Friday, June 6, 2008

A three-day United Nations (UN) summit, bringing together leaders from 181 countries, has wrapped up with a pledge by all attending countries to address the global food shortage crisis. Key actions cited include doubling the world’s food production by 2030, providing resources for farmers in poor countries and increasing humanitarian aid in times of crisis.

Protests and violent riots have resulted in parts of the world in recent months due to increasing unaffordability, and sometimes unavailability, of food. It is estimated that 862 million people, or just over one eighth of the world’s population, are malnourished.

According to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, up to US$20 billion will be required annually to avert crises in the most hard-hit areas. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has put the figure closer to US$30 billion. Pledges made just at the summit amounted to more than US$5 billion, according to the UN.

Despite the largely positively-received outcome of the summit, held in Rome, Italy, there were some who felt that the proceedings could have gone better. Several non-governmental organisations (NGOs) pointed to the fact that they were not invited to partake in the discussions. Food and hunger policy adviser Magda Kropiwnicka of ActionAid commented on the strength of the final pledge: “There were no quantifiable financial commitments. Apart from the existing UN Food and Agriculture Organisation funds, no money has been given to address the key problem of boosting capacity.”

While most delegates agreed that biofuels have been one of the causes of the food crisis, no actions were agreed upon to address this hot topic. Biofuels have been increasingly in demand in recent years, meaning that many crops that would have previously been used for food are now being used as fuel.

The impact that biofuels has goes further than simply increasing the demand of food crops. As fuel prices increase, so do the costs of fertilisers, farm vehicle use and the transport of foods. All of this adds up to a large increase in the cost of food.

Some UN officials say that biofuel use has caused up to 30% of the global food price inflation of late. The United States estimates that figure to be closer to just 3%. The Globe and Mail newspaper indicates that some estimates go as high as 60%. The only consensus that could be reached on biofuels is that they provide both “challenges and opportunities”, and need to be looked into further for a conclusive analysis on their impact on food production.

Other factors increasing food prices are increased consumption of meat and dairy products in developing nations like China and India. Argentina noted that subsidies granted to farmers from the US, the European Union and other Western countries have also been a major player in the increase.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to sue a police officer accused of creating a story about being shot by someone at El Camino High School, causing a costly search for the assailant by police.

The officer, Jeffrey Stenroos, who had worked for the Los Angeles Unified School District police for eight years, caused thousands of students to remain on lockdown for hours.

Traffic officers, county sheriffs, California Highway Patrol, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were involved in the search. The council voted to ask Stenroos to pay the city for the cost of the search. Council president Eric Garcetti said, “We had thousands of dollars spent on police overtime.”

Thursday, the Los Angeles Police chief announced Stenroos’ claim was false and he was later arrested and released on $20,000 (€14,600) bail, charged with filing a false police report.

Stenroos allegedly mishandled a firearm and shot himself in his bulletproof vest, according to an anonymous police official.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005A federal jury found Bernard Ebbers guilty on all nine counts in an indictment for fraud, conspiracy and false regulatory filings. The verdict was handed down by a New York jury after 8 days of deliberation on the former WorldCom CEO and mastermind behind the accounting scandal that brought down the telcom giant.

AP writer Erin McClam reported that when the verdict was announced, “Ebbers’ face reddened.”

Sentencing is set for the second Tuesday of next week when he could receive 85 years in prison for the conviction.

Ebbers who took the stand in his own defence, said he left the details of the company’s accounting to others and that he had no knowledge of shady practices. But Scott Sullivan, the ex-chief financial officer of the company and key prosecution witness, directly linked Ebbers to the fraud. Sullivan agreed to co-operate with prosecutors in the hopes of receiving a lenient sentence for his own involvement in the scandal.

The fall of WordCom sparked a massive class action law suit by investors. The plunge in WorldCom’s stock changed the capitalized value of the company in the range of $11 billion as the scandal unravelled. Secuities fraud cases stemming from the suits will probably break new legal ground where the involvement of investment banks and public accounting firms who would normally check company irregularities will be called into legal question.

Monday, September 4, 2017

Experts in Frankfurt, Germany defused a World War II-era bomb yesterday, after more than 60,000 people, the most since World War II, evacuated from the area.

The HC 4000 blockbuster bomb, dropped by the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force, was discovered days ago near the Goethe University Frankfurt campus in a construction site. Fire chiefs warned its reportedly 1.4 tons of explosives could have destroyed an entire city block.

Residents of the Westend neighborhood, including those of two nearby hospitals, were asked to evacuate by 8 a.m. local time (0600 UTC), though the bomb removal process only began around 2:30 p.m., as the evacuation drew on. Just after 8 a.m., Markus Röck, a spokesman for the Frankfurt fire brigade, said: “The situation is relaxed which is a good sign and everything so far is going according to plan. We will now assess if everybody has left voluntarily and go from house to house and remove people if necessary.”

About 1,100 workers assisted with the evacuation, according to the fire brigade, and helicopters and heat-detection technology were used to check everyone within 1.5 kilometers, about 1 mile, had left. A convention center and concert hall opened to house people, and at museums and the airport, other activities were offered for free.

When the area near the bomb was evaluated, other parts of the city became more populated. Peter Cachola Schmal, director of the German Architecture Museum, remarked, “It’s a different atmosphere here today, because people are settling for a longer time[…] People are coming here to sit with their laptop and work, for example, or read the newspaper for hours.”

Fire brigade director Reinhard Ries said, “the scale of this bomb is overwhelming. I have never seen anything like it.”

Likely thousands of unexploded bombs from the era remain across Germany, and reportedly eleven bomb defusal technicians have been killed there since 2000. Devices may become more unstable as time wears on and their fuses age.

Saturday, December 11, 2004

VIENNA –Doctors from the Rudolfinerhaus clinic in Vienna say “there is no doubt” Ukrainian opposition leader Victor Yushchenko was poisoned with Dioxin.

Yushchenko’s body had about 1,000 times more than the normal concentration of the toxin. It is unknown if there were any other poisons in his system.

Although it has not yet been proven that the poisoning was deliberate, doctors suspect it was. “We suspect a cause triggered by a third party,” said Michael Zimpfer, head doctor at the Rudolfinerhaus clinic. He suggested the poison may have been administered orally, through food or drink.

Today’s announcements are a follow-up of an earlier press conference, where Dr. Korpan that there were three hypotheses under consideration, one of them involving dioxin. He did not reveal what the other two hypotheses were. Dr. Michael Zimpfer, director of the Rudolfinerhaus clinic emphasized that time there was no proof yet to specify the substance causing the illness.

Yushchenko left Kiev on Friday (2004-10-12) for further examination in Vienna. When Yushchenko fell ill on October 6th, Ukrainian doctors had initially diagnosed food poisoning, leading to speculation that he had been poisoned deliberately. The illness has disfigured Yushchenko’s body and face which doctors say could take up to two years to heal.

He fell seriously ill on the September 6th, during his presidential campaign. Yushchenko was taken to the Rudolfinerhaus clinic of Vienna, where he stayed for four days under Dr. Korpan’s care. He was diagnosed with “acute pancreatitis, accompanied by interstitial edematous changes.” These symptoms were said to be due to “a serious viral infection and chemical substances which are not normally found in food products” as his campaign officials put it. In laymans terms, he developed an infection in the pancreas and got a bad skin condition that disfigured his face with cysts and lesions. The skin condition has similarities with the chloracne associated with dioxin posioning according to a British toxicologist John Henry.

• Viktor Yushchenko (left) as he appeared in July 2004 and (right) as he appeared in November after the poisoning(Gleb Garanich/Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)

Earlier, doctor Nikolai Korpan of Rudolfinerhaus clinic confirmed today that the illness of Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko was caused by an attempt to kill him.

Saturday, October 7, 2006

The city of Bratsk in Irkutsk Oblast, Russia, received a new turbine for its famous 4,500 megawatt hydroelectric plant founded in the mid-1950s on the Angara river. In future this new unit will cause an efficiency rise up to 255MW for each turbine.

Currently, the Bratsk Power Station operates 18 hydro-turbines, each with capacity of 250MW, produced by the Leningrad Metal Works (“LMZ”) in the 1960s. The plant is the second level of the Angara Hydroelectric Stations cascade. Since its full commissioning in 1967, the station was the world’s single biggest power producer until Canada’s Churchill Falls in 1971. Annually the station produces 22.6 billion kWh.

The precious 80 tonne cargo was transported to Pulkovo International airport of Saint-Petersburg where it was loaded on Antonov An-124-100 Ruslan to made all the way to Bratsk by air. On October 4, 2006 it landed in the Bratsk airport. In two days the unit 16 replacement arrived to the assemble place on the Angara river.

Sergey Emdin, CEO of IrkutskEnergo JSC, noted the press that the Bratsk plant reconstruction project includes not only the economical, but the ecological aspect by reducing carbon dioxide emission for 6 million tonnes for the period of 2008-2012.

In 2006 and 2007 the old plant is scheduled to receive two more working wheels – by one for each year respectively, and in 2008 and 2009 another four – by two for each year.

Sunday, September 30, 2007

Evan Wolfson, the founder of the modern gay marriage movement, tells the waiter he would like an iced decaf and “the usual.” Wolfson, one of Time Magazine’s Most Influential People in the World, is a man who unflinchingly knows what he wants and stays his course, whether it be in his choice of restaurant or in his choice of battle. And others always know when they see Evan coming what it is that he wants.

Since his time at Harvard Law School when he wrote a paper on the topic, what Wolfson wants is the right for gay people to marry. The issue gained national prominence in 1993 when the Hawaii Supreme Court held in Baehr v. Lewin that the government had to show a reason for the denial of the freedom to marry, not just deny marriage licenses to the plaintiff gay couples. Wolfson was co-counsel in the historic 1996 Hawaii trial in which he argued that the government does not have a sufficient reason for excluding same-sex couples from marriage. In 1999, Wolfson contributed to Baker v. Vermont, the case that led to the creation of civil unions; advised the lead attorneys in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, the case that led to same-sex marriage in Massachusetts; and since 2003, when he founded the primary umbrella organization coordinating the efforts to win marriage for gay people, Freedom to Marry, Wolfson has played a role in every marriage equality case in the United States. He is the movement’s founder and leader, and his focus remains square on winning that right. “For years,” said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, “many of us were saying to him, ‘We’re not ready. The country’s not ready. And, by the way, you’re crazy.'”

When I make a statement to him about his devoting his life to gay marriage, he corrects me: “I’ve played a part in cases that span the entire spectrum of eliminating gay people’s exclusions and limitations on who gay people are, and I’ve also written on immigration and economic justice, and I have worked on cases involving race discrimination in jury selection and women’s inequality. I don’t think one has to pick one of these things; they work together.”

Indeed, he has. Wolfson was lead counsel before the Supreme Court in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, the case arguing against the expulsion of gay scoutmasters. As an intrepid young assistant district attorney in Brooklyn, Wolfson worked on People v. Liberta to end the exemption that allowed women to be raped by their husbands legally, a right in New York State as early as 1984. And he helped end the practice of choosing jurors based upon their race.

Wolfson’s entire career has been at the center of the most explosive legal and cultural issues of the last 30 years in the United States, and his influence has been profound. David Shankbone sat down with him to discuss some of the recent decisions affecting gay marriage, gender in marriage and reactions in the gay community to his fight for their rights.