BANGKOK — For all the talk of urgency in fighting climate change, negotiators are putting off the hard part in drafting the next global treaty until the US election, diplomats and environmentalists say. All three major candidates seeking the keys to the White House in January support tougher action on climate change than President George W. Bush, who rejected the Kyoto Protocol as one of his first acts in office. Five days of marathon negotiations in Bangkok ended late Friday with a work plan to draft a treaty, by the end of next year, on how to fight climate change once Kyoto’s commitments to curb harmful gas emissions run out in 2012. ‘We’re all looking forward to moving ahead more swiftly in 2009 when finally there is a US administration that recognises the urgency of climate change,’ said David Mittler, a climate adviser at environmental group Greenpeace. ‘The world community has to make it clear that they expect the US to join in a real, climate-saving agenda… to ensure a world that still has things like coral reefs and farmers in Africa who are not made refugees,’ he said. Bush argues that Kyoto is unfair […]
Artificial food colours are set to be removed from hundreds of products after a team of university researchers warned they were doing as much damage to children’s brains as lead in petrol. Academics at Southampton University, who carried out an official study into seven additives for the Food Standards Agency (FSA), said children’s intelligence was being significantly damaged by E-numbers. After receiving the advice last month, officials at the FSA have advised their directors to call for the food industry to remove six additives named in the study by the end of next year. The advice, which will be put before the FSA board next week, would be voluntary. However, manufacturers would be expected by the regulator to remove the additives, replacing them with natural alternatives if possible. Some sweetmakers have unilaterally agreed to remove the suspect colours following the latest scientific evidence. Researchers have linked E-numbers to behavioural problems since the 1970s but the debate has intensified after the Southampton study, published last September, found that seven additives such as sunset yellow (E110) and tartrazine (E102) were causing temper tantrums among normal children. The FSA, which funded the £750,000 study, was criticised by health groups […]
Just a year ago, science understood little about the genetic origins of common conditions such as diabetes and cancers of the lung, breast and prostate. These were known to be affected by inheritance, but with the exception of rare mutations with catastrophic effects, the genetic mechanisms responsible remained elusive. The picture has changed decisively, as was highlighted this week by the discovery of six new genes that affect type 2 diabetes, and the first genetic variant linked to lung cancer. These are only the latest chapters in a story that is transforming medicine. In the past 12 months, close to 100 common genetic variants have been linked to major diseases, using a new gene-hunting technique called whole-genome association. Such knowledge is providing unprecedented insights into the molecular pathways of disease, which should help with the design of new therapies. Some of these could be aimed at patients with particular genetic profiles, in whom they are most likely to work. Another prospect is genetic screening, allowing people to assess their disease risk, with a view to lowering it through drugs, diet or exercise. It is not hard to see why this ‘new genetics’ has caused so much […]
A U.S. government-funded medical information site that bills itself as the world’s largest database on reproductive health has quietly begun to block searches on the word ‘abortion,’ concealing nearly 25,000 search results. Called Popline, the search site is run by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland. It’s funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, the federal office in charge of providing foreign aid, including health care funding, to developing nations. The massive database indexes a broad range of reproductive health literature, including titles like ‘Previous abortion and the risk of low birth weight and preterm births,’ and ‘Abortion in the United States: Incidence and access to services, 2005.’ But on Thursday, a search on ‘abortion’ was producing only the message ‘No records found by latest query.’ Stephen Goldstein, a spokesman for Johns Hopkins, said he wasn’t aware of the censorship, and couldn’t immediately comment. Under a Reagan-era policy revived by President Bush in 2001, USAID denies funding to non-governmental organizations that perform abortions, or that ‘actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations.’ A librarian at the University of California at San Francisco […]
NAIROBI and MANILA — Rice prices rose more than 10 per cent on Friday to a fresh all-time high as African countries joined south-east Asian importers in the race to head off social unrest by securing supplies from the handful of exporters still selling the grain in the international market. The rise in prices – 50 per cent in two weeks – threatens upheaval and has resulted in riots and soldiers overseeing supplies in some emerging countries, where the grain is a staple food for about 3bn people. The increase also risks stoking further inflation in emerging countries, which have been suffering the impact of record oil prices and the rise in price of other agricultural commodities – including wheat, maize and vegetable oil – in the last year. Kamal Nath, India’s trade minister, said the government would crack down on hoarding of essential commodities to keep a lid on food prices. ‘We will not hesitate to take the strongest possible measures, including using some of the legal provisions that we have against hoarding,” he said on Friday. Thai medium-quality rice, a global benchmark, traded at about $850 a tonne on Friday, up from $760 a […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
