CAPE TOWN, Dec 29 (IPS) - A few years ago 66-year-old grandmother Regina Fhiceka and her family of five ate vegetables only once a week. They would survive on maize and bread the rest of the time -- the cheapest food available in the poor township of Philippi, just 15 minutes from the affluent business district of Cape Town.

But then Fhiceka got to hear about a municipal project where people were encouraged to get together to establish community gardens.

"I knew a few of the other women in the community who had started their own backyard gardens where we were growing small amounts of vegetables. We asked the local social worker to help us obtain a bigger piece of land. We filled out the necessary application documents and the local department of agriculture made a piece of municipal land available to us."

Fhiceka and five other women were given land on the outskirts of Philippi where 150,000 people live in squalid conditions. After a few months, Fhiceka's group had an abundance of vegetables, including tomatoes, cabbage, carrots and beans, and they started selling the surplus.

"I had no choice. I had to start farming because I had no money to buy vegetables from the shops. I also realized that if we farmed as a group, we would have more than enough food to eat and that we could generate an income from selling the rest."

AMARELEJA, Portugal, Dec 30 (IPS) - The most ambitious and innovative solar power project in the world kicked off Monday in this white-walled village in the southern Portuguese municipality of Moura, one of the most impoverished areas in the European Union.

The Acciona Energy S.A. company has put into service the Amareleja photovoltaic power plant, located 150 km south of Lisbon, which is capable of producing enough energy to supply 30,000 households in the south-central region of Alentejo.

Almost simultaneously, the mayor of Moura, José María Prazeres Pós-de-Mina, was selected as one of the ten finalists for the prestigious 2008 People of the Year award granted by OneWorld, a non-governmental news network that is one of the most highly-respected international organisations devoted to raising environmental awareness and promoting change.

The only requirement for nomination was that the candidates embody the values of OneWorld, which include human rights for all, fair distribution of the world's natural and economic resources, simple and sustainable ways of life, the right of every individual to inform and be informed, participation and transparency in decision-making, and social, cultural, and linguistic diversity.

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) -- A federal conservation program originally designed to help small farmers is now disproportionately benefiting industrial livestock operations, according to a new report by a family farm advocacy group.

The Campaign for Family Farms and the Environment examined five years worth of payments through the federal Environmental Quality Incentives Program, known as EQIP.

Nationally, industrial hog operations accounted for 37 percent of all EQIP payments, the group determined, even though such businesses account for less than 11 percent of that industry. Industrial dairies received 54 percent of all EQIP dairy contracts. Such businesses represent only 3.9 percent of all dairy operations.

The study found similar disparities on the state level in Iowa, Minnesota and Missouri.

"This report demonstrates what family farmers have known for years: This corporate-controlled, industrial model of livestock production can't survive without taxpayer support," said Rhonda Perry, a Howard County livestock farmer and program director of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center.

Grounding planes after the 11 September attacks may not have caused unusual temperature effects.

When all commercial air traffic in the United States was grounded after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, scientists got an unexpected opportunity to test ideas about the climate effects of the condensation trails left behind by jets.

A study in 2002 suggested that these contrails could have a significant effect on daily temperature patterns (see 'Air-traffic moratorium opened window on contrails and climate'). But a new analysis now claims that altered US temperature patterns during the three flight-free days can be explained by natural variations in cloud cover, rather than the absence of planes.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 1, 2009) -- A team of scientists from the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has reported a rapid recovery of coral reefs in areas of Indonesia, following the tsunami that devastated coastal regions throughout the Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004.

The WCS team, working in conjunction with the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (ARCCoERS) along with government, community and non-government partners, has documented high densities of "baby corals" in areas that were severely impacted by the tsunami.

The team, which has surveyed the region's coral reefs since the December 26, 2004 tsunami, looked at 60 sites along 800 kilometers (497 miles) of coastline in Aceh, Indonesia. The researchers attribute the recovery to natural colonization by resilient coral species, along with the reduction of destructive fishing practices by local communities.

"On the 4th anniversary of the tsunami, this is a great story of ecosystem resilience and recovery," said Dr, Stuart Campbell, coordinator of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Indonesia Marine Program. "Our scientific monitoring is showing rapid growth of young corals in areas where the tsunami caused damage, and also the return of new generations of corals in areas previously damaged by destructive fishing. These findings provide new insights into coral recovery processes that can help us manage coral reefs in the face of climate change."

Do you know how wi-fi works? No, me neither. You sort of plonk your computer down in a coffee shop and switch it on. And then there's a sort of magic box thingy somewhere in the vicinity and it connects, I think, in some kind of magical invisible sort of way with, er, whatever's inside your computer. And then, bingo, off you go. You can write this morning's Facebook update without ever plugging anything in. Amazing.

My main concern with all of this always used to be that your typing might be broadcasting itself to anyone who had the time, energy and idle curiosity to eavesdrop. The people of Glastonbury, however, have devoted themselves to the question, and have produced a completely new set of worries. What happens if all those invisible ray jobbies are broadcasting straight into your chakras? Mightn't they mess with your inner balance?