Important activist opportunity to help make a film about Haiti that goes deep into the country’s history, culture, and food insecurity issues.

Haiti was on people’s map after the horrible earthquake it suffered recently, and then… quickly off it.

Perhaps a much bigger issue for Haiti than this recent earthquake, however, is a food crisis it has been suffering for numerous years. On the positive side, some grassroots efforts are trying to bring Haiti back to a sustainable, self-sufficient food system.

Now, you have the opportunity to help bring that story to many more people via film.

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Greenpeace recently found genetically engineered maize from Monsanto, MON810, illegally growing in Italy. Now, activists from Italy, Austria, Germany and Hungary are quarantining this GE maize.

“Greenpeace has taken action today to prevent any further contamination from these hazardous and illegal GE crops,” said Federica Ferrario, Greenpeace Italy Agriculture campaigner. “For days these crops will have been contaminating not only neighbouring fields, but countryside further away as well, as insects and winds disseminate their pollen.”

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[ By Steph in Urban Images, Urban Videos, Urbex & Parkour. ]

Anyone who’s already familiar with parkour – the jaw-dropping urban sport that involves astonishing acrobatics including gravity-defying jumps – probably stared in disbelief at a video showing a trio of parkour enthusiasts scaling buildings and bridges with the help of hooked ladders. Created as an ad for a sports drink, the video undoubtedly sparked many people to google the dubious new sport of ‘pomparkour’.

So what’s got people up in arms about it? As it turns out, pomparkour is the fictional creation of advertising agency BBDO for ‘V Energy‘, a guarana concoction from New Zealand. And conveniently left out of the video is the fact that these guys are professional stuntmen equipped with safety ropes which were edited out of the final video (check out proof below).

Around the same time the video debuted, a blog about the sport materialized, featuring a few photos and a small amount of info. A Wikipedia article on pomparkour also appeared, but was quickly flagged as a hoax or at the very least, mere self-serving advertisement.

So is it a fictional sport, or just a rad new form of parkour in its infancy? Time will tell whether serious practicers of parkour will embrace this offshoot and pull some ladder play into their movements. Even with safety ropes, the guys in the ad perform some breathtaking stunts, earning quite a bit of well-deserved attention.

[ WebUrbanist - By Steph in Urban Images, Urban Videos, Urbex & Parkour. ]

Some great recent news from the Important Media network.

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Credit: First Solar. Enbridge, the Canadian company behind the recent oil spill in Michigan's Calhoun County near Marshall, just happens to also be behind construction of the largest photovoltaic solar energy facility in North America. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image Credit: All photos courtesty of Urbanbolisimo It looks like as a green destination, Spain is pulling ahead. The European country has emerged as a solar energy leader and its wind power industry is growing by leaps and bounds. So when Spanish design blog Urbanbolisimo reported that San Vicente de Raspeig, in eas...Read the full story on TreeHugger