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March 29th, 2024

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The Continuing Crisis; Wait, What?

News of the Weird by Chuck Shepherd

By News of the Weird by Chuck Shepherd

Published Jan.23, 2015

The Continuing Crisis; Wait, What?

As young professionals have embraced urban neighborhoods, locally grown produce has proliferated in community (and even backyard) gardens and is thought to be healthier than pesticide-laden commercial produce. However, the New York Post revealed in November (based on state Health Department data) that such gardens in construction-dense New York City are vulnerable to astonishingly high levels of lead and other toxic metals. One community garden in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant, for example, showed levels of lead nearly 20 times the safe level. [New York Post, 11-16-2014]

In November, a clothing store on Yabao Road in Beijing came under criticism for posting a sign, "Chinese Not Admitted," on its door. An employee told the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper that no one should believe that "we Chinese look down upon ourselves. But some Chinese customers are too annoying." (A legal scholar told the newspaper that China, except for Hong Kong, has no law against racial or ethnic discrimination.) [South China Morning News (Hong Kong), 11-26-2014]

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