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The leaders of the House and Senate agriculture committees are meeting Wednesday as they continue to try to work out the differences between their respective farm bills. If they fail, the country faces what's being called the "dairy cliff" — with milk prices potentially shooting up to about $7 a gallon sometime after the first of the year.

Here's why: The nation's farm policy would be legally required to revert back to what's called permanent law. In the case of dairy, that would be the 1949 farm bill.

And if House and Senate negotiators fail to reconcile their farm bills, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack warns, "I'm going to be put in a position where I have to invoke and implement permanent law. And I will do my job because that's what I swore an oath to do."

The problem is that back in 1949, the dairy industry was much smaller and less efficient than the one that exists today, so it received bigger price supports from the federal government. And if U.S. policy reverted to the old law, the government would be forced to go into the marketplace and buy milk, butter and cheese at about double the going rate.

Vilsack says this would distort the market: "So you, as a [milk] producer, would have a choice of selling it to your normal purchaser at $18 or $19 a hundred weight or to USDA at $38 a hundred weight. What do you think producers will do?"

Of course the producers would sell to the government. And that, says Jim Dunn, a professor of agricultural economics at Penn State University, "would be terrible."

"Every refrigerated warehouse in the United States would be full of cheese and butter," he says, "and nonrefrigerated milk warehouses would be full of powdered milk."

And for the rest of us, he says, there would be sticker shock in the dairy aisle.

Vilsack says there would be supply issues, too, because the federal government would own the commodities, but there would be shortages in the grocery store. Which is how Americans would quickly end up facing milk at $7 a gallon —"If you can find it," notes Vilsack. "And that is why it is ludicrous for Congress not to get a farm bill done."

Milk would only be the first commodity affected. Without a farm bill, other commodity prices would spike as the year went on, affecting every family in America. Farm policy, often obscure for most consumers, would get personal fast. If this all sounds like illogical and terrible policy — well, that's the point, says Vilsack.

"It's a great lever to compel action," he says of the invocation of permanent law that hovers over every farm bill. "In most cases, it's the reason why we've had fairly routine extensions of the farm bill for the past 50 years."

Rep. Mike Conaway, a Republican from Texas and a member of the farm bill conference committee, agrees with Vilsack's assessment.

"It's applying pressure to me," he notes."That's the whole advantage of having permanent law that's as bad as it is: to try to get folks to create the new law that we need for the next five years."

Now, if all this talk about a dairy cliff sounds familiar, that's because it is: Last year, lawmakers narrowly avoided triggering those 1949 price supports by tucking a temporary extension of the 2008 farm bill into last-minute legislation that avoided the fiscal cliff.

This year, efforts to pass a new five-year farm bill have fallen into some of the same philosophical fights about the role of government that have gummed up the budget process on Capitol Hill — and just about everything else.

Singapore isn't usually known as a place simmering with tensions, but the city-state's first riot in more than 40 years has prompted the prime minister to urge calm.

Sunday's riot was sparked by the death of a 33-year-old Indian national who was struck and killed by a bus. Hundreds rioted in the Little India neighborhood following the death. Rioters attacked police, and set police cars and an ambulance on fire, the BBC reported. Eighteen people were hurt. Police arrested 27 people, mostly Indians. They face up to seven years in prison along with caning.

In a post on Facebook, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong urged restraint. He said he'd ordered an inquiry into the events that led to the incident, "how the incident was handled, and how we manage areas where foreign workers congregate."

He added:

"This was an isolated incident caused by an unruly mob. The vast majority of foreign workers here obey our laws. We must not let this bad incident tarnish our views of foreigner workers here. Nor should we condone hateful or xenophobic comments, especially online."

"You know when you put something in the bin, and in your head, say to yourself 'that's a bad idea'? I really did have that," James Howells says. And boy, was his intuition right: Howells tossed a hard drive that held millions of dollars' worth of Bitcoins, the currency whose value has skyrocketed this year.

Howells' story is emerging on the same day Bitcoin rose above the $1,000 mark for the first time on the Mt. Gox exchange, as CNET reported. At that exchange rate, Howells' stash of 7,500 Bitcions would have been worth $7.5 million today. (Because there's no central exchange for Bitcoins, prices can vary.)

The Bitcoins were in a digital wallet in a hard drive that was sitting in a desk drawer in Newport, Wales. It contained the unique access key that would allow Howells to control the money. Howells, who reportedly works in IT, did not make a backup file.

As Howells tells The Guardian, it was months before he realized he had tossed the Bitcoins along with the drive, the survivor of a Dell laptop he had used to "mine" the currency in 2009.

"I don't have an exact date, the only time period I can give – and I've been racking my own brains – is between 20 June and 10 August," he tells the newspaper. "Probably mid-July."

His attempts to find the missing hard drive have been stymied by the epic size of the local landfill. Its operators told Howells that his hard drive was probably about four or five feet deep, in an area the size of a soccer field. And with no guarantee of finding the Bitcoins, he can't take on the expense of an excavation.

"I'm at the point where it's either laugh about it or cry about it," Howells says. "Why aren't I out there with a shovel now? I think I'm just resigned to never being able to find it."

At least Howells has company. As we reported this past spring, a man named Stefan Thomas told Der Spiegel that he lost 7,000 Bitcoins because of a hard-drive failure. Back then, the currency made headlines for hitting the $200 mark.

Ukraine's government has deployed riot police near Independence Square outside Kiev's city hall, which has been occupied by anti-government protesters for more than a week. Police had told the protesters they have until early this week to vacate the building.

Opposition leaders have been trying to calm the situation, which was sparked by outrage over President Viktor Yanukovich's decision to reject closer ties with the European Union in favor of joining a trade union with Russia.

From Kiev, NPR's Corey Flintoff reports on the scene today:

"Riot police with black helmets and shields formed a line near the building, but didn't advance toward it. Vitaly Klitchko, an opposition politician and world boxing champion, spoke briefly with one of the police commanders.

"He said before giving any orders, the police should consider whether they themselves are violating the law. Klitschko said the protest was a peaceful demonstration with no aggression."