| India inflation falls to 6pc as food bills cut
NEW DELHI: India's inflation rate has fallen by over half a percentage point, helped by cheaper food and fuel, official data showed yesterday, easing pressure on the government.The wholesale price index, India's most closely watched cost-of-living monitor, showed inflation fell to 6.05 per cent for the week ended February 17 from 6.63pc the previous week. The drop came as welcome news to the ruling Congress party, whose defeat in two state elections earlier this week was widely blamed on soaring food bills. However, inflation, which stood at 4.13pc a year earlier, was still significantly above the central bank's target range of 5.0pc to 5.5pc. The fall was mainly due to a cut in fuel prices earlier in February as well as drops in the cost of pulses, vegetables, fruit and other food.
Phoenix news briefs
The city's Housing Department and the Arizona Association of Community Managers are joining forces to make facility improvements at the Pine Towers senior housing complex today. City housing staff members and AACM representatives will improve the center courtyard area, installing six sidewalks, trimming and pruning trees, mowing lawns, and installing plans. .
Michael Jansen: Apartheid in Israel
It is important for Israel to silence or smear anyone who compares Israel to apartheid South Africa. On the one hand, Israel argues that the Jewish state has a moral basis for existence: recompensing the Jews for centuries of Western persecution.
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GM seeds are blowing in the wind
Genetically modified foods are dangerous. They create self-propagating genetic pollution. Scientists are adding novel characteristics to foods, tomatoes that wont rot quickly, corn and cotton that produce their own pesticides and soybeans that are herbicide tolerant. It is vital to look beyond short-term benefits and think through consequences outside the laboratory. Weird manipulations present technology that uses genes from viruses, bacteria, plants, animals and even humans to create new life forms that dont occur in nature. Accidental cross-pollination between conventional crops and wild relatives is a reality.Lab animals fed GM food showed damage to virtually every system studied, said Jeffrey Smith, who collaborated with more than 30 scientists on his forthcoming book, Genetic Roulette: The documented health risks of genetically engineered foods.
Will green tech become the valley's new bubble?
Silicon Valley's shift toward green technology is in high gear. Will it create the same kind of bubble, bust and lasting change as the Internet itself? Are we going to party like it's 1999? Will we hear venture capitalists like John Doerr describe ``green tech'' the way they did the Internet boom in the 1990s as the ``largest legal creation of wealth in human history''? I don't think we're in danger of going over the edge into a bust just yet. It's so early, and the bubble warning signs just aren't there. For instance, we don't have any 50-person green tech start-ups valued at $10 billion yet. But the velocity of news about clean tech is certainly accelerating. Clean coal is going to get a boost with the proposed $45 billion buyout of Texas utility TXU, funded in part by San Francisco's Texas Pacific Group.
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