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Can taxation curb obesity?
"When two-thirds of the population of countries like Australia or the US are obese or overweight, you can't handle the problem with simple solutions like education," Barry Popkin of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, told a meeting of agricultural economists on Queensland's Gold Coast this week. Instead, he says, governments need to impose tariffs to replicate the success of tobacco taxes in reducing smoking.

Quick Overview

• The dollar hit a fresh two-month low against the Euro on Monday as investors shunned the greenback amid signs the U.S. economy is slowing.
  

• The average U.S. retail price of gasoline fell by more than 7 cents last week to $2.92 a gallon.
  

• Coffee is at risk of freezing temperatures in the southern part of Minas Gerais in Brazil early this week.
  

• Gold rallied Monday as a sharp fall in the dollar and stronger oil prices spurred fresh buying.

The timing is political Unlike the herd of security experts, I have had the highest security clearance; I have done a huge amount of professional intelligence analysis; and I have been inside the spin machine. And I am very sceptical about the story that has been spun.

Lieberman calls for Rumsfeld to quit

The Arctic and Future Energy Resources
The Northwest Passage connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by way of waters around the Arctic Archipelago. During the next 20-30 years, continually melting Arctic ice will increase access to what will become a vital shipping lane. Climate studies have shown that temperatures are rising faster at the earth's poles than the rest of the planet, which will increase annual navigation via the Northwest Passage from approximately 30 days to 120 days by century's end. As such, the Northwest Passage could reduce the trip from London to Tokyo by some 5,000 kilometers (3,000 miles) compared to traveling through the Suez Canal, or by nearly 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) when going through the Panama Canal.

Scientists flock to test 'free energy' discovery
McCarthy claims it provides five times the amount of energy a mobile phone battery generates for the same size, and does not have to be recharged. Within 36 hours of his advert appearing he had been contacted by 420 scientists in Europe, America and Australia, and a further 4,606 people had registered to receive the results.

Mass murder in the skies: was the plot feasible?
Now we have news of the recent, supposedly real-world, terrorist plot to destroy commercial airplanes by smuggling onboard the benign precursors to a deadly explosive, and mixing up a batch of liquid death in the lavatories. So, The Register has got to ask, were these guys for real, or have they, and the counterterrorist officials supposedly protecting us, been watching too many action movies?..
..It should be small comfort that the security establishments of the UK and the USA - and the "terrorism experts" who inform them and wheedle billions of dollars out of them for bomb puffers and face recognition gizmos and remote gait analyzers and similar hi-tech phrenology gear - have bought the Hollywood binary liquid explosive myth, and have even acted upon it.

Despatches: The real threat we face is Blair
John Pilger
A senior Metropolitan Police officer, Paul Stephenson, claims the Heathrow plot "was intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale". The most reliable independent surveys put civilian deaths in Iraq, as a result of the invasion by Bush and Blair, above 100,000. The difference between the Heathrow scare and Iraq is that mass murder on an unimaginable scale has actually happened in Iraq.

Quick Overview

• The University of Michigan's preliminary index of sentiment declined to 78.7 from 84.7 in July.
  
  

• The Chinese central bank today raised its 1-year benchmark rate by 27 bp to 6.12% from 5.85%.
  
  

• YoY Germany's July producer price index was up 6.0% versus. 5.9% exp. -- just slightly below June's 24-year high of +6.1%.
  

• Canada's wholesale sales totaled C$41.5 billion in June, down 0.6% MoM, but up 5.5% YoY.
  

• The U.K. posted a record high budget surplus of 6.3 billion pounds in July.
  
  

• A Canadian ethanol plant is going on stream and anticipates to use 350 mt of feed wheat yearly.
  
  

• The USDA said there were 10.822 million head of cattle on feed, up 7.2% YoY.
  
  

• The Florida Department of Citrus said there were 83.4 million gallons of frozen orange juice in inventory, down 33% YoY.

A Penny Saved is a Waste of Time
JOHN PUGSELY
Ha! Those novice debasers were pikers. It took them 300 years to steal 97% of the coin's value. The U.S. government has taken less than 100 years to strip out 99% of the value of the penny. Well, we might as well call it 100%, since these little tokens aren't worth bending over to pick up off the sidewalk.

Federal Judge Orders Halt to Warrantless Wiretapping
A federal judge ruled Thursday that the government's warrantless surveillance program is "unconstitutional" and ordered an immediate end to it.

Cost of water shortage: civil unrest, mass migration and economic collapse

Cholera may return to London, the mass migration of Africans could cause civil unrest in Europe and China's economy could crash by 2015 as the supply of fresh water becomes critical to the global economy. That was the bleak assessment yesterday by forecasters from some of the world's leading corporate users of fresh water, 200 of the largest food, oil, water and chemical companies.

Worst drought hits China, 10m people thirsty A worst drought in 50 years is hitting western, central and northeastern Chinese regions, causing drink water shortages to at least 10 million people and an economic loss of 9.9 billion yuan (US$1.24 billion).

Quick Overview

• The Conference Board Index of Leading Economic Indicators fell 0.1 percent in July.
  
  

• The Labor Department reported that 312,000 workers applied for jobless benefits, down by 10,000 from the previous week.
  
  

• The Philadelphia Federal Reserve's regional index of business activity increased from 6.0 to 18.5 in August, more than expected.
  

• The U.S. Department of Energy said that underground supplies of natural gas were up 37 billion cubic feet last week at 2.800 trillion cubic feet.
  

• Retail sales in the U.K. were down 0.3% in July, weaker than expected.
  

• Taiwan's GDP was up 4.6% in the second quarter from a year ago, less than expected.
  

• Italy posted a current account deficit of 2.053 bln Euro in June against a deficit of 855 mln a year earlier.
  

Snow White's dwarfs more famous than US judges: poll
Three quarters of Americans can correctly identify two of Snow White's seven dwarfs while only a quarter can name two Supreme Court Justices, according to a poll on pop culture released on Monday.

Quick Overview

• The U.S. Labor Department said that YoY consumer prices were up 4.1% in July. Excluding food and energy, prices were up 2.7% YoY.
  

• Chinese fixed-asset investment, real estate, factories and utilities, eased to 30.5% YoY in the first seven months of 2006, down from 31.3% in the first half of 2006.

• U.S. Housing starts were at a yearly rate of 1.795 million units in July, down 2.5% from June's pace. For 2006, housing starts were down 5.1% YoY.
  

• U.S. Industrial production was up 0.4% in July, weaker than expected.
  

• YoY Argentina's economy grew 8.2% in June
  

• Mexico's economy grew at 4.7% in the second quarter, boosted by a booming construction industry and a surge in auto exports.
  

• The U.S. Department of Energy said that::
  Supplies of crude oil were down 1.6 million barrels to 331.0 million barrels.
  Supplies of unleaded gasoline were down 2.3 million barrels
  Supplies of heating oil were down 300,000 barrels.
  

• The World Gold Council said that world demand for gold totaled 802 tons in the second quarter of 2006, down 16% YoY. World mine production totaled 625 tons in the second quarter, up 2.3% YoY.
  

Quick Overview

• Wholesale prices, with food and fuel prices removed, fell 0.3 percent in July, the best showing for core inflation in nine months. Wholesale prices rose 0.1% , well below the 0.5 percent jump in June.
  
  

• The U.S. Treasury Department said that foreign purchases U.S. securities totaled $84.7 billion while U.S. purchases of foreign securities totaled $9.6 billion.
  

• The New York Federal Reserve's regional index of economic activity fell from 16.6 to 10.3 in August.
  

• YoY consumer prices in the U.K. rose 2.4% in July
  

• YoY Industrial production in China rose 16.7% in July – more than expected
  
  
  

Could Puno and Guantanamo Be The Next Hong Kongs? The U.S. should remember what a colossal effect West Berlin had on the other side of the Brandenburg Gate and what a damning example Hong Kong constituted for China before the British handover. Two million Cubans in the United States have accumulated twice as much wealth as the 11 million Cubans on the island by starting thousands of businesses over the years. (At the end of the 1990s, Hispanic Business magazine estimated that Cuban companies in the U.S. generated $25 billion; more recent figures are not available, it must be much higher today.) If Cubans had been allowed to turn Guantanamo into a prosperous capitalist zone, they would have been 10 times more successful than they have been at combating Castro from Miami and Madrid.

The Lebanon Curse Strikes Again
by Eric Margolis
The Bush Administration’s encouragement of Israel’s foolish invasion and laying waste of Lebanon marks its third military disaster after Afghanistan and Iraq. This from the man who styles himself “the war president.”

Quick Overview

• Eurozone Q2 GDP rose to +0.9% QoQ (+3.6% YoY), a 6-year high. That was the first time in 5 years the Eurozone GDP beat US GDP.
  

• China's July retail sales were strong at 13.7%, versus 13.9% in June.
  

• Indonesia's GDP was up 5.2% YoY.
  

• Heatwaves continued in southwestern and western China, affecting more than 17 million people as the shortage of drinking water worsens, sources said.
  

• Dow-Jones Newswires reports that Russia has harvested 33 million tons of grain so far, down 22% from a year ago, because of wet conditions. Russia's Ag Minister expects this year's harvest to be down 8% YoY.

• Czarnikow Sugar estimates 2006-2007 world sugar production surplus at 3.1 million tons.
  

• Shipping: China's ports post 22 % growth According to a Xinhua report, during first half of 2006, China's major sea and river ports together handled over 42 million TEUs posting a growth of more than 22 percent.
  
  

• Disruptions continued at London’s Heathrow Airport because of last week's terrorist scare and one third of flights were canceled today.

Worlds worst internet laws sneaking through the Senate
The treaty requires that the U.S. government help enforce other countries' "cybercrime" laws - even if the act being prosecuted is not illegal in the United States. That means that countries that have laws limiting free speech on the Net could oblige the F.B.I. to uncover the identities of anonymous U.S. critics, or monitor their communications on behalf of foreign governments. American ISPs would be obliged to obey other jurisdiction's requests to log their users’ behavior without due process, or compensation.


Rich nations under fire on pledges to fight poverty
Rich countries have largely failed to back their voluble lip service to combating global poverty by doing more to help, according to an annual assessment by a leading think-tank.

What the Hell Has Happened to the Army?
by Uri Avnery

WATCHING LEBANON
Washington’s interests in Israel’s war.
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
The Middle East expert said that the Administration had several reasons for supporting the Israeli bombing campaign. Within the State Department, it was seen as a way to strengthen the Lebanese government so that it could assert its authority over the south of the country, much of which is controlled by Hezbollah. He went on, “The White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the Axis of Evil, and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hezbollah as part of his interest in democratization, with Lebanon as one of the crown jewels of Middle East democracy.”

How London's Terror Scare Looks From Beirut
I was amused to see that Bush--just before my electricity was cut off again--still mendaciously tells us that the "terrorists" hate us because of "our freedoms". Not because we support the Israelis who have massacred refugee columns, fired into Red Cross ambulances and slaughtered more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians--here indeed are crimes for Paul Stephenson to investigate--but because they hate our "freedoms".

LOUD AND CLEAR
The ABA House of Delegates ended the association’s 2006 annual meeting with a bang on Tuesday, adopting two key policy recommendations on issues touching on the current debate over the federal separation of powers.
After a sharp debate that highlighted the two-day session of the policy-making House, delegates voted to oppose the "misuse" of presidential signing statements

Quick Overview

• The U.S. Commerce Department said retail sales rose 1.4% in July, more than expected and the best in six months. Excluding autos, sales were up 1.0%, also more than expected.
  
  

• Airlines warned the British government Saturday the country's air travel is grinding to a halt because of tough new antiterrorisms security wants.
  

• Japan's Q2 GDP fell to an annualized 0.8% and Q1 was revised lower to 2.7% from 3.1%

• The Bank of Japan kept its interest rate unchanged at 0.25%.

• French Q2 GDP rose sharply by 1.2% QoQ, which was a 5-year high and was much stronger than expected

• The USDA's U.S. 2006-2007 ending stocks estimate for:
  Corn was increased from 1.077 to 1.232 billion bushels.
  Soybeans were reduced from 560 to 450 million bushels.
  Wheat was reduced from 438 to 434 million bushels.
  Sugar was increased from 979,000 to 1,609,000 tons.
  Cotton was reduced from 4.90 to 4.70 million bales.
  

• The USDA's world 2006-2007 ending stocks estimate for:
  Corn was increased from 91 to 93 million tons.
  Soybeans were reduced from 53 to 50 million tons.
  Wheat was reduced from 133 to 128 million tons.
  Cotton was increased from 47 to 48 million bales.

Collapse of the Flanks
by William S. Lind
One pointer to a shift in the tactical balance is the comparative casualty counts. According to the Associated Press, as of this writing Lebanese dead total at least 642, of whom 558 are civilians, 29 Lebanese soldiers (who, at least officially, are not in the fight) and only 55 Hezbollah fighters. So Israel, with its American-style hi-tech "precision weaponry," has killed ten times as many innocents as enemies. In contrast, of 97 Israeli dead, 61 are soldiers and only 36 civilians, despite the fact that Hezbollah’s rockets are anything but precise (think Congreves). Israel can hit anything it can target, but against a Fourth Generation enemy, it can target very little. The result not only points to a battlefield change of some significance, it also raises the question of who is the real "terrorist." Terror bombing by aircraft is still terror.

U.S. Lags World in Grasp of Genetics and Acceptance of Evolution
“American Protestantism is more fundamentalist than anybody except perhaps the Islamic fundamentalist, which is why Turkey and we are so close,” said study co-author Jon Miller of Michigan State University.

Economy Often Defies Soft Landing
To reduce inflation to the upper limits of what Mr. Bernanke and other Fed officials consider acceptable, more than three million jobs would be lost, a bigger drop than in the recession of 2001.

Proposed War Crimes Act protection for Bush administration would apply retroactively
“I think what this bill can do is in effect immunize past crimes. That's why it's so dangerous,” said a third attorney, Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice.

Baghdad Morgue Tallies 1,815 Bodies in July


A Bush family tradition
The deficit may be down, but government is growing.