Aug
30
Four deposed judges of the Lahore high court were sworn in Lahore.
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The number of the judges of the Lahore high court has also been increased from fifty to sixty. Chief justice Lahore high court justice Syed Zahid Hussain administered the oath. Those who took oath are:
Justice Mian Saqib Nisar, Justice Asif Saeed Khosa, Justice Azmat Saeed And justice Umer Atta Bandiyal Judges of the lahore high court and a large number of lawyers attended the oath taking ceremony.
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Jun
27
WASHINGTON - Silent on central questions of gun control for two centuries, the Supreme Court found its voice Thursday in a decision affirming the right to have guns for self-defense in the home and addressing a constitutional riddle almost as old as the republic over what it means to say the people may keep and bear arms.
The court’s 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns and imperiled similar prohibitions in other cities, Chicago and San Francisco among them. Federal gun restrictions, however, were expected to remain largely intact.
The court’s historic awakening on the meaning of the Second Amendment brought a curiously mixed response, muted in some unexpected places.
The reaction broke less along party lines than along the divide between cities wracked with gun violence and rural areas where gun ownership is embedded in daily life. Democrats have all but abandoned their long push for stricter gun laws at the national level after deciding it’s a losing issue for them. Republicans welcomed what they called a powerful precedent.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, straddling both sides of the issue, said merely that the court did not find an unfettered right to bear arms and that the ruling “will provide much-needed guidance to local jurisdictions across the country.” But another Chicagoan, Democratic Mayor Richard Daley, called the ruling “very frightening” and predicted more violence and higher taxes to pay for extra police if his city’s gun restrictions are lost.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain welcomed the ruling as “a landmark victory for Second Amendment freedom.”
The court had not conclusively interpreted the Second Amendment since its ratification in 1791. The amendment reads: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
The basic issue for the justices was whether the amendment protects an individual’s right to own guns no matter what, or whether that right is somehow tied to service in a state militia, a once-vital, now-archaic grouping of citizens. That’s been the heart of the gun control debate for decades.
Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said an individual right to bear arms exists and is supported by “the historical narrative” both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted.
President Bush said: “I applaud the Supreme Court’s historic decision today confirming what has always been clear in the Constitution: the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear firearms.”
The full implications of the decision, however, are not sorted out. Still to be seen, for example, is the extent to which the right to have a gun for protection in the home may extend outside the home.
Scalia said the Constitution does not permit “the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home.” The court also struck down D.C. requirements that firearms be equipped with trigger locks or kept disassembled, but left intact the licensing of guns. The district allows shotguns and rifles to be kept in homes if they are registered, kept unloaded and taken apart or equipped with trigger locks.
Scalia noted that the handgun is Americans’ preferred weapon of self-defense in part because “it can be pointed at a burglar with one hand while the other hand dials the police.”
But he said nothing in the ruling should “cast doubt on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons or the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings.”
In a concluding paragraph to the 64-page opinion, Scalia said the justices in the majority “are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country” and believe the Constitution “leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns.”
D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty responded with a plan to require residents to register their handguns. “More handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence,” Fenty said.
In a dissent he summarized from the bench, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority “would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons.”
He said such evidence “is nowhere to be found.”
Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a separate dissent in which he said, “In my view, there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden urban areas.”
Joining Scalia were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas. The other dissenters were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter.
Gun rights advocates praised the decision. “I consider this the opening salvo in a step-by-step process of providing relief for law-abiding Americans everywhere that have been deprived of this freedom,” said Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association.
The NRA will file lawsuits in San Francisco, Chicago and several Chicago suburbs challenging handgun restrictions there based on Thursday’s outcome.
Some Democrats also welcomed the ruling.
“This opinion should usher in a new era in which the constitutionality of government regulations of firearms are reviewed against the backdrop of this important right,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont.
The capital’s gun law was among the nation’s strictest.
Dick Anthony Heller, 66, an armed security guard, sued the district after it rejected his application to keep a handgun at his Capitol Hill home a short distance from the Supreme Court.
“I’m thrilled I am now able to defend myself and my household in my home,” Heller said shortly after the opinion was announced.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in Heller’s favor and struck down the district’s handgun ban, saying the Constitution guarantees Americans the right to own guns and a total prohibition on handguns is not compatible with that right.
The issue caused a split within the Bush administration. Vice President Dick Cheney supported the appeals court ruling, but others in the administration feared it could lead to the undoing of other gun regulations, including a federal law restricting sales of machine guns. Other laws keep felons from buying guns and provide for an instant background check.
The last Supreme Court ruling on the matter came in 1939 in U.S. v. Miller, which involved a sawed-off shotgun. Constitutional scholars agree it did not squarely answer the question of individual versus collective rights.
The case is District of Columbia v. Heller, 07-290.
Jun
20
Japan suicides near record high in 2007
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TOKYO (Reuters) - Over 33,000 people took their lives in Japan last year, topping 30,000 for the tenth consecutive year despite a government campaign to reduce what is one of the highest suicide rates in the world.
A report issued by the National Police Agency on Thursday showed that 33,093 people killed themselves in Japan in 2007 — the second-largest number on record after 34,427 in 2003 — mostly because of debt, family problems, depression and other health issues.
There was also a leap in the number of suicides involving toxic hydrogen sulphide gas made from household detergents, a previously obscure method that is spreading rapidly as Internet messages tell victims how to produce the poison at home.
“This extremely regrettable situation has been going on for a long time,” chief government spokesman Nobutaka Machimura said of the data.
“It’s a very hard problem, but we want to do as much as we can.”
The number of suicides shot up in Japan after the 1980s economic bubble burst, leaving many out of work and in debt. Suicides by those aged 60 and above rose by 9 percent to around 12,100 last year, while those by teenagers decreased slightly.
From January to May this year, close to 520 people committed suicide using hydrogen sulphide gas. There were only 30 cases involving the gas in the same period in 2007, the report showed.
Hundreds of people have been evacuated from houses contaminated by the fumes generated in such suicides. Police have urged Internet service providers to delete the instructions for producing the gas from websites.
Japan, which has the second-highest suicide rate in the Group of Eight nations after Russia according to the World Health Organisation, has also been trying to tackle the root of the problem.
ANTI-SUICIDE CAMPAIGN
In June 2007, the government pledged to cut its suicide rate by more than 20 percent by 2016. Welfare workers, however, say the problem is complex and solving it will take time.
“We’re thankful the government thought they need to do something about it, but they don’t quite know what is actually going on,” said Yukiko Nishihara, founder of Befrienders Worldwide Suicide Prevention Center.
Akita prefecture in northern Japan, which has had the highest rate of suicides in the country for the last 13 years based on a separate welfare ministry survey, has been running a suicide prevention program since 2000.
“People used to say ‘why do we have to use tax money to deal with suicides, when this is an individual problem?”‘ Akira Sato, an official at Akita prefecture, said.
“But unless the entire community understands that this is an issue, it can’t be solved.”
Annual cases of suicide in Akita, which has a population of around one million, peaked in 2003 at around 520 and fell to about 420 in 2007.
Akita has been sending health care workers to homes of elderly people to check on their mental health and protect them from becoming isolated, Sato said.
Akita is also planning to work closely with programs that support people in debt, for example by providing psychological assistance, he added.
“Unlike certain illnesses, the causes of suicides lie in a wide range of social issues,” Sato said.
“So what’s important is to capture the changes in the society — for instance the rise in unemployment or escalation of debt — and to continue taking new measures that match such changes.”
(Editing by Sophie Hardach)
Jun
19
In his hunt for a new home, Demetrius Stroud crunched the numbers to find out that, with gas prices climbing, moving near an Amtrak station is the best thing for his wallet.
Stroud was looking in Elk Grove., Calif. - about 85 miles away from his job in the San Francisco Bay Area - because homes there are more affordable. But with gas at $4.50 and a car that gets about 22 miles per gallon, Stroud would be pumping $560 a month into his tank.
So instead he made an offer on a home near the train station in Davis, which will shave $160 off his commuting costs.
“I wouldn’t even be able to consider doing it without that Amtrak possibility,” said Stroud, 45, who also telecommutes one day a week to his job in software quality assurance.
Stroud’s choice represents a fundamental shift in the way more Americans are approaching home buying in this era of ballooning gas prices. Real estate agents, transportation officials and industry surveys indicate that home buyers are placing more importance on cutting their gas bills and commute times than they have since the oil shocks of the 1970s.
And there are some early indications that homes near urban centers, and subway, train and bus stops are often selling faster and at better prices than those in the distant suburbs.
On Wednesday, a survey of 900 Coldwell Banker agents showed a remarkable 96 percent said that rising gas prices were a concern to their clients, and 78 percent said higher fuel costs are increasing their desire for city living.
Don Denton, manager of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in the Capitol Hill area of Washington, D.C., said prices are holding in the area and the neighborhood appears to be expanding.
“We have seen a steady increase in interest in our area over the last several years and it is comparable to how the reaction to the 1970s gas crisis sparked an interest in this area and inside the entire Beltway,” Denton said.
A grueling commute by car into the city is the main reason why Mark Bulkeley wants to move closer to his job in Tysons Corner, Va., near downtown Washington D.C. He is selling his home in Haymarket, Va., which is 30 miles from work, and has signed a contract on a home in Great Falls, Va., that’s just 6 miles from the office.
“My commute is miserable enough that I’ve taken to leaving my house at about quarter to five in the morning to avoid the traffic,” said Bulkeley, a 36-year-old wholesale electricity trader. “It’s kind of brutal. It’s routinely an hour, and there’s a lot of variability around that.”
Bulkeley already has a hybrid Honda Civic, but he still calculates a savings of about $100 a month on gas once he moves closer to the city.
“When we decided that we were going to make a move we basically put a dot in the middle of the map where my office is and said, `We are not going to live farther than essentially a 20-minute circle around that,’” Bulkeley said.
Gas prices, which have shot up $1.07 this year, are magnifying demographic trends that show more younger buyers and empty-nest seniors are moving back to urban centers. If gas prices continue their ascent, this could have profound consequences over time on the future development of American cities and suburbs and modes of transportation.
Homes in cities and neighborhoods that require long commutes and don’t provide enough public transportation alternatives are falling in value more quickly than more central locations, according to a May study by CEOs for Cities, a network of U.S. urban leaders.
In Atlanta, agent Mike Wright with Prudential Georgia Realty notes that real estate brokerages within the city perimeter have been selling better than those outside the city, reflecting an area trend of people moving “closer-in.”
“You can easily draw the conclusion that’s traffic or gas-price related,” Wright said. “It’s a decision that’s both lifestyle driven and people trying to stay out the car.”
In response to more riders, some U.S. cities are expanding their mass transit services.
The Dallas Area Rapid Transit system, for example, is doubling the miles of light rail it has to 90, said Morgan Lyons, DART’s spokesman. The project has an estimated cost of $4 billion, and two main light rail lines are expected to be completed by 2014, he said.
Lyons said DART saw a spike in riders once gas prices began to skyrocket. And private investment in transit-oriented development - including condominiums and mixed-use projects that combine retail, residential and entertainment space - has risen to around $7 billion in areas including Dallas, Garland, Richardson and Farmer’s Branch, Lyons said.
In Florida, real estate professor Bill Weaver sees this as possibly the beginnings a shift to a more European approach to finding homes.
For the past three decades, travel has been relatively cheap in the U.S., so more Americans sought homes in the suburbs or in the country because they wanted the space and quiet and didn’t mind - or care about - the cost of commuting, Weaver said.
That approach led to sprawl in and around cities from Los Angeles to Orlando, Fla., in contrast to the smaller and more densely populated cities in Europe.
“Transportation costs in Europe have been so high for so long that they already take transportation into account when they buy a home,” Weaver said. “We’ve just been behind on that. In that regard, you might look at high gas prices as sort of a silver lining”.
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Apr
18
FAA sets up high-level alerts for missed airline inspections
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WASHINGTON - The Federal Aviation Administration is going to begin alerting its top headquarters officials when field inspectors miss airline safety inspections, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters announced Friday.Peters also demanded that the FAA and American Airlines explain to her within 14 days why 250,000 U.S. air travelers endured canceled flights last week. American grounded its MD-80 jetliners and canceled 3,100 flights in order to inspect or redo wiring that was supposed to have been completed between Sept. 5, 2006, and March 5, 2008.
“No one at all was well served by what happened last week,” Peters told a news conference outside FAA headquarters.
She said she didn’t think federal regulators had overreacted in the wake of revelations about the FAA’s lax supervision of Southwest Airlines. Last month, it was revealed that the FAA allowed Southwest to fly dozens of Boeing 737s without inspecting them as required for fuselage cracks and that Southwest’s system for complying with FAA safety directives had not been inspected by the FAA since 1999.
But Peters wanted to know “why so many aircraft had to be grounded and so many travelers had to be inconvenienced” in order to “help us avoid similar disruptions” as the FAA completes an audit of all major airlines’ compliance with safety directives. The audit was ordered after the Southwest debacle came to light and helped uncover the MD-80 wiring problems.
Flanked by acting FAA administrator Bobby Sturgell, Peters announced a series of steps to improve safety in a system she insisted was already the safest in history:
_FAA is setting up a national safety inspection review team to examine airlines for problems mostly likely to occur and in a comprehensive way.
_FAA will begin requiring senior field office officials to sign off on voluntary safety disclosures by airlines. These voluntary disclosures must show the immediate problem has been fixed and steps have been taken to ensure it won’t recur. In return, the airlines will avoid penalties for the safety problems.
_The FAA general counsel and Transportation officials will begin meeting with airlines to be sure they have plans for accommodating passengers if there are future mass aircraft groundings.
_Peters named five outside aviation and safety experts to recommend improvements for the whole system within 120 days.
“This plan appears to address some of the main problems that created the current safety crisis,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. “But the question remains: Will the FAA devote the resources and manpower to get it done right?”
Many of the steps had been recommended by Transportation Department Inspector General Calvin L. Scovel III, particularly the new system to alert top headquarters officials when safety inspections fall behind schedule. Scovel concluded in a highly critical report that the FAA had “developed an overly collaborative relationship” with Southwest.
The lack of headquarters supervision of inspections was evident when Sturgell was unable to give a number when asked how many inspections were currently overdue, but he said the new alert system would remedy that.
Sturgell also denied that the audit of all carriers represented a new, tougher approach by his agency. “This is not a crackdown; it’s not getting tough,” Sturgell said, but rather an attempt to verify the system is working effectively. He reinforced that by noting that during the audit the FAA had given nine different airlines approval for 14 different alternate methods of complying with FAA safety orders, including on the wiring problem.
Peters did not address Scovel’s recommendations that FAA come to better grips with massive retirements and resignations among its air traffic controllers and safety inspectors. Scovel noted that controllers-in-training now comprise 25 percent of the controller work force, compared with 15 percent in 2004, and that half of its safety inspectors are eligible to retire in the next five years.
“The real problem is there aren’t enough FAA inspectors to keep tabs on the burgeoning number of outsourced maintenance facilities,” said Teamster Union President Jim Hoffa, “especially overseas where foreign repair stations don’t have to meet the same standards as U.S. facilities do.” He called Peters’ plan “window dressing.”
The FAA had already announced it would adopt one Scovel recommendation: lengthening the “cooling off period” before former FAA inspectors can work for an airline they used to oversee or interact with the agency.
Peters emphasized that since the late 1990s the death rate in commercial aviation has dropped from 45 for every 100 million people flown to a record low five-to-eight deaths per 100 million flown. But she said, “A good system can always be made better,” and asked her panel of outside experts to help do that.
The panel includes J. Randolph Babbitt, former president of the Air Line Pilots Association; William O. McCabe, former Director of Aviation DuPont and member of the National Business Aviation Association safety committee; Malcolm K. Sparrow, a professor of public management at Harvard; Edward W. Stimpson, U.S. representative under President Clinton on the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization; and Carl W. Vogt, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.
“We fully support the formation of the commission,” said John Meenan, executive vice president of the Air Transport Association, which represents the major airlines.
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Apr
13
Cotton prices rise on high mill demand
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Cotton market on Saturday recovered a good part of the overnight fall as ginners raised their asking prices by Rs25 per maund in the backdrop of higher mill demand but no spinner went beyond his export parity level as was reflected by a low volume figure.Some of the fine lots were traded as higher as Rs3,550 per maund as a leading textile group is said to be after each premium quality lint needed by it to produce higher counts of cotton yarn for the export markets, floor brokers claim.
“Foreign textile markets are again heating up after relative slackness for the last couple of months,” they said, adding: “The mill demand is expected to stay on the higher side and may cause fresh increase in prices in the subsequent weeks”.
But some others said buying prices may remain tied to the quality of the lint, both fine and inferior lots, in trade as spinners may not go beyond their export parity levels.
This fact is also well reflected in the daily turnover figures, which at time are alarmingly low and sometime sharply higher depending on the asking prices by the ginners, they added.
On the export front, private sector exporters have physically shipped, up to April 7, 2008, 0.171 million bales of lint cotton to various countries against the forward sales of 0.193 million bales during the same period.
Meanwhile, reports reaching here from the lower Sindh cotton belt indicate that sowing of the new crop, though a bit late because of shortage of irrigation water, is well in progress and is expected to be completed during the next couple of days, local market sources said.
New York cotton future suffered a fresh setback of 0.59 and 0.44 cents per lb at 74.16 and 77.69 cents for both the ruling May and the new crop July settlements, respectively.
Official spot rates were again revised upward by Rs25 at Rs3,300 per maund as ginners raised their asking prices for an average quality lint.
Mill ready off-take was light amounting to over 2,000 bales, the following being some of the notable deals: 1,000 bales, Gilanwali at Rs3,550, 600 bales, Rahim Yar Khan at Rs3,375, and 200 bales, Khanpur Mehar at Rs3,470.
Apr
2
Only 1 of 2 students graduate high school in US cities: study
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WASHINGTON (AFP) - Three out of 10 US public school students do not graduate from high school, and major city school districts only graduate one out of two students, according to a study released Tuesday.
In a report on graduation rates around the country, the EPE Research Center and the America Promise Alliance also showed that the high school graduation rate — finishing 12 grades of school — in big cities falls to as low as just 34.6 percent in Baltimore, Maryland, and barely over 40 percent for the troubled Ohio cities of Columbus and Cleveland.
And it said that black and native American student’s have effectively a one-in-two chance of getting a high school diploma.
“Our analysis finds that graduating from high school in America’s largest cities amounts, essentially, to a coin toss,” the study said.
“Only about one-half (52 percent) of students in the principal school systems of the 50 largest cities complete high school with a diploma.”
Based on 2003-2004 data, the report said that across the country the graduation average for public school students is 69.9 percent, with the best success rate in suburbs — 74.9 percent — and rural districts — 73.2 percent.
Asian-Americans score the highest graduation rate, at 80 percent, with whites at 76.2 percent and Hispanics at 57.8 percent.
Women graduate at a much higher rate than men, 73.6 percent to 66.0 percent.
In the country’s city schools, the study found that in urban areas generally, just 60.4 percent graduate, and in the principal school districts of the top 50 cities, barely half graduate.
Detroit, Michigan’s main school district scored a graduation rate of 24.9 percent.
New York, the country’s largest city, has a graduation rate for its main school district of 45.2 percent, and Los Angeles, the second largest, of 45.3 percent.
Only five of the principal school districts topped the national average.
Mar
26
Chavez: Little chance FARC will free high-profile hostage
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(CNN) — There is little chance Colombia rebels will free one-time Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt after that country’s March 1 attack on a rebel camp inside Ecuador, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Tuesday.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez discussed FARC hostages in Caracas on Tuesday.
The 44-year-old, who holds dual French citizenship, has been held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia for more than six years.
In January, FARC rebels in southern Colombia handed over two hostages to representatives of the Red Cross and Venezuela.
And in February, FARC released four others.
Those released prisoners who had seen Betancourt said she was in poor health.
Last year, Chavez helped mediate a proposed exchange of jailed guerrillas for FARC hostages.
But Colombian President Alvaro Uribe ended the talks in November after accusing Chavez of exceeding his authority.
“Before the attack on Ecuador, we were giving a high probability of the liberation of Ingrid,” Chavez said during a news conference at his palace in Caracas.
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“After that, the probability fell,” Chavez told reporters.
Also on Tuesday, the Ecuadoran government asked the Organization of American States to help smooth over relations with Colombia over the rebel camp attack. The request was made after Colombia’s minister of defense, Juan Manuel Santos, declared that his country had committed “a legitimate act of war” inside Ecuador.
The attack killed about two dozen people, including Raul Reyes, the second-in-command of FARC, as well as an Ecuadoran and several Mexicans. Colombia said it found laptop computers belonging to FARC that indicated Venezuela was funding the guerrillas.
Venezuela denied the charge, and Ecuador and Venezuela promptly severed diplomatic relations with Colombia. Ecuador called the move an attack on its territorial sovereignty.
Ecuadoran OAS representative Maria Isabel Salvador called Santos’ remarks “almost a declaration of war that, obviously, has to be rejected.”
On Wednesday, relatives of the dead Ecuadoran, 38-year-old Franklin Aisalia, will travel to Bogota, Colombia, to repatriate his body.
Colombia has accused him of collaborating with the FARC, a claim that his father on Monday rejected.
Chavez also denounced the accusation, noting that Colombia originally identified the dead man as a Colombian.
“Now [Colombia] says, yes, it’s an Ecuadoran, but a terrorist,” Chavez said Tuesday. “And if the father comes to reclaim his son, he’s a terrorist, too.”
In comments directed at Santos, Chavez said, “Tell the truth instead of talking garbage about this supposed computer from Raul Reyes.”
Mar
16
High wheat prices raise grocery costs
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LUBBOCK, Texas - If you think the cost of gassing up your car is outrageous, wait until you need to restock your pantry.
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The price of wheat has more than tripled during the past 10 months, making Americans’ daily bread - and bagels and pizza and pasta - feel a little like luxury items. And baked goods aren’t the only ones getting more expensive: Experts expect some 80 percent of grocery prices will spike, too, and could remain steep for years because wheat and other grains are used to feed cattle, poultry and dairy cows.
“It’s going to affect everything … impact on every section of the grocery store,” said Michael Bittel, senior vice president of King Arthur Flour Co. in Norwich, Vt.
Consumers such as Maria Cardena feel trapped by the prices. She said the bread she buys has jumped from 69 cents a loaf to $1.09 in recent weeks.
“You have to buy it,” said the 29-year-old mother from Lubbock, Texas. “You can’t go without it. Everything has gone up.”
The wheat market has been pushed higher by a combination of agricultural, financial and energy issues.
Poor wheat harvests in Australia and parts of Europe and the U.S. have caused China and other Asian countries to buy up more American crops, which are especially attractive because of the weak U.S. dollar.
At the same time, the American crop is shrinking because of federal incentives to grow corn for ethanol. And skyrocketing gas prices make it costlier to get any wheat to market. Those same pressures have also made it more expensive to supply feed grains for livestock.
At Bob’s Red Mill flour company, wheat flour has typically been subject to retail price adjustments every five years. Now those increases are happening almost monthly.
“You look at the price and you say, ‘Oh, my gosh,’” said Dennis Gilliam, executive vice president of sales and for the company in Milwaukie, Ore. “It keeps climbing every day.”
Wheat historically trades at $3 to $7 a bushel.
But this week, futures of spring wheat - which produces the flour used in hearth breads, rolls, croissants, bagels and pizza crust - were close to $18 a bushel on the Minneapolis Grain Exchange. They climbed as high as $24 in late February.
Consumers pay an additional penny on wheat products for each dollar the price-per-bushel increases. “It’s a huge impact,” said Steve Mercer, spokesman for U.S. Wheat Associates, an industry group.
White bread cost an average of 85 cents a pound in 1998 and $1.03 in February 2006. The price rose to $1.32 a pound last month, according to federal data.
And that’s on top of overall food price increases of 4 percent last year and an additional 3.5 to 4.5 percent expected this year, according to federal data. Most years see 2.5 percent increases.
During the past few months, the price of cereals and baked goods has risen nearly 6 percent over the same time last year, federal officials reported.
Consumers can try to minimize costs by buying fewer wheat products, but the nation’s bakers, pizzerias and other flour-dependent industries don’t have that luxury.
Panera Bread Company is paying more than double what it paid for wheat in 2007 - an additional $26.5 million this year, according to its latest earnings report.
At Kraft Foods Inc., producer of Ritz crackers and Chips Ahoy cookies, the cost of commodities including wheat were up 9 percent last year, or about $1.3 billion. Spokeswoman Lisa Gibbons called that unprecedented and said the company doesn’t expect prices to ease anytime soon.
The company has offset most of those costs by finding savings elsewhere, such as switching its Miracle Whip sandwich spread from glass to cheaper plastic bottles.
At the online baked goods retailer 1-800-Bakery.com, the price of wheat has meant a hiring freeze and curbing low-profit products. So far, those measures have been enough to avoid price increases. But Stephen Pazyra, the company’s chief executive, said prices will go up unless there is relief soon.
Sometimes the only option is to bake less.
Four months ago, Tony’s Old Fashioned Bakery in Midland, Texas, was paying $7.50 for a 25-pound bag of flour. This week the cost was $23 a bag - for a company that uses 25 to 30 bags a week.
To stretch their dollar and flour, Carmina Aguilar said her family’s bakery is making fewer pastries for display and stopped taking many last-minute orders.
Meanwhile, some consumers are taking the opposite path - baking more. King Arthur’s Bittel said that while store-bought bread is running between $3 and $5, a home baked loaf will cost about 60 cents.
That’s up from 40 cents from a year ago, but Bittel said his company nevertheless has seen growing sales of bread-making machines.
Some experts said wheat prices may be close to topping out. But whether prices come down, and when, is a guessing game.
Global wheat stocks have hit a 30-year low following seven of eight years in which world consumption exceeded production. Federal projections show America’s supplies at their lowest levels since the late 1940s.
Earlier this week, representatives of the U.S. baking industry went to Washington to ask the Bush administration and Congress to address the record wheat prices.
Lee Sanders, senior vice president of the American Bakers Association, said her group isn’t asking for a wheat export moratorium, which countries such as Ukraine, Russia and Argentina have enacted. But the industry does want export policies reviewed to ensure domestic bakers have enough affordable flour
Source : Yahoo News
Mar
15
Rockets fly high with 21 straight wins
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HOUSTON - The Houston Rockets’ 21st consecutive victory gave them the second-longest winning streak in NBA history and a share of first place in the Western Conference.
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Tracy McGrady scored 30 points and the Rockets beat the Charlotte Bobcats 89-80 on Friday night to break a tie with the 1970-71 Milwaukee Bucks for the second-best victory streak in league history. Only the 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers, who won 33 in a row, had a longer streak.
The win also sets up Sunday’s showdown with the current Lakers at the Toyota Center. They’re both 45-20, the best records in the West.
As the final seconds ticked off, Dikembe Mutombo waved his arms, urging the capacity crowd to stand and cheer. McGrady simply stood at the free throw line near the Rockets bench, a tired grin on his face.
When the buzzer sounded, red streamers rained down as the crowd started chanting “M-V-P!” for McGrady.
Jason Richardson scored 28 points and Emeka Okafor added 23 for the Bobcats, who’ve lost five in a row to Houston.
Rafer Alston added 17 and Shane Battier had 12 points and nine rebounds for Houston, now 9-0 since Yao Ming’s season-ending foot injury.
The Rockets also extended their home-court winning streak to 14 games, the longest since the 1985-86 team won 20 in a row at the Summit.
Houston has won 25 of its last 26 games and 30 of its last 33, easily the best stretch of any team since late December.
Now comes the real test - after the Lakers on Sunday, Houston faces Boston, New Orleans, Golden State and Phoenix next week.
The Rockets had won 13 of their previous 20 games by double digits, but the Bobcats made them work for this one.
Houston hit seven of its first 12 shots, then missed its next 14 tries to fuel a 21-1 Charlotte run. Richardson scored 11 points during the spurt, including two breakaway dunks and a 3-pointer. Jared Dudley’s putback two minutes into the second quarter gave Charlotte a 29-18 lead, the largest deficit the Rockets had faced during their victory streak.
McGrady slammed home an alley-oop pass from Bobby Jackson with 8:28 left in the half, Houston’s first field goal in 10 minutes. The Rockets were impatient on offense the rest of the half, heaving up questionable long shots early in possessions. They missed 14 of their first 17 shots from 3-point range.
Alston hit a 3 with 1:46 left, then hit a driving one-hander to pull Houston to 41-36. Okafor answered with a bank shot to put Charlotte up by seven at halftime.
The Rockets looked like a more energetic team out of the break, suddenly clicking on offense and making plays at the other end.
Houston opened the third quarter with a 26-11 run, started when Battier rebounded his own miss and put back a layup. Battier then deflected a pass and saved the ball to Alston, who started a fast break that Luis Scola finished with a layup to cut Charlotte’s lead to 43-40.
Later, Mutombo swatted away a shot by Matt Carroll and Battier finished a fast break with another layup to put Houston up 54-50. McGrady sank a shot from the wing with 3:30 left in the quarter to complete the spurt and put the Rockets up 62-54.
The Bobcats missed 11 of their first 17 shots after halftime, but Gerald Wallace’s 3-pointer in the final seconds cut Houston’s lead to 64-62.
The Rockets scored the first eight points of the final quarter to keep control. After McGrady hit a fadeaway from the baseline, he flexed his muscles and yelled, “Let’s go!” as he trotted down the court. Reserve forward Mike Harris then scored inside to stretch Houston’s lead to 72-62.
The Bobcats twice closed within six, but the Rockets made the stops and free throws when it counted.
Mutombo embraced McGrady at midcourt in the final minute as Rockets owner Les Alexander stood and cheered with the rest of the crowd.
Notes:@ McGrady also had seven rebounds and four assists. … Harris scored 12 for Houston. … Wallace scored 16 in his second game back since recovering from a concussion. … Rockets rookie forward Carl Landry missed his fourth straight game with a bruised right knee.
Source : Yahoo News