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As he steps up his efforts in Iowa, Mr. Sanders is using a traditional media platform to try to bring new voters into the political system to support him.
November 7, 2019Read More
Public and internal Republican Party polls suggested the race had been extremely close before President Trump arrived.
November 7, 2019Read More
The killing of nine members of a family in northern Mexico prompted questions about violence in the region and what will be needed to combat it.
November 7, 2019Read More
The euro zone economy is likely to grow slower than earlier expected this year and next, the European Commission forecast on Thursday, because of global trade conflicts, geopolitical tensions and Brexit. The Commission cut its growth forecast for the …
November 7, 2019Read More
China plans to launch a recoverable satellite that will carry half a tonne of life forms into space to see if better crops can be produced there, according to scientists involved.The “passengers” on the satellite, which could be launched early next year, will include more than 240kg (530lbs) of seeds and plants, as well as other forms of life such as bacteria.It forms part of the world’s largest single experiment so far into inducing biological mutation with cosmic radiation, according to Chinese government researchers.And it could be a rough ride. The flight might last about two weeks, during which time the seeds will be exposed to a lack of air, temperatures close to absolute zero and high-energy radiation.Other life forms such as seedlings may have some air and heating, but will still be exposed to radiation, regardless their storage conditions, to cause mutations that would have been impossible or taken longer to produce under normal conditions.After the flight, a capsule will bring its passengers back to Earth so that scientists can sow the seeds, monitor their growth and mark unusual traits such as higher yield or new colours, to identify candidates for commercial exploitation. Some of these variations could produce better crops, the researchers said.Food security is a big issue for China, which has nearly 20 per cent of the world’s population but only 9 per cent of its arable land. Over the decades, many nations have sent plants into space to trigger mutations that produce higher-yielding breeds, but none can match China in terms of persistence and scale.Insights from the country’s space programme have brought about a 1.3 million tonne increase in annual grain production, or about a kilogram for every Chinese citizen, according to the Chinese government.”Mutation is a driving force behind evolution,” said Dr Li Jingzhao, a scientist involved in the programme with the Space Breeding Industry Innovation Alliance, a non-profit organisation in Beijing which is a participant in the government-run programme. “An increase of mutation will lead to higher biodiversity.”He added that biodiversity loss, or extinction of species, had become a threat to agriculture. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations, about 75 per cent of crop biodiversity has been lost worldwide because of the cultivation of a single crop. This made food production vulnerable to climate change, among other issues.”The question is, should we stick entirely to the pace of nature, or give it a little boost?” he asked.When China launched Shijian 8 ” the world’s first satellite designed mainly for mutation breeding ” in 2006, carrying about 200kg of vegetable, fruit, grain and cotton seeds, there were doubts among the international community.Some researchers in the United States said the benefits would not justify the cost. They saw the launch as a publicity stunt, according to a report by New Scientist.Space flight is expensive, costing US$10,000 per pound of payload, but the Chinese programme sent more plants and seeds to space with the support of government funding. Research facilities were set up to study the returning mutants, and scientists and officials appointed to lead it.For the forthcoming mission, attempts will be made to lower costs. The researchers said the capsule would be reusable, having been designed for up to 15 launches, which would cut the cost of future space missions.By the end of last year, the commercial plantation of species derived from the “space crop” programme had reached 2.4 billion hectares, with direct economic benefit exceeding 200 billion yuan (US$28 billion), according to a government institute.A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in April this year stated that the second most widely used mutant wheat variety in China, Luyuan 502, had been developed using space-induced mutation breeding, and had a yield 11 per cent higher than the traditional variety. It was also more resistant to drought and main diseases, the report said.The IAEA and the FAO are working with China to promote its technology in other countries with the goal of developing new crop varieties.China has released more than 1,000 mutant crop varieties, accounting for a quarter of the mutants listed in the IAEA/FAO database of mutant varieties produced worldwide ” more than any other country.Scientists are also combining other biological technology such as genetic sequencing, molecular labelling and gene editing to help improve the efficiency of new crop species, according to Li.Professor Liu Zhiyong, researcher with the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, said the biodiversity decline was bad news for the global ecological system.”The [space crops] project is meaningful because it will produce more varieties for scientific research,” said Liu, who was not involved in the programme.This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP’s Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2019 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 2019. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
November 7, 2019Read More
(Bloomberg) — Sign up to our Brexit Bulletin, follow us @Brexit and subscribe to our podcast.Both of the U.K.’s major parties are rolling out big spending plans. Chancellor of the Exchequer Sajid Javid said a Conservative government would borrow about…
November 7, 2019Read More
LIVERPOOL/MANCHESTER, England, Nov 7 (Reuters) – Britain’s governing Conservatives vowed on Thursday to spend billions of pounds more on infrastructure, stepping up an election battle with the main opposition Labour Party over who is best placed to dri…
November 7, 2019Read More
(Bloomberg) — Public debate surrounding the House impeachment inquiry has focused heavily on whether President Donald Trump’s aides withheld military aid to Ukraine as part of a “quid pro quo.”Yet testimony unsealed this week makes clear that somethin…
November 7, 2019Read More
(Bloomberg) — Former Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan declined to say if he’s been asked by the U.K. about succeeding Mark Carney to head the Bank of England, and repeated his view that the job is now burdened with huge political challenges.“You’re navigating in a very complicated environment with a whole lot of political forces,” Rajan, who now teaches at Chicago Booth School of Business, said in a Bloomberg TV interview with Haslinda Amin on Thursday. He said in July that the issues posed by Brexit were a key reason he didn’t apply for the role.Asked if anything has changed since then, and whether he’s been approached about the job, Rajan declined to comment.“I don’t want to talk about that, but I would say it’s a very difficult job,” he said. “Mark has a very difficult job, he’s done it in a very admirable way and it’s good that he’s there.”Carney, who himself denied an interest in the BOE governorship before he was appointed, has twice extended his stay and is now due to step down at the end of January, though the upcoming U.K. general election has delayed the appointment of his successor. Originally slated for the fall, it’s now not expected until after the Dec. 12 vote. An interview panel has prepared a shortlist, but that could be discarded.To contact the reporter on this story: Fergal O’Brien in Zurich at [email protected] contact the editors responsible for this story: Craig Stirling at [email protected], Paul Gordon, David GoodmanFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
November 7, 2019Read More
(Bloomberg) — Sign up to our Brexit Bulletin, follow us @Brexit and subscribe to our podcast.While Boris Johnson bets that voters are bored with Brexit, Labour is calculating the public is more fed up with austerity. The party’s economy spokesman John…
November 7, 2019Read More
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday that members of slain Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s “inner circle” are trying to enter Turkey from Syria. The Turkish leader’s comments were his second effort in as many days to …
November 7, 2019Read More
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