Word: cowed
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...billion people--a quarter of the globe's population--have no access to electricity or gasoline. They cannot refrigerate food or medicine, pump well water, power a tractor, make a phone call or turn on an electric light to do homework. Many spend their days collecting firewood and cow dung, burning it in primitive stoves that belch smoke into their lungs. To emerge from poverty, they need modern energy. And renewables can help, from village-scale hydro power to household photovoltaic systems to bio-gas stoves that convert dung into fuel. More than a million rural homes in developing countries...
State investigators, who in mid-July were tipped off to the eerie coincidence, caution that it is too early to come to any conclusions. The fear, however, is that chronic wasting disease, a mad cow-like illness that affects wild game, may have jumped the so-called species barrier. The fatal disease, which makes animals listless, has been endemic in Colorado herds for decades and was spotted in Wisconsin deer in February. Particularly worrisome is the fact that the illness is caused by infectious agents called prions that are not destroyed by cooking...
Even if investigators find a link between the Wisconsin outdoorsmen and the game they ate, it won't necessarily lead to a mad cow-type epidemic. Americans, after all, eat a lot more hamburger than they do venison...
...Markets, based in Boulder, Colo., is riding a surge of interest in so-called natural and organic foods. While such foods account for just 3% of Americans' grocery bills, they attract higher-income buyers and yield fatter profits for grocers and producers. And a parade of food scares--mad-cow disease, hormones and antibiotics in meat and milk, pesticides in produce, genetically altered "Frankenfoods"--is propelling more shoppers to go organic. Result: sales of natural and organic foods are growing at an 18% annual clip and are projected to surpass $17 billion this year...
...bureaucratic databanks. The government has yet to draft an accompanying privacy law as promised. Worse, the new registry accidentally leaked information two days after the launch, sending letters to households in Moriguchi that contained the ID numbers, gender information and birthdates of other people. Adding insult to injury: Japanese cows were given a 10-digit ID in the wake of last fall's mad cow scare. Humans, who get 11 digits, are feeling a little like livestock...