Quick Overview

• YoY consumer prices in Tokyo were up 0.9% in August. In Japan overall prices were up 0.3% YoY. Less than expected.
  

• Statistics Canada estimates Canada's 2006 wheat crop at 25.9 million tons, down 3% YoY.
  Statistics Canada estimates 2006 canola crop at 8 million tons, down 17% YoY.
  

• The Brazilian government raised its estimate of the coffee crop from 40.6 to 41.6 million bags. The USDA's estimates the Crop at 44.8 million bags.
  

• Chad ordered U.S. energy giant Chevron and Malaysia's Petronas on Saturday to leave the country within 24 hours for failing to honor tax obligations, a move seemingly aimed at increasing control over its oil output.

Freedom in a Cage
In his most recent news conference Mr. Bush said: "if we ever give up the desire to help people who live in freedom, we will have lost our soul as a nation, as far as I'm concerned." Thanks to Mr. Bush the Uighurs now live in freedom in a barbed wire enclosed refugee camp in Albania where no one speaks their language. They get free room and board and 40 Euros a month. In addition to his brain, it would appear that Mr. Bush has also lost his soul. That news will not surprise the Albanian Uhguirs. No one else will be surprised.

Israel may 'go it alone' against Iran
He said there was a need to understand that "when push comes to shove," Israel would have to be prepared to "slow down" the Iranian nuclear threat by itself.

Having said this, he did not rule out the possibility of US military action, but said that if this were to take place, it would probably not occur until the spring or summer of 2008, a few months before President George W. Bush leaves the international stage. The US presidential elections, which Bush cannot contest because of term limits, are in November 2008.

Quick Overview

• New home sales fell 4.3% in July, the Commerce Department said Thursday. For 2006, new home sales were down 14% YoY.
  

• First-time U.S. jobless claims fell by 1,000 to 313,000 last week, the Labor Department said Thursday
  

• The U.S. Commerce Department said that durable goods orders were down 2.4% in July, weaker than expected. Excluding transport, orders were up 0.5% on the month.
  

• The Ifo index of business confidence in Germany dropped from 105.6 to 105.0 in August, less than expected.
  

• The International Grain Council estimated Wheat 2006-2007 ending world stocks at 117 million tons, less than the USDA's 128 million tons estimate.
  

• The U.S. Department of Energy said that supplies of natural gas were up 57 billion cubic feet to 2.857 trillion cubic feet.
  
  

Quick Overview

• Existing-home sales dropped 4.1 percent in July from the previous month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.33 million units, the National Association of Realtors reported. That was the lowest level since January 2004.
  
  

• Canada's index of leading indicators was up 0.2% in July.
  
  

• The U.S. Department of Energy said that:
  Supplies of crude oil were down 600,000 barrels last week to 330.4 million barrels.
  Supplies of unleaded gasoline were up 400,000 barrels
  Supplies of heating oil supplies were up 1.4 million barrels
  

US interventions have boosted Iran, says report The US-led "war on terror" has bolstered Iran's power and influence in the Middle East, especially over its neighbour and former enemy Iraq, a thinktank said today.

DNA database can flag suspects through relatives
"It's a major privacy intrusion in the life of families," says Tania Simoncelli, who studies DNA database issues for the American Civil Liberties Union in New York City. "And we're effectively expanding the already huge (DNA) databases to include potentially hundreds of thousands of relatives and non-relatives. It's the worst kind of privacy intrusion."
1984

Bush's notes I took a few minutes with Photoshop, and now here are the same notes, rotated and made a little clearer, as if we're looking down from the podium ourselves:Hmm.

Bundesbank rules out gold sales to fill budget gaps
"Such one-off measures are never a good idea," the Bundesbank chief said. "Drawing on capital is not an alternative. It is better to press ahead with consistent debt reduction. And here a lot can be done on the spending side."
Germany has 3,428 tonnes of gold, worth an estimated 54 billion euros (69.5 billion dollars) at current market prices, making it the second largest holder of gold reserves in the world after the United States.
In addition, it has a further 28 billion euros in reserves of foreign currency, such as the dollar and the yen.

Quick Overview

• More rate increases could still be needed to cut inflation, Chicago Federal Reserve President Michael Moskow said.

• French Q2 GDP rose 1.1% QoQ (4.4% annualized) – the fastest rate in five years.
  
  
• S&P raised its 2006 GDP forecast for China to +10.5% from +10.0%.
  
  
• Argentina's jobless rate fell to 10.4% in Q2 from 11.4%.
  
  
• YoY Canada's consumer prices were up 2.4% in July
  
  
• Bloomberg : Coffee production in India, which supplies 4.5 percent of world exports, will probably decline in the coming year because of damage from heavy rains and pests.
  
  
• Hong Kong's port transshipment cargo recorded an average annual growth rate of 12% from 2000 to 2005, the Census & Statistics Department says.
  
  
• Palladium prices advanced to hit a 10-week high on Tuesday, helped by good jewelry demand.
  
  
• Asian soybean rust has been detected near Dayton, in Liberty County -- eastern Texas.
  
  
• Some 100,000 farmers from southwest China's Chongqing have left their hometowns to pick cotton in Xinjiang Uygur 3,300 kilometers away after the worst drought in 50 years destroyed their crops.

Drought, water worries cloud skies for US farmersThe region under the greatest stress is the Great Plains, an area from North Dakota to Texas dubbed the Great American Desert by early explorers but turned into a garden spot in the last century thanks to a single innovation: irrigation.

China to spend US$125 billion to improve water facilities, combat pollution
Water companies from France, England, and Germany already have invested in China's water supply and treatment projects, Zhang said, adding that they have ``contributed a lot to the development of China's water sector with their technologies and experiences.''
Last year, China treated 52 percent of the 2 billion cubic meters (70 billion cubic feet) of sewage produced by its huge cities, an improvement from 2000, when only one-third of wastewater was treated, he said.

Crude oil could hit $300 a barrel "The industry cut too many corners when prices were low. For 25 years, there was not a proper maintenance programme. We backed ourselves into a system - rigs, pipelines and refineries - that rusted away."

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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.