African seeds reach "safe-house" in the Arctic

Ten genebanks operated by CGIAR-supported Centers were the scene of frenetic activity in recent weeks, as staff rushed to finish packing samples of more than 200,000 crop varieties for shipment to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV), a new storage facility located on a remote island near the Arctic Circle. Twenty-one boxes filled with 7,000 unique seed samples from more than 36 African nations were shipped to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a facility being built on a remote island in the Arctic Circle as a repository of last resort for humanity’s agricultural heritage.

International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia

The International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO) is celebrated every May 17 around the world. It is coordinated by the Paris based "IDAHO Committee" founded and presided over by French academic, Louis-Georges Tin. May 17 was chosen as the day of the event because homosexuality was removed from the International Classification of Diseases of the World Health Organization (WHO) on May 17, 1990.

Water Wars: Ethiopia and Kenya

While the well off fret over rising gas prices and global tension over oil, the world’s poor are struggling to secure access to another, even more basic resource. Water scarcity in East Africa is fueling conflict and thwarting development while growing in step with local populations and rising global temperatures.

How to Manufacture a Global Food Crisis: Lessons from the World Bank, IMF, and WTO

When tens of thousands of people staged demonstrations in Mexico last year to protest a 60 percent increase in the price of tortillas, many analysts pointed to biofuel as the culprit. Because of US government subsidies, American farmers were devoting more and more acreage to corn for ethanol than for food, which sparked a steep rise in corn prices, says Walden Bello.

April 10th edition of the New York Times: editorial entitled The World Food Crisis

Critical look at world bank’s genetically-engineered Green Revolution as “a political strategy designed to gain and keep control over the Global South’s food systems firmly in the hands of northern corporations and institutions.”

*Raj Patel is the author of "Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World
Food System" and Eric Holt-Gimenez is the Executive Director of Food First (www.foodfirst.org).

*Henry Saragih is the International Coordinator for La Via Campesina.

Food security

'Unified Quest' game in US focuses on Nigeria and Somalia

Conflict

CARLISLE BARRACKS, Pa. (Army News Service, May 7, 2008) - The Nigerian government is near collapse and rival factions are vying for power in that troubled part of the world, or at least a visitor to the Army War College this week would think that to be the case.

The War College is hosting Unified Quest 08 which includes military leaders old and new from around the world as well as representatives from academia, industry and several different government agencies to discuss responses to global conflicts of the future.

The fictitious Nigerian scenario, set in 2013, is one of four such imaginary conflicts being played out. Three were set in 2013, one in Peru, one in the Philippines and the Nigerian one. There was also a scenario set in 2025
in Somalia.

PangeaDay: an event lived worldwide

On May 10th 2008 at 18:00 GMT, 24 films will be broadcast during a 4 hour event. What makes this different is that this event, PangeaDay will be broadcast from six locations worldwide in seven different languages worldwide to be viewed through internet, television or cellphones with one unique purpose: to make each other know about the lives of others and focus on what makes us similar, instead of what makes us different and let us work together towards peace. This initiative came from Egyptian filmmaker Jehane Noujaim's wish. As a TED Prize winner she was granted a wish in addition to a $100 000 USD award. PangeaDay is her wish, to change the world and create a day in which people of the world could come together through film.
The logistics of PangeaDay are awe inspiring: from Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro, films, live music and speakers will come together to inspire the whole world. The films chosen have been selected from more than 25000 films from over 100 hundred countries.These movies all share some characteristics such as being able to inspire, transform and enabling us to experience life through another's eyes.

The End of the World: CERN

CERN has announced that the Large Hadron Collider will switch on in May 2008, with collisions at full energy starting in summer 2008."We'll be starting up for physics in May 2008, as always foreseen, and will commission the machine to full energy in one go," said LHC project leader Lyn Evans. The €6.3bn Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be the world's largest particle accelerator, colliding protons at energies of 14 TeV to generate what physicists hope will be a slew of new particles, such as the Higgs boson and so-called supersymmetric particles.The builders of the world's biggest particle collider are being sued in federal court over fears that the experiment might create globe-gobbling black holes or never-before-seen strains of matter that would destroy the planet.

Circumcision > male sexuality

(Vienna, July 20, 2010) Following the remarks on male circumcision made today by former President Bill Clinton and philanthropist Bill Gates, PSI will release the results of a groundbreaking study on a new model of efficiency that will allow for quality and cost-effective scale-up of male circumcision.

"Our first task is to scale up the prevention efforts that are cheap, effective and easy to apply. Some of these – especially male circumcision and preventing mother-to-child transmission – are so cheap, and so effective, that in endemic countries it is more expensive not to pursue them," said Gates, immediately after showing a video that showcased PSI's male circumcision clinic Litsemba Letfu in Swaziland. "Countries need to make this a policy for funding and prevention," he added.

PSI is at the forefront in providing male circumcision services across sub-Saharan Africa. In Swaziland alone PSI has already circumcised more than 10,000 men and has developed a proven model of demand creation. This has helped Swaziland achieve one of the highest rates of male circumcision in the region. Watch PSI's film about one Litsemba Letfu client in Swaziland. www.psi.org/multimedia/male-circumcision-in-swaziland

ORDOS100 China: Mokena Makeka

April 2008
Mokena Makeka selected amongst 100 architects from around the world to design 1 of 100 villas by Ai Wei Wei and Hertzog and de Meuron to be a part of the Ordos 100 in Mongolia China.

The Global Food Crisis

Riots in Haiti , Burkina Faso, Cameroon,Cote d'Ivorie, Egypt, Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Yemen and more. Massive crisis in Somalia

Sky rocketing prices due to rising fuel costs, weather problems as well as the push to create biofuels from cereal crops.

World bank’s genetically-engineered Green Revolution

US farm subsidies

Robert Berold > an alternative take on farming (see Drive Out Hunger: The story of J.J.Machobane of Lesotho by Robert Berold & J.J. Machobane and People's Workbook a manual of rural practical skills by Robert Berold et. al.)

Comparison to Cuba’s response to the food crisis created by the collapse of the Soviet Bloc in 1989?

“Nongqawuse pattern” - Achille Mbembe

PEN World Voices

May 1 | Writing Place, Finding Refuge

When: Thursday, May 1
Where: Brooklyn Public Library: Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn
What time: 7 p.m.
With Fatou Diome, Nuruddin Farah, Xiaolu Guo, and Etgar Keret; moderated by Rick Moody



Best-selling novelist Rick Moody will guide the discussion among Fatou Diome, Nuruddin Farah, Xioalu Guo, and Etgar Keret about the settings for their novels and short stories, the places they call home, and where they find refuge; introduced by BOMB's Betsy Sussler.

The Secret Lives of Cities

May 1, 2008 I Instituto Cervantes I New York City

With Yousef Al-Mohaimeed, Juan de Recacoechea, Joshua Furst, and Francisco Goldman; moderated by Matt Weiland

• Juan de Recacoechea reads from American Visa
• Joshua Furst reads from The Sabotage Cafe
• Francisco Goldman reads from The Long Night of White Chickens

Explore the underbellies of four very different cities: novelists Juan de Recacoechea, Yousef Al-Mohaimeed, Francisco Goldman, and Joshua Furst guide us through the alleyways and crime scenes of La Paz, Guatemala City, Riyadh, and Minneapolis.


May 1, 2008 | Joe's Pub | NYC

With György Dragomán, Hasan Elahi, Asli Erdogan, Péter Esterházy, Chenjerai Hove, Irakli Kakabadze, Jenny Marketou, Ivy Meeropol, Francine Prose, and Ingo Schulze

Cosponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union

May 1 | TimesTalk: American Literature Seen From Abroad
When: Thursday, May 1
Where: TheTimesCenter: 242 West 41st St.
What time: 6:30 p.m.

With Yousef Al-Mohaimeed, Ian McEwan, and Binyavanga Wainaina
Award-winning author Ian McEwan (Atonement, On Chesil Beach) and best-selling international authors Yousef Al-Mohaimeed from Lebanon and Binyavanga Wainaina from Kenya discuss the literature that defines the United States.