Global Free Market For Food and Energy Faces Biggest Threat In Decades
May 9, 2008
The global free market for food and energy is facing its biggest threat in decades as a host of countries push through draconian measures to hold down prices, raising fears of a new “resource nationalism” that could endanger world food security.
India shocked the markets yesterday by suspending trading in futures contracts for a range of farm products in a bid to clamp down on alleged speculators and curb inflation, now running at 7.6pc.
The country’s Forward Markets Commission said contracts for soybean oil, chana (chickpeas), potatoes, and rubber had been banned for four months, even though a report by the Indian parliament last month concluded that soaring food costs had almost nothing to do with the futures contracts. Traders in Mumbai slammed the ban as an act of brazen political populism.
The move has been seen as a concession to India’s Communist MPs - key allies of premier Manmohan Singh - who want a full-fledged ban on futures trading in sugar, cooking oil, and grains.
As food and fuel riots spread across the world, a string of governments have resorted to steps that menace the free flow of food and key commodities. Argentina has banned beef exports, while Egypt and India have stopped shipments of rice.
If this is your first time visiting Bible Prophecy In The News, I'd like to invite you to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Evangelical Manifesto Criticizes Politics of Faith
May 4, 2008
Conservative Christian leaders who believe the word “evangelical” has lost its religious meaning plan to release a starkly self-critical document saying the movement has become too political and has diminished the Gospel through its approach to the culture wars.
The statement, called “An Evangelical Manifesto,” condemns Christians on the right and left for using faith to express political views without regard to the truth of the Bible, according to a draft of the document obtained Friday by The Associated Press.
“That way faith loses its independence, Christians become ‘useful idiots’ for one political party or another, and the Christian faith becomes an ideology,” according to the draft.
The declaration, scheduled to be released Wednesday in Washington, encourages Christians to be politically engaged and uphold teachings such as traditional marriage. But the drafters say evangelicals have often expressed “truth without love,” helping create a backlash against religion during a “generation of culture warring.”
“All too often we have attacked the evils and injustices of others,” the statement says, “while we have condoned our own sins.” It argues, “we must reform our own behavior.”
The document is the latest chapter in the debate among conservative Christians about their role in public life. Most veteran leaders believe the focus should remain on abortion and marriage, while other evangelicals — especially in the younger generation — are pushing for a broader agenda. The manifesto sides with those seeking a wide-range of concerns beyond “single-issue politics.”
All Salmon Fishing Banned On West Coast - Salmon Disappear
May 3, 2008
Salmon fishing was banned along the West Coast for the first time in 160 years Thursday, a decision that is expected to have a devastating economic impact on fishermen, dozens of businesses, tourism and boating.
Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez immediately declared a commercial fishery disaster, opening the door for Congress to appropriate money for anyone who will be economically harmed.
The closure of commercial and recreational fishing for chinook salmon in the ocean off California and most of Oregon was announced by the National Marine Fishery Service.
It followed the recommendation last month of the Pacific Fishery Management Council after the catastrophic disappearance of Californias fabled fall run of the pink fish popularly known as king salmon.
It is the first total closure since commercial fishing started in the Bay Area in 1848.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency last month and sent a letter to President Bush asking for his help in obtaining federal disaster assistance. Schwarzenegger plans to appropriate about $5.3 million for coastal salmon and steelhead fishery restoration projects.
The disaster declaration allows state officials to work with Congress on obtaining appropriations for businesses and fishermen and women, some of whom will lose as much as 80 percent of their annual income.
Ex-NYPD Cops Say Smiley Face Deaths May Be Work of Nationwide Network of Killers
May 1, 2008
A spray-painted smiley face with a taunting grin could be the disturbing signature of a nationwide network of killers who target promising college students.
The chilling symbol has been found at at least 12 sites where young men fitting a distinct profile have been drowned in incidents that were ruled accidents.
Found by two retired NYPD cops, the link could be evidence that at least 40 men in 11 states were victims of a syndicate of serial killers. Four area students were among the victims - all found floating in New York City waters more than a decade ago.
“I believe we’re looking at an organized group that has a hierarchy and is involved in murder and other criminal activity,” retired NYPD Sgt. Kevin Gannon said Monday, noting that some of the deaths in different cities occurred on the same day.
Gannon, a 20-year veteran who worked homicide and missing persons cases, said trademark graffiti left at the sites where the victims have been dumped in the water reveal a pattern of intent - along with the near-identical profiles of the drowned men.
Time For Americans To Stockpile Food?
April 25, 2008
I don’t want to alarm anybody, but maybe it’s time for Americans to start stockpiling food.
No, this is not a drill.
You’ve seen the TV footage of food riots in parts of the developing world. Yes, they’re a long way away from the U.S. But most foodstuffs operate in a global market. When the cost of wheat soars in Asia, it will do the same here.
Reality: Food prices are already rising here much faster than the returns you are likely to get from keeping your money in a bank or money-market fund. And there are very good reasons to believe prices on the shelves are about to start rising a lot faster.
“Load up the pantry,” says Manu Daftary, one of Wall Street’s top investors and the manager of the Quaker Strategic Growth mutual fund. “I think prices are going higher. People are too complacent. They think it isn’t going to happen here. But I don’t know how the food companies can absorb higher costs.” (Full disclosure: I am an investor in Quaker Strategic)
Stocking up on food may not replace your long-term investments, but it may make a sensible home for some of your shorter-term cash. Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you’ll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate. Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only going to pay you about 4.1%, according to Bankrate.com. And those yields are before tax.
Meanwhile the most recent government data shows food inflation for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a year.
And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They’re all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%.
Strange Red Lights Reported In Phoenix Sky
April 22, 2008
Several Valley residents reported seeing strange red lights in the sky on Monday night.
One north Phoenix resident, who wished to remain anonymous, said he saw four or five red lights lined up in a straight line and spaced apart evenly. The lights slowly moved east and became dimmer as the witness watched. He said the last light remained in the sky the longest. Then three jets came from the west and traveled in the direction of the red lights.
An Arizona Republic reporter who lives in Deer Valley reported seeing four lights in a square shape that eventually became a triangular shape. The lights were moving to the east and they disappeared one by one. She said the lights were visible for about 13 minutes.
An official from Luke Air Force Base stated that they do not have any aircraft in the sky tonight and that the lights are not part of any Air Force activities.
Perfect Storm - Food Crisis Grips Globe
April 21, 2008
Hunger smashed in the front gate of Haitis presidential palace. Hunger poured on to the streets, burning tyres and taking on soldiers and the police. Hunger sent the countrys prime minister packing.
Haitis hunger, that has become fiercer than ever in recent days as global food prices spiral out of reach, rising by as much as 45% since the end of 2006 and turning staples such as beans, corn and rice into closely guarded treasures.
Saint Louis Meriskas children ate two spoonfuls of rice apiece as their only meal and then went without any food the following day. His eyes downcast, his own stomach empty, the unemployed father said: “They look at me and say Papa, Im hungry, and I have to look away. Its humiliating and it makes you angry.”
That anger is palpable across the globe. The food crisis is not only being felt among the poor but is also eroding the gains of the working and middle classes, sowing volatile levels of discontent and putting new pressures on fragile governments.
In Cairo, Egypt, the military is being put to work baking bread as rising food prices threaten to become the spark that ignites wider anger at a repressive government. In Burkina Faso and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, food riots are breaking out as never before. In reasonably prosperous Malaysia, the ruling coalition was nearly ousted by voters who cited food and fuel price increases as their main concerns.
“Its the worst crisis of its kind in more than 30 years,” said Jeffrey D Sachs, the economist and special adviser to the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon. “Its a big deal and its obviously threatening a lot of governments. There are a number of governments on the ropes, and I think theres more political fallout to come.”
Oregon Earthquake Swarm Continues To Puzzle Researchers
April 17, 2008
That’s how researchers at Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center (HMSC) are describing a swarm of earthquakes they are monitoring off the central Oregon coast, about 150 nautical miles southwest of Newport. Since April 1, they have recorded more than 600 quakes in an area not known for a high level of seismic activity.
“We’ve never seen a swarm of earthquakes in an area such as this,” said Robert Dziak, who is among the scientists from OSU using a network of underwater hydrophones to listen for the sounds of ocean floor earthquakes and other phenomena from their labs at HMSC. “We’re not certain what it means.”
A marine geologist and seismologist who works with both OSU and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Dziak called the swarm “unique” because it’s occurring in the middle of what’s known as the Juan de Fuca plate, rather than at the edges where it rubs against other such plates in the earth’s crust.
World Population to Hit 6,666,666,666 on May 10th, 2008
April 17, 2008
The worlds population is expected to hit 6,666,666,666 on May 10th 2008.
California In For Devastating Earthquake Within 30 Years - The Big One
April 14, 2008
A strong and potentially deadly earthquake is virtually certain to strike on one of California’s major seismic faults with a magnitude of at least 6.7 within the next 30 years, scientists said Monday in releasing the first official forecast of statewide earthquake probabilities.
By their calculations the probability of such a strong and damaging quake hitting somewhere the Golden state is now more than 99 percent.
A much more damaging quake of magnitude of 7.5 or greater is at least 46 percent likely to hit on one of California’s restless web of active fault systems within the same three decades, but probably in the southern part of the state, the team of federal and state earthquake scientists warned.
The new report by the team of federal and state geologists, seismologists and geophysicists does not significantly change the current probability estimates for future large quakes on the Bay Area’s major faults that were calculated five years ago, but it does provide the first detailed forecasts for the odds of future quakes on faults in the Los Angeles area: on the southern San Andreas, on the San Jacinto and on the Elsinore faults specifically.
“In our two major metropolitan areas where odds are high that a large quake is coming, people think a lot about quakes whenever even a smaller one shakes … but ten days later most folks forget them, and they shouldn’t,” said David Schwartz, an earthquake geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park who served on the scientific review panel that evaluated the new probability estimates. The analysis was requested by the California Earthquake Authority, a public agency created by the state Legislature in 1996 and funded by companies throughout the state that offer limited quake insurance to all comers.
The report’s details should also prove useful for city planners, building code designers and home and business owners “who can use this information to improve public safety and mitigate damage before the next destructive earthquake occurs,” said geophysicist Ned Field of the U.S. Geological Survey who headed the Working Group on California Earthquake Probabilities that developed the forecasts.
“This new, comprehensive forecast advances our understanding of earthquakes and pulls together existing research with new techniques and data,” Field said.
Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey, the Southern California Earthquake Center and the California State Geological Survey participated in the report. Aside from the scientists in California who evaluated the Working Group’s conclusions, both the California and National Earthquake Prediction Councils evaluated the study too.
The scientists used complex analytical tools that they have developed over many years and new computer programs to arrive at their new forecasts of earthquake magnitudes and the faults they may rupture.
By their calculations, the probability that a 6.7 magnitude quake will hit on any one of the faults in the Bay Area is now set at 63 percent, only a tiny bit higher than the 62 percent estimated in 2003. But the probability for that kind of severely damaging quake on the Hayward-Rodgers Creek fault was increased in the new forecast from 27 percent to 31 percent.
The analysis was the first the scientists done of probabilities for quakes on several Southern California faults. They calculated the odds of a 6.7 magnitude quake striking within 30 years somewhere in the greater Los Angeles at two-to-one, a probability of 67 percent, according to the report.
The single fault in all California with the highest probability of a large quake occurring within the next 30 years is the Southern San Andreas, and the seismic odds-makers set the number for it at 59 percent.
Looking at Northern California’s farthest region - actually the southern end of the 750-mile-long Cascadia Subduction Zone which stretches far up the Pacific Coast into British Columbia - the quake experts set the probability for a large quake within 30 years at only 10 percent, but concluded it could register a magnitude of 8 or even 9. Quakes that powerful occur once every 500 years on average.
Estimating probabilities for future earthquakes is highly complicated and calls for analysis of many factors: the average time between quakes that have struck on a given fault; the location, the size and the time when a quake last ruptured a given fault; the type of quake that hit, the geology of the region, and the rate at which the Earth’s crust is moving.
“The further you are in time from the last quake on a fault, the higher the probability is for the next one,” Schwartz said.
Prophecy In The News Ads
Did God Send A Prophet In The Last Days?
Latest Bible Prophecy In The News Headlines
- Blood Moon Eclipses, Signs In The Skies
- Israel at 60: Will Israel Strike Iran Before Bush Leaves Office
- Child Viral Death Toll Up to 34 In China - 25,000 Infections
- Radio Talk Show Host Bernie Ward Admits To Child Porn in Plea Deal
- Global Free Market For Food and Energy Faces Biggest Threat In Decades
- Burma Death Toll 500,000! Worse than Tsunami
- Fear Grips China As Some 12,000 Children Infected With HFMD Virus
- Myanmar Believes 13,000 Dead, Missing From Cyclone
- Catholics Have Become Key Clinton Base: Analyst
- Scientists Look To Create New Species By Breading Apes With Humans
Sections
- A Perilous Planet
- Coming Economic Collapse
- Disease & Pestilence
- Israel Gods Timepiece
- Moral Decay, Iniquity, Love Waxes Cold
- Prophecy In The News Featured Story
- Prophecy News Misc.
- Science and Technology
- Wars, Rumors of Wars & Terrorism
- Watch Russia
- World Religion, Spirituality & Atheism
