Second fire at an offshore oil facilities in less than five months has spurred some to press the Obama administration to extend its six-month ban on deepwater drilling, but critics of that plan say the arguments fall flat.

After storm weakens to Category 1 storm, a hurricane warning remains in effect for southeastern Massachusetts, where forecasters say fierce winds and heavy rains pose a threat to the region | |

WEATHER CENTER | TRACKER | LOCAL COVERAGE | VIDEO

Wind Scale | Follow Earl

American Muslim organization is asking the U.S. Army to deny a Muslim soldier's request for conscientious objector status, accusing him of treason and urging the military to punish him to the full extent of law

Gates: 'Tough Days Ahead' in Afghan South | VIDEO

New employment figures renew GOP's call for Obama to replace his economic team, as the president sought to put the best face on what many say is just more evidence of an economy stuck in neutral | VIDEO

For a second time, an Ohio woman has given birth to a baby who couldn't wait and arrived on the drive to the hospital.

The recipient of a rare double hand transplant says he feels "fantastic" and can wiggle fingers on both his new hands.

Eyewitness says Lohan ran light and hit nanny pushing stroller, then left the scene, but actress denies
Lindsay Hot Shots

More than 70 years after its release, the Hollywood classic is still revered as one of the best of all time. Find out what happened to the stars | 'Gone With the Wind' Star Dies

It's 'The American' vs. 'Machete' at the Labor Day Weekend box office
Holiday Movie Preview

Zsa Zsa Gabor had a workout tape called 'It's Simple Darling.' Plus more celebs who rode the workout gravy train...

After four decades in the business, Geraldo Rivera has opened our eyes with with ground-breaking interviews — now hear highlights from the man himself
GERALDO: 40 YEARS IN TV

Moonshine conjures images of clandestine deliveries of hooch in jelly jars, but that'll soon change if modern distillers have anything to say about it

From license plates you would like to see to making over the Oval Office, here's YOUR take on some of the week's top stories

A powerful predawn earthquake hit New Zealand, causing water mains to break and some buildings to crumble, though there were no immediate reports of deaths.

Six job recruiters have been indicted in federal court in what the FBI has called the largest human-trafficking operation ever to result in charges in the United States.

Hurricane Earl weakened to a Category 1 storm Friday with winds of 85 mph, but the Northeast was still preparing to feel its fury.

A cargo plane has crashed in an uninhabited area near the Dubai airport, according to the official WAM news agency in the United Arab Emirates.

A Florida judge sentenced Rachel Wade, the 20-year-old woman convicted of second-degree murder for fatally stabbing her romantic rival in a fight last year, to 27 years in prison Friday.

European scientists say they've figured out the recipe for water in space: Just add starlight.

After two days of meetings and talks led by President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Israeli and Palestinian leaders leave Washington deadlocked over the contentious issue of Israeli settlements.

A shootout between soldiers and suspected drug dealers in northeast Mexico left 25 of the suspects dead, the regional military said Thursday.

When the month of Ramadan began, I received a letter from Laura Fattal, the mother of one of the three young American hikers detained in Iran. In it, Fattal appealed to me, the first Muslim scholar she had contacted, to intervene on behalf of her son and his two friends.

Bethany Storro doesn't usually wear sunglasses, but she got a surprise paycheck and bought a pair earlier this week. Those sunglasses, she is convinced, saved her eyesight when a woman threw a cup of acid in her face 20 minutes later.

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A major earthquake hit New Zealand's second biggest city Christchurch early on Saturday, bringing down power lines, ripping up roads and wrecking building facades, but authorities reported no deaths.

NEW YORK/DETROIT (Reuters) - The U.S. government is likely to take a loss on General Motors Co in the first offering of the automaker's stock, six people familiar with preparations for the landmark IPO said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Friday he would outline new measures next week to boost the U.S. economy, but analysts were skeptical he would be able to deliver a big enough package to lift growth significantly.

DUBAI (Reuters) - Concerns over Israeli access to BlackBerry data, and the use of the device by the United States to spy on the United Arab Emirates are behind the Gulf state's moves to curb the smartphone, Dubai's police chief said.

HYANNIS, Massachusetts (Reuters) - A weakened but still dangerous Hurricane Earl churned up the U.S. eastern seaboard toward New England and Canada on Friday after dealing North Carolina's coast only a glancing blow.

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - A suicide bomber struck a rally in the Pakistani city of Quetta on Friday, killing at least 54 people in the second major attack this week and piling pressure on a U.S.-backed government overwhelmed by a flood crisis.

HOUSTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government on Friday launched an investigation into Mariner Energy Inc's Gulf of Mexico platform fire, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors in Gabriel Capital LP, a so-called feeder fund that funneled money to imprisoned swindler Bernard Madoff, were awarded $12.74 million by a panel of three arbitrators, court records show.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Employment fell for a third straight month in August, but the drop was far less than expected and private hiring was a positive surprise, relieving concerns about a stalling economic recovery.

HOUSTON (Reuters) - BP Plc removed a failed blowout preventer from atop its ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well on Friday afternoon, a company spokesman said.

The war in Iraq has entered a new phase, as U.S. forces move toward an advisory role. Among the legacies of the conflict is the effect it had on the U.S. military and the Army in particular. The years-long fight in Iraq strained the Army almost to the breaking point. The Army has also been forced to reinvent itself and is now fighting a brand of warfare -- counterinsurgency -- that it had been reluctant to embrace.

Mohammed Saqar from Gaza and Dana Levy from Israel met when they were teenagers at a peace camp in the U.S. They once both believed in peace in the Middle East. Now, 14 years later, they are still friends -- but both have lost hope for Israel and Gaza.

Robert Siegel speaks with our regular political commentators, E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and Brookings Institution and David Brooks of The New York Times, about the economy and the campaign season.

Bjorn Lomborg, the controversial Danish economist, has pushed his way back into the global warming debate with a book that proposes "smart solutions" to climate change. Those promised solutions rely heavily on R&D aimed at making clean energy cheap, rather than attempts to shut down dirty energy sources. Lomborg says his views haven't changed, but more people are willing to listen to him because international negotiations on limiting greenhouse emissions have accomplished so little.

In his first public speech in four years, a military-clad Fidel Castro stood on the steps of the University of Havana and addressed thousands of students. He warned them U.S. and Israeli tensions with Iran are pushing the world toward nuclear war.

This past Sunday, 13-year-old motorcycle racing star Peter Lenz was killed during a warm-up lap at the Indy 500 track. Why do we allow such young teens to drive motorcycles at speeds topping 120 mph? Who are the parents who support this sport?

The Stark County Fair in northeastern Ohio features poultry and pie, a headless lady and a midway. Fairgoers this year were also treated to a good bit of politicking, as freshman Democrat Rep. John Boccieri fights to hold onto the 16th district. His vote for the president's health care bill is one point of contention.

Robert Siegel talks with sportswriter Stefan Fatsis about the start of the college football season. Alliances have changed with the re-organization of some of the largest conferences as schools chase the almighty dollar. And the now-customary early season blood-bath has begun as weak teams face powerhouses.

London Mayor Boris Johnson, is a great believer in the idea of cycling to work, and since taking office, he's done a lot to encourage Londoners to take their commute on two wheels. NPR's new London correspondent, Philip Reeves, also likes the idea of riding his bicycle to work -- but is finds his fellow cyclists seem to take the whole thing far too seriously.

The United Nations has delayed the release of a report detailing a decade of gruesome attacks against civilians in the Congo after Rwanda protested the findings. Drafts of the report leaked to the media last week and accused Rwandan troops of slaughtering Hutus in Congo in the 1990s.

Melissa Block speaks with Meil Hendrickson, regional coordinator for International Medical Corps in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hendrickson's team has treated more than 200 women who were raped in rebel attacks a month ago. The area is known for its gold and mineral deposits, and attacks on villages in the area is frequent.

As summer comes to an end this weekend, "Recovery Summer" too sputters to an end. The Obama administration's hopes that the spring's jobs growth would continue were not realized. On Friday, the president said he'd be proposing new plans to give the economy a bit more juice.

The unemployment rate grew in August from 9.5 percent to 9.6 percent. But that's mostly because 114,000 temporary Census jobs ended. The job decline is less than most economists expected as the private sector added 67,000 new jobs last month.

During her opening statement in a televised debate Wednesday, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer stumbled and stammered, and even paused for more than 10 seconds. Then she bolted after the debate when reporters asked her about a statement she made about headless bodies supposedly found in the Arizona desert. Melissa Block speaks with E.J. Montini, a columnist for The Arizona Republic, about Brewer's performance during the debate.

It's hard to get incentives right -- even if you're a professional economist, and you just want to give your kid an allowance.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he envisions two or three more years of combat operations in Afghanistan before the U.S. transitions to an advisory role, a mission likely to last years more.

Washington's response to the country's stubbornly high unemployment rate will depend in part on who wins an increasingly intense debate over its causes.

If regulators matter to Apple, it is as a threat to its growth. Except, that is, when it comes to what Steve Jobs likes to call a hobby: Apple TV.

The U.S. economy lost 54,000 jobs in August as census workers continued to exit payrolls, but the private sector added 67,000 jobs. The unemployment rate rose to 9.6%.

Canadian miner Goldcorp said it had reached a deal to buy Andean Resources in a deal that values the gold company at around $3.42 billion.

Goldman Sachs has decided to close its principal-strategies unit, which does its proprietary trading, in the wake of financial-overhaul regulation passed by Congress.

T-Mobile USA is in talks to distribute Huawei Technologies's new Google-powered smartphone this holiday season. The Ideos phone could be priced under $100 in the U.S.

Google said the Texas attorney general's office is conducting an antitrust review of the Web giant's core search-engine business, another sign of growing government scrutiny of the company.

UBS and other investors go to court to try to force U.K. fund manager Reade Griffith to speed up the return of their money.

A UPS cargo plane crashed Friday evening after takeoff near Dubai, killing two pilots in the package delivery giant's first fatal aircraft accident.

The global dependency on the members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries for oil will rise as production by non-OPEC nations falls.

BP disclosed various lessons and capabilities built from trouble-shooting the big oil spill in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.

Toshiba said that it will release by year-end a tablet computer that runs on Google's Android operating system as the company aims to compete with Apple's iPad.

BP said it has spent around $8 billion in response to the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and expects to resume its relief-well drilling shortly.

It wasn't the biggest bidding war the tech world has ever seen, but the battle between titans H-P and Dell for a humble maker of data-storage systems certainly qualified as one of the wildest ever.

Richard Pechter, a director of Finra and NYSE's regulatory arm, said this week that he made an offer for Value Line's troubled mutual-fund business.

Campbell Soup quarterly profit rose 64% as the company cut costs, but its soup sales continued to decline despite efforts to attract consumers with more promotions.

Boeing Co. doesn't plan to finance any of the 787 aircraft due for delivery next year, while one of its largest customers said it needs more clarity on the final delivery schedule before it can approach lenders.

Brazil's state-run energy company Petrobras launched the world's largest-ever sale of shares to finance a $224 billion, five-year investment program.

When does a company that has made financial disclosures fail to satisfy disclosure requirements?

Singapore intervened in the foreign-exchange market and Korea resumed its intervention after a two-week break, while Japan has signaled it is weighing entering the market for the first time in six years.

Roche said it has launched a cost-cutting and efficiency plan in the wake of increased price pressures and a series of drug-development setbacks.

Fed chief Ben Bernanke told a panel that he had no options to prevent Lehman Brothers' failure in September 2008 even though he knew its downfall would be "catastrophic."

TPG sold its remaining stake in Ping An Insurance for $1.16 billion in the latest example of how the U.S. company is reaping profits from its investments in Asia.

The U.S. Treasury is concerned about the political fallout of allowing overseas investors to buy big stakes in General Motors through the car maker's initial public offering this fall.

The Russian prime minister's move helped push up the price of wheat and sparked fears of supply shortages and broader unrest over rising food costs.

Abbott pulled the plug on the sale of its European flu-vaccine business when initial bids came in below the company's expectations.

Employers passed health-insurance costs onto employees at a sharply higher rate this year, and businesses' premiums grew more slowly than they have in a decade, according to an annual survey.

Disney and Time Warner Cable reached an accord after marathon negotiations over a long-term deal that will provide Time Warner Cable subscribers with a wide swath of Disney's programming.

Ben Roethlisberger's suspension cut from six to four games by the NFL.

The Dallas Cowboys have traded wide receiver Patrick Crayton to the San Diego Chargers on Friday.

Nyjer Morgan's wild week has landed him an eight-game suspension, one of nine punishments handed out Friday by Major League Baseball following a brawl between Washington Nationals and Florida Marlins.

Ole Miss quarterback Jeremiah Masoli, who was told he wouldn't be eligibile until the 2011 season earlier this week, has been cleared to play immediately, a school source told ESPN's Joe Schad.

The NHL has signed off on Ilya Kovalchuk's latest contract with the New Jersey Devils.

Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Byron Leftwich has a second-degree sprain of the medial collateral ligament in his left knee, sources told ESPN senior NFL analyst Chris Mortensen on Friday.

Kim Clijsters beat Petra Kvitova and Hurricane Earl with a quick victory at the U.S. Open.

Floyd Mayweather Jr., who has steadfastly refused to answer questions about the most recent round of failed negotiations for a fight with Manny Pacquiao, has unleashed a racist and homophobic rant against the Filipino star.

Zach Johnson strengthened his case as a Ryder Cup pick Friday by rolling in putts from everywhere in easy scoring conditions ahead of Hurricane Earl, giving him an 8-under 63 to share the early lead with Jason Day at the Deutsche Bank Championship.

The NFL has fined Lions rookie defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh $7,500 for slamming down Browns quarterback Jake Delhomme last week during a preseason game.

Twelve players from North Carolina won't play in the 18th-ranked Tar Heels' opener against No. 21 LSU in Atlanta on Saturday amid an ongoing NCAA investigation.

Broncos running back LenDale White tore his Achilles tendon Thursday night and will miss the regular season, a team source told ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter on Friday.

The NCAA has declared Alabama defensive end Marcell Dareus ineligible for two games for accepting improper benefits.

Agent: Dallas Cowboys WR Patrick Crayton seeks his release from team.

Matt Barkley and Ronald Johnson connected on three touchdowns to make Lane Kiffin a winner in his first game as Southern California coach.

The couple were arrested for alleged drug possession

The couple and their two daughters spend time with Casey Affleck and his family in California

Plus: Kim Kardashian indulges in a manicure, and more star sightings

The SNL funnyman also addresses his relationship with Jennifer Aniston

As promised, she stays covered up for her Dancing with the Stars gig

The actress says riding around Paris in the designer's Rolls-Royce was "insane"

The actress, whose husband is also battling cancer, finds the movie star an inspiration

The couple tour a chapel in Hawaii, "but they're taking things day by day," says a source

Despite reports that she grazed the carriage, some sources say she narrowly missed the woman and child

The Resident Evil: Afterlife star makes a pronoun slip while promoting the film

The internet has become too important for governments to ignore

GOVERNMENTS are increasingly finding ways to enforce their laws in the digital realm. The most prominent is China’s “great firewall”. But China is by no means the only country erecting borders in cyberspace. The OpenNet Initiative, an advocacy group, lists more than a dozen countries that block internet content for political, social and security reasons. They do not need especially clever technology: governments go increasingly after dominant online firms because they are easy to get hold of. In April Google published the numbers of requests it had received from official agencies to remove content or provide information about users. For more on how governments and companies are erecting borders in cyberspace see article.

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Galloping inflation in American college fees

FOR decades, college fees have risen faster than Americans’ ability to pay them. Median household income has grown by a factor of 6.5 in the past 40 years, but the cost of attending a state college has increased by a factor of 15 for in-state students and 24 for out-of-state students. The cost of attending a private college has increased by a factor of more than 13 (a year in the Ivy League will set you back $38,000, excluding bed and board). Academic inflation makes most other kinds look modest by comparison. Students may not be getting a good deal in return (see story). ...

China now has more warships than America, according to the IISS

THE International Institute for Strategic Studies (better known as the IISS), reckons China now has more warships than America, which long possessed the biggest fleet. As it can be hard to distinguish a warship from other boats, the IISS uses its own definition of what counts and what does not. This striking trend is yet another manifestation of the rise of China. But it also reflect the cost of warships and other weapons built by America (see article). Philip Pugh, author of “The Cost of Seapower”, a 1986 study of shipbuilding costs since the end of the Napoleonic wars, argues that the industrial revolution made the problem more acute: the rapid pace of technological change set off a race to build bigger, more powerful, more heavily armed and better-protected battleships. At some point, as unit prices rise, one of two things must happen: countries must either scale back their ambition, or seek game-changing technology, as they did when the battleship gave way to the submarine and aircraft-carrier.

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The best-selling political memoirs in Britain

TONY BLAIR, Britain's former prime minister, published his memoirs on Wednesday September 1st. The few people who have already read them cover to cover report that, in addition to the familiar stuff about how awful his relationship with Gordon Brown was, Mr Blair admits to being manipulative and to having a developed sense of his own destiny. The book is likely to sell well, though it seems that British book buyers are rather more interested in American politicians than in their own. Three of the four bestselling political memoirs in Britain (since barcodes made such things easier to count) are by Americans. The Brit who separates the Clintons near the top, comedian John O'Farrell, was never really a politician: he stood for election once (in Maidenhead) and then made some rather archaic puns about the experience.

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How America's opinion of the Iraq war has changed

OVER seven years after the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, America's direct military involvement is now coming to an end. President Barack Obama will set out his new policy in a speech from the Oval Office on Monday August 31st. American public opinion on the war has changed enormously during that time. When George Bush prematurely declared an end to major combat operations in May 2003 most Americans were behind the war, with only a quarter saying it was a mistake according to Gallup polling data. But the public's mood turned when allegations of torture by US soldiers came to light in early 2004. The bloody terror campaign by Sunni militia groups, which began in earnest in 2006 and killed Iraqis by the thousands and American troops by the hundreds, also had a profound effect on opinion.

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China's traffic jam was inevitable

CHINA tends to do everything a bit bigger than the rest of the world, including traffic jams. One snarl up this month along a highway leading into Beijing was at one point over 100km long and left traffic gridlocked for eleven days until it mysteriously vanished on Thursday August 26th. Roadworks and booming demand for coal and other goods sent thousands of lorries heading for China's capital. Beijing is set to spend 80 billion yuan ($11.8 billion) on transport infrastructure in 2010—but it may not be enough. In recent years rising vehicle ownership has outpaced the growth of China's express highway system by a distance. China's new motoring class may have to get used to spending many more hours behind the wheel than they might otherwise intend.

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Who has most freedom to travel?

THE ability to visit a foreign country without the cost and hassle of obtaining a visa is a welcome bonus for any traveller. It is also a barometer of a country's international alliances and relations. A report released on August 25th by Henley & Partners, a consultancy, shows that Britons have the fewest visa restrictions of the 190-odd countries (and territories) for which data are available. British citizens can enjoy a three-day stay for business or pleasure to 166 destinations without needing a visa. Generally, citizens of rich countries and trade-based economies have more freedom to travel than those of countries suffering from war or repression. Compare, for instance, the restrictions on South Korea with North Korea and Hong Kong with those on China.

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Where has all the plastic gone?

THE amount of plastic thrown away by Americans increased fourfold between 1980 and 2008. It is a reasonable assumption that as more plastic is produced and discarded, this will affect oceanic pollution. But a study of the north Atlantic and the Caribbean, just published in Science, suggests things are not getting worse. Between 1986 and 2008 there was no increase in the concentration of plastic in the areas looked at despite a steady rise in the amount discarded. Kara Law and her colleagues at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts have no explanation for this lack of accumulation. A programme by the American plastics industry that resulted in a decrease in the number of pellets in the water is still insufficient to explain the data. Nor does the missing plastic seem to have sunk; trawls at depth show no sign of it. The Sargasso Sea of legend, and its modern equivalent, the Bermuda Triangle, are supposed to be places where things disappear without trace. Dr Law seems to have come up with a real example.

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Bankruptcies rise in America

BANKRUPTCY filings rose 20% in the year to June 30th compared with the previous 12-month period, according to statistics released on August 17th by the Administrative Office of the US Courts. This takes quarterly filings to their highest point since tougher bankruptcy laws were introduced at the end of 2005. That change brought a spike of bankruptcies, as companies and individuals rushed to declare themselves broke under the more lenient old regime. The data suggest that an older trend is reasserting itself. This is could be more bad news for America—or it could just mean that creative destruction is alive and well.

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Asia overtakes Europe, in beer terms

CHINA;S remarkable growth is as apparent in beer consumption as it is in more formal economic indicators. In the space of a couple of decades the country has gone from barely touching a drop to become the world;s biggest beer market, a considerable distance ahead of America. And beer drinking in China is growing fast, by nearly 10% a year according to Credit Suisse;s World Map of Beer. This might seem like good news for the four big firms that dominate global brewing. Between them ABI, SABMiller, Carlsberg and Heineken have nearly half the world market. But unlike America and other hugely profitable mature markets where beer drinking has levelled off or is in decline, China;s drinkers provide slender profits. Still it remains a market with huge potential, though foreign brewers must now be rather tired of hearing that.

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China's economy overtakes Japan's in real terms

CHINA has become the world's second biggest economy according to data released on Monday August 16th. Japan's economy fell behind China's at market exchange rates in the second quarter (it has been number three in PPP terms for some time). These numbers are not strictly comparable: Japan's data have been seasonally adjusted while those for China have not. Quibbles aside, Japan will surely be eclipsed soon, if it has not been already. Data compiled by Angus Maddison, an economist who died earlier this year, suggest that China and India were the biggest economies in the world for almost all of the past 2000 years. Why they fell so far behind may be more of a mystery than why they are currently flourishing.

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The jobless recovery, long prophesied, is here

FEARS that the recovery of America's economy after the financial crisis would fail to spur an increase in employment are being realised. In July, 52,000 fewer people were employed on non-farm payrolls than in July 2009, the month in which it is estimated the American economy climbed out of recession. Comparing the latest recession with previous ones is unflattering. The American economy has seen downturns this severe and recoveries this jobless, but never one on top of the other.

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Shadow economies have grown since the financial crisis began

A NEW estimate of the size of shadow economies around the world sheds light on a worrying trend. Friedrich Schneider, of Linz University in Austria, reckons that, for the first time in a decade, transactions taking place outside the taxable and observable realm of the official economy captured by GDP numbers are increasing. Shadow economy does not mean ill-gotten gains here, but legal economic activity that is not taxed. Mr Schneider attributes this reversal to the financial crisis, which seems to be pushing more people in OECD and EU countries to avoid the extra burden of taxation by resorting to informal transactions. The shadow economy, in other words, can act as a cushion when times are tough.

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The world's biggest broadband providers

THE ten largest broadband service providers in the world gained over 23m subscribers in the year to the end of March. Together they have 191m subscribers, or almost 40% of the world’s 492m broadband customers, according to TeleGeography, a research firm. The lion's share is taken by China Telecom and China Unicom, which together account for a fifth of all global broadband subcribers. Both companies gained around 9m more subscribers over the past year, equivalent to the entire broadband subscriber base of Verizon.

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In which European countries are people least likely to attend religious services?

THE proportion of people who regularly attend religious services has declined steadily throughout Europe in recent years. But habits vary widely across countries. According to the latest European Social Survey conducted in 2008 and 2009, over 60% of Czechs say they never attend religious services, with the exception of “special occasions” such as marriages and christenings. France, Britain and Belgium are also secular nations, with over half of respondents never going to services. The most regular attenders among the 28 countries polled are in Cyprus and Greece, where only 2.4% and 4.9% respectively say they do not go to church.

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How long can corporate America’s profit rebound continue?

THE quarterly results season that is drawing to a close has revealed that corporate profits are back within a whisker of the all-time highs achieved before the downturn in late 2008. American profits are already back to 11% of GDP. Corporate America is reaping the rewards from cutting costs, especially in capital investment and labour, through an unpleasant mix of redundancies, reduced hours and lower pay. The great squeeze cannot go on forever, of course, but it shows no sign of slackening. Figures released on Friday August 6th show the unemployment rate remained steady at 9.5% in July, but non-farm payroll employment fell by 131,000, some 65,000 more than expected. The great decoupling of profits from jobs could last for a long time.

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Who produces most diamonds?

AMID much media interest, Naomi Campbell, a model, gave evidence on Thursday August 5th at the special court for Sierra Leone in The Hague. Charles Taylor, the former dictator of Liberia, who is on trial for war crimes in neighbouring Sierra Leone, is accused of giving Ms Campbell a “blood diamond” in 1997. Ms Campbell admitted receiving a gift of “dirty looking stones”. Since 2000, the governments of over 75 countries have signed up to the Kimberley Process, which certifies that diamonds produced for foreign markets have not helped to fund violence. The Process has its critics, who point out that diamonds from the huge Marange mine in Zimbabwe have just been cleared for sale, despite much evidence of government-sponsored violence there.

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The cost of breakfast rises

SEVERE drought and wildfires in Russia, the world’s fourth largest wheat producer, have destroyed a fifth of the country’s crop and sent prices soaring. Since the end of June wheat prices have more than doubled. On Wednesday August 4th, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization cut its forecast for 2010 global wheat production by 5m tonnes, to 651m tonnes. Kazakhstan and Ukraine, both big wheat producers, have also been hit with dry weather. In Canada the problem is the reverse: unusually wet weather has prevented seeding and destroyed crops. But wheat is not alone. The price of orange juice has also risen recently, probably thanks to bets placed on the likelihood of tropical storms. Coffee prices, which hit a 13-year high, are a result of poor harvests. Taken together, the raw ingredients for breakfast in much of the rich world have increased in price by 25% since the beginning of June.

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Stolen cars which are most costly to insurers

AMERICA'S car thieves show clear preferences in the vehicles they steal. Size, speed and luxury are all important factors when it comes to selecting a target. But the country's car thieves are, at least, patriotic. If America's carmaking giants have struggled in recent years to build vehicles that match the public taste, they are keeping car thieves happy. Only two of the top ten stolen cars in America (measured in terms of cash paid out by insurers) come from a foreign manufacturer. America's car criminals are more suspicious of Japanese or European models and are reluctant to be seen in smaller cars. A reluctance to nick Toyota Priuses shows they have little regard for the environment either.

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