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Food prices in South Africa up 49% in 5 years

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Food price hikes yet again.
Cape Town - A comparison between a basket of goods by sister publication City Press on how food prices have increased over five years shows that seven basic items alone have increased by an accumulative 49% from January 2008 to April 2013.

The cost of bread, meat, milk, cheese, vegetables, sugar and cooking oil among others in January 2008 were compared with prices for the same products in April 2013. Where consumers had to pay R189.94 in January 2008 for these products, they now had to fork out R283.09 for the same items, a 49% increase from five years ago.

Other items in the basket that were compared, included luxury, "sin" goods chocolates, coffee, beer, wine and cigarettes, which also showed an accumulative 49% increase in the review period.

The price of bread alone skyrocketed 69% in the 5-year period, while meat went up 40%.

Laptop

'Social media and opposition to blame for protests,' says Turkish PM

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"You and me baby aint nothin but psychopaths"...
'Social media is the worst menace to society,' says Recep Erdogan after thousands take control of Istanbul's main square

Thousands of protesters have controlled Istanbul's main square once more after two days of violent clashes with rampaging riot police, as Turkey's prime minister vowed to press on with the controversial redevelopment that provoked the clashes.

Calling the protesters an "extremist fringe", Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed the opposition Republican People's party for provoking the protests.

"We think that the main opposition party, which is making resistance calls on every street, is provoking these protests," Erdogan said on Turkish television, as an estimated 10,000 demonstrators streamed into the area waving flags and calling on the government to resign.

Comment: Nice try Erdogan, but unlike the Color Revolutions, the protests that never were in Libya, and the gangs armed by the CIA and friends in Syria, this is no foreign plot to bring down your government. No doubt players in the shadows will try to vector the movement this way then that way, but for now at least it appears that Turkey's uprising is a genuine revolt, much like Egypt's was in 2011.


Che Guevara

Best of the Web: Thousands of protesters pack Istanbul's Taksim Square, over 900 arrested across Turkey

Thousands of protesters pack Istanbul's Taksim Square, over 900 arrested across Turkey


Police in Istanbul have withdrawn from Taksim Square, allowing the mass protest to continue unabated, Turkish media report. Istanbul and Ankara are entering the third day of violent protests, with tear gas and water cannon deployed and over 900 arrested.

Minor scuffles broke out after protesters lobbed fireworks at officers as they were drawing back, the state-run Anadolu Agency reports. Police removed barricades around the square, located in the heart of the city, which had previously been erected to prevent the anti-government protests, Private Dogan news agency said.

Despite the authorities decision to allow tens of thousands to flood onto the square, the main subway gateway to Taksim, the central station in the city's metro network, has reportedly been shut down in an effort to keep more people from reaching the ongoing protests.

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© Twitter: Stun โ˜  @57UN"This is the voice of the revolution!" #occupyturkey #occupytaksim pic.twitter.com/QZTLKRBaMJ

Che Guevara

900 arrested in 90 demonstrations across Turkey

Outrage over plans to replace a park in Istanbul's Taksim Square with a shopping mall became a flashpoint sparking anger in cities across Turkey over the policies of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government.

Source: CBS News

Heart - Black

Fire in China poultry plant kills 120

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Smoke rises from the Jilin poultry farm where up to 120 people died
A fire at a poultry processing plant in China has killed at least 119 people, officials say.

The fire broke out at a slaughterhouse in Dehui in Jilin province early on Monday.

Accounts speak of explosions prior to the fire, which caused panic and a crush of workers trying to escape. Some exits were said to be locked.

The fire is now said to have been mostly put out and bodies are being recovered.

Sources including the provincial fire department suggest there may have been an ammonia leak which either caused the fire or made fighting the blaze more hazardous.

Other reports speak of an electrical fault.

An injured woman lies on a bed at a hospital in Changchun, after fire broke out at a poultry slaughterhouse in Dehui, Jilin province, on Monday Dozens of injured have been sent to hospital

It is China's deadliest fire since 2000, when 309 people died in a blaze in a dance hall in Luoyang, in Henan province. A labour activist told the BBC it was the worst factory fire in living memory.

About 100 workers had managed to escape from the Baoyuan plant, Xinhua said, adding that the "complicated interior structure" of the building and narrow exits had made rescue work more difficult.

It said the plant's front gate was locked when the blaze began.

Bad Guys

Punitive pricing! Samoa Air to charge passengers by body weight

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Samoa Air, a small island airline, has become the world's first airline to implement a "pay as you weigh" pricing model that calculates passengers' flight tickets based on their body weight, according to reports.

"This is the fairest way of traveling," Samoa Air chief executive Chris Langton told Australia's ABC Radio. "There are no extra fees in terms of excess baggage or anything - it is just a kilo is a kilo is a kilo."

The airline, which flies domestically and to American Samoa, the Cook Islands and Tonga, will charge rates ranging from $1 a kilogram on the airline's shortest domestic route to about $4.16 per kilogram for travel from Samoa to American Samoa, according to ABC Radio.

Under the new pricing system, passengers of Samoa Air, which operate N2A Islander and Cessna 172 aircraft, will need to enter their estimated weight during online booking and airfare will be calculated using their weight. "You travel happy, knowing full well that you are only paying for exactly what you weigh... nothing more," states the Samoa Air website.

Attention

Explosion of unknown origin in Brussels injures 7

"An explosion of unknown origin in a dwelling quarter has left at least seven people injured in Brussels, Belgian TV reports. The blast caused fire in an accommodation unit; firefighters are currently extinguishing the flames. The cause of the explosion is being investigated."

Alarm Clock

Kindergartener interrogated over cap gun until he pees his pants, then suspended 10 days

cap gun
© Unknown
In the latest incident of anti-gun hysteria to erupt in a school setting, a kindergarten boy has been suspended from school for 10 days because he showed a friend his cowboy-style cap gun on the way to school.

The incident happened on Wednesday morning at about 8:30 a.m. on a school bus in Calvert County, Maryland, reports The Washington Post.

The kindergartener had brought the toy gun because his friend had brought a water gun the previous day. He later told his mother than he "really, really" wanted his friend to see it.

The suspended boy had acquired the menacing, plastic, orange-tipped weapon at Frontier Town, a western-themed campground with a water park, mini golf and the like.

School officials at Dowell Elementary School in the town of Lusby proceeded to question the five-year-old for over two hours before finally calling his mother, whom The Post also does not name.

The principal eventually called the boy's mother at 10:50 a.m. By that time, the five-year-old had wet his pants (which the mother called highly unusual).

The principal told the boy's mother that the boy had simulated shooting someone on the bus with the offending novelty. However, both the boy and his older sister, a first-grader, say the principal is not telling the truth.

Che Guevara

Turkey police crack down on anti-government protests

Dozens injured as police use water cannon and tear gas at escalating anti-government rallies in Istanbul and Ankara.


Turkish riot police have used tear gas and water cannon during clashes with thousands of protesters in Istanbul, as more people joined the second day of the fiercest anti-government demonstrations for years.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday called for an immediate end to the protests, that were triggered by government redevelopment plans of a park in Istanbul's Taksim Square.

The protests have since widened into a broader show of defiance against Erdogan and his government and spread to Ankara and other cities.

Che Guevara

Best of the Web: Revolution underway in NATO protectorate Turkey? Istanbul Occupied

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Taken from Occupy Geziโ€™s Facebook page.
To my friends who live outside of Turkey:

I am writing to let you know what is going on in Istanbul for the last five days. I personally have to write this because most of the media sources are shut down by the government and word of mouth and the internet are the only ways left for us to explain ourselves and call for help and support.

Four days ago a group of people who did not belong to any specific organization or ideology got together in Istanbul's Gezi Park. Among them there were many of my friends and students. Their reason was simple: To prevent and protest the upcoming demolishing of the park for the sake of building yet another shopping mall at very center of the city. There are numerous shopping malls in Istanbul, at least one in every neighborhood! The tearing down of the trees was supposed to begin early Thursday morning. People went to the park with their blankets, books and children. They put their tents down and spent the night under the trees. Early in the morning when the bulldozers started to pull the hundred-year-old trees out of the ground, they stood up against them to stop the operation.

They did nothing other than standing in front of the machines.

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© Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty ImagesTaksim Square is now Occupied: Istanbul, on Sunday.