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A severe drought across vast area of Florida is wilting crops, sparking wildfires and sinking one of the country's largest lakes to historically low levels.

The majority of the state is experiencing the drought, prompted by La Nina conditions characterized by unusually cold ocean temperatures that are causing similar dry spells across the southern U.S., from New Mexico all the way to the Atlantic coast and north to Delaware.

"This one seems to be a different beast," said Brian Fuchs, a climatologist at the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "I think we're going to see things probably get worse before we see improvement."

Even as Florida starts its rainy season — which in its first week has been bone dry — showers can only do so much to reverse months of below-normal precipitation. A best-case scenario this summer might only lift the hardest-hit areas from the highest drought rating to one still rated severe.

The South Florida Water Management District, a 16-county area of central and South Florida with 7.7 million residents, recorded rainfall between Oct. 2 and Monday of just under 12.5 inches, nearly 11 inches below average. The period from October through February ranked as the driest such time frame in the district in 80 years.

That's drying out Lake Okeechobee, the backup reservoir for 5 million people, which stood at just 9.81 feet Wednesday, 3.32 feet below normal and approaching its all-time low of 8.82 feet set in July 2007. That drought ended in August 2008 when Tropical Storm Fay lingered over the state for almost a week, dropping 30 inches of rain in some spots.

Susan Sylvester, the water district's director of operations control, said the current problems are compounded by increased evaporation.

"Every root in every plant is trying to pull out some moisture," she said.

When the lake's levels are too low, it stops the natural gravity flow of its waters into canals that lead to water sources for millions of residents, in turn prompting irrigation restrictions. It also cuts flow to the ecologically fragile Everglades, causing navigation issues for boaters with ramps dried out and drying marsh areas on the lake's banks where wading birds forage for fish.

Rick Roth, a Belle Glade farmer, recently harvested radishes, green beans and lettuce. Radish yields were down about 5 percent, he said; green bean production was on par, but with the added expense of irrigation. And many heads of lettuce never reached full size.

A third-generation farmer who also grows sugarcane, corn and rice, Roth worries more about the crops going forward, particularly if the rainy season doesn't live up to its name.

"We're going to be in worse shape next year than we are this year," he said, "and this year we purely got by by the skin of our teeth."

Dale Erickson, whose farm near Pahokee grows mangoes, lychee and other crops, mustered a positive spin on lower yields. Even with his lychee production 40 percent below average, he had his best season in years, because he's been recovering from the loss of trees to an onslaught of hurricanes in 2004 and 2005. And compared with tornadoes, hurricanes and floods, Erickson says he'll take the drought.

"If we had any of the other ones, we'd be a lot worse," he said.

While many state residents are facing restrictions on watering their lawns, the extent of the drought hasn't hit home for most because in-home usage hasn't been affected. But one noticeable impact has been a string of wildfires blamed, in part, on the dry conditions.

Scott Petrich, wildfire mitigation specialist at the state's Division of Forestry, said 115 such fires have been recorded so far this year in its Everglades District, which includes Florida's four most southeasterly counties, mostly in unpopulated areas. That is nearly triple the normal level.

A motorist simply pulling a car into grass off the side of the road is enough to spark a fire in some areas, Petrich said. About a third of wildfires in the state are caused by lightning, which increases in the summer months.

"Until we get significant amounts of rainfall we're going to be faced with this situation," he said.

Smoke from one large fire west of Miami is closing some roads near the Miccosukee Indian Reservation, which has a large casino and resort. The fire, which began Sunday, has burned almost 30,000 acres but so far no homes are threatened. It is about 25 percent contained. The cause is unknown.

Fuchs said some relief is projected over the next two to three months but, particularly for farmers, the effects can be felt long after.

"The idea that the drought will go away rapidly — there's a chance of that — but right now it's not looking like it's going to," he said.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Citigroup’s revelation that hackers stole personal information from more than 200,000 credit card holders makes it one of the largest direct attacks on a major bank.

Even more striking is that similar data breaches have been occurring for years — and the financial industry has failed to prevent them.

Details remain scarce, but the disclosure of the Citigroup breach on Thursday quickly turned into a debate on whether the banks and major credit card companies had invested enough money to safeguard the personal information of their customers.

“They’re not at all on top of it,” said Avivah Litan, a financial security analyst at Gartner Inc. “It’s almost shocking.”

In Washington, the finger-pointing has already begun. Sheila C. Bair, the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, said on Thursday that she planned to call on some banks to strengthen their authentication procedures when customers log onto online accounts. That’s on top of new data security rules that federal regulators are completing.

Lawmakers, meanwhile, said they were outraged that Citigroup waited since early May to notify its customers; some are preparing legislation.

Representative James R. Langevin, a Rhode Island Democrat, said he was “shocked and disappointed” to learn of Citi’s delayed disclosure. “They knew the customers’ data was potentially exposed in May and only now are they telling them about the threat,” he said. “Being more forthcoming is essential.”

Consumers, meanwhile, are feeling increasingly vulnerable amid recent reports of data breaches at big companies, like Lockheed Martin, Epsilon and Sony.

A. J. Angus, a 25-year-old Google employee, was put in double jeopardy. On Thursday, he learned that his Citi credit card data had been stolen. Only a few weeks earlier, he learned that personal data on his Sony PlayStation 3 was compromised.

“You have to be vigilant,” he said, adding that he periodically checks his credit report and looks over his transactions almost daily on a personal finance Web site.

On Thursday, Citigroup began notifying about half of the 200,000 affected customers that it planned to replace their credit cards after it discovered last month that hackers had gained access to its computer systems. The bank said that the thieves obtained customer names, card numbers, addresses, and e-mail details.

Social security numbers, expiration dates and the three-digit code found on the back of most credit cards were not compromised — a move that security experts say makes the exposed cardholders less likely to become fraud victims.

Neither Citigroup’s debit card business nor its online banking operations were breached.

“Citi has implemented enhanced procedures to prevent a recurrence of this type of event,” the company said in a statement.

The intrusion is not all that unique. Over the last six years, there have been 288 publicly disclosed breaches at financial services companies that exposed at least 83 million customer records, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center.

Credit card industry officials say security issues go to the heart of their brands and they are trying to keep up with ever-more sophisticated criminals.

“We’re not dealing with 14-year-old hacker kids,” said Steve Elefant, the chief information officer at Heartland Payment Systems, which overhauled its security measures after the systems it used to process credit and debit card transactions were hacked in 2008. “We’re talking about 21st-century bank robbers — sophisticated, organized criminal gangs, located mostly in Eastern Europe and the U.S.”

Making matters worse, nearly every step along the payment chain is outsourced from the time a card is swiped to the time a monthly statement arrives, leaving plenty of openings for enterprising thieves. Security is further hampered by a patchwork of data protection laws and regulatory agencies, each with limited mandates.

“We need a uniform national standard for data security and data breach notification,” said Representative Mary Bono Mack, a California Republican who is pushing for legislation on better consumer safeguards. “In the meantime, regulators need to do a better job of being a consumer watchdog.”

Big credit card lenders are loath to acknowledge another reason that the breaches keep happening: they are in the business of reducing the financial losses stemming from fraud, not preventing data theft in the first place. As a result, analysts say, they have devoted the bulk of their resources to trying to stop fraudulent transactions from occurring.

“Data breaches are one thing,” noted David Robertson, the publisher of The Nilson Report, a payments industry newsletter. “Acting on that information is another, and the systems in place to catch fraud when it is trying to be perpetrated are extremely good.”

Indeed, while the thieves have gotten more skilled, the amount of money the banks have lost to fraud has actually stayed the same over the last six years — and has sharply fallen since the early 1990s. Today, fraud costs the banks about 5 cents for every $100 that is charged, compared with 15 cents for every $100 in 1992, according to Nilson data.

Merchant advocates, meanwhile, say the banks have little incentive to reduce it more because, in some cases, it can be a source of income. Not only do they take in hefty charge-back fees from merchants — sometimes $25 or more for each fraudulent purchase — but in many cases retailers must swallow the cost of the item fraudulently purchased.

Preventing data theft from occurring seems to be a lower priority. After the huge credit card data breach of a payment processor in 2005, the major credit card companies banded together to form a set of security standards for the industry. But six years on, compliance with those rules has been mixed. Although virtually all of the 1,000 biggest merchants meet those requirements, far fewer than 60 percent of the millions of mom-and-pop retailers and online merchants do, according to Visa data.

Other proactive steps have also fallen by the wayside because of their cost. In Europe and Asia, most credit and debit card issuers have switched to cards that use small chips embedded inside the plastic that do a better job protecting transaction data. In the United States, the banks and card companies have not adopted the technology, reasoning that retailers are unwilling to spend heavily to upgrade their existing card readers.

Likewise, some security experts say encrypting data as it flows across the entire payment network would make data far less vulnerable to being extracted by thieves. However, only a tiny fraction of merchants and processors have upgraded their systems.

Mr. Elefant said the industry needed to adopt the encryptions technology more quickly. “Unfortunately, some companies look at breaches as the cost of doing business,” he said. “That’s not the right way to look at it. You need to be as secure as you possibly can be.”

Others suggest the banks need to do more to enlist their customers, like providing more regular fraud alerts and giving them more control to turn on and off their credit cards.

“What they don’t do enough of is engage the identity holder in the war against fraud,” said James Van Dyke of Javelin Strategy and Research, a payments consulting firm. “They greatly prefer to wage this battle solo.”

Tara Siegel Bernard, Riva Richmond and Nelson D. Schwartz contributed reporting.

This story originally appeared in The New York Times

1) Import prices rose for an eight straight month in May despite a drop in fuel costs, with the year-on-year increase reaching its highest level in nearly three years, according to the Labor Department.

Import prices climbed 0.2 percent last month, confounding forecasts for a 0.7 percent decline and following April's revised 2.1 percent jump. In the year to May, import prices surged 12.5 percent, the largest gain since September 2008.

Exports prices rose 0.2 percent after a downwardly revised 0.9 percent gain. Analysts had been looking for a 0.3 percent gain.

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1) Jobless claims edge higher as per the report from labor department The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment aid unexpectedly edged higher last week, stoking fears of a stalled economic recovery even as a separate report showed record U.S. exports in April.

Initial claims for state jobless benefits increased 1,000 to 427,000, the Labor Department said. However, economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims dropping to 415,000 from a previously reported count of 422,000.

2) Trade deficit narrowed in April according to the Commerce Department, as U.S. exports rose to a new record and imports from Japan tumbled more than 25 percent after its earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster.

The monthly trade gap totaled $43.7 billion, down 6.7 percent from a revised estimate of $46.8 billion in March which was originally reported as $48.2 billion.

The $3 billion drop in imports from Japan from March to April was the largest on record. U.S. auto and auto parts imports from Japan and other suppliers fell $2.8 billion, partly reflecting supply chain disruptions in the aftermath of the triple disaster.

3) Wholesale inventories rose less than forecast in April, but seemed enough to boost investor confidence and stocks.

Inventories rose 0.8 percent to $447.2 billion in the first month of the second quarter, below economists forecasts of 1.0 percent, according to the Commerce Department. Automotive inventories, one of the biggest categories, fell 1.3 percent. Wholesale inventories have increased 16.6 percent since hitting a low in September 2009.

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( Source: Biospace )