Update 18:12 Davos, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Brazilian President Lula da Silva will not be attending the 2010 meeting of the World Economic Foum (WEF) in Davos. He has been advised by his doctor to cancel his activities for the next few days, including his meeting in Davos, where he was slated to receive a Global Statesman award.
Lula was about to board a flight to Switzerland, but fell ill suddenly. He spent the night in the hospital at Recife, and has been transferred to Sao Paulo to undergo tests. His doctor says he is fine, but needs to rest.
Links to other sites: AFP, BBC, Romandie News
Montreux Jazz Festival 2010, by Britto
Montreux, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The new Montreux Jazz Festival poster is out, with Romero Britto, Brazilian neo-pop artist providing the bright and lively artwork. This is not Britto’s first work for the Festival: some will remember that he did the poster work for the 33rd Montreux Festival in 1999.
His work is energetic, lively and fresh, defined by a harmonious use of colour and space. His style is on the edge between the directness of marketing and the subtlety of fine art. Think of Paul Klee with a spray can.
WWF International has called on the International Convention for the Conservation of the Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT) to impose a ban on catching the bluefin tuna, as well as a ban on trading in it. ICCAT is holding its 21st regular meeting in Recife, Brazil Monday 9 November. It meets to decide on whether to heed its own scientists’ calls to end its members’ fishing of the bluefin tuna, stocks of which are close to collapse in the Eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
Monaco proposed 14 October that the bluefin tuna be placed on the CITES list of endangered species banned from international trade. A CITES ban on the trade in ivory in 1989 is credited with saving African elephant populations.
European tuna fleets export most of their catch to Japan, the world’s largest importer of tunafish.
WWF International joined Greenpeace 28 October to call on the organization to heed its scientists’ findings, pleas that have largely gone unheeded in the past. A single bluefin tuna sold for $173,000 in January 2009. In 2007, it is estimated that the tuna catch was 61,000 tonnes, more than twice the quota fixed by ICCAT.
