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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

CA Farmworkers' Advocates Rally Against Pesticides Near Schools

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Monday, July 11, 2016   

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - About 150 farmworkers' families and their advocates plan to rally tomorrow in front of the California state PEA office in Sacramento. The groups are concerned with the toxicity of pesticides applied near schools, and say they've been waiting for the Department of Pesticide Regulation to act after it held community meetings on several proposals last year.

Angel Garcia, a community organizer with El Quinto Sol de America in Tulare County, said kids should be protected from pesticides that are in both the restricted and non-restricted categories.

"The main 'ask' at the state level is to create a one-mile buffer zone around schools when children or families, or school-sponsored activity is happening," he said.

He said current regulations vary from county to county. Some have a quarter of a mile protection zone, but only for certain pesticides. Some have systems to notify schools and parents when spraying will occur, while others do not.

Valerie Gorospe, a community advocate with the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, said studies have linked pesticide spraying to serious illness, and it disproportionately affects Latino children.

"There are pesticides that cause cancer, that do neurological damage to developing bodies," she said. "We've seen skin diseases; and asthma is definitely something that a lot of our children, especially in the San Joaquin Valley, deal with on a daily basis."

Gorospe said the Department of Pesticide Regulation is also considering changing the so-called "banking system" for pesticides so the amount farmers are allowed in a given year can't be rolled over into the following year.


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Health and Wellness

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Missouri residents are worried about future access to birth control. The latest survey from The Right Time, an initiative based in Missouri…


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Wisconsin children from low-income families are now on track to get nutritious foods over the summer. Federal officials have approved the Badger …

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Almost 2,900 people are unsheltered on any given night in the Beehive State. Gov. Spencer Cox is celebrating signing nine bills he says are geared …


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Environment

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New York's Legislature is considering a bill to get clean-energy projects connected to the grid faster. It's called the RAPID Act, for "Renewable …

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