I’m no saint, but one thing I swear by is bringing my cloth bags to the market.   I have to admit, it’s a bit of an embarassment bringing my green ‘Whole Foods’ bags to Safeway or Trader Joes. The International Market gave me a couple free from their venue so I wouldn’t bring them in. Still some habits are hard to break, even the good ones. However, can’t help but wonder why they don’t make some plain bags or some cute ones with no name! Well voila, found some chic varieties that will work at any store…

http://www.skeeda.com/bags.html

And here is another site, offering alot more ecogoods, a more unisex bag, fun for browsing (and splurging).

http://www.whiteapricot.com/index_c2sd.php#c2sd

I think I’ll go with the Greenpeace set , and and secretly wanting an I am not a Plastic Bag!

Happy (Eco) shopping,

Zahra Pilavdzic

CANADA’S annual seal hunt kicked off today, touting for the first time new more humane killing methods, but still sparking criticism from animal rights groups.

Canada set a limit for its seal harvest this year of 275,000 harp seals, and adopted Independent Veterinarians Working Group recommendations to ensure the slaughter was less cruel and try to curb international protests.

“Unfortunately, I think this year’s hunt will be ‘business as usual’ here in Canada,” Sheryl Fink, a veteran seal hunt observer with the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), said.

“I don’t expect to see any improvement in the way animals are killed, or in the way this hunt is monitored,” she said.

According to officials, the new rules require hunters to check an animal’s pupils for a blinking reflex, and to slit its main arteries under its flippers, after clubbing or shooting a seal.

The regulations are meant to ensure that hunted seals are dead before they are skinned on the ice, and starting this year are a condition of holding a seal hunting licence.

But Fink said competing sealers face “unpredictable conditions” such as shifting ice, high winds, freezing temperatures and unpredictable seas – “all of which make it extremely difficult to execute a so-called ‘humane’ kill.”

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23450210-23109,00.html

Southern California Edison Co. plans to build the nation’s largest solar energy installation — an array of collector cells covering two square miles of rooftops that could power about 162,000 homes, the utility announced Thursday.

Edison said it asked state regulators for approval to begin installing the technology on the rooftops of commercial buildings throughout the region over the next five years.

The project would cost an estimated $875 million.

Edison hopes to mount the first cells immediately on buildings in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, with some sites operational as soon as August.

“These new solar stations, which we will be installing at a rate of one megawatt a week, will provide a new source of clean energy, directly in the fast-growing regions where we need it most,” said John E. Bryson, chairman and chief executive of Edison International, the utility’s parent company.

A one-megawatt power plant running continuously at full capacity can power 778 households a year, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

The cells convert sunlight into electricity by using solar rays to trigger an electric current through a chemical reaction.

The array of solar cells placed atop commercial building rooftops across Southern California would generate 250 megawatts of electricity.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger praised the project.

“If commercial buildings statewide partnered with utilities to put this solar technology on their rooftops, it would set off a huge wave of renewable energy growth,” Schwarzenegger said.

Florida-based utility FPL Energy LLC has also sought approval from the state to build a solar energy project in California.

The company’s proposed Beacon Solar Energy Project would involve more than 500,000 parabolic mirrors assembled in rows on 2,000 acres in the Mojave Desert north of Los Angeles.

The project, which would generate 250 megawatts of power, was expected to take about two years to complete.

Solar power from the project will be used to make steam for a turbine generator connected to an electricity grid.

The combined 500 megawatts produced by the FPL and Edison projects would increase the state’s solar power flowing to the state electricity grid by just more than 50 percent.

Rosemead-based Edison provides power to 13 million people in central and Southern California.

Shares of Edison International rose 76 cents, or about 1.5 percent, to $49.50 during afternoon trading Thursday.

___

Edison International: www.edison.com/

Palestinians sit on the rubble of their destroyed home in Jabalia, Gaza Strip. Photograph: Abid Katib/Getty images

The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, warned yesterday that more fighting in Gaza was imminent and admitted that one of his goals was now to “weaken” the Islamist movement Hamas.

Israeli troops and tanks pulled out of Gaza before dawn yesterday after five days of intense combat that left at least 106 Palestinians and three Israelis dead and brought criticism from many in the international community, including the UN. Israel’s leading human rights group B’Tselem, which has researchers on the ground, said at least half the Palestinian dead “did not take part in the hostilities”.

Despite the heavy loss of life of both militants and civilians, the Hamas movement claimed a victory. Militants continued firing rockets from Gaza into Israel, many towards the nearby town of Sderot but also some of a longer range towards the larger city of Ashkelon 11 miles to the north.

Israeli troops were still deployed close to Gaza and a senior Israeli official was quoted as saying there would be a two-day interval in the combat during the visit of the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, who is due in Jerusalem later today on a trip intended to spur on the peace talks between Olmert and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. However, she will find the peace process stalled after Abbas suspended his side’s involvement in the talks in the wake of the offensive.

In the Gazan town of Jabalia yesterday, crowds poured on to the streets. Funeral tents were set up outside houses as workmen began to repair electricity cables and rebuild walls. More families emerged with stories of civilian casualties amid the combat. Louise Arbour, the UN human rights commissioner, called on Israel to carry out an impartial investigation into the Palestinian deaths.

More conflict appears inevitable. “We are in the midst of a combat action,” Olmert was quoted as telling a parliamentary committee. “What happened in recent days was not a one-time event … The objective is reducing the rocket fire and weakening Hamas.”

Hamas is just as defiant. The group won Palestinian elections two years ago and went on to seize full control of Gaza last summer after a near civil war with the rival Fatah faction, led by Abbas, which now controls the West Bank. “Invading one inch of the Gaza Strip means that the battle and confrontation will continue and will expand even further than it has reached,” said Mahmoud Zahar, the most senior Hamas figure in Gaza. Palestinian rockets have killed 13 people in Israel since mid-2004, the most recent a civilian in Sderot last Wednesday.

On the main street in the Abed Rabbo district of Jabalia, close to the Israeli border, there was severe damage. Tank tracks had torn up the pavement and there were gaping holes in several houses. Twisted metal gates lay where they had been blasted off by soldiers who raided most of the homes.

One house targeted, on the corner of the main al-Quds Street, was home to the Abu Safi family. One of the younger sons, Hassan, 21, had been married seven days earlier. He stood on the second floor balcony to make a mobile phone call at around 8am on Saturday and was shot dead with a single bullet to the head. “We didn’t see the soldiers until they had shot him,” said one of his brothers, Yahya, 26. The family insist neither he nor others in the house were fighters and there was none of the insignia that usually marks a militant’s funeral.

Half an hour after the shooting Israeli soldiers forced open the building and entered the apartment. “They went in and saw his blood and they walked through it,” said Mohammad Abu Safi, 32, the oldest brother. “That was very hard for us.”

The soldiers searched the flat and the family and found nothing. “They asked: Are you Hamas? I said, of course not. We’re businessmen.” Abu Safi showed his identity card and his Palestinian Chamber of Commerce card. The soldiers confiscated their mobile phones and, the family say, took several hundred shekels too. “They never apologised for killing my brother,” he said. “At the end, one patted my father on the back and said: God bless him.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/04/israelandthepalestinians

Banish the Bags: This Whale Washed Up on a British Beach. In Its Stomach….the Remains of 23 Plastic Bags

Bloodied and skinned, its carcass lies on a British beach, battered by the sea and smashed by rocks. This shocking image shows the lifeless body of a Cuvier’s beaked whale - a shy and mysterious giant washed on to the shore of the Isle of Mull.

Its stomach was crammed with plastic bags. Twenty-three bags, or fragments of bags, were found.

read more

WAL-MART
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/937371164

SEAR CORP which includes K-Mart
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/780258434

DOLLAR GENERAL
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/426104243

TARGET STORE
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/560623574

HOME DEPOT
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/301092451

Israel and Gaza are on the brink of war. A ground assault has left many dead, and the rain of rockets only spreads. Israel is now considering a full-scale invasion of Gaza, which has never worked before. The only answer is a ceasefire deal, already suggested by Hamas and supported by 64% of Israelis and some senior cabinet ministers. With international help, this could make civilians on both sides safer.

Peace itself is at stake in the coming days, as are thousands of lives. But both sides know they are in a battle for global legitimacy, and international opinion matters. We need to raise a massive worldwide outcry for a Gaza ceasefire now - sign the emergency petition below, we will deliver it to senior Israeli and Palestinian leaders and in a billboard campaign:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/gaza_ceasefire_now/3.php?cl=57951150

Continuing air and land bombardments by the Israeli Occupation Forces have killed over 100 Palestinians since February 27, 2008. Both the UN and the EU condemn the onslaught as well as the United States. Still the incursion carries on unscathed. Neighboring Egypt has opened up it’s borders to accommodate wounded Palestinians, who find their own local hospitals pushed to the breaking point. To date 108 Gazans have been killed, 54 of them civilians.

PCHR’s investigations indicates that IOF have use excessive and disproportionate lethal force during aerial and land operations against populated areas and civilian installations. The use of force disregarded the threat to civilian lives, causing many direct civilian casualties inside homes. In addition, IOF intentionally obstructed the work of medical crews. Many of the victims died bleeding to death in front of their family members. In addition, IOF directly targeted medical crews, killing a paramedic and seriously injuring another in Jabalia. Ambulances sustained damages as well.

PCHR reiterates its condemnation of these serious crimes, and:

1. Affirms that these crimes are a continuation of Israeli war crimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) in general and the Gaza Strip in particular. These crimes are indicative of IOF disregard for civilian Palestinian lives.
2. Reiterates the warning over the escalation crimes against civilians in light of the statements and threats by Israeli political and military leaders, which threaten to cause additional civilian casualties.
3. Calls upon the High Contracting Parties (HCP) of the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) to fulfill their legal obligation under Article 1 of the Convention and ensure that it is respected by all parties under any circumstances. The Centre calls upon the HCP to fulfill their obligations under Article 146 of the Convention to pursue persons suspected of perpetrating grave violations of the Convention, which are defined as war crimes under Article 147 of the Convention.

PCHR mural in Gaza city.
For up to the minute reporting please visit:

Palestinian Center for Human Rights

http://pchrgaza.ps/