A plague of locusts threatens some parts of Africa:

"Without immediate attention to the plague of locusts, the FAO warned entire fields of maize, cassava and other staple regional crops would be destroyed.

An invasion by the voracious insects has already spread to 6.5 million hectares (16 million acres) of agricultural land in the Arab Maghreb nations of north Africa and the Sahel region to the south.

One tonne of locusts - a very small portion of an average swarm - eat as much food in one day as about 10 elephants or 25 camels or 2500 people."

This is a very serious situation and they need help immediately. The people in those countries are starving enough already. Hopefully international aid is underway. They need about 83 million dollars for the campaign to protect from the locusts, but the donations promised are well under what is needed.
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Wal-Mart has a frightening anti-union campaign.
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"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House will project on Friday a record budget deficit expected to total between $425 billion and $450 billion for fiscal year 2004, government sources said.
...
A deficit topping $425 billion would be well above the shortfall of $374 billion in 2003, which was a record.
...

Bush has cited a recession and the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, including wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A stronger economy that has lifted tax revenues in recent months led to the downward revision in the budget deficit, administration officials said.

Richard Kogan of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities suggested the administration had overstated the deficit in February "so that it could produce a lower, more realistic deficit estimate later in the year and claim the drop proved its tax-cut policies were working."

Republicans are expected to tout the revised forecast as a sign of progress in reducing the budget gap."

This reminds me a lot of the Federalist and Hamiltonian economics, only exponentially more insane.