Food prices at dangerous levels, says World Banklink

Food prices are close to record levels according to the World Bank's latest assessment

The World Bank says food prices are at "dangerous levels" and have pushed 44 million more people into poverty since last June.

According to the latest edition of its Food Price Watch, prices rose by 15% in the four months between October 2010 and January this year.
Food price inflation is felt disproportionately by the poor, who spend over half their income on food.
The Bank called on this week's G20 meeting to address the problem.
The World Bank's president, Robert Zoellick, said in a statement: "Global food prices are rising to dangerous levels and threaten tens of millions of poor people around the world."
He also said that rising food prices were an aggravating factor of the unrest in the Middle East, although not its primary cause.
Rapid food price inflation in 2008 sparked riots in a number of countries. At that time, the World Bank estimated 125 million people were in extreme poverty.
The World Bank says prices are not quite back at those levels - just 3% below - although they are 27% higher than a year ago.
A separate report earlier this month from the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) said that world food prices had hit a record high in January.
Finance ministers and central bankers from the G20 group of developed and developing nations are meeting later this week in Paris.

Coincidence or what? There was a movie in 1998 called Deep Impact where the name of the comet was ellie, similar to this newly discovered comet named by the person who found it, Elenin....link

link to vid

link to vid

Deep Impact is a 1998 science-fiction disaster-drama film released by Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks in the United States on May 8, 1998. It was directed by Mimi Leder and stars Elijah Wood, Téa Leoni, Morgan Freeman and Robert Duvall. The plot describes the attempts to prepare for and destroy a 7-mile wide comet, which is expected to collide with the Earth and cause a mass extinction.

Another "space impact" film, Armageddon, was released about two months after Deep Impact in the United States.[1] Deep Impact's greater scientific credibility was recognized,[2] though Armageddon fared better at the box office; however, Deep Impact was still a major financial success, grossing over $349 million worldwide on a $75 million production budget.[3] Both films were equally received by critics, with Armageddon scoring 41% and Deep Impact scoring 46% on the Tomatometer.

On May 10, 1998, teenage amateur astronomer Leo Biederman (Elijah Wood) discovers an unusual object near the stars Mizar and Alcor at a star party. He alerts professional astronomer Marcus Wolf (Charles Martin Smith) at a local observatory. Wolf learns that the object is a comet, and calculates that it will impact with Earth, but dies in a car accident before he can alert the world.

A year later, MSNBC reporter Jenny Lerner (Tea Leoni) investigates the resignation of the United States Secretary of the Treasury (James Cromwell) and his connection to an "Ellie". She discovers that Ellie is not a mistress but an acronym: "E.L.E.", for "Extinction-Level Event". Because of Lerner's investigation, President of the United States Tom Beck (Morgan Freeman) reveals to the public that the United States government learned a year ago from Wolf's scientific records about the comet's existence and announces the grim facts: The comet—named Wolf-Biederman—is 7 miles (11 km) wide, large enough to destroy all life if it strikes Earth. The United States and Russia have been secretly constructing in orbit the spacecraft Messiah, which they plan to send on a mission to destroy the comet with nuclear weapons. Life changes drastically worldwide, and both Leo and Lerner become celebrities.

After landing on the comet, the Messiah crew members plant nuclear bombs 100 meters beneath the surface; one crew member dies while another is seriously injured. When the bombs are detonated, Messiah is damaged and loses contact with Earth. Instead of being destroyed the comet splits into two smaller rocks nicknamed "Biederman" (1.5 miles (2.4 km) wide) and "Wolf" (6 miles (9.7 km) wide), both still world-threatening.

Beck acknowledges Messiah’s failure, declares martial law, and announces that governments worldwide are building underground shelters. The United States' national refuge is in the limestone caves of Missouri. The US government conducts a lottery to select 800,000 ordinary Americans aged 50 and under to join 200,000 pre-selected scientists, engineers, teachers, artists, soldiers, and officials. Lerner and Leo's family are pre-selected, but Leo's girlfriend Sarah Hotchner (Leelee Sobieski) is not. Leo marries Sarah to save her family but the Hotchners are mistakenly left off the evacuee list; Sarah refuses to leave without them.

A last-ditch effort to use Earth's missile-borne nuclear weapons to deflect the two chunks of the comet fails. Leo returns home looking for Sarah, but her family has left for the Appalachian Mountains and are trapped on a jammed highway. Sarah's parents urge Leo to take Sarah and her baby sister to high ground; Sarah still does not want to abandon her parents, but she quickly realizes that she has no choice but to do so and bids them a tearful goodbye. Lerner gives up her seat in the last evacuation helicopter to her friend Beth, who has a young daughter. She instead joins her estranged father (Maximilian Schell) at her childhood beach house, where they reconcile and remember happier times and memories. The Biederman fragment impacts in the Atlantic Ocean near Bermuda, creating an enormous, supersonic megatsunami. Leo, Sarah and her baby sister survive but Lerner and her father, Sarah's parents, and millions of others along the Atlantic coasts of North and South America, Europe, and Africa die.

The world braces for the impact of Wolf in western Canada, which will create a cloud of dust that will block out the sun for two years. This in turn will destroy all remaining life aside from that which has been evacuated underground. Low on fuel and life support, the crew of the Messiah decides to undertake a suicide mission with the remaining nuclear warheads. After saying goodbye to their loved ones by video conference, the Messiah reaches the fragment and enters a fissure to blow itself up, which breaks Wolf into much smaller pieces; these burn up in Earth's atmosphere, sparing humanity.

The film closes with Beck speaking to a large crowd in front of the under-reconstruction United States Capitol, where he urges the nation and the world to continue their recovery.

Admiral Mullen to China: We're Staying in Your Backyard ~ link ~

Here’s how to understand what’s driving the new National Military Strategy, released today by the U.S. military’s top officer: China, China and China.

Ostensibly, Adm. Mike Mullen’s document is about how the U.S. military ought to organize and prepare for future threats. The watchwords there: building networks, whether with civilian government and international agencies or foreign partner forces, prepared to “extend” U.S. “competitive advantages” in military tech and training to all who seek its help. That sets a “transition from a force that has been engaged in sustained combat operations to a Joint Force that is shaped for the future,” Mullen’s team writes — one in which the U.S. bolsters its military strength through deep alliances even as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars end.

Russia: Foreign Power may have disabled key satellite ~ link ~ That is a powerful charge. If we, did that, we are really crossing the line. Attacking a satellite is considered an 'act of war'. Stirling

The Russian space agency suggested Feb. 14 that a foreign power may have been behind the space accident earlier this month that disabled one of the country's most modern military satellites.

Russia on Feb. 1 launched a high-tech Geo-IK-2 craft to help the military draw a three-dimensional map of the Earth and locate the precise positions of various targets. News reports said the satellite was a vital part of Russia's effort to match the United States and NATO's ability to target its missiles from space.

Afghan War draws in China and Russia ~ link ~ Yep, the global banking families want a true world war as part of the End Game to establish their satanic high-tech police state New World Order. Stirling

According to MEMRI, a high-profile Middle Eastern think-tank, China's involvement as a Pakistan ally is ongoing and becoming a good deal more obvious and pervasive. In the past year, Pakistan has sought the stationing of 11,000 Chinese troops at Gilgit-Baltistan in the sensitive Kashmir region. Pakistan denied the troop presence at first, but then explained the Chinese were there to help Pakistan with its flooding. MEMRI makes other points involving Chinese-Pakistan cooperation.

Pakistani tribal areas have been opened up for Chinese inspection. Chinese Army officials were welcomed into the Khyber Agency in October 2010 by Colonel Asad Qureshi. Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani welcomed a Chinese role in Afghanistan in April 2010. Pakistan has signed a contract with China to build Pakistani warships that will carry missiles and heavy weapons. Pakistan sees itself as aligned against the West in a superpower clash.

South Korea chaos - Heaviest snowfall in a century -
More snow on the way
14 Feb 11 - Includes sad video of a deer trapped in the snow.
See South Korea chaos - Heaviest snowfall in a century -
More on the way

More Deep-Sea Volcanic Vents Discovered - But we still blame humans for heating the seas
14 Feb 11 - This is the fourth set of hot springs to be discovered around Antarctica since 2009, suggesting that "deep-sea vents may be more common in our oceans than previously thought." See More Deep-Sea Volcanic Vents Discovered