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After nearly a month, Indonesia will lift an export ban on palm oil starting Monday, which could ease tight edible oil markets worldwide and reduce some of the pressure on soaring food prices. “Based on the current supply and price of cooking oil and considering that there are 17 million workers in the palm oil industry, both working farmers and other supporting staff, I have decided that the export of cooking oil will reopen on Monday, May 23,” President Joko Widodo said in a statement on Thursday. Indonesia is the world’s biggest shipper of edible oils, accounting for nearly 60%...

The world's top palm-oil producer announced that it would ban exports of the commodity starting on Thursday, sending the prices of edible oils soaring. Indonesia accounts for about half of the world's supply of palm oil, the world's most widely used vegetable oil. Palm oil is used for cooking and for the production of thousands of consumer products, including biscuits, detergents, and lipsticks.In a video statement on Friday, Indonesian President Joko Widodo said the move was designed to bring down domestic palm-oil prices and ensure domestic food availability in the wake of global food inflation. "I will monitor and evaluate...

The study, published in the journal Nature and part-funded by the UK charity Worldwide Cancer Research, uncovers how palmitic acid alters the cancer genome, increasing the likelihood the cancer will spread. The researchers have started developing therapies that interrupt this process and say a clinical trial could start in the next couple of years. Metastasis – or the spread – of cancer remains the main cause of death in cancer patients and the vast majority of people with metastatic cancer can only be treated, but not cured. Fatty acids are the building blocks of fat in our body and the...

Greedy killer monkeys were found to be catching and gobbling up large rats in Malaysia. Shocked scientists uncovered the rat-catching macaques on palm oil plantations – and say the hungry predators could be used as pest control. The southern pig-tailed macaques were typically thought to chow down on fruit. They would also hunt for meaty prey sometimes, but generally only small lizards and birds. Now scientists have confirmed that these monkeys are also regularly snatching and devouring large rats.

The $44 billion palm oil industry, under pressure in Europe after authorities listed the edible oil as a cancer risk, has found a vocal ally in the food sector: the maker of Nutella. Italian confectionery firm Ferrero has taken a public stand in defense of an ingredient that some other food companies in the country are boycotting. It has launched an advertising campaign to assure the public about the safety of Nutella, its flagship product which makes up about a fifth of its sales

The head of the world's largest food producer believes high prices are due to the growing of crops for biofuels."The time of cheap food prices is over," says Nestle chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe. He is highly critical of the rise in the production of bio-diesel, saying this puts pressure on food supplies by using land and water that would otherwise be used to grow crops for human or animal consumption."If no food was used for fuel, the prices would come down again - that is very clear," he says. "We are now in a new world with a completely different level...

As bounty hunters with bush knives entrapped them in a circle and moved in for the kill, the only thing this mother orang-utan could think to do was to wrap a giant protective arm around her daughter. The pair seemed to be facing a certain death as a gang of hunters surrounded them in Borneo, keen to cash in on the palm oil plantations' bid to be rid of the animals.

Palm oil may not be 'environmentally friendly' as commonly believed, researchers say Thirty years after tropical rain forests were cleared and replaced with oil palms, the amount of carbon being stored is 65 percent less than the original amount, a National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) team has found. Carbon that was once stored in forest is feared to have been released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, contributing to global warming. Oil palm cultivation has expanded dramatically in recent years, as the demand for palm oil in making environmentally-friendly soaps and biofuel has risen. The latest analysis results, which...

(Fortune) -- What do Oreo cookies made by Nabisco, Cheez-It crackers from Kellogg's or General Mills' Fiber One Chewy Bars have to do with global warming and the destruction of tropical rainforests? A lot, say environmental activists. The link between the supermarket shelf, climate change and shrinking rainforests is palm oil, a controversial ingredient that may now be the most widely-traded vegetable oil in the world. Here's the problem: Demand for palm oil, which is found in soaps and cosmetics as well as food, has more than doubled in the last decade as worldwide food consumption has soared. Farmers, in...

(LANGKAT, Indonesia) - Palm oil prices might be going through the roof and making investors and businessmen rich, but the soaring prices have not improved the lot of pickers and locals working on the fringes of the palm oil industry. On the island of Sumatra, one of the main palm oil-growing islands in Indonesia, the world's second-largest producer after Malaysia, 52-year-old Minah salvages unspoilt fruit from partly rotten palm branch that have fallen to the ground. The Indonesian mother of eight ekes out a living on a state-run palm oil plantation near her house by picking through fallen branches to...

WASHINGTON — America's drive for energy independence and clean air could threaten orangutans, Sumatran tigers, elephants, rhinoceroses and the world's largest butterflies. All could be hurt as the rainforests of Southeast Asia are cleared to produce palm oil for use in biodiesel. It's the downside of the crash effort to rein in global warming. And the owners of what will be the largest biodiesel plant in the nation — at a deepwater port on Washington state's coast — are well aware of the environmental consequences of logging and burning some of the most biologically diverse forests in the world to...

Did Saddam Hussein use any of his ill-gotten billions filched from the United Nations oil-for-food program to help fund Al Qaeda? Investigations have shown that the former Iraqi dictator grafted and smuggled more than $10 billion from the program that for seven years prior to Saddam’s overthrow was meant to bring humanitarian aid to ordinary Iraqis. And the Sept. 11 Commission has shown a tracery of contacts between Saddam and Al Qaeda that continued after billions of oil-for-food dollars began pouring into Saddam’s coffers and Usama bin Laden declared his famous war on the U.S. Now, buried in some of...