"TODOS SANTOS, Mexico -- Clamshell containers on supermarket shelves in the United States may depict verdant fields, tangles of vines and ruby red tomatoes. But at this time of year, the tomatoes, peppers and basil certified as organic by the Agriculture Department often hail from the Mexican desert, and are nurtured with intensive irrigation. "

In the Japanese community of Kashiwa, scanning your food and soil for radiation is the new normal.

"Kashiwa, about 30 km northeast of Tokyo, is known for its humble beginnings as a 1970s bedroom community for Tokyo workers.

The tranquil residential city of 406,000 in Chiba Prefecture rarely enters the national spotlight, except when Kashiwa Reysol, the local soccer team, is playing at home.

"WASHINGTON -- Four domestic companies that make most of the steel towers for wind turbines in the United States filed a trade complaint against China and Vietnam on Thursday, seeking tariffs in the range of 60 percent. The action is a significant new skirmish in an emerging green energy trade war.

"Worried about her 2-year-old son and distrustful of government and TV reports that seemed to play down radiation risks, she scoured the Web for information and started connecting with other mothers through Twitter and Facebook, many using social media for the first time."

"The 41-year-old mother joined a parents group — one of dozens that have sprung up since the crisis — that petitioned local officials in June to test lunches at schools and day care centers for radiation and avoid using products from around the troubled nuclear plant.

Despite Iran's threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, some global oil prices fell. It turns out Iran's influence on the international oil market may be weak, and its threats more an effort to head off international sanctions that will harm its own weakened petroleum economy. Shipping lanes are just one of many major strategic factors affecting the global oil market. Iran has, however, offered spurious ammunition to U.S. politicians crowing for US acts of war against it. Right now, the news media are taking Iran's threats more seriously than the oil market is.

"BP has taken the axe to its solar power business, saying it 'can't make any money' from selling panels at a time when it continues to spend $20bn annually on oil and gas developments."

"Nigerian coastal and fishing communities were on Thursday put on alert after Shell admitted to an oil spill that is likely to be the worst in the area for a decade, according to government officials."

"Decommissioning Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant will take three or four decades, Japan's government said on Wednesday as it unveiled plans for the next phase of a huge and costly cleanup of the tsunami-wrecked complex."

"A European court ruled Wednesday that airlines flying into and out of European airports will have to pay a price for the carbon dioxide they emit when they burn jet fuel."

"Humans are having an effect on Earth's ecosystems but it's not just the depletion of resources and the warming of the planet we are causing. Now you can add an over-abundance of nitrogen as another "footprint" humans are leaving behind. The only question is how large of an impact will be felt. In a Perspectives piece in the current issue of Science, Arizona State University researcher James Elser outlines some recent findings on the increasing abundance of available nitrogen on Earth."