Muara Teweh!

This space is usually reserved for a local sports personality, past or present, to tell his story. George Hayes would qualify based on his 25-year relationship with junior bowling, but today’s story is not about him.

They will be his words, but it is a story of history and tradition, of striving for equality, and of tough times, especially now.

There was an era when African-Americans were not welcome in white-owned bowling houses. The sport’s sanctioning bodies, the American Bowling Congress and the Women’s International Bowling Congress, enforced Caucasian-only rules. Even after those bodies merged into the United States Bowling Congress, segregation was the rule until the early 1950s.

In 1939, blacks started the National Bowling Association with five founding branches - the Toledo Bowling Senate and others from Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Chicago. The founding fathers for Toledo were legendary black bowlers Lucius Huntley, Dwight Guy and Clarence King » Read more after the jump →

The college dreams of nine young women took a step toward fulfillment Saturday in a fairy tale setting at the Harborside Event Center in downtown Fort Myers.

Backdropped by Cinderella’s castle and the princess’ pumpkin coach, the young women had a chance to come out in style at the Nation’s Association Charities Quinceanera, its second annual scholarship gala.

The night was as much a celebration of the girls’ accomplishments as promise of a brighter future, said Chuck West, associate director of Nations Association.

Judged by grade-point average, community service and abilities to enunciate life goals, the nine finalists were winnowed from a field of 50 girls who applied for the program.

“Each of these girls worked hard and showed what they could achieve,” West said. » Read more after the jump →

PARIS (AFP) - France is reportedly planning a freeze on commercial genetically modified crops, which cover less than one percent of farmland in Europe’s top agricultural producer. According to Le Monde newspaper, the government is preparing to announce a halt to sales of GM seeds at a national conference on the environment taking place next month, involving farmers, business and advocacy groups.

Quoting Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo, Le Monde said the government wanted a freeze while working on a new law on GM crops, after ruling that it is impossible to stop the genes of GM crops spreading in the environment through pollination. Growing crops for research would be allowed to continue.

Borloo’s office refused to confirm or deny the report, which was greeted as a victory by environmentalist groups including Greenpeace. » Read more after the jump →

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Top scientists David and Birgitte Lane are set to leave Singapore to take up new positions at Scotland’s University of Dundee, which could complicate the city-state’s multi-billion dollar biotechnology ambitions.

Cancer expert Lane and his wife Birgitte, a skin cell expert, would return to Scotland in January to lead the new Division of Molecular Medicine at Dundee’s College of Life Sciences, a statement on the university’s Web site said.

The Singapore government, which has attracted some of the world’s top researchers to its shores in a bid to build up its biomedical industry, downplayed the move.

“Sir David Lane is not leaving the Agency for Science, Technology and Research and Singapore,” Andre Wan, deputy executive director of the Biomedical Research Council at Singapore’s A*STAR said on Thursday in a statement. » Read more after the jump →

BRUSSELS (AFP) - A total freeze on commercial genetically modified crops, such as France may be considering, is not allowed under EU rules, the European Commission said Friday.

“A general ban is not possible” for an EU state or region, said Barbara Helfferich, spokeswoman for EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas.

Without being drawn on the plans being drawn up in Paris, she said “we would have to look at the exact details of the proposition.”

The French newspaper Le Monde reported Thursday that France was planning a freeze on GM crops, which cover less than one percent of farmland in Europe’s top agricultural producer.

According to the paper, the government is preparing to announce a halt to sales of GM seeds at a national conference on the environment taking place next month, involving farmers, business and advocacy groups.
» Read more after the jump →

In an unusual nod to American history, a national gardening organization will plant a tree Friday cloned from President Teddy Roosevelt’s Sagamore Hill home on Long Island. It will join an ash tree cloned from George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate, with plans to add genetic replica trees from properties owned by Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln — ultimately creating a tree tribute to the four presidents represented on Mount Rushmore in upcoming years.

The trees will be planted on the grounds of the National Garden Clubs Inc., a nonprofit with roughly 230,000 members that promotes a love of gardening in the United States and overseas. The organization has its headquarters on six acres in St. Louis, just next to the Missouri Botanical Garden — known both for 79 acres of renowned gardens and its botanical research.

The presidential trees are being presented to the garden clubs’ headquarters by the Michigan-based Champion Tree Project and Connecticut-based Bartlett Tree Experts, which have been working to preserve the legacy of old-growth trees from presidential properties. » Read more after the jump →

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A federal jury found a 29-year-old environmental activist guilty Thursday of conspiring to burn down or blow up a northern California dam, a genetics lab, cell phone towers and other targets.

Eric McDavid of Foresthill, Calif., faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for what FBI agents said was as an ecoterrorist plot in the name of the Earth Liberation Front, a shadowy, loose-knit group that has claimed credit for arsons throughout the West.

McDavid and two others were arrested in January 2006 after buying bottles of bleach, a car battery, potassium chloride and other items prosecutors said were being used to build plastic explosives.

The Nimbus Dam on the American River near Sacramento and the U.S. Forest Service’s Institute of Forest Genetics in Placerville, in the foothills east of Sacramento, were among the suspected targets.
» Read more after the jump →