The run-up of sterling was halted today with the announcement of an election May 6. the market fears a ‘hung’ parliament with no party in control. Meanwhile Australia raised its interest rates another quarter percent to 4.25%, the fifth hike in the past few months, mark of recovery Down Under. And if anyone doubted that mining coal is a tough way to earn a living, a fatal US mine disaster spelled out the dangers.
It was great that most the Chinese miners were safely extracted from a flooded coalmine. But methane is much harder to deal with.
And while on the subject of coal, there is risk to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef of a bulk carrier sinking a load of coal.
Your editor is in Paris for the tail end of the Passover holiday, benefitting from French gastronomic laxity compared to what applies in the rest of the Jewish Diaspora. On the Rue de Rosiers, the heart of the shrinking plaetzl or Jewish quarter, you can see Orthodox teenagers walking around eating (sweet popcorn on Passover. This is a non-non in other Jewish centers. When maize was brought to Europe after America was discovered, the leading European rabbis decreed that corn was ‘hametz’, not allowed at Passover although of course the Talmud had not mentioned maize as a grain forbidden at Passover since it was not known before Columbus.
In the Jewish communities of Sepharad (exiles from Spain), the rabbis took a different stance. In North Africa and the Middle East corn (like rice, also not in the Talmud’s banned grain list) was allowed to be eaten.
That means in France you can eat popcorn on Pesach and drink normal Coca Cola; in the US and Britain, no corn or corn syrup is allowed, and you have to buy special Passover coke and almost anything sweetened with corn syrup (and what isn’t?) is not allowed.
More about corn and coal follows for paid subscribers as well as other news.
