Author: WHES

The ‘food bubble’ is bursting, says Lester Brown, and biotech won’t save us

For years — even decades — Earth Policy Institute president and Grist contributor Lester Brown has issued Cassandra-like warnings about the global food system. His argument goes something like this: Global grain demand keeps rising, pushed up by population growth and the switch to more meat-heavy diets; but grain production can only rise so much, constrained by limited water and other resources. So, a food crisis is inevitable.

Sudan’s leader reaches out ahead of a referendum on independence for the South

YEI, Sudan — President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who for so long brutally prosecuted the civil war in southern Sudan, arrived here in the region on Tuesday, offering a conciliatory message five days ahead of a historic referendum for southern independence.

Ravindra Misal: Trying to help some of India’s poor and caste-restricted young (and himself) achieve upward mobility by beginning to learn the ways of those in higher strata of society

I came to Umred to write about a riot. A few months earlier, power blackouts that rural Indians always suffered silently triggered a violent reaction. Why? Umred was just another small town in the middle of nowhere, dusty and underwhelming. But Umred had begun to dream, townspeople told me, because of television, because of cousins with tales of call-center jobs and freedom in the city. Once Umred contracted ambition, blackouts became intolerable. A psychological revolution, a revolution in expectations, had taken place.

In India, a struggle for moderation as a young Moslem woman quietly battles extremism

It was Sept. 11, 2001. Television sets in the mosques, tea shops and market were beaming images of the World Trade Center engulfed in flames in New York. Five months later, Rubina’s house was burning as Hindu mobs torched Muslim areas of her city, leaving thousands of people homeless. She remembers smoke hovering over Ahmedabad just as it had over New York