Nexus - 0606 - New Times Magazine-pages

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... GLOBAL NEWS ... NEWS favour of the 1993 European moratorium on Monsanto's GE hormone-treated milk (tBGH). This unexpected ruling, reveal- ingly greeted by the US Press with deafen- ing silence, is a powerful blow against US global trade policies which are strongly influenced by powerful multinational cor- porations such as Monsanto. The Codex Commission ruling has also forced the US to abandon its threats to challenge the European moratorium before the World Trade Organization later this year. And, as importantly, the ruling repre- sents the first large-scale defeat of geneti- cally modified foods on unarguable scien- tific grounds, apart from ethical and ideo- logical concerns. (Source: The Campaign for Food Safety, , 18 August 1999) changes in the Earth's orbit, called cal sciences at Changchun University of Milankovitch variations. They are named Technology, believes the damage is caused after Serbian astronomer-mathematician by solar winds—a current of high-energy Milutin Milankovitch, whose theories _ particles—rather than the use of freon, the about ice-age timings were accepted from _ official news agency said. the 1920s until about 30 years ago. Yang, who is engaged in research into The orbital variation, known as "eccen- the evolution of the Earth and changes in tricity", has two cycles: one every 100,000 global climate, published his research in an years and one every 413,000 years. But article in the May 1999 Chinese edition of while the 100,000-year cycle shows up in Scientific American. studies of ancient climate—as seen in sam- He argues that the solar wind has made ples taken from glacial ice-cores, old sedi- the atmosphere at the South Pole thinner. ments, etc.—there has been no evidence of _ The eruption of volcanoes in the southern the 413,000-year cycle. hemisphere has then released large Writing in the journal Science, Rial says amounts of harmful gas, which has further he has found the evidence and may thus damaged the ozone layer there. have exonerated Milankovitch. He says the The third factor is that the solar high- pattern looks like an FM (frequency modu- _ energy particle currents consume ozone at lated) radio wave. He does not know the — both the South Pole and the North Pole physical mechanism behind it, but says it when they enter the Earth's atmosphere. helps explain why the ice ages seem to Yang argues that the northern hemi- have occurred at irregular intervals. sphere is where the use of freon is concen- Other scientists have suggested that trated, and so, if the freon theory were cor- changes in the plane of the Earth's orbit, or rect, the ozone hole should have appeared periodic dipping into a dust ring that also above the North Pole instead of the South circles the Sun, might have triggered the Pole, Xinhua reported. ice ages. (Source: Agence France Presse, Xinhua (Source: Fox News, , 21 com>, 24 July 1999) June 1999) EARTH'S CHANGING ORBIT MAY EXPLAIN ICE AGES ariations in the Earth's orbit around the Sun could explain why ice ages, which occur about every 100,000 years, have not been more regular. "The Earth circles the Sun every year in an orbit that becomes either more elliptical or less elliptical over tens of thousands of years," says Jose Rial, a professor of geo- physics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "Variations in the orbit over time chiefly account for the ice ages as differing amounts of sunlight warm the planet." The shift from circular to elliptical and back is one of several known, long-term OZONE HOLES CAUSED BY SOLAR WIND, NOT HUMANS he hole in the ozone layer over the South Pole is due to the Sun, not peo- ple, according to research by a Chinese sci- entist, the Xinhua news agency reported on 20 June. Yang Xuexiang, a professor of geologi- WHAT BUFORD FURROW'S E-MAIL ADDRESS MEANS I has been revealed that Buford Furrow, the man who committed the bloody assault on a Jewish community centre in Los Angeles on 10 August, had an interest- ing e-mail address: . * NSC: Denotes National Security Council. ¢ McChord: Denotes McChord Air Force Base, outside Seattle. «DDN: This most likely means either Department of Defense Network or Defense Data Network. «CONUS: This seems to indicate "Continental US". * MIL: This is a military e-mail designa- tion (written in all capital letters here). This e-mail address for Buford Furrow was active until a little more than 24 hours after he turned himself in to his FBI han- dlers at their Las Vegas office on Wednesday 11 August. Incidentally, Buford O'Neal Furrow Senior was in the Air Force for many years, most recently at Nellis AFB in Nevada. (Source: By John A. Quinn , 17 August 1999, © NewsHawk Inc.) ~ — —— | SASS Ve Big temas ea CET) peepee Gon oT) BEX NZS COL Ge Tae! Os BE sl | | _ "| stitched up a great deal getting 'em mass printed in Vietnam, shipped by a Liberian line, and distributed through the Club Med chain." 8 = NEXUS OCTOBER —- NOVEMBER 1999