Comments on: Wednesday Night #1356

By: Diana Thébaud Nicholson

Diana Thébaud Nicholson — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 19:31:14 +0000

China’s inflation hit 8.7% in February, the highest rate in over 11 years, the National Statistics Bureau said.
Soaring food prices were driving inflation, up 23.3% in February against the previous year, the bureau said.
It attributed the jump to snow storms last month that caused widespread disruption and to seasonal price rises over the Lunar New Year holiday.
Analysts had predicted a rise of 8.0% but the figure, up from 7.1% in January, was higher than forecast.
In recent months inflation has continued to rise despite higher interest rates and other measures by Beijing to keep the economy from overheating.
This is a serious concern for the government, which fears higher food prices could trigger social unrest.

By: Diana Thébaud Nicholson

Diana Thébaud Nicholson — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:40:50 +0000

Food prices hurt poverty fight, UN warns
Soaring prices for food and energy, coupled with the growing threat of climate change, are hurting the world’s efforts to reach the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals on poverty, officials said at a meeting at the UN headquarters Monday. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told BBC in an interview that the recent steep increases in food prices concern him deeply and that agencies such as the World Food Programme may be forced to cut their aid, but he also expressed optimism about progress in sub-Saharan Africa. BBC (3/11) , USA TODAY/Associated Press (3/10)

By: Diana Thébaud Nicholson

Diana Thébaud Nicholson — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 03:17:34 +0000

China Sticking With One-Child Policy
China’s controversial one-child-per-couple law will remain in place for at least the next decade, government officials said Monday. Their statement ended weeks of speculation about whether China was considering abandoning the program to pave the way for more babies amid an aging population. The New York Times (3/11)

By: Diana Thébaud Nicholson

Diana Thébaud Nicholson — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 09:44:18 +0000

Guy Stanley responds to Paul Wells’ column of February 23:
I think the fooling around with OECD data–i.e. making a virtue out of what is actually an indicator of failure — Canada’s ratio of business research to higher ed research–is the response to years of failure in making sense of most science-based files except possibly public health and agriculture. (Hence disastrous fishery management, disastrous forestry situation, steep decline of biotech and telecom commercial competitiveness, and of course the goofy way we’re backing into global warming issues.) Canada actually lacks programs and institutions that more successful countries have put in place to accelerate adaptation to the knowledge-based economy and at the federal level anyway this doesn’t seem to work its way through to ministers’ briefings. Nor are media really interested in those stories.
Paul [Wells] may not think the closing of the chief scientist’s office matters, but the recent editorial in Nature pointing to Canada as a science-unfriendly country will certainly undermine our reputation globally. As to the condition of our universities, McGill is not exactly representative as its students are very smart & come from every continent. I think Canada is probably on a par with other countries that essentially treat universities like public utilities and where there are no deeply endowed centres–most of the OECD in other words. There are plenty of well-informed researchers, but the creative links between science & engineering and industry that one finds at MIT & Stanford are not here at the scale required despite exceptions like Waterloo and some of the industry-related programs in Montreal. Canada’s health care program, another
potential engine of adaptation, is handicapped because of a very retarded approach to technology (documented in a recent Conference Board report by the way.) Basically, no one is held responsible for poor outcomes and so there is no focus brought to bear. Now that Asia seems to have drained the west of so much productive capital, we may have reached a tipping point of
some kind…but most of Canada’s problems I think are related to poor policies and sub-standard organization rather than lack of resources.