Carving out a section of low-hanging basement ceiling was a small price to pay to give Travis Bondy the space he needed to play in the Isolation Dart League.

The World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report is prepared monthly and includes forecasts for U.S. and world wheat, rice, and coarse grains (corn, barley, sorghum, and oats), oilseeds (soybeans, rapeseed, palm), and cotton. U.S. coverage is extended to sugar, meat, poultry, eggs, and milk. USDA World Agricultural Outlook Board analysts chair the Interagency Commodity Estimates Committees (ICECs) comprising representatives from several key USDA agencies. The nine ICECs- one for each commodity- compile and interpret information from USDA and other domestic and foreign official sources to produce the report.

The ICECs rely on Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) attaché reports and analysis of foreign commodity developments, Economic Research Service (ERS) domestic and foreign regional assessments, and National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) U.S. crop and livestock estimates. For domestic policy and market information, the Board relies on the Farm Services Agency and the Agricultural Marketing Service. WAOB and FAS use weather analysis and satellite imagery to monitor crop conditions. Additional private and public information sources are considered.

This broad information base is reviewed and analyzed by ICEC members who bring diverse expertise and perspectives to the report. To arrive at consensus forecasts, alternative assessments of domestic and foreign supply and use are vetted at the ICEC meetings. Throughout the growing season and afterwards, estimates are compared with new information on production and utilization, and historical revisions are made as necessary.

The WASDE reports a full balance sheet for each commodity. Separate estimates are made for components of supply (beginning stocks, imports, and production) and demand (domestic use, exports, and ending stocks). Domestic use is subdivided into major categories, for example corn for feed and corn for ethanol. Domestic use may be based on data from other Federal agencies: for example, U.S. wheat ground for flour, soybeans crushed for oil, and cotton mill use come from the Bureau of the Census. The demand side of the balance sheet may include a category for residual or unaccounted disappearance to balance known uses against total supplies.

The WASDE also reports forecast season-average farm prices for most items. Prices tie together both sides of the balance sheet. Market prices aid in rationing available supplies among competing uses. Prices also indicate potential supply responses, for example potential planting decisions for the upcoming year. The process of forecasting price and balance sheet items is complex and involves the interaction of expert judgment, commodity models, and in-depth research by USDA analysts on key domestic and international issues.

Politicians, pundits and other thoughtful westerners chat about the priorities, preoccupations and politics of Albertans and others who are West of Centre in this podcast series hosted by CBC Calgary's executive producer of news, Kathleen Petty.

Employees in Alberta continuing care homes and seniors’ residences are the most likely recipients of a federal wage top-up intended for essential workers.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have signed Finnish defenceman Mikko Lehtonen to a one-year, entry-level contract for the 2020-21 season, the club announced Monday.

Just when you thought you watched the best shot of the Brier, another best shot of the Brier appears at the 2020 Canadian men's curling championship being held in Kingston, Ont.

The hoarders, the deliverers and what the coronavirus says about class in America.

The general field of quantitative biology has advanced significantly on the back of recent improvements in both sequencing technology and proteomics methods. The development of high-throughput, short-read sequencing has revolutionized RNA-based expression studies, while improvements in proteomics methods have enabled quantitative studies to attain better resolution. Here we introduce methods to undertake global analyses of gene expression through RNA and protein quantification in Xenopus embryos and tissues.

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FSI Briefs No 5, April 2020. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, governments have launched guarantee programmes to support bank lending to companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises. This is essential to avoid a sharp contraction in bank credit that would exacerbate the pandemic's adverse impact. The design of such programmes needs to strike a difficult balance between responding promptly to the pandemic and maintaining a sufficient level of prudence. Key features of a sample of programmes (eg target beneficiaries, coverage of the guarantee, loan terms, length of the programme) reflect this tension. Incentives were created for the banks to join these programmes by exploiting flexibility in existing prudential requirements, while central banks have often provided liquidity support. Programmes are, however, subject to operational challenges and, ultimately, fiscal capacity limits.

Introductory statement by Ms Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, and Mr Luis de Guindos, Vice-President of the European Central Bank, Frankfurt am Main, 30 April 2020.

Remarks by Mr Stephen S Poloz, Governor of the Bank of Canada, at the Ivey Business School, London, Ontario, 30 April 2020.

Notional amounts of OTC derivatives rose from $544 trillion at end-December 2018 to $559 trillion at end-December 2019. This, however, corresponds to a significant fall over the last six months, which could be at least partly attributed to seasonal factors. The seasonal pattern in the data, whereby end-June values tend typically to be larger than end-of-year values, appears strongest in positions vis-à-vis central counterparties. Such end-of-year contractions can occur if dealer banks and/or their clients shrink their outstanding notional derivative positions for regulatory and financial reporting purposes. Contracts denominated in non-G4 currencies (ie excluding USD, EUR, JPY and GBP) have grown in size for both interest rate and foreign exchange derivatives, even though those denominated in US dollars remain the largest segment.

Opening remarks by Ms Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, at the Online Edition of The State of the Union conference organised by the European University Institute, 8 May 2020.

Bank of Italy Working Papers by Eleonora Porreca and Alfonso Rosolia

Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers by Gonçalo Faria and Fabio Verona

Bank of England Working Papers by Nicola Garbarino and Benjamin Guin

European Systemic Risk Board Occasional Papers by Greg Ros

Bank of Spain Working Papers by Henrique S. Basso and Juan F. Jimeno

Central Bank of Chile Working Papers by Andrés Sagner

More suffering is ahead for the developing world.

These causes will make great use of your money or your time.

If you're willing to pay the (necessarily) big bucks to create a new TRX40-based Threadripper desktop, few motherboards on any platform can match the Asus ROG Zenith II Extreme for sheer robustness and feature set.

As the pols take the fight out back to the web, will the dank memes prevail?

Penn State is implementing a new opt-in grading system for the spring 2020 semester that will give students flexibility, help preserve GPAs and minimize impacts to students’ transcripts during the academic challenges presented by the novel coronavirus public health crisis.

As college campuses closed and the COVID-19 virus began casting a larger shadow in south central Pennsylvania, members of the nursing and physical therapist assistant programs at Penn State Mont Alto took stock of all the medical personal protection equipment (PPE) items in their labs. The two programs were supplied with hundreds of gloves and dozens of medical gowns and masks, plus other items such as disposable stethoscopes, shoe covers and safety glasses — items no longer needed as the campus transitioned to remote instruction.

Penn State Mont Alto recognizes and honors winners during awards ceremony

The Penn State Mont Alto campus held its annual Academic and Leadership Awards Ceremony online on Sunday, April 19. Eighty-eight students were recognized for their academic achievements and campus leadership during the 2019-20 academic year. Three faculty members and one staff member were also recognized for their above-and-beyond contributions to the learning environment at Penn State Mont Alto.

Penn State Mont Alto unveiled its new project and supply chain management degree in response to a local and global need.

Authoritarian rule may be just around the corner.

Why won’t Republicans help Americans losing their jobs?

The 2020 "Expanding Empathy" lecture series has moved online and added a lecture on "The Altruistic Brain," as well as a panel discussion on empathy in the time of COVID-19, both to be held on April 29 via Zoom.

The College of Health and Human Development will host M. Daniele Fallin, Sylvia and Harold Halpert Professor in Mental Health and chair of the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, at 4 p.m. via Zoom Webinar on Thursday, May 7, for the next presentation in its Dean’s Lecture Series: Perspectives on the Pandemic. This presentation, “Mental Health and the COVID Pandemic,” will summarize recent findings on the psychological effects of the pandemic, as well as offer some strategies for prevention and intervention as the pandemic, and its after-effects, continue.

Apple's latest iOS 13.5 beta release includes a new Health app feature that allows iPhone and Apple Watch users to automatically send Medical ID information to first responders.

Instead of every meeting attendee staring at a flat Zoom screen, Apple is looking to the future of video conferencing with Memoji-style avatars arranged in augmented reality around each meeting attendee.

After several years of back-and-forth litigation, Apple has withdrawn what was likely its final appeal in a Wi-Fi hotspot patent infringement case due to a Supreme Court decision.

While Apple has yet to make substantial inroads into India's mainstream smartphone market, the tech giant's latest flagship iPhones continue to dominate top-tier category sales.

The OM team in Bar, Montenegro, received an enthusiastic response when they showed the JESUS film in the Roma language for the first time.

Dan Deming, KKM Financial

Dan Deming, KKM Financial

Dan Deming, KKM Financial

Dan Deming, KKM Financial

Dan Deming, KKM Financial

Dan Deming, KKM Financial