Drought in China; millions at risk

Feb 26, 2010, ST

Crops hit and it may have to turn to imports

A resident walks across a partially dried reservoir basin in Shilin in China's Yunnan province. Millions of hectares of crops have been affected by the severe drought in the south-western region of the country, including sugar, rubber, wheat and vegetables. -- PHOTO: REUTERS

BEIJING: A severe drought in south-western China has left more than seven million people without adequate drinking water and hit hectares of crops there.

It is the worst dry spell in 60 years for Yunnan province, the country's second-largest producer of sugar cane and rubber.

The local agricultural bureau said that the drought, which began late last year, has affected a total of 2.55 million ha of crops, including wheat and vegetables, accounting for 85 per cent of the province's total growing area.

Farmers have almost completed harvesting sugar cane and will start tapping rubber trees in April.

Lower Chinese output could force China, a major rubber consumer, to import more.

Also badly hit is the neighbouring province of Guizhou, whose reservoirs and hydro-power generated electricity supplies are at risk.

The drought has also affected the top sugar producing region of Guangxi.

That could cut China's production to only 11 million tonnes in the 12 months to September, 12 per cent lower than the previous year, and not enough to meet the country's demand, according to the China Sugar Association.

Nearly six million people and 3.6 million head of livestock are facing drinking water shortages in Yunnan.

If the drought continues, the number of people without sufficient drinking water will rise to 7.92 million next month, Xinhua news agency cited Yunnan Governor Qin Guangrong as saying.

In addition, more crop land will be affected and grain production will be greatly reduced.

On Tuesday, Mr Qin said the risk of forest fires would increase as the drought persisted.

Local fire control officials say that at least 84 forest fires have been reported in the province since November, up 611 per cent from the same period the previous year.

Xinhua said 21 Chinese boats had been grounded and crews rescued on the Lancang-Mekong River, which is at its lowest level in 50 years.

The local authorities have stopped issuing permits to vessels to cross the border because the river is flowing at only half the normal level.

XINHUA, REUTERS

Have you 'poked' your MP today?

Five years ago, the PAP's Penny Low (above) became the first MP to have a blog. -- ST PHOTO: DESMOND WEE

Madam Phua tossing yusheng with residents in her Paya Lebar ward on Monday. -- PHOTO: COURTESY OF CYNTHIA CHUA

A photo on Dr Lim's Facebook page of himself and ministers K. Shanmugam and Khaw Boon Wan at a constituency countdown party for 2010. -- PHOTO: COURTESY OF LIM WEE KIAK

Feb 20, 2010

More than half of the 81 PAP Members of Parliament have taken to the social networking site Facebook to complement their online presence. What has their cyber experience been like? Are they still finding their way around or have they got into their stride?

By Zakir Hussain

Enter Web 2.0

ADVANCEMENTS to Internet applications, however, meant websites that leveraged on Web 2.0 technologies - those that allow readers to interact directly with one another and make it easy to produce, publish and share content with little effort - had an advantage over others.

As blogs took off here, Foreign Minister George Yeo became the first Cabinet minister to blog on the sites of two constituency activists in 2006.

Twelve new MPs born after Independence tagged themselves as the post-65ers and started group blog P65.sg to write about their constituency work and discuss topical issues with youth who may not read mainstream media.

The move came after a call by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to new MPs to establish themselves with voters and hold the ground ahead of the next elections, which must be held by February 2012.

Significantly, the blog allowed readers to comment, but soon fell silent as contributions slowed, with some MPs simply posting their parliamentary speeches. It was later relaunched to include a wide range of committed contributors.

But Internet-savvy party members were worried that anti-PAP voices were drowning out the party's views online.

The party began a quiet campaign to get members to go into Internet forums and blogs to rebut anti-establishment views that were rampant.

Still, it lacked an online platform to engage directly with a growing number of netizens on a personal level.

As Facebook, which started in 2004, caught on rapidly in recent years, several MPs began to dabble in it.

Ms Low and Mr Yeo aside, pioneers include Community Development, Youth and Sports Minister Vivian Balakrishnan, Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Community Development, Youth and Sports and Transport Teo Ser Luck, and MPs Zaqy Mohamed of Hong Kah GRC and Lim Wee Kiak of Sembawang GRC.

By comparison, opposition MPs Low Thia Khiang and Sylvia Lim of the Workers' Party (WP) and Mr Chiam See Tong of the Singapore People's Party (SPP) do not have Facebook pages of their own, but have sites managed by their supporters. However, their parties - like the NSP - rely on their websites, which are regularly updated, to get their views across.

As Dr Gillian Koh of the Institute of Policy Studies observes, the opposition is somewhat less trusting of the mainstream media and the key parties have chosen to use the Internet to record speeches in full and give their alternative points of view.

However, they do not seem to directly engage netizens much through their formal sites or blogs.

The situation is different in Facebook pages set up by the WP Youth Wing or Reform Party chief Kenneth Jeyaretnam, which post regular updates of events and photos of walkabouts and activities.

The SDP is the only opposition party that updates its website almost daily and allows readers to post comments on its main website.

zakirh@sph.com.sg

In good governance, we learnt that the government uses a number of channels such as media, Meet-the-people's sessions, emails and Feedback units to communicate with the citizens. The latest is using web 2.0 technologies such as the social network platforms, for example, Facebook. What are your views about them using the new technologies to engage the citizens? Will this be more effective?

Survey for 3EA

Please do the survey at the school e-learning portal.

1. Log in to School e-learning portal
2. Click the tab 'Survey' for students.

3. Click Geography/ History

Deadline is 28 February. Thanks!

Topics for CA 1

3E

Geography: - Chapter 1, Introduction to Issues in Physical and Human Geography

Chapter 2, Map Reading and Basic Techniques

Social Studies- Chapter 2, Governance in Singapore

5N

Geography: - Chapter 11, Food Consumption

Chapter 12, Intensity of Food Production

Social Studies: SBQ: Chapter 2: Sustaining Economic Development

SEQ: Chapter 3: Rise of Venice

Time: 1 hour

Marks: 30m

Genes aside, you are what you eat

8 Feb 2010
To keep obesity at bay, exercise discipline at the dinner table
By John McBeth, Senior Writer

FOR the life of me, I can't understand the attraction of The Biggest Loser, the Hallmark reality television show where grossly fat people compete to see how much weight they can lose - and then probably put it all back on later.

That's because I can't help thinking to myself how such young, able-bodied people could have become so overweight in the first place if they had eaten properly, played sport or even got off the couch occasionally.

The programme makes no real effort to explain that. Instead, we are treated to the spectacle of competitors with unbelievable rolls of fat sweating and straining to take off a few pounds each week.

I assume they were all given a prior medical check. But is it really good for people carrying that much weight to exert themselves in such a manner? Shouldn't they be doing some fast walking first?

'It must be morbid fascination, but I just like watching all those fat people,' says one of my friends, a slimly-built teacher and physical education instructor. 'Maybe it makes me feel better that I'm not as fat as that.'

Obviously, genes play a big role in determining a person's susceptibility to weight gain - but only up to a point, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), whose figures on obesity are still less than comprehensive.

But with an estimated 300 million people worldwide now defined as clinically obese, WHO points the main finger of blame at 'energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods with high levels of sugar and saturated fats'.

The Biggest Loser Asia is the biggest eye-opener. The 16 initial contestants weighed in at a staggering 2,307kg, or an average of 144kg. Their average age was 30, with the youngest being 19 and the oldest 41.

What my teacher friend notices is that the Asians in the programme lack the work ethic of their American counterparts and tend to be the biggest whiners. The need to speak English means the contestants are relatively well educated and that in turn suggests a more privileged upbringing and all that that entails in Asia.

Many also have a broad American accent, which probably partly explains why they have a weight problem in the first place. There is also that thing in Asia about fat children being some sort of status symbol.

But the point is, only a few decades ago, one would have hardly seen a fat person in a region where skinny reigned supreme. What changed it all was economic growth - and with it, the explosion of American fast-food restaurants.

The only such outlet in Bangkok I can remember in the early 1970s was a small Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) joint on downtown Silom Road, with a big cut-out of Colonel Sanders standing on the potholed footpath outside.

It wasn't very popular with the Thais. In fact, back in those days rice was king and most Thais wouldn't even look at Western food. Why would they, when they have arguably the world's best cuisine?

Fast forward to 2003 and there are now 281 KFC outlets in Thailand - plus another 650 or more across Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia. Then add the 750 McDonald's and 370 Pizza Hut outlets that have sprouted in the same four countries.

The year 2003 was also when the Thai Public Health Ministry disclosed that 33.8 per cent of Thai females and 31.5 per cent of males were obese - a remarkable 50 per cent increase in only five years.

Perhaps more troubling was a second study, based on a weight-to-height ratio, showing that obesity among five- to 12-year-old Thai children rose from 12.2 per cent to 16 per cent in just two years.

For all the fast-food temptations, Asians are still a lot thinner than their Western counterparts. More than 60 per cent of Americans, for example, are either overweight or obese, including 20 per cent of teenagers.

On one recent Biggest Loser show, a 212lb (96kg) American woman, tensely preparing to mount the scales, said she was worried that eating out with her friends on just one evening had undone her recent weight loss.

Why? Didn't she look at what she was eating? Hasn't anyone heard of a little discipline at the dinner table?

Most of us eat fast food occasionally. I hate to say it, but every six months or so, I get the urge for a KFC fix myself. But in my experience, the whole issue for children revolves around decent parenting.

I had to eat everything on my plate before I was allowed to leave the table. As a result, there is not a single vegetable I don't like - even those that I used to hate. In fact I'm sure I eat more vegetables than most so-called vegetarians. That is the result of the decent parenting my generation received.

But how many times have I sat down with a lot of my younger friends and watched their children simply refuse to look at anything grown in a garden. They don't know what they're missing.

Of course, we won't be discussing beer drinking in this column.

thane.cawdor@gmail.com

So what are the reasons for obesity to take place according to this article?