Even as it receives a billion pounds of free food from international donors, Sudan is growing and selling vast quantities of its own crops to other countries, capitalizing on high global food prices at a time when millions of people in its war-riddled region of Darfur barely have enough to eat.
read more | digg story
A 12 year old American citzen visiting South Ossetia was rescued by Russian Troops and clarifies that they were under siege by the Georgians. Her Aunt who tries to speak on this issue gets rudely silenced, Real Journalism anybody?
read more | digg story
The gradual weakening of the overall magnetic field can take hundreds and even thousands of years. But smaller, more rapid fluctuations within months may leave satellites unprotected and catch scientists off guard, new research finds
read more | digg story
Originally built in 1901, this walkway now serves as an approach to Makinodromo, the famous climbing sector of El Chorro. Scared of Heights? Maybe you shouldn’t watch.
Will be adding this to my list of “to visit” places.
Most U.S. and foreign corporations doing business in the United States avoid paying any federal income taxes, despite trillions of dollars worth of sales, a government study released on Tuesday said.
Scheunemann was a PNAC member, an architect of the Iraq war and a lobbyist for Georgia.
McDowell warns reinstated powers could play in net neutrality debate, lead to government requiring balance on Web sites.
this years protest will feature Green Party Presidential nominee Cynthia McKinney. Rallies will be held in cities around the world. Cynthia will be in NYC. If you are not able to make it to New York City, plan a protest in your city locally.
BP shut down a pipeline carrying Caspian oil from Azerbaijan to the Georgian Sea on Tuesday citing concern about security in Georgia. Toby Odone, a BP spokesman, said the 150,000 barrels a day pipeline from Baku to Supsa on the Georgian Black Sea had been closed as a “security precaution.” What does this mean? I don’t know but it cant be good!
U.S. Economy: Retail Sales Fell in July, Led by Autos (Update2)
By Bob Willis and Timothy R. Homan
Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) — Sales at U.S. retailers dropped in July for the first time in five months as record gasoline prices and tighter credit reduced automobile purchases.
Spending dropped 0.1 percent from June, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Excluding cars, sales rose 0.4 percent, less than anticipated. The Labor Department said prices of imported goods soared 21.6 percent in the year to July, the most since at least 1982.
Consumer spending, which makes up more than two-thirds of the economy, is likely to keep fading as a boost from tax rebates wanes and households try to cope with job losses and house-price declines. Macy’s Inc., the No. 2 U.S. department-store chain, today said profit may fall more than it forecast. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Kohl’s Corp. and J.C. Penney Co. also report this week.
“With the tax-rebate effects dissipating and the labor market weakening, we should see consumer spending slow through the remainder of the year,” said Dana Saporta, an economist at Dresdner Kleinwort in New York, which correctly forecast sales excluding autos.
Import prices rose 1.7 percent in July from the previous month, more than economists had projected, after a 2.9 percent increase in June, Labor figures showed.
“We are in the midst of a long-term trend in inflation,” said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at Merk Investments LLC in Palo Alto, California. “We can’t sugarcoat this. It’s not a good thing.”
Stocks, Treasuries
Stocks dropped and Treasuries were little changed after the reports. Benchmark 10-year notes yielded 3.90 percent as of 11:55 a.m. in New York. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Stock Index fell 1.1 percent to 1,275.81.
Retail sales excluding gasoline decreased 0.2 percent, the Commerce Department said.
The drop in total purchases matched the median estimate of 75 economists in Bloomberg’s survey. Sales in June rose a revised 0.3 percent, compared with the previous estimate of 0.1 percent. The median projection for sales excluding autos was a 0.5 percent gain.
Americans are buying fewer cars as gasoline prices soar. The Commerce Department said sales at auto dealers and parts stores dropped 2.4 percent, after industry figures earlier this month showed the weakest annual pace of buying since 1993.
Trends `Conspiring’
“A whole host of factors — unemployment growing, wages flat to stagnating, the wealth effect of lower house prices and stock prices — all are conspiring to forecast, I think, weaker sales ahead,” Thomas Duesterberg, chief executive officer of the Manufacturers Alliance, said in a Bloomberg Television interview.
Separate Commerce Department figures today showed inventories at U.S. businesses rose half as fast as sales in June as companies prepared for weaker spending. The 0.7 percent gain in the value of unsold goods at factories, retailers and wholesalers was larger than forecast.
Filling station sales rose 0.8 percent in July after jumping 4 percent the prior month, today’s figures showed.
Still, an oil-industry report today showed that U.S. gas consumption dropped in the first seven months of the year as record pump prices forced consumers to change their behavior.
Gasoline use declined 2.1 percent to an average 9.07 million barrels a day through July, erasing five years of demand growth for the period, the American Petroleum Institute said.
Gas Prices
Regular unleaded gasoline reached an average monthly record of $4.06 a gallon in July, a cent higher than in June, according to AAA. Prices have since declined.
Banks are making it harder for consumers to get credit after posting billions of dollars of losses amid the slide in securities tied to mortgages.
Most U.S. lenders “reported having tightened their lending standards and terms on all major loan categories over the previous three months,” the Fed said Aug. 11 in its quarterly Senior Loan Officer Survey.
The rate on 36-month loans for new cars rose to an average of 6.77 percent so far this year from 6.10 percent the previous five years, according to bankrate.com. Rates on 30-year fixed mortgages have increased to 5.91 percent from 5.66 percent over the same period.
Today’s Commerce report indicated Americans spent the cash from tax rebates on more than just gasoline. Sales at furniture stores rose 1 percent, the most since January 2007, and climbed 0.8 percent at electronics outlets.
Purchases at general merchandise retailers increased 0.3 percent.
GDP Impact
Excluding autos, gasoline and building materials, the retail group the government uses to calculate gross domestic product figures for consumer spending, sales gained 0.3 percent, after a 0.5 percent increase in June. The government uses data from other sources to calculate the contribution from the three categories excluded.
Wal-Mart last week said same-store sales will probably slow this month after rising 3 percent in July because most shoppers have already received their tax rebates.
More than 90 percent of the estimated $100 billion in rebate checks forecast to go out this year had been sent as of mid-July, Treasury Department figures show.
Customers bought groceries, flat-panel televisions and video games, while apparel and home goods were “slightly negative,” Wal-Mart said. Consumers are spending “more cautiously” as stimulus checks end, Eduardo Castro-Wright, the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer’s head of U.S. stores, said in a statement.
Spending, which has grown every quarter since 1992, may stall in the last three months of this year after growing at a 0.6 percent annualized pace from July to September, according to a monthly Bloomberg survey of economists.
Spending growth in the year that ended in June was the slowest since the 12 months through December 1991.
The world’s largest economy will expand at an average 0.7 percent annual pace from July through December, half the gain in the first six months of the year, this month’s survey indicated.
To contact the reporter on this story: Bob Willis in Washington bwillis@bloomberg.net