Department of Agriculture has designated 13 California counties natural disaster areas because of the combined effects of drought in October and prolonged freezing in January that destroyed about $800 million in citrus crops. In the coming months there will be agricultural jobs harvesting and boxing stone fruit and other commodities, but many workers will be idle until November, when the first of the navel orange crop is harvested. There are about 12,000 workers in citrus packing houses...

house prices rose at their slowest monthly pace so far this year during May, suggesting recent interest rate hikes are finally beginning to cool the housing market, figures released Monday by online estate agency Rightmove showed. Rightmove also reported that the number of new properties advertised for sale on its Web site totaled 200,115 in the four weeks to mid-May, which was the highest ever number of newly advertised properties on record, and surpassing the previous high of 178,158...

Agriculture and Interior departments, which jointly monitor for avian influenza, told Reuters they plan to take about 77,000 samples from wild birds during the April 2007 to March 2008 period. As part of an effort to rapidly boost domestic surveillance following the spread of the virus overseas, USDA and Interior worked with states to collect more than 111,000 samples during the same period a year ago. Interior will test about the same number of birds, 27,000, but this time it will spend...

But with temperatures on the rise and the days growing longer, it gets harder to resist buying an ice cream cone or throwing a pint of Ben & Jerry's into the grocery cart. And thanks to new recipes and developments in production technology, the light ice creams and frozen yogurts of today are, in many cases, a far cry from the bland products first introduced in the '80s and '90s. What's Hot Experts in the world of frozen desserts say the health-conscious indulgences that are hot right now...

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