A thought to start the day..
Canada's predicting a hotter than usual Summer.. last year was the hottest since records started in the 1940's, but Environment Canada's forecasters have agreed this summer should top the last.. It's thought that no part of the country will escape the above average temperatures..
Mind you they're hedging their bets on precipitation.. saying the Prairie Provinces shouldn't be looking at a draught..having said that they may well be saying this simply because predicting precipitation patterns is far more difficult.. No threat to the wheat in Saskatchewan.. not yet at any rate..
But what of those in the cities..? Environment Canada has issued a humidex advisory that stretches from Windsor and Sarnia, around the Golden Horseshoe to Ottawa and Cornwall and as far north as Algonquin and Grey-Bruce. That's an area far larger than the entire UK.. some 650 miles in length and 450 miles to the north..Temperatures yesterday hovered near the 40C mark.. with more of the same for the immediate future..
In June, no less..

There's some concern over a new strain of E-Coli that's beginning to circulate Europe..haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS)which attacks the kidneys and digestive system.. Germany's where it all began, and at the time they blamed contaminated Spanish cucumbers.. Britain has reported 7.. Even the US has one case, a tourist returning from Hamburg..
Germany, the centre of the outbreak, confirmed 372 new infections yesterday alone, 97 of them with HUS. The country has so far reported 470 cases of HUS and a further 1,064 with bloody diarrhoea.. as disgusting as that might be, it is the symptom.. Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK have reported cases, almost all in people who have just returned from Germany. Overall in Europe, 499 cases of HUS and 1,115 of bloody diarrhoea have been reported...
So far 18 people have died from this variation of the disease..
“This is a unique strain that has never been isolated from patients before,” said Hilde Kruse, a food safety expert at the World Health Organization..
Russia's taking no chances.. it's banned all imports of vegetables from the EU...

Japan still is considered the third largest economy in the world.. and the problems it is enduring since the earthquake and tsunami are being dealt with, as quickly as the government can..
However, the lot must fall on someone, and the man at the top is usually the goat..
Naoto Kan survived a vote of non-confidence in the Diet after pleading with his Democratic Party of Japan to allow him to lay the groundwork for recovery from the triple disasters... After that, he will resign, making the way clear for an election that will see the country's sixth Prime Minister in five years..
This is not going to do any good whatsoever for the immediate financial future of many countries.. Japan itself of course.. with it's lack of power and reduced production, the downstream is getting hit harder and harder..
It might well be that the top priority would be twofold in the Diet.. the cleanup of the three contaminated ports.. and the restoration of full power to it's manufacturing sector, and it's population..
But in fact, the last thing this country needs, is yet another election.. it's all time wasted..

Employment figures released in the US today caused a fair drop in the Dow.. some 9% of the American workforce, can't find jobs..
This puts real pressure on Barack.. no American President has ever been re-elected with unemployment over 7.2%, other than FDR of course..
It's only 17 months before the next election.. and analysts are not optimistic that the employment market will open at any great extent before November next year..
Barack's only hope of a clear cut victory, is on the back of the Republican Party allowing Sarah Palin to stand for the White House..

Despite his repeated public offers to step aside to ease the crisis in the country, Yemen’s authoritarian president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, appeared to be gearing up for a major assault on the Ahmar family, his tribal rivals and political opponents... there was heavy fighting today in the Capital of Sana..
The violence in Yemen has transformed a largely peaceful uprising into a tribal conflict with no clear end in sight.. The US and Yemen’s Arab neighbours the likes of Saudi Arabia, which have tried and failed to mediate a peaceful solution to the country’s political crisis, are reduced to merely watching.. and pleading for restraint..
The deterioration of this uprising into tribal factional wars, leaves little hope a solution will be found anywhere in the near future.. There is no one faction that will recognize another as supreme.. and a coalition, has so far, been beyond arrangement..

And the screws are turning on Greece.. Moody's has piled the pressure on the government by downgrading it's critical credit rating from B1 to CAA1.. Last month Moody's dropped Greece by three notches.. and this cut is even deeper..
Portugal's watching these developments closely.. with the possibility of their falling under the same hammer quite likely.. as is Eire..