Stephan: Here is the latest data on the bee crisis and, I am sorry to say, it continues to be disturbingly bad news. This trend just doesn't seem to have the power to engage politicians, and that is a crisis of another sort.
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Without bees, future generations may not be able to identify with adages like, ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away.’
Crop yields for key crops like apples, cherries and blueberries are down across the U.S. because of a lack of bees in agricultural areas, a Rutgers University-led study published Wednesday in The Royal Society found. This could have “serious ramifications” for global food security, reported The Guardian.
The scientists wanted to understand the degree to which insect pollination, or lack thereof, actually limits current crop production. Surveying 131 locations across major crop-producing areas of the U.S., they found that five out of seven crops showed evidence of “pollinator limitation” and that yields could be boosted with full pollination, the study said.
“The crops that got more bees got significantly more crop production,” said Rachael Winfree, an ecologist and pollination expert and the senior author of the paper, reported The Guardian. “I was surprised, I didn’t expect they would be limited to this extent.”
The research further noted that pollinator declines could “translate directly” to […]
Stephan: Everything is a grift in Trump world. Here is the Trump choice for how to develop a vaccine.
“You can’t have a contractor supervising government officials.”
Moncef Slaoui, a former GSK executive, is head of the White House’s Operation Warp Speed
The White House on Friday awarded a record-breaking $2.1 billion contract for development of a Covid-19 vaccine, raising questions about a former pharmaceutical executive’s involvement in the administration’s decision.
The deal is for 100 million doses of a vaccine manufactured by Sanofi, a French drug maker, and its British partner GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).
The deal follows billions of dollars of U.S. commitments to other experimental vaccines—all still needing to show their effectiveness in testing—and may stoke concerns that other countries will be left behind. Vaccines are seen as the key to leading the world out of the pandemic that has killed about 675,000 people in a matter of months.
Dr. Moncef Slaoui, a former GSK executive, is head of the White House’s Operation Warp Speed, the administration’s program to develop and disburse an effective coronavirus vaccine. Slaoui’s connection to his former company has been the focus of […]
Stephan: And here we have another grift. The corporate rich are making out like bandits with this pandemic.
Jim Continenza, is the latest example of executives and board members at companies receiving federal support to their personal benefit
Former photography pioneer Kodak received a huge infusion of cash from President Donald Trump this week.
But it is what happened one day before that is raising eyebrows.
“At the beginning of this week, the Eastman Kodak Company handed its chief executive 1.75 million stock options,” The New York Timesreported Friday.
“It was the type of compensation decision that generally wouldn’t attract much notice, except for one thing: The day after the stock options were granted, the White House announced that the company would receive a $765 million federal loan to produce ingredients to make pharmaceuticals in the United States,” the newspaper reported. “The news of the deal caused Kodak’s shares to soar more than 1,000 percent. Within 48 hours of the options grants, their value had ballooned, at least on paper, to about $50 million.”
