EU interior ministers have agreed to give the European Commission the green light to negotiate terms for visa-free travel to the US for all EU states.
EU officials have been unhappy about deals being done individually, as has already happened in some cases.
Most older EU states are already in the US visa waiver scheme, but Greece and most of the 12 newer members are not.
Access to personal data is a key issue in the talks. Since the 2001 terror attacks the US has tightened the rules.
The ministers, meeting in Luxembourg on Friday, want the Commission to address concerns that US security demands could contravene EU laws on data protection.
Washington wants access to passenger data and to the database used by EU countries in the Schengen zone of border-free travel.
Only 15 EU states are covered by the current visa-waiver scheme. They are Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the UK.
Citizens from Greece and 11 of the 12 newest EU states - Slovenia is the exception - need visas for travel to the US.
Source:
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Friday, April 18, 2008
Action urged to keep net neutral
Tough action is required by US regulators to protect the principles that have made the net so successful, a leading digital rights lawyer has said.
Professor Lawrence Lessig was speaking at a public meeting to debate the tactics some net firms use to manage data traffic at busy times.
He said the Federal Communications Committee (FCC) should act to keep all net traffic flowing equally.
The FCC said net firms had a duty to tell customers about data management.
No more rules
The seven-hour public meeting was held at Stanford University and featured presentations from Prof Lessing, songwriters, network administrators and net engineers.
Prof Lessig said one of the principles that guided the foundation of the net was that all traffic should flow equally across it.
This principle of net neutrality, he said, was being eroded as net firms manage traffic and place restrictions on what their domestic broadband customers can do.
Consumers must be fully informed of the exact nature of the service they are purchasing
Kevin Martin, FCC
The meeting was called by the FCC in reaction to the news that US net firm Comcast had been exposed as managing traffic by stopping some of its 13m customers uploading files to BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer networks.
The FCC has started a formal investigation to see if Comcast merits a fine for its actions.
In response to the publicity surrounding its actions, Comcast has said it would change its policy.
In the UK many net firms manage traffic at peak times in a bid to ensure that everyone gets the highest broadband speed possible.
Prof Lessig said there had to be clear rules, perhaps involving financial incentives, to force net firms to respect net neutrality. Current rules, he warned, meant that many firms were tempted to manage traffic to protect profits.
At the meeting the two Democrats who sit on the five-strong FCC board said it needed new powers to make sure net firms complied with net neutrality principles.
But the two Republican commissioners on the board warned against over-burdening net firms with more rules.
Summing up, FCC chairman Kevin Martin said its net policies were powerful enough but just needed to be properly enforced.
He said there was nothing wrong with net firms managing traffic as long as they kept customers fully informed.
"There must be adequate disclosures of the particular traffic management tools," said Mr Martin. "Consumers must be fully informed of the exact nature of the service they are purchasing."
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7354133.stm
Professor Lawrence Lessig was speaking at a public meeting to debate the tactics some net firms use to manage data traffic at busy times.
He said the Federal Communications Committee (FCC) should act to keep all net traffic flowing equally.
The FCC said net firms had a duty to tell customers about data management.
No more rules
The seven-hour public meeting was held at Stanford University and featured presentations from Prof Lessing, songwriters, network administrators and net engineers.
Prof Lessig said one of the principles that guided the foundation of the net was that all traffic should flow equally across it.
This principle of net neutrality, he said, was being eroded as net firms manage traffic and place restrictions on what their domestic broadband customers can do.
Consumers must be fully informed of the exact nature of the service they are purchasing
Kevin Martin, FCC
The meeting was called by the FCC in reaction to the news that US net firm Comcast had been exposed as managing traffic by stopping some of its 13m customers uploading files to BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer networks.
The FCC has started a formal investigation to see if Comcast merits a fine for its actions.
In response to the publicity surrounding its actions, Comcast has said it would change its policy.
In the UK many net firms manage traffic at peak times in a bid to ensure that everyone gets the highest broadband speed possible.
Prof Lessig said there had to be clear rules, perhaps involving financial incentives, to force net firms to respect net neutrality. Current rules, he warned, meant that many firms were tempted to manage traffic to protect profits.
At the meeting the two Democrats who sit on the five-strong FCC board said it needed new powers to make sure net firms complied with net neutrality principles.
But the two Republican commissioners on the board warned against over-burdening net firms with more rules.
Summing up, FCC chairman Kevin Martin said its net policies were powerful enough but just needed to be properly enforced.
He said there was nothing wrong with net firms managing traffic as long as they kept customers fully informed.
"There must be adequate disclosures of the particular traffic management tools," said Mr Martin. "Consumers must be fully informed of the exact nature of the service they are purchasing."
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7354133.stm
See Mercury, the Elusive Planet
The planet Mercury is often cited as the most difficult of the five brightest naked-eye planets to see. Because it's the planet closest to the Sun, it never strays too far from the Sun's vicinity in our sky. It is often referred to as "the elusive planet." And there's even a rumor that Copernicus, never saw it, yet it's not really hard to see. You simply must know when and where to look, and find a clear horizon. And for those living in the Northern Hemisphere, a great "window of opportunity" for viewing Mercury in the evening sky is about to open up.
Mercury is called an "inferior planet" because its orbit is nearer to the Sun than the Earth's. Therefore, it always appears from our vantage point to be in the same general direction as the Sun. In the pre-Christian era, this planet actually had two names, as it was not realized it could alternately appear on one side of the Sun and then the other.
Mercury was called Mercury when in the evening sky, but was known as Apollo when it appeared in the morning. It is said that Pythagoras, about the fifth century B.C., pointed out that they were one and the same.
A bright evening "star"
Mercury just passed superior conjunction on April 16, but in the days to come it will bolt out to become easily visible low in the west-northwest at dusk. On Wednesday evening, April 23, Mercury should be visible within about 30 minutes after sunset if your sky is quite clear. Mercury will be shining at magnitude �1.6, slightly brighter than Sirius (the brightest of all stars). In fact, at that particular hour of the day, Mercury will be the brightest object in the sky!
So, if your sky is free of any horizon haze and there are no tall obstructions to your view (like trees or buildings) you should have no trouble in seeing it as a very bright "star" shining with just a trace of a yellowish-orange tinge. By April 30, Mercury will be setting as late as 85 minutes after the Sun. That evening, binoculars may show the Pleiades star cluster 4 degrees directly above it. (Your clenched fist held at arm's length measures about 10 degrees in width.)
In the evenings that follow, Mercury will slowly diminish in brightness, but it will also slowly gain altitude as it gradually moves away from the vicinity of the Sun. This is just the start of Mercury's best apparition of the year for mid-northern viewers. On the evening of May 6, be sure to look for a delicately thin sliver of a 1.5-day old crescent Moon sitting just a couple of degrees above and slightly to Mercury's right.
Pinnacle: May 14
Mercury, like Venus, appears to go through phases like the Moon. Right now, Mercury is a nearly full disk, which is why it starts off appearing so bright. Mercury reaches its greatest elongation, 22 degrees to the east of the Sun, on May 14. Shining at magnitude +0.4 (as bright as the star Procyon in Canis Minor), it will set nearly two hours after the Sun. By the time it arrives at its greatest elongation, it will appear roughly half-illuminated and the amount of its surface illuminated by the Sun will continue to decrease in the days to come. So when it begins to turn back toward the Sun's vicinity after May 14, it will fade at a rather rapid pace.
In fact, on the evening of May 22, Mercury's brightness will have dropped to magnitude +1.7; only 1/20 as bright as it was on April 23. In telescopes it will appear as a narrowing crescent phase. This, in all likelihood will be your last view of it, for the combination of its lowering altitude, plus its descent into the brighter sunset glow will finally render Mercury invisible by the final week of May.
Orbital peregrinations
In old Roman legends, Mercury was the swift-footed messenger of the gods. The planet is well named for it is the closest planet to the Sun (at an average distance of 36 million miles) and the swiftest of the Sun's family, averaging about 30 miles per second; making its yearly journey in only 88 Earth days. Interestingly, the time it takes Mercury to rotate once on its axis is 59 days, so that all parts of its surface experiences periods of intense heat and extreme cold. But we cannot say that a solar day on Mercury lasts 59 days because its highly eccentric orbit causes an effect known as a 3:2 spin�orbit resonance. As a consequence, because Mercury rotates three times for every two times it revolves around the Sun, the time it takes from one sunrise to the next is equal to about 176 days.
So for 88 days, the Sun is constantly above the horizon and surface temperatures soar to nearly 900 degrees F (482-degrees C). Daytime temperatures are high enough to melt zinc and tin. Then comes 88 days of darkness, with surface temperatures plummeting to -300 degrees F (-184 degrees C) — the greatest range of temperatures of any planet.
In fact, on some parts of Mercury's surface, it is even possible to see the Sun briefly reverse its course in the sky. This happens around the time that Mercury arrives at that part of its orbit which places it closest to the Sun (called perihelion), where it's orbital speed can briefly exceed its rotational speed.
At sunrise, this strange effect would cause the Sun to appear to rise above the horizon ... then slow to a halt ... then reverse direction and drop back below the horizon. At sunset, the Sun would drop below the horizon, then pop back up into view before resuming its normal course, ultimately setting again for a second time within a week.
Found at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080418/sc_space/seemercurytheelusiveplanet
How Far is the US From Food Shortages and Food Riots?
by Monica Davis (davis4000_2000@yahoo.com )
Saturday Apr 12th, 2008 2:37 PM
Even the United States is not immune from the potential for food shortages, food riots and food insecurity. We’re just blind to the possibility.
As Americans complain over high gasoline and food prices, many third world countries are experiencing food riots over price and scarcity of food. In some parts of the word rice is so expensive that it is transported in heavily guarded convoys and farmers guard their fields from thieves.
Food riots are becoming more common, as more land and crops are being diverted from the food chain by the world biofuels industry. According to an investment magazine, the crisis shows no signs of weakening. Food, the bread of life, is fast becoming the “gold” of the Twenty-first century.
Fatal food riots in Haiti. Violent food-price protests in Egypt and Ivory Coast. Rice so valuable it is transported in armoured convoys. Soldiers guarding fields and warehouses. Export bans to keep local populations from starving. (Globalinvestor.com)
The face of food security is rapidly changing around the world and there are no quick fixes experts say. What worries many is that food stockpiles are at historic lows. In the United States alone,
stockpiles of wheat hit a 60-year low in the United States as prices soared. Almost all other commodities, from rice and soybeans to sugar and corn, have posted triple-digit price increases in the past year or two. (Ibid)
Experts say the high prices will continue for years, putting billions of people at risk for malnutrition or starvation. World leaders continue to cast fearful eyes at the burgeoning bio-fuels industry, noting that the competition generated by the industrial biofuels industry and food agriculture is pushing up food prices and making it more profitable to grow fuel crops for industrialized countries than it is for big farmers in Third World countries to grow food for their own citizens.
What has put many world leaders on notice is the fact that this artificially generated food crisis has not yet peaked. As of this writing, no one knows when the situation will reach a crescendo, or to what extent this demand will affect food security and political stability in the world.
Many believe that the food crisis is in its infancy and they worry about increasing food-based political instability worldwide.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said this week he's worried that ethanol production is pushing up food prices everywhere, and he called for an urgent review of the issue. Economist Dr. Hazell has said that filling an SUV tank once with ethanol consumes more maize than the typical African eats in a year. (Ibid)
So far, Americans have been able to weather the storm. While rising fuel and food prices have generated grumbling from the populace and hand wringing from the politicians, this country has yet to experience the level of social unrest and rioting that high food prices have generated in other parts of the world.
In Haiti, ongoing instability and riots over food prices has led to the probable ousting of the nation’s Prime Minister. Newswires are reporting “A Haitian senator says that parliament has voted to dismiss Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis following deadly riots over rising food prices.” (Wire services)
A few analysts believe that the United States is on the verge of a major economic revolution, a process, which will change where we live, what we eat, and how we view agriculture. Looking at the rumbles from around the world we are already seeing wars over oil and energy resources, not to mention the violent eviction of traditional farmers in South America and other parts of the world by the industrialized bio-fuels industry.
The fight over finite land resources is slowly taking shape out of sight of most of the United States as agribusinesses lay claim to land around the world. Agro-conglomerates chase natives off tribal lands in South America, Indonesia and parts of the Far East at gunpoint. Murder over land continues in the Third World, as conglomerates move onto jungle and rain forest land, clearing acreage with slash and burn campaigns.
What was once climate producing tropical rain forest has become fields for sugar cane, corn and other biofuels. More profitable biofuel crops have now deprived the food chain of a large supply of corn and other crops, driving up the cost of corn-based food such as corn meal, tortillas, corn syrup and a hundred other crops and products which grace our tables at ever greater cost.
The food riots in Haiti are mirrored by riots in parts of Africa and Asia, sending shock waves throughout the Third World. According to a report from the United Nations, the 60 per cent price increase in the price of corn and feedstock over the past two years can be directly traced to the increased demand on corn and soybeans made by the biofuels industry. The United States, as the world’s largest exporter of corn, has diverted millions of pounds of corn and soybean crops to the growing biofuels industry, creating a market that makes fuel crops more profitable than food crops. National surpluses of grains have give way to increased demand for biofuels, driving up the price of corn and grains around the world. (World Bank)
Traditional food crops—rapeseed, maize (corn), palm and soybean are in demand by both food agriculture and the growing biofuels industry, creating an increased competition, which is driving up food costs by double digits, generating food riots around the world. Thai farmers and other farmers are now guarding rice crops, as skyrocketing grain prices are leading to crop theft and food riots around the world. According to international reports:
Rice farmers here (Thailand) are staying awake in shifts at night to guard their fields from thieves. In Peru, shortages of wheat flour are prompting the military to make bread with potato flour, a native crop. In Egypt, Cameroon, and Burkina Faso food riots have broken out in the past week. (Thoughtcriminal.org)
In Thailand and other rice and grain producing nations, food theft is rising. Crops are stolen directly from fields.
The reported thefts in five rice-growing provinces in central Thailand are the first signs of criminal activity in this region stemming from the sharpest global spike in commodity prices since the oil crisis in the mid-1970s. Across the world, higher food prices are triggering thefts and violence – both by people who can’t afford to eat and those who want to make an easy buck. (Ibid)
The United States produces 46% of the world’s biofuels, with Brazil coming in at a close second with 42%. (Biofuels: the Promise and the Risks). As a world leader in food exports, grain in particular, the United States has altered world grain markets by diverting grain into fuel production, thereby increasing demand for grains with a resultant rise in the price of the commodity because of demand. The ensuing market shortage has generated price increases in the world grain market, making food staples too expensive for much of the world’s poor to afford.
So far, Americans are mostly bystanders in the game, content to grumble at the gas pump and complain in the grocery aisles. As a “First World” nation, the United States so far has not been subject to the food riots, which we have seen in Haiti and other parts of the world. Americans have more per capita income than much of the world; hence the crisis of the Third World, so far, is inconvenience in the “First World” and in developed nations such as the United States.
That said, however, we must understand that this situation is not sustainable. While Americans do have more disposable income than the rest of the word, that income is not unlimited and our food supply is much more vulnerable than we think. When it comes to food security, both in terms of supply and accessibility, this country is much more vulnerable than we think.
As one retired grain salesman noted, most of the nation’s grain is moved around the country by just TWO railroads. Little is stored in the event of disaster and the whole system is extremely vulnerable. While we in the United States look at the food riots in other countries with a sense of disbelief, we are not immune. Under the right circumstances, we could be in the same boat. (Ibid)
In order for riots to break out the whole food supply doesn't have to be wiped out. It just has to be threatened sufficiently. When people realize their vulnerability and the fact that there is no short-term solution to a severe enough drought in the Midwest they will have no clue as to what they should do. Other nations can't make up the difference because no other nation has a surplus of grain in good times let alone in times when they are having droughts and floods also. (Robert Felix, “US Food Riots Much Closer than You Think”)
Critics say the US is currently too preoccupied with foreign excursions and oil to pay attention to food security, particularly how concentration of suppliers and processors threaten the food chain. The highly concentrated meat processing industry has generated millions of pounds of recalls this year. Outbreaks in e.coli and other food borne pathogens continue to haunt the headlines, as food prices rise around the world.
The concentration of food processing, cultivation and distribution into the hands of a few companies is wrecking havoc around the world. A Canadian reporter noted the connection between market concentration and price increases around the world:
In Mexico and most other countries, a handful of international companies is controlling more and more of the food production line—from growing crops to purchasing crops from farmers, to warehousing, processing and distribution.
Carlsen said investigations following the tortilla crisis found that huge stores of corn in warehouses had cut down the supply and led to a jump in prices. (Matthew Little, Epoch Times, “Food Prices Skyrocket Amidst Growing Shortages.”)
Food security, that is the availability and affordability of food, has been pushed aside by the War on Terror, and continues to lag behind our awareness, despite their being linked together in a dangerous dance of death, which has been created by the bio-fuels industry. Ultimately, the price of oil, depends on supply, demand and risk (War), and the price of food has now become dangerously linked to the energy market by the requirements of the fuel crop industry. We now are dealing with a ‘double whammy’ that is dangerously impeding our food supply.
Living in the “Breadbasket of the World,” it is hard for most Americans to even conceive of the idea that food could become scarce in this country. Few of us are paying attention to the close relationship between biofuel, grain crops and price inflation.
Think tank analyst Pat Mooney noted the close connection between corn and oil prices.
"The market place does now tie the price of a bushel of corn to the price of a barrel of crude and when it does that it means that poor people are going to lose out," said Mooney. (Ibid)
The world’s grain and food markets have been turned on their heads. Where once the price of fuel and oil-based fertilizers used to cultivate crops added to the cost of the crop, now the use of crops as fuel generates still another tier of demand on the world’s soils and crops.
With finite amounts of cropland, competition between fuel and food crops for land and economic resources, and unpredictable natural disasters, wars and pestilence waiting in the wings, our food supply is not as secure as we think it is.
Even the United States is not immune from the potential for food shortages, food riots and food insecurity. We’re just blind to the possibility.
The author is an activist/writer/public speaker based in the Midwest. She has written articles on the mortgage crisis, land theft, mis-education of ethnic youth and food security. Books include:
Land, Legacy and Lynching: Building a future for Black America, and Urban Asylum: Politics, Lunatics and the Refrigerator Woman.
Source:
Saturday Apr 12th, 2008 2:37 PM
Even the United States is not immune from the potential for food shortages, food riots and food insecurity. We’re just blind to the possibility.
As Americans complain over high gasoline and food prices, many third world countries are experiencing food riots over price and scarcity of food. In some parts of the word rice is so expensive that it is transported in heavily guarded convoys and farmers guard their fields from thieves.
Food riots are becoming more common, as more land and crops are being diverted from the food chain by the world biofuels industry. According to an investment magazine, the crisis shows no signs of weakening. Food, the bread of life, is fast becoming the “gold” of the Twenty-first century.
Fatal food riots in Haiti. Violent food-price protests in Egypt and Ivory Coast. Rice so valuable it is transported in armoured convoys. Soldiers guarding fields and warehouses. Export bans to keep local populations from starving. (Globalinvestor.com)
The face of food security is rapidly changing around the world and there are no quick fixes experts say. What worries many is that food stockpiles are at historic lows. In the United States alone,
stockpiles of wheat hit a 60-year low in the United States as prices soared. Almost all other commodities, from rice and soybeans to sugar and corn, have posted triple-digit price increases in the past year or two. (Ibid)
Experts say the high prices will continue for years, putting billions of people at risk for malnutrition or starvation. World leaders continue to cast fearful eyes at the burgeoning bio-fuels industry, noting that the competition generated by the industrial biofuels industry and food agriculture is pushing up food prices and making it more profitable to grow fuel crops for industrialized countries than it is for big farmers in Third World countries to grow food for their own citizens.
What has put many world leaders on notice is the fact that this artificially generated food crisis has not yet peaked. As of this writing, no one knows when the situation will reach a crescendo, or to what extent this demand will affect food security and political stability in the world.
Many believe that the food crisis is in its infancy and they worry about increasing food-based political instability worldwide.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said this week he's worried that ethanol production is pushing up food prices everywhere, and he called for an urgent review of the issue. Economist Dr. Hazell has said that filling an SUV tank once with ethanol consumes more maize than the typical African eats in a year. (Ibid)
So far, Americans have been able to weather the storm. While rising fuel and food prices have generated grumbling from the populace and hand wringing from the politicians, this country has yet to experience the level of social unrest and rioting that high food prices have generated in other parts of the world.
In Haiti, ongoing instability and riots over food prices has led to the probable ousting of the nation’s Prime Minister. Newswires are reporting “A Haitian senator says that parliament has voted to dismiss Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis following deadly riots over rising food prices.” (Wire services)
A few analysts believe that the United States is on the verge of a major economic revolution, a process, which will change where we live, what we eat, and how we view agriculture. Looking at the rumbles from around the world we are already seeing wars over oil and energy resources, not to mention the violent eviction of traditional farmers in South America and other parts of the world by the industrialized bio-fuels industry.
The fight over finite land resources is slowly taking shape out of sight of most of the United States as agribusinesses lay claim to land around the world. Agro-conglomerates chase natives off tribal lands in South America, Indonesia and parts of the Far East at gunpoint. Murder over land continues in the Third World, as conglomerates move onto jungle and rain forest land, clearing acreage with slash and burn campaigns.
What was once climate producing tropical rain forest has become fields for sugar cane, corn and other biofuels. More profitable biofuel crops have now deprived the food chain of a large supply of corn and other crops, driving up the cost of corn-based food such as corn meal, tortillas, corn syrup and a hundred other crops and products which grace our tables at ever greater cost.
The food riots in Haiti are mirrored by riots in parts of Africa and Asia, sending shock waves throughout the Third World. According to a report from the United Nations, the 60 per cent price increase in the price of corn and feedstock over the past two years can be directly traced to the increased demand on corn and soybeans made by the biofuels industry. The United States, as the world’s largest exporter of corn, has diverted millions of pounds of corn and soybean crops to the growing biofuels industry, creating a market that makes fuel crops more profitable than food crops. National surpluses of grains have give way to increased demand for biofuels, driving up the price of corn and grains around the world. (World Bank)
Traditional food crops—rapeseed, maize (corn), palm and soybean are in demand by both food agriculture and the growing biofuels industry, creating an increased competition, which is driving up food costs by double digits, generating food riots around the world. Thai farmers and other farmers are now guarding rice crops, as skyrocketing grain prices are leading to crop theft and food riots around the world. According to international reports:
Rice farmers here (Thailand) are staying awake in shifts at night to guard their fields from thieves. In Peru, shortages of wheat flour are prompting the military to make bread with potato flour, a native crop. In Egypt, Cameroon, and Burkina Faso food riots have broken out in the past week. (Thoughtcriminal.org)
In Thailand and other rice and grain producing nations, food theft is rising. Crops are stolen directly from fields.
The reported thefts in five rice-growing provinces in central Thailand are the first signs of criminal activity in this region stemming from the sharpest global spike in commodity prices since the oil crisis in the mid-1970s. Across the world, higher food prices are triggering thefts and violence – both by people who can’t afford to eat and those who want to make an easy buck. (Ibid)
The United States produces 46% of the world’s biofuels, with Brazil coming in at a close second with 42%. (Biofuels: the Promise and the Risks). As a world leader in food exports, grain in particular, the United States has altered world grain markets by diverting grain into fuel production, thereby increasing demand for grains with a resultant rise in the price of the commodity because of demand. The ensuing market shortage has generated price increases in the world grain market, making food staples too expensive for much of the world’s poor to afford.
So far, Americans are mostly bystanders in the game, content to grumble at the gas pump and complain in the grocery aisles. As a “First World” nation, the United States so far has not been subject to the food riots, which we have seen in Haiti and other parts of the world. Americans have more per capita income than much of the world; hence the crisis of the Third World, so far, is inconvenience in the “First World” and in developed nations such as the United States.
That said, however, we must understand that this situation is not sustainable. While Americans do have more disposable income than the rest of the word, that income is not unlimited and our food supply is much more vulnerable than we think. When it comes to food security, both in terms of supply and accessibility, this country is much more vulnerable than we think.
As one retired grain salesman noted, most of the nation’s grain is moved around the country by just TWO railroads. Little is stored in the event of disaster and the whole system is extremely vulnerable. While we in the United States look at the food riots in other countries with a sense of disbelief, we are not immune. Under the right circumstances, we could be in the same boat. (Ibid)
In order for riots to break out the whole food supply doesn't have to be wiped out. It just has to be threatened sufficiently. When people realize their vulnerability and the fact that there is no short-term solution to a severe enough drought in the Midwest they will have no clue as to what they should do. Other nations can't make up the difference because no other nation has a surplus of grain in good times let alone in times when they are having droughts and floods also. (Robert Felix, “US Food Riots Much Closer than You Think”)
Critics say the US is currently too preoccupied with foreign excursions and oil to pay attention to food security, particularly how concentration of suppliers and processors threaten the food chain. The highly concentrated meat processing industry has generated millions of pounds of recalls this year. Outbreaks in e.coli and other food borne pathogens continue to haunt the headlines, as food prices rise around the world.
The concentration of food processing, cultivation and distribution into the hands of a few companies is wrecking havoc around the world. A Canadian reporter noted the connection between market concentration and price increases around the world:
In Mexico and most other countries, a handful of international companies is controlling more and more of the food production line—from growing crops to purchasing crops from farmers, to warehousing, processing and distribution.
Carlsen said investigations following the tortilla crisis found that huge stores of corn in warehouses had cut down the supply and led to a jump in prices. (Matthew Little, Epoch Times, “Food Prices Skyrocket Amidst Growing Shortages.”)
Food security, that is the availability and affordability of food, has been pushed aside by the War on Terror, and continues to lag behind our awareness, despite their being linked together in a dangerous dance of death, which has been created by the bio-fuels industry. Ultimately, the price of oil, depends on supply, demand and risk (War), and the price of food has now become dangerously linked to the energy market by the requirements of the fuel crop industry. We now are dealing with a ‘double whammy’ that is dangerously impeding our food supply.
Living in the “Breadbasket of the World,” it is hard for most Americans to even conceive of the idea that food could become scarce in this country. Few of us are paying attention to the close relationship between biofuel, grain crops and price inflation.
Think tank analyst Pat Mooney noted the close connection between corn and oil prices.
"The market place does now tie the price of a bushel of corn to the price of a barrel of crude and when it does that it means that poor people are going to lose out," said Mooney. (Ibid)
The world’s grain and food markets have been turned on their heads. Where once the price of fuel and oil-based fertilizers used to cultivate crops added to the cost of the crop, now the use of crops as fuel generates still another tier of demand on the world’s soils and crops.
With finite amounts of cropland, competition between fuel and food crops for land and economic resources, and unpredictable natural disasters, wars and pestilence waiting in the wings, our food supply is not as secure as we think it is.
Even the United States is not immune from the potential for food shortages, food riots and food insecurity. We’re just blind to the possibility.
The author is an activist/writer/public speaker based in the Midwest. She has written articles on the mortgage crisis, land theft, mis-education of ethnic youth and food security. Books include:
Land, Legacy and Lynching: Building a future for Black America, and Urban Asylum: Politics, Lunatics and the Refrigerator Woman.
Source:
Euro 2008 fans at risk of measles
Football supporters travelling to Euro 2008 may be at risk of catching measles, health officials have warned.
Significant outbreaks are occurring in Switzerland and Austria, the two countries hosting the competition this summer, Europe-wide figures show.
A team of vaccine experts is currently conducting a risk assessment in Austria just eight weeks before the tournament.
The experts warned people to make sure they are vaccinated against the highly contagious disease.
Figures from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) show more than 1,300 measles cases were reported across Europe in the first quarter of 2008, compared to less than 800 in the same period last year.
Significant outbreaks have occurred recently in several European countries, so the risk to the millions of unvaccinated Europeans is real
Zsuzsanna Jakab
In 2007, Switzerland, UK, Romania and Ireland were the countries with the highest number of measles cases per 100,000 population.
"Significant" outbreaks are currently occurring in Austria and Switzerland.
Hundreds of thousands of people, some of whom may be unvaccinated against measles, are expected to travel to Austria and Switzerland for the championship, European officials warned.
ECDC director Zsuzsanna Jakab said: "Measles is one of the most contagious viruses in existence, causing serious illness and even death.
"If unvaccinated people are exposed to it they have a high chance of being infected.
"Significant outbreaks have occurred recently in several European countries, so the risk to the millions of unvaccinated Europeans is real."
Routine childhood vaccination against measles was introduced in most European countries in the 1980s.
But there are many children and young adults who have not had the opportunity or have refused to be vaccinated meaning a target to eliminate measles from Europe by 2010 is unlikely to be met.
In the UK MMR immunisation rates dipped following research - since discredited - which raised the possibility that the vaccine may be linked to an increased risk of autism.
Professor Steve Field, chair of the Royal College of GPs said the general advice would be to get your child vaccinated.
"Children are probably even more at risk in the UK than many other countries in Europe so it's not just an issue for Euro 2008.
"Measles can be very serious and even fatal."
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7352490.stm
Significant outbreaks are occurring in Switzerland and Austria, the two countries hosting the competition this summer, Europe-wide figures show.
A team of vaccine experts is currently conducting a risk assessment in Austria just eight weeks before the tournament.
The experts warned people to make sure they are vaccinated against the highly contagious disease.
Figures from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) show more than 1,300 measles cases were reported across Europe in the first quarter of 2008, compared to less than 800 in the same period last year.
Significant outbreaks have occurred recently in several European countries, so the risk to the millions of unvaccinated Europeans is real
Zsuzsanna Jakab
In 2007, Switzerland, UK, Romania and Ireland were the countries with the highest number of measles cases per 100,000 population.
"Significant" outbreaks are currently occurring in Austria and Switzerland.
Hundreds of thousands of people, some of whom may be unvaccinated against measles, are expected to travel to Austria and Switzerland for the championship, European officials warned.
ECDC director Zsuzsanna Jakab said: "Measles is one of the most contagious viruses in existence, causing serious illness and even death.
"If unvaccinated people are exposed to it they have a high chance of being infected.
"Significant outbreaks have occurred recently in several European countries, so the risk to the millions of unvaccinated Europeans is real."
Routine childhood vaccination against measles was introduced in most European countries in the 1980s.
But there are many children and young adults who have not had the opportunity or have refused to be vaccinated meaning a target to eliminate measles from Europe by 2010 is unlikely to be met.
In the UK MMR immunisation rates dipped following research - since discredited - which raised the possibility that the vaccine may be linked to an increased risk of autism.
Professor Steve Field, chair of the Royal College of GPs said the general advice would be to get your child vaccinated.
"Children are probably even more at risk in the UK than many other countries in Europe so it's not just an issue for Euro 2008.
"Measles can be very serious and even fatal."
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7352490.stm
Chaos at polygamy custody hearing
The US judge deciding the fate of 416 children removed from a breakaway Mormon sect has struggled to control a first chaotic day of custody hearings.
Judge Barbara Walther had to suspend proceedings for an hour to allow hundreds of lawyers for the children and their parents to view evidence.
Lawyers were arguing whether the Texas case violated religious freedom rights.
Police raided the ranch last week after receiving reports that a 16-year-old girl had been sexually abused.
'Largest case'
The courtroom in San Angelo was packed with members of the Yearning for Zion religious sect, including many of the children's mothers, who wore distinctive long pastel dresses.
More than 300 lawyers crammed into additional rooms, in what is reportedly the largest child welfare case in US history.
The judge said her primary task was to establish whether the children should be returned to their parents or remain in the care of the Texan authorities.
"The court is not in the position and certainly does not intend to rule about someone's religious practices and their freedom of religion," said Judge Walther.
Detectives had raided the ranch after a 16-year-old girl called an abuse hotline saying she had been beaten and raped by her 50-year-old husband.
Church built at the FLDS's compound in Texas (2005)
Sect members believe men must have at least three wives to get to heaven
As a result of the raid, all children on the ranch aged between six months and 17 years of age were placed in emergency state custody.
Texas law states that if sexual abuse is happening in a home and a parent does not put a stop to it, then the parent can lose custody of the child.
One of the judge's tasks is to determine whether or not the ranch constitutes a "home" under state law.
In making her judgement, she may also weigh up the dangers of placing children who have grown up in such an isolated location into mainstream society.
The unprecedented size of the case is also putting pressure on the state's child services division, and if the state is granted permanent custody of the children, it will have difficulty finding foster homes for all of them.
Except for 27 adolescent boys, all of the children are being held in a domed coliseum on land used for the San Angelo state fair.
Mormon split
The Yearning for Zion ranch belongs to a breakaway Mormon sect called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
FBI Ten Most Wanted poster for Warren Jeffs
Warren Jeffs was on the FBI's most wanted while on the run
The sect is led by polygamist Warren Jeffs, who is currently in jail as an accomplice to rape after he forced a 14-year-old girl to marry her cousin.
The self-proclaimed prophet is currently awaiting trial in Arizona on charges of being an accomplice to four counts of incest and sexual conduct with a minor stemming from two arranged marriages.
Members of the sect have denied the latest allegations of abuse.
"It's the furthest thing away from what we do here," said Dan, a sect member.
"There's nothing that's more disliked and more trained against," he added.
The 10,000-strong sect, which dominates the towns of Colorado City in Arizona, and Hildale, Utah, split from the mainstream Mormon church more than a century ago.
Members believe a man must marry at least three wives in order to ascend to heaven.
Women are meanwhile taught that their path to heaven depends on being subservient to their husband.
Polygamy is illegal in the US, but the authorities have reportedly been reluctant to confront the FLDS for fear of sparking a tragedy similar to the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian sect in Waco, Texas, which led to the deaths of about 80 members.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7353304.stm
Judge Barbara Walther had to suspend proceedings for an hour to allow hundreds of lawyers for the children and their parents to view evidence.
Lawyers were arguing whether the Texas case violated religious freedom rights.
Police raided the ranch last week after receiving reports that a 16-year-old girl had been sexually abused.
'Largest case'
The courtroom in San Angelo was packed with members of the Yearning for Zion religious sect, including many of the children's mothers, who wore distinctive long pastel dresses.
More than 300 lawyers crammed into additional rooms, in what is reportedly the largest child welfare case in US history.
The judge said her primary task was to establish whether the children should be returned to their parents or remain in the care of the Texan authorities.
"The court is not in the position and certainly does not intend to rule about someone's religious practices and their freedom of religion," said Judge Walther.
Detectives had raided the ranch after a 16-year-old girl called an abuse hotline saying she had been beaten and raped by her 50-year-old husband.
Church built at the FLDS's compound in Texas (2005)
Sect members believe men must have at least three wives to get to heaven
As a result of the raid, all children on the ranch aged between six months and 17 years of age were placed in emergency state custody.
Texas law states that if sexual abuse is happening in a home and a parent does not put a stop to it, then the parent can lose custody of the child.
One of the judge's tasks is to determine whether or not the ranch constitutes a "home" under state law.
In making her judgement, she may also weigh up the dangers of placing children who have grown up in such an isolated location into mainstream society.
The unprecedented size of the case is also putting pressure on the state's child services division, and if the state is granted permanent custody of the children, it will have difficulty finding foster homes for all of them.
Except for 27 adolescent boys, all of the children are being held in a domed coliseum on land used for the San Angelo state fair.
Mormon split
The Yearning for Zion ranch belongs to a breakaway Mormon sect called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
FBI Ten Most Wanted poster for Warren Jeffs
Warren Jeffs was on the FBI's most wanted while on the run
The sect is led by polygamist Warren Jeffs, who is currently in jail as an accomplice to rape after he forced a 14-year-old girl to marry her cousin.
The self-proclaimed prophet is currently awaiting trial in Arizona on charges of being an accomplice to four counts of incest and sexual conduct with a minor stemming from two arranged marriages.
Members of the sect have denied the latest allegations of abuse.
"It's the furthest thing away from what we do here," said Dan, a sect member.
"There's nothing that's more disliked and more trained against," he added.
The 10,000-strong sect, which dominates the towns of Colorado City in Arizona, and Hildale, Utah, split from the mainstream Mormon church more than a century ago.
Members believe a man must marry at least three wives in order to ascend to heaven.
Women are meanwhile taught that their path to heaven depends on being subservient to their husband.
Polygamy is illegal in the US, but the authorities have reportedly been reluctant to confront the FLDS for fear of sparking a tragedy similar to the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian sect in Waco, Texas, which led to the deaths of about 80 members.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7353304.stm
NY tower plans found in rubbish
A homeless man has found confidential blueprints for New York's new Freedom Tower dumped in a city rubbish bin.
Mike Fleming handed the documents - marked "Secure Document - Confidential" in to the New York Post newspaper.
The Freedom Tower is being built at Ground Zero, to replace the World Trade Centre towers destroyed on 9/11.
A spokeswoman apologised for the security breach and said that anyone found responsible would be liable for "serious disciplinary action".
'Game plan'
Mr Fleming said he was concerned that the documents might fall into the wrong hands.
"I was outraged, because this is priceless," he told the New York Post.
"This could have ended up on eBay or gotten to al-Qaeda."
The blueprints reveal details of the new building's floor plans, along with the specifications of its concrete walls and its heating and ventilation systems.
Steve Yang, an architect who spoke to the New York Post, said that the plans would have been helpful for a terrorist planning an attack.
"An expert in explosives, demolition or biological weapons certainly could glean enough here to develop a game plan," he said.
However, Candace McAdams, a spokeswoman for the Port Authority of New York which owns the site, said that the plans were "not very detailed" and available to anyone bidding on contracts.
The Port Authority will now conduct an inquiry to find out how the breach occurred.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7355139.stm
Mike Fleming handed the documents - marked "Secure Document - Confidential" in to the New York Post newspaper.
The Freedom Tower is being built at Ground Zero, to replace the World Trade Centre towers destroyed on 9/11.
A spokeswoman apologised for the security breach and said that anyone found responsible would be liable for "serious disciplinary action".
'Game plan'
Mr Fleming said he was concerned that the documents might fall into the wrong hands.
"I was outraged, because this is priceless," he told the New York Post.
"This could have ended up on eBay or gotten to al-Qaeda."
The blueprints reveal details of the new building's floor plans, along with the specifications of its concrete walls and its heating and ventilation systems.
Steve Yang, an architect who spoke to the New York Post, said that the plans would have been helpful for a terrorist planning an attack.
"An expert in explosives, demolition or biological weapons certainly could glean enough here to develop a game plan," he said.
However, Candace McAdams, a spokeswoman for the Port Authority of New York which owns the site, said that the plans were "not very detailed" and available to anyone bidding on contracts.
The Port Authority will now conduct an inquiry to find out how the breach occurred.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7355139.stm
Thursday, April 17, 2008
How the rich starved the world
World cereal stocks are at an all-time low, food-aid programmes have run out of money and millions face starvation. Yet wealthy countries persist with plans to use grain for petrol. Plus Iain Macwhirter on how food prices are rocketing
The irony is extraordinary. At a time when world leaders are expressing grave concern about diminishing food stocks and a coming global food crisis, our government brings into force measures to increase the use of biofuels - a policy that will further increase food prices, and further worsen the plight of the world's poor.
What biofuels do is undeniable: they take food out of the mouths of starving people and divert them to be burned as fuel in the car engines of the world's rich consumers. This is, in the words of the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, nothing less than a "crime against humanity". It is a crime the UK government seems determined to play its part in abetting. The Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO), introduced on 15 April, mandates petrol retailers to mix 2.5 per cent biofuels into fuel sold to motorists. This will rise to 5.75 per cent by 2010, in line with European Union policy.
The message could not have been clearer if the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, had personally put a torch to a pyre of corn and rice in Parliament Square: even as you take to the streets to protest your empty bellies and hungry children, we will burn your food in our cars. The UK is not uniquely implicated in this scandal: the EU, the United States, India, Brazil and China all have targets to increase biofuels use. But a look at the raw data confirms today's dire situation. According to the World Bank, global maize production increased by 51 million tonnes between 2004 and 2007. During that time, biofuels use in the US alone (mostly ethanol) rose by 50 million tonnes, soaking up almost the entire global increase.
Next year, the use of US corn for ethanol is forecast to rise to 114 million tonnes - nearly a third of the whole projected US crop. American cars now burn enough corn to cover all the import needs of the 82 nations classed by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) as "low-income food-deficit countries". There could scarcely be a better way to starve the poor.
The threat posed by biofuels affects all of us. Global grain stockpiles - on which all of humanity depends - are now perilously depleted. Cereal stocks are at their lowest level for 25 years, according to the FAO. The world has consumed more grain than it has produced for seven of the past eight years, and supplies, at roughly only 54 days of consumption, are the lowest on record.
The president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, has already warned that 100 million people could be pushed deeper into poverty because of food price rises caused directly by this imbalance between supply and demand. Even consumers in rich countries are suffering. We now pay higher prices for our food in order to subsidise the biofuels industry, thanks to measures such as the renewable fuels directive.
This is not just a short-term price blip, but the beginnings of a major structural change in the world food market. Population pressure - still something of a taboo subject - is also certainly playing a part. With the world population growing by 78 million a year, and expected to reach nine billion by the middle of the century, there are simply many more mouths to feed.
In addition, rapid economic growth in India and China has created tens of millions of new middle-class consumers, all demanding western-style diets high in meat and dairy products, thereby vastly increasing the quantity of grain required for livestock production.
Weather plays a major role, too: the FAO's latest food situation brief reports that, in 2007, "unfavourable climatic conditions devastated crops in Australia and reduced harvests in many other countries, particularly in Europe", while Southern Africa and the western United States have been hit hard by severe drought. Rising oil prices also increase the cost of food, as fossil fuels are important throughout the agricultural process, from tractor diesel to fertiliser production.
Inconsistency
The most important structural change, however, is the increasing interlinking of world energy and food markets. Once, food was just for people. Now rising demand for transport fuel - particularly in rich countries - is sucking supply away from the world food market and increasing the upward pressure on prices. In the words of Josette Sheeran, executive director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP): "We are seeing food in many places in the world priced at fuel levels," with increasing quantities of food "being bought by energy markets" for biofuels.
Rising oil prices feed back into the process. With food and fuel markets intertwined, increases in the price of oil are shadowed by increases in the price of grain. The real-world result from this structural shift may be that hundreds of thousands of people starve in the next few years - unless policies promoting biofuels are urgently reversed.
This is not to suggest that government targets on biofuels are driven by some kind of malicious desire to starve the world's poor. Indeed, both Brown and his Chancellor, Alistair Darling, have expressed concern about the food supply crisis and the role of biofuels in causing it. But for these two political leaders to voice their concerns while allowing the increased use of biofuels in the UK to be pushed forward - all in the same week - is nothing short of bizarre.
As Oxfam's Robert Bailey puts it: "This inconsistency at the highest levels simply beggars belief." The aid agency calculates that the RTFO represents a £500m annual subsidy from motorists and taxpayers to the biofuels industry - more than double the amount the WFP is urgently seeking from donor countries to try to mitigate the impact of food price rises on the world's poor.
The EU, meanwhile, persists in the erroneous belief that biofuels can help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The main reason for its speedy introduction of the replacement fuel initiative was as a sop to motor manufacturers who were lobbying hard against proposed higher fuel economy standards. With biofuels, the EU hoped, it could cave in to the car industry while still getting reduction in emissions.
Yet recent research suggests otherwise: two major studies published in Science magazine in February showed clearly that once the agricultural displacement effects of the new fuels on rainforests, peatlands and grasslands are taken into account, emissions are many times worse than from conventional mineral petrol. In other words, it would be better for the climate if we just went back to fossil fuels. Biofuels are not a "necessary but painful" way of saving the climate; they are a calamitous mistake by almost every criterion, whether social, ethical or environmental.
Reversing the damage
The industry claims that "second-generation" biofuels, using by-products such as corn stalks and woodchip as a feedstock, will be able to redress the balance. But if this technological advance is achieved (and that is by no means certain) it could usher in an even worse scenario: the annihilation of the world's forests. If all plant life was seen as potentially convertible for transport fuel, there would be nothing to stop what was left of the planet's biosphere from being strip-mined to keep rich motorists on the road. There is no simple solution. Much of the increased biofuel demand comes from the US, where Democratic and Republican politicians alike have talked themselves into a dead-end search for "energy security" - with US-grown corn top of the list.
But the UK and the EU can reverse some of the damage by immediately ditching their own biofuels policies and providing vital aid funding, principally through the WFP, to help prevent widespread starvation in the short term. Politicians need to realise that there is no such thing as "sustainable biofuels", either now or in the future. As for investors, they need to realise that pouring money into biofuels is a bad bet: subsidies will be quickly withdrawn when policymakers face up to the reality of their ghastly error.
In the meantime, millions face starvation and death from increasing hunger and malnutrition. There is no time to lose.
2008: the year of food riots
Egypt Thousands of demonstrators in Mahalla el-Kobra loot shops and throw bricks at police during protests at rising food prices and low salaries, as part of nationwide strike
Haiti At least four people killed in the southern city of Les Cayes after food prices rise 50 per cent in the past year
Côte d’Ivoire Police injure more than ten protesters as several hundred demonstrators demand government action to curb food prices
Cameroon Riots last four days and result in at least 40 deaths. Unrest is due to high fuel and food prices. Worst riots in country for 15 years
Mozambique At least four people killed and 100 injured following fuel price rises
Senegal Violent demonstrations in Dakar as prices of rice, milk and oil soar. Senegal imports almost all its food
Yemen Five days of rioting and a hundred arrests after the price of wheat doubled over two months. Protesters set up roadblocks in Sana’a and Aden
...and in Mauritania, Bolivia, Indonesia, Mexico, India, Burkina Faso, and Uzbekistan
Research by Jax Jacobsen
Source: http://www.newstatesman.com/200804170025
The irony is extraordinary. At a time when world leaders are expressing grave concern about diminishing food stocks and a coming global food crisis, our government brings into force measures to increase the use of biofuels - a policy that will further increase food prices, and further worsen the plight of the world's poor.
What biofuels do is undeniable: they take food out of the mouths of starving people and divert them to be burned as fuel in the car engines of the world's rich consumers. This is, in the words of the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, nothing less than a "crime against humanity". It is a crime the UK government seems determined to play its part in abetting. The Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO), introduced on 15 April, mandates petrol retailers to mix 2.5 per cent biofuels into fuel sold to motorists. This will rise to 5.75 per cent by 2010, in line with European Union policy.
The message could not have been clearer if the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, had personally put a torch to a pyre of corn and rice in Parliament Square: even as you take to the streets to protest your empty bellies and hungry children, we will burn your food in our cars. The UK is not uniquely implicated in this scandal: the EU, the United States, India, Brazil and China all have targets to increase biofuels use. But a look at the raw data confirms today's dire situation. According to the World Bank, global maize production increased by 51 million tonnes between 2004 and 2007. During that time, biofuels use in the US alone (mostly ethanol) rose by 50 million tonnes, soaking up almost the entire global increase.
Next year, the use of US corn for ethanol is forecast to rise to 114 million tonnes - nearly a third of the whole projected US crop. American cars now burn enough corn to cover all the import needs of the 82 nations classed by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) as "low-income food-deficit countries". There could scarcely be a better way to starve the poor.
The threat posed by biofuels affects all of us. Global grain stockpiles - on which all of humanity depends - are now perilously depleted. Cereal stocks are at their lowest level for 25 years, according to the FAO. The world has consumed more grain than it has produced for seven of the past eight years, and supplies, at roughly only 54 days of consumption, are the lowest on record.
The president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, has already warned that 100 million people could be pushed deeper into poverty because of food price rises caused directly by this imbalance between supply and demand. Even consumers in rich countries are suffering. We now pay higher prices for our food in order to subsidise the biofuels industry, thanks to measures such as the renewable fuels directive.
This is not just a short-term price blip, but the beginnings of a major structural change in the world food market. Population pressure - still something of a taboo subject - is also certainly playing a part. With the world population growing by 78 million a year, and expected to reach nine billion by the middle of the century, there are simply many more mouths to feed.
In addition, rapid economic growth in India and China has created tens of millions of new middle-class consumers, all demanding western-style diets high in meat and dairy products, thereby vastly increasing the quantity of grain required for livestock production.
Weather plays a major role, too: the FAO's latest food situation brief reports that, in 2007, "unfavourable climatic conditions devastated crops in Australia and reduced harvests in many other countries, particularly in Europe", while Southern Africa and the western United States have been hit hard by severe drought. Rising oil prices also increase the cost of food, as fossil fuels are important throughout the agricultural process, from tractor diesel to fertiliser production.
Inconsistency
The most important structural change, however, is the increasing interlinking of world energy and food markets. Once, food was just for people. Now rising demand for transport fuel - particularly in rich countries - is sucking supply away from the world food market and increasing the upward pressure on prices. In the words of Josette Sheeran, executive director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP): "We are seeing food in many places in the world priced at fuel levels," with increasing quantities of food "being bought by energy markets" for biofuels.
Rising oil prices feed back into the process. With food and fuel markets intertwined, increases in the price of oil are shadowed by increases in the price of grain. The real-world result from this structural shift may be that hundreds of thousands of people starve in the next few years - unless policies promoting biofuels are urgently reversed.
This is not to suggest that government targets on biofuels are driven by some kind of malicious desire to starve the world's poor. Indeed, both Brown and his Chancellor, Alistair Darling, have expressed concern about the food supply crisis and the role of biofuels in causing it. But for these two political leaders to voice their concerns while allowing the increased use of biofuels in the UK to be pushed forward - all in the same week - is nothing short of bizarre.
As Oxfam's Robert Bailey puts it: "This inconsistency at the highest levels simply beggars belief." The aid agency calculates that the RTFO represents a £500m annual subsidy from motorists and taxpayers to the biofuels industry - more than double the amount the WFP is urgently seeking from donor countries to try to mitigate the impact of food price rises on the world's poor.
The EU, meanwhile, persists in the erroneous belief that biofuels can help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The main reason for its speedy introduction of the replacement fuel initiative was as a sop to motor manufacturers who were lobbying hard against proposed higher fuel economy standards. With biofuels, the EU hoped, it could cave in to the car industry while still getting reduction in emissions.
Yet recent research suggests otherwise: two major studies published in Science magazine in February showed clearly that once the agricultural displacement effects of the new fuels on rainforests, peatlands and grasslands are taken into account, emissions are many times worse than from conventional mineral petrol. In other words, it would be better for the climate if we just went back to fossil fuels. Biofuels are not a "necessary but painful" way of saving the climate; they are a calamitous mistake by almost every criterion, whether social, ethical or environmental.
Reversing the damage
The industry claims that "second-generation" biofuels, using by-products such as corn stalks and woodchip as a feedstock, will be able to redress the balance. But if this technological advance is achieved (and that is by no means certain) it could usher in an even worse scenario: the annihilation of the world's forests. If all plant life was seen as potentially convertible for transport fuel, there would be nothing to stop what was left of the planet's biosphere from being strip-mined to keep rich motorists on the road. There is no simple solution. Much of the increased biofuel demand comes from the US, where Democratic and Republican politicians alike have talked themselves into a dead-end search for "energy security" - with US-grown corn top of the list.
But the UK and the EU can reverse some of the damage by immediately ditching their own biofuels policies and providing vital aid funding, principally through the WFP, to help prevent widespread starvation in the short term. Politicians need to realise that there is no such thing as "sustainable biofuels", either now or in the future. As for investors, they need to realise that pouring money into biofuels is a bad bet: subsidies will be quickly withdrawn when policymakers face up to the reality of their ghastly error.
In the meantime, millions face starvation and death from increasing hunger and malnutrition. There is no time to lose.
2008: the year of food riots
Egypt Thousands of demonstrators in Mahalla el-Kobra loot shops and throw bricks at police during protests at rising food prices and low salaries, as part of nationwide strike
Haiti At least four people killed in the southern city of Les Cayes after food prices rise 50 per cent in the past year
Côte d’Ivoire Police injure more than ten protesters as several hundred demonstrators demand government action to curb food prices
Cameroon Riots last four days and result in at least 40 deaths. Unrest is due to high fuel and food prices. Worst riots in country for 15 years
Mozambique At least four people killed and 100 injured following fuel price rises
Senegal Violent demonstrations in Dakar as prices of rice, milk and oil soar. Senegal imports almost all its food
Yemen Five days of rioting and a hundred arrests after the price of wheat doubled over two months. Protesters set up roadblocks in Sana’a and Aden
...and in Mauritania, Bolivia, Indonesia, Mexico, India, Burkina Faso, and Uzbekistan
Research by Jax Jacobsen
Source: http://www.newstatesman.com/200804170025
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Feds to collect DNA from every person they arrest
By EILEEN SULLIVAN, Associated Press Writer
Wed Apr 16, 7:39 PM ET
WASHINGTON - The government plans to begin collecting DNA samples from anyone arrested by a federal law enforcement agency — a move intended to prevent violent crime but which also is raising concerns about the privacy of innocent people.
Using authority granted by Congress, the government also plans to collect DNA samples from foreigners who are detained, whether they have been charged or not. The DNA would be collected through a cheek swab, Justice Department spokesman Erik Ablin said Wednesday. That would be a departure from current practice, which limits DNA collection to convicted felons.
Expanding the DNA database, known as CODIS, raises civil liberties questions about the potential for misuse of such personal information, such as family ties and genetic conditions.
Ablin said the DNA collection would be subject to the same privacy laws applied to current DNA sampling. That means none of it would be used for identifying genetic traits, diseases or disorders.
Congress gave the Justice Department the authority to expand DNA collection in two different laws passed in 2005 and 2006.
There are dozens of federal law enforcement agencies, ranging from the FBI to the Library of Congress Police. The federal government estimates it makes about 140,000 arrests each year.
Justice officials estimate the new collecting requirements would add DNA from an additional 1.2 million people to the database each year.
Those who support the expanded collection believe that DNA sampling could get violent criminals off the streets and prevent them from committing more crimes.
A Chicago study in 2005 found that 53 murders and rapes could have been prevented if a DNA sample had been collected upon arrest.
"Many innocent lives could have been saved had the government began this kind of DNA sampling in the 1990s when the technology to do so first became available," Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said. Kyl sponsored the 2005 law that gave the Justice Department this authority.
Thirteen states have similar laws: Alaska, Arizona, California, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.
The new regulation would mean that the federal government could store DNA samples of people who are not guilty of any crime, said Jesselyn McCurdy, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.
"Now innocent people's DNA will be put into this huge CODIS database, and it will be very difficult for them to get it out if they are not charged or convicted of a crime," McCurdy said.
If a person is arrested but not convicted, he or she can ask the Justice Department to destroy the sample.
The Homeland Security Department — the federal agency charged with policing immigration — supports the new rule.
"DNA is a proven law-enforcement tool," DHS spokesman Russ Knocke said.
The rule would not allow for DNA samples to be collected from immigrants who are legally in the United States or those being processed for admission, unless the person was arrested.
The proposed rule is being published in the Federal Register. That will be followed by a 30-day comment period.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080416/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/dna_collection
Wed Apr 16, 7:39 PM ET
WASHINGTON - The government plans to begin collecting DNA samples from anyone arrested by a federal law enforcement agency — a move intended to prevent violent crime but which also is raising concerns about the privacy of innocent people.
Using authority granted by Congress, the government also plans to collect DNA samples from foreigners who are detained, whether they have been charged or not. The DNA would be collected through a cheek swab, Justice Department spokesman Erik Ablin said Wednesday. That would be a departure from current practice, which limits DNA collection to convicted felons.
Expanding the DNA database, known as CODIS, raises civil liberties questions about the potential for misuse of such personal information, such as family ties and genetic conditions.
Ablin said the DNA collection would be subject to the same privacy laws applied to current DNA sampling. That means none of it would be used for identifying genetic traits, diseases or disorders.
Congress gave the Justice Department the authority to expand DNA collection in two different laws passed in 2005 and 2006.
There are dozens of federal law enforcement agencies, ranging from the FBI to the Library of Congress Police. The federal government estimates it makes about 140,000 arrests each year.
Justice officials estimate the new collecting requirements would add DNA from an additional 1.2 million people to the database each year.
Those who support the expanded collection believe that DNA sampling could get violent criminals off the streets and prevent them from committing more crimes.
A Chicago study in 2005 found that 53 murders and rapes could have been prevented if a DNA sample had been collected upon arrest.
"Many innocent lives could have been saved had the government began this kind of DNA sampling in the 1990s when the technology to do so first became available," Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said. Kyl sponsored the 2005 law that gave the Justice Department this authority.
Thirteen states have similar laws: Alaska, Arizona, California, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.
The new regulation would mean that the federal government could store DNA samples of people who are not guilty of any crime, said Jesselyn McCurdy, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.
"Now innocent people's DNA will be put into this huge CODIS database, and it will be very difficult for them to get it out if they are not charged or convicted of a crime," McCurdy said.
If a person is arrested but not convicted, he or she can ask the Justice Department to destroy the sample.
The Homeland Security Department — the federal agency charged with policing immigration — supports the new rule.
"DNA is a proven law-enforcement tool," DHS spokesman Russ Knocke said.
The rule would not allow for DNA samples to be collected from immigrants who are legally in the United States or those being processed for admission, unless the person was arrested.
The proposed rule is being published in the Federal Register. That will be followed by a 30-day comment period.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080416/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/dna_collection
Monday, April 14, 2008
Marilyn Monroe Sex Film Sold for $1.5M
16mm film depicts Monroe performing oral sex on unidentified man
By: Nelson X / AVN News
Posted: 04/14/2008
NEW YORK - In what is arguably the mother of all celebrity sex tapes, a 16mm film strip featuring a young Marilyn Monroe performing oral sex on an unidentified lucky bastard was sold to a New York business man for 1.5 million dollars.
According to Keya Morgan, the memorabilia collector who brokered the deal, the film is believed to have been shot during the '50s, and was confiscated by former FBI head J. Edgar Hoover during the mid 60's in an effort to implicate John F. Kennedy or Robert F. Kennedy.
Morgan tells the New York Post that the film was originally discovered by an FBI informant who made a copy for himself before turning it over to the Bureau. Morgan located the informant's son in Washington DC and was surprised to discover the film's existence.
"You see instantly that it's Marilyn Monroe-she has the famous mole," Morgan told the Post. "She's smiling, she's very charming, she's very radiant, but she's known for being radiant. She moves away, and then it [the footage] stops."
Morgan describes the black & white footage as silent and points out that Monroe-positioned on her knees in front of the unidentified man-never looks at the lens.
The film's new owner is said to have no interest in releasing the footage, citing respect for Hollywood's ill-fated icon.
By: Nelson X / AVN News
Posted: 04/14/2008
NEW YORK - In what is arguably the mother of all celebrity sex tapes, a 16mm film strip featuring a young Marilyn Monroe performing oral sex on an unidentified lucky bastard was sold to a New York business man for 1.5 million dollars.
According to Keya Morgan, the memorabilia collector who brokered the deal, the film is believed to have been shot during the '50s, and was confiscated by former FBI head J. Edgar Hoover during the mid 60's in an effort to implicate John F. Kennedy or Robert F. Kennedy.
Morgan tells the New York Post that the film was originally discovered by an FBI informant who made a copy for himself before turning it over to the Bureau. Morgan located the informant's son in Washington DC and was surprised to discover the film's existence.
"You see instantly that it's Marilyn Monroe-she has the famous mole," Morgan told the Post. "She's smiling, she's very charming, she's very radiant, but she's known for being radiant. She moves away, and then it [the footage] stops."
Morgan describes the black & white footage as silent and points out that Monroe-positioned on her knees in front of the unidentified man-never looks at the lens.
The film's new owner is said to have no interest in releasing the footage, citing respect for Hollywood's ill-fated icon.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Deadly blast strikes Iran mosque
At least nine people have been killed and more than 100 wounded in an explosion at a mosque in Iran, local media reports say.
The blast reportedly occurred during an address by a prominent local cleric in the southern city of Shiraz.
The city's Law Enforcement Force commander, Col Zamani, told the semi-official Fars news agency that the explosion had been caused by a bomb.
There has been no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast.
Fars quoted a hospital official as saying at least nine people had been killed and 105 injured. An initial Iranian TV report said scores had been killed, but later revised its death toll to "several".
A police official said a home-made bomb had been planted in the mosque, Fars reported.
The agency said the explosion occurred at around 2100 (1630 GMT) and could be heard a mile (1.5km) away. The Irna news agency said it broke the windows of many nearby houses.
Most of those inside the Hoseyniyeh Shohada mosque were young boys and girls affiliated to the Rahpoyan-e Vesal Association, which "holds weekly meetings every Saturday regarding misguided groups, including Wahhabis and Bahais", Fars added.
Wahhabism is a strict version of Sunni Islam practised throughout the Arabian Peninsula, most notably by Saudi Arabia's ruling family, while the Bahai faith is viewed as heretical by Iran's religious authorities.
Members of the Law Enforcement Force and the Basij militia have placed a cordon around the mosque. Ambulance and fire crews are said to be at the scene assisting the victims.
Television channels urged people in Shiraz to donate blood for the injured, adding that all nurses in the city had been called in on duty.
Shiraz, about 900km (560 miles) south of the capital Tehran, is a major tourist destination because of its closeness to a number of important ancient sites.
It has not been, however, a target of the isolated bomb attacks which have occurred in Iran in recent years.
The last major bombing, in the south-eastern city of Zahedan in February last year, is believed to have been carried out by the Sunni Baluchi militant group, Jundallah.
Thirteen members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed when a car bomb exploded next to the bus in which they were travelling.
The south-western city of Ahwaz, close to the Iraqi border, has seen sporadic anti-government violence since 2005, allegedly by its ethnic minority Arab population.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7344780.stm
The blast reportedly occurred during an address by a prominent local cleric in the southern city of Shiraz.
The city's Law Enforcement Force commander, Col Zamani, told the semi-official Fars news agency that the explosion had been caused by a bomb.
There has been no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast.
Fars quoted a hospital official as saying at least nine people had been killed and 105 injured. An initial Iranian TV report said scores had been killed, but later revised its death toll to "several".
A police official said a home-made bomb had been planted in the mosque, Fars reported.
The agency said the explosion occurred at around 2100 (1630 GMT) and could be heard a mile (1.5km) away. The Irna news agency said it broke the windows of many nearby houses.
Most of those inside the Hoseyniyeh Shohada mosque were young boys and girls affiliated to the Rahpoyan-e Vesal Association, which "holds weekly meetings every Saturday regarding misguided groups, including Wahhabis and Bahais", Fars added.
Wahhabism is a strict version of Sunni Islam practised throughout the Arabian Peninsula, most notably by Saudi Arabia's ruling family, while the Bahai faith is viewed as heretical by Iran's religious authorities.
Members of the Law Enforcement Force and the Basij militia have placed a cordon around the mosque. Ambulance and fire crews are said to be at the scene assisting the victims.
Television channels urged people in Shiraz to donate blood for the injured, adding that all nurses in the city had been called in on duty.
Shiraz, about 900km (560 miles) south of the capital Tehran, is a major tourist destination because of its closeness to a number of important ancient sites.
It has not been, however, a target of the isolated bomb attacks which have occurred in Iran in recent years.
The last major bombing, in the south-eastern city of Zahedan in February last year, is believed to have been carried out by the Sunni Baluchi militant group, Jundallah.
Thirteen members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed when a car bomb exploded next to the bus in which they were travelling.
The south-western city of Ahwaz, close to the Iraqi border, has seen sporadic anti-government violence since 2005, allegedly by its ethnic minority Arab population.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7344780.stm
Who's Watching You?
You’re out for a Sunday ride with your friends, cruising out of town to enjoy your favorite twisties.
On the way back, you jump onto the freeway, where you pass under a metal canopy holding a row of sensors. The sensors download data from a GPS unit installed as standard equipment on your bike.
A couple of days later, a traffic ticket arrives at your home. The notation on it indicates that somewhere out there on those back roads, you exceeded the speed limit briefly. You can mail in your fine, or you can go to court and try to prove that you didn’t do what your own bike says you did.
• • •
You stop at a gas station to fill up, and a display on the pump indicates that it’s identified your motorcycle. The pump reads your bike’s onboard computer and then adjusts the price of the gas based on your road-usage patterns.
• • •
You pull a stack of letters out of the mailbox and notice an envelope from your insurance company. Inside is a bill that includes a hefty surcharge.
Why? The helpful note underneath explains that the insurance company has determined you’re spending much of your time on congested roads where the chances of being in an accident are higher. As a result, your insurance rate just went up.
• • •
Far-fetched? Hardly. The technology to do all that—and a lot more—already exists.
More significant, transportation officials and insurance companies are already testing ways to use this emerging technology in ways that have the potential to completely change the experience of riding your motorcycle.
If you live in even a moderate-sized city, chances are you’ve already seen some of this new technology at work in the form of stoplight cameras designed to catch drivers who run red lights.
But that’s just the start. Join us for a look at the type of tattletale tech that could increasingly allow others to look over your shoulder every time you go for a ride.
Data Recorders
Chances are, the only time you think of data recorders is when you hear about a plane crash in which investigators are trying to recover the aircraft’s “black box.”
But the fact is that more than two-thirds of the cars sold in the U.S. today also come with black boxes, technically called event data recorders (EDRs). They’ve been on many American cars since 2004, and in some stretching back to 1990. In all, experts estimate that EDRs have been installed on about 40 million cars.
The EDR works like an airplane’s flight data recorder, monitoring a wide range of information about the vehicle—speed, engine rpm, throttle or brake usage, even whether the occupants are wearing their seat belts. As a result, it offers a snapshot of what was going on with the vehicle when it crashed, and in the seconds leading up to that crash.
Originally, car manufacturers used EDRs to improve the performance of safety systems like airbags. But the information contained in those automotive black boxes is increasingly being revealed in court to help determine who was at fault in a crash. You may claim you were obeying the speed limit when you skidded on wet pavement and ran off the road, but your car may tell a different story.
Data recorder evidence has been introduced in accident cases in 19 states. One high-profile case that focused attention on EDRs was the 2003 crash in which South Dakota Congressman Bill Janklow ran a stop sign in his Cadillac and collided with a motorcycle ridden by Randy Scott, killing the rider. Traffic investigators extracted data from the Cadillac’s black box showing that Janklow was speeding as he blew by the stop sign and into the path of Scott’s bike.
The increasing number of automotive black boxes has sparked concerns on the part of people who say they represent an invasion of privacy. In response, the federal Department of Transportation has ordered the manufacturers of vehicles with EDRs to include that information in the owners manual, beginning in 2011.
What about EDRs in motorcycles? No one has indicated they are specifically installing such a device, but the computers that run modern engine-management systems track much of the same information, and it’s likely that some include storage of at least a few seconds of data to more precisely adjust things like spark timing and fuel mixture.
GPS, etc.
If knowing exactly how fast a vehicle is going before a crash can be considered an invasion of privacy, how about knowing exactly where that vehicle is, all the time?
That, too, is entirely possible with today’s technology.
Many car drivers and motorcyclists already use GPS units to keep them from getting lost on the road. But officials in California and Oregon have considered requiring them on vehicles to track how many miles they travel and whether they go out of state as an alternate way to assess highway taxes.
Oregon in particular is looking at GPS tracking to compute gasoline taxes. The onboard GPS would record where a vehicle goes and how many miles it’s driven. Then the tax would be determined at the gas pump.
The British government is considering a similar fuel tax, and a government feasibility study there has suggested that it would cost more than $1,200 per vehicle to implement the system, including the cost of the GPS units in vehicles and the infrastructure to collect the tax.
But the capabilities of GPS units go well beyond reporting where a vehicle is. Among other things, they also collect data on its speed, which has obvious implications.
A few years ago, a rental-car company in Connecticut decided to take advantage of that capability by installing GPS devices in its cars and assessing a $150 penalty on drivers if the device showed they had been speeding. The practice only ended when the state attorney general said that the company couldn’t impose the penalty.
But that hasn’t stopped other companies from setting prices based on driving data from their customers. Currently, for instance, Progressive’s TripSense program, a voluntary pricing plan available to drivers in Michigan, Minnesota and Oregon, monitors when they use their cars and how fast they’re going. The company then computes insurance discounts for those who do most of their driving during low-risk hours of the day and spend less then one-tenth of 1 percent of their driving time over 75 mph.
TripSense gets its information from a device that plugs into the dataport for the car’s engine computer. It isn’t a GPS, but it uses the vehicle’s speed data with its own internal clock to determine when the car is being driven. It also collects information about acceleration and braking, but according to Progressive, “That is not used to calculate the discount. Progressive collects this data to better understand if it is predictive of future accidents.”
It should be noted, however, that Progressive warns customers their TripSense data would be released if it was subpoenaed by a court.
A company in England is trying a similar type of insurance pricing there.
Meanwhile, millions of drivers already have full GPS units in their cars—even if they don’t know it.
For instance, the OnStar system in GM cars combines a cellphone with a GPS device, all of which can be turned on by the driver or triggered automatically in a crash.
OnStar says it doesn’t continuously track its customers. It only locates a car when the system senses it’s been in a crash, when the airbag is deployed or when the OnStar equipment gets data updates. Of course, the company also notes that it will locate a car when ordered to by a court.
Don’t own an OnStar-equipped vehicle? You’re still carrying around a GPS locator every time you bring your cellphone with you on a trip.
Since 2005, nearly all cellphones have been equipped with GPS technology, required by law so that police can locate you when you call 911 in an emergency. Again, those phones are not currently set up to track your position continuously, but if the technology exists, there’s the potential for someone to use it.
The Big-Brother Scenario
So let’s say you’re a lawmaker interested in using all this technology to the fullest. What could you do to control the behavior of drivers and riders?
Plenty.
At the simplest level, you could do what one lawmaker in Texas proposed recently. He suggested inserting radio frequency identification (RFID) chips into vehicle registration tags. The chips would contain information about the licensing and insurance status of the vehicle.
That Texas proposal would have given police the authority to use RFID readers—like the units that are part of the EZ-Pass systems on many toll roads—to check vehicles on the road. And if you passed one of these checkpoints in an uninsured vehicle, a $250 ticket would arrive in the mail.
That plan died in the Texas Legislature, but it’s an example of the sort of thing public officials are considering. And that just scratches the surface.
Imagine mandatory EDRs connected to GPS units. They could store every detail of your route and your speed until you pass a bank of sensors connected to a centralized traffic-control computer, which would read the accumulated data.
The computer could compare your route and speed information to speed limits on the roads you used and find out that you’d gone a little too fast at some point. Potentially, it could also pinpoint an illegal U-turn you’d made when no one was watching. Either way, you’d get a ticket from the local police, or an automatic surcharge from your insurance company—or both.
But why just ticket people who violate traffic laws? Why not prevent them from breaking it to begin with?
That, too, is under consideration.
Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and other European Union countries are researching Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA) systems that would warn riders and drivers when they exceed the speed limit, and could even slow a vehicle automatically.
British officials just completed a five-year study of the system, and press reports indicate that members of Parliament are taking a hard look at the research with an eye on putting it into practice.
The British system uses GPS technology and a base map to track how fast a vehicle is going and the speed limit on the road it’s traveling.
A demonstration of the system on a motorcycle showed that when the bike nudged over the speed limit, the rider got two beeps as a warning. When the bike exceeded the limit by 5 mph, the seat started to vibrate.
And if the rider didn’t heed that second warning, then the ISA system took over, slowing the bike down to the speed limit.
The Bottom Line
OK, let’s separate out the reality from the tin-foil hat speculation.
Clearly, even though the technology is available, we’re not on the verge of having every moment of our riding controlled anytime soon. But smaller steps are definitely possible.
For instance, the British House of Commons Transport Committee recently issued a report suggesting that a much simpler technology—top-speed limiters—be required on new bikes.
“Motorcycle accident rates are far too high. They have been for 10 years. It is time to consider radical action to tackle this problem,” the report said.
Several years ago, the European Commission went down a similar path when it proposed a 100-horsepower limit on motorcycles. But that measure wasn’t adopted in part because officials couldn’t prove that the restriction would actually reduce motorcycling fatalities.
Now, it looks as though European lawmakers will be having that debate all over again. And it could lead to discussions of more sophisticated forms of vehicle control.
Those discussions could have a direct impact on American motorcyclists, says Edward Moreland, AMA vice president for government relations. He notes that the U.S. is part of a group called the United Nations World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations, which is designed to open up the world market by letting manufacturers build one vehicle that can be sold anywhere. And that, warns Moreland, means regulations adopted in Europe could affect riders in America.
“We need to make sure that vehicle standards imposed in the U.S. are appropriate for U.S. riders and riding,” Moreland says. “The traffic environment in Europe is very different from the U.S., and what works there doesn’t necessarily work here.”
© 2007, American Motorcyclist Association
June 2007 Index
On the way back, you jump onto the freeway, where you pass under a metal canopy holding a row of sensors. The sensors download data from a GPS unit installed as standard equipment on your bike.
A couple of days later, a traffic ticket arrives at your home. The notation on it indicates that somewhere out there on those back roads, you exceeded the speed limit briefly. You can mail in your fine, or you can go to court and try to prove that you didn’t do what your own bike says you did.
• • •
You stop at a gas station to fill up, and a display on the pump indicates that it’s identified your motorcycle. The pump reads your bike’s onboard computer and then adjusts the price of the gas based on your road-usage patterns.
• • •
You pull a stack of letters out of the mailbox and notice an envelope from your insurance company. Inside is a bill that includes a hefty surcharge.
Why? The helpful note underneath explains that the insurance company has determined you’re spending much of your time on congested roads where the chances of being in an accident are higher. As a result, your insurance rate just went up.
• • •
Far-fetched? Hardly. The technology to do all that—and a lot more—already exists.
More significant, transportation officials and insurance companies are already testing ways to use this emerging technology in ways that have the potential to completely change the experience of riding your motorcycle.
If you live in even a moderate-sized city, chances are you’ve already seen some of this new technology at work in the form of stoplight cameras designed to catch drivers who run red lights.
But that’s just the start. Join us for a look at the type of tattletale tech that could increasingly allow others to look over your shoulder every time you go for a ride.
Data Recorders
Chances are, the only time you think of data recorders is when you hear about a plane crash in which investigators are trying to recover the aircraft’s “black box.”
But the fact is that more than two-thirds of the cars sold in the U.S. today also come with black boxes, technically called event data recorders (EDRs). They’ve been on many American cars since 2004, and in some stretching back to 1990. In all, experts estimate that EDRs have been installed on about 40 million cars.
The EDR works like an airplane’s flight data recorder, monitoring a wide range of information about the vehicle—speed, engine rpm, throttle or brake usage, even whether the occupants are wearing their seat belts. As a result, it offers a snapshot of what was going on with the vehicle when it crashed, and in the seconds leading up to that crash.
Originally, car manufacturers used EDRs to improve the performance of safety systems like airbags. But the information contained in those automotive black boxes is increasingly being revealed in court to help determine who was at fault in a crash. You may claim you were obeying the speed limit when you skidded on wet pavement and ran off the road, but your car may tell a different story.
Data recorder evidence has been introduced in accident cases in 19 states. One high-profile case that focused attention on EDRs was the 2003 crash in which South Dakota Congressman Bill Janklow ran a stop sign in his Cadillac and collided with a motorcycle ridden by Randy Scott, killing the rider. Traffic investigators extracted data from the Cadillac’s black box showing that Janklow was speeding as he blew by the stop sign and into the path of Scott’s bike.
The increasing number of automotive black boxes has sparked concerns on the part of people who say they represent an invasion of privacy. In response, the federal Department of Transportation has ordered the manufacturers of vehicles with EDRs to include that information in the owners manual, beginning in 2011.
What about EDRs in motorcycles? No one has indicated they are specifically installing such a device, but the computers that run modern engine-management systems track much of the same information, and it’s likely that some include storage of at least a few seconds of data to more precisely adjust things like spark timing and fuel mixture.
GPS, etc.
If knowing exactly how fast a vehicle is going before a crash can be considered an invasion of privacy, how about knowing exactly where that vehicle is, all the time?
That, too, is entirely possible with today’s technology.
Many car drivers and motorcyclists already use GPS units to keep them from getting lost on the road. But officials in California and Oregon have considered requiring them on vehicles to track how many miles they travel and whether they go out of state as an alternate way to assess highway taxes.
Oregon in particular is looking at GPS tracking to compute gasoline taxes. The onboard GPS would record where a vehicle goes and how many miles it’s driven. Then the tax would be determined at the gas pump.
The British government is considering a similar fuel tax, and a government feasibility study there has suggested that it would cost more than $1,200 per vehicle to implement the system, including the cost of the GPS units in vehicles and the infrastructure to collect the tax.
But the capabilities of GPS units go well beyond reporting where a vehicle is. Among other things, they also collect data on its speed, which has obvious implications.
A few years ago, a rental-car company in Connecticut decided to take advantage of that capability by installing GPS devices in its cars and assessing a $150 penalty on drivers if the device showed they had been speeding. The practice only ended when the state attorney general said that the company couldn’t impose the penalty.
But that hasn’t stopped other companies from setting prices based on driving data from their customers. Currently, for instance, Progressive’s TripSense program, a voluntary pricing plan available to drivers in Michigan, Minnesota and Oregon, monitors when they use their cars and how fast they’re going. The company then computes insurance discounts for those who do most of their driving during low-risk hours of the day and spend less then one-tenth of 1 percent of their driving time over 75 mph.
TripSense gets its information from a device that plugs into the dataport for the car’s engine computer. It isn’t a GPS, but it uses the vehicle’s speed data with its own internal clock to determine when the car is being driven. It also collects information about acceleration and braking, but according to Progressive, “That is not used to calculate the discount. Progressive collects this data to better understand if it is predictive of future accidents.”
It should be noted, however, that Progressive warns customers their TripSense data would be released if it was subpoenaed by a court.
A company in England is trying a similar type of insurance pricing there.
Meanwhile, millions of drivers already have full GPS units in their cars—even if they don’t know it.
For instance, the OnStar system in GM cars combines a cellphone with a GPS device, all of which can be turned on by the driver or triggered automatically in a crash.
OnStar says it doesn’t continuously track its customers. It only locates a car when the system senses it’s been in a crash, when the airbag is deployed or when the OnStar equipment gets data updates. Of course, the company also notes that it will locate a car when ordered to by a court.
Don’t own an OnStar-equipped vehicle? You’re still carrying around a GPS locator every time you bring your cellphone with you on a trip.
Since 2005, nearly all cellphones have been equipped with GPS technology, required by law so that police can locate you when you call 911 in an emergency. Again, those phones are not currently set up to track your position continuously, but if the technology exists, there’s the potential for someone to use it.
The Big-Brother Scenario
So let’s say you’re a lawmaker interested in using all this technology to the fullest. What could you do to control the behavior of drivers and riders?
Plenty.
At the simplest level, you could do what one lawmaker in Texas proposed recently. He suggested inserting radio frequency identification (RFID) chips into vehicle registration tags. The chips would contain information about the licensing and insurance status of the vehicle.
That Texas proposal would have given police the authority to use RFID readers—like the units that are part of the EZ-Pass systems on many toll roads—to check vehicles on the road. And if you passed one of these checkpoints in an uninsured vehicle, a $250 ticket would arrive in the mail.
That plan died in the Texas Legislature, but it’s an example of the sort of thing public officials are considering. And that just scratches the surface.
Imagine mandatory EDRs connected to GPS units. They could store every detail of your route and your speed until you pass a bank of sensors connected to a centralized traffic-control computer, which would read the accumulated data.
The computer could compare your route and speed information to speed limits on the roads you used and find out that you’d gone a little too fast at some point. Potentially, it could also pinpoint an illegal U-turn you’d made when no one was watching. Either way, you’d get a ticket from the local police, or an automatic surcharge from your insurance company—or both.
But why just ticket people who violate traffic laws? Why not prevent them from breaking it to begin with?
That, too, is under consideration.
Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and other European Union countries are researching Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA) systems that would warn riders and drivers when they exceed the speed limit, and could even slow a vehicle automatically.
British officials just completed a five-year study of the system, and press reports indicate that members of Parliament are taking a hard look at the research with an eye on putting it into practice.
The British system uses GPS technology and a base map to track how fast a vehicle is going and the speed limit on the road it’s traveling.
A demonstration of the system on a motorcycle showed that when the bike nudged over the speed limit, the rider got two beeps as a warning. When the bike exceeded the limit by 5 mph, the seat started to vibrate.
And if the rider didn’t heed that second warning, then the ISA system took over, slowing the bike down to the speed limit.
The Bottom Line
OK, let’s separate out the reality from the tin-foil hat speculation.
Clearly, even though the technology is available, we’re not on the verge of having every moment of our riding controlled anytime soon. But smaller steps are definitely possible.
For instance, the British House of Commons Transport Committee recently issued a report suggesting that a much simpler technology—top-speed limiters—be required on new bikes.
“Motorcycle accident rates are far too high. They have been for 10 years. It is time to consider radical action to tackle this problem,” the report said.
Several years ago, the European Commission went down a similar path when it proposed a 100-horsepower limit on motorcycles. But that measure wasn’t adopted in part because officials couldn’t prove that the restriction would actually reduce motorcycling fatalities.
Now, it looks as though European lawmakers will be having that debate all over again. And it could lead to discussions of more sophisticated forms of vehicle control.
Those discussions could have a direct impact on American motorcyclists, says Edward Moreland, AMA vice president for government relations. He notes that the U.S. is part of a group called the United Nations World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations, which is designed to open up the world market by letting manufacturers build one vehicle that can be sold anywhere. And that, warns Moreland, means regulations adopted in Europe could affect riders in America.
“We need to make sure that vehicle standards imposed in the U.S. are appropriate for U.S. riders and riding,” Moreland says. “The traffic environment in Europe is very different from the U.S., and what works there doesn’t necessarily work here.”
© 2007, American Motorcyclist Association
June 2007 Index
Friday, March 14, 2008
Vegas man paints car like police cruiser
LAS VEGAS, N.M. - Jessie Vigil's black-and-white car sports a red-and-blue emergency bar across the top and the word "police" painted on the doors. Vigil, however, isn't a cop. Law enforcement agencies say what he's done with his car isn't illegal as long as he doesn't act like a police officer.
He started decorating his 2007 Ford Mustang last summer to look like the police cruiser in the "Transformers" movie because his 7-year-old son, Thomas, was fond of the film.
"My intent was to re-create the movie car," said Vigil, a 35-year-old disabled veteran from the war in Iraq. "When I came back from Iraq, I tried to spoil him. I wasn't the best dad before."
He said he called the district attorney's office beforehand and spoke to Chief Deputy District Attorney Joe Ulibarri, who tried to discourage his decorating scheme but couldn't find anything in the law that would stop Vigil as long as he didn't impersonate an officer.
Ulibarri said a state law prevents people from mimicking state police cars, which are painted black and white. But he also said the state police sell their old cars to private citizens without changing the colors.
"Are we violating our own law by not repainting them?" he asked.
He called the state law vague, and noted that normal state police cars aren't Mustangs.
"I don't think this guy has any intent to mimic a state police officer," Ulibarri said. "I'm not hearing that he is causing a problem and arresting people."
A close look shows Vigil's car isn't a police cruiser. Instead of the familiar slogan "To protect and serve," it carries a motto: "To punish and enslave" on the side. Instead of telling people to dial 911 for emergencies, the Mustang advises them to "dial 411 for theater information."
He originally marked his car, "Transformers police" but later changed it to just "police." He also added what appears to be a bar of emergency lights, but said they're not actual lights.
Vigil acknowledged people have mixed feelings about his car.
State police Capt. Craig Martin said the agency is "concerned for the safety of people who think he is an officer and think they may get help from him.
"People around town know who he is, but not those people on the interstate."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080313/ap_on_fe_st/odd_faux_cruiser
He started decorating his 2007 Ford Mustang last summer to look like the police cruiser in the "Transformers" movie because his 7-year-old son, Thomas, was fond of the film.
"My intent was to re-create the movie car," said Vigil, a 35-year-old disabled veteran from the war in Iraq. "When I came back from Iraq, I tried to spoil him. I wasn't the best dad before."
He said he called the district attorney's office beforehand and spoke to Chief Deputy District Attorney Joe Ulibarri, who tried to discourage his decorating scheme but couldn't find anything in the law that would stop Vigil as long as he didn't impersonate an officer.
Ulibarri said a state law prevents people from mimicking state police cars, which are painted black and white. But he also said the state police sell their old cars to private citizens without changing the colors.
"Are we violating our own law by not repainting them?" he asked.
He called the state law vague, and noted that normal state police cars aren't Mustangs.
"I don't think this guy has any intent to mimic a state police officer," Ulibarri said. "I'm not hearing that he is causing a problem and arresting people."
A close look shows Vigil's car isn't a police cruiser. Instead of the familiar slogan "To protect and serve," it carries a motto: "To punish and enslave" on the side. Instead of telling people to dial 911 for emergencies, the Mustang advises them to "dial 411 for theater information."
He originally marked his car, "Transformers police" but later changed it to just "police." He also added what appears to be a bar of emergency lights, but said they're not actual lights.
Vigil acknowledged people have mixed feelings about his car.
State police Capt. Craig Martin said the agency is "concerned for the safety of people who think he is an officer and think they may get help from him.
"People around town know who he is, but not those people on the interstate."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080313/ap_on_fe_st/odd_faux_cruiser
Thursday, March 13, 2008
800 Small Dogs Seized From Ariz. Home
TUCSON, Ariz. — About 800 small dogs, including Chihuahuas, terriers and Pomeranians, were seized from a triple-wide mobile home whose occupants were overwhelmed trying to care for the animals, authorities said Wednesday.
Pima County sheriff's deputies and animal welfare officials who removed the dogs also found 82 caged parrots in the home in a rural area northwest of Tucson.
Some dogs were pregnant and giving birth as they were taken to shelters in Tucson, said Jenny Rose, a spokeswoman for the Humane Society of Southern Arizona. Ninety-six dogs were taken from the house Monday and another 700 on Wednesday, she said.
"The home was definitely in very bad condition, urine and feces all over the home, in the kitchen and bedroom, with a very strong odor," she said. "Obviously, 800 dogs in a triple-wide mobile home, they were packed in there. That being said, they were in pretty good shape."
The elderly owners, who have not been identified, were apparently overwhelmed but have cooperated with authorities, sheriff's Sgt. James Ogden said. No charges have been filed, but authorities continue to investigate.
The animals appeared to have had enough food, but a few were missing paws — some from having been attacked by other animals, others apparently having caught their feet in fencing outside, Rose said.
The breeds included Chinese cresteds and Lhasa apsos. The owners were breeding and offering the dogs for sale, Rose said, but she described it as a hoarding case, in which elderly people sometimes feel no one else can give their animals a good home and won't part with them.
Deputies were alerted this month after a woman who bought a Chihuahua at the home reported the conditions, Ogden said.
The dogs living inside the house apparently had free run of the premises, Ogden said. Others were found in other structures on the property.
Ogden described the living conditions as "horrible, filth everywhere ... probably one of the worst (situations) I've ever seen."
The animals will be offered for adoption soon, Rose said, adding that a rescue group from Phoenix had taken 100 of the dogs.
Source: http://www.dailysentinel.com/hp/content/shared-gen/ap/National/Dogs_Seized.html
Pima County sheriff's deputies and animal welfare officials who removed the dogs also found 82 caged parrots in the home in a rural area northwest of Tucson.
Some dogs were pregnant and giving birth as they were taken to shelters in Tucson, said Jenny Rose, a spokeswoman for the Humane Society of Southern Arizona. Ninety-six dogs were taken from the house Monday and another 700 on Wednesday, she said.
"The home was definitely in very bad condition, urine and feces all over the home, in the kitchen and bedroom, with a very strong odor," she said. "Obviously, 800 dogs in a triple-wide mobile home, they were packed in there. That being said, they were in pretty good shape."
The elderly owners, who have not been identified, were apparently overwhelmed but have cooperated with authorities, sheriff's Sgt. James Ogden said. No charges have been filed, but authorities continue to investigate.
The animals appeared to have had enough food, but a few were missing paws — some from having been attacked by other animals, others apparently having caught their feet in fencing outside, Rose said.
The breeds included Chinese cresteds and Lhasa apsos. The owners were breeding and offering the dogs for sale, Rose said, but she described it as a hoarding case, in which elderly people sometimes feel no one else can give their animals a good home and won't part with them.
Deputies were alerted this month after a woman who bought a Chihuahua at the home reported the conditions, Ogden said.
The dogs living inside the house apparently had free run of the premises, Ogden said. Others were found in other structures on the property.
Ogden described the living conditions as "horrible, filth everywhere ... probably one of the worst (situations) I've ever seen."
The animals will be offered for adoption soon, Rose said, adding that a rescue group from Phoenix had taken 100 of the dogs.
Source: http://www.dailysentinel.com/hp/content/shared-gen/ap/National/Dogs_Seized.html
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