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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Inflation Isn’t Nutritious in PA - Who's to Blame?

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Monday, April 28, 2008   

Philadelphia, PA – Inflation for breakfast, lunch and dinner is anything but nutritious for Pennsylvania families. Egg prices are up 35 percent, chicken is up 10 percent, prices for bread and breakfast cereals have seen their biggest increases in more than 30 years, according to the U.S. Labor Department and the Consumer Price Index.

Gawain Kripke, senior policy advisor for the international relief and development organization Oxfam America, says certainly rising gas prices get a lot of the blame, and have probably received most of the attention. However, he adds, some of the basic ingredients used in food production, both in food processing and feeding animals, have been in short supply, too.

"We're consuming almost a third of our corn crop to produce ethanol, which we're then burning in our cars, and that's taking a lot of food off the market to put into our gas tanks."

Sticker shock at the supermarket isn't a problem only in America, says Kripke. It has affected the global market, and he says the hardest-hit are those who live in the poorest countries.

"Food may be 80 percent of what they spend money on and, if food prices are increasing even 20 percent, that means that people are not going to eat."

Kripke believes the next U.S. Farm Bill could potentially help ease consumer price hikes, because it includes incentives for farmers who grow corn for food.





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