WORLD HUNGER
Hunger still stalks the planet. Statistics released last week by the UN show that, outside China, there are 50 million more undernourished people than there were six years ago. At this year鈥檚 World Summit, governments cheered news that 20 million fewer people go to bed hungry, but the UN Food and Agriculture Organization鈥檚 new figures show that only Chinese bellies are filling, as the country now has more than 70 million fewer hungry people than before. Around the world an estimated 840 million people are undernourished, with the recent increase being concentrated in central Africa.
RETURN OF THE WHALERS
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The International Whaling Commission has voted to allow Iceland back in. Ironically, Iceland itself cast the decisive vote in the 19-to-18 ballot. It had walked out in 1991 in protest at the whaling ban imposed in 1986. While it still refuses to sign up to the ban, it has agreed to not resume commercial catches until 2006, which convinced some anti-whaling nations to withdraw their opposition. Conservationists will see Iceland鈥檚 readmission as a blow to the IWC鈥檚 credibility. The meeting also allowed aboriginal people in Russia and the US whose land borders the Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort Seas to resume subsistence hunting of bowhead whales.
DESTRUCTION DEFERRED
Russia has won an extension to its 2007 deadline for destroying its 40,000 tonnes of chemical weapons, the world鈥檚 largest stockpile. The deadline had been set by the Chemical Weapons Convention, but at a meeting in The Hague last week, Moscow said it could not afford to destroy the weapons on time, partly because the US Congress is blocking promised financial assistance. Without a reprieve Russia might have withdrawn from the CWC, which would have effectively scuppered the treaty. The deadline will now be extended a year at a time until Russia has finished the job.