NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Thanks to commercials for erectile dysfunction drugs, men know to seek medical attention for "erections lasting more than four hours," but a new study suggests a blood disorder is the cause of many prolonged erections.
While the condition - formally known as priapism - is rare, researchers report in The Journal of Urology that between 14 percent and 30 percent of cases that show up in U.S. emergency rooms are men with sickle-cell disease.
"I would say what the paper is telling us is that sickle-cell disease is still responsible for the bulk of the visits for priapism," said Dr. Gregory Broderick, professor of urology at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, who was not involved in the study.
Sickle-cell disease is an inherited disorder that leads to red blood cells containing an abnormal type of hemoglobin. The defective cells frequently take on a sickle- or crescent-shape and can block small blood vessels, which can lead to tissue damage or even stroke.
Especially dangerous for people with the sickle-cell trait is becoming dehydrated, which thickens the blood and can provoke a potentially fatal "sickle-cell crisis."
Other complications of the condition are anemia, jaundice, gallstones, severe leg and arm pain, and spleen, liver and kidney damage.
Previous studies have linked priapism to sickle-cell disease, as well as to illegal drug abuse and use of erectile dysfunction treatments.
To get a better idea of who is most likely to experience priapism, and why, researchers led by the University of Montreal Health Center's Dr. Florian Roghmann analyzed a database of U.S. ER visits between 2006 and 2009.
They found that 32,462 men came to ERs with priapism during that period, which works out to be less than one emergency visit per 100,000 U.S. men. Of those patients, about 13 percent ended up being admitted to the hospital.
The figures were not significantly different from the past, according to the researchers, which suggests the problem is not becoming more common as the population ages.
About half the men were treated at urban teaching hospitals. And about 14 percent of were reported to have sickle-cell disease, but that number was even higher - about 31 percent - among patients younger than 18 years old. About 4 percent of the patients said they had abused drugs.
The study did not assess how many of the men had used erectile dysfunction drugs. Nor could the researchers tell from the data how many of the ER visits were by the same patients.
But the high proportion of patients identified as having sickle-cell disease, according to Broderick, suggests sickle-cell is the main driver of priapism.
"You're really talking about a demographic slice," said Broderick, who has researched priapism but wasn't involved with the new study.
Sickle-cell disease is most common among people of African, especially West African, descent.
The condition is not thought to cause priapism directly by clogging blood vessels with damaged cells. Rather, it's believed that when the defective red blood cells break, their contents in the bloodstream interfere with signaling from the brain that regulates blood flow and tissue responses, according to Broderick.
The study team also found that priapism is more common during the summer months and in warmer climates. Broderick said that may be due to dehydration among people with sickle-cell disease.
But he cautioned that the new study cannot say for certain what caused priapism in these patients. So the researchers can't rule out other explanations.
Regardless of the cause, Broderick told Reuters Health that the condition can lead to serious long-term complications if it's not treated quickly.
"It's a time-dependant emergency. The more time they've had the ischemic or erect penis, the more likely they're going to have erectile dysfunction," he said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/ZQU1Kp The Journal of Urology, online April 10, 2013.
MEXICO CITY -- The lower house of Mexico's congress voted Tuesday to loosen longstanding restrictions on foreigners buying property along the coast and the nation's borders, a proposal that drew stiff criticism from some quarters.
The measure, which passed 356-119 in the Chamber of Deputies, still needs approval from the Senate and a majority of the country's 32 state legislatures to become law.
For decades, foreigners have had to use real-estate trusts or Mexican front companies to buy beachfront properties, because Article 27 of the constitution prohibits non-Mexicans from directly owning land within 31 miles (50 kilometers) of the coast and 62 miles (100 kilometers) of the nation's borders. The trusts and front companies have provided a lucrative income for banks, lawyers and notaries who are required to operate them, and the extensive paperwork has discouraged many foreigners from buying.
The change, sponsored by Congressman Manlio Fabio Beltrones of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party, would allow foreigners to directly buy ocean-front property for residential use, but not for commercial projects.
Such proposals have been made before, but not by figures as influential as Beltrones, the PRI's congressional leader.
"This is about eliminating the middlemen who, through trusts, corporations and front men, have made a living off the constitutional ban," Beltrones' office said when he submitted the bill earlier this month. "It is a question of encouraging tourism investment and creating local jobs."
The Union of Indians and the Farmers' Force, a farmworkers group, criticized the proposal Tuesday, saying it would "give free rein to foreigners to legally buy up the best land, and encourage robbery and financial and real estate speculation."
"This would result in the foreign colonization of the country," the groups said in a statement.
Those are strong sentiments in a country frequently invaded by foreign powers in the 19th and early 20th century. Mexico set up the restrictions to ensure national security and avoid the creation of foreign enclaves like the one that grew up in a former Mexican province known as Texas, where the foreigners eventually rebelled and split from Mexico.
"For historical reasons, it was considered risky to allow foreigners to establish themselves permanently on the coast and the borders," according to Beltrones' proposal, but it says "the conditions that led the Constitution to limit such purchases have been overcome."
Arguing for the change Tuesday, Beltrones said, "Apart from ensuring legal certainty over property rights, this would financially benefit the coastal town government, given that it would make tax payments, like property taxes, easier to collect."
Kevin Graham, a Texan who runs the Costa Maya Living real estate firm in the Caribbean beach town of Mahahual, said some potential buyers are put off by the prospect of not being able to hold direct title to beach properties.
"I feel, with all the doubts they have, it's slowed the market down for foreign investment here," he said.
Federico Estevez, a political science professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, also cited the benefits to foreign investment by simplifying ownership for foreigners.
"This is to bring the law up to date, because basically it's going on anyway, but with all these foul distortions of having to pay people off," he said.
Noting that Mexico has been seeking more foreign investors, Estevez added: "You want their money, keep them here."
BANGKOK (AP) ? Crude prices rose Wednesday as traders waded back into the oil market following a string of positive corporate earnings and an improved U.S. housing report.
Benchmark oil for June delivery was up 45 cents to $89.63 per barrel at midday Bangkok time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 1 cent to close at $89.18 a barrel on the Nymex on Tuesday.
Strong earnings pushed all three major Wall Street indexes ? the Dow, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq composite ? higher Tuesday. Industry giants such as DuPont Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. reported results that were better than analysts expected. Additionally, housing data showed that sales of new homes increased 1.5 percent in March.
The rise in housing demand is also helping to boost prices, which tend to make homeowners feel wealthier and encourage more spending. That could drive up consumption of energy and prices of fuel.
Investors are now waiting for the latest data on U.S. stockpiles of crude and refined products. Data for the week ending April 19 is expected to show an increase of 1.4 million barrels in crude oil stocks, according to a survey of analysts by Platts.
Brent crude, which is used to price oil used by many U.S. refiners, rose 45 cents to $100.59 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London.
In other energy futures trading on the Nymex:
? Gasoline rose 0 .9 cent to $2.72 per gallon.
? Heating oil rose 0.3 cent to $2.801 a gallon.
? Natural gas fell 1.7 cent to $4.221 per 1,000 cubic feet.
Conventional wisdom has it that Apple has reached its peak and can only disappoint from now on. Yet, many financial facts don’t make sense. The market is too harsh with Apple compared to its competitors. But when it comes to products, there is an unsettling detail: there was no product release during fiscal Q2 2013. While Apple is certainly not doomed, its future looks gloomy. That’s why today’s earnings will be important for the company. Expectations “I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can’t help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced.” –Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights (1848) Apple’s growth has been incredible over the past two years, with double-digit growth for sales and profit. For years, Apple bloggers have vigorously criticized analysts’ expectations regarding Apple earnings and units sold. Basically, Wall Street analysts were setting the bar too high for units and market share, and too low for profit and sales. It led to distortion. With a very minor market share, Apple was able to capture a big profit share. The company reported hit after hit after hit — that’s why Apple shares were doing so great even though sales were “disappointing” according to some analysts — the bottom line is more important than anything else. But now, analysts have caught up and Apple is only able to pull out mixed earnings compared to estimates. Even iPhone sales are now below analysts’ expectations. The company was supposed to sell between 6 million and 10 million iPhone 5 during opening weekend. In reality, it sold 5 million units. As a reminder, for the first weekend alone, analysts predicted sales of 1 million iPhone 4 and 2 million iPhone 4S, compared to 1.7 million and 4 million actual units sold. This time around, analysts have to lower their expectations to get closer to reality. Fortune’s consensus puts Apple’s Q2 2013 revenue at $42.6 billion with estimated earnings per share of $10.21. Revenue would still be up 8.7 percent year over year. But it’s disappointing given the incredible growth trend over the past couple of years. One of the reason is that gross margin will be lower than what it used to be. Last year, Apple reported a 47.4 percent gross margin. The company now expects a 37.5 to 38.5 gross margin. Finance Over the
Carrie Underwood made one Michigan high school girl forget her long list of troubles, if only for a few hours, on Saturday (April 20). The country music superstar took time before her Jacksonville, Fla., stop on the current Blown Away tour to meet Haley Gort, an 18-year-old who has been battling a brain tumor for more than two years, and the teen says it was an evening she will never forget.
"That was the best moment of my entire life," Haley tweeted, after meeting her musical idol before the show at the Jacksonville Veteran's Memorial Arena. "Thank you so much @CarrieUnderwood. See ya out there!"
The songstress wasted no time in sharing the love with her lifelong fan. "Finally got to meet @HaleyGort tonight!" Carrie tweeted, posting a photo of the pair on Instagram. "Hope she has fun at the show!"
Haley, who received a flight to the Florida show and tickets and backstage passes thanks to the Make-a-Wish Foundation, says she is feeling better after suffering through intense treatment over the last few months.
"The chemo was way worse than the radiation," she explains to Michigan's MLive newspaper. "I had to sit in a chair for three hours for three days straight hooked up with an IV and feeling like crap. Then for about a week after, I was nauseous and vomiting. I couldn't keep food down and I lost my hair."
Thankfully, Haley felt well enough to attend Carrie's concert, and became even more of a fan after the show. "Okay all in one day I meet her and she tweets me?" she tweeted later that night. "Could life get any better?!?! @CarrieUnderwood is awesome. End of story."
Carrie continues her Blown Away tour tonight (April 23) with a show in Houston, Texas. Keep track of her tour schedule here.
Watch Carrie Underwood's 'Two Black Cadillacs' Video
Fertilizer that fizzles in a homemade bomb could save lives around the worldPublic release date: 23-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Nancy Salem mnsalem@sandia.gov 505-844-2739 DOE/Sandia National Laboratories
Sandia researcher develops a non-detonable fertilizer
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. A Sandia engineer who trained U.S. soldiers to avoid improvised explosive devices (IEDs) has developed a fertilizer that helps plants grow but can't detonate a bomb. It's an alternative to ammonium nitrate, an agricultural staple that is also the raw ingredient in most of the IEDs in Afghanistan.
Sandia has decided not to patent or license the formula, but to make it freely available in hopes of saving lives.
Ammonium nitrate fertilizer is illegal in Afghanistan but legal in neighboring Pakistan, where a quarter of the gross domestic product and half the workforce depend on agriculture. When mixed with a fuel such as diesel, ammonium nitrate is highly explosive. It was used in about 65 percent of the 16,300 homemade bombs in Afghanistan in 2012, according to government reports. There were 9,300 IED events in the country in 2009.
IEDs have killed more American troops than any other weapon during the 11-year war in Afghanistan. About 1,900 troops were killed or wounded in IED attacks in 2012, 60 percent of American combat casualties.
Ammonium nitrate explosives are not limited to Afghanistan. More than 700 IED attacks take place outside Afghanistan each month, and more than 17,000 global IED events have occurred in 123 countries in the past two years. The United States witnessed how deadly ammonium nitrate can be in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people.
U.S. efforts to curb the flow of ammonium nitrate fertilizer into Afghanistan through seizures, export controls and diplomacy have had limited success. The Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) was established by the Department of Defense in 2006 to reach out to the armed services, private sector and academia for counter-IED technologies. JIEDDO last year issued a call for ideas on how to neutralize ammonium nitrate as an IED explosive.
Sandia optical engineer Kevin Fleming took on the challenge and developed a fertilizer formula as good as, if not better, than ammonium nitrate, but not detonable.
An Achilles heel
"I looked at it differently," said Fleming, who retired from the labs in February. "I've been an organic gardener since I was eight. We had five acres in Las Cruces with the problems of calcareous soils that are very similar to those in the Middle East. I know something about commercial farming."
He also knew the chemistry of IEDs from years of training soldiers how to deal with them.
From a terrorist's perspective, ammonium nitrate has an Achilles heel. The ammonium ion is weakly attached to the nitrate ion. They hang onto each other, but the right chemical reaction can easily pull them apart. Fleming reasoned you could separate the ions by adding a compound they would rather cling to, called a metathesis reaction. "It would change into something else at the molecular level," he said.
Fleming tried several materials including iron sulfate, a readily available compound that steel foundries throw away by the tons. When mixed with ammonium nitrate, the iron ion "grabs" the nitrate and the ammonium ion takes the sulfate ion. Iron sulfate becomes iron nitrate and ammonium nitrate becomes ammonium sulfate. This reaction occurs if someone tries to alter the fertilizer to make it detonable when mixed with a fuel.
"The ions would rather be with different partners," Fleming said. "The iron looks at the ammonium nitrate and says, 'Can I have your nitrate rather than my sulfate?' and the ammonium nitrate says, 'I like sulfate, so I'll trade you.'"
Ammonium sulfate and iron nitrate are not detonable, even when mixed with a fuel, as is ammonium nitrate. "It's a different compound," said Fleming, who completed work on the formula in late 2012. "At the chemical level it's a great fertilizer but does not detonate."
Sandia chemical engineer Vicki Chavez ran a small-scale proof-of-concept of the reaction, and validated it. "We were able to prove that there was little to no ammonium nitrate left in the resulting process," she said. "It was very cool. We looked at pure ammonium nitrate and pure ammonium sulfate. The resulting sample looked more like ammonium sulfate."
Fleming said iron sulfate in fertilizer adds iron and acidifies soil. "It does good things for soil health. It takes alkaline soil and makes it more neutral, closer to an ideal pH level," he said. "The closer you get a neutral pH, the more crops grow. Crop yield would improve significantly.
"And iron-containing fertilizer added to the soil would be taken up in crops and help fight anemia and other iron deficiencies in people who eat them."
The soil in Afghanistan is alkaline with a high pH, and could benefit from an ammonium nitrate/iron sulfate fertilizer, Fleming said. "What they use now, ammonium nitrate with calcium carbonate which makes soil more alkaline doesn't make sense," he said.
Danger to soldiers
Sandia could have patented the formula but opted to waive ownership rights for humanitarian reasons.
"One of Sandia's priorities is deploying the technologies that result from our research for the public good," said Pete Atherton, senior manager of industry partnerships at Sandia. "We think that making the fertilizer formula as accessible as possible is the best way to accomplish this mission."
Replacing ammonium nitrate with a non-detonable fertilizer in Afghanistan and other parts of the world will not happen overnight, Fleming said. Ammonium nitrate is produced in huge plants in many locations. "It's easy to get in large quantities," he said. "The sheer volume of ammonium nitrate is gigantic."
But he said there are some ideas about how to get the non-detonable formula, which would not cost more to produce, into the marketplace. "We could give the formula to a neutral party and let them work with the Afghans, Pakistanis and others," he said. "They could set up side-by-side demonstrations to see which fertilizer works better. Prove it to them gradually."
Fleming has informed JIEDDO of his results. He said his sense of urgency in tackling the issue came from looking into the eyes of hundreds of soldiers he trained in anti-IED tactics. "Explosive Ordnance Disposal techs see a lot of IEDs, and about one third of them will die, be maimed or injured by IEDs before getting through their tours, and most from ammonium nitrate-based explosives," he said.
At a meeting last year in Crystal City, Va., Fleming sat next to an ex-Marine who had lost both legs trying to find IEDs. "He had a metal detector, but some bombs are chemically initiated with no metal parts. He stepped on a non-metal trigger and set off a blast that took off both legs. He became a double amputee in milliseconds. So when I sit next to him and see the aftermath of an IED, I have to think of any way possible to keep this from happening."
###
Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin company, for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. With main facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., Sandia has major R&D responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies and economic competitiveness.
Sandia news media contact: Nancy Salem, mnsalem@sandia.gov, (505) 844-2739
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Fertilizer that fizzles in a homemade bomb could save lives around the worldPublic release date: 23-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Nancy Salem mnsalem@sandia.gov 505-844-2739 DOE/Sandia National Laboratories
Sandia researcher develops a non-detonable fertilizer
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. A Sandia engineer who trained U.S. soldiers to avoid improvised explosive devices (IEDs) has developed a fertilizer that helps plants grow but can't detonate a bomb. It's an alternative to ammonium nitrate, an agricultural staple that is also the raw ingredient in most of the IEDs in Afghanistan.
Sandia has decided not to patent or license the formula, but to make it freely available in hopes of saving lives.
Ammonium nitrate fertilizer is illegal in Afghanistan but legal in neighboring Pakistan, where a quarter of the gross domestic product and half the workforce depend on agriculture. When mixed with a fuel such as diesel, ammonium nitrate is highly explosive. It was used in about 65 percent of the 16,300 homemade bombs in Afghanistan in 2012, according to government reports. There were 9,300 IED events in the country in 2009.
IEDs have killed more American troops than any other weapon during the 11-year war in Afghanistan. About 1,900 troops were killed or wounded in IED attacks in 2012, 60 percent of American combat casualties.
Ammonium nitrate explosives are not limited to Afghanistan. More than 700 IED attacks take place outside Afghanistan each month, and more than 17,000 global IED events have occurred in 123 countries in the past two years. The United States witnessed how deadly ammonium nitrate can be in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people.
U.S. efforts to curb the flow of ammonium nitrate fertilizer into Afghanistan through seizures, export controls and diplomacy have had limited success. The Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) was established by the Department of Defense in 2006 to reach out to the armed services, private sector and academia for counter-IED technologies. JIEDDO last year issued a call for ideas on how to neutralize ammonium nitrate as an IED explosive.
Sandia optical engineer Kevin Fleming took on the challenge and developed a fertilizer formula as good as, if not better, than ammonium nitrate, but not detonable.
An Achilles heel
"I looked at it differently," said Fleming, who retired from the labs in February. "I've been an organic gardener since I was eight. We had five acres in Las Cruces with the problems of calcareous soils that are very similar to those in the Middle East. I know something about commercial farming."
He also knew the chemistry of IEDs from years of training soldiers how to deal with them.
From a terrorist's perspective, ammonium nitrate has an Achilles heel. The ammonium ion is weakly attached to the nitrate ion. They hang onto each other, but the right chemical reaction can easily pull them apart. Fleming reasoned you could separate the ions by adding a compound they would rather cling to, called a metathesis reaction. "It would change into something else at the molecular level," he said.
Fleming tried several materials including iron sulfate, a readily available compound that steel foundries throw away by the tons. When mixed with ammonium nitrate, the iron ion "grabs" the nitrate and the ammonium ion takes the sulfate ion. Iron sulfate becomes iron nitrate and ammonium nitrate becomes ammonium sulfate. This reaction occurs if someone tries to alter the fertilizer to make it detonable when mixed with a fuel.
"The ions would rather be with different partners," Fleming said. "The iron looks at the ammonium nitrate and says, 'Can I have your nitrate rather than my sulfate?' and the ammonium nitrate says, 'I like sulfate, so I'll trade you.'"
Ammonium sulfate and iron nitrate are not detonable, even when mixed with a fuel, as is ammonium nitrate. "It's a different compound," said Fleming, who completed work on the formula in late 2012. "At the chemical level it's a great fertilizer but does not detonate."
Sandia chemical engineer Vicki Chavez ran a small-scale proof-of-concept of the reaction, and validated it. "We were able to prove that there was little to no ammonium nitrate left in the resulting process," she said. "It was very cool. We looked at pure ammonium nitrate and pure ammonium sulfate. The resulting sample looked more like ammonium sulfate."
Fleming said iron sulfate in fertilizer adds iron and acidifies soil. "It does good things for soil health. It takes alkaline soil and makes it more neutral, closer to an ideal pH level," he said. "The closer you get a neutral pH, the more crops grow. Crop yield would improve significantly.
"And iron-containing fertilizer added to the soil would be taken up in crops and help fight anemia and other iron deficiencies in people who eat them."
The soil in Afghanistan is alkaline with a high pH, and could benefit from an ammonium nitrate/iron sulfate fertilizer, Fleming said. "What they use now, ammonium nitrate with calcium carbonate which makes soil more alkaline doesn't make sense," he said.
Danger to soldiers
Sandia could have patented the formula but opted to waive ownership rights for humanitarian reasons.
"One of Sandia's priorities is deploying the technologies that result from our research for the public good," said Pete Atherton, senior manager of industry partnerships at Sandia. "We think that making the fertilizer formula as accessible as possible is the best way to accomplish this mission."
Replacing ammonium nitrate with a non-detonable fertilizer in Afghanistan and other parts of the world will not happen overnight, Fleming said. Ammonium nitrate is produced in huge plants in many locations. "It's easy to get in large quantities," he said. "The sheer volume of ammonium nitrate is gigantic."
But he said there are some ideas about how to get the non-detonable formula, which would not cost more to produce, into the marketplace. "We could give the formula to a neutral party and let them work with the Afghans, Pakistanis and others," he said. "They could set up side-by-side demonstrations to see which fertilizer works better. Prove it to them gradually."
Fleming has informed JIEDDO of his results. He said his sense of urgency in tackling the issue came from looking into the eyes of hundreds of soldiers he trained in anti-IED tactics. "Explosive Ordnance Disposal techs see a lot of IEDs, and about one third of them will die, be maimed or injured by IEDs before getting through their tours, and most from ammonium nitrate-based explosives," he said.
At a meeting last year in Crystal City, Va., Fleming sat next to an ex-Marine who had lost both legs trying to find IEDs. "He had a metal detector, but some bombs are chemically initiated with no metal parts. He stepped on a non-metal trigger and set off a blast that took off both legs. He became a double amputee in milliseconds. So when I sit next to him and see the aftermath of an IED, I have to think of any way possible to keep this from happening."
###
Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin company, for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. With main facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., Sandia has major R&D responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies and economic competitiveness.
Sandia news media contact: Nancy Salem, mnsalem@sandia.gov, (505) 844-2739
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China will refuse to grant new licenses to iron ore importers unless they participate in a domestic trading platform, in a fresh move by the world's biggest iron ore consumer to wrestle pricing power away from global miners.
China, which buys around two-thirds of the world's 1-billion-tonne plus sea-borne iron ore, has been attempting to regain the upper hand in pricing the steel making raw material since grudgingly accepting an industry-wide shift to spot pricing after four decades of a yearly-set price ending in 2010.
Under new rules, traders and steel mills seeking a new license to import will now have to trade at least 551,155 tons of iron ore on the platform set up by the China Beijing International Mining Exchange (CBMX), a document on the regulations obtained by Reuters showed. Only Chinese firms are eligible for import licenses.
China's first physical iron ore trading platform competes with the globalORE platform in Singapore, but the new rules, in a country with tens of thousands of iron ore traders, could give CBMX more business and boost liquidity.
Global miners BHP , Vale and Rio Tinto and Chinese steelmakers including Baoshan Iron and Steel are members of both platforms.
China has long suspected that iron ore pricing is manipulated by some miners and traders and wanted a platform that it deems more transparent, although miners may be wary of Beijing gaining control if more business flows to the exchange, particularly after Chinese pressure over ore price levels.
Last month, China's top economic planning agency accused the world's top three miners and some traders of manipulating the market to push up prices that soared more than 80 percent to near $160 a 1.1 ton <.io62-cni> in February from three-year lows in September.
"Some traders have already been verbally informed of this new rule and they are keen to increase trade on the platform to get the import qualification," said an industry source familiar with the matter.
CBMX launched the physical trading platform, together with its own iron ore pricing index, on May 8, 2012, hoping to boost its price-setting influence in its biggest commodity import by volume.
The new requirements were drawn up by the China Iron and Steel Association and the China Chamber of Commerce of Metals Minerals and Chemicals Importers and Exporters, a unit that helps regulate iron ore trade on behalf of the Ministry of Commerce of China, industry sources said.
Officials at the two organizations could not immediately be reached for comment.
A CBMX official declined to comment.
Firms applying for new licenses will have to show that they have traded a minimum of 551,155 tons of iron ore with CBMX since it was launched, according to the list of requirements in the document distributed to traders.
They also stipulate that companies should have imported more than 1 million tonnes last year.
Steel mills applying for a license are also required to have an annual output of more than 1 million tonnes of crude steel and steel making facilities that meet state environmental requirements, according to the document.
Importers already holding a license would not be affected by the new regulations, officials at two state-owned Chinese traders said.
BOOSTING TRADE TO BECOME BENCHMARK
Since the iron ore market moved to daily pricing, a battle between pricing platforms and exchanges has been underway to become the benchmark for the world's second-largest commodity market after oil.
Attracting the highest volume of trade is key to winning the benchmark battle. The CBMX has moved ahead of globalORE to date in 2013 in terms of the volume of iron ore traded.
The CBMX has hosted 5.92 million tonnes of trade in 2013 as of April 12, according to data from the exchange. globalORE has seen only about 1.9 million tonnes this year, according to industry sources.
That is a reversal from last year, when the CBMX saw 7 million tonnes traded of the 93 million tonnes of iron ore it put on offer in 2012. globalORE traded a total of 9.62 million tonnes of iron ore since it was launched on May 30, 2012.
Traders said there was a risk the new requirements might not operate as designed, noting that it was possible to get around them by conducting "paper only" transactions on the exchange with no actual delivery.
"The exchange does not need undertake responsibility for participants to eventually settle the physical delivery, that means they can default after they make the deal on the platform," said a trader in Shanghai.
Beijing has long tried to impose more control on how iron ore trading is regulated, seeking big reductions in the number of licensed traders and trying to crack down on speculative reselling. But smaller players in the industry have often found ways around the regulations.
The list of companies with import licenses is not made public, but about 120 companies are eligible, according to industry sources.
Iron ore buyers who do not have a license would have to go through importers with a permit to purchase iron ore on their behalf on a commission basis.
(Additional reporting by Manolo Serapio Jr.; Editing by Ed Davies and Simon Webb)
All Critics (40) | Top Critics (22) | Fresh (38) | Rotten (2)
A thousand-watt jolt of mischief, a spunky, funky, ebullient indie that packs its 81 minutes with cinematic exhilaration.
It may be a slight movie, but it has its sunny charms.
A movie about teenage taggers in the Bronx should be fast and raw, scruffy and loose, and Adam Leon's Gimme the Loot is just that.
As it lopes along, the movie offers a warm but very sharp portrait of New York's have-nots and their uneasy relationship with the haves.
"Gimme the Loot" shouldn't be as appealing and exuberant as it is, it really shouldn't.
Tashiana Washington and Ty Hickson are terrific in the main roles. So is Zo? Lescaze as Ginnie, a spoiled white kid who teaches the taggers a thing or two about drift and being dissolute.
Simultaneously real and hopeful, "Loot" has almost no plot, but when the setting is so fresh and the characters feel so raw and alive, who needs one?
Ghetto laughs with a sophisticated point of view.
...a magical, summery treat.
Promotes robbery and can't be serious in expecting us to care whether Malcolm and Sofia become more than friends.
The winner of the Indie Spirit 'One to Watch' award could never work again and will always have a memorable New York City film to his credit.
An impressive debut feature, Gimme the Loot is also an unusual take on characters who want to leave their stamp on "the city that never sleeps."
Much more grownup than it looks, Gimme the Loot is that rare teen-centric film whose brisk pace is unburdened by sentimentality.
Writer-director Adam Leon has crafted a classic New York story, a film imbued with the fast rhythms and muggy sensations of city life during the summer.
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There is one part of the purity doctrines that I don?t think has been talked about often enough, and that is that the emphasis on sexual or emotional purity leads women to stay in abusive relationships rather than leave, because if they leave, having given up their sexual and emotional purity, they will be ruined and no other man will have them. This reality was recently elucidated?in a rather moving post?by Samantha of Defeating the Dragons:
When I was fourteen, I went to a month-long summer camp at the college I would later attend. Like most Christian summer camps, this one involved going to a chapel service twice a day. Most of the time they were fun, lighthearted?until one evening they split up the girls and the boys. Great, I remember thinking, because I knew exactly what was coming. Segregation can only mean one thing? they were going to talk about sex. I sighed when they made the announcement. Again? I thought wearily.
That evening, when the camp counselors had shooed all the men and boys out of the building, the speaker got up to the podium. She didn?t even beat around the bush, but launched right into her object lesson. Holding up a king-size Snickers bar, she asked if anyone in the audience wanted it. It?s a room full of girls?who doesn?t want chocolate? A hundred hands shot up. She picked a girl close to the front that wouldn?t have to climb over too many people and brought her up to the stage. Very slowly, she unwrapped the Snickers bar, splitting the package like a banana peel. She handed it to the young woman, and asked her, very clearly, to lick the chocolate bar all over. Just lick it.
Giggling, the young lady started licking the chocolate bar, making a little bit of a show of it. At fourteen, I had no idea what a blow job was, so I missed the connection that had a lot of girls in the room snorting and hooting. The young lady finished and handed it back to the speaker. As she was sitting down, the speaker very carefully wrapped the package around the candy bar, making it look like the unopened package as possible. Then she asked if anyone else in the room wanted a go.
No one raised her hand.
?????
My sophomore year in college, another speaker shared a similar object lesson? ironically, in the exact same room, also filled exclusively with women. She got up to the podium carrying a single rose bud. At this point I was more familiar with sexual imagery, and I knew that the rose had frequently been treated as a symbol for the vagina in literature and poetry? so, again, I knew what was coming.
This speaker asked us to pass the rose around the room, and encouraged us to enjoy touching it. ?Caress the petals,? she told us. ?Feel the velvet.? By the time the rose came to me, it was destroyed. Most of the petals were gone, the ones that were still feebly clinging to the stem were bruised and torn. The leaves were missing, and someone had ripped away the thorns, leaving gash marks down the side.
?????
For my own emotional stability, I will be brief. The relationship was emotionally, verbally, physically, and sexually abusive. Like countless other stories, the abuse slowly escalated?I had no idea what was happening until it was too late.
Women in, or who have recently escaped from, violent relationships typically get asked ?why do/did you stay?? Very frequently, they don?t have a solid answer to that question. There are a host of common reasons?daddy issues, economic stability, shame.
I know exactly why I stayed. I was crippled, paralyzed, and overwhelmed by fear. Fear that he would abandon me. Fear that, if he left, I would no longer have any value. John had literally ruined me, in my mind, for anyone else.
Be sure to read the rest. But what I want to hammer on here is that what she?s saying here makes so, so much sense to me. We were given this idea that if we?d given our heart away, we couldn?t get it back, and that if we?d given our bodies away, we were forever sullied. Sure, we were told that Jesus could make us pure again, that people good be ?born again? virgins, but who were they kidding? We knew that wasn?t how it worked. We knew that guys wouldn?t want girls who had had had sex before, and that even something as simple as dating a guy threatened to dent our purity?even without any physical contact at all.
I only ever dated one person?the man who is now my husband?but I remember thinking when I was first getting in that I was playing at a dangerous game. I only started dating him because I was already about 90% sure I would marry him?I felt ?moved by the spirit? that he was the one. I knew at the time that if it didn?t work out, I would no longer be perfectly pure and completely unsullied. It was a gamble I was taking.
But what Samantha points out is so, so important?because the consequences of the first relationship not working out are so, so huge, especially if you?ve had sex and thus lost your ?sexual purity,? you?re likely to stay in that relationship even if things become abusive or turn out not so great. The option is making it work even with glaring problems, or jumping ship and hoping to catch someone else in spite of being damaged and sullied. In other words, these purity teachings have the effect of encouraging women to stay in abusive relationships.
The deeper you dig, the more toxic these purity teachings appear. Also, many thanks to Samantha for sharing her story. It can?t have been easy to write all of that out, but these are the things that have to be said?and every additional story we tell has the potential to help someone out of these toxic teachings.
By: Cari Nierenberg, MyHealthNewsDaily Contributor Published: 04/18/2013 12:45 PM EDT on MyHealthNewsDaily
A new study from Japan confirms what many mothers may know instinctively: Picking up and carrying a fussy baby usually calms down and relaxes the child, making the move a good one for both moms and infants.
When mothers in the study carried their babies while walking around, the infants became noticeably more relaxed and stopped crying and squirming. The babies' rapidly beating hearts also slowed down, evidence that the children were feeling calmer.
"Infants become calm and relaxed when they are carried by their mother," said study researcher Dr. Kumi Kuroda, who investigates social behavior at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Saitama, Japan. The study observed strikingly similar responses in mouse babies.
Since carrying (meaning holding while walking) can help stop an infant from crying, Kuroda said, it can offer mothers a way to soothe short-term irritations to their children, such as scary noises or vaccinations.
The findings were published online today (April 18) in the journal Current Biology.
A strong calming effect
For the small study, researchers monitored the responses of 12 healthy infants ages 1 month to 6 months. The scientists wanted to discover the most effective way for mothers to calm a crying baby over a 30-second period ? simply holding the baby or carrying the infant while walking.
Young babies carried by a walking mother were the most relaxed and soothed, compared with infants whose mothers sat in a chair and held them, the study found. As a mother stood up and started to walk with her child cradled close in her arms, scientists observed an automatic change in the baby's behavior.
These results held even after the researchers took into account other factors, such as the child's age and sex, and the mother's age and walking speed.
Kuroda said she was surprised by the strength of the calming effect from maternal holding and walking. In observing experiments on both humans and mice, she was amazed at how quickly the heart rate slowed, and by how much immediately after a mother started walking. (Mother mice pick up their young by the scruff of their neck with their mouths.)
According to the researchers, maternal walking may be more effective in calming infants than other kinds of rhythmic motion, such as rocking.
Advice for parents
When an underlying reason for crying persists, such as hunger or sustained pain, the infant may start crying again soon after the end of carrying.
That's why Kuroda recommended that when a baby starts crying, a brief period of carrying may help parents to identify the cause of the tears. She acknowledged carrying might not completely stop the crying, but it may prevent parents from becoming frustrated by a crying infant.
The findings also have implications for one parenting technique in which parents let babies cry as a way to help them learn to fall asleep by themselves, the researchers said.
"Our study suggests why some babies do not respond well to the 'cry-it-out' parenting method," Kuroda said.
Proponents of the technique advise parents to let infants, after a certain age, cry themselves to sleep ? without mom or dad comforting them ? in the hopes the baby will learn how to soothe himself or herself.
But Kuroda said that calming by maternal carrying, as well as crying during separation, are both built-in mechanisms for infant survival. These behaviors have been hard-wired for millions of years. "Changing these reactions would be possible as infants are flexible, but it may take time," she said.
Although this study looked at a baby's behavior in response to its mother, Kuroda said the effect is not specific to moms, and any primary caregiver for the infant can perform the carrying. The researchers observed the same carrying-induced calming effects when fathers, grandmothers and an unfamiliar female with caregiving experience carried babies who were under 2 months old, Kuroda said.
Pass it on: Picking up and carrying a crying infant will automatically calm the child.
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D.C. Council at-large candidate Pat Mara is four days away from election day, but some D.C. government officials are paying more attention to one of his older campaigns. The District's Office of Campaign Finance is looking into an arrangement Mara made with a conservative group to assist in raising money from his 2008 campaign donors, OCF spokesman Wesley Williams said this afternoon.
Under the terms of the deal, first reported by the Washington Post on Monday, Mara helped a think tank called DC Progress by meeting with donors and sending them fundraising letters. In exchange, Mara would make as much as $2,500 a month or 10 percent of the donations, according to the Post?a potential violation of campaign finance law. Mara's campaign responded with a statement on Tuesday denying that he had used campaign records for the fundraising and saying he had made less than $10,000 on the project.
OCF decided to begin what Williams describes as an "internal inquiry" shortly after the Post story ran. Williams doesn't know whether the inquiry will be ready in time for the election. "We're trying to expedite it as fast as possible, considering with the election coming up on Tuesday," he says.
In an email, Mara says that he hasn't been contacted by the OCF. "We have run a positive campaign," he writes. "I wish I could say the same for my rivals."
It's no secret that Apple hangs onto your Siri data for some length of time (as other companies so with search data and the like), but it hasn't been clear exactly how long it keeps that data sitting on its servers. Wired has now cleared that up somewhat, though, hearing from Apple spokesperson Trudy Muller that the company "may keep anonymized Siri data for up to two years." That word follows another report from Wired yesterday that raised concerns about the issue. As Muller notes, the data is immediately deleted if a user turns Siri off at any time, and it's anonymized from the start; neither your Apple ID or email address are stored with a data, but rather a randomly generated number that represents the user and becomes associated with the voice files. That number then gets disassociated from voice clips after six months, but Apple still hangs onto the files for another 18 months for what's described as testing and product improvement purposes.
It?s been a tough week for hard assets. Prices plummeted for gold, silver, platinum, copper, oil and more. It was a broad, marketwide retreat ? helped along by the ?usual suspect? market movers, who likely wanted to knock things down for their own nefarious reasons.
In the past week, at some moments, the sell side was in a panic. People apparently bailed from large positions ? although I believe that as things quickly evolved (too quickly, actually), many jumpers were forced to exit due to margin calls.
Today, as I write, precious metal and energy markets seem stable, albeit at a lower price plateau. Still, lower prices for ?long-term? wealth-protection ideas like gold, silver, etc., have knocked down the share price for many a producing company.
All in all, many hard asset portfolios have taken tough hits, especially those of investors who bought in over the past year, and certainly in recent months. What happened? Where do we go? Has the hard asset train derailed? Let?s think it through.
I have to admit that a few weeks ago, when I was writing to my paid up readers, I did not foresee the sharp asset dive that we?ve just experienced. I?m more than aware that gold and silver prices go down as well as up. But I didn?t see a super-sharp selloff coming.
For example, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold shares dropped from the $33 range to the vicinity of $29. Barrick shares dropped from over $25 to just under $19. These levels are five-year lows ? as low as the respective companies have been since late 2008 and early 2009, during the worst days of the last crash.
At current price levels, the dividend yield for both Freeport and Barrick shares is near 4.2% for each company ? not bad. If Freeport and Barrick were good ideas before, they?re ?better? ideas now. These entry points are attractive, although I counsel caution and suggest allowing more dust to settle. Yes, there is STILL a downside to big mining plays.
Still, at these levels, I?m inclined to suggest that long-term investors nibble away. Be sure to keep cash in reserve for other opportunities.
Markets for everything move up and down. You get bad days, right? That, and beware fighting the Federal Reserve. But I still don?t understand why the dollar is somehow so ?strong? in a relative sense and gold is somehow ?weak.? The ferocity and scope of last week?s hard asset slide surprised me.
Why the Slide?
Let?s look at a couple of the mainstream explanations for the gold sell-off. One has to do with Japan?s intentional weakening of the yen for domestic ?stimulation.? In response, the dollar strengthens. Strong dollar leads to lower gold prices, right? But why would a stronger dollar trigger a major gold sell-off? On the best day, dollar-yen is an exchange-rate issue, not a fundamental restructuring of U.S. monetary issues.
How about the rumor that Cyprus will sell its national gold to pay the European Union for a bank bailout. That?s on top of Cyprus nicking all of the big bank accounts on the island for up to 60%. Still, how much gold does Cyprus have? And where would it go?
If Cyprus ?sells? its national gold, the transaction will likely just be a ledger move from the books of one central bank to another. That is, unless China buys the gold and demands delivery. Beware of that happening, because it?ll lead to a physical scramble to cover delivery ? in which case gold prices should rise, not fall.
And why would any large gold holder ? public or private ? ?sell? it in such a way as to crash the price? That is, why dump a large gold position in a hurry? Especially if you know that it?ll spook the market downward, and at the end of the day you?ll get a lower price. That?s dumb, right?
It?s dumb unless you?ve already positioned yourself to gain from the price fall. You?ve got your short contracts in place. Basically, what if somebody is manipulating the gold market? Who would do such a thing?
Well, gee. Isn?t it interesting that last week Goldman Sachs announced that it was recommending that people exit gold and await a price decline. Then, on Thursday, as if on cue, The New York Times published a front-page hit piece titled, ?Gold, Long a Secure Investment, Loses Its Luster.?
When I saw the Times article, I wasn?t sure if it should be on the front page as news or the business pages, if not the obituary section. Here?s one of the key lines from the Times, ringing with empirical certitude: ?Gold, pride of Croesus and store of wealth since time immemorial, has turned out to be a very bad investment of late.?
Got that? Gold is for losers. And then the next day, Times columnist Paul Krugman weighed in with a tirade against ?gold bugs,? of which I?ll mention more below.
Looking for the Next Investment Fad?
First, though, looking back to 2001 or so, we?ve had a sweet, rising, bullish market for gold, silver, etc. Still, don?t confuse personal insight with a rising, bullish market.
The good news is that if you bought into the gold story back when the yellow metal was selling for $300 per ounce, you?re still up about 370% even after the pullback to the $1,400 range. If you bought silver at, say, $5 per ounce, then you?re up by a similar level.
But the last decade is history. What about the future? Is the gold pullback a harbinger of fundamental change in world monetary realities, if not market perceptions? In other words, have central banks and their currencies ? dollars, euros, yen, etc. ? somehow gotten well in a hurry? Has investor sentiment changed dramatically and moved away from gold and silver?
Last week, in The New York Times, the predictably dyspeptic Paul Krugman ripped into gold and ?gold bugs.? Krugman used his characteristic, ad hominem tone, and that nasty polemic style that he reserves to label and indict groups that lack a protected, politically-favored status. (If Krugman were a woman, he?d be a ?mean girl.?)
Basically, in his execrable column, Krugman gloated that after a 12-year run as a top-performing asset class, gold has hit the skids. It?s over for gold, states the economic sage of Princeton University. Of course, the former adviser to Enron has been known to be wrong in the past.
Deep down, though, let?s humor Krugman and ask the hard question. For the past decade or more, was gold just another investment fad ? a transient, ?dot-gold? sort of thing, like buying dog food over the Internet ? and now we need to find a new fad?
Looking for Clues
I?m old enough to recall the 1970s, when gold prices ran up from $32 per ounce to around $800. Then, as the 1980s unfolded, gold prices crashed back down and stayed in the dumps for two decades. I?ve seen this movie before.
What happened back then? The late 1970s and 1980s were the era of presidents Carter-Reagan in the U.S. and prime ministers Callaghan-Thatcher in Britain.
First, under the ?liberals? (as the British label their politics), gold and silver prices ran up in the shadow of rampant global inflation and stagnant economies due to government mismanagement. Then, under the ?conservatives? (again using British terms), new leadership stopped their respective nations from turning into Cuba without the sunshine.
In the U.S., Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker raised interest rates to double-digit levels, and choked inflation out of the system. In Britain, Chancellor of the Exchequer Geoffrey Howe worked similar policy. In both nations, tough monetary policy pushed many an uneconomic enterprise into bankruptcy. At the same time, other parts of the economy began to boom ? not the least being Britain?s North Sea oil sector and American?s high-tech and defense sectors.
Returning to the present, why would the dollar get well last week while gold was forced into precipitous decline? Asked another way, is anyone serving up hard monetary or fiscal medicine to the U.S. economy?
Do the Fed?s zero interest rate policies spread money to the job creators of the nation? Do legislative diktats like Dodd-Frank and Obamacare kick-start a profound advance in the fortunes of the U.S. economy and its dollar.
Say again, what?s the signal for a long-term downtrend for gold? I do not see such flags waving, nor hear those drums beating and bugles blowing. It doesn?t make sense.
Just a Correction?
Try this. Perhaps last week?s gold sell-off was more like a classic correction, where Mr. Market shakes out the weak hands. Indeed, the recent market retreat resembled a scene where valuable assets moved from weak hands to strong hands.
Consider this chart, courtesy of my friend and Agora Financial colleague Dan Denning, down in Australia:
The dark line represents shares in iconic Apple Computer, which are down nearly 35% in the past eight months. Compare this with gold, which dropped about 16.5% last week. Tell me again what?s ?crashing??
Investment guru Marc Faber recently made this same point during an interview with Bloomberg TV. He stated:
?I love the markets. I love the fact that gold is finally breaking down. That will offer an excellent buying opportunity? At the same time, the S&P is at about not even up 1% from the peak in October 2007. Over the same period of time, even after today?s correction, gold is up 100%. The S&P is up 2% over the March 2000 high. Gold is up 442%. So I am happy we have a sell-off that will lead to a major low. It could be at $1,400, it could be today at $1,300, but I think that the bull market in gold is not completed. Nobody knows for sure, but I think the fundamentals for gold are still intact.?
Those ?fundamentals? include the fact that gold is a hard asset and ? if you take possession ? no one else?s liability.
On this last point, consider that ? as we learned from the recent Cyprus debacle ? political and monetary authorities feel legally entitled and morally justified to confiscate your savings when they want the funds to cover government bills. Meanwhile, never forget that central banks everywhere continue to print money and monetize government debt. The story of the Weimar Republic sort of speaks for itself.
Weimar Republic, half-billion mark ?brick? of notes. Museum of Economy, Stockholm. BWK photo.
To wrap it up, yes, the idea of a serious asset decline is always in the back of my head ? certainly, since I saw gold tumble and stay down in the 1980s. But was last week the beginning of the end for gold? The resurrection of the dollar as a long-term store of wealth? I don?t believe so.
Not All Bad Luck Is Bad
One final point?
?It is sad for the bird farmers, but good news for us,? said a Chinese man, quoted in a recent issue of the U.K. Daily Mail. ?Not all bad luck is bad for all,? he added.
The Chinese man was discussing his relative good fortune. That is, he fell into a bargain buying unwanted baby ducklings from ?bird farmers.?
The back story, here, is that the price of poultry has collapsed in China due to fears about a new strain of bird flu, called H7N9. Fearful of flu infection, Chinese diners are eating fewer duck dinners, leaving farmers who raise the birds with a large surplus.
Thus, Chinese duck farmers are selling birds on the cheap (so to speak), and others are benefitting. The ?lucky? farmer quoted above will feed the surplus baby ducks to his snakes.
With characteristic Chinese practicality, another farmer stated, ?It?s not a nice end for the baby ducks but they were raised as food. They weren?t going to live on a pond for the rest of their natural lives.?
Bottom line? If someone wants to sell you gold and silver at a bargain, feel free to take it off their hands.
That?s all for now. Thanks for reading.
Byron W. King
Original article posted on Daily Resource Hunter
Byron King
Byron King is the managing editor of Outstanding Investments and Energy & Scarcity Investor. He is a Harvard-trained geologist who has traveled to every U.S. state and territory and six of the seven continents. He has conducted site visits to mineral deposits in 26 countries and deep-water oil fields in five oceans. This provides him with a unique perspective on the myriad of investment opportunities in energy and mineral exploration. He has been interviewed by dozens of major print and broadcast media outlets including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, MSN Money, MarketWatch, Fox Business News, and PBS Newshour.
(Reuters) - Barge shipping was halted on Friday on parts of the Illinois and Mississippi rivers as flooding forced the closure of several locks until at least the middle of next week, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said.
The closures come three months after near-record-low water along the Mississippi River near St. Louis threatened to halt commercial barge traffic. Some 60 percent of U.S. grain export shipments are moved on barges on the Mississippi and its tributaries from production centers in the Midwest to export terminals at the Gulf of Mexico.
Torrential rains this week flooded broad swaths of Illinois and neighboring states, slowing farmer deliveries of grain to elevators and further delaying the start of corn planting in many areas.
Crests on the swollen Mississippi and Illinois rivers were not expected to arrive until Sunday at the earliest in northern areas and several days later further south.
"The crest here right now is forecast by the middle of next week, but there is some rain in the forecast so we'll see if that changes," said Michael Petersen, spokesman for the Army Corps' St. Louis district.
"Once the crest has passed and the water has dropped below the mark that we have to shut it down, and if we know that it's not coming right back up, we should be able to open them up within 24 hours," he said.
On the Illinois River, Dresden Island, Starved Rock and T.J. O'Brien locks were closed due to high water while Marseilles lock and dam was closed after nine barges broke away from a tow in record floodwater late on Thursday and struck the dam.
Four of the barges sank and three, including one carrying caustic soda, remained afloat, said Ron Fournier, a spokesman for the Army Corps' Rock Island district.
The dam may have been damaged but an assessment cannot be done until the water recedes and the barges have been removed. As of Friday, two had been towed from the waterway, he said.
Seven Mississippi River locks, from Lock 16 at Muscatine, Iowa, to Lock 22 at Saverton, Missouri, were closed between Thursday evening and Friday morning as water overtopped dams, said Rob Germann, operations manager for the Army Corps' Mississippi River project, Rock Island district.
The Corps also was not allowing vessels to pass through lock 15 at Rock Island, Illinois, because they would be unable to pass below a railroad bridge adjacent to the lock.
Downriver locks 24 and 25 on the Mississippi River were forecast to close on Saturday, halting commercial navigation on the major shipping waterway north of St. Louis.
Grain prices at Gulf of Mexico export terminals spiked as shippers scrambled to get enough grain to load ocean-going vessels, but prices fell in the Midwest as the grain backed up at elevators.
Prices for spot barge shipments of corn at the Gulf surged by more than 10 cents a bushel late this week to a one-month peak as shippers scrambled to get their hands on enough grain to load ocean-going vessels.
Spot soybean barge premiums at the Gulf also rallied 10 cents or more to their highest point since January when it looked as if the then parched Mississippi River would be closed.
Cash prices offered to farmers fell at some river elevators as barge traffic ground to a halt.
At a terminal along the Mississippi in Savanna, Illinois, soybean basis bids plunged by 33 cents a bushel to a three-week low during the last two days.
"We can't load anything out," said a grain merchant across the river in Davenport, Iowa. "The locks are closed so we are not going to move anything anyway."
Barge brokers on Friday pulled their freight offers on the Illinois River and the Mississippi River north of St. Louis until the last week of April.
The latest river forecasts from the National Weather Service suggest the lock closures will persist until at least next Wednesday.
(Additional reporting by Michael Hirtzer in Chicago; Editing Jim Marshall, Toni Reinhold)
Conventional wisdom has it that Apple has reached its peak and can only disappoint from now on. Yet, many financial facts don’t make sense. The market is too harsh with Apple compared to its competitors. But when it comes to products, there is an unsettling detail: there was no product release during fiscal Q2 2013. While Apple is certainly not doomed, its future looks gloomy. That’s why today’s earnings will be important for the company. Expectations “I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can’t help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced.” –Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights (1848) Apple’s growth has been incredible over the past two years, with double-digit growth for sales and profit. For years, Apple bloggers have vigorously criticized analysts’ expectations regarding Apple earnings and units sold. Basically, Wall Street analysts were setting the bar too high for units and market share, and too low for profit and sales. It led to distortion. With a very minor market share, Apple was able to capture a big profit share. The company reported hit after hit after hit — that’s why Apple shares were doing so great even though sales were “disappointing” according to some analysts — the bottom line is more important than anything else. But now, analysts have caught up and Apple is only able to pull out mixed earnings compared to estimates. Even iPhone sales are now below analysts’ expectations. The company was supposed to sell between 6 million and 10 million iPhone 5 during opening weekend. In reality, it sold 5 million units. As a reminder, for the first weekend alone, analysts predicted sales of 1 million iPhone 4 and 2 million iPhone 4S, compared to 1.7 million and 4 million actual units sold. This time around, analysts have to lower their expectations to get closer to reality. Fortune’s consensus puts Apple’s Q2 2013 revenue at $42.6 billion with estimated earnings per share of $10.21. Revenue would still be up 8.7 percent year over year. But it’s disappointing given the incredible growth trend over the past couple of years. One of the reason is that gross margin will be lower than what it used to be. Last year, Apple reported a 47.4 percent gross margin. The company now expects a 37.5 to 38.5 gross margin. Finance Over the
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