CHICAGO Ecco Shoes UK Sale , May 18 (Xinhua) -- Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) grainsfutures closed lower on Thursday with soybeans posting the biggestsingle-day loss since last August.
The most active corn contract for July delivery fell 5.5 cents,or 1.48 percent, to 3.66 dollars per bushel. July wheat deliverywas down 1.25 cents, or 0.29 percent, to close at 4.2575 dollarsper bushel. July soybeans slumped by 31 cent, or 3.18 percent, to9.4475 dollars per bushel.
U.S. soybean futures fell sharply as Brazil's currency lostnearly 7 percent to 3.35 per U.S. dollar as of 1530 GMT onThursday.
The plunge took place after the biggest newspaper in Brazilclaimed that President Michel Temer was caught on tape authorizingbribes for a potential witness to remain silent in a graft probe.This report has led to a sudden political turmoil in thecountry.
Brazil has recorded this year its largest-ever soybean harvest,estimated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture at 111.6 milliontonnes. Brazilian farmers who had sold only about half of it byearly May will probably hurry up with large sales amid decline intheir currency, thus put big pressure on U.S. soybeans.
CBOT corn and wheat followed soybeans lower. Enditem
by Xinhua Writer Tian Dongdong
BEIJING, Feb. 5 (Xinhua) -- Though the degree to which U.S. President Barack Obama and the Dalai Lama will interact Thursday during the National Prayer Breakfast is unclear, any possible meeting or encounter between the two is sure to have negative consequences because the Dalai Lama is a political liability which backfires.
Issues regarding Tibet concern China's core interests and national sentiments. Beijing has long made it clear that the Dalai Lama, who has for decades tried to separate Tibet from China, should never be hosted by leaders of other countries.
Chumming with a secessionist is playing with fire, which severely harms the mutual trust between China and the United States, and downgrades Obama's credit as a national leader for breaking his commitments to China on the Tibet issue.
There may be self-claimed friendship between Obama and the Dalai Lama as individuals, but a meeting between a U.S. president and a political fugitive goes beyond personal domain. What lies under their hypocritical relationship is nothing but political deals and cold calculations.
Frankly speaking, Obama needs the Dalai Lama not because the latter is respectful, as Obama claimed, but because the Dalai Lama is useful. For one thing, he is a separatist. For another, he comes from China and is against his own motherland.
In essence, the Dalai Lama is just a handy tool for Obama to scramble for short-term gains, show off his moral clarity and score easy points at home.
But Obama and other politicians who want to meet the political fugitive will soon find they have miscalculated as their losses outweigh their gains and they have to pay too much for the whistle.
Firstly, China's determination to defend its core interests such as the Tibet issue should never be underestimated.
"We strongly oppose any country interfering in China's internal affairs in the name of issues regarding Tibet," a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson strongly reiterated on Monday.
Secondly, if Obama meets the Dalai Lama, he will simply reverse the positive trends established by China and the U.S. in the development of their relations.
For all that, any possible meeting or encounter with the Dalai Lama planned by Obama will dampen the hard-won positive momentum in China-U.S. relations.
Now the ball is in Washington's court. It is highly advisable that the United States stick to its commitments and properly handle related issues with the overall interests of China-U.S. relations in mind.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 (Xinhua) -- More U.S. teens are now using e- cigarettes than traditional tobacco ones or any other tobacco product, according a national study released Tuesday by the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse.
The results are part of the 2014 Monitoring the Future survey, which studied 40,000 to 50,000 students in the 8th, 10th and 12th grades throughout the United States to track trends in substance use in American teens. Use of e-cigarettes has been measured for the first time in the study, now in its 40th year.
"As one of the newest smoking-type products in recent years, e- cigarettes have made rapid inroads into the lives of American adolescents," said University of Michigan Professor Richard Miech, a senior investigator of the study. "Part of the reason for the popularity of e-cigarettes is the perception among teens that they do not harm health."
The survey found that 9 percent of the 8th-graders reported using an e-cigarette in the past 30 days, while only 4 percent reported using a tobacco cigarette.
In the 10th grade, 16 percent reported using an e-cigarette and 9 percent reported using a tobacco cigarette. Among the 12th- graders, 17 percent reported e-cigarette use and 14 percent reported use of a tobacco cigarette.
On the other hand, only 15 percent of the 8th-graders said there is a great risk of harm with regular use of e-cigarettes, compared with 62 percent of the 8th-graders who said there is a great risk by smoking one or more packs of tobacco cigarettes a day.
The study did not determine whether youth who use e-cigarettes exclusively were more likely to later go on to become tobacco cigarette smokers, which is of substantial concern to the public health community.
But it did found cigarette smoking reached historical lows among teens in 2014 in all three grades. For the three grades combined, 28 percent reported any smoking in the prior month in 1998, the recent peak year, but that rate was down to 8 percent this year.