Some Chinese farmers have decided to stop fighting Mother Earth’s climate change, and have rented out their farm land to movie studios.
In one area, the farmers gave up farming and now use their land as huge film studios. The former farmers also double as movie extras. They have made enough money to replace their old farm homes with big modern homes.
It’s not only crops that are suffering in China, because of drought. Bee keepers say they’re losing their bees as well.
Honey production is down due to a decrease in flower pollen production, thanks to climate change. Bee keepers say it will also mean a decrease in bees, because pollen is their food.
China has the largest rapeseed field in the world. Rapeseed is used to make canola oil. Farmers there say drought keeps seed production too low for use in canola oil production. It also keeps rapeseed flower growth too low for the bees.
Thanks to a WikiLeaks release, tensions between the United States and Ecuador are heating up.
The WikiLeaks document showed that the U.S. ambassador to Ecuador, Heather M. Hodges, made some not so nice comments about their President. Apparently President Rafael Correa gave her a chance to retract, or explain, her statements, and she allegedly refused. She was then declared persona non grata (unwelcome) in Ecuador, but not officially kicked out.
Now the United States has actually kicked out the ambassador from Ecuador. The U.S. State Department says it’s in retaliation for Ecuador ordering Hodges out of the country, which President Correa disputes. Correa says they simply said she was no longer welcome, but they were not “kicking her out”.
This continues a long list of problems between Ecuador and the U.S. In the past few years the United States was pushing Ecuador to allow U.S. military bases to be set up on their soil. The official reason was to fight drugs in Columbia, but many people believe it was to encircle Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. President Correa responded, in 2009, by saying that the only way the U.S. could build bases in Ecuador, was if Ecuador was allowed to build bases in the United States.
Now we have the WikiLeaks/ambassador fiasco. What’s next, oil? Maybe!
Ecuador has oil! They have been fighting international legal battles to prevent oil companies from coming in and drilling. That’s right, they do NOT want anymore oil pumped out of their ground. Ecuador does have active oil fields, but they don’t want anymore. The oil corporations, backed by governments (Chevron/United States), are saying to bad so sad, you just a piddly country, what you gonna do about it?
So far Ecuador has been petitioning United Nations members, but not getting much support. There’s estimated to be hundreds of millions of barrels of oil still to be drilled and pumped out in Ecuador. And with the price of oil making it more tempting, could President Obama (or any other future U.S. president) be planning some kinda humanitarian military intervention in Ecuador?
“There are problems with parts supply. But each day, we are doing our utmost to improve the conditions so that we can deliver cars to many customers.”-Akio Toyoda, Toyota President
Toyota is having trouble getting around 150 components, but that’s down from 500 components after the March 11 quake.
Chile’s economy continues to awe outsiders. For the month of February, 2011, Chile’s economy grew by 7.2%.
Chile’s Central Bank said it’s due mainly to exports. The top export from Chile is copper. Right now copper is trading for $10,000 per ton.
Other exports helped Chile: Fruit, timber and fishing. Chile also got a boost from it’s transport industries.
The down side is inflation. The Central Bank says it’s inevitable that with such explosive growth inflation will follow. Currently inflation in Chile is at 4.3%.
From 1998 to 2008 Venezuelans increased their caloric consumption by 55.5%. That’s according to a study by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
Also, between 70-75% of the food is produced locally. It reflects Venezuela’s focus on increasing domestic production.
Venezuela also has a law that says the government must keep three months worth of food, for an estimated 27 million people, stocked up for emergencies.
For the past three years Iran has been building updated dairy production centers and corn flour mills in Venezuela.
Iranian ambassador, Adbolessa Mesri, said the project is meant to upgrade Venezuela’s technology in milk and flour production. The deal gives Venezuela the rights to export the technology to other South American countries.
Russia just delivered two Mi-35P (P for Peru?) Hind E attack copters to Peru.
Officially Peru is using the helicopters in their drugs war.
In 2010 Peru signed a $108-million contract for six Mi-171 Hip H multi-role helicopters and two Mi-35 helicopters. The Mi-35 is an improved version of the infamous Mi-24 Hind, and the Mi-171 is an improved version of the Mi-17.
Toyota and Nissan hope to restart all their Japanese plants by mid to late April.
However, production will not be at full capacity.
Tourism numbers are looking really bad for japan, thanks to the ongoing nuclear disaster. Don’t let that stop you from taking a trip to Japan.
In fact, because of the huge drop in tourist money coming in, you’ll probably get some really good deals in the near future. Even the Japanese airlines will start making unbelievable deals. JAL just got out of bankruptcy and now they’re in trouble, again, because of the ongoing nuke crisis.
The nuke disaster is taking place in northern Honshu. The prevailing winds blow east of there, offshore to the Pacific. Think about visiting southern Honshu (south of Tokyo), and Shikoku & Kyushu. Their locations mean they will avoid most or all airborne (waterborne contamination might be an issue) radiation contamination from northern Honshu.
Also, they are least affected by power outages.
Not only could you get a good deal on a vacation to Japan, but your tourist money will really help Japan to recover.