Rice, Wheat, UG99, Olympic Torch, Elephant self portrait

April 17, 2008. NYT
The Deniliquin mill, the largest rice mill in the Southern Hemisphere, once processed enough grain to meet the needs of 20 million people around the world. But six long years of drought have taken a toll, reducing Australia’s rice crop by 98 percent and leading to the mothballing of the mill last December.
..The collapse of Australia’s rice production is one of several factors contributing to a doubling of rice prices in the last three months — ... violent protests in countries including Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Haiti, Indonesia, Italy, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, the Philippines, Thailand, Uzbekistan and Yemen.
Senegal and Haiti each import four-fifths of their rice....
.Moderate warming could benefit crop and pasture yields in countries far from the Equator, like Canada and Russia. In fact, the net effect of moderate warming is likely to be higher total global food production in the next several decades.
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But the scientists said the effect would be uneven, and enormous quantities of food would need to be shipped from areas farther from the
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Paul Lamine N’Dong, an elder in Joal, Senegal, worries that hot weather and failing rains have already crippled his village’s crop of millet, a coarse grain eaten locally and traded for rice.
[but note flooding rains across West Africa earlier in 07?? ]
...
[like I said, the first 1.5° is good for rather a lot of places, so not much will be done about GCC, and the late century 6° will be a civilization killer...]
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Paris, April 15, 2008 -- The meetings last weekend of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, both under new leaders – Dominique Strauss-Kahn of France and the American Robert Zollick – made news principally on the question of world food price rises and shortages, ...
The food crisis is a real one, with rice –...rising in price by 75% in two months, and the rise in wheat, ... rising by 120% over the year.
...
williampfaff
newscientist
eurekalert
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A virulent rust (a type of fungus) called UG99 is reducing wheat crop yields in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. ..The infection is expected to reduce wheat yields by 80% over the next 2 years as there aren’t any commercial wheat strains (that I know of) resistant to UG99;
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The FAO says that some 65 million hectares of wheat, which produce about a quarter of the global wheat harvest, are now directly under threat. It gets worse. Over two-thirds of the wheat strains in North America are vulnerable to this disease.

And this comes at a time when world wheat reserves are at their lowest level since records were first kept, and when there are global shortages of other staple foods like rice.

This thing has immense potential for social and human destruction," says Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug, now 93 and known as the father of the Green Revolution in agriculture.
metimes

Biologists at Monsanto and at the various GMO laboratories around the world are working to patent such strains. ...The spreading alarm over the Ug99 fungus is being used by Monsanto and other GMO agribusiness companies to demand that the current ban on GMO wheat be lifted to allow spread of GMO patented wheat seeds
financialsense
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Torch Guards
Chinese guards protecting the torch in other cities have been picked from special police units chosen for skills in martial arts, marksmanship and hand-to-hand combat according to British-based website sinodefence.com, which specialises in Chinese military affairs.

Thailand's leg of the Olympic torch run got under way earlier on Saturday, with the flame guarded by more than 2,000 police and security officials.

K Rudd has apparently said that the 'blue chinese security' will not be welcome in Aus... Interesting to see if he follows through on that..

Mr Rudd said today he had been advised all the officials would remain in the bus unless they were required to relight the torch.

"My understanding is that the Chinese torch attendants will play zero role ... in the provision of any security," he said on Fairfax radio.

"We are providing security here. This is our country, we provide the security - end of story."

theaustralian
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April 19, 2008
OTTAWA — The Canadian government moved Friday to ban polycarbonate infant bottles, the most popular variety on the market, after it officially declared one of their chemical ingredients toxic.
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Nalgene brand water bottles had used bisphenol-a, which some studies in animals linked to hormonal changes.
..
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tamino


Southern Lands Warming?
Tamino does a detailed analysis of Climate-Warming
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Elephant paints self portrait, with flower
youtube
bbc

"So far only Paya, the elephant, has mastered the art of self-portrait, while the others each have their own speciality."

I tend to think that these elephant self portraits are some how faked. Or else I must drastically revise my ideas of homo vs other mammalian intelligence
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Rice, Wheat, UG99, Olympic Torch, Elephant self portrait,