The following are editorial opinions from newspapers from around the world which may be of interest to Royal Gazette readers.

London Evening Standard,– on Bank of England secret lending

The Government is trying to make us eat less meat. A report in the Lancet today, based on a study partly funded by the Department of Health, recommends that the number of animals bred for meat should be reduced by 30 percent. The Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, backs the report, on public health and environmental grounds.

But is it really that simple? Granted, ruminants, specifically cattle, emit methane. But the effect of meat on the environment depends to a great extent on where and how it is produced and how far it is transported.

Beef produced in South America on cattle ranches for which forests have been cleared, which is then transported to Europe, is environmentally damaging in several respects.

But British beef, if produced in an environmentally sensitive manner and transported as short a distance as possible, is less problematic. It would help if meat, in supermarkets and in catering, were clearly labelled to show its country of origin. Farmers are custodians of the environment. And, according to the National Farmers Union, their carbon emissions account for only one percent of the UK total.

By all means, let ministers encourage us to adopt a varied diet — though fish is scarce. But a blanket target to reduce the number of animals bred for meat is crude. There are other means of reducing carbon emissions: today the Forestry Commission recommends that another four percent of our land mass should be used to plant trees. That is an initiative we can all support.

Cherry Hill, New Jersey Courier-Post, on coping with piracy off Somalia

Spain's government undermined efforts to fight piracy last week by paying a $3.3 million ransom. As long as Somali pirates know they will collect huge ransom payments, they will keep attacking ships.

After the Maersk Alabama was attacked in April, a hijacking that led to the dramatic rescue of Captain Richard Phillips by Navy SEAL snipers, crew members requested that the ship travel different routes or be repainted and/or renamed to avoid it being targeted again by Somali pirates.

None of those things happened and, guess what, the ship was attacked again Wednesday. This time, however, private security guards aboard the ship prevented the pirates from getting on board. ...

The pirates attacked again despite the heavy military presence in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean, despite knowing that attacking an American ship would be difficult. Why? Well, only the day before a $3.3 million ransom was delivered to pirates on a Spanish fishing vessel they had captured six weeks ago. The vessel had 36 crew members. The Spanish government paid the ransom.

Paying ransoms to pirates will only make the problem worse. The Spanish government acted foolishly in capitulating and, in the long run, put more sailors of all nationalities at risk. If governments are going to spend money addressing the piracy problem, there are two ways to spend it: putting more Navy ships in pirate-infested waters and putting either military personnel or private security guards on all commercial vessels that travel the waters off the eastern coast of Africa.

Until the pirates of lawless Somalia come to understand that they will get a fierce fight every time they attempt to take a vessel, rather than a bag full of money, they will continue to violently attack ships. It's amazing that there are governments that don't understand this.