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Posts Tagged ‘United States’

In U.S., Salmonella Is On the Rise While E. Coli Retreats

June 7, 2011 Comments off

usnews

TUESDAY, June 7 (HealthDay News) — As a deadly new strain of E. coli in Europe makes headlines, U.S. health officials announced Tuesday that salmonella, not E. coli, remains the biggest foodborne health threat to Americans.

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In fact, while rates of several types of foodborne illness — including E. coli — have been falling over the past 15 years, there’s been no progress against salmonella infections, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While infections from Shiga toxin-producing E. coli O157 (the strain of most concern in the United States) have dropped almost in half and the rates of six other foodborne infections have been cut 23 percent, salmonella infections have risen 10 percent, the agency said.

“There are about 50 million people each year who become sick from food in the U.S. That’s about one in six Americans,” CDC director Dr. Thomas R. Frieden said during a noon press conference Tuesday.

In addition, about 128,000 people are Read more…

Categories: disease and pestilence Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Beijing warned on dollar holdings

June 7, 2011 Comments off

ft.com

U.S. dollar notes are seen in this picture illustration taken at the Bank of Taiwan in Taipei November 11, 2010. REUTERS/Nicky Loh

China is running a major risk in holding so many dollars because the US may deliberately devalue its currency, a senior Chinese official has warned.

The comments by Guan Tao, head of the international payments department in the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, knocked the dollar on Tuesday, adding to fears about the struggling US economy. The dollar fell to a one-month low against a basket of six leading currencies.

Pressure on the dollar has intensified amid heightened concerns that the soft patch in the US economy will ensure that the Federal Reserve sticks to its ultra-loose monetary policy in the near future.

Despite Mr Guan’s concerns, which are often voiced in Beijing, analysts said that China had little choice but to recycle its vast foreign currency reserves into dollar-denominated assets. “The United States has adopted expansionary fiscal and monetary policy to stimulate economic growth,” Mr Guan said in an article that was published on the website of China Finance 40 Forum, a Beijing economic think tank.

“The United States may find it hard to Read more…

Categories: China, economics, United States Tags: , , , , , ,

NIA Releases U.S. Economic and Inflation Update

June 6, 2011 Comments off

inflation.us

The official U.S. unemployment rate rose during the month of May to 9.1%, up from 9% in April, with only 54,000 non-farm jobs being created for the month. The real unemployment rate including short and long-term discouraged workers is now 22.3%. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) used the birth/death model to produce a positive monthly bias during the month of May of 206,000 jobs, up from 175,000 in April, 117,000 in March, and 112,000 in February. Without the birth/death model, 152,000 jobs were lost during the month of May.

 

By utilizing the birth/death model, the BLS is assuming that during the month of May, the number of new jobs created by start-up businesses were 206,000 greater than the number of jobs lost from companies going out of business. NIA finds this assumption to be Read more…

Categories: Inflation, unemployment, United States Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

India approves $4bn Boeing military deal

June 6, 2011 Comments off

afp

Photo: Reuters

A Boeing C-17 transport aircraft, known as the Globemaster, shown here at the Papa Air Base in Papa, Hungary, July 27, 2009.

NEW DELHI — India on Monday cleared a more than $4.0-billion deal to buy military transport planes from Boeing in the biggest ever defence deal between New Delhi and an American firm, officials said.

The agreement for the C-17 Globemaster III planes, used for transporting heavy equipment, was cleared at a meeting of the government’s cabinet committee on security affairs, a senior government official said.

The Indian defence ministry declined to comment but the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP that the cabinet gave its clearance to buy 10 C-17 aircraft.

He said the procurement would be done as Read more…

Categories: India, military Tags: , , , , ,

Gold Price Nears $1,550, Time for a Gold Standard?

June 6, 2011 1 comment

goldalert

GOLD PRICE NEWS – The gold price, at $1,542.50 per ounce, traded near unchanged Monday morning despite modest strength in the U.S. dollar.  While gold prices were flat, silver advanced higher by 1.5% to $36.79 per ounce.  Global equity prices have been under pressure over the past month with the S&P 500 falling for five consecutive weeks.  Weak data points in housing, manufacturing, and labor have all combined to heighten worries over the prospect of a double-dip recession.  Precious metals, notably gold, have benefited from their safe haven qualities as investors seek to lower their risk profiles.

The strong performance of the gold price in recent years has led to a growing collection of calls for the United States to return to a gold standard. Steve Forbes, the billionaire CEO of Forbes Inc., wrote a piece in Forbes Magazine urging candidates for the 2012 U.S. presidential election to consider returning to some form of gold standard to support the value of the U.S. dollar.

Forbes began the article by stating that “Monetary policy is one of Read more…

Categories: GOLD Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Local levees threatened by record-setting releases into Missouri River

June 6, 2011 Comments off

columbiamissourian

COLUMBIA — Workers at the city’s water treatment plant in the Missouri River bottoms are getting the boats out of storage.

Two levees protect McBaine from river levels up to 32 feet, and a flood wall at the plant itself can withstand up to 40 feet, said Floyd Turner, Columbia’s manager of water operations.

Extremely high amounts of rainfall and melting snow along the northern sections of the Missouri River are expected to raise river levels enough to possibly overwhelm levees throughout the state. One of those at risk, the McBaine Levee District, protects the Columbia Drinking Water Plant.If the Missouri River overflows the levees along the river, though, plant workers will need their two 14-foot boats to navigate between the nearby wells and possibly transport workers to and from the plant.

The water plant’s staff was stockpiling sand for spot leaks along with other supplies in case floods limit access to the plant, engineer Michael Anderson said Friday. Workers at the plant were also checking on emergency generators in the event the plant loses electricity.

A forecast from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers shows the Missouri River overflowing as many as 58 levees between Kansas City and St. Louis by the end of the month.

After a year’s worth of rain in recent weeks and snowpack 140 percent above average in the Read more…

Categories: Flood, Missouri Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

European drought raises fears of food riots

June 2, 2011 Comments off

theaustralian

european droughts

The cracked river-bed near the village of Ancenis, in western France, where severe water restrictions have been impressed. Picture: AFP Source: AFP

BERNARD Maquis’s cattle would normally be grazing in the lush green pastures of the Limousin region, in central France, at this time of year.

Instead, they are eating hay intended for the winter after months of drought have turned the fields yellow.

He is wondering whether it might be better to sell his cows at a reduced price rather than find himself without fodder by the end of the autumn. “I’m starting to sleep badly,” he said.

Mr Maquis is not alone. With northern Europe facing its worst drought since 1976, politicians in the West are expecting protests Read more…

Categories: Droughts, Europe, Food Crisis Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

China denies Gmail hacking accusations

June 2, 2011 Comments off

guardian

Google China's former headquarters in Beijing

Gmail account passwords were stolen by hackers suspected to be based in Jinan, capital of Shandong province. Photograph: Jason Lee/Reuters

China has rejected Google’s accusations that it is behind a wave of high-level hacking attacks and said its critics had “ulterior motives” in trying to blame the government in Beijing.

The rebuttal follows revelations that Chinese hackers have stolen the Gmail login details of hundreds of senior US and South Korean government officials as well as Chinese political activists.

Google has warned the victims of the “phishing” scam and made a public statement about the threat. The US company said it could not say for sure who was responsible, but it traced many of the attacks to Jinan, the capital of Read more…

Categories: China Tags: , , , , , , , ,

New signs economy’s recovery faltering

June 2, 2011 Comments off

startribune

Evan Solomon worked at the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday as fears that the economy was stalling rattled the markets.

The U.S. economic recovery is faltering, and Washington is running out of ways to get it back on track.

New reports Wednesday showed a steep slowdown in the manufacturing sector and weak private-sector job creation in May. The grim news comes on the heels of other recent indicators — falling home prices and consumer spending — that reflect an economy slowing to a limp this spring.

The data dash the sunnier expectations that many analysts had entering the year; many forecasters had expected economic growth of 3.5 to 4 percent in 2011.

Instead, the U.S. economy appears to be settling back into a pattern of Read more…

Categories: Economy, United States Tags: , , , , ,

GMO created foods may be used as a biological weapon

June 1, 2011 Comments off

examiner

Genetically modified organisms (GMO) which are used to create new food seeds and crops, are being tied to use as a potential biological weapon in creating infertility in places around the world.

A report published on May 28th tied together that the international organization Codex, which is seeking to regulate every food, mineral, and herb in the world used for consumption, does not consider GMO created products as food, and thus they are being placed in a separate sphere of attributes that can be used for alternative functions.

Including birth control and creating infertility in a nation or population.

There has been a concerted national effort by citizens to have the US government label GMOs.  Opposing it are government intent not only to keep them unlabeled in the US but efforts at the international level by the US government to remove all labeling of GMOs through Codex.  The problem is that Codex applies to food, and Read more…

Categories: Genetically modified Tags: , , , , , , , ,