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Is the world headed for a food crisis India, Mexico and Yemen have seen food riots this year. What" s the cause for these shortages and price hikes Expensive oil, for the most part. The United Nations food and Agriculture Organization(FAO)reported that, at nearly $ 100 a barrel, the price of oil has sent the cost of food imports skyrocketing this year. Add in escalating crop prices, the FAO warned, and a direct consequence could soon be an increase in global hunger—and, as a consequence , increased social unrest. What" s more, worldwide food reserves are at their lowest in 35 years, so prices are likely to stay high for the foreseeable future.On the demand side, one of the key issues is biofuels. Biofuels, made from food crops such as corn, sugar cane, and palm oil, are seen as easing the world" s dependence on gasoline or diesel. But when crude oil is expensive, as it is now, these alternative energy sources can also be sold at market-competitive prices, rising steeply in relation to petroleum. With one-quarter of the US corn harvest in 2010 diverted towards biofuel production, the attendant rose in cereal prices has already had an impact on the cost and availability of food, Critics worry that the gold rush toward biofuels is taking away food from the hungry Leaders in the biofuel industry respond that energy COSTS are more to blame for high food prices than biofuels " Energy is the Mood of the world, so if oil goes up then other commodities follow," Claus Sauter, CEO of German bioenergy firms Verbio said. Others argue that cleaner-burning biofuels could help stem the effects of climate change, another factor i-dentified by the FAO as causing food shortages. Analysts note that scientists believe climate change could be behind recent extreme weather patterns, including catastrophic floods, heat waves and drought. All can diminish food harvests and stockpiles. But so can market forces.

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正确答案：世界是否要步人一个粮食危机印度、墨西哥和也门今年已出现了因食物引起的暴乱。造成食物短缺和价格飞涨的原因是什么......

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Globalization is under strain as never before. Everywhere its stresses rumble. Most of sub-Saharan Africa, South America, the Middle East, and Central Asia are mired in stagnation or economic decline. North America, Western Europe, and Japan are bogged down in slow growth and risk renewed recession. War now beckons in Iraq.For advocates of open markets and free trade this experience poses major challenges. Why is globalization so at risk Why are its benefits seemingly concentrated in a few locations Can a more balanced globalization be achievedNo easy answers to these questions exist. Open markets are necessary for economic growth, but they are hardly sufficient. Some regions of the world have done extremely well from globalization— notably East Asia and China in recent years. Yet some regions have done miserably, especially sub-Saharan Africa.The truth is that economic performance is determined not only by governance standards, but by geopolitics, geography, and economic structure. Countries with large populations, and hence large internal markets, tend to grow more rapidly than countries with small populations.Coastal countries tend to outperform landlocked countries. Countries with high levels of malaria tend to endure slower growth than countries with lower levels of malaria. Developing countries that neighbor rich markets, such as Mexico, tend to outperform countries far away from major markets.These differences matter. If rich countries don t pay heed to such structural issues, we will find that the gaps between the world s winners and losers will continue to widen. If rich countries blame unlucky countries—claiming that they are somehow culturally or politically unfit to benefit from globalization—we will create not only deeper pockets of poverty but also deepening unrest. This, in turn, will result in increasing levels of violence, backlash, and yes, terrorism.

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The concept captured the Zeitgeist of the personal computer revolution. Many young people, especially those in the counterculture, had viewed computers as instruments that could be used by Orwellian governments and giant corporations to sap individuality. But by the end of the 1970s, they were also being seen as potential tools for personal empowerment. The ad cast Macintosh as a warrior for the latter cause—a cool, rebellious and heroic company that was the only thing standing in the way of the big evil corporation s plan for world domination and total mind control.Once again Jobs would end up suffering bad publicity without making a penny. Apple s stock price kept dropping, and by March 2003 even the new options were so low that Jobs traded in all of them for an outright grant of $ 75 million worth of shares, which amounted to about $ 8. 3 million for each year he had worked since coming back in 1997 through the end of the vesting in 2006.None of this would have mattered much if the Wall Street Journal had not run a powerful series in 2006 about backdated stock options. Apple wasn t mentioned, but its board appointed a committee of three members—Al Gore, Eric Schmidt of Google, and Jerry York, formerly of IBM and Chrysler—to investigate its own practices. We decided at the outset that if Steve was at fault we would let the chips fall where they may, Gore recalled. The committee uncovered some irregularities with Jobs s grants and those of other top officers, and it immediately turned the findings over to the SEC. Jobs was aware of the backdating, the report said, but he ended up not benefiting financially.(A board committee at Disney also found that similar backdating had occurred at Pixar when Jobs was in charge.)The laws governing such backdating practices were murky, especially since no one at Apple ended up benefiting from the dubiously dated grants. The SEC took eight months to do its own investigation , and in April 2007 it announced that it would not bring action against Apple based in part on its swift, extensive, and extraordinary cooperation in the Commission s investigation[and its]prompt self-reporting. Although the SEC found that Jobs had been aware of the backdating, itcleared him of any misconduct because he was unaware of the accounting implications.The SEC did file complaints against Apple s former Chief financial officer Fred Anderson, who was on the board, and general counsel Nancy Heinen. Anderson, a retired Air Force captain with a square jaw and deep integrity, had been a wise and calming influence at Apple, where he was known for his ability to control Jobs s tantrums. He was cited by the SEC only for negligence regarding the paperwork for one set of the grants(not the ones that went to Jobs), and the SEC allowed him to continue to serve on corporate boards. Nevertheless he ended up resigning from the Apple board.