Daily Digest

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Daily Digest 7/14 - China's Slowdown Deepens, Food Demand Is On The Rise
by Daily Digest
Saturday, July 14, 2012, 11:05 AM
Economy
The Other Consequences of Fast and Furious (Chris M.)
Although it will never be possible to completely cut off the flow of guns to Mexico from the United States, it can be reduced. This would force the cartels to search for new sources of weapons.
China's slowdown deepens, raises risks to global economy (Michael W.)
But the timing of those efforts has coincided with turmoil in the global economy. Weaker demand from foreign customers, especially in Europe and the United States, has hit Chinese exports hard, and its manufacturing sector has slowed.
Austerity Reaches the Hollande Government in France (jdargis)
Official cars have been diminished in size and in luxury. Mr. Hollande has given up the presidential Citroën C6 for a smaller but hardly shabby Citroën DS5 diesel hybrid. He has reduced the ranks of his official drivers to two from three, and they are now supposed to stop at red lights. Mr. Ayrault gave up his C6 for a cheaper Peugeot 508. Cabinet ministers have also traded down, and the housing minister, Cécile Duflot, an ecologist who was criticized for wearing jeans to an Élysée Palace meeting, has ordered four official bicycles.
China’s Growth Rate Slowed in the 2nd Quarter (jdargis)
“The most important context for looking at this data is that the boom years are over,” said Andy Rothman of CLSA Research. “The days of 20 percent growth in autos or luxury goods — that’s mostly over.”
Chinese officials say this reflects China’s maturing economy.
Harnessing Gene Codes as Sleuths of Food Ills (jdargis)
Cataloging gene codes is time-consuming. Salmonella alone has about 2,700 different strains, almost three times as many as all the sequences for food-borne bacteria that have been cataloged to date. Dr. Musser said his laboratory had cataloged just 500 in about three years of work. It is contributing those sequences to the project, all related to salmonella.
Food Demand Is On The Rise: Why Jim Rogers Is Investing In Farmland (David B.)
Soaring demand for grain has already affected the market. Monsanto said global grain consumption has exceeded total production for seven out of the last eight years.
“The world has got a serious food problem,” Rogers told Time. “The only real way to solve it is to draw more people back to agriculture.”
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