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USDA: Food prices to rise further during rest of 2011
World instability+Food Prices+Oil+Floods+Droughts+Inflation=A Hungry and Broke You/Me
A federal study finds food prices will take a bigger bite out of Iowans’ food budgets this year. Rick Volpe, an economist with the U-S Department of Agriculture, says a trip to the grocery store will mean either less food in your cart or less money in your wallet.
“It will be hard to pay roughly the same amount you paid in 2010,” Volpe says. “There is no question that the food budget is going up for a lot of households.” Volpe says the highest price hikes will be seen in the supermarket’s meat and dairy cases.
“We’re forecasting a seven-to-eight-percent increase in retail beef prices and six-and-a-half to seven-and-a-half for pork,” he says. “Your milk, yogurt and cheese, we are forecasting about a five-percent increase.”
Volpe says there are several reasons for the hike in food prices but the rising cost of fuel is foremost. Triple-A-Iowa says the Read more…
Bedbugs with ‘superbug’ germ found
We’ve all heard the expression “don’t let the bed bugs bite.” Well that’s exactly what they do, and a new study shows some of them may be carrying a staph infection superbug.
First of all the study is very small and preliminary. Canadian scientists found drug-resistant staph bacteria in bedbugs at a hospital in British Columbia. Experts say while the bugs cause a lot of discomfort they have not been known to spread disease. Just the word bedbug gives a lot of people the willies.
The small pests were nearly wiped out 70 years ago, but they are once again a growing problem.
Karen Christie is an infection preventionist with ProMedica. She says, “In the state of Ohio, we’ve seen a real increase and part of the reason for that is they are resistant to some of the pesticides that are used to treat and kill bedbugs.”
The Centers for Disease Control released a study on the potential bedbug superbug this week. Doctors at a Vancouver hospital did research after seeing a spike in bedbugs and staph infections from a neighborhood near the hospital. Five bed bugs were crushed and analyzed. Methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus or MRSA was found on three of the bugs. MRSA is resistant to several Read more…
House approves biometrics listing bill -MANILA, PHILIPPINES
MANILA, PHILIPPINES
THE HOUSE of Representatives approved on second reading on Tuesday a bill that seeks to clean the voter record in preparation for the midterm elections in 2013.
The Web site of the Bills and Index service stated that House Bill 3469 requires all voters to have their biometrics data — photographs, fingerprints and signature — taken by an election officer.
The bill, aside from ensuring that the Automated Fingerprint Identification System will identify double registrants and other irregularities, is seen to also discourage cheating.
Data from the Commission on Elections (Comelec) showed that there were 704,542 voters with double or multiple registration in May 2010 general elections.
The bill defines such voters as those registered in more than one city or municipality.
Only half of the 50.8 million voters have biometrics data, the Comelec said.
The bill seeks to prohibit those without biometrics data from voting. Read more…
Silver to Surge to $450/oz and Gold to $12,000/oz – Cazenove’s Robin Griffiths
Gold and silver are higher this morning with the dollar, the British pound and commodity currencies falling in value. It is too early to tell whether the recent margin driven, paper sell off on the COMEX is over but physical supply remains limited while demand remains robust, particularly in China, India and wider Asia.
Cross Currency Rates
Knowledgeable experts continue to urge investors to own gold and silver due to the likelihood of much higher prices, currency and inflation risk.
One of the most respected global technical and macro strategists in the world, Robin Griffiths has said that silver and gold could rise to $450 and $12,000 per ounce respectively due to the debasement of Read more…
India’s Army Could Receive WMD-Resistant Gear
Russia announced that it would provide its military with these suits earlier this month.
India’s army could receive new gear designed to provide protection against chemical, biological or nuclear materials, the Press Trust of India reported on Wednesday (see GSN, April 26).
Kanpur’s Defense Material and Stores Research Development Establishment “has developed a new NBC or nuclear-biological-chemical suit that would be proved effective against any kind of dangerous weapons or chemicals and protect soldiers from any sort of attack,” agency head Arvind Kumar Saxena said.
“The organization [has] developed the chemical attack-resistant suit, but the suits necessary for the nuclear and biological war situation has not been prepared,” the official said. “The work on the biological suit is likely to be completed by 2013, whereas the preparation for the Read more…
Rising Mississippi takes aim at Cajun country
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| Workers build a temporary levee in Krotz Springs, La., Thursday, May 12, 2011, in advance of possible flooding if the Morganza Spillway north of Baton Rouge is opened. Crews were rushing to build temporary levees to protect properties that have been built outside of the town’s permanent ring levee over the last few decades. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) |
BUTTE LAROSE, La. (AP) — In the latest agonizing decision along the swollen Mississippi River, federal engineers are close to opening a massive spillway that would protect Baton Rouge and New Orleans but flood hundreds of thousands of acres in Louisiana Cajun country.
With that threat looming, some 25,000 people in an area known for small farms, fish camps, crawfish and a drawling French dialect are hurriedly packing their things and worrying that their homes and way of life might soon be drowned.
People in this riverfront community gathered at their volunteer fire station to hear a man dressed in Army fatigues deliver an Read more…
IMF Says Europe’s Debt Woes Could Spread
The International Monetary Fund is warning that the governmental debt problems in Greece, Ireland and Portugal could spread to other European countries that employ the euro currency and also to the emerging economies in eastern Europe.
In its semi-annual report on the European economy, the IMF said Thursday that officials so far have been able to contain the continent’s debt contagion to the three countries on Europe’s geographic periphery. But the Washington-based financing agency said there “remains a tangible downside risk” of debt problems spreading. It said European nations will have to make “unrelenting” efforts to contain their financial problems.
The IMF said weak banking systems remain a threat to the financial health of the 17 nations where the euro is the common currency. It said the reduction in the number of banks in Europe is proceeding too slowly and that greater financial integration on the continent is needed.
Greece and Ireland reluctantly accepted bailouts from the IMF and their European neighbors last year and now Portugal is Read more…
China’s Yangtze river closed to ships by severe drought
The Yangtze river, the longest waterway in Asia and China’s most important shipping route, has been closed by the worst drought in 50 years that has left cargo ships stranded and 400,000 people without drinking water.
Water-levels have sunk as low as 10ft in the main thoroughfare of the 3,900-mile long river that stretches from the glaciers of the Tibetan plateau to the coastal city of Shanghai.
The Yangtze river basin is home to one-third of China’s population and is responsible for 40 per cent of the country’s economic growth.
Emergency teams have been sent to the river’s middle reaches around Wuhan in the central province of Hubei, to rescue two ships Read more…
Is This The New Great Depression?
One of the precious few things that politicians, historians, and economists can all agree on is that policy makers blew it in the Great Depression. During the singular moment when they should have most allowed free markets to take care of things—they compounded them with protectionism, isolationism, taxes, and tariffs.
In this video, James Grant, of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, and Liaquat Ahamed, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Lords of Finance discuss the legacy being left behind by the central bankers of today.
James Grant has been called a wingnut, but you can immediately sense that he has studied cycles and monetary history. Last year, in the New York Times, he wrote an article in which he criticized the Fed, and longed for the classical gold standard of yesteryear:
Climate Record Suggesting Severe Tropical Droughts as Northern Temperatures Rise
 Laguna Pumacocha in the Peruvian Andes. |
A 2,300-year climate record Universityof Pittsburgh researchers recovered from an Andes Mountains lake reveals that as temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere rise, the planet’s densely populated tropical regions will most likely experience severe water shortages as the crucial summer monsoons become drier. The Pitt team found that equatorial regions of South America already are receiving less rainfall than at any point in the past millennium.
The researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that a nearly 6-foot-long sediment core from Laguna Pumacocha in Peru contains the most detailed geochemical record of tropical climate fluctuations yet uncovered. The core shows pronounced dry and wet phases of the South American summer monsoons and corresponds with existing geological data of precipitation changes in the surrounding regions.
Paired with these sources, the sediment record illustrated that rainfall during the South American summer monsoon has dropped sharply since 1900-exhibiting the greatest shift in precipitation since around Read more…
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