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[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[guardian.co.uk > Business > Investing]

Water funds tempt investors with booming growth
Investors look to water funds as alternative to volatile credit and equity markets, with water-technology businesses fuelling growth

Elena Moya
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 8 August 2010 15.40 BST
Article history

{Water funds are tempting investors, a surge fuelled by the water-technology business as utilities need to invest in new pipe work. Photograph: Frank Baron/Guardian}

Funds that invest in water are booming, as investors shy away from volatile credit and equity markets, and from commodities that have already reached dizzying heights.

Global water indices have gained about 9% so far this year, compared with a 4% drop of the FTSE 100 index, according to Guardian research. Water funds have proliferated to more than 100 over the past few years.

Growth is mostly fuelled by water-technology businesses, as utilities need to invest in the quality of pipes to reduce waste, investors say. The average person in the UK uses around 150 litres of water every day and of this around one third is wasted, according to Waterwise, an NGO.

"Water is scarce, and scarcity is a technology question," said Klaus Käempf, who manages the Sarasin Sustainable Water Fund in Basle, Switzerland.

The fund has gained 8.7% so far this year, after rising 33% in 2009. Success has attracted more investors, lifting the fund's size to €113m, from €33m at the end of 2008.

Geneva-based Pictet & Cie runs the biggest and oldest water fund, with €2.38bn under management. The portfolio, which is invested in water-related stocks around the world, has gained 24% over the past 12 months, and 9% so far this year. Almost half of the fund is allocated to the US, where municipal water companies such as Aqua America or California Water Service, are publicly traded.

The fund has dropped companies that produce water bottles since bottled-water consumption has fallen in developing countries over the past few years – amid high transportation and other costs.

Some of its top-performing holdings include Roper Industries, a US water meter maker, which has gained 20% this year, and Hyflux, a Singaporean water treatment company.

Asset managers say water investment is not a short-term bubble, or a safe alternative whose value may plunge when equity and credit markets stabilise and investors return to them. Water companies, – some of which are heavily regulated – have long-term investment horizons of as long as 30 years, to guarantee returns, investors say.

Demand is rising, since less than 1% of the planet's water is drinkable, and consumption increases as economies develop and become more affluent.

The UN estimates that global water requirements will grow by 40% by 2020. Every year millions of people, most of them children, die from diseases associated with inadequate water supply, sanitation, and hygiene, according to the UN. Every day 3,900 children die because of dirty water or poor hygiene, the World Health Organisation says.

Water demand is also pushed by technology and farming companies, as about 70% of fresh water is used in agriculture, Käempf said. Heavy water users also include chipmakers, such as ST Microelectronics, in Switzerland, he said.

Financial companies such as Janney Capital Markets in the US and Standard & Poor's have developed water indexes to track the sector. The S&P Global Water Index, for instance, has gained 9.5% over the past 12 months. Its holdings include Geberit AG, a German developer of sanitary technology. Britain's United Utilities, Severn Trent and Pennon Group are also part of the portfolio.

High returns are making investors pour more money into water funds. ETF Securities says that its water Exchange Traded Fund has $9m under management, a ten-fold increase from when it started in November 2008.


[guardian.co.uk > News > World news > Pakistan]

Monsoon rains threaten to worsen Pakistan's flood crisis
Authorities evacuate people living along swollen rivers as further downpours hamper efforts to help millions already affected

Associated Press in Sukkur
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 8 August 2010 14.17 BST
Article history

{Children displaced by flooding in north-west Pakistan attempt to protect their belongings from renewed downpours. Photograph: A Majeed/AFP/Getty Images}

Pakistani authorities evacuated people living alongside expanding rivers today as forecasts predicted further heavy rain that could worsen the country's flood crisis.

Officials estimate that as many as 13 million people have been affected by the worst flooding in the country's 63-year history. About 1,500 people have died, most of them in the north-west, the hardest-hit region.

Monsoon rains began about two weeks agoand have washed away roads, bridges and many communications lines, hampering rescue efforts by aid organisations and the government. The downpours have grounded many aircraft trying to rescue people and ferry aid, including six helicopters manned by US troops on secondment from Afghanistan.

Confidence in the national government's ability to cope has been shaken by the decision of the president, Asif Ali Zardari, to visit the UK and France amid the crisis.

Floodwaters receded somewhat on Friday in the north-west, but further torrential rain in the evening and early yesterday again swelled rivers and streams. Pakistani meteorologist Farooq Dar said heavy rains in Afghanistan were expected to make things even worse into today as the swollen waters of the Kabul river flowed into the region.

That will likely mean more woes for Punjab and Sindh provinces as well, as the torrents flow east and south.

An Associated Press reporter saw many people walking on foot and travelling in lorries towards safer places in Sindh, where tens of thousands have already fled and floodwaters have overcome many villages. Some Pakistanis, however, refused to leave their crops and homes.

"Let the flood come. We will live and die here," said Dur Mohammed, 75, who lives in a mud brick home in Dadli village.

Mohammed was one of 250 people in Dadli resisting evacuation, even though floodwaters had already reached the embankments of the Indus river less than a mile away. Many feared that if they left and the floods never came, their household items would be stolen.

Pakistan's military said it had rescued more than 100,000 people from flood-affected areas so far, with 568 army boats and 31 helicopters used for the operation.

The army was also providing food and tents to survivors, a statement said.

Some 30,000 Pakistani soldiers are rebuilding bridges, delivering food and setting up relief camps in the north-west, which is also the main battleground in the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban. Foreign countries and the UN have donated millions of dollars to the aid effort.

Nato said in a statement today that Pakistan had asked for help dealing with the floods. The alliance said it would help co-ordinate assistance offered by members and partner nations, including aid transport.

Islamist charities are also helping in the relief effort, including the Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation, which western officials believe is linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba. Lashkar is the militant group blamed for the deadly 2008 attacks in India's financial capital of Mumbai.

The Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation says it is running 12 medical facilities, providing cooked food for 100,000 people every day, and plans to open shelters soon.

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[guardian.co.uk > News > World news > Russia]

Russian troops dig canal around Sarov nuclear base as wildfires grow
Emergency action reported to have 'stabilised' situation at Sarov, the closed town where first Soviet nuclear bomb was built

Lin Jenkins
The Observer, Sunday 8 August 2010
Article history

{Heavy smog in Kriusha, Ryazan, 155 miles south of Moscow. Photograph: Denis Sinyakov/Reuters}

Russian troops dug a five-mile canal yesterday to protect a nuclear arms site from wildfires caused by a record heatwave.

The forest and peat fires have killed at least 52 people, made more than 4,000 homeless, diverted many flights and pushed air pollution in Moscow to six times its normal level, forcing some residents of the capital to wear surgical masks.

"The fire situation in the Moscow region is still tense, but there is no danger either for residential areas or for economic sites," an emergencies ministry spokesman said.

Weather forecasts said the smoke, which has reached even underground metro stations, would persist until Wednesday.

The canal was dug at Sarov, a closed town 220 miles east of Moscow, whose nuclear site, ringed by forest, produced the first Soviet atomic bomb in 1949 and remains Russia's main nuclear design and production facility.

The emergencies ministry said that the situation in Sarov had "stabilised", and Russia's nuclear chief assured President Dmitry Medvedev that all explosive and radioactive material had been removed from the nuclear site as a precautionary measure.

Russia, one of the world's top grain producers, has also brought in a temporary ban on exports after crops were ravaged by the dry weather. The news sent world wheat prices soaring.

The temperature climbed to 36C yesterday.


[guardian.co.uk > News > UK news > Food safety]

Experts dispel safety fears over cloning of British beef
With such conflicting advice consumers can scarcely be blamed for feeling confused about cloned beef and milk

Robin McKie, science editor
The Observer, Sunday 8 August 2010
Article history

{Cows on the Drumduan farm near Nairn in Scotland that was the source of cloned beef. Photograph: David Cheskin/PA}

The British Sunday roast will never seem the same. Last week it was revealed that meat from the offspring of several cloned cows had ended up on the dinner tables of British families. For good measure, it was said that milk from cows born to cloned mothers was also being sold in our supermarkets.

The news caused a hailstorm of headlines outlining the "shocking evidence of how super-calves are secretly spreading through the dairy industry". Hundreds of cloned cows were to be found in UK farms, it was subsequently claimed. Monster meat cut from the loins of distorted, unnatural creatures was about to fill the nation's shop shelves, it was implied. The sanctity of the traditional Sunday joint was under attack, as was that nutritional staple – the glass of milk.

It was a time for calm, considered leadership from the food industry. Sadly this was not forthcoming. The Food Standards Agency, which is soon to have its role substantially reduced, announced that cloned meat and milk should be considered novel foods which therefore needed the FSA's approval before they could be sold in the UK. And that approval had not been given.

However, this interpretation was dismissed by other organisations. For example, the EU argued that no approval was required. "There could be lots of milk from the offspring of cloned animals in Europe as there is no need to notify the authorities," said an official. According to this interpretation, the meat and milk of the offspring of cloned cows are not novel, a point of view that was backed by Grahame Bulfield, former director of the Roslin Institute, the animal research organisation where Dolly the sheep was cloned.

"The FSA is just making itself very foolish," he told reporters. "It cannot produce any evidence that meat from clones or their offspring is novel in any way, or is any different to other meat. There is none, because it must be exactly the same."

Thus Britain was presented with the prospect of the nation's food chain filling up with an unguessable number of animals born to cloned cows while the people in charge of our food standards couldn't agree if it was novel or not. Consumers could scarcely be blamed for being confused.

So what exactly was going on? Just how had cloned meat entered the food chain? Answers to these questions are revealing – not about the dangers posed by cloned meat and milk, but about the way we breed cattle on our farms today. Those offspring of cloned cows arrived in the form of frozen embryos bought from US breeding companies that were sent by air mail to UK farms. Implanted into surrogate mothers, they grew into healthy calves.

The crucial point is that the sale of frozen embryos and their transfer to the surrogate mothers is common in the cattle trade. The government says 203 consignments of embryos have been imported into Britain since January last year. All that was different in this case was the source of the embryo. It was created by cloning cells scraped from the ear of a prize-winning Holstein bull, as opposed to having been produced by artificial insemination.

So did the meat and milk that was produced this way pose a risk to the public? Most experts agreed with Bulfield and pointed to the work of the US Food and Drug Administration which, in 2008, completed a five-year study that found that meat and milk from cloned cows and their offspring were indistinguishable from the meat and milk of traditionally reproduced livestock.

"Consumption of the milk or meat derived from healthy cloned animals or their offspring presents no dangers above the consumption of such products from non-cloned animals," said Keith Campbell, professor of Animal Development at Nottingham University, and a member of the Roslin team whose work led to the birth of Dolly the sheep.

Indeed, there is a prospect that cloned meat could be superior, a point highlighted by Professor Robin Lovell-Badge, head of stem cell biology at the National Institute for Medical Research. "The point of cloning is to expand the number of high-quality animals, it is quite possible that the meat will be better than usual. After all, sacred cows make the tastiest hamburgers," he said.

In fact, the real worry about eating produce derived from cloned animals is that it is "against nature" and that anything cloned must be unsafe, according to Piers Benn, a medical ethicist. "But this doesn't follow at all. Whether it is unsafe is an empirical, scientific matter. Whether something is 'unnatural' and therefore wrong is a different sort of question."