Environment

California is suffering one of the worst droughts in history, which according to Oregon Live, is causing some companies to become very creative with what they use to make their products…particularly in the beer industry: Half Moon Bay Brewing created an IPA with gray water from toilets and showers. The water, of course, is treated using NASA’s system that allows astronauts, such as recently-returned Scott Kelly, to brew coffee with their sweat and urine.

The city of Portland are suing GMO giant Monsanto for poisoning the city’s water supply with PCBs.  City Attorney Tracy Reeve has filed a suit claiming that traces of cancer causing PCB chemicals were found in Portland’s waterways. Kgw.com reports: Reeve says the city has already spent a significant amount of public money to clean up the PCB contamination in the Willamette River and Columbia Slough and will continue to do so. It has known for years of the contamination.

Russia have announced plans to visit Mars in 2018 using a new nuclear engine that will allow them to reach the red planet in just six weeks.  Using current technology it takes spacecraft 18 months to get to Mars, meaning that Russia will become the first country to get there in just over a month – and possibly the first nation to send humans to Mars. Dailymail.co.uk reports: The country is betting on nuclear propulsion because it weighs almost half as much as a chemical rocket without reducing thrust.

Kurds in northern Syria plan to declare a federal region under their control as a way of encouraging Damascus to the idea of a more decentralized form of government in which all ethnic groups could have representation. A conference is to be held in Rmelan to declare the federation of three Western Kurdistan enclaves. Russia Today reports: Barzan Iso, a Kurdish journalist, has confirmed the news to RT. “Now the conference has just started in Rmelan, about 200 representatives of Rojava have joined [the event]. They represent different ethnicities and nationalities.

An “alien” illness has made 54 people ill since November 2015 in Wisconsin. The disease comes from a rare strain of bacteria called “ElizabethKingIa”. Many refer to it as the “King Elizabeth Killer” – it has claimed 15 lives so far, as reported by wired.com: Elizabethkingia is common in the environment—in soil, in water—but it rarely gets people sick. Cases pop up in ones and twos, usually in people with weak immune systems, says Michael Bell, deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s healthcare quality division.