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World food prices hit a new record high in January after rising for a seventh consecutive month, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said Thursday, warning the poor would be hit hardest.

The FAO Food Price Index, which monitors monthly price changes for a basket of commodities, averaged 231 points in January -- up 3.4 percent from December and its highest level since FAO started measuring food prices in 1990.

Lawmakers on Friday sent Gov. Jerry Brown a compromise bill that delays California's effort to force online retailers such as Amazon.com to collect the state's sales taxes while retailers lobby Congress for national rules governing online sales taxes. The compromise between lawmakers, Amazon.com and traditional retailers would delay the expanded online tax collections until at least September 2012. That would give Amazon and other retailers time to lobby Congress for national rules governing online sales taxes.

The mayor of the "eternal city" has made it illegal to eat snacks and junk food on or around its monuments.

As we have recently pointed out, there are a million little ways retailers can screw you on what you buy. But maybe nowhere is this more common than in the world of high-tech gadgets, where the customers are always going to be a little more ignorant of what they're buying. So it opens up whole new realms of dickishness, like ...

How much do we trust the government to label foods today? Think about "pastured," "cage free," "whole grains," and "organic" labels. With such an inefficient, overstuffed bureaucratic fumbling with the current labeling of food, why would we want this same institution regulating GMO labels? Now, when a smaller independent company labels their food as containing no GMOs, we can trust that label. Get the government involved and this labeling system will lose meaning.

Why Is a Farmer Who Sells Extra Milk From His One Cow to Neighbors Being Sued By the State of Maine?

The lawsuit also challenges a 'local food and community self-governance' ordinance.
December 7, 2011 |

This is the first in a two-part series by the Center for Media and Democracy's Food Rights Network (FRN) about challenges to local food sovereignty across the United States. You can read the second one

Uber, SideCar and Lyft Fined, Uber Also Sued by Taxi Drivers

It hasn’t been a good week for San Francisco taxi and ride-share apps.

On November 9, two taxi drivers filed what they hope will be certified as a class action lawsuit against Uber stemming from its months-old taxi service in the city.

Yesterday afternoon, Uber, SideCar and Lyft were fined $20,000 each by the California Public Utilities Commission for operating what the state considers unlicensed charter car businesses.

A New Jersey dad who saves his 5 year old son from a embankment was deemed a hero upon the community however the father was giving tickets and was fined by the police .

A woman put an unwanted air conditioner out on the curb. A man asked her if he could take it. She said ok, and the man put it in his car. For this egregious crime, the man and woman were fined $2000 each and the man had his car impounded. Oh, and ignorance of this law is no excuse, citizen.