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Lansing, MI, United States (AHN) – Four Loko the popular alcohol infused energy drink popular on college campuses has been banned in Michigan. Stores now have 30 days to remove it from shelves, but store owners aren’t worried they know a new drink will take its place or consumers will make their own mixes.

On Thursday Michigan’s Liquor Control Commission on a 201 voted to ban alcoholic energy drinks like Four Loko. The ban came a day after Chicago’s City Council proposed their own ban on energy drinks that contain alcohol and follows an already enacted ban in Utah.

Health experts have signaled out Four Loko in their campaign to have the product banned and just recently students in Washington and New Jersey were hospitalized after drinking Four Loko.

“The popularity of these drinks are increasing among college students and underage youth,” Commission spokeswoman Andrea Miller said. “They felt it necessary that this product should be banned in Michigan until further research.”

Phusion Projects the company which makes Four Loko said the popular product contains 12 percent alcohol and a 23.5-ounce has as much caffeine as a tall Starbucks coffee.

However critics of the drink say the caffeine masks the effects of the alcohol. Thereby, leaving young consumers unaware of their intoxication level and prompting them to drink more.

Phusion contends consumers have been mixing alcohol and caffeine for years in such drinks as Red Bull and vodka and rum and cola for years.

Michael Mansour, owner of Spartan Spirits near the Michigan State University campus told The State News, “If they can’t get it prepackaged in one unit, then they’ll buy it separately and mix it themselves. They’re going to do it, whether they package it that way or not.”

He went on to say, “In this market, we are always changing and staying on top of what our students’ appeal is. We are constantly staying up on what’s the latest, greatest newest product, so something will come out.”

Phusion plans on challenging the action and released a statement Thursday saying that Michigan’s liquor commission did not provide advance notice of its proposed action and “did not give parties who will be affected by the ban any opportunity to be heard on whether the ban is warranted or authorized by law.”

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London, England, United Kingdom (AHN) – British Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne announced Tuesday a plan that would make all 26 million homes in the country green over the next 10 years. Under the New Green Deal, local councils, supermarkets and chain stores would extend loans up to $15,000 (10,000 pounds) to homeowners.

Among the chain stores expected to handle the green loans are B & Q and Marks & Spencers.

The amount would be used to finance double glazing, the purchase of solar panels or other energy efficiency measures.

Huhne said the loans would eventually be paid back not from the pockets of unit owners, but from savings on energy bills spread over 20 years.

However, landlords would be at a disadvantage because they would be mandated to convert their units into environmentally friendly flats, but the reduced fuel bills would be enjoyed by their tenants since fuel bills are shouldered by tenants.

Aside from lower fuel bills, renters would benefit in terms of having more better-insulated homes available on the market. More than 20 percent of about 670,000 units of 3.2 million homes for rent in Britain have the worst efficiency ratings of F or G in the United Kingdom.

However, insurance experts pointed out the landlords may actually pass on the cost of making their units green by charging higher rentals.

Landlords who fail to comply with the New Green Deal would be fined $7,500 (5,000 pounds).

Huhne said about 100,000 jobs are expected to be created over the next five years by the initiative.

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Calgary, Alberta, Canada (AHN) – Alberta Environment filed nine charges Thursday against Suncor Energy for allowing the company’s storm water runoff to enter Athabasca River and providing misleading information on discharge of water and dirt.

If found guilty, Suncor faces a fine of $500,000 on each charge, or a total penalty of $4.5 million.

Alberta Environment said the incident happened in May 2008 when Suncor released the water that entered the Athabasca River while the company was constructing its Voyageur upgrader. In another incident, the government agency said Suncor provided it with misleading information on Suncor’s discharge of water and dirt into the same river from the energy firm’s mine site near Fort McMurray.

Suncor spokesman Brad Bellows denied the government’s accusations. Bellows said the runoff was melting snow and rain from an area undergoing clearing for a tank farm located between Highway 63 and the Athabasca River. Bellows stressed there was no tar in the runoff.

Suncor reported Wednesday that it had started maintenance on one of its two oil sands upgraders near Fort McMurray, together with work on a hydrogen reformer connected to the upgrader.

The maintenance work is expected to last six weeks, during which the upgrader is expected to operate at reduced rates. But Suncor’s other upgrader will continue normal operations. Suncor produced an average of 331,000 barrels of oil per day in August.

Suncor spokesman Brad Bellows denied the government’s accusations. Bellows said the runoff was melting snow and rain from an area undergoing clearing for a tank farm located between Highway 63 and the Athabasca River. Bellows stressed there was no tar in the runoff.

The case is scheduled for a hearing on Nov. 3.

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Austin has long been a home for friendly folk- friendly to each other, friendly to animals, and friendly to the environment. What used to be considered as only the concerns of hippies and the bohemian sect, environmentalism is now at the forefront of commercial and residential design, and “green” businesses are popping up nationwide. Austin, however, was the first city in the United States to establish a local green-building program, laying out environmentally friendly and sustainable guidelines for home builders and its interested citizens back in 1991.

Since the Austin real estate market is known nationwide as the leader of these green building methods, the National Association of Home Builders chose the city as its hub to launch an industry-wide effort to establish green-building guidelines in 2004. These guidelines now provide a practical nationally recognized framework for builders to follow to reduce a home’s environmental impact by making them more energy efficient, improving indoor environmental quality, and so on. Though Austin has already been using similar guidelines for over a decade, now the rest of the country is following suit.

The City of Austin and Austin Energy provide a great resource to owners of Austin homes, and new home builders, who are looking for ways to conserve energy, and build an environmentally friendly home. The city’s website offers a list of companies willing to do an energy analysis of a home that will determine possible options to help the house conserve more energy, with suggestions ranging from air conditioning repair to weather stripping doors. The city then will offer a 20 to 75% of that cost.

For those Austinites building a new house or commercial building, the city created the Austin Energy Green Building organization to promote the construction of high quality, more sustainable buildings, and has even zoned sections of the city’s real estate to require an Austin Energy Green Building rating. Four times a year, the organization also holds a one day “Green By Design” workshop open to the public. The workshop provides an overview of the green building process, and brings in design, building, engineering, landscaping, and Austin real estate professionals with many years of experience in homebuilding and remodeling, to help make sense of it all.

In March of this year, Austin was named as the city leading the country in “cleantech” by SustainLane, an online resource center that offers sustainability tips to state and local government. The term “cleantech” refers to venture capital-based startups based in green technology, with Austin as the front runner with seven such startups, ranging from internet-controlled irrigation to geothermal energy technologies. To keep Austin on the cutting edge of green technology, the Clean Energy Incubator program was set up to help young clean energy businesses succeed by commercializing their ideas. With citizens, government, and forward thinking businesses, Austin will likely be the city to follow in the environmental battle for years to come.

What do you know about Feng Shui? If you’re like most people, you probably are not even sure if I spelled it right just now. Maybe you picture an old man doing the world’s slowest kung fu at dawn (that’s Tai Chi, totally different.) Feng shui is a sorta guidebook about the placement and architecture of a house to allow good flow of energy. And it’s not just placement of the bed and couch. The placement of the actual house and landscaping will affect the ch’i (energy) of the house in a big way. Let’s start with a few tips to bear in mind when looking examining the location for your dream home.

1. First and most important, research the history of a property. Find out what happened with the previous tenants, and the ones before them. And even the ones before them. Ask neighbors, or selling agent. If all the previous inhabitants have had money problems, family problems, etc., chances are there’s bad feng shui going on. Best to move on and look for another house.

2. Pay attention to the road placement. The road in front of your house should not be pointing directly into your home. If a house is sitting at a dead end, in a T-intersection, or in the center of cul-de-sac, then energy is constantly flowing straight down that road into the house, then building up and stagnating there. This is not good; the ch’i must continue to flow, like air. If it gets stuck in your home, it can go bad.

3. Pay attention to what’s around the house. Examine the terrain closely. Ideally, the property should have a dark turtle in the back (a mountain or hill, another house, a row of trees, a fence, etc.), a dragon (a house, a tree) to the left, a white tiger (a smaller house or tree) to the right, and a phoenix (open ground, a circular flowerbed, a meandering river or road) in front. All those exotic names are just a fun way to state the obvious —a house by itself is not ideal, since there is nothing to slow the flow of ch’i. Most houses will have all of these things around them already, but it doesn’t hurt to think about it your first time seeing a place. Other things to think about are “poison arrows,” like telephone poles, flagpoles, or the corner of a house pointing your way. They can hinder the energy flow to the house. Even a hospital can be a source of bad energy.

4. Something that probably doesn’t automatically spring to mind is the shape of the property; but that can be very important as well. Always go for something symmetrical, like a square or a rectangle. If your real estate is pretty close to square, use hedges to fill in the spots that make it irregular. Triangle-shaped properties can create disharmony. If you just love a place and absolutely have to have a it but it’s on a triangle-shaped lot, it’s better for the wide side to be in the back; the other way indicates an inability to save money.

When you visit a property, notice the shapes of the things around. I know it sounds strange, but kind of squint your eyes and see what you see, like you used to do as a kid, when you were looking at the clouds in the sky. If anything looks like something hostile, then be careful. That could be an indication of some anti-ch’i. You want enough stuff to slow the energy down to capture it but allow it to also flow.

You would need to have been living on Mars if you had not heard of global warming and the negative effect we are having on our environment.  As a result many people have become leaders in green living and spend much of their day devoted to ensuring they are reducing their carbon footprint.  Whilst not all of us are this devoted there are a number of things that we can do to make our homes more environmentally friendly which can often save us money as well.  Here we have listed some top tips for you to try.

1.  When you replace light bulbs go for the energy efficient variety.  These use a different system to produce the light, using a fraction of the energy used by traditional bulbs and they also last up to twelve times longer.  Lighting is estimated to make up between 10 and 15% of your energy bills so there is a large saving to be made here.

2.  Up to a third of the clean drinking water we use in our households is flushed down the toilet every day.  On average each flush uses eight litres of water.  You can easily fit a save-a-flush bag into your toilet cistern which will reduce water usage by approximately one litre for each flush.  Often your local water company will provide these so it need not cost you a penny to fit.

3.  When replacing appliances look out for their energy efficiency ratings.  Do some research online to see how each appliance compares with each other.  Ask your plumber to use fittings with energy efficiency in mind, these range from baths that retain heat to taps that regulate water flow.

4.  On a larger scale you could invest in a rain water harvesting system.  This uses rainwater to flush toilets and use in the garden, saving your fresh drinking water uses to the minimum.  This helps your pocket and the environment.

5.  There is ongoing debate about how long a solar panel will take to pay for themselves through savings in energy bills but an often quoted number is a decade.  While this sounds like a long time the savings to the environment by using sustainable energy is substantial and with ongoing energy prices rises, the return may well be a lot quicker.

6.  Contact your local authority to see if there are any grants or subsidies available for energy saving home improvements.  These range from help with replacing old windows to insulation and solar panels.

7.  When replacing or upgrading your heating system, research some environmentally friendly alternatives.  For example Eco Heat Pumps work through a deep borehole close to your property and work by converting a small amount of heat in a large area to a greater amount of heat in a smaller area.  Heating your water and under floor heating in this way will save you substantial amounts of money on your energy bills.

8.  Are you looking to build a house or purchase a new one?  Put at the top of your wish list a green eco home.  If you are building one yourself include all our top tips in the initial planning stages and use as many local suppliers as possible.  You may well be lucky and find one already built and utilising all these energy saving systems.

ou would need to have been living on Mars if you had not heard of global warming and the negative effect we are having on our environment.  As a result many people have become leaders in green living and spend much of their day devoted to ensuring they are reducing their carbon footprint.  Whilst not all of us are this devoted there are a number of things that we can do to make our homes more environmentally friendly which can often save us money as well.  Here we have listed some top tips for you to try. 1.  When you replace light bulbs go for the energy efficient variety.  These use a different system to produce the light, using a fraction of the energy used by traditional bulbs and they also last up to twelve times longer.  Lighting is estimated to make up between 10 and 15% of your energy bills so there is a large saving to be made here. 2.  Up to a third of the clean drinking water we use in our households is flushed down the toilet every day.  On average each flush uses eight litres of water.  You can easily fit a save-a-flush bag into your toilet cistern which will reduce water usage by approximately one litre for each flush.  Often your local water company will provide these so it need not cost you a penny to fit. 3.  When replacing appliances look out for their energy efficiency ratings.  Do some research online to see how each appliance compares with each other.  Ask your plumber to use fittings with energy efficiency in mind, these range from baths that retain heat to taps that regulate water flow. 4.  On a larger scale you could invest in a rain water harvesting system.  This uses rainwater to flush toilets and use in the garden, saving your fresh drinking water uses to the minimum.  This helps your pocket and the environment. 5.  There is ongoing debate about how long a solar panel will take to pay for themselves through savings in energy bills but an often quoted number is a decade.  While this sounds like a long time the savings to the environment by using sustainable energy is substantial and with ongoing energy prices rises, the return may well be a lot quicker. 6.  Contact your local authority to see if there are any grants or subsidies available for energy saving home improvements.  These range from help with replacing old windows to insulation and solar panels. 7.  When replacing or upgrading your heating system, research some environmentally friendly alternatives.  For example Eco Heat Pumps work through a deep borehole close to your property and work by converting a small amount of heat in a large area to a greater amount of heat in a smaller area.  Heating your water and under floor heating in this way will save you substantial amounts of money on your energy bills. 8.  Are you looking to build a house or purchase a new one?  Put at the top of your wish list a green eco home.  If you are building one yourself include all our top tips in the initial planning stages and use as many local suppliers as possible.  You may well be lucky and find one already built and utilising all these energy saving systems.

Anna Barrington writes for Percy Williams & Sons, builders of innovative environmentally friendly developers of the latest houses for sale Cornwall. For more information please visit new homes cornwall.

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