What Caught My Eye Today

Economy -I'll give you fair warning on this. If you are on anti-depressants or located in a high-rise building with access to the roof, you may want to consider skipping over this story altogether. No good news today on the economic front. Consumer confidence plunged, the wholesale inflation rate soared, the number of homes being foreclosed jumped, home prices fell sharply and a report predicts big increases in health care costs. Seriously, folks it doesn't get any better if you read any further. The New York-based Conference Board said that its Consumer Confidence Index plunged in February to 75.0 from a revised 87.3 in January. Inflation at the wholesale level soared in January, pushed higher by rising costs for food, energy and medicine. The monthly increase carried the annual inflation rate to its fastest jump in a quarter century. The number of homes facing foreclosure jumped 57 percent in January compared to a year ago, with lenders increasingly forced to take possession of homes they couldn't unload at auctions. The worsening situation came despite ongoing efforts by lenders to help borrowers manage their payments by modifying loan terms, working out long-term repayment plans and other actions. Standard and Poor's reported U.S. home prices lost 8.9% in the final quarter of 2007 marking a full year of declining values and the steepest drop in the 20-year history of its housing index. Okay, last one. The federal government predicts that by 2017, total health care spending will double to more than $4 trillion a year, accounting for one of every $5 the nation spends. But here's the good news. Those $600 tax rebate checks--you know from the economic stimulus package that Congress and the President agree upon--should be in the mail any day now.

Email - Microsoft free Web-based e-mail service and other sites have been unavailable for hours to Internet users around the world. Web surfers were unable to log on to Hotmail, along with other services that require a Microsoft login, such as the Xbox Live video game community site and the Windows Live Messenger instant messaging program. Microsoft confirmed the problem was international in scope, but did not say how many people were affected or when a resolution was expected. I bet those jerks in Pakistan had something to do with this. Speaking of which...

Pakistan - Pakistan's telecommunications regulator said it has lifted restrictions on YouTube that knocked out access to the video-sharing Web site in many countries for up to two hours over the weekend. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority told Internet service providers to restore access to the site after the removal of what it called a "blasphemous" video clip. Government officials said the Pakistani regulator carried no responsibility for "technical hitches" which may have lead to problems elsewhere. And how do you figure that? Weren't you the dudes that pulled the plug in the first place? Pakistani officials hope to prevent a repeat of violent anti-Western protests that erupted in early 2006 after a Danish newspaper published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad regarded by many Muslims as offensive. I don't mean to go off the reservation, but maybe a better approach than say--burying your heads in the sand every time something offensive is brought up--perhaps you could focus a bit more effort on religious tolerance.

Venezuela - Ah yes, here is another pearl of wisdom from that pillar of rational thought, President Hugo Chavez. President Hugo Chavez's government is taking its battle against U.S. "imperialism" into Venezuelans' dictionaries, urging state phone company workers to avoid English-language business and tech terms. The Communications and Information Ministry said that Venezuelans must recover Spanish words that are "threatened by sectors that have started a battle for the cultural domination of our nations." The leftist president has sought to counter what he calls U.S. cultural imperialism on all fronts, financing Venezuelan cinema as an alternative to the "dictatorship of Hollywood" and forcing radio stations to play more Venezuelan music. Of course this is America's fault. I'm sure we have nothing better to do that sit in a room all day long dreaming up words that cannot be translated. Here's a thought, Hugo. If you don't like the words we come up with, make up your own. You seem perfectly capable of creating your own parallel universe, so coming up with some new 'palabras' on occasion, should be no big deal.

Norway - Norway opened a frozen "doomsday" vault deep within an Arctic mountain where millions of seeds will be stored to safeguard against wars or natural disasters wiping out food crops around the globe. Svalbard Global Seed Vault, just 620 miles from the North Pole, is designed to house as many as 4.5 million crop seeds from all over the world. It is built to withstand global warming, earthquakes and even nuclear strikes. I understand the bit about earthquakes and nuclear strikes, but global warming? The vault, built by the Norwegian government for $9.1 million, will operate like a bank box. Norway owns the bank, but the countries depositing seeds own them and can used them as needed free of charge. Something must be amiss here. No one does anything these days for purely altruistic reasons. I'm thinking those crafty Norwegians have something up their sleeves.The vault will serve as a backup to the other 1,400 seed banks around the world, in case their deposits are lost. War wiped out seed banks in Iraq and Afghanistan, and another bank in the Philippines was flooded in the wake of a typhoon in 2006. There are 1400 of these things? My goodness.