Rice

Let it be known that James Kyson Lee is ripped. The actor who first gained fame as Ando, skeptical sidekick of the time-traveling Hiro on NBC's "Heroes," is a part-time baller (a point guard for the celebrity hoops squad the Hollywood Knights) whose workout regimen has been featured on TVGuide.com. Lee confidently strides into his publicist's offices with a hipster haircut, open shirt and thick wristbands over veiny forearms. His TV character gained powers of his own last season, including the "Ando Blast" (no, that's not a protein shake)

From Cairo to New Delhi to Shanghai, a run on rice is threatening to disrupt worldwide food supplies as much as the scarcity of confidence on Wall Street this year roiled credit markets. China, Egypt, Vietnam and India, representing more than a third of global rice exports, curbed sales this year, and Indonesia says it may do the same. Investigators in the Philippines, the world's biggest importer, raided warehouses last month to crack down on hoarding.

The global run on food that has led to shortages and riots in Egypt, Haiti and other nations has made its way to U.S. shores. Concerned about rising prices and limited supplies of staples such as rice and flour, customers across the country have been cleaning out the shelves at big-box retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s Sam's Club and Costco Wholesale Corp. stores.

While Myanmar's military regime Friday restricted the rush of international aid offered to help hungry and homeless cyclone survivors, the government was exporting tons of rice through its main port. Four of the five berths at the port of Thilawa for oceangoing container vessels were empty, but a crane was loading large white sacks into the hold of a freighter.

All over the world, prices for basic foods -- barley for beer, milk for cheese, corn for tortillas, and the rice that serves as a staple for more than half the world's population -- are soaring. But farmers aren't rushing to cash in on the boom by planting more of the crops. The amount of corn planted in the U.S. is expected to dip this year. Rice acreage in California, which sells as much as half its crop overseas, is predicted to increase by only a small amount.

Anyone seeking signs that China and Japan are working hard to get their fraught relations back on track should consider this: After a four-year ban, the Chinese have agreed to resume eating Japanese rice. China cut off rice imports from Japan in 2003, ostensibly because Beijing had found insects in a shipment.

Japanese researchers have developed a genetically engineered rice that protects against cholera, offering the hope of an inexpensive, easily stored vaccine that could make a major impact against diseases in Third World countries. The research, carried out by Hiroshi Kiyono and colleagues at the University of Tokyo, was published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The rice was engineered to produce a portion of the cholera toxin protein in the grains.

Stone Age people began cultivating rice in what is now China more than 7,700 years ago by burning trees in coastal marshes and building dams to hold back seawater, converting the marshes to rice paddies that would support growth of the high-yield cereal grain, researchers reported today.

Inside the special bag Isabelle Vajda brings back each year from Paris are four things (five if she has room): five packets of couscous fin, four cans of Clement Faugier chestnut paste, two large cans of duck confit and lots of Haribo chocolate-covered marshmallow teddy bears. Any extra space and she might add a few boxes of green lentils. Yes, she knows she can get them here, but the ones she buys in France she thinks are just a bit firmer.

Bayer, the second-biggest corn-seed producer in the U.S., detected trace amounts of an unapproved genetically engineered rice variety in commercial U.S. samples, posing a threat to a portion of rice exports. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration concluded that there were "no human health, food safety or environmental concerns associated with the rice," Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said.