31 March 2008

Analyst Predicts Corn Rationing in 2008

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NEW YORK — A BB&T Capital Markets analyst said Monday corn rationing may be necessary this year, following a U.S. Department of Agriculture report predicting farmers would plant far fewer acres of corn in 2008.

According to the March Prospective Plantings Report, farmers intend to plant about 86 million acres of corn this year, down 8 percent from 2007, when the amount of corn planted was the highest since World War II.

Analyst Heather L. Jones said in a note to investors if the USDA estimate proves accurate, the year may produce just 200 million bushels of corn. That, she said, wouldn't be enough to meet demand, given current export and feed demand trends and higher ethanol demand. Both ethanol and animal feed are made with corn.

"That is an untenable inventory demand, in our opinion," she said. "Consequently, we believe demand must be rationed or there needs to be a big supply response from other growing regions of the world."

The plantings report caused nervousness among meat producers and food makers who spent last year struggling to offset higher corn costs. Even though acreage was high, demand for ethanol and need overseas pushed prices to record levels.

Jones said she expects corn prices to rise even more, especially if unfavorable weather damages any of the crop.

The report delivered some promising news for meat producers, who also use soybeans to make feed. Farmers estimated they will plant 74.8 million acres of soybeans, up 18 percent from 2007.

But that might not bring much relief, Jones said, since corn is still the primary feed ingredient.

Shares of Tyson Foods Inc., one of the world's largest meat companies, fell 12 cents to $16.01 in afternoon trading, while shares of pork producer Smithfield Foods Inc. dropped 39 cents to $25.57.

Chicken producer Pilgrim's Pride Corp. shares dipped 19 cents to $20.28. Earlier in the day, the stock reached a new four-year low of $20.08.

Japanese scientists eye mysterious 'Planet X'

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Published: Thursday, February 28, 2008

Scientists at a Japanese university said Thursday they believed another planet up to two-thirds the size of the Earth was orbiting in the far reaches of the solar system.

The researchers at Kobe University in western Japan said calculations using computer simulations led them to conclude it was only a matter of time before the mysterious "Planet X" was found.

"Because of the very cold temperature, its surface would be covered with ice, icy ammonia and methane," Kobe University professor Tadashi Mukai, the lead researcher, told AFP.

This illustration released by Kobe University shows a planet -- half the size of Earth -- which is believed to be in the outer reaches of the solar system. The researchers at Kobe University have said that their theoretical calculations using computer simulations lead them to conclude it was only a matter of time before the long-awaited "Planet X" was found.

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This illustration released by Kobe University shows a planet -- half the size of Earth -- which is believed to be in the outer reaches of the solar system. The researchers at Kobe University have said that their theoretical calculations using computer simulations lead them to conclude it was only a matter of time before the long-awaited "Planet X" was found.

The study by Mukai and researcher Patryk Lykawka will be published in the April issue of the US-based Astronomical Journal.

"The possibility is high that a yet unknown, planet-class celestial body, measuring 30 percent to 70 percent of the Earth's mass, exists in the outer edges of the solar system," said a summary of the research released by Kobe University.

"If research is conducted on a wide scale, the planet is likely to be discovered in less than 10 years," it said.

Planet X -- so called by scientists as it is yet unfound -- would have an oblong elliptical solar orbit and circle the sun every thousand years, the team said, estimating its radius was 15 to 26 billion kilometres.

The study comes two years after school textbooks had to be rewritten when Pluto was booted out of the list of planets.

Pluto was discovered by the American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 in the so-called Kuiper belt, a chain of icy debris in the outer reaches of the solar system.

In 2006, nearly a decade after Tombaugh's death, the International Astronomical Union ruled the celestial body was merely a dwarf planet in the cluttered Kuiper belt.

The astronomers said Pluto's oblong orbit overlapped with that of Neptune, excluding it from being a planet. It defined the solar system as consisting solely of the classical set of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

The team noted that more than 1,100 celestial bodies have been found in the outer reaches of the solar system since the mid-1990s.

"But it would be the first time to discover a celestial body of this size, which is much larger than Pluto," Mukai said.

The researchers set up a theoretical model looking at how the remote area of the solar system would have evolved over the past four billion years.

"In coming up with an explanation for the celestial bodies, we thought it would be most natural to assume the existence of a yet unknown planet," Mukai said.

"Based on our hypothesis, we calculated how debris moved over the past four billion years. The result matched the actual movement of the celestial bodies we can observe now," he said.

He was hopeful about research by Kobe University, the University of Hawaii and Taiwan's National Central University.

"We are expecting that the ongoing joint celestial observation project will eventually discover Planet X," Mukai said.

Asian countries curb exports to avoid shortfalls as 'perfect storm' nearly doubles price in three months

Workers in a rice field on the outskirts of Chiang Mai in Thailand. Photograph: Alamy

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Knee-deep in muddy water, her face smeared with sandalwood paste and a broad-brimmed hat for protection against the broiling sun, Samniang Ketia grins broadly at her good fortune to be in the rice growing business as she replants shoots for the next harvest two months off.

The 37-year-old, who leases a small plot of land in Samblong, central Thailand, knows the price of rice has rocketed - in some cases nearly doubling in three months - and that she is about to reap the benefit when she sells what her family does not eat.

But the price rises have a downside and spawned a new phenomenon: rice rustling. One night, one of Samniang's neighbour's fields was stripped as it was about to be harvested. Local police have now banned harvesting machines from the roads at night while on the northern plains farmers are camping in their fields, shotguns at the ready.

"I've never heard of it happening before, that people have stolen rice," said Lung Choop, 68, who grows rice on his smallholding. "But it's happening now because rice is so expensive. I guess I'll have to guard my own distant fields when they're ready."

Across Asia the suddenly stratospheric rice prices have prompted countries to ban exports amid fears that shortages could provoke food riots.

While prices of wheat, corn and other agricultural commodities have surged since the end of 2006, partly because of extra demand for biofuels to offset rising oil prices, rice held fairly steady.

However, prices for the staple food of about 2.5 billion Asian people rocketed two months ago. Thai rice, the global benchmark, which was quoted at just below $400 (£200) a tonne in January rose to $760 (£380) last week.

Aware that shortages of such a vital staple could spell trouble at home, Asian governments have moved to ensure their people get enough to eat at a price they could afford, an insurance policy which has in turn raised prices further.

Late last week, Cambodia banned all exports for two months to ensure "food security", following the lead of Egypt, a major exporter. Vietnam, which ships 5m tonnes abroad each year, on Friday declared a 20% cut in exports.

India started the ball rolling late last year. With dwindling stocks, the large exporter introduced curbs that effectively banned exports, around 4m tonnes. Pakistan and China also introduced curbs.

Hopes that India would re-enter the market within the next few months were dashed on Thursday when it raised the minimum price for exports from $650 a tonne to $1,000, effectively maintaining the ban, which was escaped only by the foreign currency-earning premium basmati.

The Philippines is potentially among the biggest losers - with 91 million people, it cannot feed itself. After its farmers warned of a looming shortfall Manila's fast-food outlets offered to serve "half portions" of rice to conserve stocks. The Philippines' president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, has also pleaded with Vietnam to guarantee 1.5m tonnes of rice this year.

While Indonesians took to the streets of the capital, Jakarta, in protest at rising prices even Thailand, the world's largest exporter, is bracing itself.

The country produces 30m tonnes of rice a year, and aims to export 8.5m tonnes. Last year 9.5m tonnes was sold abroad and more may be exported this year, prompting ministers to consider curbs. "A rice shortage in the local market is very likely," said Prasert Kosalwit, director general of the Thai government's rice department.

Rice shortfalls were reported in southern Thailand as traders from the northern rice belt bought up stocks at inflated prices.

With global rice stocks at their lowest level since 1976, analysts expect price rises to continue until the end of next year. Some analysts predict it could hit $1,000 (£500) a tonne before farmers, spurred by the high prices, plant more crops and increase supplies.

Demand outstripped supply by nearly 2m tonnes last year. The predicted shortfall this year is more than 3m tonnes on the 424m tonnes required.

Across Asia, with its vast and growing population, there is little if any extra land to bring into production, and it may take several years for any "supply response" to materialise.

Growing urbanisation over the longer term in countries such as China and India is cited as a key factor in the shortfall, where the increasingly affluent middle classes demand more meat and dairy products, with land turned over to growing feed for livestock.

Rising wealth in Africa has also become a factor. Oil-rich Nigeria is now the largest importer in Africa, a continent which takes the lion's share of Thai exports, about 40%. Asia soaks up 35%.

Severe weather across Asia has also damaged production. Record icy temperatures were recorded in China and Vietnam, the latter of which also suffered a pest outbreak. Bangladesh endured a devastating cyclone while Australia suffered a prolonged drought.

"It's been described as a 'perfect storm' of factors that have pushed prices to their highest levels since the 1970s," said Adam Barclay, of the International Rice Research Institute.

The World Food Programme is also alarmed. The extra cost of feeding the 28 million "poorest of the poor" spread across 14 Asian countries will cost $160m a year and it has asked three dozen donor governments for the cash, part of a $500m global appeal to offset rising food prices.

"The real danger with rising rice prices is that the 'working poor' will simply be pushed into the category of 'poor' who will look to us to feed them," said Paul Risley, spokesman for WFP Asia. "There are hundreds of millions living at, or just below, the poverty line of $1-a-day, spending 70% of their day-labour wages on food.

"If food costs double they've no opportunity to increase their earnings and no alternative but to reduce what they and their families eat."

Clay tablet holds clue to asteroid mystery

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British scientists have deciphered a mysterious ancient clay tablet and believe they have solved a riddle over a giant asteroid impact more than 5,000 years ago.


	The tablet shows drawings of constellations and pictogram-based text known as cuneiform

Geologists have long puzzled over the shape of the land close to the town of Köfels in the Austrian Alps, but were unable to prove it had been caused by an asteroid.

Now researchers say their translation of symbols on a star map from an ancient civilisation includes notes on a mile-wide asteroid that later hit Earth - which could have caused tens of thousands of deaths.

The circular clay tablet was discovered 150 years ago by Sir Austen Henry Layard, a leading Victorian archaeologist, in the remains of the royal palace at Nineveh, capital of ancient Assyria, in what is now Iraq.

The tablet, on display at the British Museum, shows drawings of constellations and pictogram-based text known as cuneiform - used by the Sumerians, the earliest known civilisation in the world.

A historian from Azerbaijan, who believes humans originally came to Earth from another planet, has interpreted it as a description of the arrival of a spaceship. More mainstream academics have failed to decipher its meaning.

Now Alan Bond, the managing director of a space propulsion company, Reaction Engines, and Mark Hempsell, a senior lecturer in astronautics at Bristol University, have cracked the cuneiform code and used a computer programme that can reconstruct the night sky thousands of years ago to provide a new explanation.

They believe their calculations prove the tablet - a copy made by an Assyrian scribe around 700 BC - is a Sumerian astronomer's notebook recording events in the sky on June 29, 3123 BC.

The pair say its symbols include a note of the trajectory of a large object travelling across the constellation of Pisces which, to within one degree, is consistent with an impact at Köfels.

Mr Hempsell said: "All previous work has drawn a blank on what the tablet is about.


	Köfels, in the Austrian Alps, where an asteroid is thought to have hit 5,000 years ago

"It is such a big jigsaw and the pieces we have found fit together so well that I think we have a definitive proof."

The Köfels site was originally interpreted as an asteroid impact, however the lack of an obvious impact crater led modern geologists to believe it to be simply a giant landslide.

However, the Bond-Hempsell theory, outlined in their book published today, A Sumerian Observation of the Köfels Impact Event, suggests that the asteroid left no crater because it clipped a mountain and turned into a fireball.

Mr Hempsell said: "The ground heating, though very short, would be enough to ignite any flammable material, including human hair and clothes.

"It is probable more people died under the plume than in the Alps due to the impact blast."

He added that extreme changes caused to rock and other substances at the site had previously led to the Köfels impact being erroneously dated to around 8,000 years ago.

Antarctica's Wilkins Ice Shelf eroding at an unforeseen pace

Reporter Peter N. Spotts discusses how the British Antarctic Survey captured footage of the disintigrating Wilkins Ice Shelf.

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A crumbling ice shelf along the West Antarctic Peninsula has become the latest polar poster child for global warming.

This week, researchers in the United States, Britain, and Taiwan released images of long stretches of ice shearing away from the shelf. What started with the loss of a relatively thin, 26-mile-long iceberg at the end of February cascaded into the loss of 160 square miles of ice by the end of last week.

Its erosion won't affect sea levels. Like an ice cube in a filled cup, it's already in the water. And the handful of glaciers that feed into the shelf, called the Wilkins Ice Shelf, are small. Still, researchers say, the event represents a marker. The region has seen unprecedented rates of warming during the past 50 years. Two of the 10 shelves along the peninsula have vanished within the past 30 years. Another five have lost between 60 percent and 92 percent of their original extent. Of the 10, Wilkins is the southernmost shelf in the area to start buckling under global warming's effects.

"Wilkins is a stepping stone in a larger process," says Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., who discovered the breakup in satellite images. "It's really a story of what's yet to come if the mainland of Antarctica begins to warm."

So far, the shelf has lost about 3 percent of its total extent, which covers an area more than twice the size of Rhode Island and is up to 820 feet thick. But all that sits between the shelf's new seaward edge and a vast expanse of much weaker shelf ice is what researchers dub a "thread" of strong ice. And Wilkins's erosion is happening faster than researchers projected.

"In 1993, we predicted that this was going to be a vulnerable ice shelf," says David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey. "But we got the time scales completely wrong. We were saying 30 years at that time, and now it's happened within 15."

Glaciologists are concerned about Antarctica's ice shelves because most of them represent brakes of solid ice that slow the glaciers' flow to the sea. Without those brakes, the glaciers would surge, calve into icebergs, and significantly raise the sea level.

The region of greatest concern is West Antarctica, which includes the peninsula. Using satellites, scientists have been tracking snowfall, ice loss, and changes in the region's gravity field to gauge the amount of mass the continent's two large ice sheets are gaining or losing. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is separated from its eastern sibling by a long chain of mountains, so gains or no change in mass for the continent as a whole may still mask significant changes on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Recent studies have added to a growing body of evidence that key glaciers flowing from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet are thinning at rates not seen since the last ice age. For instance, for the past 4,700 years, the Pine Island Glacier has thinned at a rate of about 1-1/2 inches a year, according to a team of scientists from Britain and Germany. That rate is similar to those of other major glaciers in the region. But between 1992 and 1996, Pine Island Glacier thinned at an average rate of 63 inches a year. Their results appear in the March edition of the journal Geology.

Meanwhile, a team led by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Eric Rignot published satellite radar data showing that while East Antarctica's ice sheet lost virtually no mass between 1992 and 2006, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet was losing 132 billion tons of ice a year by the end of that period. Scientists attribute the losses to warmer air and ocean temperatures, which melt the glacier's shelves from above and from below.

But the Wilkins Ice Shelf is a different breed in the way it forms, explains Dr. Vaughan.

Although it's been stable for as long as scientists have been able to reach the continent and study it, the shelf scientists see crumbling today appears to have formed either between the Roman era and the Medieval Warm Period or with the onset of the Little Ice Age. Indeed, he adds, "it's kind of a come-and-go ice shelf" compared with the other vanishing shelves, which have been stable far longer.

Wilkins appears to have started as seasonal sea ice that gradually thickened, Dr. Vaughn adds. Shelves built of glacial ice are stout, because the weight of each succeeding winter's snow has compressed the layers beneath until the glacial ice becomes solid.

By contrast, Wilkins and a handful of ice shelves like it are more porous. Over centuries they too thickened with each winter's snowfall. The weight of the new snow, however, drives a preceding year's layer under water before the upper layers build enough weight to squeeze the tiny nooks and crannies out of it.

The task now is to tease out the precise mechanisms triggering the recent collapse, researchers say. By figuring out the breakup mechanism in detail, scientists should be able to improve the models they use to anticipate the behavior of other ice shelves as climate and ocean conditions continue to change, Dr. Scambos says.

Deformed beaks mean slow starvation for region's birds; cause a mystery

Left: A falcon with a normal beak. Right: A falcon with a long-billed deformity.

In his back yard in Fremont, Nikos Anton spotted a house sparrow that seemed to be toting a twig in its beak.

But when he looked a little closer, Anton saw the "stick" was actually the grotesquely misshapen and overgrown top half of the bird's beak.

"Look at that!" he said, pointing to his pictures of the bird. "It's like an elephant trunk. ... It's a very odd thing happening here in Seattle."

But it's not just here.

This "long-billed syndrome" has been recorded in about 160 birds by a Skagit County researcher, mostly in Western Washington and southern British Columbia and mostly since 2000. It's also documented in more than 2,100 birds in Alaska, where the phenomenon seems to have started affecting lots of birds in the early 1990s.

Researchers say the weird beaks appear to be concentrated in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, although reports are coming in from farther south -- from Southern California in one case earlier this month.

What's the cause? That remains a mystery. A small band of puzzled, poorly funded scientists is scrambling to find answers. Could it be chemicals? Something genetic? A disease? Maybe a combination?

Could it affect humans?

Whatever the cause, researchers are left profoundly unsettled by the mysterious "long-billed syndrome."

"It's really tragic," said Bud Anderson of the Falcon Research Group, based in Skagit County. "It's grotesque. It's horrible. It makes me want to puke." Continue.

30 March 2008

Tensions rise as world faces short rations

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WASHINGTON/PARIS (Reuters) - Food prices are soaring, a wealthier Asia is demanding better food and farmers can't keep up. In short, the world faces a food crisis and in some places it's already boiling over.

Around the globe, people are protesting and governments are responding with often counterproductive controls on prices and exports -- a new politics of scarcity in which ensuring food supplies is becoming a major challenge for the 21st century.

Plundered by severe weather in producing countries and by a boom in demand from fast-developing nations, the world's wheat stocks are at 30-year lows. Grain prices have been on the rise for five years, ending decades of cheap food.

Drought, a declining dollar, a shift of investment money into commodities and use of farm land to grow fuel have all contributed to food woes. But population growth and the growing wealth of China and other emerging countries are likely to be more enduring factors.

World population is set to hit 9 billion by 2050, and most of the extra 2.5 billion people will live in the developing world. It is in these countries that the population is demanding dairy and meat, which require more land to produce.

"This is an additional setback for the world economy, at a time when we are already going through major turbulence. But the biggest drama is the impact of higher food prices on the poor," Angel Gurria, head of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, told Reuters. Continue..

Tanzania says 75 feared dead in mine flood

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NAIROBI (Reuters) - At least 75 miners were feared dead in northern Tanzania on Saturday after floods swept through a mine near the town of Arusha, state media reported.

The Daily News quoted Manyara Regional Commissioner Henry Shekifu as saying five bodies had been recovered so far after a torrential downpour on Friday.

"Witnesses said flood waters entered eight pits and then spread to other pits, drowning working miners," the state-run newspaper said on its Web site.

Volunteers rushed to the scene on Saturday and the government said it was bringing equipment to drain the water as fast as possible. But electricity poles in the area had been brought down by the floods, it said, and engineers were battling to restore power for rescuers.

The newspaper said 100 miners died in similar floods in the area 1998. The region is the only place where the valuable blue gemstone tanzanite is found -- prized by jewellery-lovers in wealthy nations.

Mining disasters are not uncommon in Tanzania's "wild north", where small-scale independent miners dig remote gemfields in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro. Miners sometimes die in explosions or due to suffocation.

In 2002, at least 48 miners were suffocated when a compressor used to pump clean air into the gemstone mine failed.

South Pole telescope peers heavenward for dark energy

Chris Walker / Chicago Tribune

The Amundsen-Scott station, where scientists are scanning space for evidence of dark energy. Understanding it could explain the history and future of the universe.

The giant instrument seeks clues that might identify the most powerful, plentiful but elusive substance in the universe.

AMUNDSEN-SCOTT STATION, ANTARCTICA -- Anywhere on Earth this would be a big telescope, as tall as a seven-story building, with a main mirror measuring 32 1/2 feet across. But here at the South Pole, it seems especially large, looming over a barren plain of ice that gets colder than anywhere else on the planet.

Scientists built the instrument at the end of the world so they can search for clues that might identify the most powerful, plentiful but elusive substance in the universe: dark energy.

First described just nine years ago, dark energy is a mysterious force so powerful that it will decide the fate of the universe. Having already overruled the laws of gravity, it is pushing galaxies away from one another, causing the universe to expand at an ever faster rate.

Though dark energy is believed to account for 70% of the universe's mass, it is invisible and virtually undetectable. Nobody knows what it is, where it is or how it behaves.

"If you see it in your basement," jokes University of Chicago cosmologist Rocky Kolb, "you better get back on your medication." But he knows better than most the high priority the world's governments and scientists have placed on gaining a fuller understanding of the invisible force.

"Many think dark energy is the most important problem in physics today," said Kolb, who recently served as chairman of the Dark Energy Task Force, convened in 2005 by the U.S. Department of Energy, NASA and the National Science Foundation.

Figuring out what dark energy is would explain the history and future of the universe and generate new understanding of physical laws that, applied to human invention, almost certainly would change the way we live -- just as breakthroughs in quantum mechanics brought the computer chip.

Swinging its massive mirror skyward, the South Pole Telescope has begun to search the southern polar heavens for shreds of evidence of the elusive stuff. Controlled remotely from the University of Chicago, the $19.2-million telescope has quickly succeeded in its first mission: finding unknown galaxy clusters, clues to the emergence of dark energy.

Ambitious project

The Chicago university has a stronger astronomy presence at the pole than perhaps any other institution, having built several smaller experimental telescopes there over the last 20 years. This scope, however, was the most ambitious project by far.

Its components had to be custom-built by scientists and craftsmen in several different parts of the world, then shipped to Antarctica in pieces for final assembly. The largest sections of the telescope were carefully designed so each could fit into ski-equipped military transport planes. It took 25 flights in all to ferry 260 tons of telescope components.

Late last year, a crew mostly made up of graduate students spent eight hours a day outdoors to help put them all together.

"It gets really, really cold, because you aren't moving much," said Joachin Vieira, 28, a graduate student in physics. "There's steel behind you, steel in front of you, and you're holding steel tools." His crew was assembling a 10-meter aluminum mirror and attaching it to a carbon-fiber backing designed to keep the mirror rigid in the powerful South Pole winds.

Earlier they had spent three months doing a dry run on the mirror assembly in the blazing summer heat of Kilgore, Texas. At the pole, temperatures never exceeded 20 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Crew members said it took hours indoors before their fingers limbered up enough to type on their computers.

"We have to get these pieces into place to within 1/2,000th of an inch of accuracy," said Jeff McMahon, 29, a postdoctoral physics student. "If you move, you risk screwing it up, so you stand motionless at 20 degrees below zero."

Also out there, slinging two-by-fours alongside ironworkers putting together the telescope's main structure, was John E. Carlstrom, a veteran South Pole astronomer and University of Chicago astrophysicist who is heading up the international team that designed and constructed the telescope.

Senior scientists at six other institutions are collaborating with Carlstrom's Chicago team, including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, UC Berkeley, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Harvard, Case Western Reserve and McGill universities. The project is funded mainly by the National Science Foundation with additional money coming from two California donors, the Kavli Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

A thoughtful, soft-spoken man, Carlstrom honed his skills at physical labor by working in construction during his college-student days. He seems genuinely excited to be in the middle of the hunt for an elusive quarry, but still flummoxed by the astonishing new realities that dark energy represents.

"It's odd that we find ourselves missing the density of 70% of the universe," he said. "It's a hard pill to swallow, that this thing dominates the universe, but there is a lot of evidence to say that it is there."

Old-time methods

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Urgency grows as severe food shortages loom in N. Korea

Tough conditions set by donors put Kim Jong Il to test

SEOUL - A grim rite of spring in Northeast Asia is the calculation of how many North Koreans could starve before the fall harvest - and what the neighbors are willing to do about it.

This year, though, the famine bailout season is more urgent, more complicated, and more politically explosive than at any time since the mid-1990s, when millions starved behind North Korea's closed borders.

Severe crop failure in the North, surging global prices for food, and tougher behavior by donors, particularly South Korea and China, are putting unaccustomed pressure on Kim Jong Il's dysfunctional communist state.

"For Kim Jong Il, this will be his most difficult year," predicts Park Syung-je, a scholar at the Asia Strategy Institute in Seoul, referring to the North's dictator. "North Korea does not have much choice for food."

The threat of a calamitous 1990s-style famine has fallen substantially because of the emergence of grass-roots private markets across North Korea and a UN system for nutrition monitoring. Still, large numbers of people stand to suffer severe hardship, although probably not death, joining the ranks of the millions of North Koreans who go hungry even when harvests are good and food aid arrives.

Roughly a third of children and mothers are malnourished, according to a recent UN study. The average 8-year-old in the North is 7 inches shorter and 20 pounds lighter than a South Korean child of the same age.

This year is anything but good. Floods last August ruined part of the main yearly harvest, creating a 25 percent shortfall in the food supply and putting 6 million people in need, according to the UN World Food Program.

Over the winter, drought damaged the wheat and barley crop, according to a recent report in the official North Korean media. That crop normally tides people over during the summer "lean season" until the fall harvest.

North Korea's ability to buy food, meanwhile, has plunged, as the cost of rice and wheat on the global market has jumped to record highs, up 50 percent in the past six months.

Equally important for North Korea, its reliably generous neighbors seem to be operating under new, less tolerant rules for charity.

For nearly a decade, South Korea had led the world in providing assistance to the North, while setting almost no conditions on aid and asking few questions about who was getting it.

But South Korea's new president, Lee Myung-bak, wants to condition some of his country's gifts of food and fertilizer on progress in removing nuclear weapons from the North, on improvements in human rights, and on guarantees that food will go to poor people, not to the North Korean military.

North Korea yesterday rejected a new UN resolution condemning its alleged human rights abuses as a US-led political plot, warning the United States, the European Union, and Japan of "unpredictable consequences" for leading the move. The resolution was passed Thursday by the UN Human Rights Council.

While South Korea will probably end up providing some agricultural aid without conditions, a long and politicized debate in Seoul about how much to give and under what conditions is delaying delivery.

China, the North's closest ally and main trading partner, also seems to be stiffening its food policies. It has quietly slashed food aid to North Korea, according to figures compiled by the World Food Program. Deliveries plummeted from 440,000 metric tons in 2005 to 207,000 tons in 2006.

The reason for the cuts has not been made public, but some analysts believe it is related to North Korea's decision in 2006 to detonate a nuclear device.

29 March 2008

The new global menace: food inflation

BARRIE MCKENNA

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WASHINGTON — First it was shelter. Now food.

Still reeling from the U.S. housing collapse, global markets are confronting a dangerous new bubble: food inflation.

The price of the world's three main grains – rice, wheat and corn – have all more than doubled in the past year, affecting just about everything people eat, and fanning social unrest in some of the most unstable corners of the world.

Canadians might be forgiven for not noticing. The remarkable rise of the loonie has so far largely insulated them from the kind of rampant inflation that is hitting much of the rest of the world. Canadian prices were up 1.8 per cent in February compared with last year, less than half the U.S. inflation rate – a gap economists say is largely due to the strong dollar.

Signs of stress are emerging just about everywhere else. Food riots have erupted in Egypt, Morocco, Senegal and Cameroon. In Thailand, rice farmers are sleeping in their fields to prevent thieves from stealing their crops.

Numerous countries, including Argentina and Vietnam, have capped or taxed exports of key farm products in a bid to quell domestic inflation, running the risk of violating international trade rules. To ease growing shortages, the Philippine government has asked fast-food restaurants to serve less rice with meals to ease shortages.

In Egypt, the price of many basic foods has spiked as much as 50 per cent in a matter of months. In Asia, where rice is part of virtually every meal, prices are rising almost daily.

The United Nations World Food Programme warned this week it will have to ration food aid to cope with soaring grain prices unless it gets an emergency cash infusion of $500-million (U.S.) from donor countries.

“We are seeing a new face of hunger – people who suddenly can no longer afford the food they see on store shelves,” lamented Sheila Sisulu, deputy executive director of hunger solutions for the UNFP. “Prices have soared beyond their reach.”

And yesterday Chinese authorities announced they will pay farmers substantially more for rice and wheat as they try to boost output and cool surging inflation that threatens to spark unrest ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

“This could be the next bubble,” suggested William Cline, an agricultural economist and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

The trick is sorting out how much of the recent inflationary burst is permanent, and how much is caused by speculators flocking to commodities to escape the turmoil in financial markets. “There's a lot of speculative money that has gone into commodities as a store of value in turbulent times,” Mr. Cline said.

There are also longer-term factors pushing food prices higher, including global warming, Asia's dramatic economic emergence, $100-a-barrel oil and the United States's love affair with ethanol.

“Markets do adapt over the longer term,” said Kimberly Elliott, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Global Development.

“But in the short-run, we are going to continue to see some pretty serious effects in parts of the world.”

The era of cheap food may be over for a while. Food prices soared 40 per cent between 2006 and 2007, according to a key UN index, and the rate of inflation has accelerated this year. In a report this month, the United Nations predicted that food prices are likely to remain high for a decade.

The most lasting cause of higher food prices is certainly population growth. As countries such as China and India grow and prosper, they are consuming a greater share of the world's food. Prosperity affects how much people eat and what they eat.

This has pushed inventories such as rice and wheat to lows not seen in decades. World rice inventories currently stand at about 72 million metric tones, equal to about 17 per cent of what the world consumes annually and the lowest level since the 1970s. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has predicted that, this year, wheat inventories will hit their lowest point since 1946.

The Chinese, for example, are eating a lot more meat as they move from rural areas to cities. Ms. Elliott pointed out that it takes roughly eight pounds of grain to produce a single pound of meat.

Ms. Elliott warned that export controls aren't the answer to rising prices because they distort markets and may ultimately discourage production.

Experts also point to climate change as a reason for rising food prices. Rising temperatures are being blamed for longer and more frequent droughts, such as the ones now affecting grain production in Australia and Ukraine.

The spike in oil prices isn't helping.

Farmers consume large quantities of fertilizer, which in turn depends on now more expensive fossil fuel to produce. Likewise, in a global economy, food is shipped over ever-greater distances, compounding the impact on food prices when oil prices rise.

Even oil-rich Persian Gulf states, such as the United Arab Emirates, are experiencing rampant food inflation, and the resulting unrest. Last week, hundreds of construction workers demanding higher wages burned cars and ransacked buildings. Like most Arab states, the UAE's currency is pegged to the falling U.S. dollar, forcing consumers to pay more for the largely imported food they eat.

Another major culprit is the ethanol boom in the United States, Brazil and Europe. The diversion of crops, such as corn and soybeans, to produce biofuels has raised the price of all crops and diverted fields from food to fuel production.

This, in turn, has sparked growing tension between North and South over agricultural policies. During a visit to London this month, Egyptian Investment Minister Mahmoud Mohieldin complained that U.S. and Europe biofuel subsidies are hurting the world's poor.

“[The market] is out of order,” he told Dow Jones. “It sends the wrong message to the world, especially its poorer nations. It takes from the food of people to feed thirsty automobiles used by the relatively rich.”

Oddly, global consumers may get some relief from higher prices if Americans endure some economic pain as the U.S. economy slumps.

“We may quickly see a decline in [food] prices if we see a recession in the United States,” said Ms. Elliott of the Center for Global Development.

High Rice Cost Creating Fears of Asia Unrest

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HANOI — Rising prices and a growing fear of scarcity have prompted some of the world’s largest rice producers to announce drastic limits on the amount of rice they export.

The price of rice, a staple in the diets of nearly half the world’s population, has almost doubled on international markets in the last three months. That has pinched the budgets of millions of poor Asians and raised fears of civil unrest.

Shortages and high prices for all kinds of food have caused tensions and even violence around the world in recent months. Since January, thousands of troops have been deployed in Pakistan to guard trucks carrying wheat and flour. Protests have erupted in Indonesia over soybean shortages, and China has put price controls on cooking oil, grain, meat, milk and eggs.

Food riots have erupted in recent months in Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen. But the moves by rice-exporting nations over the last two days — meant to ensure scarce supplies will meet domestic needs — drove prices on the world market even higher this week.

This has fed the insecurity of rice-importing nations, already increasingly desperate to secure supplies. On Tuesday, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines, afraid of increasing rice scarcity, ordered government investigators to track down hoarders.

The increase in rice prices internationally promised to put more pressure on prices in the United States, which imports more than 30 percent of the rice Americans consume, according to the United States Rice Producers Association. The price that consumers pay for rice has already increased more than 8 percent over the last year.

But the United States is fortunate in also exporting rice; poor countries ranging from Sengal in West Africa to the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific are heavily dependent on imports and now face higher bills.

Vietnam’s government announced here on Friday that it would cut rice exports by nearly a quarter this year. The government hoped that keeping more rice inside the country would hold down prices.

The same day, India effectively banned the export of all but the most expensive grades of rice. Egypt announced on Thursday that it would impose a six-month ban on rice exports, starting April 1, and on Wednesday, Cambodia banned all rice exports except by government agencies.

Governments across Asia and in many rice-consuming countries in Africa have long worried that a steep increase in prices could set off an angry reaction among low-income city dwellers.

“There is definitely the potential for unrest, particularly as the people most affected are the urban poor and they’re concentrated, so it’s easier for them to organize than it would be for farmers, for example, to organize to protest lower prices,” said Nicholas W. Minot, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington.

Several factors are contributing to the steep rice in prices. Rising affluence in India and China has increased demand. At the same time, drought and other bad weather have reduced output in Australia and elsewhere. Many rice farmers are turning to more lucrative cash crops, reducing the amount of land devoted to the grain. And urbanization and industrialization have cut into the land devoted to rice cultivation.

In Vietnam, an obscure plant virus has caused annual output to start leveling off; it had increased significantly each year until the last three years.

Until the last few years, the potential for rapid price swings was damped by the tendency of many governments to hold very large rice stockpiles to ensure food security, said Sushil Pandey, an agricultural economist at the International Rice Research Institute in Manila.

But those stockpiles were costly to maintain. So governments have been drawing them down as world rice consumption has outstripped production for most of the last decade.

The relatively small quantities traded across borders, combined with small stockpiles, now mean that prices can move quickly in response to supply disruptions.

At the same time, prices set in international rice trading now have an increasingly important effect on prices within countries. This has been particularly true in an age of Internet and mobile phone communications when even farmers in remote areas can learn about distant prices and decide whether their own buyers are giving them a fair price.

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A bullfrog expert is calling for the urgent creation of a conservancy to protect Gauteng's only breeding population of enigmatic giant bullfrogs, in Midrand.

This follows the deaths of thousands of juvenile giant bullfrogs after the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA) graded a road at Midrand's protected Glen Austin Pan.

It's the latest threat to the survival of the world-famous giant bullfrogs, hemmed in by development; squashed by quadbikes, traffic and illegal dumping; or snatched for the exotic-pet trade.

Bullfrog specialist Clayton Cook, who has monitored Glen Austin's bullfrogs since 1991, termed the graded road "non-negotiable" and demanded that it be closed in order to protect them.

Water shortage may cause famine in Pakistan

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LAHORE: Sindh Tas Water Council warned that the country may face acute shortage of food and that the famine situation may crop up owing to the decreasing water resources. Talking to media on Friday, Sindh Tas Water Council Pakistan Chief Organiser M Yousuf Sarwar said the biggest issue between Pakistan and India after the Kashmir is river water, adding India is expediting the construction work of dams an barrages on the remaining rivers of Pakistan. The past government of Pakistan did nothing in this regard to forbid India from doing this. Yousuf Sarwar said at least 405 canals and 124 distributaries of Pakistan would dry up in the wake of Baglihar Dam construction and large swathes ranging millions of hectares of land will turn arid. He cautioned that Terbela and Mangla are at the dead level for the past two decades, adding 38 million acres of land are being spoiled without having enough water. Yousuf Sarwar pleaded the new government to prevent India from constructing new dams and take resort to the world court in this connection.

Death of the Bees

GMO Crops and the Decline of Bee Colonies in North America

Global Research March 25, 2008

by Brit Amos

‘Commercial beehives pollinate over a third of [NorthAmerica’s crops and that web of nourishment encompasses everything from fruits like peaches, apples, cherries, strawberries and more, to nuts like California almonds, 90 percent of which are helped along by the honeybees. Without this pollination, you could kiss those crops goodbye, to say nothing of the honey bees produce or the flowers they also fertilize’.1

This essay will discuss the arguments and seriousness pertaining to the massive deaths and the decline of Bee colonies in North America. As well, it will shed light on a worldwide hunger issue that will have an economical and ecological impact in the very near future.

There are many reasons given to the decline in Bees, but one argument that matters most is the use of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) and "Terminator Seeds" that are presently being endorsed by governments and forcefully utilized as our primary agricultural needs of survival. I will argue what is publicized and covered by the media is in actuality masking the real forces at work, namely the impact of genetically modified seeds on the reproduction of bee colonies across North America.

Genetically modified seeds are produced and distributed by powerful biotech conglomerates. The latter manipulate government agricultural policy with a view to supporting their agenda of dominance in the agricultural industry. American conglomerates such as Monsanto, Pioneer HiBred and others, have created seeds that reproduce only under certain conditions, often linked to the use of their own brands of fertilizer and/or insecticide.

The genetic modification of the plant leads to the concurrent genetic modification of the flower pollen. When the flower pollen becomes genetically modified or sterile, the bees will potentially go malnourished and die of illness due to the lack of nutrients and the interruption of the digestive capacity of what they feed on through the summer and over the winter hibernation process.

I will argue that the media’s publications distracts public opinion from the true cause which underlies the destruction of bee colonies. As such, outlined are four major arguments which the biotech conglomerates (which produce and market GMO seeds) have used to mislead the public regarding the demise of the bees. These arguments include Varroa mites, parasites, cell phones, and terminator seeds

Argument 1: Varroa mites2

Firstly, while there are some people who want to pin the blame on these mites, such views are unconvincing in that the argument does not make any sense because the main source of disease for these bees is intestinal disease. In fact, ‘many bee experts assumed Varroa mites were a major cause of the severe die-off in the winter of 2005. Yet when researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, traveled to Oakdale, California, where Anderson and a number of his fellow beekeepers spend winter and spring, they could find no correlation between the level of Varroa mite infestation and the health of bee colonies. ‘We couldn’t pin the blame for the die-off on any single cause,’ says Jeff Pettis, a research entomologist from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland,3 However, treatments against mites may be leaving hives open to the onslaught of powerful pathogens, much in the same way the overuse of antibiotics lead to super bugs in society today. What does that say about our future? We have learned that in the 1960’s and 1970’s, among other human ailments, DDT was a major cause of cancer in humans and animals; however, the substitution of such pesticides was a closely guarded secret. Unfortunately, the long term effects on the human population has yet to be understood as the compromise of the immune system may be happening quicker than we are ready to accept, even regarding the advent of super bugs. One can see that even this medical implication has severe economical implications.

Argument 2: Parasites

Secondly; Crops and even hedges, verges, and woodlands, and even where bees remain are sprayed with pesticides or herbicides. These chemicals are the practical extension of an exasperating belief that nature is our enemy. Pouring poison on our food is a very simplistic way of dealing with our problems however it ignores the root causes. “New genetically modified crops, designed to be immune to certain pesticides and herbicides, have resulted in the increased usage of these chemicals. Pesticides, particularly Bayer’s imidacloprid, a nicotine-based product marketed under the names Admire, Provado, Merit, Marathon, and Gaucho have been concretely implicated4 in the destruction of bee populations before (see also)5. The fact that other bees and insects are not raiding deserted hives to feed on the honey as they normally would lends some credence to the theory of a toxic overload. The toxic overload is certainly a concern, but wouldn’t it also need to be considered that this is systematic in the degeneration of the digestive process, such as in humans inability to digest preservatives and not absorb the enzymes to break down the foods eaten for survival?

Argument 3: cell phones

Thirdly, there was also a misconstrued study on cell phone radiation 6 and its effects on the bee’s ability to navigate which turned out to be an over-zealous unthinking reaction by an article in the Independent news. Some have also mentioned other navigational hindrances such as UV radiation, shifting magnetic fields and even quantum physics7 as a reason to the destruction of the bees.

There is certain implications to this theory, and it has been proven that electromagnetic radio wave lengths to affect the navigation of the bees. However the sun emits radiation spurts all the time, yet this has not offered a hindrance to the bees.

Argument 4: Terminator Seeds

Lastly, ‘Leaked documents seen by the Guardian show that Canada wants all governments to accept the testing and commercialization of “Terminator” crop varieties. These seeds are genetically engineered to produce only infertile seeds, which farmers cannot replant, also to mention that the bees that are trying to collect pollen, found to have their digestive tract diseases, such as amoeba and nosema disease’8. These diseases are mainly located in the digestive tract system. After studies of the autopsy, the most alarming trait is that the lower intestine and stinger have discolored to black vs. the normal opaque color, Synominus with colon cancer in humans.

28 March 2008

Saturn storm has hurricane like features

Cassini stares deep into the swirling hurricane-like vortex at Saturn's south pole, where the vertical structure of the clouds is highlighted by shadows. Such a storm, with a well-developed eye ringed by towering clouds, is a phenomenon never before seen on another planet. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

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A massive whirling vortex recently discovered over Saturn's south pole has features that are similar to hurricanes on Earth and unlike anything astronomers have seen before, a new study finds.

The polar vortex was first discovered by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Oct. 11, 2006, as it flew over the gas giant's south pole. The mass of swirling clouds took scientists by surprise.

"This is something we have never seen before," said study team leader Ulyana Dyudina of Caltech. "Before Cassini, we didn't know such a feature could exist on the poles."

Dyudina and her colleagues used more than three hours of observations of the vortex to examine its dynamics and structure. False color images of cloud heights showed a dark, red central eye similar to those at the center of terrestrial hurricanes, indicating that the upper atmosphere in the eye was nearly cloud-free.

Two eye walls encircle the eye and their clouds rotate in the same direction as the planet does, just as they do in hurricanes. Eyes and eye walls have never been observed anywhere else except on Earth.

Saturn's polar vortex is much bigger than any hurricane found on Earth though: Its eye alone measures about 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) in diameter, Dyudina told SPACE.com. The eye of a typical terrestrial hurricane is often just 2 or 3 miles wide.

Exactly what drives the vortex is uncertain, but it's not the warm ocean moisture that fuels hurricanes on Earth. Dyudina said that it could be supported by the moisture-driven motion of clouds in the lower atmosphere, but that scientists have no way to tell just yet.

The vortex also differs from hurricanes because it is stationary, constantly spinning over the same portion of the south pole. Polar vortices have been observed on other planets (they cover the North and South Pole of Earth), but unlike any of these vortices, Saturn's core eye is warm. In contrast, the polar vortices of Earth have cold cores.

As Saturn's year (about 29.5 Earth-years) shifts so that the sun no longer shines on the south pole and begins to illuminate the north pole, Dyudina hopes that Cassini's extended mission will allow scientists to observe indications of a north pole vortex and to continue observing the south pole vortex to see if they are permanent features and how the vortices fit into the planet's overall atmospheric circulation.

Arkansas winter wheat crop hit by flooding

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Flooding from heavy storms last week has submerged tens of thousands of acres of winter wheat in Arkansas, a university agronomist said Tuesday.

"We've got tens of thousands of acres of wheat that has gone under water," said Jason Kelley, extension wheat agronomist with the University of Arkansas.

The flooding along the Arkansas River and its tributaries will likely lower yields in some fields and may kill the crop in other areas, depending on how long the water lingers.

Wheat should recover in areas where standing water lasts only two or three days, Kelley said, but with some rivers still rising, low-lying areas could be submerged for two weeks.

"There are a lot of fields that have been under water for five or six days, and the water is just not dropping very fast," he said.

Farmers whose wheat is damaged may switch to spring-seeded crops including corn, soybeans, rice or cotton.

Arkansas growers planted 870,000 acres of winter wheat for harvest in 2008, up 6 percent on the year. The state grows soft red winter wheat, which is planted in the fall and harvested in the spring after a dormant period in the winter.

U.S. seedings of soft red winter wheat for 2008 rose 21 percent from a year ago, reaching 10.5 million acres, as farmers took advantage of historically high prices at planting time last fall. Continued...

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Asia worry how they will feed the hungry

Rising rice prices spark concerns across Asia

MANILA, Philippines: Philippine activists warn about possible riots. Aid agencies across Asia worry how they will feed the hungry. Governments dig deeper every day to fund subsidies.

A sharp rise in the price of rice is hitting consumer pocketbooks and raising fears of public turmoil in the many parts of Asia where rice is a staple.

Part of a surge in global food costs, rice prices on world markets have jumped 50 percent in the past two months and at least doubled since 2004. Experts blame rising fuel and fertilizer expenses as well as crops curtailed by disease, pests and climate change. There are concerns prices could rise a further 40 percent in coming months.

The higher prices have already sparked protests in the Philippines, where a government official has asked the public to save leftover rice and communist rebels have vowed to take advantage of the situation to stir up public unrest.

In Cambodia, Prime Minister Hun Sen ordered a ban on rice exports Wednesday to curb rising prices at home. Vietnamese exporters and farmers are stockpiling rice in expectation of further price increases.

Prestoline Suyat of the May One Labor Movement, a left-wing workers group, warned that "hunger and poverty may eventually lead to riots."

The neediest are hit hardest.

Rodolfo de Lima, a 42-year-old parking lot attendant in Manila, said "my family will go hungry" if prices continue to rise.

"If your family misses a meal, you really don't know what you can do, but I won't do anything bad," said de Lima, whose right foot was amputated after he was shot during a 1985 gang war.

Others might not be so restrained, said Domingo Casarte, 41, a street vendor.

"There are people who are hotheaded," he said. "When people get trapped, I can't say what they will do."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts global rice stocks for 2007-08 at 72 million tons, the lowest since 1983-84 and about half of the peak in 2000-01.

The higher prices are stretching the budgets of aid agencies providing rice to North Korea and other countries, particularly with donations already falling.

Jack Dunford, head of a consortium in Thailand helping more than 140,000 refugees from military-ruled Myanmar, said soaring rice prices and a slumping U.S. dollar are forcing cuts in already meager food aid.

"This rice price is just killing us," he said. "This is a very vulnerable group of people under threat."

China is among several countries in the region that subsidize rice prices, an increasingly expensive proposition.

Rice prices have almost doubled in Bangladesh in just a year, sparking resentment but no unrest yet. Repeated floods and a severe cyclone last year have cut production, forcing the government to increase imports.

In Vietnam, a major rice exporter, the crop has been hit by a virus called tungro and infestations of the brown planthopper insect.

Farmers there say they are not benefiting from the higher prices.

"The rice price has gone up 50 percent over the past three months, but I'm not making any more money because I have to pay double for fertilizer, insecticides and labor costs," said Nguyen Thi Thu, 46, a farmer in Ha Tay province, just outside Hanoi.

Another farmer, Cao Thi Thuy, 37, in Nam Dinh province, 120 kilometers (75 miles) south of Hanoi, said exporters have actually been paying less for rice over the last week.

"If the world prices are going up still, then Vietnamese rice-exporting companies are benefiting, not us," she said. "They tell us that now weather is better, and rice can grow more easily, so we should not expect higher prices."

Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, worried about anything that could spark a "people power" revolt against her, is assuring the public that rice won't run out or skyrocket in price during the traditionally lean months of July to September.

This week, she arranged the purchase of up to 1.5 million tons from Vietnam. She also has ordered a crackdown on price manipulation, hoarding and profiteering on subsidized rice, and will hold a food summit April 4.

Things are so tight that Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap has asked people not to throw away leftover rice and urged fast-food restaurants, which normally give customers a cup of rice with meals, to offer a half-cup option to cut waste.

Communist rebels marked their insurgency's 40th anniversary Friday with a vow to take advantage of the rising prices of rice and other essential goods to stir up public discontent and intensify attacks on Philippine troops.

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Thailand braces for rice crisis

Story HERE

Thailand, the world's largest rice exporter, could face a shortage of rice after skyrocketing prices have encouraged traders to substantially increase their export volumes, Prasert Kosalwit, the director-general of the Rice Department, said yesterday.

Concerns over shortages could lead to the introduction of measures to control the amount of rice exported in the second half of this year if the price continues to increase. The measures have been floated by Deputy Commerce Minister Wiroon Techapaiboon.

Fears of a shortage come against a backdrop of signs of rice shortages in some countries, including the Philippines and neighbouring Cambodia.

The Cambodian government yesterday appealed for people to remain calm and not to stock up on food commodities after the government banned rice exports on Wednesday.

The Philippines rushed to sign a purchase agreement with Vietnam for 1.5 million tonnes of rice this year to alleviate an expected shortage in coming months. The agreement came one day after the government announced the country was facing a serious rice supply crisis.

India has banned the export of rice to other countries, while China and Vietnam have already reduced export volumes.

''A rice shortage in the local market is very likely,'' warned Mr Prasert.

His comment was supported by rice export volumes which were more than one million tonnes a month from October last year to February this year.

The stockpile under the supervision of the Commerce Ministry is 2.1 million tonnes. That could ease domestic rice shortages for about three months, said Mr Prasert.

In case the rice stocks are used up and the rice shortage gets worse, the Rice Department will encourage farmers to grow a mixed breed paddy with a high average yield per rai of 1,200kg. The growing period for the mixed breed paddy is only 110 days.

Rice Exporters Association president Chookiat Ophaswongse admitted that the rice price and global demand would rise further from the second quarter of this year.

This is because Iran and Indonesia, which are regular customers, have not yet placed their orders for this year, he said. The two countries are expected to do so in the middle of this year.

Iran is likely to order at least one million tonnes and Indonesia more than 1.5 million tonnes. This has prompted rice millers and farmers to hoard rice for future speculation as well, said Mr Chookiat.

But Mr Chookiat said he is confident the government rice stockpile of 2.1 million tonnes would be enough to prevent a rice shortage for three to four months until paddy from the new season is harvested.

He said the main shortage would come from the race to export rice to other countries.

Thailand could face problems only when it exports more than nine million tonnes a year, he said. Over the past five months, the country sold more than one million tonnes a month to other countries. If this export volume continues, a shortage is possible, he added.

Mr Chookiat supported measures to stamp out excessive exports, suggesting that the government prepare to put in place a minimum export price system, which has been in use in India.

''If the rising rice price continues, the measure may be needed in the second half of this year,'' he said.

Under the measure, the government requires exporters to sell rice at determined prices which are higher than the market price to slow exports.

27 March 2008

Flowers are in danger of losing their scent.

NO SCENT: Air pollution is destroying flowers' natural fragrance, one natural history site claims

WHY FLOWERS NO LONGER SMELL LIKE THEY USED TO

FOR years men have been saying it with flowers.

But a sweet-smelling bouquet may no longer be the way to a woman’s heart – because flowers are in danger of losing their scent.

The reason? Air pollution caused by a whole variety of emissions is destroying flowers’ natural fragrance, according to new research on the natural history website loveearth.com.

So serious is the effect that some flowers which rely on pollination by insects could die out altogether.

For pollution is swamping the natural fragrances that flowers emit to attract insects like bees. Scientists fear that pollinating insects often can’t smell flowers if they are more than 200 metres away.

Before the industrial revolution more than a century ago insects could smell flowers a mile away.

All the chemicals and car emissions now pumped into the atmosphere every day are breaking down the strength of their aromas, as well as making flowers unhealthy and their colours noticeably less vibrant.

This, in turn, also makes them less attractive to insects.

Jose Fuentes, who led the research funded by the US National Science Foundation, said: “The biggest surprise was the amount of destruction of scents.”

The effect on pollination is thought to be altering the diversity of such insects across the globe.

Antarctic shelf 'hangs by thread'

Wilkins Ice Shelf from Twin Otter (Image: British Antarctic Survey)

The Antarctic Peninsula is one of the fastest warming places on Earth

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A chunk of ice the size of the Isle of Man has started to break away from Antarctica in what scientists say is further evidence of a warming climate.

Satellite images suggest that part of the ice shelf is disintegrating, and will soon crumble away.

The Wilkins Ice Shelf has been stable for most of the last century, but began retreating in the 1990s.

Six ice shelves in the same part of the continent have already been lost, says the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

Professor David Vaughan of BAS said: "Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened.

"I didn't expect to see things happen this quickly. The ice shelf is hanging by a thread - we'll know in the next few days or weeks what its fate will be."

'Like an explosion'

BAS researchers were alerted to the break-up by daily monitoring of satellite images. They sent a Twin Otter aircraft on a reconnaissance mission to video what was happening.

This is yet another indication of climate change in the Antarctic Peninsula and how it is affecting the environment

Prof David Vaughan

Jim Elliott, who was on board the plane, said he had never seen anything like it before.

He said: "We flew along the main crack and observed the sheer scale of movement from the breakage.

"Big hefty chunks of ice, the size of small houses, look as though they've been thrown around like rubble - it's like an explosion."

A 41-by-2.5km (25-by-1.6 mile) berg appears to be breaking away, with much of the Wilkins Ice Shelf protected only by a thin strip of ice spanning two islands.

Since an ice shelf is a floating platform of ice, the break-up will have no impact on sea level. But scientists say it heightens concerns over the impact of climate change on this part of Antarctica.

'Unprecedented' warming

Professor Vaughan predicted in 1993 that the northern part of the Wilkins Ice Shelf would be lost within 30 years if climate warming continued. But he said it is happening more quickly than he expected.

He told BBC News: "What we're actually seeing is a chunk of the ice shelf drop off in a way that suggests it is not just a normal part of iceberg formation.

"This is not a sea level rise issue, but is yet another indication of climate change in the Antarctic Peninsula and how it is affecting the environment."

Scientists say the Antarctic Peninsula, which juts out into the Southern Ocean towards the tip of South America, has experienced unprecedented warming over the last 50 years.

Several ice shelves have retreated in the past 30 years - six of them collapsing completely.

Other researchers believe the Wilkins Ice Shelf may hang on a little longer, as Antarctica's summer melt season draws to a close.

Dr Ted Scambos of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado said: "This unusual show is over for this season. But come January, we'll be watching to see if the Wilkins continues to fall apart."

Bats Perish, and No One Knows Why

THREAT Healthy bats, like the one above, hibernate in winter.

Al Hicks was standing outside an old mine in the Adirondacks, the largest bat hibernaculum, or winter resting place, in New York State.

It was broad daylight in the middle of winter, and bats flew out of the mine about one a minute. Some had fallen to the ground where they flailed around on the snow like tiny wind-broken umbrellas, using the thumbs at the top joint of their wings to gain their balance.

All would be dead by nightfall. Mr. Hicks, a mammal specialist with the state’s Environmental Conservation Department, said: “Bats don’t fly in the daytime, and bats don’t fly in the winter. Every bat you see out here is a ‘dead bat flying,’ so to speak.”

They have plenty of company. In what is one of the worst calamities to hit bat populations in the United States, on average 90 percent of the hibernating bats in four caves and mines in New York have died since last winter.

Wildlife biologists fear a significant die-off in about 15 caves and mines in New York, as well as at sites in Massachusetts and Vermont. Whatever is killing the bats leaves them unusually thin and, in some cases, dotted with a white fungus. Bat experts fear that what they call White Nose Syndrome may spell doom for several species that keep insect pests under control.

Researchers have yet to determine whether the bats are being killed by a virus, bacteria, toxin, environmental hazard, metabolic disorder or fungus. Some have been found with pneumonia, but that and the fungus are believed to be secondary symptoms.

“This is probably one of the strangest and most puzzling problems we have had with bats,” said Paul Cryan, a bat ecologist with the United States Geological Survey. “It’s really startling that we’ve not come up with a smoking gun yet.”

Merlin Tuttle, the president of Bat Conservation International, an education and research group in Austin, Tex., said: “So far as we can tell at this point, this may be the most serious threat to North American bats we’ve experienced in recorded history. “It definitely warrants immediate and careful attention.”

This month, Mr. Hicks took a team from the Environmental Conservation Department into the hibernaculum that has sheltered 200,000 bats in past years, mostly little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) and federally endangered Indiana bats (Myotis sodalis), with the world’s second largest concentration of small-footed bats (Myotis leibii).

He asked that the mine location not be published, for fear that visitors could spread the syndrome or harm the bats or themselves.

Other visitors do not need directions. The day before, Mr. Hicks saw eight hawks circling the parking lot of another mine, waiting to kill and eat the bats that flew out.

In a dank galley of the mine, Mr. Hicks asked everyone to count how many out of 100 bats had white noses. About half the bats in one galley did. They would be dead by April, he said.

Mr. Hicks, who was the first person to begin studying the deaths, said more than 10 laboratories were trying to solve the mystery.

In January 2007, a cave explorer reported an unusual number of bats flying near the entrance of a cavern near Albany. In March and April, thousands of dead bats were found in three other mines and caves. In one case, half the dead or living bats had the fungus.

One cave had 15,584 bats in 2005, 6,735 in 2007 and an estimated 1,500 this winter. Another went from 1,329 bats in 2006 to 38 this winter. Some biologists fear that 250,000 bats could die this year.

Since September, when hibernation began, dead or dying bats have been found at 15 sites in New York. Most of them had been visited by people who had been at the original four sites last winter, leading researchers to suspect that humans could transmit the problem.

Details on the problem in neighboring states are sketchier. “In the Berkshires in Massachusetts, we are getting reports of dying/dead bats in areas where we do not have known bat hibernacula, so we may have more sites than we will ever be able to identify,” said Susi von Oettingen, an endangered species biologist with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.

In Vermont, Scott Darling, a wildlife biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Department, said: “The last tally that I have is approximately 20 sites in New York, 4 in Vermont and 2 in Massachusetts. We only have estimates of the numbers of bats in the affected sites — more or less 500,000. It is impossible for us to count the dead bats, as many have flown away from the caves and died — we have over 90 reports from citizens across Vermont — as well as many are still dying.”

Rising Rice Prices Spark Concerns

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MANILA, Philippines — Philippine activists warn about possible riots. Aid agencies across Asia worry how they will feed the hungry. Governments dig deeper every day to fund subsidies.

A sharp rise in the price of rice is hitting consumer pocketbooks and raising fears of public turmoil in the many parts of Asia where rice is a staple.

The higher prices have already sparked protests in the Philippines, where a government official has asked the public to save leftover rice. In Cambodia, Prime Minister Hun Sen ordered a ban on rice exports Wednesday to curb rising prices at home. Vietnamese exporters and farmers are stockpiling rice in expectation of further price increases.