Japanese Electronics Giants Panasonic, Sharp and Toshiba announced plans to participate in a massive electronics program last week. The corporations will be joining forces with Manufacturers Recycling Management LLC in creating a national recycling infrastructure for their products via a 50 state rollout of recycling centers by January of 2009. The first phase of the program will start of this month in California, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin expanding to the rest of the nation throughout next year.

This is a very important program to eliminate the industrial waste of components within our electronic items. Landfills and conventional recycling programs across the country simply do not have the resources of know how to properly handle the complicated components in our laptops, stereos, televisions and boom boxes. Worse yet, many programs which advertise that they will in fact “recycle” these items, actually ship them to impoverished countries for disadvantaged people to try and salvage small amounts of gold and other substances out of them by hand, an unsafe practice which is causing a human health crisis around the world.

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With the Presidential election just one week away, John McCain is going after the vote of an often overlooked group: The Amish. Whether the strategy will prove to be an inspired last minute play or a final act of desperation, with McCain running behind in most battleground state polling, remains to be seen. What’s not in question however is the conservative credentials of a community that is not only against abortion as a part of their religious beliefs, but also against the use of electricity and the internal combustion engine. Particularly given their stance on abortion, the Amish are believed to almost always vote Republican when they make it to the polls. But their voter turnout is unknown given the obvious difficulties of polling a community that doesn’t believe in the use of telephones and is skittish about contact with the outside world.

Probably the main draw of the Amish vote to the McCain campaign is their geographic distribution. The majority of Amish communities are located in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana, all three of which are swing states in this year’s election. However as reported by Benjamin Sarlin on The Daily Beast, the McCain-Palin campaign may have missed the horse and buggy on getting the Amish vote to the polls, with their outreach only beginning now and the voter registration deadline having passed in all three states.

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The woman who claimed a robber had beat her and carved a Backward “B” on her face after seeing a McCain sticker on her car, has confessed to police her story was a hoax. Ashley Todd, a 20 year old McCain campaign volunteer from College Station, Texas working in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania finally admitted today that she had lied about being assaulted by a crazed, black, knife-wielding Obama supporter who carved a “B” for Barack on her. It turns out fellow blogger Giulia was right to think something was fishy. Pittsburgh police had held the woman for questioning and had her take a polygraph test after noting several inconsistencies in her story.

It is simply disgusting that anyone could do such a thing, ignorant of the social consequences an act like this could have in the middle of a heated election season where race is a central issue. Many questions need to be answered about this incident and information is still being divulged, but a thorough investigation needs to be conducted by Pittsburgh police as to exactly what went on here and who was involved.

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While it remains my dream that problems with voter registration, pollworker training, and statewide voter databases be eliminated in every state, I must admit that I’d most prefer that they first be dealt with in swing states. I know, I know swing states get all the attention. The red state voter in Kansas and the blue state voter in California are no less important than the swing state voter in Ohio. And electoral reform should be done for its own sake, not just when it’s convenient for our candidate, right? Right.

Yet, the worst outcome of a troubled electoral process would be if the will of the people was subverted and the aforementioned problems thwarted voter intent. Which is why we ought to pay special attention to problems in the states where the vote will be close.

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The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, an agency I didn’t know existed until right now, had the very unenviable task Monday of informing people in a region of Northwest Pennsylvania that the area is home to a cluster of polycythemia vera (PV), a rare blood cell cancer. The area, about 80 miles outside Philadelphia, is also home to many Superfund sites and a waste-powered coal plant.

People in the 20-mile stretch considered to contain the cluster are four times as likely to develop PV as people in the rest of the country. Though some residents blame the cancer on the waste sites in the area, researchers made clear that that connection had not officially been made.

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The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!

Nicole Hughes:

Should Drive-Thrus Be Banned?

Eco-Moms Mad About “Greenwash” Barbie

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Andy Kondrat:

Home Depot Will Recycle Your CLF Bulbs for Free

Department of Energy Predicts 50% Energy Increase By 2030

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Jon Popham:

NYC Waterfalls Installation Starts This Week

Capt. John Smith Is Back…and Running for President

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Giulia Rozzi:

Yoga Across the Border

Emile Norman: By His Own Design

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Gina Telaroli:

Silverdocs 08: A Post-Fest Wrap-Up

Human Rights Watch 08: Letter to Anna

Capt. John Smith, one of the earliest 17th Century English explorers of the New World, is back…and running for President. Well, sort of. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation is running a fictional Presidential campaign featuring Capt. Smith to draw awareness to needs of the Chesapeake, and the rivers and streams that feed it, for the upcoming Presidential election.

The original European explorer of the Chesapeake, Capt. Smith found a rich environment filled with fish, oysters, and, of course, Chesapeake Bay Blue Crabs in his journeys around America’s largest estuary. In the 400 years since the Bay has lost an enormous amount of its vitality due to pollution from the nearby cities of Baltimore and Washington DC plus the enormous runoff of fertilizer and pesticides from farmlands throughout the Chesapeake’s vast watershed stretching through Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and even southern central New York State. The need for restoration has never been greater in order for future generations to be able to enjoy the abundance the Bay has provided throughout all of modern American history dating back to the founding of Jamestown and the Colony of Virginia.

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How the use of rBGH, aka recombinant bovine growth hormone, affects human health is unclear. We do know that it’s bad for the cows, causing all kinds of health problems, including painful udder infections.No wonder consumers prefer to buy milk that’s labeled “rBGH-free.” In fact, so many people are paying a premium for rBGH-free milk that sales of dairy products from farmers who use the Monsanto-made hormone are suffering.So now Monsanto’s fighting back by pushing the state of Pennsylvania to ban, beginning on February 1st, the use of milk carton labels that tell you whether that milk comes from cows treated with rBGH. Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Ag—a former dairy farmer himself”insists the ban is necessary to protect “confused consumers.”

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