Month: July 2001

Speaking in Kenya, U.S. official Andrew Natsios warned that Sudan could face a catastrophic crop failure next year.

Natsios reported that drought in northern parts of Sudan combined with continuing government attacks in southern Sudan were beginning to create hunger in that country and could lead to dramatic crop failures later this year.

If that scenario plays out, Sudan could face catastrophic famine. Natsios compared the possible outcome to Sudan’s catastrophic drought of the 1980s when 250,000 people died from famine-related causes.

Source:

New US warning on Sudan. The BBC, July 23, 2001.

Yesterday NBC News had a couple stories about the controversy over stem cell research. The stories were prompted by George W. Bush’s meeting with the Pope wherein the Pope expressed his view that stem cell research is immoral.

I happen to support stem cell research, but I was appalled at the short piece NBC News ran giving the pro-stem cell research point of view. What appalled me was that the segment was an interview with Christopher Reeve.

Reeve is a capable actor, but he’s no scientist and he’s certainly not an expert on stem cell research. The last person in the world I want to see explaining a scientific and ethical controversy is an actor who is best known for his role portraying a comic book super hero.

A longtime friend is of the view that network news shows are simply entertainment — differing little in form from the sitcoms, dramas, and soap operas served up by the networks. Sometimes, I’m inclined to agree.

Supposedly there’s this free trade agreement between the United States and Mexico, but that doesn’t stop the United States from fighting a war on illegal imports of a clearly dangerous product — cheese.

Due to protectionist laws in the United States, cheese is very expensive here. As the Associated Press notes, a wedge of cheese that might sell for $6 in the United States can be had in a Mexican shopping market for $1.50. Moreover, many Americans in Texas prefer the Mexican cheese to the AMerican variety, saying its fresher and tastier as it tends to come from small-scale cheese makers.

As a result, many people buy the cheese at $1.50/wedge or so in Mexico and resell it at $4/wedge in the United States. Which, of course, is completely illegal.

“They don’t want to meet food and drug administration requirements for imports,” Customs supervisor John Deputy told the Associated Press, who notes that people often try to smuggle 50-100 pounds of cheese into the country (what angers the FDA is that the cheese is often made from unpasteurized milk).

Of course what the smugglers really don’t want to do is pay the high tariffs that one has to pay when bringing cheese across the “free trade” zone.

Source:

Cheese smuggling prevalent at Texas Border Points. Associated Press, July 18, 2001.

After all these months I’m still get several e-mails a week saying something like: “Have you seen BonsaiKitten.Com. How could anyone be that cruel? How can we get this site taken down.” I’m still genuinely surprised that people actually believe that BonsaiKitten.Com is serious.

But a NewsNet5 report on the web site that was recently carried on Yahoo! helps explain how people fall for it. The site quoted a cat lover named Sandee Robertson saying,

I’m sure it must be [real]; they’ve got a Web site for it. There must be an interest for it. It’s disgusting and it’s sick, but there are people out there (who) would do things like that.

They’ve got a web site for it, so it must be real — wow! I guess I expect significantly better critical thinking skills from adults.

Source:

Bonsai Kittens Causing Worldwide Uproar. NewsNet5, July 24, 2001.

Much like the Green Revolution before it, genetic modification of food crops has plenty of critics in the West who maintain that it will never meet its potential of feeding more people more cheaply. Critics were wrong about the Green Revolution, which played a major role in improving the food situation in countries like India, and according to a recent United Nations report, the critics are wrong about genetically modified food as well.

UN Development Program’s Mark Malloch Brown said, “These varieties have 50% higher yields, mature 30 to 50 days earlier, are substantially richer in protein, are far more disease and drought tolerant, resist insect pests and can even out-compete weed. And they will be especially useful because they can be grown without fertilizer or herbicides, which many poor people can’t afford anyway.”

The main obstacle to such advances right now is the often irrational opposition to genetically modified food in rich, Western countries.

Source:

UN says GM crops could rescue world’s poor. Ananova, July 10, 2001.