CNNNN discovers Americans support war on Kyrgyzstan, 'wherever it may be'
The difficulties experienced in Iraq have not put Americans off going to war again, CNNNN's Julian Morrow found when he surveyed people on the streets of Texas.

Global Warming Drying Out Source Of China's Mighty Yellow River
Global warming is drying out the source of the Yellow River, threatening water supplies to 120 million people, an environmental group said Monday.

Pessimism over economy lifts in October
Americans were slightly less pessimistic about the U.S. economy and went shopping in October despite worries about higher interest rates and gasoline prices, reports showed on Tuesday.

Consumers feeling bite of soaring cost of living

U.K. Trade Gap Widens to Record on Higher Imports

Quick Overview

• Federal Reserve minutes released today showed members voted 9 to 1 to increase the federal funds rate by a quarter-percent to 3.75% -- giving plenty of hints there will be more hikes to come.
  

• Brazil's stocks and currency rose on Tuesday as Fitch Ratings signaled it may soon upgrade the country's sovereign ratings, boosting even more the allure of high-yielding Brazilian assets.
  

• Machinery orders in Japan were up 8.2% in August -- stronger than expected.
  

• China's National Development and Reform Commission said that they expect China's economy to grow 9.2% this year and 8.5% in 2006
  

• Yesterday’s discovery that Brazil has a problem with foot-and-mouth disease may lead to a likely cut in beef exports.
  

• The European Cocoa Association announced that YoY grindings in the third quarter of 2005 were up 8.6%. For the first three quarters of 2005, Europe's cocoa grinding were up 5.6% YoY

World must hurry to save environment or face global poverty, UN official warns
With some 60 per cent of the planet's ecosystem currently being degraded by human activities, the global community must take speedy action or else face a future of 6 billion people “scratching around trying to survive,” the head of the United Nations environmental agency said today.
“You cannot continue to drive a car if all you do is put petrol in the tank,” he warned. “It needs servicing, parts require replacing and we must pay for the roads and infrastructure on which it runs.

China research spending to outpace EU in five years
In just five years, China will proportionally be spending more on research and development (RD) than the European Union, the Financial Times reported Monday.

Quick Overview

• New offers from the United States and the European Union to cut aid to their farmers could herald a breakthrough in deadlocked global trade talks, just two months before a deadline for a treaty, ministers said Monday
  

• It's still tough to read how badly Katrina and Rita hurt the economy, but data show Americans reacted in their usual way -- by going shopping
  

• The DoE said the number of closed refineries is down to eight, resulting in a daily loss of 900,000 barrels of gasoline.
  

• Brazil's coffee trees are in need of rain this month for the flowering, but the near-term outlook is calling for dry weather. Hurricane Stan may have also damaged some coffee crops in Mexico and Central America last week.
  

• Dow-Jones Newswires said the International Sugar Organization is predicting 2005-2006 world production of 149.6 million tons and consumption of 150.6 million tons.
  

• YoY Singapore's GDP was up 6.0% in the third quarter.
  

• Gold futures in New York settled at a near-18-year high on Monday as fund buying on the back of economic worries and strong investment demand extended the metal's recent rally, traders and analysts said.
  

• French industrial production increased by 0.8 percent from July, when the output had dropped a revised 0.7 percent.
  

Drug Rehab For George
Do you hear little voices speaking to you sometime? I do; well, I mean I used to. Officially speaking, they stopped. Excepting for yesterday, yesterday the little voice in my head said, "Go gambling and play machine number 161." So I did. And wouldn’t you know it? I won. Really! I started with $60 and wound up $840. Darn if that little voice in my head isn’t giving me some great advice… Sometimes.

Ray Kurzweil calls for 1918 flu genome to be 'un-published'
"The decision by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services to publish the full genome of the 1918 influenza virus on the Internet in the GenBank database is extremely dangerous and immediate steps should be taken to remove this data," says inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil.

Bird flu fight lifts biotech stocks
Shares of biotechnology companies developing treatments to fight a possible outbreak of avian flu rose on Friday as delegates from around the world met to discuss plans for battling the illness.

Greenspan concerned about interest-free loans and other riskier mortgages
"In the event of widespread cooling in house prices, these borrowers, and the institutions that service them, could be exposed to significant losses," Greenspan said recently.

Southwest bars woman over T-shirt obscenity
A Washington state woman says she intends to press a civil rights lawsuit against Southwest Airlines for barring her from one of its flights because of a message on her T-shirt.
..Here we are trying to free another country and I have to get off an airplane in midflight over a T-shirt.

Signals of the End of the Dollar Standard

As Voltaire said in 1729 “paper money eventually goes down to its intrinsic value – zero.”

Quick Overview

• The Department of Transportation said Thursday that its transportation services index for July fell 0.3% from June, the second consecutive decline.
  
  

• U.S. payrolls fell by 35,000 jobs in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the unemployment rate rose to 5.1% in September from 4.9% in August, the Labor Department reported Friday
  
  

• U.S. Wholesale inventories rose 0.5% in August, the most in four months, the Commerce Department said Friday.
  
  

• U.S. Rail freight and intermodal traffic rose for the week ended Oct. 1 compared to a year earlier, and traffic in September also increased over last year despite two big hurricanes, the Association of American Railroads said.
  
  

• The International Atomic Energy Agency and its chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons…the Bush administration may not be extremely pleased.
  
  

• A Ministry of Commerce report said that China's trade surplus could triple to as much as 100 billion dollars this year.
  
  

• U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow said on Friday China needs to act "soon" to let its yuan currency become more flexible and he will tell Chinese officials that in person next week.
  
  

• Germany's industrial production was down 1.6% in August.
  
  

• Japan's index of coincident economic indicators increased from 30.0 to 88.9 in August, a sign of expansion.
  
  

• London inventories of copper continue to fall, they are at 70,475 tons.
  
  
  

• December gold is at a new contract high because of concerns over inflation and strong global demand.
  
  
  

• Canada's unemployment rate improved from 6.8% to 6.7% in September, the lowest since 1976.

Record low for home affordability in California
Soaring prices in California's housing market have shut out a record 86 percent of households from buying a typical home with a traditional down-payment,

Climate Change More Rapid Than Ever?
According to the calculations of scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, over the next century the climate will change more quickly than it ever has in the recent history of the earth. These results come from the latest climate model calculations from the German High Performance Computing Centre for Climate and Earth System Research.

GE raises full-year outlook

Venezuela moves reserves out of US Treasuries