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The energy of the full-backs for the hosts today has been highly impressive. Clyne finds himself deep into the opposition's half yet again and is brought to a halt by a crunching tackle from Mee.
FIVE MINUTES TO GO! Time is ticking and hope of getting something from this game is ebbing away from Sean Dyche's men. Long puts a brilliant cross into Pelle again but the Italian fails to make contact under pressure from Shackell.
This has been a really solid performance from the hosts as they continue to look for more goals as Pelle goes through on goal but the assistant's flag is up.
D. Ings is done for the day. M. Sordell is his replacement.
There will be THREE minutes of added on time.
OVER! Wallace stands over a free-kick roughly 25 yards out but is unable to keep his effort on target as the ball drifts out of play for a goal kick.
Categories: "Agriculture" or "Coffee" or "Horticulture" or "Khat"
The hills of Chencha in southern Ethiopia, over 2,700m above sea level, are not a place where you might expect the Irish potato to be thriving underground. But in a country where most farmers work on small plots, providing just enough to feed themselves and their family, the humble spud is a popular crop.
In fact, it is estimated there are one million potato farmers in Ethiopia, planting approximately 16,000 hectares annually. The crop – known as the Irish potato across the region – is grown on mainly small half-hectare plots in the highlands, without fertiliser and mostly by women farmers.
The International Potato Institute, based in Peru, estimates that Ethiopia may have the highest potential for potato production of any country in Africa, with 70 per cent of its 13.5 million hectares of arable land suitable to its cultivation.
Ethiopia’s arabica coffee export earnings are forecast to climb 25 percent to about $900 million in 2014-15 because of higher prices after a drought damaged plants in the biggest grower of the bean, Brazil, an industry group said.
Arabica prices on the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange could average $2 a pound if supplies of the crop in the world market are tight, Ethiopian Coffee Exporters’ Association General Manager Alemseged Assefa said in the capital, Addis Ababa. Ethiopia is Africa’s biggest producer of the crop and the origin of the arabica plant.
Arabica has surged 71 percent in New York since January after a drought hurt plantings in Brazil, the world’s biggest exporter of the beans, fueling speculation that consumption may outstrip supply. The Brazilian woes come as plantings in Central America, Mexico and Peru struggle to recover from a crop disease called leaf rust that has cut yields across the region over the past two years.
Arabica coffee for December delivery rose 1.5 percent to $1.89 a pound on the ICE Futures U.S. yesterday, tumbling 12 percent from a two-year high in April.
Gleaming Deere & Co. (DE) tractors and harvesters are sitting idle five years after Karuturi Global Ltd. (KARG) opened a farm in Ethiopia that was hailed as the poster child of the country’s plan to triple food exports by 2015.
Eighty percent of the Bangalore-based company’s land in the southwestern Gambella region is on a flood plain, meaning its 100,000-hectare (247,100-acre) concession is inundated by the Baro River for as much as seven months of the year, according to Managing Director Ramakrishna Karuturi. The company was unaware of the extent of the flooding when it leased the land, he said.
Karuturi, the world’s biggest rose grower, was one of the first companies to take advantage of a government plan to lease 3.3 million hectares (8.2 million acres) of farmland to private investors. Growing food on the unutilized land would help the Horn of Africa country address shortages that forces it to seek aid from international donors every year, former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said at the time.
Agriculture investors are targeting African countries such as Ethiopia to meet growing global food requirements. The world’s population will increase to 9 billion people by 2050, and agricultural production will need to increase 70 percent by then to feed everyone, according to the World Bank.
The Ethiopian program has got off to a poor start because of transportation and electricity problems, a lack of security and a shortage of funds and farming expertise, said James Keeley, a consultant for the International Institute for Environment and Development. The plots are located mainly in sparsely populated, heavily forested areas such as the western states of Gambella and Benishangul-Gumuz that border South Sudan and Sudan.
“Land investment in Ethiopia proceeded initially in a chaotic fashion,” Keeley said. Leases in some regions were awarded without checks on investors, environmental-impact assessments or performance-monitoring plans, he said.
Ethiopia is Africa’s biggest coffee producer and second-biggest exporter of the beans. The country is also sub-Saharan Africa’s largest wheat consumer and third-biggest corn consumer.
The government in Addis Ababa began leasing land for as little as $1 per hectare annually in 2008. The state owns all land in a nation dominated by subsistence smallholders who mostly farm on less than a hectare.
At the time, the government projected that within five years, commercial farmers would be producing food on about 900,000 hectares of land, according to Bizualem Bekele, an official at the government’s Agricultural Investment Land Administration Agency. As of last month, only about 10,000 hectares of land have been developed, Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn said on Oct. 20.
“We’ve given more than 400,000 hectares of land to the private sector to engage in this agricultural production, but up to now the progress is very slow,” Hailemariam said.
Karuturi isn’t the only company struggling. Saudi Star Agricultural Development Plc, owned by Ethiopian-born Saudi billionaire Mohamed al-Amoudi, is growing rice on 350 hectares of a 10,000-hectare lease as it completes an irrigation canal started by Ethiopia’s socialist military regime more than two decades ago that will allow it to ramp up cultivation.
The company is searching for “intensive funding” for the project and hopes the main canal will be finished before the rainy season in June, Saudi Star Chief Executive Officer Fikru Desalegn said in a phone interview on Nov. 18.
Shapoorji Pallonji and Co., a unit of Mumbai, India-based Tata Group, plans to grow the biofuel-plant pongamia on 50,000 hectares in Benishangul-Gumuz. After signing the lease “several years” ago, it’s farming on 2,500 hectares, said Keeley, who is preparing a report on the land program for the International Institute for Environment and Development based on research done for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Ruchi Agri Plc, also based in Mumbai, obtained 25,000 hectares in Gambella. After three years, its growing soybeans on 1,000 hectares and has cleared another 2,000 hectares of scrub at a cost of $1,500 a hectare, Technical Manager Rameshsingh Pardesi said in an interview. If all goes to plan, the operation may become profitable by 2020, he said.
Other major investors such as Hunan Dafengyuan from China, which took a lease to grow sugarcane on 25,000 hectares in Gambella, have had their lease canceled, according to Keeley.
In November 2010, Karuturi said it would have “developed” the 100,000 hectares by June. In the final quarter of last year, it harvested its maiden corn crop from about 4 percent of the concession.
Karuturi’s stock has slumped to 1.55 Indian rupees on the National Stock Exchange of Mumbai from a peak of 36.30 rupees on Nov. 9, 2010. Plans announced in the past 18 months to raise funds from development banks and sovereign wealth funds have yet to materialize, according to Karuturi.
Most of Karuturi’s farm that runs either side of one of Gambella’s main roads for about 100 kilometers (62 miles) is still covered in a thick scrubland of bushes and trees. A plaque to commemorate its opening now lies in land taken back by the government after confusion over exactly where the company’s lease was.
The company was given 300,000 hectares of land by the regional government before officials in Addis Ababa reduced the plot size by two-thirds in 2010. There is a plan to rent out the idle tractors, harvesters and crop-spraying machines to other farmers, Karuturi said.
To encourage faster development of large farms, the government plans to use a “carrot and stick” approach to investors. Companies will be given government support and licenses may be withdrawn from those that fail to develop fast enough, Agriculture Minister Tefera Deribew said in an interview.
Ethiopia planned to earn $6.58 billion a year from agriculture exports in 2015, according to a five-year economic plan published in 2010, when total exports were about a third of that amount. In the 12 months through July 7, the end of the Ethiopian fiscal year, shipments fell 2 percent to $3.08 billion from a year earlier.
The land-leasing program has also been beset by criticism from advocacy groups includingHuman Rights Watch, based in New York, that residents have been displaced in a relocation program to make way for the farms.
Karuturi rejects the allegations for the same reason that the farm project has failed to take off: flooding.
The value of exports from Ethiopia, Africa’s biggest grower of coffee, fell 2 percent in 2012-13 from a year earlier as a result of declining prices for the beans even as volumes increased, the Trade Ministry said.
Ethiopia’s exports declined to $3.08 billion in the 12 months through July 7 from $3.15 billion a year earlier, the Addis Ababa-based ministry said in an e-mailed statement.
The Horn of African nation’s $43 billion economy is forecast to expand 6.5 percent this year, faster than the average of 5.6 percent for sub-Saharan Africa, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Revenue from coffee exports declined to $746.4 million in 2012-13 from $832.9 million, while volumes jumped 18 percent to 199,104 metric tons, the ministry said. Arabica coffee prices dropped 31 percent in the period, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The price rose 2.9 percent to $1.2480 per pound by the close in New York yesterday.
Gold, the country’s second-biggest source of export revenues, fetched $578.8 million, falling 4 percent from a year earlier. Earnings from other minerals, excluding tantalum, jumped 48 percent to $12.4 million, while sales abroad of khat, a leafy plant that is used as a mild stimulant, raised $271.5 million, an increase of 13 percent, the ministry said.
Ethiopian exports have a limited impact on the overall economy, which is mainly spurred by public investment and private consumption, Lars Christian Moller, the World Bank’s lead economist in the country, said by phone today from Addis Ababa, the capital.
“The ambition is to have export-driven growth but Ethiopia needs to make further progress on improving competitiveness to realize this,” Moller said.
Shipments of leather products increased 10 percent to $121.9 million in the period as textiles rose 16 percent to $97.9 million, the ministry said. Deliveries of oil seeds fell 6 percent to $440.9 million, while exports of pulses surged 46 percent to $233.3 million, the ministry said.
Along with The Annex, Harcourt is working on leasing the 57,000-square-foot Granary Building. The plan is to have office space for businesses throughout the upper floors of the building and retail on the ground floor, Gallina said. The ground floor will have an open floor concept, creating an opportunity for an atmosphere similar to what's seen at Seattle's Pike Place Market, but on a smaller scale.
Gallina said interest for the space in the Granary Building has been strong so far and he is expecting businesses to be open in some of the spaces as soon as this summer.
Between the Granary Building, the restaurant space and the nearby Waypoint Park, Gallina said that spot of waterfront redevelopment will take on a look of a little village.
Work continues in Spring 2018 on a project to transform a former industrial site on Bellingham's downtown waterfront to residential and commercial use. An early highlight is Waypoint Park on Whatcom Waterway, which includes the refurbished acid ball.
Also happening is construction of the district's two main roads, Granary Avenue and W. Laurel Street. The Granary Avenue portion near the Granary Building is nearly complete, while the rest of the project is expected to be done by November.
Also in the works is the $32 million residential project west of Waypoint Park. The project is scheduled to get started in August with plans to be done in October 2019. It will have 70 residential units in three buildings with about 26,000 square feet of commercial space.
Purcell Painting and Coating employees coat the old "acid ball" with a layer of reflective glass beads on Friday, April 27, in Bellingham. Mutuus Studio created the design for the repurposed "acid ball" now known as "Waypoint".
It's not easy being a lean, mean killing machine. Whether a fleet-footed cheetah or a lie-in-wait puma, a hunting feline's survival balances on the point between how much energy they lose in hunting for a meal and the energy they gain from actually eating it. Now, two new studies in the journal Science follow these big cats to find out how they make this lifestyle work.
Being a top predator might seem like an enviable position. After all, generally speaking, no one's trying to eat you. But it comes with some serious drawbacks when nabbing a meal. Think about it: If you're a typical herbivore – a zebra or a deer – you find a plant, you stand there and eat the plant. Aside from dealing with a large-scale environmental crisis, like drought, getting grub is pretty straightforward.
For carnivores, what you want to eat is sometimes bigger than you, it can sometimes fight back and it might even be able to outrun you. A carnivore runs the risk of spending a lot of energy for just one meal and ending up empty-clawed.
It's pretty difficult to tell how these hunters minimize these energetic costs in nature, on often rugged and unforgiving terrain. So in a study led by Terrie Williams of UC Santa Cruz, researchers devised a clever way to track this energy consumption. They created SMART collars (short for "species movement, acceleration and radio tracking") that helped them link the animals' energy consumption to a variety of different behaviors, including resting, eating and running.
They captured four wild pumas, outfitted them with the devices and released them into a roughly 650-square-mile study area in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
The scientists found that the pumas used a variety of different styles, "ranging from low-cost sit-and-wait behaviors to constant movements with energetic costs averaging 2.3 times those predicted for running mammals," they wrote.
But to mitigate those energy costs, they tended to keep still and stay out of sight. And when they did attack, they were able to precisely match their pouncing force to the size of their unlucky prey – leaving very little energy wasted.
It makes sense, the authors wrote. Killing an animal may seem like a lot of work, but actually doing the deed takes up a small slice of their day. Searching for that prey, however, takes a lot of time and energy.
A second study looked at a hunter with a very different style – the cheetah, which engages in high-speed chases to bring down, say, a gazelle. While the cheetah is fast, it's vulnerable to other predators (like lions and hyenas) who muscle in after the cheetah's done all the work and steal the meal.
So on top of having to work hard to get a meal, the cheetah can easily lose it to another predator. How does it deal with these costs? An international team took 19 cheetahs and administered doses of doubly labeled water (water whose hydrogen and oxygen atoms have been replaced with heavier isotopes). They used the isotope-tagged water to track the cheetahs' energy expenditure over time, collecting urine samples as the animals roamed around parks in southern Africa.
The scientists found that the cheetahs can offset their losses from stolen food (a phenomenon called kleptoparasitism) by traveling wider distances. They could actually deal with a 25% kleptoparasitism rate, because it would require only an additional 1.1 hours of time and 12% extra daily energy expenditure to make up for the loss. As long as there's enough prey to go around, the thievery didn't affect their energetic bottom line too much.
"It shows that cheetahs are well adapted to the presence of competitors and that costs incurred by traveling drive their energy budgets, rather than those encountered securing prey," the study authors wrote.
Ultimately, the biggest concern for cheetahs sounds very similar to that of the puma study: Doing the long-term legwork while looking for food is much more costly than actually sealing the deal.
"Intuitively, one would think that the extreme physical exertion of chasing and pouncing on prey would far outweigh the searching process," John Laundré of UC Riverside, who was not involved in either study, wrote in a commentary on the papers. "As both studies point out, however, although subduing prey is energy-intensive, the time spent doing this is short. Carnivores either quickly capture their prey or give up."
Both teams indicate that humans' effect on these animals' natural habitats could profoundly alter that delicate energy equation. In the case of pumas, loss of vegetation – natural cover – makes it harder to sneak up on prey. In the case of cheetahs, lower numbers of animals on the African plains means that the big cats have to travel farther to search for food.
"In either case, these changes can increase the energy that predators expend in both seeking and subduing prey, and thus threaten their survival," Laundré wrote. "In this case, conservation of adequate habitat and prey abundance become paramount in efforts to conserve large carnivores."
That's worrisome, given that apex predators play an important role in keeping their ecosystem in balance -- and they're in decline.
Think cheetahs never prosper? Follow @aminawrite for more science news from the animal kingdom.
Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi emerged as the biggest winner after this week’s massive strike, while the trade federation’s president, Sdumo Dlamini, expressed anger about the way it was conducted, indicating fault lines that are mainly rooted in the ANC’s Mangaung battles.
Cosatu’s decision to embark on a nationwide strike this week to protest against labour brokers and the e-tolling system has angered some leaders within both the federation and the ANC, who see the action as an attempt to embarrass President Jacob Zuma and his government.
The strike action was seen as a political show of strength by the Vavi-aligned group ahead of the federation’s national congress in June, the ANC policy conference, also in June, and the party’s crucial elective conference in December.
While Vavi continues to enjoy popular support among ordinary members of Cosatu he appears to have lost significant support within the federation’s central executive committee, largely because of his hardline stance towards the ANC and the government under Zuma.
Dlamini, who led a march in Durban, was critical of the way the Johannesburg march was conducted, saying the decision to go on strike was a collective Cosatu decision, not a Vavi initiative. And he lambasted the ANC Youth League for using Cosatu platforms to fight factional battles in the ANC after Julius Malema addressed the Jo’burg marchers on Wednesday.
Malema stole the limelight as the marchers cheered: “Juju, juju, juju!” Although he was initially not on the list of speakers, Cosatu leaders were forced to afford him the opportunity to address the marchers, who impatiently chanted his name.
Dlamini told the Mail & Guardian that Cosatu leaders had initially agreed that youth league secretary general Sindiso Magaqa, not Malema, would address the marchers.
“People were desperate to get Julius to speak, in spite of the decision that the league’s secretary general would speak,” said an angry Dlamini.
Once a close ally of Zuma, Vavi has now become one of the key critics of the ANC president, while Dlamini has said publicly that Zuma should be re-elected. This has led to a breakdown of trust between Vavi and Zuma, who are no longer on speaking terms, according to reliable sources within the alliance.
The M&G has been told about behind-the-scene attempts by a powerful section within the ANC’s national executive committee led by ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe to isolate Vavi from the rest of Cosatu’s leadership .
Mantashe has denied that he was part of a group that wanted to control Cosatu.
Mantashe criticised leaders for putting the integrity of Nedlac—the chamber in which government, business and labour negotiate—in question by going on strike while negotiations over how best to deal with the issue of labour brokers were still taking place. He said Cosatu was involved in discussions about e-tolling with the Gauteng government.
A dominant group within the federation’s executive committee is pushing for Zuma’s re-election. It includes Dlamini, National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) general secretary Frans Baleni, NUM president Senzeni Zokwane, National Education Health and Allied Workers’ Union general secretary Fikile Majola and the general secretary of the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu), Mugwena Maluleke.
Most of these leaders also serve as members of the South African Communist Party’s central committee, led by general secretary Blade Nzimande and Mantashe, who is the SACP chairperson. Under Nzimande’s leadership, the SACP has been widely criticised for its soft stance towards Zuma’s administration.
Although the Zuma-aligned group within Cosatu’s executive committee enjoys majority support, it has found it difficult to impose decisions on the Vavi-aligned group, which includes metalworkers union (Numsa) general secretary Irvin Jim, Sadtu president Thobile Ntola and leaders of the municipal workers union Samwu.
The Vavi contingent believes the ANC under Zuma has failed to implement the resolutions taken at Polokwane, including abolishing the labour brokering system and creating decent jobs in the country. The Vavi group is also pushing for radical policy change in the ANC and supports the ANC Youth League’s call to nationalise mines and other key sectors of the economy.
While SACP leaders, including Nzimande, joined Cosatu’s march, the party does not agree with Cosatu’s argument that the tolling system should be scrapped, saying tolls will affect only the wealthy.
Speaking to the M&G this week, Sadtu’s Ntola acknowledged a fight was taking place for the control of Cosatu because it was a significant factor within the alliance.
The business closed in 1993.
“This is sad as hell, not only for us but for all the people who shop here,” Ross Humphrey told a Telegram-Tribune reporter on the store’s closing day.
Ross Humphrey was born in Illinois in 1935. His family later moved to Minnesota, where his brother was born, and then to San Luis Obispo in 1955.
Humphrey studied agricultural science at Cal Poly, received a business degree from San Jose State and then joined the family business, according to a biography provided by family members.
He married Sally L. McBride, and together they had three children, Kim, Bill and Ed. The family moved to Atascadero in 1970.
Rileys also boasted a home furnishings department, and in the early 1970s opened branches in Arroyo Grande, Atascadero and Morro Bay.
Robert Humphrey said Friday that the brothers were a good team.
Ross Humphrey said in 1987 that the store grew from earning $1 million in annual sales in 1966 to more than $10 million a year by the time it celebrated its centennial. The business employed 250 people.
That same year, the family sold the store to the Charles Ford Co. of Watsonville. After the store closed about five years later, the building was sold to Tom and Jim Copeland.
In retirement, Ross Humphrey played golf and traveled with wife Marilyn Pentz, whom he married in 2005.
A celebration of life will be held Friday from 2 to 4 p.m. in the former Rileys building at Chorro and Marsh streets.
Alberto Contador on Sunday won the Vuelta a Espana for a third time.