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Infants who are more heavily exposed to pollution from car traffic are more likely to develop attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, a new National Institutes of Health study suggests. Children who lived in areas with high levels of "traffic-related air pollution" when they were a year old were significantly more likely by age 7 to have ADHD than children who lived in less polluted areas. The study, published Tuesday in NIH's Environmental Health Perspectives, was conducted by researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and researchers at the University of Cincinnati.

An unprecedented stocktake of UK wildlife has revealed that most species are struggling and that one in three have halved in number in the past half century. The State of Nature report was compiled by 25 conservation groups including the Wildlife Trusts, the Mammal Society, Buglife and the Marine Conservation Society. The unique report, based on scientific analysis of tens of millions of observations from volunteers, shows that from woodland to farmland and from freshwater streams to the sea, many animals, birds, insects, fish and plants are in trouble. The key findings are presented here, and the full report is online: www.rspb.org.uk/stateofnature. Of more than 6,000 species that have been assessed using modern Red List criteria, more than one in 10 are thought to be under threat of extinction in the UK. The UK’s Overseas Territories hold a wealth of wildlife of huge international importance and over 90 of these species are at high risk of global extinction. Half of the species assessed have shown strong changes in their numbers or range, indicating that recent environmental changes are having a dramatic impact on nature in the UK. The report makes especially sobering reading with regard to invertebrates. The small things that run the world are suffering the greatest declines, especially moths, butterflies, ladybirds and ground beetles, these groups of insects have all declined between 65-70%! Many invertebrates are highly threatened, such as the Freshwater pearl mussel at risk of global extinction, and dozens of species have become extinct nationally such as the Short-haired bumblebee and Large copper butterfly. The intensification of farming has had far-reaching and ongoing impacts on wildlife. The loss of meadows, hedgerows and ponds, the increased use of pesticides, the abandonment of mixed farming, changes in cropping and the intensification of pastoral farming have all had a significant impact. Watch Sir David Attenborough launching the report at the Natural History museum, with the Minister for Biodiversity and State of Nature partners: http://vimeo.com/66800298#at=22 and listen to this amazing speech about the state of nature in Wales from Iolo Williams, a Welsh nature observer and television presenter, best known for his BBC and S4C nature shows: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnJQjtvngqA

In this special series called “The Neonicotinoid View”, host, June Stoyer and special guest co-host, Tom Theobald talk to commercial beekeeper, Steve Ellis about an unusual bee mortality event due to corn planting. Steve Ellis owns the Old Mill Honey Company which operates roughly 2,300 hives of bees in Minnesota for honey production and pollination for crops in California. Steve is the secretary of the National Honeybee Advisory Board (NHAB) and has been involved in pesticide issues for the past 15 years.

Turtle doves (Streptopelia turtur) were once widespread across much of England and Wales, but the most recent figures show that the population in the south east, one of the last remaining strongholds, has fallen by 84 per cent since 1995. Nationally turtle doves have declined by 93 per cent since 1970. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) said that “at this current rate of change, if we don’t help this species, scientists calculate there will be fewer than 1000 pairs by 2020, and complete UK extinction as a breeding species will be a real possibility.”

The death knell is ringing for Oregon's marbled murrelet. The seabird, which nests in old growth coastal forests and hunts for fish beyond the surf, is losing the battle against extinction. And this despite the best efforts of conservationists. An impartial study published in the international research journal The Condor found that marbled murrelet numbers in five different study areas fell sharply between 2001 and 2010. The count dropped from 22,200 to roughly 16,700. And this included four of the five conservation areas identified in the federal Marbled Murrelet Recovery Plan. Marbled murrelets live in Oregon, Washington and California. They’ve been on the federal endangered species list for more than 20 years, but they're worse off than ever. “This study confirms the fears that many conservationists have held for years,” says Steve Holmer, senior policy analyst for the American Bird Conservancy, about the report published in December. “By showing that the marbled murrelet is still in sharp decline, the study emphasizes the need for stronger, more aggressive conservation measures.”

The US State Department has been essentially acting as a de facto global-marketing arm of the ag-biotech industry, complete with figures as high-ranking as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton mouthing industry talking points as if they were gospel, a new Food & Water Watch analysis of internal documents finds. The FWW report is based on an analysis of diplomatic cables, written between 2005 and 2009 and released in the big Wikileaks document dump of 2010. FWW sums it up: "a concerted strategy to promote agricultural biotechnology overseas, compel countries to import biotech crops and foods that they do not want, and lobby foreign governments—especially in the developing world—to adopt policies to pave the way to cultivate biotech crops."

Currently there is no law to prosecute those who are destroying the planet. Instead, climate campaigners do not have the support of the judiciary in preventing the corporate ecocide that is daily occurring under our very noses. Ecocide is permitted by the government and, by dint of the global reach of modern-day transnational business, every government in the world. Corporate ecocide has now reached a point where we stand on the brink of collapse of our ecosystems, triggering the death of many millions in the face of human-aggravated cataclysmic tragedies. The failure rests with our governments who are unwilling to intervene to make the destruction of our world a crime. Our police are disempowered and our justice system is unable to protect our greater interests when faced with the superior silent right of corporations to cause injury to persons and planet.

Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal, has jested that instead of scientific peer review, its rival The Lancet had a system of throwing a pile of papers down the stairs and publishing those that reached the bottom. On another occasion, Smith was challenged to publish an issue of the BMJ exclusively comprising papers that had failed peer review and see if anybody noticed. He replied, “How do you know I haven’t already done it?” As Smith’s stories show, journal editors have a lot of power in science – power that provides opportunities for abuse. The life science industry knows this, and has increasingly moved to influence and control science publishing. The strategy, often with the willing cooperation of publishers, is effective and sometimes blatant.

According to preliminary results of a survey by the Bee Informed Partnership, 31.1 percent of managed honey bee colonies in the U.S. were lost during the 2012/2013 winter. In addition to this national report, several state level incidents of large scale honey bee colony losses have been reported. In a recent incident in Florida, citrus groves experienced an acute foliar poisoning that resulted in severely damaged colonies. Oranges had an early bloom this year, and were still blooming near the end of April. One beekeeper’s colonies suffered immense losses due to drift from an application of Montana 2F, an imdacloprid-based herbicide, from a neighboring grove. 1000-1500 colonies were killed, while 10,000-13,000 colonies suffered severe damage. In Maryland, close to 60 percent of the managed hives died during the 2012/2013 winter, according to the state bee inspector and local beekeepers. In Canada, beekeepers are calling on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to allow commercial beekeepers to import package bees from the U.S. because of higher than expected bee losses this past winter. Some beekeepers reported average losses of up to 50 percent of their hives. Though weather is seen as a major factor in the wintering losses of Canadian honey bees, the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists also argue that the use of systemic pesticides are connected to these dramatic bee losses.

That's not going over well with everyone in Congress. Tensions between conventional and organic agriculture boiled over this week during a late-night House Agriculture Committee debate on farm legislation that for decades has propped up traditional crops and largely ignored organics. When Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., a former organic farmer, offered an amendment to make it easier for organic companies to organize industry-wide promotional campaigns, there was swift backlash from some farm-state Republicans. One lawmaker said he didn't want to see the industry get a free ride and a second complained about organics' "continued assault on agriculture. That's one of the things that has caught me and raises my concerns, is that industry's lack of respect for traditional agriculture," said Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga. He was referring to some organic companies' efforts to reduce the number of genetically modified crops in the marketplace. At the same time, Scott acknowledged that he and his wife buy organic foods. Growing consumer interest in organics has proved tough for some Republicans on the committee to ignore. Eight Republicans, most of them newer members of the committee, joined with all of the committee's Democrats in supporting the amendment, which was adopted 29-17.