Australia: 14 Mar 2010:- Joseph Stalin is credited with saying: "It's not important how people vote; it's how you count the votes that matters". That thought came to mind after getting two takes on a report on the state of GM cropping worldwide in 2009, compiled by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Crops (ISAAA).

One was from Agrifood Awareness Australia, the lobby group that promotes the uptake of GM technology, which said the global use of GM crops had continued to increase in 2009. The other was from Gene Ethics, the Australian anti-GM group, which stated the report showed seven of the 25 GM countries grew less genetically manipulated crops in 2009.

No more countries adopted GM and just 2.7 percent of agricultural land globally was used for GM soy, corn, canola or cotton, it said.

USA: March 14, 2010:- In a find that has implications for future development of possible treatments for Alzheimer's disease, a team at Rocky Mountain Laboratories found new forms of prion disease in genetically modified mice.

A paper published last week in scientific journal PLoS Pathogens details the latest exploration of the little-understood prion protein that is known to cause a host of well-documented infectious diseases of the brain, from mad cow disease to chronic wasting disease to sheep scrapie.

The study set out to observe a type of prion disease similar to Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker syndrome that infected two people in Holland. RML's Laboratory of Persistent Viral Diseases, headed by Bruce Chesebro, found reactions in the brains of genetically altered mice that veered dramatically away from the sponge-like holes prion diseases typically cause in victims.