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One year before the Alternative World Water Forum (known by its French acronym FAME) will take place in Marseille 2012, various peoples’ movements around Europe have witnessed landslide victories. Increased citizen participation has played a major role in the issues of water supply management and wastewater treatment, allowing these movements to take giant steps towards remunicipalization, or bringing the water back under public control.

This week we have an inspiring story for you from Berlin, Germany. 12 years ago, almost half (49.9 percent) of the Berlin Water Works (BWB) was privatized under Veolia and RWE. This led to price increase of 35 percent, one of the highest of any German city. Due to negotiated conditions, the Berlin Senate and the private investors decided to keep these contracts secret. As a result, a peoples’ initiative called the “Berliner Wassertisch” began challenging this and started a citizen’s referendum aimed at obtaining the publication of these contracts.

The New York Times reported this week that the city of Paris is now offering residents free sparkling water. While the program is ostensibly designed to wean Parisiennes off a popular guilty pleasure (red wine) we’re charmed that they’ve chosen the humble water fountain as the delivery method of choice for their efforts.

Antibiotic resistance has become a real challenge for modern medicine. As bacteria grow stronger, there are few options for treating very sick people. Over the past decade, medical professionals have raised awareness about the need to curb the over-prescription of antibiotics. Likewise, tireless activists have fought to decrease the use of antibiotics in industrial agriculture. But dwindling options for medical treatment aren’t the only worry associated with antibiotic resistance. Many things in nature depend on bacterial to grow. Plants need bacteria in soil to grow.

It looks like meat and milk from the offspring of cloned cows have beaten both Frankenswine and Arnold Schwartzensalmon to market—at least in the UK—to the surprise of UK consumers and authorities alike.

The cosmetics industry is a lightly-regulated, moneymaking machine. It encourages women to buy products to look better, thinner, tanner, softer, and generally more ‚attractive”. Unfortunately, these products are filled-to-the-brim with chemicals. We know some of these chemicals are harmful. That‚ bad enough, but even more frightening is that many chemicals or formulations do not have to be disclosed because they are considered ‚trade secrets.” Such is the case with the ingredient listed as ‚fragrance.”

Fragrance is rarely made up of just one chemical. It‚ a veritable toxic soup of many. In an attempt to demonstrate transparency, the European Union‚ International Fragrance Association (IFRA) just released 3,163 chemicals that were used in fragrance formulations in 2008.