| Agriculture Commissioner to visit Ireland
The senior Danish politician will attend the Irish Farmers' Association AGM and hold talks with the Minister for Agriculture Mary Coughlan. In May 2006 Ms Fischer-Boel became the first EU Commissioner to take part in a national parliamentary debate in a member state when she attended a special joint Dail-Seanad session. On Tuesday, Ms Fischer Boel will deliver a major speech explaining changes for farmers arising out of the "Health Check" of the Common Agricultural Policy (Cap). A Commission spokeswoman said: "The Health Check of the Cap, introduced in November, aims to build on the 2003 reforms designed to streamline and simplify EU agricultural policy and help farmers meet new challenges. "The Commission is calling for a wide-ranging consultation on its ideas before it finalises its legislative proposals in May." Ms Fischer Boel will also give a briefing on the ongoing global trade negotiations and her recent decision to restrict imports of Brazilian beef.
Railroads rallying?
With the economy moving off track, there's mixed news for the train industry. There's even a possibility of longer waits at railroad crossings for many motorists in the region because of that. "The economy is really slowing down," said Rudy Husband of Norfolk Southern Railroad. "It's been hitting every railroad in the country. With the drop off of the automotive and housing industries our overall carloading is off." Steve Davis, development officer for CSX Ohio, said while 2006 was a record year for the railroad, 2007 brought changes. "In 2007, our earnings continued to improve, but the number of items being shipped dropped off slightly, mainly because of the housing and automobile industries," he said. Garrick Francis, spokesman of the CSX Midwest division, said it's a mixed bag now for railroads.
The Intel switch pays off
Maybe Jobs' time there has run its course… Does the Intel news make anyone else sick to their stomachs? Obviously, there was a fair amount of knee-jerk negativity going on, which any amateur psychiatrist can tell you is typical whenever people are faced with change. And I think at the root of that ambivalence toward the Intel transition was a single underlying concern: Just how does this move benefit me? A little more than a year later, Apple provided the definitive answer to that question with the unveiling of the Mac Pro, the desktop that completes the company's migration to Intel processors. The processing specs of the Mac Pro are impressive enough—two dual-core Xeon processors that run at clock speeds ranging from 2GHz to 3GHz for reported performance gains of anywhere from 1.4 to 1.8 times that of a PowerPC G5, depending on what application you're talking about.
|
