Different Culture

The article i read for this post is about rice farmers in Africa and how they are very dependent on world food prices to decide how much money they will make. The problem is, that it costs them more to produce the rice because they do not get the government subsidies like many more developed countries. Prices now are fairly high, and rice farmers are taking advantage of that, but many of them borrowed a lot of money to be able to expand their production fields, and if prices don't stay high, they could all end up broke because they won't be able to pay off what they borrowed. The worry over world food supplies caused some countries to panic over food supplies because the price was rising, and their was no local production to replace the imports; so the government offered subsidized farming equipment, seed, and fertilizer to start local production. The higher prices also meant that the local farmers could now compete with the more efficient farms in Asia, allowing them to make a profit.

read the whole article here

Overcoming a struggle

Imagine if you lived in a remote part of Alaska, where many of the people didn't even have running water, and things at the store cost you twice as much as they cost here. This is the reality for the residents of Akiachak, Alaska. It is a small Eskimoe town of about 700 people that many issues that they must deal with. The cost of living in the town is very high because it is so remote, so it is more expensive to get the things you need, like food or gasoline. Also, some residents have been unable to vote because the ballots and polling stations don't have translations for the native language, Yup’ik, and have gone to court in a lawsuit to get the state to provide ballots that have Yup'ik translations on them. They recently had a rarity for the town; an Obama campaign member visited their town to shake hands and talk, which doesn't happen very often in the town.

Barry, Dan. "Remote and Struggling but Still a Bit of America." New York Times. 5 October
2008. 2 February 2009.

Earthquake

In early May of 2008 there was an earthquake that measured as an 8 on the richter scale and killed close to 70,000 people. Many chinese people believe that much could have been done to help prevent all the death and destruction that the quake caused, but chinese seimologist say that they still don't know how to predict natural disasters such as earthquakes. People that spread rumors over the internet have been arrested for saying that the government knows how to predict earthquakes and did know of this one. In the area that was effected, resiedents say there were warnings in the days befor the quake, such as the draining of ponds, frogs invading towns, and cows falling against their enclosures. This was one of the most devastating natural disasters of 2008, which was supposed to be a lucky year, and made many people in China wonder if their government really does know these things or if the simply do not care