BBC: Polygamy no fun, admits Ethiopian

From BBC: Polygamy no fun, admits Ethiopian:

An Ethiopian man with 11 wives and 77 children is urging people not to follow his example and is giving advice on family planning and contraception.

After seeing his fortune disappear under the competing demands of his enormous family, Ayattu Nure, 56, even urges people not to get married.

Mr Ayattu says he used to be rich and wanted to share his wealth around, which is why he took so many wives.

But now he struggles to feed them all.

"I feel like killing myself when I see my hungry children whom I cannot help," Mr Ayattu says.

His wives have given birth to more than 100 children but 23 have died.

Too much of a good thing.

The news report

From The Star: Minor hiccups and a handful of arrests during run:

KUALA LUMPUR: Two minor incidents occurred during the Malaysian leg of the Olympic torch run here, resulting in several foreigners including a monk being detained.

At Dataran Merdeka, where the event began, a Japanese couple and their five-year-old son and another foreigner were detained for wearing T-shirts with the wordings “Free Tibet.”

Another scuffle also ensued before the run in Dataran Merdeka when a group of Chinese national students took away a banner emblazoned with the word “Liberty” from a 24-year-old woman known only as Gek.

It was learnt that the group hit Gek’s head at least three times and chanted “One world, one dream, one China”.

The situation was defused when another woman calmed the members down and told them not to create trouble.

It was revealed later that the banner did not belong to Gek, but to Hafiz Noor Shams, 26, who said he came to the torch relay “to witness things”.

Asked on his intentions in bringing such a banner, Hafiz said that it was only a one-word banner.

“But they are free to interpret however they like,” he said, admitting that he was pro-Tibet.

And now we know more behind the Malaysians support China, demoralizes Tibetans story. And while I was reading that, I saw this gem:

Malaysians support China, demoralizes Tibetans

Eyewitness account, reproduced as per email received, complete with typos and errors:

Just came back from dataran merdeka.

see the olympic torch relay,

Many people with China flag then suddenly saw one guy with a card board saying 'liberty' (tibet supporter i guess).

not even 3 seconds he hold up the card, suddenly came a wave
of people with China flag covered him.

he managed to slip through, then he passed the card board to his fren a lady,

then one guy with china flag gave fying kick kung fu style to the lady then she dropped the card then another guy with china flag took the card away and brought it to his group of about 200 people holding china flag. then that poor lady tried to run away from the crowd and misteriously ran towards us [editor: names omitted]followed by group of jounalists and followed by a wave of people with china flag. so if u see us in any newspaper or magazine ,just act cool okay.

then lastly about 1000 people with china flag swarmed that lady and the police didnt do anything .thats the end of tibetan protest at the Malaysia olympic torch relay.

lesson learnt: if u want to do a protest make sure they are more than 2 of you muahahahaha

Didn't even know we had China supporters. Keep this in mind if it hits the papers.

Malaysia: Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll

The sex

From The Star: Homosexuals caught in the act in toilets:

SOME homosexuals are alleged to be using public toilets in shopping centres in Kuala Lumpur to engage in unnatural sexual acts, Harian Metro reported.

The daily quoted a guard at a shopping centre in Bukit Bintang, Mohd Hamdan Zainuddin, 44, as saying that cleaners and payment collectors outside the toilets had discovered the homosexuals’ activities.

Berita Harian highlighted a report about a national service trainee who had complained she was suffering from a haemorrhoid at a camp in Kemaman but ended up giving birth to a baby boy at a hospital nearby.

National Service Training Department director Datuk Abdul Hadi Awang Kechil said the unmarried trainee did not reveal she was pregnant when she reported to the camp on March 18. Even her family was unaware about it.

Okay, I lied about the drugs. There aren't any. But there is rock & roll. It's just not a very interesting article. It's basically a puff piece about a Datuk who used to play the drums back in the day. There is a story about excesses, though.

From The Star: Some own 700 cars each:

ABOUT 30 rich men in the country own between 100 and 700 cars each, reported China Press.

Quoting sources from the Road Transport Department (JPJ), the daily reported that these men registered the vehicles under their names for collection purposes.

One of the sources believes the owners had bought the cars to avoid paying income tax. Most of these cars were not used as some owners did not even renew their road tax.

There. Told you.

I love food

From BBC: World Bank echoes food cost alarm:

The rapid rise in food prices could push 100m people in poor countries deeper into poverty, the head of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, has said.

His warning follows that from the leader of the International Monetary Fund, who said hundreds of thousands of people are at risk of starvation.

Mr Zoellick proposed an action plan to boost long-run agricultural production.

There have been food riots recently in a number of countries, including Haiti, the Philippines and Egypt.

"Based on a rough analysis, we estimate that a doubling of food prices over the last three years could potentially push 100 million people in low-income countries deeper into poverty," Mr Zoellick said.

The World Bank and its sister organisation, the IMF have held a weekend of meetings that addressed rising food and energy prices as well as the credit crisis upsetting global financial markets.

Food prices have risen sharply in recent months, driven by increased demand, poor weather in some countries that has ruined crops and an increase in the use of land to grow crops for transport fuels.

GLOBAL FOOD PRICE RISES

Wheat: 130%
Soya: 87%
Rice: 74%
Corn: 31%
Time: Year to March 2008

The price of staple crops such as wheat, rice and corn have all risen, leading to an increase in overall food prices of 83% in the last three years, the World Bank has said.

It's only been very recently in our history that the world has been able to experience a situation where there's enough food for everyone. For millennia, people have had to fight for food and live on subsistence. Today, we've become so comfortable that we've moved from eating to live to living to eat. And I can attest to the 'live to eat' philosophy.

This is scary to us, because our generation has never faced this. We've always had an abundance of food and been spoiled for choice. We've been guilty of gluttony more than once. Riots due to lack of food have been happening ever since governments formed. Food riots littered the history of the Roman, Egyptian and Greek empires, and now they're happening again.

What's interesting is that TIME magazine reports ethanol fuel as a cause. Not all ethanol fuel, simply the ones that come from corn. It takes too much land and too much corn for ethanol fuel from this source to be efficient. Rainforests are being razed to grow the corn to sell to Americans to make ethanol fuel. Counter-intuitive, isn't it? The amount of corn it takes to produce just 1 tank of gas for 1 SUV could feed a person for 1 year. Yet, corn is the source of choice being promoted by politicians worldwide as the saviour to our energy crisis. In the process, they've also caused a food crisis which, is much more serious than a mere energy crisis.

The effects are dire. 1 billion people are below the poverty line, and much closer to famine than we are. A small increase in the price of food would seriously mitigate the amount of food that they get from goodwill organisations. The head of the United Nations Food Programme is calling a state of emergency. They say that they will need an additional US$500 million to simply meet their projections for the year. The number of poor, previously forecasted to decrease in the next few years, is now predicted to increase.

How do we stop the snowball? In this day and age of social responsibility and social consciousness, how easy is it to tell someone that this kind of ethanol fuel is bad for both the environment and people? Trying to simply say the words will get you a series of looks of horror that you would simply suggest such a thing.

The fact of the matter is that there are other sources of ethanol fuel that are much more efficient, such as sugar cane, which can be produced on much smaller pieces of land. Malaysian petrol companies (company?) are looking at a whole different kind of source: a poisonous berry that grows on semi-arid land, which takes little processing to produce oil. A source that doesn't take away food from people, can be grown on land that isn't already used for grazing or agriculture, and can be used to combat desertification.

The answer to the world's problems? We've heard that before.