Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% – far more than previously estimated – according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian. The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body. The figure emphatically contradicts the US government’s claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil. Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush. ‘It would put the World Bank in a political hot-spot with the White House,’ said one yesterday. The news comes at a critical point in the world’s negotiations on biofuels policy. Leaders of the G8 industrialised countries meet next week in Hokkaido, Japan, where they will discuss the food crisis and come under intense lobbying from campaigners calling for a moratorium on the use of plant-derived fuels. It will also put pressure on […]
WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of ‘coercive management techniques’ for possible use on prisoners, including ‘sleep deprivation,’ ‘prolonged constraint,’ and ‘exposure.’ What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners. The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency. Some methods were used against a small number of prisoners at Guantánamo before 2005, when Congress banned the use of coercion by the military. The C.I.A. is still authorized by President Bush to use a number of secret ‘alternative’ interrogation methods. Several Guantánamo documents, including the chart outlining coercive methods, were made public at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing June 17 that examined how such […]
Starting next month, it will be ‘TGIT’ for Utah state employees. As in: ‘Thank God It’s Thursday.’ In a yearlong experiment aimed at reducing the state’s energy costs and commuters’ gasoline expenses, Utah is about to become the first state to switch to a four-day workweek for thousands of government employees. They will put in 10-hour days, Monday through Thursday, and have Fridays off, freeing them to golf, shop, spend time with the kids or do anything else that strikes their fancy. They will get paid the same as before. ‘One of the jokes is that one of the biggest benefits will be for golf courses,’ said Ryan Walker, 49, an information technology director. He said he is looking forward to tackling items on his long-neglected ‘honey-do’ list (As in: ‘Honey, do this’ and ‘Honey, do that’); camping; and traveling more around the state. The order issued by Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman will affect about 17,000 out of 24,000 executive-branch employees. It will not cover state police officers, prison guards or employees of the courts or Utah’s public universities. Also, state-run liquor stores will stay open on Fridays. The compressed workweek in Utah - whose […]
A key compound in red wine known as resveratrol appears to protect against many of the health ravages associated with growing old, new animal research reveals. ‘It’s very hard to extrapolate from this finding to comment on the benefits of red wine directly, because red wine has many other compounds besides resveratrol, including ethanol, which have very active biological effects,’ noted study author Rafael de Cabo, unit chief of the laboratory of experimental gerontology at the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore. ‘But red wine is a good source of resveratrol,’ he added. ‘And, in this mouse study, we have shown that this particular compound has very strong positive effects on preventing cardiovascular disease, reducing heart inflammation, keeping bone health in terms of structure and function, and maintaining loco-motor and balance activity. So, if these effects translate into humans, it will have a very good impact on the standard of human health.’ De Cabo conducted the research with David A. Sinclair, of Harvard Medical School. Their team is publishing its findings in the July 3 online issue ofCell Metabolism. Although daily consumption of the compound — also found in the skin of grapes and the crust […]
When President George W. Bush went to his first Group of Eight summit in 2001, a dominant issue was the dollar — the strong dollar, that is. The U.S. currency was on a record-setting streak, and the free-marketeering president wasn’t going to stand in the way. On the eve of Bush’s last G-8 appearance, the dollar’s gyrations are again in the crossfire. This time, it is a weak currency, upended by slumping growth, a housing recession and record gas prices, that is gnawing away at the world economy. The dollar’s 41 percent drop against the euro during Bush’s term writes the economic epitaph of an administration that set out to restore American preeminence. Instead, Bush heads to Japan next week for his final international summit with diminished leverage as Russian and Chinese influence grows. ‘Between the economic duress facing the United States and the global community at large and the fact that the clock is running out on the Bush administration, Bush does not hold a good hand,” said Charles Kupchan, an international-relations professor at Georgetown University in Washington. He called the summit a ‘damage-limitation” exercise to show the world that governments are trying to contain food […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
