Nexus - 0602 - New Times Magazine-pages

Page Content (OCR)

... GL@BAL NEWS ... NEWS According to the Guardian Weekly (27 Dec 1998), Monsanto is about to be prose- cuted in the UK for deliberately releasing genetically modified oilseed rape into the countryside. In the United States, Monsanto stands accused by a growing number of consumer groups of falsifying research data on the safety of its genetically engineered bovine growth hormone which has been injected into 30 per cent of US dairy cows twice a month over the last five years. The Canadian Government's Health Protection Branch recently reviewed all the data from a Monsanto safety study and came up with vastly different conclusions. Monsanto started its PR slide when it was revealed that its herbicide-resistant Roundup Ready soya beans had been shipped to Europe mixed with ordinary soya beans. Consumers interpreted the move as a ploy to force transgenic soya products down European throats. In late November, farmers in in the Raichur district of India destroyed a field- trial plot of Monsanto's genetically modi- fied cotton plants. They were concerned that pollen from the modified plants would escape into the environment. A recent survey of 1,000 French con- sumers, conducted by the TMO company, revealed that only nine per cent expressed a positive opinion about GMOs, while more than half expressed negative feelings. One quarter associated GMOs with danger. Our thanks go out to Monsanto for allowing us all to become more aware of the serious health, environmental, ethical, legal and marketing issues surrounding genetically modified organisms. (Sources: Nature, vol. 395, 22 Oct 1998, vol. 396, 3 Dec 1998; New Scientist, 31 Oct 1998; ABC News, USA, www.abcnews.com; Guardian Weekly, London, 29 Nov, 27 Dec 1998; Sydney Morning Herald, 27 Dec1998) sunspot activity. Dr Phil Wilkinson, from the Australian Government's Ionospheric Prediction Service, commented that the ionosphere is modulated strongly by the Sun and that sunspot activity is approaching its peak. (Sources: The Australian, 17 September 1998; New Scientist, 26 September 1998) said his team was ordered in the 1980s to develop a "pigmentation weapon" to target only black people. The British Medical Association has become so concerned about the lethal potential of genetically based biological weapons that it has opened an investiga- tion, due to report in January 1999. (Sources: The Sunday Times, London, 15 Nov 1998; The Australian, 16 Nov 1998) ISRAELI GERM WARFARE DESIGNED TO KILL ARABS? laims made by the London Sunday Times last November [1997], that Israel is working on a biological weapon which is genetically targetted against Arabs, received a boost when Foreign Report, a Jane's publication which moni- tors security and defence matters, also reported that Israeli scientists have used South African genetic warfare research in an attempt to develop an "ethnic bullet". Israeli scientists at super-secret Nes Tziyona biowarfare laboratory near Tel Aviv are attempting to engineer deadly micro-organisms that only attack DNA within the cells of victims with distinctive Arab genes. Nes Tziyona produces a wide range of chemical and biological weapons and is reportedly larger than all Arab and Iranian biowarfare laboratories combined. The research mirrors biological studies conducted by South African scientists dur- ing the apartheid era and disclosed in testi- mony before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Daan Goosen, head of a South African chemical and biological warfare facility, DANISH SCIENTISTS DEVELOP ATOM-SIZED COMPUTER CHIP anish scientists have created a chip where a single atom jumping back and forth could generate the binary code which is the basis of digital information used by computers. Information stored today on one million CD-roms could be stored on a single disc, says doctor of physics Frangois Grey. Using a scanning tunnelling microscope, a four-man team at the microelectronics centre of the Danish University of Technology was able to remove from a hydrogen layer surface on a silicon chip one of a pair of hydrogen atoms attached to one silicon atom, leaving the remaining hydrogen atom jumping back and forth. Scientists elsewhere had conducted sim- ilar experiments making single atoms jump back and forth, but their work was done with material frozen to near absolute zero temperature. The Danish team is the first to have succeeded in room temperature conditions, Grey said. (Source: The Australian, 3 November 1998) HANG SENG [Figs] NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO HATE BANKS [5,619275 102 bow Jones [B475-j THE SKY REALLY IS FALLING! Acoring to British Antarctic Survey scientists, the ionosphere is ‘falling’ at the rate of about 200 metres per year. The findings come from an analysis of 600,000 measurements of the ionosphere's height taken over the past 38 years using echo- sounding technology. Scientists are divided as to whether the ionospheric contraction is a result of greenhouse gases and the depletion of the ozone layer, or whether it is caused by cyclic changes in the Sun and resultant K NEXUS <7 FEBRUARY — MARCH 1999