“Inflation is at a two-year low but that’s not the way it feels for those of us shopping for groceries,” said Avery Shenfeld, senior economist at CIBC World Markets.

The cost of food rose 7.3% in 2008, inching up 0.3% in December for a fourteenth straight month of increase, Statistics Canada figures showed Friday. Marking the sharpest increase was the cost of fresh vegetables, which were 26.9% higher than in December last year. Other notable increases included a 18.9% rise in fruit prices, a 12.4% increase in bakery product prices, a 6% rise in the cost of dairy products and a 5.5% increase in meat prices.

Source and More : www.financialpost.com

At least 11 adults were killed in separate incidents in Spain and France as gales buffeted the region for a second day, cutting power, disrupting flights and blocking roads. Forest fires, one caused by felled power lines, raged in Spain.

In the sports centre disaster, winds of more than 100 km (62 miles) per hour, ripped the metal roof off a building next to a baseball court in Sant Boi, causing the breeze block walls to collapse inwards.

Source and More : http://uk.reuters.com

“Do whatever you want. Manufacturing the holy weapons is our mission and we know how to acquire weapons,” Abu Ubaida, a spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing, told a news conference.

Addressing journalists with his face masked by a checkered Arab scarf, he said “all options would be open” if Israel failed to pull its troops out of the Gaza Strip within a week, a demand raised by Hamas when it announced Sunday a ceasefire after three weeks of fighting.

Source and More : GAZA (Reuters)

A spokesman for the agency, Christopher Gunness, said that hundreds of Palestinians were sheltering in the compound at the time of the shelling and that there were five fully laden fuel vehicles at the site. He said two buildings were ablaze.

The United Nations compound was struck as Israeli ground forces pushed further into Gaza City and intensified its shelling of both outlying neighborhoods and central districts, sending thousands of panicked residents fleeing from their homes, witnesses said. Among other buildings hit in the center of Gaza City, the witnesses said, was one occupied by several media organizations, and at least two television cameramen were hospitalized.

The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, expressed “strong protest and outrage” to Israel over the shelling of the United Nations compound. Mr. Ban, who was in Israel Thursday to promote a cease-fire, said that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak had told him the strike on the compound was a “grave mistake.”

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Mr. Gunness said that the Israelis had been provided with the GPS coordinates of all United Nations facilities in Gaza.

Earlier in Israel’s 20-day-old campaign against Hamas, Israeli mortar shells landed outside a United Nations school compound in Jabaliya, northern Gaza, killing 40 Palestinians, according to United Nations and hospital officials.

In that attack, the Israeli military said it was responding to mortars fired by Hamas militants from a yard next to the school compound, and that one of the shells it fired back fell off the mark.

As the fighting in Gaza entered its 20th day, the Israeli military would not give precise details of its latest ground operations in Gaza City, b

ut a spokesman said that “fierce fighting” was under way “relatively deep inside Gaza.”

Source and More :NYTIMES Israeli