Summary of newsmakers of the previous day – 13.9. 2007

Genetics rules over fields also outside Europe

Two specialists from the Agrarian Chamber of the CR, Ing. Jiří Felčárek and Ing.Jaroslava Nekvasilová, have been recently at a work intership abroad. Both have many interesting remarks in some of which they shared in following article. Jiří Felčárek participated in a two-day negotiation of POCC (Political Coordination Committee at COPA/COGECA, an association covering non-governmental EU organizations) on genetically modified organisms (GMO). After his return he evaluated skeptically a denial approach of the European Union to wider use of GMO crops.

Prazdroj increase price of beer. Reputedly because of prices of barley

Pilsner Prazdroj will increase price of beer by 6 - 8 percent from November. The firm asserts that it is owing to prices of barley on European market. It reputedly increased year-on-year to double. I don´t remember such price escalation as we face now. The present price of one ton of Czech barley approximates double of last year's price. We are forced to adapt ourselves to actual prices”, a manager of brewery Mike Short said. According to him prices of raw materials grow in the entire Europe so breweries and malt plants which produce from imported raw materials face the same pressure. Malt barley represents in beer a major item of production costs.

Bursík: The Czech Republic will not be in the Secure Council because of Klaus

The president Václav Klaus can endanger, according to the vice-premier Martin Bursík (Green Party) chances of the Czech Republic to become an instable member of the Secure Council of UNO in 2008 - 2009. According to Bursík, when Klaus present his opinions in UNO on climatic changes, the Czech Republic will lose votes of island states which fight with increasing levels of oceans. “I believe that if he brings such sharp speech, we will not get votes of island states”, the vice-premier said to ČTK and TV Nova.

There are still few whales

According to geneticists a population of whales has not recovered from centuries of fishing. Gray whale experienced with people many difficulties; experts never doubt of it. Estimation spoke on that since the 17th century whalers killed approximately a third of their population. However, a team from Stanford University in Palo Alto in Californial argues that this number is probably quite underestimated. A group of scientists did not rely on common ways of estimation of past whale populations, so on data on fares. Records of whalers on numbers of killed animals and harpooned but not hunted whales served as a base for population models.