Inflationary pressures are rising around the world. Here is a summary of recent economic reports from 25 countries around the world. Most reflect the latest data from June 2008, a few reflect May 2008 data. In any event, the news is not good and it is especially bad in Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam. And it is especially bad for the poor no matter where they live. But nowhere is it worse than in Zimbabwe where the economy has come unglued.

United Kingdom
Inflation hit a new record of 3.8% last month as food and petrol prices rocketed, raising fears that inflation is surging towards 5% or even higher.

The Office for National Statistics said June’s annual inflation rate was the highest since the consumer prices index was set up in January 1997, up from 3.3% in May. The rate is nearly double the Bank of England’s inflation target of 2%. More from the UK Guardian.

United States
Soaring energy prices pushed consumer costs up in June at the second-fastest rate in 26 years. The U.S. Labor Department reported that consumer prices jumped 1.1% in June. Energy prices shot up nearly 7%, reflecting big increases for gasoline, home heating oil and natural gas.

The 1.1% June increase was the second largest monthly advance in the past 26 years, surpassed only by a 1.3% gain in September 2005 from a jolt to energy costs after Hurricane Katrina. Over the past 12 months, consumer inflation is up by 5.0%, the largest year-over-year gain since May 1991.

Food prices rose 0.7% in June, more than double May’s 0.3% increase. Vegetable prices grew by 6.1%, the biggest increase in nearly three years as recent flooding in the Midwest translates to higher prices for many crops. Core inflation, which excludes energy and food, showed rising pressures too with an increase of 0.3% in June, up from 0.2% in May and the biggest one-month rise since January.

More from Agence France-Presse and from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Japan
Japan’s core inflation rose 1.5 percent in May from a year earlier, the quickest pace since a consumption tax hike in March 1998. More from the International Herald Tribune.

Venezuela

La inflación en Venezuela sigue desbocada y ya acumula un incremento del 15,1 por ciento en el primer semestre del 2008 cuando la meta inicial del Gobierno era de un 11% y, posteriormente, se estimó en 20%. El Banco Central de Venezuela informó hoy que el Indice Nacional de Precios al Consumidor (INPC) registró en junio una variación del 2,4 por ciento, mostrando una desaceleración respecto a mayo cuando fue del 3,2 por ciento, reseñó Reuters.

Inflation in Venezuela rose 2.4% in June 2008 and is up 15.1% year-to-date.

Portugal
Monday, Portugal’s consumer price index rose at its fastest pace in two years, a report by Statistics Portugal said. Food prices as well as transport charges were mainly responsible for the increase, along with rise in prices of most other commodities.

The index rose 3.4% year-on-year in June, compared with a 2.8% increase in the previous month. This was the highest increase in the CPI since the 3.7% rise in June 2006. Core inflation, excluding energy and fresh food, rose to 2.3% from 2.2% last month.

Food and non-alcoholic beverage prices grew 5.8% compared with a 3.9% rise in the previous month. This was the highest rise in prices since January 2007, when prices were up 4.1%. Prices of alcoholic beverages and tobacco were up 6.8% compared with a 6.9% rise in the preceding month.

Prices of housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels were up 4.5% compared with a 4.4% increase. Health charges rose at a faster rate of 0.3% compared with a 0.1% rise in the prior month. Transport costs increased 3.4% compared with a 2.6% increase in May. More from INO Trend Analysis.

Below the fold, data for Argentina, Bhutan, Brazil, Canada, Ethiopia, Finland, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, the Philippines, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.

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The Obama campaign has unveiled a new ad entitled America’s Leadership. The ad is to run in 18 battle ground states across the country.

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One thing they omit was that the challenging of petitions was done on the last day depriving the others of a response. Obama sent in a team of lawyers and they stayed until everyone was off the ballot, not just Alice Palmer, but everyone.

No such thing as coincidernces in Chicago politics. Blair Hull, Jack Ryan, Alice Palmer. I might add John Edwards to that list. Who leaked the haircut story? Who worked for John Edwards previously but now works for Obama?

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In a communique dated the 26th of June 2008, the FARC thanks Nicaragua’s President for his positions in the face of:

“en momentos tan difíciles para nuestra organización como los asesinatos de Raúl e Iván Ríos, y la muerte de nuestro Comandante en Jefe, Manuel Marulanda Vélez”.

“Muy valiente su decisión de concederles asilo político a las guerrilleras Susana y Diana, sobrevivientes del ataque artero de Bogotá y Washington al campamento transitorio de Raúl, cuando la hipócrita política antiterrorista del imperio intenta chantajear el decoro de gobiernos independientes y satanizar las luchas de los pueblos”

“Las FARC surgidas del ataque militar a Marquetalia en 1964 son una respuesta popular legítima a todas las violencias del Estado. Mientras se mantengan las causas políticas, económicas y sociales que la generaron, la lucha armada nunca perderá vigencia. Nos alzamos en armas por la paz con justicia social, y triunfaremos. Habrá nuevo poder, Nueva Colombia, Patria Grande y Socialismo”

“Sólo un nuevo gobierno, verdaderamente democrático, surgido de un Gran Acuerdo Nacional, podría retomar el camino de la búsqueda de una solución política al conflicto social y armado que vive Colombia”

In English below the fold: (more…)

Perhaps they are just out of the loop, the Chicago loop, that is. What could you have expected when he moved operational control of the DNC from Washington DC to Chicago? And if you think it will get better, it won’t. You keeping on seeing what you want to see in Barack Obama and not what is really there. Obama can change his policies with the wind, he can’t change who he is, at least not without a lot of therapy.

I have long argued that Obama is the political reincarnation of Richard Nixon. Sure their politics are different, but their personnas are not. Richard Nixon was a control freak, so is Barack Obama. Nixon would do whatever it took to win lying and pandering his way into office, Barack is no different. Nixon broke into a psychiatrist’s office to get dirt on his opponent’s, while innuendo that likely emanated from within the Obama campaign undid the candidacies of Blair Hull (domestic abuse allegations) and Jack Ryan (sexual impropriety allegations). Nixon was a narcissist, Obama is hardly any less of one. I see a very different Obama. I see one who threw four people off a ballot so he could run unopposed. I see someone who played the race card over and over again. I see someone who has been nothing but duplicitous. I see soemone who tells the American public that his campaign takes no money from lobbyists and then rakes in millions from lobbying firms via the back door. His political 180s are nothing new. I have said this before there is no there there in Barack Obama. He has no core convictions other than his own political welfare.

Via Politico

After a brief bout of Obamamania, some Capitol Hill Democrats have begun to complain privately that Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is insular, uncooperative and inattentive to their hopes for a broad Democratic victory in November.

“They think they know what’s right and everyone else is wrong on everything,” groused one senior Senate Democratic aide. “They are kind of insufferable at this point.”

Among the grievances described by Democratic leadership insiders:

• Until a mailing that went out in the past few days, Obama had done little fundraising for Democratic candidates since signing off on e-mailed fundraising appeals for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee immediately after securing the Democratic nomination.

• Obama has sometimes appeared in members’ districts with no advance notice to lawmakers, resulting in lost opportunities for those Democrats to score points by appearing alongside their party’s presumptive presidential nominee.

• The Obama campaign has not, until very recently, coordinated a daily message with congressional Democrats, leaving Democratic members in the lurch when they’re asked to comment on the constant back and forth between Obama and John McCain — as they were when Obama said earlier this month that he would “continue to refine” his Iraq policies after meeting with commanders on the ground there.

• Coordination between the Obama campaign and the House and Senate leadership is so weak that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — who will chair the Democrats’ convention in August — didn’t know of Obama’s decision to move his final-night acceptance speech from the Pepsi Center to Invesco Field until the campaign announced it on a conference call with reporters.

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Here is the Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 edition of interesting reads from around the world.

Turkish Coup Plot
Turkey has indicted 86 people on charges of membership in an illegal ultranationalist group and plotting a coup against the government. More from the Financial Times.

Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir Charged with War Crimes
The Sudanese government has responded angrily after an international prosecutor accused President Omar al-Bashir of genocide in Darfur. He has been charged with war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. A report from the BBC and a video report from the Associated Press:

In Defense of the Gypsies
Though in my personal life they have been nothing but trouble, I cannot stay silent with what is going on with the Roma, the Gypsies, in Italy. An op-ed by Seumas Milne in the UK Guardian speaks to the problem.

Italy’s campaign against the Roma has ominous echoes of its fascist past, and the silence of our leaders is deafening.

French and Regional Languages in France
Language Log covers the debate over language in France.

Did Lee Kuan Yew Commit Perjury?
Former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew testified to a laudatory letter that was never sent by an international legal organization. Lee, Singapore’s octogenarian Minister Mentor and the country’s first Prime Minister, volunteered under oath during cross-examination in the May trial of Chee that the International Bar Association, following its October 2007 convention in Singapore, wrote a letter to the organizers, the Law Society of Singapore, describing “how impressed they were by the standards they found to obtain in the judiciary…Standards of the rule of law and the judges, the meritocracy which is practiced throughout the judiciary.” In fact, says the International Bar Association, it did no such thing. The story in the Asia Sentinel.

Syria’s Diplomatic Isolation is Ending
The Asia Times looks at Syria’s diplomatic offensive from Doha to Paris. Meanwhile, the New York Times takes a different view on Syria’s diplomatic moment in the sun.

Sinaloa Gripped in a Drug War
At least 21 people, including a 12-year-old girl and other ordinary citizens, have been killed by warring drug gangs since Thursday in the western state of Sinaloa, in one of the worst spasms of violence in memory in a region long conditioned to narcotics-related savagery. More from the Los Angeles Times. I will keep on harping on this but Mexico is sliding into chaos. Its drug wars are escalating past the point of no return that will require massive outside assistance to quell. This is a repeat of what Colombia endured between 1985 and 1992, only now it is on the doorstep of the United States.

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