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3 Days of Mourning in China
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A Chinese soldier carries a little girl as residents are evacuated in Beichuan, southwest ChinaÕs Sichuan province on May 17.
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China began three days of national mourning on Monday for more than 30,000 victims of an earthquake that struck a week ago, but the search for survivors went on as families refused to give up hope for their loved ones.
Public entertainment was suspended, flags were put at half-mast and a three-minute silence will be observed to mark exactly a week since the quake, the government said.
The national flag in Tiananmen Square in central Beijing flew at half mast after a ceremony at dawn. The Olympic torch relay, currently on its domestic leg ahead of the August 8 opening in Beijing, was also suspended for three days, Reuters reported.
“I have come today with a heavy heart,“ said Liu Xianzeng, watching the ceremony in Tiananmen Square. “I feel for the victims of the earthquake and soldiers who are helping there.“
Around the country, air raid sirens and car, train and ship horns will sound to “wail in grief“ at 2:28 p.m. (0628 GMT), the time the quake hit a week ago, the official Xinhua news agency said.
The Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges and the futures exchanges in Shanghai, Zhengzhou and Dalian will also halt trading for three minutes from 2:28 p.m.
In southwestern Sichuan province’s Beichuan, hard hit by the earthquake, relatives continued to travel back into the disaster zone to look for family members and see the damage for themselves.
“It’s a good idea but maybe it’s a bit early,’ said Zhou Wanli of the national state of mourning, sitting in the back of a truck heading into Beichuan.
“All we can care about for the time being is finding our relatives. We don’t want to memorialize them if we don’t even know if they’re alive or dead,“ he said.
The official death toll stands at nearly 32,500 from the original quake of 7.9 magnitude that rattled Sichuan province.
Some 220,000 people are reported injured and a further 9,500 are thought to be still buried under the rubble in Sichuan. Most are feared dead, but some are still being pulled out alive.
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Food Wastage Staggering
While a global food crisis sharpens, a new report says a ’staggering’ amount of food is tossed out as garbage.
More than enough food is produced to feed the world, the report contends. It just doesn’t all get where it’s needed, reported LiveScience.
In the United States, as much as 30 percent of food, worth about $48.3 billion, are tossed out each year, according to the report by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI).
If a significant amount of that food can be saved, then international trade should allow some of it to get in the hands of the hungry, the researchers said .
Wasted food means wasted water, too.
“As much as half of the water used to grow food globally may be lost or wasted,“ said David Molden, director of research at IWMI. “Curbing these losses and improving water productivity provides win-win opportunities for farmers, business, ecosystems and the global hungry. An effective water-saving strategy will first require that minimizing food wastage is placed firmly on the political agenda.“
An estimated 1.2 billion people already live in areas where there is not enough water to meet demand, the report states. And rising demand means the problem is getting worse.
“Unless we change our practices, water will be a key constraint to food production in the future,“ said Pasquale Steduto of the FAO.
In poorer countries, a majority of uneaten food is lost before it has a chance to be consumed. Depending on the crop, an estimated 15-35 percent of food may be lost in the field. Another 10-15 percent are discarded during processing, transport and storage.
In richer countries, production is more efficient but waste is greater: People toss the food they buy and all the resources used to grow, ship and produce the food along with it. And many people overeat, the report notes.
“Improving water productivity and reducing the quantity of food that is wasted can enable us to provide a better diet for the poor and enough food for growing populations,“ said Jan Lundqvist of SIWI. “Reaching the target we propose, a 50-percent reduction of losses and wastage in the production and consumption chain, is a necessary and achievable goal.“
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Pregnancy Stress Harmful
Women who are stressed about money, relationships and other problems during pregnancy may give birth to babies who are predisposed to
allergies and asthma, US researchers said.
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Biodiversity Loss Costs $3.1 Trillion
The destruction of flora and fauna is costing the world two trillion euros (3.1 trillion dollars) a year, or six percent of its overall gross national product, according to a report trailed by German news weekly Der Spiegel.
The European Union and German environment ministry-led research, entitled “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity,“ will be presented on Monday at the ninth conference of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Bonn.
In its edition out Monday, Der Spiegel will present extracts from the paper, with the study’s lead author, Pavan Sukhdev, a senior figure with Deutsche Bank in India, writing that “the world’s poor bear the brunt of the cost.“
Der Spiegel also says that German Chancellor Angela Merkel will announce a sharp increase in German funding to combat deforestation in line with Norway, which ploughs 500 million dollars annually into forest retention.
Deforestation--a huge factor in species loss and global carbon emissions contributing to climate change--is a central theme of this year’s conference in Bonn, formerly the capital of West German.
One in four mammal species, one in eight among birds, a third of amphibian creatures and 70 percent of all plant life made the most recent endangered list issued by another UN agency, the World Conservation Union (WCU).
Einstein Letter Sells for $404,000
A letter by Albert Einstein, in which he scoffed that the Jews are the ’chosen people’, has sold for $404,000 at an auction in London.
“The Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people,“ the German-born scientist said in his letter, the New York Times reported
“They (Jews) are no better than other human groups. Otherwise I cannot see anything ’chosen’ about them,“ he added.
The letter, written by the physicist on January 3, 1954 and sent to philosopher Eric Gutkind, sold for 25 times the presale estimate.
The price makes the Gutkind letter one of the best sellers among Einstein manuscripts.
The unidentified buyer bid slightly less than the $442,500 paid for the collection of 53 love letters between Einstein and his first wife, Mileva Maric, at a 1996 auction at Christie’s.
In the Gutkind letter, Einstein reportedly expresses his thoughts and views on religion, on Judaism, on his views about God and religious texts.
Tasmanian Devil at Risk
Australia’s Tasmanian devil will be listed as an endangered species this week as a result of a deadly and disfiguring cancer outbreak, the state government said Monday.
The disease, a fast-growing head tumor which spreads over the marsupial’s face and mouth and prevents it from eating, often killing it within months, has cut the island’s devil population in the wild by as much as 60 percent, AFP reported.
A spokeswoman for Tasmania’s Primary Industries Minister David Llewellyn said the small, black-haired animal would be listed as an endangered species by state officials on Wednesday.
The minister told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that the animal would be upgraded from a vulnerable to an endangered species so that the “appropriate resources and effort“ can be poured into protecting it.
The government has also backed a plan to build an “insurance population“ of healthy Tasmanian devils at wildlife reserves, zoos and other protected areas.
Climate Change Threatens Truffle
The black truffle, one of the most exclusive and expensive delicacies on the planet, is under threat from climate change.
A mysterious species of underground fungi with reported aphrodisiac and therapeutic properties, the aromatic truffles are also highly fragile and cannot withstand more than three weeks without water, Reuters reported.
But prolonged drought in many of their prime growing regions in Europe and predictions about global warming suggest the future is about as black as the truffles themselves, to the despair of the growers.
The three main producers--France, Italy and Spain--provide about 100 tons of the gastronomic luxury per year. In the 19th century it was an estimated 1,000-1,600 tons.
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