news around the world today:

many councils 'bug' rubbish bins I like this story, it really appeals to my sense of order, and the Europeans are so good at finding the time to come up with ingenious ideas like 'pay as you throw'. It's an attempt at increasing people's awareness about recycling with a really intricate system of microchips (I kid you not!)fitted to rubbish bins. The bins are weighed and these chips can identify who threw how much and residents are charged accordingly. Britain is the EU's 3rd-worst recycling country and the government has excelled itself in a bid to push its recycling/composting figure up from only 18%. [BBC]

GM crops come under the microscope again as an unapproved variety of GM rice enters the food chain. According to the BBC Green Room story, Bayer Crop Science's GM LL601RICE had been grown in field trials and wasn't meant for commercial use. Contamination of crops have far reaching affects when the contaminated food is then exported. In Europe releasing a GM organism that has not had prior approval is illegal. Would that this were the case in South Africa! [BBC]

Apparently PricewaterHouseCoopers have issued a report that tries to estimate just how much it would cost the world to address global climate change - the arguments so far have been that they will just be too high to contemplate. The report advocates that the world would only have to give up one year's economic growth over the next 40 years to reduce carbon emissions to stave off the threat of global warming. [The Guardian]

And at home, the petrol price drops today, just as the UK and the US warn of sanctions against Iran.