by California-grown lettuce. The lettuce was distributed by FreshPoint Inc. to KFC and Taco Bell restaurants throughout Canada.
Story on A1 of print version.
The natural beauty and dedicated volunteers at the Fort Ord National Monument were recognized this week by The Wilderness Society, which presented the 15,000-acre nature preserve with a CAPE award for excellence in the conservation of public land.
Lead story on A1 of print version.
Our galaxy wasn’t always the beautiful cosmic ballet it is today. Billions of years ago, the Milky Way was a chaotic jumble of stars and gas moving every which way. Only over time did the Milky Way morph into its current uniform shape, with flat arms of starlight reaching out from a galactic core. Now, a new NASA study shows this process happened much more recently than scientists had thought.
Featured in the Santa Cruz Sentinel (Pg. C1 & online, second most viewed story for January 2013) and the San Jose Mercury News (Pg. 1B & online).