SEVEN DAYS The news in brief
POLICY Global Fund pain The economic crisis is taking its toll on the Global Fund to
Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and NASA/JPL-CALTECH Malaria, which has cancelled its next funding round and will award no new grants before 2014. The fund, based in Geneva, Switzerland, blamed “substantial budget challenges in some donor countries” in its 23 November announcement. It has been in financial trouble for some time, last year falling well below its fund-raising targets (see Nature 467, 767; 2010), and this year struggling with corruption and the theft of medicines. See go.nature. com/scqaui for more. Climategate 2? Two years after ‘Climategate’, Curiosity bound for Mars when around 1,000 e-mails from the Climatic Research NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory, also known as Mars and is scheduled to land in August 2012. Unit at the University of East Curiosity, is on its way to Gale crater on Mars. Russia’s Mars mission, Phobos-Grunt, is not Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, The 900-kilogram rover (pictured, being tested faring so well: stuck in low-Earth orbit, it has UK, were posted online, on Earth last year) launched on 26 November missed its launch window and will fall back to another set of e-mails has been from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It Earth early next year. See go.nature.com/lxap2g released. The files, containing will spend the next nine months travelling to for more. some 5,000 e-mails, were anonymously posted on a Russian Internet server on 22 are used as refrigerants and Rome, said that global food has approved it for planting. November, a week before the were introduced to replace production would need to France banned cultivation of United Nations climate summit chemicals that destroy rise by 70% by 2050 to feed MON 810 in 2008, joining began in Durban, South Africa. stratospheric ozone. As the growing population; more refusenik countries including UEA vice-chancellor Edward potent greenhouse gases, than 80% of this gain would Germany and Greece. In Acton said that the university their regulation falls under have to be made on existing September, the European would investigate if it found the United Nations climate agricultural land through Court of Justice ruled that anything new and serious in framework, but many argue more efficient use of land and France had used the wrong the documents, but it hadn’t so that they would be phased out water resources. procedure to impose the ban, far. See go.nature.com/fg1cx3 faster and more cheaply using and on 28 November, France’s and page 6 for more. the Montreal ozone treaty (see No to French GM ban State Council said that this Nature 479, 5–6; 2011). France’s highest court has meant the ban was not valid. Montreal impasse overturned a national ban on Although 108 countries now Degraded lands the cultivation of a genetically Marine reserve support a movement to amend A rapid expansion of modified maize (corn) crop, Australia has unveiled plans the Montreal Protocol to agricultural production over ruling that the government to create one of the world’s regulate hydrofluorocarbons the past 50 years has left 25% must prove that the crop poses biggest marine reserves. (HFCs) as greenhouse gases, of the planet’s land resources major health or environmental The proposed reserve, in the no action on the issue took ‘highly degraded’, according to risks. But agriculture minister Coral Sea off the country’s place at the protocol’s annual a United Nations assessment Bruno Le Maire said that he northeast coast, covers around meeting in Bali, Indonesia, on of resources for food and would work to uphold the 990,000 square kilometres. 21–25 November. Observers agriculture. The report, ban. The crop, MON 810, But only half the reserve reported that India, China released on 28 November by is made by US biotech firm is off-limits to fishing; in and Brazil refused to allow the Food and Agriculture Monsanto, based in St Louis, other areas, commercial formal discussion. HFCs Organization of the UN in Missouri; the European Union and recreational fishing is
10 | NATURE | VOL 480 | 1 DECEMBER 2011 © 2011 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved SEVEN DAYS THIS WEEK allowed. Green politicians initiative with great fanfare in and conservation groups have 2007 (see Nature 450, 768–769; condemned this concession. 2007). On 22 November the COMING UP B. O’CONNOR See page 14 for more. company announced it was ending its engineering work 4–8 DECEMBER BUSINESS on cutting the cost and water The triennial World consumption of concentrated Petroleum Congress — Vioxx fines solar power systems, and the ‘Olympics of the Drug-maker Merck will pay would publish its results so far. oil and gas industry’ US$950 million to settle Google says it still has more — meets in Qatar. The investigations into how it than US$850 million invested Deepwater Horizon marketed the painkiller Vioxx, in other companies’ wind, solar disaster, shale-gas the US Department of Justice PEOPLE and geothermal products. fracking and Arctic announced on 22 November. exploration are all on The company, based in Margulis dies Chemicals data gap the agenda. New Jersey, had to pull the Biologist Lynn Margulis Companies are failing to www.20wpc.com blockbuster arthritis drug (pictured), a creative and provide the safety data from the market in 2004, after unconventional scientist best required by Europe’s expansive 5–9 DECEMBER five years of sales. In 2007 it known for her work on the chemicals law REACH, Research on the agreed to pay $4.85 billion to theory of endosymbiosis, according to a study by the magnitude 9.0 settle nearly 27,000 lawsuits died on 22 November aged Centre for Alternatives earthquake that struck that claimed the medicine 73. Margulis pioneered the to Animal Testing at the Japan in March will had caused heart attacks and now-accepted idea that the University of Konstanz in be presented at the strokes. Last week’s extra eukaryotic cell originated Germany. The study looked American Geophysical payment was expected: Merck in fusions between different at 400 records and found Union’s meeting in San had set aside the money in the bacteria; organelles such as basic information missing on Francisco, California. third quarter of 2010. mitochondria and chloroplasts chemicals’ developmental and sites.agu.org/fallmeeting were originally free-living reproductive toxicity. It warns Lipitor patent ends bacteria before they were that up to 1.6 million animals 5–9 DECEMBER The world’s best-selling absorbed by another cell. might be used in toxicity The first conference drug, Pfizer’s cholesterol- Margulis won the National tests for the 4,599 substances on the scientific lowering medication Lipitor Medal of Science in 1999. See registered so far. Provisional results from the Kepler (atorvastatin) now faces go.nature.com/52ixtw for more. findings were reported in July exoplanet mission takes competition from generics, (see Nature 475, 150–151; place at the NASA Ames after it lost patent protection RESEARCH 2011). As Nature went to Research Park, Moffett on 30 November. The drug press, the study was due to be Field, California. has brought in more than Google ends RE
SOURCE: POINT CARBON clean-energy projects in 2012 by (Q. Abdool Karim et al. Science selling 300 million allowances to 11 329, 1168–1174; 2010), the gel emit carbon dioxide on Europe’s had cut the incidence of HIV carbon market. But after prices 10 by up to 54%. Trials of tenofovir or equivalent, € or equivalent, on the market plunged (see 2 tablets in the VOICE study chart), such credits would have 9 have also failed (see Nature raised only €2.3 billion as Nature 478, 10–11; 2011). A third arm 8 went to press. Analysts forecast Price for delivery of the study, which is trialling that prices will fall further, as December 2012 another antiretroviral tablet, the problems behind the slump 7 Spot price continues. See go.nature.com/
— weak economic conditions Price per tonne of CO zqtiz6 for more. 6 and an oversupply of carbon 03 10 17 24 31 07 14 21 credits — are likely to persist. See Oct 2011 Nov 2011 NATURE.COM go.nature.com/4xewpb for more. For daily news updates see: www.nature.com/news
1 DECEMBER 2011 | VOL 480 | NATURE | 11 © 2011 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved