Four from Truthout:

Thursday 09 June 2011
100 Percent Scared: How the National Security Complex Grows on Terrorism Fears
Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch: "Here, then, is one of the strange, if less explored, phenomena of our post-9/11 American age: in only one area of life are Americans officially considered 100% scared, and so 100% in need of protection, and that's when it comes to terrorism. For an E. coli strain that could pose serious dangers, were it to arrive here, there is no uproar. No screaming headlines highlight special demands that more money be poured into food safety; no instant plans have been rushed into place to review meat and vegetable security procedures; no one has been urging that a Global War on Food-Borne Illnesses be launched. In fact, at this moment, six strains of E. coli that do cause illness in this country remain unregulated. Department of Agriculture proposals to deal with them are 'stalled' at the Office of Management and Budget. Meanwhile, the super-toxic E. coli strain that appeared in Europe remains officially unregulated here. On the other hand, send any goofus America-bound on a plane with any kind of idiotic device, and the politicians, the media, and the public promptly act as if - and it's you I'm addressing, Chicken Little - the sky were falling or civilization itself were at risk."
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Paul Krugman | Inflation Fears Rising Faster Than Prices in US and Europe
Paul Krugman, Krugman & Co.: "I've suspected that what we're really seeing is the inadequacy of even core inflation as a way to purge transitory effects of volatile prices: the measure takes out purchases of food and energy, but it doesn't take out indirect effects of raw material prices on costs. New research from Goldman Sachs seems to support that view: It finds that core inflation is getting a temporary bump from the prices of imported raw materials, and will probably subside if the commodity surge is, in fact, over. This suggests that policy should really be based on some kind of 'supercore' inflation. Should this simply be wage growth? Economist Adam Posen at the Bank of England has certainly gone down this route, arguing that the relatively high rate of even core inflation in Britain reflects one-off factors and that stagnant wages show that there are few risks."
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Gingrich Senior Campaign Staff Resigns
Trip Gabriel and Jeff Zeleny, The New York Times News Service: "Newt Gingrich's campaign manager and a half-dozen senior advisers resigned on Thursday, two aides said, dealing a significant setback to his bid to seek the Republican presidential nomination and severely complicating his plan to make a political comeback. The campaign manager, Rob Johnson, along with longtime spokesman Rick Tyler and advisers in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, joined together to step down after a period of deep internal disagreements about the direction of the campaign. Mr. Gingrich, a former House speaker who has been fighting to regain his political footing after a rough campaign roll out last month, had been absent from the campaign trail for about two weeks on what aides had described as a pre-planned vacation. He made his first return to the campaign trail on Wednesday in New Hampshire, one day before the resignations were announced."
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News in Brief: US Steps Up Secret War in Yemen, and More ...
United States forces have stepped up a covert war against suspected militants in Yemen amid the violence and unrest that has weakened the country's government; Japan now estimates that the amount of radiation that was initially released from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant damaged by an earthquake and tsunami in April could have been twice as high as previously thought; Citigroup Inc. reported today that hackers compromised the company's information system and gained access to the credit card accounts of 200,000 customers; immigrants in the United States considered to be highly skilled workers now outnumber those considered lower skilled; the Environmental Protection Agency this week made public the identities of 150 chemicals contained in 104 health safety studies formerly kept confidential by the chemical industry.
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