WASHINGTON (CNS) — The global food crisis was called a “ticking time bomb” at a Feb. 24 forum during the annual Catholic Social Ministry Gathering in Washington.
Although prices for cereal grains have dropped since their spike last spring, the crisis has not gone away, according to Rajul Pandya-Lorch, chief of staff at the International Food Policy Research Institute and the head of the institute’s initiative, Vision 2020 for Food.
By Mark Pattison
Catholic News Service
California’s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency because of a severe drought.The governor said the drought was having “a devastating impact” on people, the economy and environment.
He urged the state’s cities and towns to cut water consumption by 20%, or face the prospect of compulsory cuts.
February 28, 2009
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
The Bush administration instituted a rule in its last days that strengthened job protections for doctors and nurses who refuse for moral reasons to perform abortions.
President Obama wants to rescind a Bush administration rule that strengthened job protections for doctors and nurses who refuse for moral reasons to perform abortions.
A Health and Human Services official said Friday the administration will publish notice of its intentions early next week, opening a 30-day comment period for advocates, medical groups and the public. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the notice has not been completed.
February 27, 2009
http://foxnews.com
ORIGINAL CAPTION: Children sit in cardboard boxes at the Kizito orphanage in Bunia, Democratic Republic of Congo. (Finbarr O’Reilly, Reuters)
Economic difficulty could impel Beijing to sow regional conflict. American policies shouldn’t add fuel to the fire.
Washington – For more than 30 years, free and open markets have propelled China’s labor-driven growth and lifted more than 200 million of its citizens out of rural poverty. But America’s recent economic downturn has hit China hard. Exports from its booming trade sector dropped 17.5 percent in January from a year ago. In the past several months, an estimated 20 million rural Chinese migrant workers have lost their jobs.
China’s rising unemployment could lead to increased social unrest, and challenge the authority of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Throughout 30 years of liberal reform, the CCP has justified its authoritarian grip through the promise of economic advancement.
A state senator in Oklahoma, Randy Brogdan, has introduced a resolution that would enable his state to “reclaim its 10th Amendment right to reject any and all acts of Congress that go beyond its enumerated powers in violation of the 10th Amendment.“
Red Full Article…..
As the global economic crisis takes hold, hardly any other country has seen its fortunes wane as brutally as the United Kingdom. Once a model economy, the country has been overcome by a deep sense of uncertainty.
It is a gloomy February in Great Britain, yet another month in which the economy is shrinking and the pound is faltering, and yet another month of record growth in unemployment.
February 23, 2009
By Thomas Hüetlin and Mathieu von Rohr
http://spiegel.de/
I am meeting a few battered Americans these days. There are not many left, but those that are seem to sound alike. Yes, I think I am beginning to understand Mr. Battered American, and he sounds tired and a bit like this.
“I’m sorry Mr. President, but we are just not dictatorial in the Middle East. You said the Saudis, not America, showed courage over there. But, Mr. President, the Saudis, they live under sharia law! And my God! — they once engineered crippling oil boycotts against our nation. And wasn’t it they who produced 15 of the 19 killers on 9/11? So no, Mr. President, those Saudis — they simply are not courageous. Now Mr. Biden, there is no reason to set the reset button on foreign policy, as you promised all those Europeans. None at all. Tell that resetting stuff instead to Ahmadinejad, Chavez, that Korean nut, Putin, and all the other thugs who kill and cause misery, but not to our America that saves and feeds and helps. Mrs. Clinton, it’s now your turn. We are not impulsive as you told the world. So you can stop apologizing for America’s recent behavior — unless you think the world would be a better place with the Taliban, and Saddam and his two boys in power. Or maybe Europe should have Schroeder and Chirac back, or Libya with nuclear weapons, or Khalid Sheik Mohammed freed from Guantanamo. Or maybe America shouldn’t have given that $15 billion for AIDs relief in Africa, or helped with earthquakes in Pakistan and tsunamis in Indonesia. Now all that was sorta impulsive.â€
As he thinks about this apology business, the battered American always gets a little angrier, “And another thing. Mr. Holder, I’ve never said or done a racist thing in my life, not one. Always supported equal opportunity, always will. So don’t call me a “coward†or my countrymen “cowards,†not when you’re my Attorney General. You are The Attorney General of the United States of America, so please, no more playing Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, leveling the latest shake-down charge on television. That’s not really in your job description to call your own countrymen “cowards.†When I was in high school I was taught that name-calling like that might be what they said was “projection.†So maybe, just maybe, you have been cowardly — and arrogant too — but not those whom you accused of all that. At least if someone asked me to help pardon a fugitive on the FBI’s most wanted list, I would have said “no.†Always, no exceptions, period! Anything else? That would be cowardly.â€
(02-22) 04:00 PST Washington - — If 30 years of financial crises teach anything – in Scandinavia, Japan, other parts of Asia and Latin America – the worst is not over for the U.S. economy. But that may be the good news.
This time, a tightly interdependent world has entered a synchronized contraction. Pretty much everyone is in trouble, leaving the world without an engine.
Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Sunday, February 22, 2009
http://Sanfrancisco Chronical
With drug-fueled violence and corruption escalating sharply, many fear drug cartels have grown too powerful for Mexico to control. Why things are getting worse, and what it means for the United States.
Much as Pakistan is fighting for survival against Islamic radicals, Mexico is waging a do-or-die battle with the world’s most powerful drug cartels. Last year, some 6,000 people died in drug-related violence here, more than twice the number killed the previous year. The dead included several dozen who were beheaded, a chilling echo of the scare tactics used by Islamic radicals. Mexican drug gangs even have an unofficial religion: They worship La Santa Muerte, a Mexican version of the Grim Reaper.
In growing parts of the country, drug gangs now extort businesses, setting up a parallel tax system that threatens the government monopoly on raising tax money. In Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, handwritten signs pasted on schools warned teachers to hand over their Christmas bonuses or die. A General Motors distributorship at a midsize Mexican city was extorted for months at a time, according to a high-ranking Mexican official. A GM spokeswoman in Mexico had no comment.
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