In Voices from the Kitchen, Marc Meyer pulls the curtain back on the harrowing journeys of the people who run his restaurants
Throughout his lifetime, celebrated chef and author Anthony Bourdain was unequivocal in his belief that the restaurant industry in the US could not function without immigrant labor. These indispensable workers, Bourdain argued, were not only willing to do the jobs that most US-born citizens would look down upon, but also they did them better and faster.
“People have differing opinions on what we should do about immigration in the future,” Bourdain told the Houston Press in 2007. “But let’s be honest, at least, about who is cooking in America now. Who we rely on – have relied on – for decades. The bald fact is that the entire restaurant industry in America would close down overnight, would never recover, if current immigration laws were enforced quickly and thoroughly across the board.”
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
12/07/2025 - 11:00
12/07/2025 - 09:00
‘Make America healthy again’ leaders call for Lee Zeldin to quit for favoring chemical companies over US families
“Make America healthy again” (Maha) movement leaders have put out a petition calling for Donald Trump to fire Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lee Zeldin, who, since being appointed in late January, has quickly moved to undo toxic chemical regulations and fast-track pesticide approvals.
The petition represents the latest salvo in a growing Maha-Maga feud over the Trump administration’s policies around toxic chemicals and pesticides. Trump campaigned on cleaning up the nation’s water and food supply, a priority for the Robert F Kennedy Jr-led Maha movement that helped propel the US president to office.
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12/07/2025 - 09:00
Education program sponsored by Shell’s Queensland Gas Company is ‘climate obstruction dressed up as education’, advocacy group says
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Queensland Museum has been accused of misleading teachers and children about the root cause of the climate crisis through a multimillion-dollar education partnership with one of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies.
Shell’s Queensland Gas Company has been sponsoring the museum’s Future Makers learning program since 2015 and produces teaching materials as well as running free professional development courses for teachers.
But a review of the program’s climate change materials carried out by climate advocacy group Comms Declare claimed they ignore the root cause of the climate crisis: the burning of fossil fuels, including gas.
Belinda Noble, founder of Comms Declare, said: “This is climate obstruction dressed up as education. We wouldn’t let big tobacco sponsor teaching materials – fossil fuel companies shouldn’t shape how kids learn about the climate.”
Future Makers worksheets and learning materials about global warming designed for years 7 to 10 explain how greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are rising and this is causing rapid warming, but the cause of the rise – mainly fossil fuel burning – is not explained.
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12/07/2025 - 07:00
The impending collapse of UK carsharing is an embarrassment for a government attempting to curb the dominance of cars
Zipcar, the world’s largest carsharing club, is leaving the UK. The company, which operates about 3,000 shared vehicles in Britain, has announced plans to shutter its UK operations at the end of the month. The news comes as a bitter blow to the hundreds of thousands of Britons who regularly rely on carsharing, and is a major setback in efforts to reduce emissions and traffic congestion.
I’m particularly gutted. This year I finally learned to drive, specifically in order to become a Zipcar member for the rare occasions when I need a vehicle. As newly qualified drivers aren’t allowed to hire Zipcars until they’ve held a licence for a year, I bought a secondhand VW Beetle to tide me over, counting the days until I could flog it and sign up for Zipcar instead. Now, with the service shutting up shop, I fear I will be stuck maintaining a costly lump of steel that I need for less than 1% of the year.
Phineas Harper is a writer and curator
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12/07/2025 - 01:00
Cameras capture lone creature collecting materials for its lodge in riverside nature reserve
A wild beaver has been spotted in Norfolk for the first time since beavers were hunted to extinction in England at the beginning of the 16th century.
It was filmed dragging logs and establishing a lodge in a “perfect beaver habitat” on the River Wensum at Pensthorpe, a nature reserve near Fakenham in Norfolk.
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12/06/2025 - 15:19
Several additional people, including children, have severe liver damage amid 21 cases of amatoxin poisoning
California officials are warning foragers after an outbreak of poisoning linked to wild mushrooms that has killed one adult and caused severe liver damage in several patients, including children.
The state poison control system has identified 21 cases of amatoxin poisoning, likely caused by death cap mushrooms, the health department said on Friday. The toxic wild mushrooms are often mistaken for edible ones because of their appearance and taste.
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12/06/2025 - 10:00
Drag queen, environmentalist, diversity and inclusion advocate and social media star arrives in San Francisco
Pattie Gonia, the drag queen and environmentalist, arrived in San Francisco on Friday afternoon and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge with $1m more than when she set out on her journey last week.
The diversity and inclusion advocate completed the 100-mile trek from Point Reyes national seashore to San Francisco in full drag with her voluminous red wig and smokey eye. The effort was part of a campaign she launched to raise $1m for eight non-profits that aim to expand access and make the outdoors a more “equitable place”.
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12/06/2025 - 01:00
Exclusive: ‘extremely unhelpful’ policy seen as deterrent to clearing thousands of dump sites across England
Millions of pounds in landfill tax owed to the government has to be paid by the Environment Agency (EA) if it clears any of the thousands of illegal waste dumps across the country.
Of the £15m that taxpayers are paying for the clearance of the only site the agency has committed to clearing up – a vast illegal dump at Hoad’s Wood in Kent – £4m is landfill tax.
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12/06/2025 - 00:52
Drone attack that Ukraine blamed on Russia blew hole in painstakingly erected €1.5bn shield meant to allow for final clean-up of 1986 meltdown site
The protective shield over the Chornobyl disaster nuclear reactor in Ukraine, which was hit by a drone in February, can no longer perform its main function of blocking radiation, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has announced.
In February a drone strike blew a hole in the “new safe confinement”, which was painstakingly built at a cost of €1.5bn ($1.75bn) next to the destroyed reactor and then hauled into place on tracks, with the work completed in 2019 by a Europe-led initiative. The IAEA said an inspection last week of the steel confinement structure found the drone impact had degraded the structure.
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12/05/2025 - 11:42
Paper published in 2000 found glyphosate was not harmful, while internal emails later revealed company’s influence
The journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology has formally retracted a sweeping scientific paper published in 2000 that became a key defense for Monsanto’s claim that Roundup herbicide and its active ingredient glyphosate don’t cause cancer.
Martin van den Berg, the journal’s editor in chief, said in a note accompanying the retraction that he had taken the step because of “serious ethical concerns regarding the independence and accountability of the authors of this article and the academic integrity of the carcinogenicity studies presented”.
The paper, titled Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans, concluded that Monsanto’s glyphosate-based weed killers posed no health risks to humans – no cancer risks, no reproductive risks, no adverse effects on development of endocrine systems in people or animals.
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