News below the fold

Fides, a catholic news service, reports terrible floods in southern Pakistan...where a lot of rice is grown....
Oryza, a rice industry website, reports the same,
StrategyPage says it's bad but not as bad as last year, and has only displaced 7 million people (compared to 17 million last year).

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Spengler writes on Turkey and the Arab spring, and notes that Egypt is facing a major food crisis.
and Turkey's president upset the Egyptian radicals by saying Egypt needs a secular gov't...yes, he may be a devout Muslim taking apart the anti religious "secular" gov't there and dissing Israel to get support, but he is a trained economist...

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This makes sense: The new gov't health care plan will cover preventive services but not if you have symptoms suggesting you need to be checked.

so if you come in for a cold, and I see you are fat and have acanthosis nigricans and check your blood sugar, you'll have to pay for it.

and that part about paying for colonoscopies for everyone over age 50 every ten years: Do we really have enough docs to do all those colonoscopies?

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