"This is not a drill! It’s happening! Everybody get up!" was the shouted alarm that awoke Splash movie star Daryl Hannah, scores of farmers and other supporters around 5 a.m., June 13, as the state’s boot heel stomped America’s largest urban farm. Three hundred-plus LAPD and L.A. County sheriffs raided the 14-acre South Central Farm, to evict 350 mostly Latino and African-American poor families who’d grown food at a community garden there since 1992, following the Los Angeles riots.

President George W. Bush has dubbed Hawaii’s Northwestern Islands a National Monument, a move that creates the planet’s largest marine reserve. At 139,000 square miles, the ecosystem is nearly as large as California and is home to sharks, whales, coral reefs and endangered Hawaiian monk seals, as well as a host of other marine life. The declaration bars commercial activities in the area.

Carmaker Toyota plans to manufacture leaner, greener vehicles that rely on electricity and ethanol as power sources, company president Katsuaki Watanabe recently announced. The company, whose United States fleet fuel efficiency is second only to Honda’s, plans to double the gas-electric hybrid models it offers (to 14) by early next decade.

The nonprofit Center for Food Safety (CFS) filed suit last week calling on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to require labeling for and conduct mandatory reviews of genetically engineered foods to be sold in the United States. Many environmental and consumer advocates fear that genetically engineered (GE) foods can harm human and ecosystem health, and as such have been lobbying Congress for years to pass more stringent regulations governing what has become the fastest growing sector of agriculture.

Based on the results of an investigative series by the Chicago Tribune newspaper, the Consumers Union has issued a recommendation that pregnant women avoid eating tuna of any kind due to the high risk of unhealthy levels of mercury contained therein.