BEIJING — Global warming threatens to intensify natural disasters and water shortages across China, driving down the country’s food output, the Chinese government has warned, even as its seeks to tame energy consumption. A forthcoming official assessment of the effects of global climate change on China will warn of worsening drought in northern China and increasing ‘extreme weather events’, according to the Ministry of Science and Technology’s Web site (www.most.gov.cn) on Wednesday. A deputy director of the National Climate Center, Luo Yong, was blunt about the risks for China’s food production. ‘The most direct impact of climate change will be on China’s grain production,’ he said on Tuesday, according to the Science Times newspaper. ‘Climate change will bring intensified pressure on our country’s agriculture and grain production.’ The official report promises to stir debate about whether and how China can balance its ambitious goals for economic growth with steps to rein in rising greenhouse gas emissions from industry and cars, which keep heat in the atmosphere and threaten to dramatically increase the planet’s average temperatures. Scientists have been uncertain about the effects of rising global temperatures on China’s farming, unsure whether greater average rainfall […]
LOS ANGELES — California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed nearly $95 million in state spending on ‘clean’ energy, biotech and nanotech research, the governor’s office said on Wednesday. Much of the proposal — $40 million — would be spent only if California universities win a $500 million grant for research from oil giant BP to develop alternatives to fossil fuels. Lease revenue bonds would be used to fund $70 million of the proposals, including the $40 million to chase the BP grant. The proposed spending will be part of Schwarzenegger’s state budget plan which will be presented in January to the state legislature. Schwarzenegger is recuperating from surgery performed on Tuesday for a broken right femur. He was injured while on a skiing holiday on Saturday with his family in Sun Valley, Idaho. Schwarzenegger three months ago signed a landmark global warming law to make California the first U.S. state to mandate cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent, which would be 1990 levels. Four projects are center in the proposals. They are: — Lease revenue bonds totaling $40 million if BP picks either the University of California-Berkeley or the University of California-San […]
Bird flu killed a woman in northern Egypt as authorities attempt to eradicate the lethal virus that infected two other members of the woman’s family. The infection killed a teenage girl in Cairo, Agence France-Presse reported. The woman from Zifta, in the northern province of Gharbia, had been in contact with infected poultry, Egypt’s Ministry of Health said in a statement on its Web site today. Fowl kept by the family and neighbors have been culled, and people in contact with the birds are being tested, the ministry said in a separate statement on Dec. 24. A 15-year-old girl died from the H5N1 strain of avian flu in a Cairo hospital, AFP reported yesterday. She was transferred from a hospital in the Nile delta province of Garbiya, where she was admitted Dec. 20, AFP said. World health experts are trying to control the H5N1 virus, which risks infecting humans and mutating to become more contagious. A virus that spreads among people as easily as seasonal flu could spark a deadly pandemic capable of killing millions of people, health authorities have said. The H5N1 strain is known to have infected 258 people in 10 countries during the […]
SACRAMENTO – For years, activists in the marijuana legalization movement have claimed that cannabis is America’s biggest cash crop. Now they’re citing government statistics to prove it. A report released today by a marijuana public policy analyst contends that the market value of pot produced in the U.S. exceeds $35 billion – far more than the crop value of such heartland staples as corn, soybeans and hay, which are the top three legal cash crops. California is responsible for more than a third of the cannabis harvest, with an estimated production of $13.8 billion that exceeds the value of the state’s grapes, vegetables and hay combined – and marijuana is the top cash crop in a dozen states, the report states. The report estimates that marijuana production has increased tenfold in the past quarter century despite an exhaustive anti-drug effort by law enforcement. Jon Gettman, the report’s author, is a public policy consultant and leading proponent of the push to drop marijuana from the federal list of hard-core Schedule 1 drugs – which are deemed to have no medicinal value and a high likelihood of abuse – such as heroin and LSD. He argues that […]
Former Secretary of State James Baker was involved in a cover-up of illegal trading by his law firm with the regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, according to a former contractor who did work for Mr. Baker’s firm. Mr. Baker used non-Americans to help acquire funds from Iraq in violation of the United Nations embargo and U.S. law, the former contractor said. Nir Gouaz, an Israeli security veteran, said that in 1999 Mr. Baker’s leading deputy at the law firm of Baker Botts ordered him to destroy all documents that detailed how he obtained from Iraq more than $250 million for a client. Mr. Baker’s firm has denied Mr. Gouaz’s account. But the Israeli said he has documents that could destroy Mr. Baker’s reputation. He said he has been angered by Mr. Baker’s attempt to press the Bush administration to impose an anti-Israeli policy in an attempt to win Arab cooperation to help stabilize Iraq. Mr. Baker, appointed by President Bush in 2003 as his envoy to recover debts from Iraq, has also co-chaired the Iraq Study Group, which on Dec. 6 issued 79 recommendations on U.S. policy in Iraq. ‘When I heard the Baker […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
