Biotech giant fined
Syngenta has been fined $375,000 by the US Department of Agriculture for mistakenly selling an unauthorised strain of genetically engineered maize. The rogue corn produces the same bacterial protein as an authorised strain, but the gene responsible is at a different location in the plant鈥檚 DNA.
Park burn
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Investigations are under way into how attempts to burn 20 hectares of bush as a safety measure in Wilsons Promontory National Park, the southernmost point of mainland Australia, ran out of control. The fire, which started on 1 April and was still burning 10 days later, has laid waste to at least 6100 hectares.
Volcano threat
Nature seems to have it in for Sumatra. After the tsunami in December and the massive earthquake in March, the Indonesian island got a scare from a volcano. Mount Talang, 40 kilometres east of the city of Padang in western Sumatra, started spewing ash before dawn on 12 April. Four villages on the fertile slopes of the 2900-metre volcano were evacuated.
Flu jump
The H5N1 bird flu virus that has killed at least 51 people in east Asia has now been found in pigs in Indonesia. This raises the fear that H5N1 in pigs might recombine with human-adapted viruses that also infect pigs, to form a hybrid capable of causing a human pandemic.
Cloned meat
Beef and milk from cloned cattle is of as good quality or better than the same produce from conventionally bred cattle, according to research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0500140102). Food from cloned livestock is not available anywhere, but in the US the Food and Drug Administration is expected to make a decision soon on whether it can be sold.