BUENOS AIRES - Argentina's Agriculture Secretariat has given the green light - after more than three years of delays due to environmental and consumer fears - for the production of a genetically modified cottonseed that will reportedly reduce production costs by 20 percent.

This Roundup Ready (RR) cotton was developed by the US-based transnational Monsanto, the same company that created the RR soy seed, which is also resistant to the same herbicide, Roundup (the trade name for glyphosate), manufactured by Monsanto as well.

Argentina is ranked second in the world, after the United States, for total land area cultivated with transgenic crops.

QUITO - The Central University of Ecuador is to study, with financial support from the state-run oil company PetroEcuador, air pollution in the country's capital. This urban environmental problem is blamed for an increase in respiratory illnesses, especially among children.

''The information generated will allow the introduction of corrective measures in the formulation of fuels and in the environmental management of the capital,'' maintains Iván Narváez, head of PetroEcuador's Environmental Department.

The oil company has reported that ''poorly maintained'' city bus engines produce 60 percent of the air pollution in Quito.

HAVANA - The normal rain showers of May and June will not be enough to bring an end to the intense drought that has affected eastern Cuba since 1997, cautions José Rubiera, head of the National Forecasting Center of the Meteorological Institute.

The drought is ''accumulative'' and will not be resolved by a normal rainy season. Only a tropical cyclone with abundant precipitation would return the reservoirs of the island's east to their normal water levels, Rubiera said.

The extended drought has caused heavy losses in farm production and has meant water shortages for five provinces, home to more than three million of the island’s 11 million people.

BUENOS AIRES - Argentina's Agriculture Secretariat has given the green light - after more than three years of delays due to environmental and consumer fears - for the production of a genetically modified cottonseed that will reportedly reduce production costs by 20 percent.

This Roundup Ready (RR) cotton was developed by the US-based transnational Monsanto, the same company that created the RR soy seed, which is also resistant to the same herbicide, Roundup (the trade name for glyphosate), manufactured by Monsanto as well.

Argentina is ranked second in the world, after the United States, for total land area cultivated with transgenic crops.