Miscellaneous News

Egg prices could rise by 41.1% this year, USDA estimates​

The price of eggs is expected to rise by 41.1% this year as the bird flu continues to rip through the nation's agricultural economy, the federal government projected in a new report.

Why it matters: That's more than double the 20% increase predicted in January.

• Egg prices have been climbing to record highs daily and shortages have been growing, which has led stores to limit how many eggs any one shopper can buy.

The big picture: The outbreak of the highly pathogenic avian influenza that begun in 2022 has recently intensified.

• In January, it affected 18.8 million egg laying hens, the highest monthly total of the three-year crisis, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

By the numbers: The USDA's Economic Research Service provided a range for its 2025 price-growth prediction of between 15% to 74.9%.

• Egg prices already increased 13.8% in January after rising by 8.4% the prior month, the report said.
• Prices this January were 53% higher than they were 12 months earlier.

State of play: Restaurants, including Waffle House and Denny's, have added temporary egg surcharges because of high egg prices and shortages.

• But McDonald's has no plans to add an egg fee and is expanding its breakfast menu and offering a deal on Egg McMuffins this Sunday.
• Michael Gonda, the fast-food giant's McDonald's North America chief impact officer, wrote on LinkedInTuesday that "unlike others making news recently, you definitely WON'T see McDonald's USA issuing surcharges on eggs, which are 100% cage-free and sourced in the U.S."

Trump admin plan to "make eggs affordable again"

What's next: Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said today in a WSJ op-ed that the Trump administration "will invest up to $1 billion to curb this crisis and make eggs affordable again."

• "We are working with the Department of Government Efficiency to cut hundreds of millions of dollars of wasteful spending," Rollins wrote. "We will repurpose some of those dollars by investing in long-term solutions to avian flu, which has resulted in about 166 million laying hens being culled since 2022."
• Rollins noted prices should "start coming down maybe this spring, this summer as we work to implement some of these bigger picture solutions."
• "Once we're past Easter, then we'll hopefully have some really good solutions for the American people," Rollins said.

The intrigue: If egg prices are still high for Easter, expect families to turn to alternatives like painting and hiding potatoes, an idea that sprouted in 2023 because of high prices.

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The USDA's Economic Research Service provided a range for its 2025 price-growth prediction of between 15% to 74.9%.

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With all the Medicare cuts, funding freezes for farmers and stuff, plus 1000s of federal employees being laid off.

The coming mid terms will be interesting.

GOODTREE said:

New Zealand Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Peters to visit China
February 20, 2025 16:10

　　BEIJING, Feb. 20 (Xinhua) -- A spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) announced on Feb. 20 . At the invitation of Wang Yi, member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and Minister of Foreign Affairs, New Zealand's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Peters will visit China from February 25th to 27th.

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Han Zheng meets with New Zealand Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Peters


　　BEIJING, Feb. 26 (Xinhua) -- On Feb. 26, Vice President Han Zheng met with New Zealand Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Peters in Beijing.

　　Han said President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Luxon met on the sidelines of the APEC Leaders' Informal Meeting in November last year, providing strategic leadership for China-New Zealand relations to continue to move forward from a new starting point. Now that the China-New Zealand Comprehensive Strategic Partnership has entered its second decade. China attaches great importance to the development of China-New Zealand relations, and is willing to work with the new side to implement the important consensus of the leaders of the two countries, adhere to the correct direction, strengthen confidence in cooperation, enhance mutual understanding, and promote the sustained, healthy and stable development of the China-New Zealand Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, so as to make more contributions to the peace, stability, development and prosperity of the two countries and the region.

　　Peters said the New Zealand side attaches importance to the development of relations with China and is willing to serve as an active partner of China, strengthen dialogue with the Chinese side, enhance understanding, deepen cooperation in various fields such as economy and trade, and push forward the New Zealand-China relations to achieve greater development.

Apple says it's fixing iPhone bug that types "Trump" instead of "racist"​

Apple said Tuesday it's working to fix an iPhone bug after some users reported its automatic dictation feature briefly displays "Trump" when they say "racist" before the text-to-speech transcription software corrects itself.

The big picture:A viral TikTok video of the glitch that Apple says erroneously suggests the word "trump" when users dictate some words that also include an "r" consonant caused outrage among conservatives online who've accused Big Tech of political bias.

• The glitch underscores artificial intelligence's accuracy problems as the technology develops and as companies like Apple move to make AI a key differentiator in choosing a smartphone.

Zoom in: Apple says the glitch is sometimes occurring during initial analysis when the speech recognition models that power dictation have on occasions displayed words that contain some phonetic overlap, but then further analysis identifies the intended word.

What they're saying: “We are aware of an issue with the speech recognition model that powers Dictation and we are rolling out a fix today," an Apple spokesperson said in an emailed statement Tuesday evening.

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SanWenYu said:

Yeah I have always ended up choosing the dumb Libs, too. It has been to avoid the evil Cons and the lunatic NDP. Really a pick of the lesser of the evils.

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chocolate flavour shit and shit flavour chocolate

Crypto is dominated by meme coins which is basically super gambling for the digital generation.

Boomers hog all the wealth and the Zoomers have nothing but scraps, so they resort to these get-rich-quick dreams. In this context, I can see how OF work might seem like salvation.

FriedButter said:

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Sounds like a feature.

SanWenYu said:

Voters are short sighted and they have the memory of goldfish. That's all this tells me.

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Eh, more like Skippy is useless and the only thing he's really good at was running his mouth (and making YouTube short videos).

After the Hunka debacle, one has to realize that the entire Parliament of Canada is in want of critical thinking. So it's really about who is less likely to give up without a fight.

FriedButter said:

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With all the Medicare cuts, funding freezes for farmers and stuff, plus 1000s of federal employees being laid off.

The coming mid terms will be interesting.

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When American millennials get old like boomers, they can tell stories to their kids about the good old days.

Boomers: back in my day, all you needed for a job was a high school degree, a firm handshake and a can do attitude.

Millennials: back in my day, eggs and toilet paper were so plentiful, we threw them at houses for fun on Halloween.