www.theaustralian.news.com.au From The Sunday Times February 03, 2003

THE myth of overpopulation this century is to be buried by a UN report that will show that average fertility rates will decline to Western levels by 2050. Fears of a population time bomb have dominated environmentalists' and demographers' predictions for decades. Malthusian doom-mongers will be disconcerted by the UN findings, out later this month, which will reveal that women are likely to bear an average of only 1.85 children in all countries by the middle of the century.

Families in developing countries are beginning to limit the number of their offspring as much as those in the West.

"All the evidence suggests fertility is falling rapidly in developing countries with no sign it is going to stop at the magical number of two," said Larry Heligman of the UN population division. "Countries are changing, society is changing."

In Thailand in the 1970s, women were bearing an average of five children. The most recent figures, for 2000, put the number at just under two.

Jintana Aromdee, 33, comes from the rural northeast of Thailand, where big families were the norm until her generation. She has chosen to have only two children.

Infant mortality and childhood diseases previously made it imperative for families to raise sons to work in the fields, while daughters did manual work and household chores.

But as prosperity grew, clean water and basic healthcare meant children were more likely to survive. At the same time, family planning education gave parents new options. "Children are expensive," said Aromdee, who now lives in Bangkok. "All my sisters and cousins, we have only small families."

Women bear on average 2.7 children worldwide, but figures for the West are much lower. In Britain, the fertility rate is 1.61 per woman. In Italy, where the Pope appealed to his flock to produce more babies, the figure stands at 1.2. In Spain it is 1.13 and Russia 1.14.

The real surprise, however, has been the rush towards Western birth rates in previously exploding populations. In Iran, where women bore on average 6.5 "soldiers for Islam" at the height of the Khomeini revolution in the early 1980s, family planning has brought the figure down to just 2.75. Similar downward trends can be seen in Indonesia, India, Tunisia and Brazil.

The UN releases an authoritative report on population trends every two years. In 2000 the average fertility figure for 2050 was estimated at 2.1 children – the replacement level – but recent shifts have been so remarkable that the forthcoming report for 2002 will reduce this projected world average to 1.85. The current Western average stands at 1.6.

Alarmist predictions of a world population of more than 10 or 11 billion by mid-century would not be reached, said Mr Heligman. By 2075, the population could have shrunk by half a billion.

Environmentalists who have predicted famine and scarcity will be confounded by these figures, said Ron Bailey, author of Ecoscam: the False Prophets of Ecological Apocalypse.

"Their fears have been driven mostly by biologists, who compare human beings to antelope or deer," he said. "Animals turn more food into offspring, but countries with the most food don't have more offspring."

icwales.icnetwork.co.uk Feb 3 2003

The Western Mail - The National Newspaper Of Wales

ANTI-WAR MPs who claim ministers have breached international law by threatening nuclear reprisals on Iraq are calling for legal action against the Government.

Plaid Cymru has published a dossier of evidence to show "re-peated threats" represent "a clear `material breach' of international law". The group will send the document to seven anti-nuclear states this week calling on them to initiate proceedings against the Government at the International Court of Justice.

The group will also table an Early Day Motion to outline its position and secure cross-party support from anti-war MPs growing increasingly uneasy about the quickening pace towards conflict in the Gulf.

Carmarthen East and Dinefwr MP Adam Price, who prepared the dossier, argues that comments by Ministers, including Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, violate the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The Treaty states no nuclear weapon state can threaten or use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear weapon state.

The Government's own dossier detailing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, published last year, concludes the state is one to two years away from producing a nuclear weapon.

Plaid's document lists comments by Europe Minister Denis McShane and the Defence Secretary, who in March 2002 told the Defence Select Committee Iraq should be "abso-lutely confident" that "in the right conditions we would be willing to use our nuclear weapons".

Plaid wants the seven members of the anti-nuclear New Agenda group of non-aligned countries to initiate proceedings against the Government in the International Court of Justice.

The countries - Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Sweden and South Africa - declared in 1998 their demand for the "total elimination" of nuclear weapons.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said the department had been "round this loop" with anti-war and anti-nuclear campaign groups in the past and dismissed Plaid's case as "nonsense".

www.forbes.com Reuters, 02.02.03, 9:06 AM ET

JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Texas - As Americans mourned the deaths of seven astronauts, teams of police and soldiers fanned across Texas searching for clues as to what caused the space shuttle Columbia to break apart as it returned to Earth, just 16 minutes from landing at its base. President George W. Bush vowed the space shuttle program would continue.

MOSCOW - A Russian cargo rocket carrying fuel and food to the International Space Station blasted off from Russia's cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, a day the Columbia disaster.

BAGHDAD - Doubts over a possible visit to Iraq by top U.N. arms inspectors this week deepened when an Iraqi official appeared to reject conditions they had set for the trip.

BAGHDAD - U.N. weapons inspectors combed more sites in Iraq for prohibited weapons.

WASHINGTON - It substitutes pure energy for munitions. It is designed to achieve military objectives without killing people or wrecking buildings. Saddam Hussein's armed forces could become the first targets of a U.S. microwave secret weapon.

NEW YORK - In the U.S. war plan for Iraq, more than 3,000 precision-guided bombs and missiles would pound the Iraqi military in the first 48 hours, paving the way for a two-pronged ground invasion to topple Saddam's government, The New York Times said.

LAGOS - An explosion ripped open the front of a four-storey bank in central Lagos, killing at least 20 people.

ABIDJAN - Opposition supporters stormed onto Abidjan streets and burned barricades after the suspected killing of a comedian triggered their biggest protest since Ivory Coast's four-month civil war began. An aide to the president said renegotiation of a French-brokered peace accord was inevitable. Pope John Paul urged a reconciliation.

BERLIN - Germans voted in two state elections expected to inflict crushing defeats on Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats for presiding over mass unemployment, near-recession and unpopular tax hikes.

ATHENS - Greek police arrested a local politician suspected of belonging to the Popular Revolutionary Struggle urban guerrilla group, held responsible for more than 300 bomb attacks and two deaths in 20 years.

BELFAST - A senior Protestant guerrilla was shot dead and a second man also killed in an ambush late on Saturday in Belfast, the latest bloodshed in a spiralling feud within Northern Ireland's outlawed "loyalist" Ulster Defence Association.

BEIJING - An unemployed Chinese man armed with a soft drink can containing fuel tried to hijack a plane on an internal flight and take it to Taiwan, but was thwarted, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

SEOUL - South Korean President-elect Roh Moo-hyun sent an envoy to Washington to explain his policies on North Korea, amid ominous signs that the crisis involving the communist state's nuclear programme was deepening.

BOGOTA, Colombia - Marxist Colombian rebels freed a British reporter and a U.S. photographer after holding them hostage for nearly two weeks, hiding all the while from army attack.

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuelan opposition leaders staging a strike to oust President Hugo Chavez said they would scale back the faltering economic shutdown as they focused on a fresh campaign for early elections.

www.msnbc.com NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL  Feb. 10 issue

     —  Let’s call it the “excuse du jour.” For three years, we’ve heard serial explanations for the economy’s weakness. The latest is a looming war with Iraq. Aside from increasing oil prices, the war specter (it’s said) has created huge uncertainty that’s causing companies and consumers to postpone big spending decisions. Once the uncertainty lifts, we’ll get a decisive recovery. Don’t count on it.	  

              SINCE MID-2000, the U.S. economy has grown at an annual rate of 1.3 percent. Some quarters have been up, some down and some nearly stagnant (the growth rate for the last quarter of 2002 was a mere 0.7 percent). Every economic sputter inspires a new theory. The dot-com collapse. The “popping” of the stock “bubble.” The trauma of September 11. Corporate scandals and shattered investor confidence. And always: a strong recovery lies just ahead.

        There’s a pattern here. It involves psychology more than economics. We prefer temporary explanations to a grimmer possibility: that the U.S. economy faces prolonged slow growth—or stagnation. Better to believe that, once “temporary” problems are settled, the economy will spring back. After the dot-com funerals, things will be fine. If investor confidence is shot, then we’ll throw corporate crooks in jail and “reform” accounting.

        The war-with-Iraq theory fits the pattern and reigns in high places. Last week, the Federal Reserve endorsed it. (In a statement, the Fed said that “aspects of geopolitical risks have reportedly fostered continued restraint on spending and hiring by businesses.” An “improving economic climate” would emerge when the risks disappeared, as “most analysts expect.”) But there are two problems.

        First: temporary problems often aren’t temporary. Accounting scandals didn’t kill investor confidence. Low profits and big stock-market losses did. Maybe corporate “reforms” can cure the first. But they can’t cure low profits and the resulting portfolio losses. In the third quarter of 2002, U.S. corporate profits were 10 percent below their peak in 1997, says the Commerce Department. Likewise, the dot-com collapse was more than a temporary setback. It symbolized an ongoing absence of commercially viable—and needed—innovation.

        The thinking now is that a rapid victory over Iraq will mean lower oil prices and less uncertainty. Perhaps—or perhaps not. Consider a report from economists at Goldman Sachs. It says that a war could drive up oil prices by $10 to $15 a barrel, from today’s price of roughly $30. But even a quick U.S. triumph might not lower them to, say, $16 or $17 a barrel, says the report. Iraq can’t increase its output quickly. And hopeful analysts are said to have underestimated long-term production losses from Venezuela, now crippled by a national strike. Even if the strike ends, 15 percent of capacity may have been lost unless there’s “significant new investment.”

        Second: temporary explanations downplay the damage from the 1990s boom. It wasn’t just a stock-market bubble. Companies invested lavishly, expecting strong demand forever; now there’s surplus capacity almost everywhere. (The Fed’s industrial capacity utilization index is 75.4 compared with a 1972-2001 average of 81.5.) Consumers spent lavishly, enjoying new stock wealth. Both companies and consumers borrowed heavily.

        All this suggests a period of retrenchment. Companies cut investment and jobs. Gradually, surplus production capacity dwindles and profits revive. Consumers respond to falling stock prices and rising job insecurity by spending more cautiously. Both try to reduce debt. To some extent, this adverse logic has been muted: the Fed cut interest rates; Congress cut taxes; automakers offered cheap car loans; homeowners refinanced mortgages at lower interest rates. Still, the logic remains.      

It wouldn’t matter much if the rest of the world economy were robust. The United States would then export its way out of trouble. Unfortunately, Europe and Japan are both economically moribund. One lesson of the 1990s boom is that other countries became overdependent on America’s appetite for their exports. Global trade is now sputtering, too. The great danger is that simultaneous economic weaknesses in Europe, Japan and the United States feed on each other, intensifying pessimism and creating a new wave of financial crises.

        There’s no doubt the prospect of war with Iraq has deepened economic anxiety. Companies that say they’ve postponed projects are probably telling part of the truth. What they don’t say is that many of these projects were likely doomed anyway, given the weak underlying economy. The big picture matters most, and it’s dark, Iraq or not. It’s understandable that people favor a diagnosis that offers greater hope for a strong recovery. And a strong recovery may even come. It’s just that the odds in its favor aren’t especially good.

reuters.com Sat February 1, 2003 04:59 PM ET By Andrea Shalal-Esa

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government on Friday urged drug companies to begin marketing pills containing Prussian blue, an artist's pigment used for centuries that can also protect people exposed to a radioactive "dirty bomb."

The Food and Drug Administration called on pharmaceutical companies to apply for licenses to market 500-milligram pills of Prussian blue, or ferric hexacyanoferrate(II), saying it "has been shown to be safe and effective in treating people exposed to radioactive elements such as cesium-137."

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said the action was part of an effort to boost production of drugs that could be used in the event of another terrorist attack, especially one involving radioactive materials.

The FDA said Prussian blue, which binds with radioactive particles and expels them from the body, would be the first therapy available to decrease radiation exposure. The main side effects were constipation and stomach upset.

It said the drug could be used to treat patients with known or suspected internal contamination with radioactive thallium, non-radioactive thallium, or radioactive cesium.

FDA said cesium-137, found in the fallout from the detonation of nuclear weapons and in the waste from nuclear power plants, was of particular concern because it could potentially be use to build a dirty bomb. Exposure to cesium can cause serious illness and possibly cancer.

TREATMENT IN BRAZIL

An agency spokeswoman said Prussian blue is produced in the United States, but not under pharmaceutical standards. She said it has been used experimentally since the 1960s as an orally ingested drug to increase fecal excretion of cesium and thallium without it being absorbed through the intestines.

There are no other FDA-approved treatments for contamination with thallium or radioactive cesium, FDA said.

Prussian blue was used to treat 250 people in Brazil in 1987 after they were contaminated with cesium-137 abandoned after use in a cancer clinic, helping expel the radioactive materials more quickly.

U.S. authorities are holding Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen who was captured in May and is accused of plotting with al Qaeda to detonate such a device.

A so-called "dirty bomb" involves exploding a conventional bomb wrapped in radioactive material that can kill victims in the immediate area and spread highly toxic material to humans, causing mass death and injury.

Prussian blue was first synthesized in 1704 and has been used as an industrial and artist's pigment since 1724.