Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it provides employment to people. Most importantly, cooking and eating give us pleasure. …
SURGEONS may soon be able to call upon living micro-organisms to fight tumours that cannot be reached by the surgeon's scalpel. US scientists are proposing a new form of "molecular surgery" involving the transfer of a viral gene into the tumour and then attacking it with the anti-viral drug, ganciclovir. …
A RECENT study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine has established that women with osteoporosis suffered fewer fractures after treatment with estrogen. Osteoporosis is a potentially debilitating disease characterised by weakened bones and an increased risk of fractures. Estrogen is already being used to prevent osteoporosis in postmenopausal women. …
SCIENTISTS have discovered that celery, which was used as a herbal remedy in ancient times, contains a chemical that may lower blood pressure. A University of Chicago Medical Centre team found that a chemical compound, 3-n-butyl phthalide, which is extracted from celery, can lower blood pressure in laboratory animals by …
Imperial Chemical Industries of England and Calgene of the USA are at war over who owns the patent rights to a "fresh" tomato. Both companies have developed a genetically improved, longer-lasting, non-squishy tomato that retains its flavour and firmness longer. Each pinpointed the enzyme that causes tomatoes to rot and …
A US high-level military planning group has issued a report strongly recommending the development of nuclear weapons for specific use against Third World enemies. Some of the proposed weapons include an electromagnetic pulse bomb that can knock out enemy communications and other electronic gear at low risk to human beings …
A RECENTLY released report, Defending the Earth, prepared by the US-based Human Rights Watch and Natural Resources Defense Council, is a first-ever effort at documenting state harassment of individuals and groups protesting environmental degradation in different countries. The report covers nine countries, including the now-defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. …
BRAZIL: Trade union leader and environmentalist Chico Mendes was one of 1,681 rural workers and activists killed in the struggle over land in Brazil between January 1, 1964, and January 31, 1992. The Pastoral Land Commission reports only 26 of the murders have gone to trial. Only 15 ended in …
In this issue, we carry two reports: One on the subject of human rights suppression and environmental degradation, and the other on trade bans against environmentally harmful products. Both trade and human rights are being used today as sticks to beat the South. Northern NGOs have repeatedly raised these issues …
PARTICLE physicists scanning the cosmos for the slippery neutrino, claim once again to have established that it has a mass. Anthony Turkevich of the University of Chicago and his collaborators have published a study claiming to have uncovered "another independent line of evidence pointing towards neutrinos having mass." Predictably, this …
WAS ROBERT C Gallo guilty, along with his colleagues at the US National Institute of Health, of scientific misconduct for their conduct and reporting of the crucial experiments that led to the development of a diagnostic blood test for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS? No, says the NIH finally, …
IT IS IRONIC that during the same week in June in which the World Bank emerged from Rio as the major funding mechanism to clean up the world's environment and implement Agenda 21, the Morse report revealed to the world the chronic institutional failures of the bank to promote environmentally …
THE WORLDWIDE consciousness about environment is now demanding action. And Rio was an important staging post in this global effort to set up a framework for future action. In many ways, the framework set up in Rio is extremely inimical to the long-term interests of the South and goes counter …
WESTERN NGOs and media built up certain myths about the South in the run-up to Rio. These perceptions then clouded the visions of numerous Northern negotiators. Myth: Rio is suffering from a North-South conflict and this will contribute to its failure. Reality: In reality, the North-South conflict was secondary to …
THIS YEAR, US President George Bush announced that US $1.4 billion is to be made available in 1993 to the US Global Change Research Programme (USGCRP), which will lead to a massive increase in humankind's understanding of the earth's atomosphere. As a part of the programme, a network of remote …
THOUGH no commitments have as yet been made by industrialised countries to reduce &rbon; emissions, car manufacturers in the West are already gearing themselves up for renewable and cleaner technologies in the near future. The European Community is pushing for stabilisation of carbon emissions by the year 2000. In Germany, …
MONEY for sustainable development in the developing countries was the only nut which UNCED could not crack. Two years of intense negotiations concluded in Rio with the South getting very little in hand. The UNCED secretariat had estimated that developing countries would need US $125 billion worth of international assistance …
• Pesticides manufacturer Monsanto is testing genetically-engineered cotton resistant to the deadly bellworm. The cotton contains genes from a natural ly-occurri ng bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis which kills the bollworm. • Hundreds of wind turbines produced by the Japanese corporation, Mitsubishi, are now being used on one of the largest …
USA: 66 per cent above the international environmental aid levels of 1990 (though nobody knows what this means in dollars). Japan: Will increase its aid support from about US $1 billion a year by 50 per cent to about US $1.4 to US $1.5 billion a year from 1992 to …
THE SOUTH had a two-point agenda in Rio: funds and technology. It failed to get both. The North continued to insist that technology is a private resource which states cannot give away, whereas the South continued to ask for technology on preferential and concessional terms. If there was any movement …
IF THERE was one thing that African leaders wanted out of Rio, it was a convention on desertification. And finally they got it. The 47th general assembly has now been asked to set up an intergovernmental negotiating committee for the convention. The jubilant Africans, however, had numerous tense moments with …
