World in brief
International Development
NAIROBI, Kenya (Thomson Reuters Foundation) — Governments must radically rethink their technology investments, which are feeding wasteful consumption, driving inequality and worsening global warming, a charity that emphasizes the use of technology to fight poverty said Jan. 21.
Contrary to popular thinking, it is governments, not businesses, that often invest in high-risk, cutting-edge research, only to let the private sector scoop up the profits from the resulting products, Practical Action said.
A relatively small number of people benefit from the vast majority of innovations, which rarely address basic needs like health and access to food, water and energy, Practical Action’s senior policy adviser, Amber Meikle, said in a statement.
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“Take the iPhone — it is almost entirely dependent on technologies developed through government-funded programs including the internet, GPS, touch-screens and Siri (a voice activated personal assistant),” she said.
Innovations to provide people with clean energy for cooking and clean water and toilets would save five million lives a year, the charity said in a report.
Pulse crops
NEW DELHI, India (Reuters) — India has developed three lentil varieties of a particular strain that was banned five decades ago amid concerns that it led to nerve damage and paralysis, a move aimed at stepping up local supplies to curb domestic prices and cut imports.
The government-backed Indian Council of Agricultural Universities Research has developed the lentils after India agreed to lift a five-decade-old ban on the grade.
The new varieties are safe for human consumption, farm minister Radha Mohan Singh said in a statement.
Annual output of khesari, the lentil variety, is estimated at 350,000 tonnes.
Every year Indians consume about 22 million tonnes of lentils used to make a thick stew called dal, commonly taken with rice or flat bread across South Asia.
Health
DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) — More than 80 international drug and biotech firms urged governments to work with them to combat drug-resistant super bugs, which could kill tens of millions of people within decades unless progress is made and new antibiotics found.
In a declaration at the World Economic Forum in Davos, they called for co-ordinated efforts to cut unnecessary use of antibiotics and support development of new ones, including by creating new economic models and investing in research.
GlaxoSmithKline chief executive officer Andrew Witty said the difficulty of finding new antibiotics was highlighted by the fact that mass screenings of hundreds of millions of chemicals at GSK and two other large firms over nine years had yielded zero potential new drugs.
Since new antibiotics will likely be kept in reserve for emergencies, possible new market models could include upfront payments so profits would not depend on sales volumes.
Any use of antibiotics promotes the development and spread of so-called super bugs, multi-drug-resistant infections that can evade the medicines designed to kill them.
Markets
CHICAGO, Ill. (Reuters) — U.S. cattle producers have called on CME Group Inc. and federal legislators to rein in price volatility they say has rendered the world’s largest livestock futures market ineffective.
Two groups of cattle producers agree volatility last year was extreme and a problem, but clash on the cause. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association blames price swings on high-frequency traders, and R-CALF USA says the nation’s largest meat packers fueled price swings.
In a letter last week, the group told CME executive chair Terrence Duffy that CME needs to do more to police high-frequency traders, including introducing a one-second delay between trading actions and cracking down on traders who cancel orders too often.
“The effectiveness of cattle futures contracts as a viable risk management tool is being called into question due to concerns over high-frequency trading,” the letter said.
Meat producers and feeders use CME’s futures contracts to offset the risk of owning cattle. High-frequency traders are speculators who can move trades in a fraction of a second.
European crops
LONDON, U.K. (Reuters) — A drop in temperatures has improved the outlook for winter wheat in France, Germany and Britain, preventing crops from becoming too advanced and thus curbing the threat from pests and disease.
Crops in Poland, where temperatures have dropped as low as -25 C at night, may have suffered some winterkill although the impact is not yet known.
“I am taking a relaxed view of the frosts as most of Germany has deep enough snow cover to prevent significant damage,” one German grains analyst said.
“The fall in temperatures following the unusually warm November and December is even welcome as we do not want plants to get too much of an advanced growth stage which would in turn leave them very vulnerable to frost damage,” the analyst added.
