The pristine forests of Papua New Guinea are at risk of being wiped out through illegal and unsustainable logging by a timber industry mired in corruption, according to an investigation by a Washington-based think-tank. Export documents validating the timber in effect “launder” illegally logged tropical hardwood, says a report by Forest Trends, a non-profit environmental organisation. Government-appointed inspectors of Papua New Guinea’s timber exports verify the quantity and description of the logs to ensure that export taxes are paid, but they give little heed to the legality of the timber operations themselves, with the result that the official documentation can give the impression that the wood was lawfully produced when it was in fact logged illegally, claimed Forest Trends. “Thus, official export documentation merely launders the ‘unlawful’ timber into legitimately-produced exports accepted by governments and retailers worldwide,” says the organisation’s report. Michael Jenkins, the chief executive officer of Forest Trends, said that a legal fund has been set up to fight the logging industry in the courts of Papua New Guinea, which harbours one of the most ecologically valuable tropical rainforests on Earth. “The system must be fixed. The nexus between the logging companies and […]
Across the globe, people are choosing to have fewer children or none at all. Governments are desperate to halt the trend, but their influence seems to stop at the bedroom door. Are some societies destined to become extinct? Hardly. It’s more likely that conservatives will inherit the Earth. Like it or not, a growing proportion of the next generation will be born into families who believe that father knows best. If we could survive without a wife, citizens of Rome, all of us would do without that nuisance. So proclaimed the Roman general, statesman, and censor Quintus Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus, in 131 B.C. Still, he went on to plead, falling birthrates required that Roman men fulfill their duty to reproduce, no matter how irritating Roman women might have become. Since nature has so decreed that we cannot manage comfortably with them, nor live in any way without them, we must plan for our lasting preservation rather than for our temporary pleasure. With the number of human beings having increased more than six-fold in the past 200 years, the modern mind simply assumes that men and women, no matter how estranged, will always breed enough children to […]
You might want to think twice the next time you’re tempted to make a call from your cell phone during an airplane flight. Or flip on your portable game player. Or work a spreadsheet on your laptop. Besides possibly annoying fellow travelers and breaking federal regulations, you might be endangering the airplane, according to a Carnegie Mellon University study that quietly monitored transmissions on board a number of flights in the Northeast. The study, by CMU’s Department of Engineering and Public Policy, found that the use of cell phones and other portable electronic devices can interfere with the normal operation of critical airline components, even more so than previously believed. Researchers concluded that such devices can disrupt the operation of cockpit instruments, including the Global Positioning System receivers that are becoming more common in helping to ensure safe landings. Researchers noted that there is no definitive instance of an electronic device used by a passenger causing an accident. However, they said their data support the conclusion that use of devices like cell phones “will, in all likelihood, someday cause an accident by interfering with critical cockpit instruments such as GPS receivers.” The findings come as […]
A report from the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) says that poor postwar planning for Iraq by the Bush administration meant that there were not enough skilled workers available to properly rebuild Iraq’s economy and public works. The Associated Press reports that previous surveys by the Bush administration and congressional auditors blamed the insurgency and the high price of security for the lag in rebuilding Iraq. “Pre-war reconstruction planning assumed that Iraq’s bureaucracy would go back to work when the fighting stopped,” it said. “When it became clear that the Iraqi bureaucracy was in widespread disarray,” occupation authorities “had to find coalition personnel to perform these tasks.” “The US government workforce planning for Iraq’s reconstruction suffered from a poorly structured, ad-hoc personnel management processes,” the report said, calling hiring practices “haphazard.” Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general, also recommended that the government establish a “civilian reserve corps” that could be deployed around the world to help rebuild areas devastated by war. Mr. Bowen’s previous reports had examined how the Bush administration had handled the $30 billion in Iraqi funds – known as the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI) – and the […]
BARCELONA, Spain — Small-scale poultry farming and wild birds are being unfairly blamed for the bird flu crisis now affecting large parts of the world, according to a new report from an international nongovernmental organization based in Barcelona. The report says initiatives are multiplying to ban outdoor poultry, squeeze out small producers and restock farms with genetically modified chickens. Instead, the transnational poultry industry is the root of the bird flu problem, says the report issued today by the organization GRAIN, which promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity based on people’s control over genetic resources and local knowledge. “Everyone is focused on migratory birds and backyard chickens as the problem,” says Devlin Kuyek of GRAIN. “But they are not effective vectors of highly pathogenic bird flu. The virus kills them, but is unlikely to be spread by them.” Kuyek says the spread of industrial poultry production and trade networks have created ideal conditions for the emergence and transmission of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu. Some poultry operations have capacities exceeding one million chickens. ((Photo by Larry Rana courtesy U.S. Department of Agriculture) ) Once inside densely populated […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
