the firefighters and first responders hailed as heroes for saving most of the city and safeguarding its people as they fled a monster wildfire in May parked their rigs and hung banners to welcome the oil-town’s gritty residents as they headed back home along Highway 63.  As the first residents arrived, passing a huge Canadian flag hung between the ladders of two fire trucks parked on one bridge, the Fort Mac Evacuees saw for the first time the devastation.  They saw destroyed areas covered with a white substance sprayed to keep toxic ash from blowing about. [node:read-more:link]

Fort McMurray lies in a forested valley 270 miles northeast of Edmonton, beneath the upside-down Y formed by the confluence of the Athabasca and Clearwater rivers. [node:read-more:link]

With their homes and small businesses lacking access to robust fiber Internet service, many American small business operators try to get by with mobile wireless service not intended to support businesses. Larry Korte is an example, trying to run his consulting business in Churchville, Virginia, on 4G cellular service. But since the service is essentially metered Internet, where users pay overage charges for exceeding bandwidth limits, Korte finds the service expensive and a poor value. “I go to the [cell phone provider] and say, ‘Well, we need 300 gigabytes a month. [node:read-more:link]

A foundation executive says some philanthropies may use questions of "capacity" as an excuse not to fund projects in rural America. But in the long run, he says, urban-based philanthropies need rural constituencies to make a difference at the national level. But that’s apparently not what has happened in the recent past. A U.S. Department of Agriculture study released last year showed that rural areas, while they were home to about 19 percent of the U.S. population,  received only 6 to 7 percent of private foundation grants awarded from 2005 to 2010. [node:read-more:link]

Americans may be divided on partisan and ideological lines, but on at least one issue they agree: Support for clean renewable energy just keeps growing. In a March 2015 Gallup Poll, for example, 79 percent said they wanted the nation to use more solar energy, while 70 percent wanted to see more of the energy we use come from wind.  As promising as this trend seems to be, however, it is a quantum leap to move from 100 percent renewable electricity to 100 percent renewable energy. [node:read-more:link]

Organic sales have grown 11% from 2014 to 2015’s total of $43.3 billion.  Nearly 5% of all the food sold in the U.S. in 2015 was organic.  The demand for fresh organic was most evident in the continued growth of “fresh juices and drinks,” which saw explosive growth of 33.5% in 2015, making it the fastest-growing of all the organic subcategories. [node:read-more:link]

Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced AquaBounty's genetically modified salmon has been approved for sale as food in Canada. AquaBounty said it will be at least a year before the salmon will be available in stores.  A final round of thorough and rigorous Canadian scientific reviews found that AquAdvantage Salmon is as safe and nutritious as conventional salmon. The same conclusion was reached by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2010, but it took until November 2015 for the agency to approve the fish for sale as food in that country. [node:read-more:link]

June 17, 2016 Webinar on unmanned aircraft and animal agriculture
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Critics of a U.S. House bill by the education committee say the legislation, which would set up a block grant pilot program in three states, is a first step toward eliminating a federal guarantee of nutritious meals for all school children.  The block grant provision will cut funds for school meal programs and nullify crucial federal mandates, including student eligibility rules for free and reduced price meals and nutrition standards, the non-profit School Nutrition Association (SNA) said [node:read-more:link]

See how your state ranks! The U.S. Clean Tech Leadership Index tracks and ranks the clean-tech activities of all 50 states and the 50 largest metro areas in the U.S. – from EV (electric vehicles) and renewables adoption to policy and investment activity.  The objective of the Leadership Index is to serve as a tool for regional comparative research, a source for aggregated industry data, and a jumping-off point for deep, data-driven analysis of the U.S. clean-tech market.   [node:read-more:link]