Sugar is among the items in the FAO’s food price index.
Global food prices are moving ever higher, hitting record levels last month as a jittery market reacted to unpredictable weather and tight supplies, according to a United Nations report released Thursday.
Continue reading… “Global Food Prices Hit Record Levels”
Evidence of a skills mismatch became increasingly clear in Fresno after the housing bubble burst, causing joblessness to nearly triple.
This city is grappling with one of the most troubling contradictions of the new economy: Even as it has one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates, it has thousands of job openings.
Ordinary Chinese people priced out of China’s property market.
To understand how far ordinary Chinese have been priced out of their country’s property market, you need to look not upwards at the Beijing’s shimmering high-rise skyline, but down, far below the bustling streets where nearly 20m people live and work. There, in the city’s vast network of unused air defence bunkers, as many as a million people live in small, windowless rooms that rent for £30 to £50 a month, which is as much as many of the city’s army of migrant labourers can afford. (Pics)
A nuclear missile in Pakistan.
Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal now totals more than 100 deployed weapons, a doubling of its stockpile over the past several years in one of the world’s most unstable regions, according to estimates by nongovernment analysts.
South Africa is in the grip of a dangerous new drug craze that could threaten the country’s battle against AIDS. The street drug called “whoonga” is a cocktail that includes the anti retroviral (ARV) medication prescribed to people with HIV. Demand for the substance has prompted a wave of thefts of AIDS drugs across the country.
Continue reading… “HIV Street Drug ‘Whoonga’ is South Africa’s Latest High”
A new report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation analyzes more than 2,500 pages’ worth of FBI documents extracted using Freedom of Information Act litigation and finds disturbing, system-wide violations of civil liberties on a scale that is far beyond anything reported to date…
Continue reading… “EFF: FBI May Have Committed More Than 40K Intelligence Violations Since 9/11”
Noted speed freak, serial-killer fangirl, and Tea Party hero Ayn Rand was also a kleptoparasite, sneakily gobbling up taxpayer funds under an assumed name to pay for her medical treatments after she got lung cancer…
Continue reading… “Ayn Rand Slyly Took Government Assistance While Decrying Others Who Did The Same”
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has officially approved the unregulated planting of Monsanto’s genetically engineered alfalfa. In a move that will undoubtedly set a precedent for what comes next (namely, the question of whether or not to deregulate GE sugarbeets) Vilsack did nothing more, and nothing less than obliterate our choice as organic consumers to be assured that we are avoiding genetically modified organisms in our food…
Continue reading… “Monsanto Wins Big and Consumers Again Get Screwed”
The famous “sex spelled out in ice cubes” gin ad.
Facebook has rolled out a new ad system where people’s updates get converted into “sponsored story” ads fed to their friends. But this is hardly the first time advertisers have tried to feed us ads stealth-style. (videos)
Continue reading… “How Advertisers Try to Control Your Mind”
Should the government here have this kind of power?
On Thursday Jan 27th at 22:34 UTC the Egyptian Government effectively removed Egypt from the internet. Nearly all inbound and outbound connections to the web were shut down. The internet intelligence authority Renesys explains it here and confirms that “virtually all of Egypt’s Internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide.” This has never happened before in the entire history of the internet, with a nation of this size. A block of this scale is completely unheard of, and Senator Joe Lieberman wants to be able to do the same thing in the US…
Continue reading… “Egypt Turns Off Internet, Lieberman Wants Same Option For US”
The dairy industry is butting heads with the FDA over the agency’s plan to increase testing for antibiotics in milk. Food safety advocates are concerned about overuse of drugs in dairy cows (and increased antibiotic resistance in humans), while the industry says the new testing procedures would cause a lot of milk to be wasted because the results can take a full week to come back.
Certain farms are already caught regularly with milk containing illegal levels of drugs—and farmers also use drugs that are not regularly tested for.
Continue reading… “Dairy Industry Fights FDA’s Proposed New Drug Testing for Milk”
Google, the company that fought censorship in China and vowed not to censor even anti-Semitism, has begun a subtle censorship campaign of its own.
As of today, if a Google search user begins typing in a term such as “BitTorrent,” Google’s Auto Suggest feature stops listing possible terms as soon as he types the second “T” in the word. Likewise, it won’t auto-complete the pirate-familiar words “megaupload,” “utorrent” or “rapidshare.”
Continue reading… “Google Engages in Subtle Form of Censorship”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.