1 Week, 7 Stories #50

Every edition features 7 stories from the past week. I’ll draw on my background in media, journalism, agriculture, biotech, and renewable energy to come up with an interesting selection and to offer some context.

I am working on another writing project this month so you will only receive a newsletter on November 16th and 30th, then back to my weekly schedule.

With housekeeping out of the way, on to our first story

Top of mind for much of the world right now are the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine. Wanna be US presidential hopeful Donald Trump said there was peace under his administration and that he would solve the two most pressing conflicts before even taking office.  Well truth be told, the New York Times reported in 2003 that the world had only been at peace for 268 years, or about 8 percent of recorded history. A significant chunk of that relatively peaceful period was the Pax Romana starting in 27 B.C. when the Roman Empire flourished and made a deliberate decision to limit its own expansion.

Not much has changed since that NYT story.

The 2024 Global Peace Index published by The Institute for Economics & Peace covers 99.7% of the world. That report says there are currently 56 active conflicts and that 92 countries are engaged in conflicts outside their national borders. Our current global state is considered less peaceful than it has been for the last 16 years.

 At the end of the Trump Presidency the 2020 Index noted that global peacefulness had deteriorated for the 9th time in the previous 12 years. In that 2020 Index Canada was ranked 6th among the most peaceful countries and the United States ranked 121st. Russia was 154th. As for actual deployment of US troops, as of September 2022  there were 171,736 active-duty military troops deployed across 178 countries, but the totals could be higher because the US military does not share all the details.

The human cost of war has its own story to tell. Before the Israeli conflict started 940,000 people have been killed by direct war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan alone. A Guardian story in June said that since 2021 the overall number of conflict-related deaths, including civilians, had risen to the highest world-wide level in 30 years. Some estimates have put the total number of deaths in wars and conflicts during the 20th century at 231 million. The UN says that 90% of war time casualties are civilians (that estimate comes before the Gaza and Ukraine casualties).

Given the global state of affairs over a few thousand years, no one can take any credit for creating a more peaceful world – because it isn’t.  

“War, I despise

'Cause it means destruction of innocent lives

War means tears to thousands of mother's eyes

When their sons go off to fight

And lose their lives”

‘War’, written by Barrett Strong / Norman Whitfield. Recorded by Edwin Starr and released in 1970.

Canada has 415,600 km (258,200 mi) of paved roads, most of which are covered in asphalt ranging in thickness from 7 to 25cm (3 to 10 in).  Asphalt is a composite material than can include crushed rock, sand, gravel, crushed construction debris, or even recycled asphalt. The aggregate is bound together with bitumen made from heavy crude oil.   It has been used on our roadways since the late 1800s and not only would we have difficulty getting around without it, but the industry is worth $5.4 billion to Canada’s economy.  Its production and application are also another source of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. To the industry’s credit it uses a lot of recycled material,  but it also uses a lot of oil, and when it rains many of the harmful compounds are washed off into sewers or soaked up into the ground.

There are alternatives and this recent CBC story features a plant-based resin developed by a Canadian company.  Bio Diffusion Technologies says its Greenroads product reduces the use of petroleum-based binders, cuts road maintenance costs, and recycles the asphalt already on our roads. The company also received a grant from the Ontario Agri-Food Research Initiative to test the resin as a replacement component of horticultural plastic.

A paper to be published in the December issue of Case Studies in Construction Materials says that a blend of waste cooking oil and polyethylene is more environmentally friendly while still getting the job done. This alternative is in preliminary development and the paper does not delve into how feasible it may be at commercial scale considering how much used cooking oil may be needed. Another paper from earlier this year noted that there needs to be more research on the operational feasibility, durability and long-term performances of all bio-based binders including those using crop, wood, and animal waste.

Given the number of kilometers of roads we have and how weather and traffic beat them up, developments in making asphalt that is less damaging to the environment is well worth pursuing.

It was made for puns but the theft of 22 tons of rare cheddar cheese will go into the annals of ‘grate’ cheese robberies.  The 950 wheels of specialty cheddars were worth £300,000 ($541,000 CAD) and disappeared in a scam late last year but only hit the news pages last week when the Neal’s Yard Dairy shared the news on social media and on its website. It apparently happened when a fraudulent buyer convinced the dairy it was legitimate then disappeared as soon as the cheese changed hands. 

Cheese it seems, can be a lucrative target for thieves. In April of 2022, 1,600 kilograms (3,500 lbs) worth €21,000 ($31,540 CAD) were taken from the storage facility of a dairy farm in the Netherlands. In 2016, three separate semi-trailer loads of cheese were stolen totalling about $206,000 USD in – where else – Wisconsin, the cheese state. The thefts were described by police as an organized type of crime. Over the course of a couple of years, an armed gang in Italy managed to steal more than 2,000 wheels of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. The cheese was taken from warehouses in northern Italy where the genuine parmesan comes from. The gang members were eventually caught but many large-scale thefts are never solved.

Why cheese? For a start cheese thefts are not the ordinary chunk of cheddar sold next to the American singles cheddar in the dairy case of your local supermarket. They are specialty cheeses and command good prices. Cheese is highly portable and even if thieves cannot find a special buyer, it can be sold off the back of a truck on the street. In the case of the recent British thefts, it is believed the cheese will end up with buyers in Russia or the Middle East.

Neal’s Yard Dairy has still paid its suppliers for the lost cheese. Once celebrity chef Jamie Oliver raised the profile of the case, customers have rallied to support the dairy and cheese makers affected.

The Shroud of Turin is one of the most significant Christian relics and perhaps one of the most discussed and disputed as well. The 4.3-by-1.2-metre (14-by-4ft) piece of linen cloth is purported to have been used to wrap the body of Jesus and that the image on the cloth appeared after his resurrection.

It may also be the most analyzed Christian artifact, and the latest analyses will only add to the faith vs fact debates.

The first record of the shroud comes from 1354 when it was found in France, and its prior provenance is unknown. It made its way to a chapel in Chambery and after being damaged in a fire, has been kept in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy for at least 400 years.

For those relying on faith to connect the Shroud with Jesus there was good news in August when a technique called wide-angle X-ray scattering analysis indicated that it is at least 2,000 years old making the Jesus connection possible (radiocarbon dating has been less conclusive).  Earlier tests of pollen on the shroud place it in the vicinity of Jerusalem adding another connection notch.

This week yet another analysis may test the faithful and provide more evidence for those who do not believe it is a true Christian relic.  A study by an expert in 3D facial reconstruction concluded that it is more likely a work of Christian art and was not wrapped around a body. Using a virtual simulation of fabric wrapped around a body showed a more distorted image than the one on the shroud. A preprint paper on the study will be available soon from Elsevier.

It is unlikely that any analysis will change the mind of believers or skeptics one way or another so keep Google handy for more news.

In newsletter #48 I shared the story of a tomb found underneath the ancient city of Petra in Jordan. We have been on this planet for a long time, and technology has given us the means to explore most of it but there are still surprises to be found. The most recent is a Mayan city in Mexico which was discovered by a PhD student who the BBC quotes as saying the data was on “something like page 16 of Google search”. The “accident” which led to the discovery was remote sensing data collected for environmental monitoring but not viewed with an archeological eye.  The results of the lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) re-evaluation were published this week in the Cambridge University Press journal, Antiquity. Dense jungle canopies and vegetation often hide what can be seen and a Phys.org story notes that we are not even close to finding all the major Maya cities.  This particular city is only a 15-minute hike from a major road yet has remained unknown until now.

The Maya in Central America and the Yucatán Peninsula go back to roughly 1800 BCE and the word “Maya” refers to both those people and their modern-day ancestors. At its height, there were more than 40 cities in modern day Mexico, Honduras, Belize, and Guatemala. The largest appears to have been Tikal in Guatemala with at least 3,000 buildings across 15.5 square kilometers (6 square miles).  The newly discovered city has been named Valeriana and covers about 16.6 square kilometers (6.4 square miles) and may include more than 6,000 structures.

With so many cities home to a civilization with an understanding of math and astronomy, one has to wonder what happened to hasten its decline between 850 and 1000 A.D. The evidence is not conclusive but a feature in the Harvard Gazette narrows it down. A series of droughts made it difficult to support an ever-increasing population.  Add in agricultural practices which led to deforestation and reduced soil quality, and you have a lesson for modern times about maintaining the balance of nature.  

1 Week, 7 Stories will check in another thousand years to see what we have learned!

Work started on the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway in 2004 and it opened in 2008 ready to protect the genetic diversity of global food crops. It can store seeds from 4.5 million crop varieties, and this week received 31,000 new seed varieties from 23 countries. According to a news release from the Crop Trust, one of the Seed Vault partners, "Climate change and conflict threaten infrastructure and impact food security for over 700 million people in more than 75 countries worldwide”.

Once in the vault, seeds are kept at an optimum temperature of −18°C and conditions inside the vault ensure they will remain viable for long periods of time. The contributing country maintains ownership of their seeds.

Two of the more remarkable deposits in that new batch are from Sudan and Palestine. These countries are in the middle of serious conflicts and yet managed to see the need and find the resources to ensure that there will be seeds available for a day when some semblance of agriculture returns. With extreme challenges to transport and preparation within Sudan and its own seedbank ransacked, seeds were moved to the port where NordGen (another Seed Vault partner) will sort and catalogue the sorghum and millet seeds before the final transfer.  It required months of negotiation with the government and militia to get to this point.

 The Union of Agricultural Work Committees in Palestine delivered seeds from 21 species of vegetables, legumes and herbs. The Palestinian Heirloom Seed Library was created in 2016 and though it does seem to still exist according to an October 8th article, it is likely under threat as is most of the infrastructure in the area.

The Svalbard Seed Vault is (sadly) an important backstop for biodiversity across borders and a will play a vital part in re-establishing food crops in areas hit by weather, political, and military extremes. 

Golden Eagles are found throughout North America and in other parts of the northern hemisphere. They have a special place in First Nations culture and are a symbol of strength, courage, and wisdom and are considered sacred because they fly close to the sun. The birds like open country near mountains, cliffs, and riverbanks, and can range from the Arctic to the desert.

They are remarkably adaptable but have their limits. Urbanization and agricultural development threaten their habitat, and many die after eating poisoned bait put out to control coyotes.

Now they are threatened by the very thing that makes them so attractive – their golden feathers are sought after by poachers, especially for feathers used in powwows and other ceremonies.

In Canada, the golden eagle is not listed as a species at risk except in Ontario where it is listed as endangered. The situation is similar in the US where nationally they are not considered endangered with state exceptions in Washington, Maine, New Hampshire, and New York. In Canada and the US, you cannot kill bald or golden eagles and there are heavy fines for violators. You are also not allowed to keep any feathers you find unless you are a member of an Indigenous community. Which leaves First Nations members in the position of having to sign up to get legally obtained feathers from roadkill, zoos, and birds which have died for any other reason. As the number and size of powwows increases on both sides of the border the waitlist for eagle feathers grows as well and poachers have been quick to try to fill the demand.

In the latest case a Montana man and his accomplices are accused of killing 3,600 birds of different species on the Flathead Reservation. At least 118 eagles were part of what was described as a “killing spree”.

He was found guilty on Thursday and was sentenced to three years and 10 months in prison and ordered to pay more than $777,000 in restitution.

Would seem to be a pretty good deterrent for future poachers.

Read, comment, subscribe, and share this newsletter.

I’m available for contract and freelance work with not-for-profits and charities. With 40 years of experience behind me and lots of time ahead of me, I’m here to help you make a difference in your media relations, public relations, and general communications needs.

I also have a Substack newsletter which includes 1 Week, 7 Stories and other new material when the mood strikes. That is where you will soon be able to read stories from my new short story collection.