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G-8 leaders presented with $1,000 sake cups
Turkmenistan News.Net
Sunday 6th July, 2008 (IANS)
The Group of Eight (G-8) leaders attending a summit here in Japan are receiving gifts of intricate lacquered sake cups engraved with their initials and with a retail value of $1,000 each.
The small wooden cups, measuring 8.2 cm in diameter and eight centimetres in height, were used for the toast at the summit's banquet in this Hokkaido island city Sunday.
Lacquer, known as 'Urushi' in Japanese, is a resinous substance obtained from certain trees and used as a natural varnish.
Its makers stressed the gift's environmentally friendly properties as leaders prepared to discuss ways to tackle climate change.
Each sake cup features green leaves symbolising nature and one of the G-8 leaders' initials at its centre. The initials of the other G-8 participants feature on its internal rim. Each cup is so intricate that it can take more than one year to make.
A limited edition of 300 samples was being offered on sale for $1,000 each.
The G-8 leaders attending the summit are Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, US President George W. Bush, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Canadian Premier Stephen Harper, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission.
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07-06-08, 11:00 PM |
G-8 leaders presented with $1,000 sake cups
1,000 cups ? while others are dying in hunger.
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waltky
07-23-08, 01:50 AM |
Maybe they could sell those saki cups and donate the money to feed people starvin' in Africa...
:rolleyes:
14M Need Food Aid in Horn of Africa
July 22, 2008 - U.N. Says 14 Million in Horn of Africa Need Emergency Food Aid
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Dahir Abdi Salah used to feed his children three meals a day — pancakes for breakfast, spaghetti for lunch and beans for dinner. Now, due to a global food crisis that is hitting this impoverished country especially hard, the family eats one meal a day. Other times they drink tea or water to ward off the inevitable hunger pangs. “They eat porridge once a day," Salah said of his children, ages 2, 5 and 6, who live on the outskirts of Somalia’s shattered capital, Mogadishu. “A kilogram (2 pounds) of beans used to cost a few cents — now it’s a dollar. You can imagine the difference and how it has affected our lives."
More than 14 million people across the Horn of Africa are relying on food aid and other assistance to survive a devastating drought and rising food prices, aid officials said Tuesday. The crisis is especially dire in Ethiopia and Somalia, two of the poorest countries in the world. Many are surviving on one meal a day; others choose between feeding their children and sending them to school. “This had led to more than belt-tightening," Mark Bowden, the U.N.'s aid chief for Somalia, told journalists in Nairobi, Kenya. “People are reducing their food intake ... We have only months before we go into a major crisis."
Bowden estimates that 3.5 million people — half of Somalia’s population — will need food assistance by the end of 2008. The U.N. has issued an aid appeal for $637 million for Somalia, but so far has gotten about a third of that. The worldwide food crisis is threatening to push the number of hungry people in the world toward 1 billion — despite a recent U.N. summit pledge to reduce trade barriers and boost agricultural production. In the Horn of Africa, food production is also hampered by drought — a double blow for Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Kenya and Djibouti. In Ethiopia, more than 80 percent of people live off the land.
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http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=5425068[/url]
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