Jon Entine

The European Food Safety Authority has weighed in with its assessment of the maize study by Gilles-Eric Séralini and his research team at France’s University of the Caen, which purportedly showed that rodents fed a strain of genetically modified corn with Monsanto’s Roundup Ready developed tumors and died.

Fifty years ago, marine biologist Rachel Carson ignited the modern environmental movement with the publication of Silent Spring. It was an ecological alarm call – an attack on what she believed was the overuse of pesticides and the potential harm they might cause to humans and wildlife – and a call for a progressive, science-focused view of modern agriculture and food.Her deeper, ecological message is often overlooked by her most ardent supporters. It should be front and center as Californians prepare to go the polls in November to decide the fate of Proposition 37 – which could introduce mandatory labeling of genetically modified (GM) foods into the United States for the first time.

Led by 100-meter world record holder Usain Bolt, Jamaican men swept the sprinting events at the London Olympics. It was a stunning feat for the small Caribbean nation. But as part of a broader trend, it’s hardly surprising. Runners of West African descent are the fastest humans on earth. For decades, a bushel of developing countries—Jamaica, Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, Saint Kitts, Barbados, Grenada, Netherlands Antilles and the Bahamas in the Caribbean and Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Namibia in western Africa, as single countries, have each produced more elite male sprinters than all of white Europe and Asia combined. Yet West African descended runners are laggards at the longer races.

When it comes to new legislation, sometimes what you see is not all you get. Just ask Nancy Pelosi, the House Minority Leader who two years ago uttered the now infamous words, “We have to pass the [Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act] so that you can find out what is in it….” Whether or not you support the president's healthcare reform initiatives, the implementation of any vast, complex legislation can result in unintended consequences.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s rumored retreat on fracking shows just how powerful an anti-science, fear-based campaign can be. If reports are correct, Cuomo will restrict fracking to a few counties in which gas shale is far below the water table, and allow a veto to localities that are dominated by anti-fracking radicals. It's all in the name of ensuring the safety of drinking water, he purportedly believes--or protecting his political base.Cuomo's decision validates the anti-frackers’ “study it to death” strategy. Their goal is to create the illusion that horizontal fracturing pollutes drinking water — even though the Environmental Protection Agency has publicly (if reluctantly) acknowledged that there is not one documented case of such pollution.

This is not a story of Lost Tribes, but of lost history--the discovery of "Jewish genes" in Hispano Christian populations of the American Southwest. Jon Entine, author of Abraham's Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chose People, reports.“Let us remember all of our Jewish brothers and sisters, who through their faithfulness to One God, inspired all Christians.”

Are modern Jews a ‘race’—the descendants of an ancient tribal people, as Biblical lore has it? Or do they trace their ancestry to Eurasia as Shlomo Sand, author of The Invention of the Jewish People, and Arthur Koestler in The Thirteenth Tribe, claim?The latest DNA research offers extraordinary insights into the origins of the Jewish people and its impact on each of us. I addressed this controversy a few years ago in my book, Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People.

“Let’s play “Jeopardy.” Round One: Science Literacy. Category: Evolution. For $500: Which is the largest demographic group to reject Darwin’s theory of evolution?”

Al Armendariz, the top Environmental Protection Agency official in the oil-rich Southwest region, resigned from his post, effective today. It's the latest twist in the never-ending and increasingly ugly fracking fracas.