Midwest Floods Set Stage For Economic Disaster
Long after the waters subside, the floods that submerged the Midwest this month could turn out to be the region’s biggest economic disaster in decades, with ramifications that will be felt by consumers across the country.
With levees still under pressure and more flooding expected, no one is ready to put an estimate on the final damage, but it will likely swamp the $21 billion in losses tallied by the Great Flood of 1993.
Crop damage in Iowa alone has already surpassed $2.7 billion, nearly half of it in just one town, Cedar Rapids. Corn prices hit an all-time high near $8 a bushel Monday on the Chicago Board of Trade, but many other important crops were also devastated, especially wheat in Missouri and Nebraska and soybeans in Indiana and Kentucky.
UN Warns Attack on Iran Could Turn Middle East Into a Ball of Fire
A military strike on Iran would turn the Middle East “into a ball of fire,” said Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency.
ElBaradei made the remarks in an interview aired on Saturday by Al Arabiya TV. The interview comes a day after reports emerged that Israel conducted a large-scale military exercise that the United States believes is in part a message to Iran that Israel has the capability to attack its nuclear program.
“In my opinion, any military strike — as I mentioned — is the worst thing that can happen now,” said ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
“It will make the Middle East turn into a ball of fire. It is a lot worse than having sanctions. A military strike will lead Iran, even if it plans today to manufacture a nuclear weapon, to establish a crash course to speed the process to have the weapon with the blessing of all Iranians, even those living in the West.”
A U.S. military official confirmed to CNN on Friday that Israel conducted a major aerial military exercise over the eastern Mediterranean Sea on June 2. The exercise was first reported in the New York Times.
The United States believes the maneuvers were in part an Israeli effort to send a public message that it has the capability to attack Iran’s nuclear program, the official said.
The exercise involved dozens of Israeli warplanes, including F-15s, F-16s and aerial refueling tanker aircraft, the official said, adding that the size and scope of the exercise ensured it was seen by both the United States and other nations in the region.
Russia Warns Against Attacking Iran
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Friday warned against the use of force on Iran, saying there was no proof it was trying to build nuclear weapons.
Lavrov said Iran should be engaged in dialogue and encouraged to cooperate with the UN nuclear monitoring agency.
He made the statement when asked to comment on Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz’s statement earlier this month that Israel could attack Iran if it does not halt its nuclear program.
“I hope the actual actions would be based on international law,” Lavrov said. “And international law clearly protects Iran’s and anyone else’s territorial integrity.”
The IDF refused to confirm or deny a New York Times report Friday that its warplanes staged a major rehearsal this month for a possible attack on Iran.
Lavrov said Russia had asked both the United States and Israel to provide factual information to back their claims that Iran was working to build atomic weapons. “So far we have seen none, and the same conclusion was made by the International Atomic Energy Agency,” he said.
“It’s absolutely not right to speak matter-of-factly that Iran continues building nuclear weapons,” Lavrov added.
Lavrov insisted that Iran must be encouraged to continue its cooperation with the UN monitoring agency.
25 Christians Kidnapped in Peshawar By Militants
Unidentified militants kidnapped 25 Christians from Academy Town in Peshawar, sources told Daily Times on Saturday.
The sources said militants kidnapped them from the Banarasabad area of Academy Town from the house of Yousaf Masih. Superintendent of Police SP Cantonment Imran Shahid confirmed that armed militants driving in five or six vehicles kidnapped eight to nine people on gunpoint and moved them to an undisclosed location at around 8pm.
He said however that the kidnapped did not number 25, and that militants have probably moved them to the Tribal Areas. He added that police have registered a case and is trying to recover them as soon as possible. The NWFP government suspended SSP Operations Peshawar, SP Cantontment, ASP Hayatabad, SHO Hayatabad and other staff after the kidnapping. manzoor ali shah
RBS Issues Global Stock and Credit Crash Alert
It appears dire financial clouds loom just over the horizon. Couple this potential crash with the need for oil and heating oil during the winter months and the loss of crops due to U.S. flooding and you get an idea where we may be heading.
Great article, I suggest you click the link an read it in it’s entirity.
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The Royal Bank of Scotland has advised clients to brace for a full-fledged crash in global stock and credit markets over the next three months as inflation paralyses the major central banks.
“A very nasty period is soon to be upon us – be prepared,” said Bob Janjuah, the bank’s credit strategist.
A report by the bank’s research team warns that the S&P 500 index of Wall Street equities is likely to fall by more than 300 points to around 1050 by September as “all the chickens come home to roost” from the excesses of the global boom, with contagion spreading across Europe and emerging markets.
Such a slide on world bourses would amount to one of the worst bear markets over the last century.
California Gay Weddings Set Stage For Cultural Showdown
June 18, 2008 by admin
Filed under Moral Decay
America’s most populous state, home to 36 million people, provoked a cultural clash by becoming the second state since Massachusetts to legalise gay marriage. But unlike the smaller, east coast state which began same-sex weddings in 2004, California will allow couples from anywhere in the US to marry, no matter the laws of their home state.
Gay couples from across the country are now expected to flock to California for the ceremonies. Opponents see the move as a threat to other states’ positions. Over 40 have laws or amendments either prohibiting same-sex marriage or defining it as a union between a man and a woman.
The 1996 Defence of Marriage Act declares that no state need recognise a same-sex marriage even if legal in another state. New York, however, has said it will honour Californian unions.
The Global Food Crisis Deepens
The list of countries on the brink of disaster because of the global food crisis is growing by the week. Terrorism and security experts predict widespread social and political unrest and violent conflict in the second and third world.
Last week the United Nations’ World Food Programme announced it is to provide US$1.2 billion (£600 million) in additional food aid in the 62 countries hit hardest by the food and fuel crisis.
And Save the Children yesterday launched an emergency appeal to help children in Ethiopia who are suffering from increasing levels of hunger. The charity said a combination of drought and escalating food prices has left 4.6 million people urgently in need of food. In scenes reminiscent of the famines of the 1980s, about 736,000 of these are children under the age of five, a group which is particularly vulnerable to the effects of malnutrition.
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More so than terrorism or global warming, food security will become so critical it will change global governance and result in civil unrest and food wars.
“It is clear which countries are going to be at risk,” Graham Hutchings of Oxford Analytica Daily Brief, which provides country-specific daily risk analysis to political leaders, academics, businesses and NGOs, told the Sunday Herald.
“Those who are net importers of food and those with weak governments will fall, in all likelihood. The overthrow of the leader in Haiti in April over food prices is the shape of things to come.
“Those which have come across our radar are Cambodia, parts of India, the Philippines, central Asian countries such as Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and African countries such as Senegal, Cameroon, Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast. There have been food riots in Egypt, Yemen and Malaysia.”
Hutchings warned there is a very real risk of an angry popular and political backlash against the globalisation and international capitalism from the world’s growing hungry. It is understood that one of the major drivers of the food crisis is financial speculation by the West. Capital flight from the subprime market into secure commodities such as wheat futures has pushed the price of food beyond the reach of the developing world.
Male Priests Marry in Anglican Church’s First Gay Wedding
An Anglican church has held a homosexual “wedding” for the first time in a move that will deepen the rift between liberals and traditionalists, The Sunday Telegraph can disclose.
Two male priests exchanged vows and rings in a ceremony that was conducted using one of the church’s most traditional wedding rites – a decision seen as blasphemous by conservatives.
The ceremony broke Church of England guidelines and was carried out last month in defiance of the Bishop of London, in whose diocese it took place. News of the “wedding” emerged days before a crucial summit of the Anglican Church’s conservative bishops and archbishops, who are threatening to split the worldwide Church over the issue of homosexual clergy.
Rumor – Bush, Like Blair May Convert to Catholicism
June 18, 2008 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
President George Bush was given such a splendid welcome by Pope Benedict XVI yesterday that rumours started flying that the President, like Tony Blair before him, was on the verge of converting to Catholicism.
It was a Vatican visit such as no other head of state has ever enjoyed. Instead of greeting him, like all previous high-ranking visitors, in the papal library of the Apostolic Palace, the Pope took Mr Bush round the medieval St Johns Tower then gave him a tour of the Vatican gardens, culminating in a brief open-air concert by the Sistine Chapel Choir.
The Pope waited for the President at the entrance of the tower. As he arrived, the President was overheard gushing “What an honour” as the two men disappeared for a half-hour tête-à-tête, details of which have not been made public.
The special reception was seen as a return of favours for the magnificent party thrown for the Pope two months ago when he turned 81 during his US tour, attended by up to 9,000 guests. But yesterday the Vatican was seething at rumours that there was much more to it than protocol: George Bush,lifelong Methodist, was about to convert.
The notion was given extra mileage by the fact that the Presidents brother Jeb, the former governor of Florida, converted to Catholicism on marrying his wife Columba, a Mexican.
Turlock Man Beats Child To Death In Public Street – Witnesses Unable To Stop Him
June 16, 2008 by admin
Filed under Moral Decay
The world has truly gone insane…
A man parked his truck on a country road outside Turlock on Saturday night, removed a baby boy from a car seat and then beat the child to death in the street, fighting off passers-by who tried to stop him, until he was gunned down by a police officer whose helicopter landed in a nearby pasture, police said Sunday.
The 27-year-old suspect, who lived in Turlock Stanislaus County, died almost immediately where he fell. The child, who according to police appeared to be 12 to 24 months old, was taken to a hospital but died before arrival.
Police officials declined to identify the man and said they were not yet certain who the child was – or in what way, if any, he was related to his attacker. The Stanislaus County coroners office told police that the agency may have to identify the boy through a DNA test because he was beaten beyond recognition.
No information was immediately available about the childs mother.
The suspect “had tunnel vision,” said Stanislaus County sheriffs Deputy Royjindar Singh, a department spokesman. “As people tried to intervene, to tackle him, he just went back to what he was doing. Anything and everything he could do to the baby, thats what he was doing.”
Seed From 2000 Year Old Tree Is Doing Well
Just over three years old and about four-feet tall, Methuselah is growing well. “It’s lovely,” Dr. Sarah Sallon said of the date palm, whose parents may have provided food for the besieged Jews at Masada some 2,000 years ago.
The little tree was sprouted in 2005 from a seed recovered from Masada, where rebelling Jews committed suicide rather than surrender to Roman attackers.
Radiocarbon dating of seed fragments clinging to its root, as well as other seeds found with it that didn’t sprout, indicate they were about 2,000 years old – the oldest seed known to have been sprouted and grown.
Sallon, director of the Louis L. Borick Natural Medicine Research Center at Hadassah Medical Organization in Israel, updates the saga of Methuselah in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.
One thing they don’t know yet is whether it’s a boy or girl. Date palms differ by sex, but experts can’t tell the difference until the tree is six or seven years old, Sallon said.
She hopes there’s a chance to use it to restore the extinct Judean date palm, once prized not only for its fruit but also for medicinal uses.
The researchers have had a look at the plant’s DNA, however, and found it shares just over half its genes with modern date cultivars.
Radical Islam Among 4 Apocalyptic Forces Threatening America, SBC’s Land Says
America is haunted by the “four modern horses of the apocalypse” – including homosexuality and “radical Islamic jihadism” – which threaten to destroy America and take over the world, according to Southern Baptists’ top ethicist.
Updating a biblical reference from the book of Revelation, which uses apocalyptic language to warn Christians of coming calamity, Richard Land said the four evil forces have “been let loose and are riding forth to wreak havoc and destruction in our society.”
Land identified the four modern horsemen of the apocalypse as the denial of the sanctity of human life, the deluge of hardcore Internet pornography, the radical homosexual agenda and its attempt to undermine marriage, and radical Islamic jihadism.
Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, spoke during his agency’s report to the SBC annual meeting in Indianapolis. He saved his toughest words for radical Islam, which he called a “death cult.”
“Radical Islamic jihadism has declared war on America and American civilization and Christianity,” he charged. “Radical Islamic jihadism is a death cult that has taken root within the religion of Islam. Not all followers of Islam are followers of radical Islamic jihadism. In fact, most of the people who have been killed by radical Islamic jihadists have been Muslims who refused to knuckle under to their perverted, twisted distortion of the Islamic religion.”
The one major obstacle to radical Islam’s attempt to take over the world is the United States, he said.
“The hope is not from Washington, D.C.,” he said. “The only answer is a revival that ripens into a spiritual awakening that will then become a reformation that will then shake America for Jesus Christ. That is the only answer.”
Land challenged Southern Baptists to make personal commitments to bring revival to America.
“Our nation needs a greater movement of the Holy Spirit and it will not happen without a great movement of the Holy Spirit within each of us,” Land added. And that will require personal repentance and prayer.
Powerful 7.0-magnitude Earthquake Kills 2 in Japan
June 14, 2008 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
Japans government says two people have died and eight others have been injured in an earthquake in the northern part of the country.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said at least two died in Saturdays 7-magnitude quake, including one person who ran out of a building in panic and was hit by a truck.
He says one of the eight injured was in serious condition.
Flooding Hits Historic 500-Year Levels in Iowa
“The rest of the levees in the city have not broken down but what the problem is is the water went way up over the top — well over a foot over the top of the levees,” Dave Koch, the city’s public information officer, told FOX News, adding “it’s a 500-year flood and it just overwhelmed us.”
The Midwest has been inundated with floods in recent days, with a man dying Thursday in Albert Lea, Minn., after his vehicle fell into a flooded stream. Two others were rescued.
Officials estimated that 100 blocks in Cedar Rapids were under water.
“We’re just kind of at God’s mercy right now, so hopefully people that never prayed before this, it might be a good time to start,” Linn County Sheriff Don Zeller said. “We’re going to need a lot of prayers and people are going to need a lot of patience and understanding.”
