BSE BAN RECONSIDERED
Britain is considering lifting its ban on meat from cattle over 30 months old. The ban, unique to British cattle, is meant to reduce the chance that people will get vCJD from eating BSE-infected meat. But Christl Donnelly and Neil Ferguson at Imperial College, London, calculate that consumption of beef from cattle older than 30 months that have tested negative for BSE 鈥� which is not foolproof 鈥� would cause only 0.04 more cases of vCJD in the UK in the next 60 years. However, the researchers calculate uncertainties in the data mean the risk could be 40 times higher.
CAESIUM SEIZED
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Thai police have arrested a man in Bangkok trying to sell 30 kilograms of powdered caesium-137, a highly radioactive material that could be used in 鈥渄irty bombs鈥�. The material allegedly came from Russia, where last year the International Atomic Energy Agency warned that a number of large boxes of powdered caesium had gone missing. Just a few grams of caesium in a dirty bomb would be enough to force the evacuation of a city centre.
TRANSGENE WARNING
People can inadvertently carry transgenes from modified crops into the natural environment, French researchers are warning. Jean-Fran莽ois Arnaud鈥檚 team at Lille University has found that seeds are more likely than pollen to spread genes from GM sugar beet into wild relatives, and they are easily carried in soil on farm machinery, personnel and trucks. Tests show conventional beet seeds can travel 1.5 kilometres from their starting point (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2003.2407).
KENYAN LIONS MASSACRED
African lions are being speared to death within sight of the headquarters of one of the continent鈥檚 largest conservation bodies. A group of Maasai tribesmen living inside the 50-year-old Nairobi National Park have declared they want to trophy-hunt all the lions in the park, which also houses 500 officials of the Kenya Wildlife Service. Local ecologist Mike Norton-Griffiths claims 48 lions have been killed in the past 4 years. Six lions have been killed in the past three weeks alone, leaving just eight.