In Kanagawa Prefecture, near Tokyo, tea crops are contaminated with cesium. Five samples tested positive for cesium, as high as 780 becquerels. National safe limit is 300 becquerels, however, Kanagawa has set its own safe limit at 500.
The farms with the contaminated tea have been requested to stop shipping the tea to market.
“Anytime Obama tries to put forward a policy to reform the system, or to do something for increasing wages, Wall Street crashes the sytem.”-Max Kaiser, former stock broker
Ever wonder why the stock markets suddenly drop, for no apparent reason, or for very weak reasons? Max Kaiser, a former stock broker, says it’s a sign that the United States is being manipulated by corporate America.
The reason that Wall Street wants to control the government, and the Federal Reserve, is to keep interest rates near zero, so corporations, and big speculators, can keep borrowing on the cheap.
“The cost for borrowing for hedge funds and players on Wall Street is actually negative 2% when you factor in all the subsidies, and give aways that the Obama administration has given the banking industry.”-Max Kaiser
If Kaiser is correct, then it means that corporate America is making money just by borrowing money.
“We are in the middle of a recession. We need to get out of the recession by moving forward with good jobs, not poverty jobs.”-Mike Chavez, Labor Expert
California has one of the highest unemployment rates in the U.S.; 12.3% as of March 2011. In Los Angeles County it’s 12.6%.
State workers are facing benefits cuts up to 30%. This week Californians are protesting the bad economy, and the state and local budget cuts, in a Week of Action.
“This is the 21st century, we need to go forward, not backward.”-protester
“I feel a very important wave coming…actually no, I fell we are on the wave right now.”-Rodrigo Contreras, Mexico’s Trade Commissioner in Shanghai
Trade between China and Latin America shot up in 2010, by 51%. China’s trade with Latin America is growing twice as fast as U.S. trade.
Not only has trade grown, but China has reduced its trade deficit with Latin America as well. Most of the trade has been in raw materials/natural resources. Officials want to move towards trading other products in the future.
Argentina has banned smokeless cigarettes (aka electronic cigarettes), because there is no proof they help people stop smoking real cigarettes.
Electronic cigarette makers say their product is not dangerous, but Argentina says some of the aerosols used in the cigarette actually contain nicotine.
In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration lost a court battle to regulate the e-cigarettes as “drug delivery devices”. Now the FDA says it will regulate the e-cigarettes as if they were real cigarettes.
Some U.S. states have banned smoking the e-cigarettes indoors, because they can contain nicotine.
It seems the makers of the electric cigarette don’t understand the problem with real cigarettes; they contain nicotine and are addictive. So how can they claim you can quite smoking if their product contains nicotine?
“WalMart does not take ownership of the goods until a product is sold.”-Sofia Scasserra, FAECYS
At a labor conference in South Africa, the Argentine Federation of Commerce and Service Workers ( FAECYS ) warned of allowing WalMart to set up shop. The warning wasn’t about labor issues, but supply issues. They claim that since WalMart was allowed to operate in Argentina, the affects on business supply has almost destroyed the business middle class.
In Argentina WalMart operates a “spot sale” deal with its suppliers. Basically WalMart doesn’t pay anything for the products it stocks, until they sell. On top of that, WalMart takes three months to pay suppliers.
Another trick WalMart plays; it ships its own products in from China. First the the products go to Brazil, then Argentina, thus avoiding tariffs.
In the case of home appliances is was discovered that WalMart forced suppliers to sell below their cost, and even give them to WalMart for free.
The result is that Argentine suppliers are going out of business. And the result of that, is that small manufacturers in Argentina are going out of business as well.
Days after the U.S. and China signed an agreement to promise to work together, a Chinese company announces they will spend $161 million building an aluminum plant in the U.S.
Shandong Nanshan Aluminum company will open an extrusion plant in Lafayette, Indiana. If there are no complications with the deal, they hope to start building the plant next year. It could employ 150 people, and produce 40,000 tons of aluminum per year.
Maybe your not old enough to remember when parents in the United States used to tell their kids, “Eat all your food, there’re starving people in China/Africa!” A new study by the United Nations proves that kind of reasoning correct.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization released findings of a study on wasting food. The study found that people, in the more wealthier countries, who buy food they don’t eat are a major contributor to the global food crisis.
People buying food in bulk, or ordering large meals at restaurants, and then they can’t eat it all, have just thrown huge amounts of cash down the toilet. The UN estimates that 222 million tons of food is just thrown away in the wealthier countries. That’s almost all the food produced in sub-Saharan Africa!
The United Nations points out that it’s not just food that’s being wasted but the land, water, labor and even investments used to grow the food.
Here’s another point; those people buying huge quantities of food are driving up the prices for food, because they’re increasing demand. Help bring down the price of food: If you’re not going to eat it, don’t buy it!
Toyota has announced they have worked deals to secure, or substitute, 80% of the parts they are missing to build their cars.
The problem is that it’s not 100% of the parts they need. Last month Toyota officials said that it only took one missing part to shut down production.
Starting in 2012, Florida will cut back the maximum number of weeks that unemployed people can collect benefits.
This is not to save the state money, but the corporations. Like Idaho, companies in Florida are the ones who pay into the unemployment system. Florida lawmakers said by reducing the number of weeks a person can collect benefits, it will reduce the cost to the companies paying into the unemployment plan.
In Idaho, companies actually get a refund at the end of the year, if they don’t have over a specific number of unemployment claims filed against them. The idea is to encourage companies not to let workers go, but it hasn’t helped reduce Idaho’s high unemployment, which is holding steady at 9.7%.