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France: New tariffs enter into force

Electricity bills rise an average of 5% from today, as interest rates on savings are cut to 1.25% and gas prices drop slightly.
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EDF is introducing a new set of tariffs from August 1, which will hit small users the least, but will push up prices in general. They affect the state regulated accounts still owned by 95% of French households.

The interest rate of the tax free savings account the Livret A is cut from 1.75% to 1.25% - its lowest ever level, last seen in August 2009.

Meanwhile the prices of state regulated gas bills are set to drop slightly, by an average of 0.45%.

The SNCF and RATP have both decided to keep their fares unchanged.

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Wheat prices in Japan to increase for third time this year

Wheat prices in Japan, which imports 60 percent of its food, are poised to increase for the third time in a year, adding to inflation as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's economic stimulus weakens the yen and boosts costs.

Foreign wheat sold by the government to flour millers including Nisshin Seifun Group Inc. (2002) will probably rise about 5 percent in October from 54,990 yen ($553) a metric ton on average, according to the U.S. Wheat Associates. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries will decide on prices this month, based on purchasing costs in the six months through August, said grain-trade director Sunao Orihara.

The increase will add to expenses for producers from noodle maker Nissin Foods Holdings Co. (2897) to Yamazaki Baking Co. (2212), which raised bread prices as much as 6 percent last month. Higher food costs are helping Abe's campaign to achieve a goal of 2 percent inflation for sustained growth. Consumer prices gained the most since 2008 in June, signaling the world's third-biggest economy may be starting to shake off 15 years of deflation. Wheat costs rose 10 percent in April and 3 percent in October.

"We expect another increase in yen-based wheat prices, despite a retreat in the international market, as Japan's currency remains weak against the dollar," Charlie Utsunomiya, director at the Tokyo office of U.S. Wheat Associates, said in an interview, based on sales through July.

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Rising food prices - not just your imagination

Tesco Boss Larry Phillip has finally come out to say that the days of cheap food prices are over. "Because of growing global demand, it is going to change. There's going to be more demand and more pressure. Over the long term I think food prices and people's proportion of income may well be going up but we'll be doing our bit. Unless more food is produced prices must go up. It's the basic law of supply and demand." Ah economics, how you attempt to explain everything. But what does this all mean?

Food Poverty

It means that we are going to have to pay more for food that ever before. It seems as if a lot of people are already well accustomed to higher food prices, which have risen by 25% over the last five years. An estimated 18 per cent of the UK is suffering from food poverty. Is it possible to continue to eat healthily while food prices rise? Processed, ready-made meals have been said to contribute to obesity levels. However, unfortunately such food is often cheaper than their healthy alternatives. What is the answer?

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Vanished without a trace - have you seen these missing people?

Missing
© The AustralianThese seven faces are among the 35,000 Australians listed missing each year.
  • Every 15 minutes, one Australian disappears
  • 35,000 Australians are reported missing each year
  • It's National Missing Persons Week
  • Australia's greatest missing person mysteries
It's your mother, your child, your partner, your friend. One day they are there and the next they have gone. It's as if they have disappeared from the face of the Earth.

For the first few weeks you jump at every phone call. In the pit of your stomach there is a nameless dread that the phone call will bring the news you've been fearing. Then nothing, endless days of nothing. Families and friends tell the same stories about their loved one who suddenly goes missing.

Years pass and they never give up hope, even if it is only the hope that the remains of their daughter, parent, wife or husband will be found, so they can mourn and accept their loss.

Every year, about 35,000 Australians are reported missing. Most are located, but then there are those who never return home, leaving the lives of those close to them in limbo.

Read some of their stories here.

Source: news.com.au

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Boy, 12, robs lemonade stand with BB gun

Lemonade Stand
© Ryan Smith/Somos Images/CorbisHeartless: A 12-year-old boy is under arrest after police say he held up a lemonade stand set up by a 10-year-old and threatened him with a BB gun over $30.
Johnstown, Pennsylvania - Authorities say a 12-year-old boy used a BB gun to rob a 10-year-old who was running a lemonade stand in western Pennsylvania.

Johnstown Sgt. Patrick Goggin says the 12-year-old approached the stand Monday with what appeared to be a handgun in his pocket and threatened the younger boy. Goggin says the boys "got into a wrestling match over the money box" before the older boy took $30 and ran away.

Three other children chased the boy home and helped police track him down. That's when police determined the boy had a BB gun.

Police aren't identifying the suspect because he'll be charged in juvenile court where most cases remain confidential.

Johnstown is about 60 miles east of Pittsburgh.

Source: Associated Press

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Pressure cookers, backpacks and quinoa, Oh My!

Pressure Cooker
© DHSDepartment of Homeland Security 2010 warning on Pressure Cookers.
It was a confluence of magnificent proportions that led six agents from the joint terrorism task force to knock on my door Wednesday morning. Little did we know our seemingly innocent, if curious to a fault, Googling of certain things was creating a perfect storm of terrorism profiling. Because somewhere out there, someone was watching. Someone whose job it is to piece together the things people do on the internet raised the red flag when they saw our search history.

Most of it was innocent enough. I had researched pressure cookers. My husband was looking for a backpack. And maybe in another time those two things together would have seemed innocuous, but we are in "these times" now. And in these times, when things like the Boston bombing happen, you spend a lot of time on the internet reading about it and, if you are my exceedingly curious news junkie of a twenty-ear-old son, you click a lot of links when you read the myriad of stories. You might just read a CNN piece about how bomb making instructions are readily available on the internet and you will in all probability, if you are that kid, click the link provided.

Which might not raise any red flags. Because who wasn't reading those stories? Who wasn't clicking those links? But my son's reading habits combined with my search for a pressure cooker and my husband's search for a backpack set off an alarm of sorts at the joint terrorism task force headquarters.

That's how I imagine it played out, anyhow. Lots of bells and whistles and a crowd of task force workers huddled around a computer screen looking at our Google history.

This was weeks ago. I don't know what took them so long to get here. Maybe they were waiting for some other devious Google search to show up but "what the hell do I do with quinoa" and "Is A-Rod suspended yet" didn't fit into the equation so they just moved in based on those older searches.

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Armed agents raid animal shelter for baby deer


WISN 12 News investigates an operation raising questions about the use of government resources and the state policy that meant a death sentence for a fawn.

"It was like a SWAT team," shelter employee Ray Schulze said.

Two weeks ago, Schulze was working in the barn at the Society of St. Francis on the Kenosha-Illinois border when a swarm of squad cars arrived and officers unloaded with a search warrant.

"(There were) nine DNR agents and four deputy sheriffs, and they were all armed to the teeth," Schulze said.

Bomb

New York woman visited by police after researching pressure cookers online

Pressure Cooker
© The Guardian, UK"What the hell is quinoa?" police asked when Catalano's husband told them what pressure cookers were used for in their household
A New York woman says her family's interest in the purchase of pressure cookers and backpacks led to a home visit by six police investigators demanding information about her job, her husband's ancestry and the preparation of quinoa.

Michele Catalano, who lives in Long Island, New York, said her web searches for pressure cookers, her husband's hunt for backpacks, and her "news junkie" son's craving for information on the Boston bombings had combined somewhere in the internet ether to create a "perfect storm of terrorism profiling".

Members of what she described as a "joint terrorism task force" descended on Catalano's home on Wednesday.

Catalano was at work, but her husband was sitting in the living room as the police arrived. She retold the experience in a post on Medium.com on Thursday.

She attributed the raid largely to her ongoing hunt for a pressure cooker, an item used devastatingly by the two Tsarnaev brothers in Boston, but also used by millions across the country to prepare vegetables while retaining most of their nutrients.

Question

Star Secret: What does giant pentagram mean?

Pentagram
© Google MapsThis strange pentagram, etched into the Earth's surface in a remote corner of Kazakhstan, can be seen on Google Maps.
Conspiracy theorists, start your engines: On the wind-blown steppes of central Asia, in an isolated corner of Kazakhstan, there's a large pentagram etched into the Earth's surface.

The five-pointed star surrounded by a circle shows up vividly on Google Maps. There are almost no other signs of human habitation in the area; the closest settlement is the city of Lisakovsk, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) to the east.

What is this bizarre symbol, measuring roughly 1,200 feet (366 meters) in diameter, doing on the side of a desolate lake in northern Kazakhstan? Naturally, many online comments have already linked the site with devil worship, nefarious religious sects or denizens of the underworld.

Yoda

Best of the Web: Alcoholic mother, abusive father, bullied at school, kicked out of home for being gay, sent to illegal war, tortured by U.S. government, indefinitely detained in solitary... The conscience of Bradley Manning

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He was a 'mess of a child' who was tormented for being gay, kicked out of home at 18 by his father and once threatened to stab his step mother with a knife.

His own mother drank too much, he could not hold down a job and once literally crawled up a wall because he felt his family were ignoring him.

Perhaps it was no surprise then, that Bradley Manning was angry at the world - angry enough to hit back at any figure of authority that was within his grasp.

He has now been convicted of leaking classified information but given the troubled life he led Manning was always a time bomb waiting to go off.

His family left him scarred, his school days left him feeling like a loner - meaning that when he enlisted he was deeply disillusioned with life already.

Comment: 'Cold-blooded' revenge is not something typically associated with 'a lifetime of rejection'. Reading between the propaganda lines here, it seems fairly clear that Bradley was a really sweet guy, despite growing up in an abusive narcissistic family dynamic and in two heavily ponerized countries.

If Bradley Manning is symbolic of the small frail conscience remaining in America, what has torturing and indefinitely detaining him done to the country's soul?

Bradley Manning - Theft or War Crimes?