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Just TWO PERCENT of Elon Musk’s wealth could solve world hunger

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The director of the United Nations’ World Food Program has called on billionaires to “step up now, on a one-time basis” to solve world hunger, claiming it would require only a fraction of their wealth.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In an interview with CNN, David Beasley specifically mentioned Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, the world’s richest men, in his appeal.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“$USD 6 ($AUD 7.9 or $NZD 8.36) billion to help 42 million people that are literally going to die if we don’t reach them. It’s not complicated,” he </span><a rel="noopener" href="https://7news.com.au/news/world/just-two-per-cent-of-elon-musks-wealth-could-solve-world-hunger-according-to-un-food-scarcity-organisation-c-4345980" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">said</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">With Mr Musk’s net worth totalling almost $USD 289 ($AUD 384 or $NZD 402) billion according to Bloomberg, the sum Mr Beasley is asking for would equate to just two percent of his fortune.</span></p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"> <p dir="ltr">$36 billion in one day - <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@elonmusk</a>'s net worth increase due to a <a href="https://twitter.com/Tesla?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Tesla</a> / <a href="https://twitter.com/Hertz?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Hertz</a> deal. Congratulations, Elon! 1/6 of your one day increase would save 42 million lives that are knocking on famine's door. Unprecedented crisis. Unprecedented wealth. Help!! <a href="https://t.co/n4hfpl5NRE">https://t.co/n4hfpl5NRE</a></p> — David Beasley (@WFPChief) <a href="https://twitter.com/WFPChief/status/1453681782742818824?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 28, 2021</a></blockquote> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mr Beasley has also taken to social media to call out the billionaires.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Congratulations, Elon!” Mr Beasley wrote on Twitter after Mr Musk’s wealth increased by $29 billion in a single day.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“1/6 of your one day increase would save 42 million lives that are knocking on famine’s door. Unprecedented crisis. Unprecedented wealth. Help!”</span></p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"> <p dir="ltr">Congratulations to <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@elonmusk</a> for passing up <a href="https://twitter.com/JeffBezos?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JeffBezos</a> as the world’s richest person - worth a whopping $221B! 🥇 Elon, to celebrate I’m offering you a once in a lifetime opportunity: help us save 42M people from starvation for just $6.6B!! Offer expires SOON.. and lives do too.</p> — David Beasley (@WFPChief) <a href="https://twitter.com/WFPChief/status/1450388737444257797?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 19, 2021</a></blockquote> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mr Beasley went on to say that many nations are “knocking on famine’s door”, due to a “perfect storm” of crises including climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“For example, take the United States and the region in Central America, the Dry Corridor, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua - just down in that area alone,” Mr Beasley said.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“We’re feeding a lot of people down there and the climate is just changing with hurricanes and flash flooding; it’s just devastating.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">According to a World Food Program (WFP) report released earlier in the week, 22.8 million people in Afghanistan - almost half the population - are facing an acute hunger crisis.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Meanwhile, the WFP estimates that 5.2 million people in Ethiopia urgently need food assistance. Mr Beasley said humanitarian organisations such as the WFP have also struggled to deliver supplies to people in the region due to ongoing conflicts between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“I don’t know where they’re getting the food from,” he said. “We’re out of fuel. We’re out of cash, in terms of paying our people and we are running out of money and we can’t get our trucks in.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The struggle to feed millions around the world comes as both Mr Bezos and Mr Musk make continued investments in private space travel, which has been criticised by environmentally-minded individuals such as Prince William.</span></p> <p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Image: @elonmusk / Instagram</span></em></p>

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Salt doesn’t make you thirsty

<p>Salt actually makes you hungrier not thirstier, according to a new study.</p> <p>German researchers at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) studied two separate groups of 10 men during a simulation of a trip to Mars at the German Aerospace Center.</p> <p>Over 200 days the "cosmonauts" were given identical diets except for their salt intake. Results of the investigations published in the <em>Journal of Clinical Investigation</em> found that a salty diet actually caused the men on the high salt diets to drink less.</p> <p>The men who ate more salt, retained more water, weren't as thirsty and needed more energy, according to the findings.</p> <p>Scientists have known that increasing a person's salt intake stimulates the production of urine and it has been assumed that the extra fluid comes from drinking more because they were thirsty.</p> <p>But it now appears that salt triggers a mechanism in the kidney that causes the kidneys to hold onto water and produce urea - a process which consumes energy, causing hunger not thirst.</p> <p>"Nature has apparently found a way to conserve water that would otherwise be carried away into the urine by salt," said Freidrich Luft from the MDC.</p> <p>Studies in mice have previously hinted that the production of urea was responsible for this increased appetite, Luft added.</p> <p>Urea is a compound and is the end product of protein metabolism. It is formed in the liver and excreted by the kidneys in the urine. It is generally thought of as a waste product but Luft said that's wrong.</p> <p>"Instead it turns out to be a very important osmolyte, a compound that binds to water and helps transport it," said Prof Luft.</p> <p>"Its function is to keep water in when our bodies get rid of salt."</p> <p><em>Written by Sarah Wiedersehn. First appeared on <a href="http://Stuff.co.nz" target="_blank"><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Stuff.co.nz</span></strong></a>.</em></p>

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