Next Update NOV.4

QUICK OVERVIEW

• The Italian Supreme Court has ruled there is a causal link between mobile phone use and brain tumors in a landmark case. The ruling has set a legal precedent that could potentially trigger a deluge of lawsuits.
• Worldwide Smartphone’s in use top 1 bln (FT)

• Kiev’s move to halt wheat exports from November 15 is the first by a leading food exporting country this year and raises spectre of 2007-08 food crisis.
• (Reuters) - The drought that ravaged the United States this year does not appear to be abating and may spread through the winter, government forecasters said on Thursday.

• U.S. home construction rose 15% in September to an annual rate of 872,000
• U.S. existing home sales fell 1.7% in September

• Hollande again called on his European counterparts to move towards issuing euro bonds via mutualized debt to complement the fiscal pact.

• Overall foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury securities reached 5.43 trillion U.S. dollars in August, up from a revised 5.348 trillion dollars in July. It was the eighth consecutive monthly increase.

• (Bloomberg) U.S. Rich-Poor Gap Widens to most since 1967 as Income Falls. Russia with its oligarchs has greater income equality than the U.S.
• USA Today: How important is the COLA? From 2001 to 2011, household incomes in the U.S. dropped for every age group except one: those 65 and older. The median income for all U.S. households fell 6.6% when inflation was taken into account, according to census data. But the median income for households headed by someone 65 or older rose 13%. "That's all because of Social Security," Certner said. "Social Security has the COLA, and that's what's keeping seniors above water, as opposed to everybody else who's struggling in this economy."

• 20% of Corporate America is cooking the books:   

• (theguardian) Mitt Romney's current standing in the polls in Massachusetts gives him the dubious honour of being more unpopular in his home state than any presidential candidate in modern history.

A Simple Fix for Farming The results were stunning: The longer rotations produced better yields of both corn and soy, reduced the need for nitrogen fertilizer and herbicides by up to 88 percent, reduced the amounts of toxins in groundwater 200-fold and didn’t reduce profits by a single cent.

Currently otherwise engaged. Next update Oct. 21