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It has been on a buying binge in the United States over the last seven years, snapping up roughly $1 trillion worth of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed debt issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Those investments have been declining sharply in value when converted from dollars into the strong yuan, casting a spotlight on the central bank’s tiny capital base. The bank’s capital, just $3.2 billion, has not grown during the buying spree, despite private warnings from the International Monetary Fund.

Affidavits released by law enforcement which were filed in support of the search warrants used in raids over the weekend, and used to support probable cause for the arrest warrants, are based on paid, confidential informants who infiltrated the RNCWC on behalf of law enforcement. They allege that members of the group sought to kidnap delegates to the RNC, assault police officers with firebombs and explosives, and sabotage airports in St. Paul. Evidence released to date does not corroborate these allegations with physical evidence or provide any other evidence for these allegations than the claims of the informants. Based on past abuses of such informants by law enforcement, the National Lawyers Guild is concerned that such police informants have incentives to lie and exaggerate threats of violence and to also act as provacateurs in raising and urging support for acts of violence.

“These charges are an effort to equate publicly stated plans to blockade traffic and disrupt the RNC as being the same as acts of terrorism. This both trivializes real violence and attempts to place the stated political views of the Defendants on trial,” said Bruce Nestor, President of the Minnesota Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. “The charges represent an abuse of the criminal justice system and seek to intimidate any person organizing large scale public demonstrations potentially involving civil disobedience, he said.”

“There is nothing in the decree that sets limits or a framework. Whether the database is used with or without moderation depends only on orders from up high. The electronic Bastille is upon us,” he wrote.

He was referring to the notorious Paris fortress in which French kings could arbitrarily imprison opponents until it was stormed on July 14, 1789, at the start of the French Revolution.

The decree says the aim is to centralize and analyze data on people aged 13 or above who are active in politics or labor unions, who play a significant institutional, economic, social or religious role, or who are “likely to breach public order.”

The information that can be collected includes addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, physical appearance, behavioral traits, fiscal and financial records, and details about people who have personal ties with the subject.

HBOS, Britain’s biggest mortgage lender, said house prices in the world’s fourth biggest economy fell 1.8 percent last month alone, as the global credit crunch had made it much harder for people to get mortgages.

But Bank of England policymakers are expected to hold interest rates at 5 percent for a fifth straight month when they end their meeting at noon due to concerns over inflation, currently running at more than double the bank’s target.

More than 25,000 pounds has been wiped off the value of the average home in the last year as a decade-long boom turned into a bust that helped bring the economy to a standstill in the second quarter of 2008.

Construction and retail companies have been among the hardest hit and consumer confidence has been battered as two-thirds of British households own their homes — and economists say it could get a lot worse.

“Very negative housing market sentiment heightens the risk that house prices will continue to fall sharply for some time to come,” said Howard Archer, economist at Global Insight.

“Unemployment is now rising at an accelerating rate which increases the likelihood that people will have to sell their house for ‘distressed’ reasons. This would lead to more houses coming on to the market and would be liable to depress prices.”

The survey, carried out by retail analysts Verdict Research, found that meat and fish prices had gone up by almost 23 percent while vegetables cost almost 15 percent more.

The largest increase was in the cost of a pack of four croissants which had increased by 47.4 percent, while items such as basmati rice, skinless chicken breasts and mayonnaise were all 40 percent more expensive.

On Wednesday the British Retail Consortium said food price inflation had increased to an annual 10 percent, while shop prices in August were 3.8 percent higher than a year ago.

The figures suggest that prices are rising well above inflation with the Consumer Prices Index rate currently 4.4 percent.

With house prices also falling, commentators said the rising food prices had led the public to look to start making savings in their expenditure.

The study, conducted on monkeys, whose brain development is similar to that of humans, raises the possibility that ailments such as depression, Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia may be linked to the controversial chemical.

Almost all people living in industrialized societies are exposed to BPA as a result of trace amounts leaking from food and beverage containers.

The researchers, from the University of Guelph in Ontario and Yale University in Connecticut, found that low-level exposure to bisphenol A, or BPA, was able to block the formation of some types of synapses in the brain, the tissue that allows brain cells known as neurons to communicate with each other. The proper development of these synapses is considered crucial for remembering thoughts and experiences, and impairments in them are common in sufferers of depression and other brain-related ailments.

The study, to be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is a significant advance over previous rodent-based findings that BPA is able to impair synapses. That research was open to criticism that what happened in the brains of a mouse or a rat was of limited applicability to the more complex brains of humans.

“If bisphenol A at these kind of low doses is able to interfere with [monkey synapses] then there has to be concern that continuous exposure to bisphenol A is probably not a good thing,” said Neil MacLusky, a biomedical science professor at the University of Guelph and one of the study authors.

The researchers were able to cause the harmful effects with a daily dose of 50 micrograms per kilogram of body weight – the human-exposure limit currently considered safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (A microgram is one millionth of a gram.) Although Health Canada’s limit is half that of the EPA, Dr. MacLusky said standards in both countries are too lax and should be reduced.

“If we’re getting a complete blockage of the effect” at the U.S. standard, then Canada’s standard “is probably not safe,” he said, although he cautioned that the doses used in his experiment were much higher than the exposure people would get from food and beverage containers.

…

In April, Health Canada proposed adding BPA to Canada’s list of toxic substances, which would make the country the first in the world to take such regulatory action.

Health Canada also said it planned to ban its use in baby bottles and have the infant formula industry cut the amount leaking from cans into baby food, based on concerns that current infant exposure didn’t provide enough of a safety margin.

In response, most major retailers removed plastic water and baby bottles made with BPA from their shelves.

About three billion kilograms of BPA are produced each year, making it one of the highest volume synthetic chemicals.

…

Last month, researchers at the University of Cincinnati linked BPA to heart attacks and adult onset diabetes through its ability to suppress the production in human fat tissue of a key hormone that protects people against these conditions.

The National Toxicology Program, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, issued a report yesterday on BPA that raised concerns the chemical may be able to alter the prostate gland and the brain, and cause behavioural changes, particularly in cases of exposure during fetal development and childhood.

More than 120 people have died, thousands are homeless and agriculture and transport networks have been washed away, prompting calls for emergency international aid.

“There are a lot of people who have been on top of the roofs of their homes over 24 hours now,” the interior minister, Paul Antoine Bien-Aime, told Reuters. “They have no water, no food and we can’t even help them.”

Haiti, vulnerable because of its flimsy dwellings and soil erosion, has been the worst affected by the tempests that have battered the Caribbean and US Gulf coast. Parts of Cuba have also been devastated, prompting Fidel Castro to compare the impact to a nuclear attack.

Tropical storm Fay started the crisis three weeks ago. Hurricane Gustav wreaked havoc last week by uprooting trees and triggering floods and mudslides that killed dozens.

Tropical storm Hanna struck on Tuesday with 65mph winds, killing at least 61 people and flooding the northern Haitian city of Gonaives with two metres of water. Corpses and the carcasses of donkeys and cows – flies swarming over them – bobbed down streets turned into rivers.

“I saw 10 bodies float in the flooded streets of the city,” the police commissioner, Ernst Dorfeuille, told the local Radio Metropole.

Gonaives lies in a flat river plain between the ocean and deforested mountains that run with mud even in light rains.

With roads impassable and winds too strong for helicopters, UN peacekeepers reached the city on inflatable boats. They found hundreds of survivors clinging to rooftops, begging for water and food – women on balconies waved empty pots and spoons.

“I lost everything, even the baby’s clothes,” Jezula Preval, one of 1,500 people huddled in the a desolate shelter nicknamed the “Haiti Hilton”, told the Associated Press. She gave birth to a healthy boy on Tuesday, after floodwaters swallowed her house.

Patients in a flooded hospital had crowded into an upper floor room. At the church about 100 people huddled on a balcony, waiting for the water to recede.

“There is no food, no water, no clothes,” said the pastor, Arnaud Dumas. “I want to know what I’m supposed to do … we haven’t found anything to eat in two, three days. Nothing at all.”

The UN soldiers secured a warehouse in preparation for food distribution, but could not impose order on the chaos. “It is a great movement of panic in the city,” the interior minister said from an inflatable speed boat.

The US embassy in Port-au-Prince declared a disaster situation, freeing $100,000 in emergency aid, a spokeswoman, Mari Tolliver, said. She said hygiene kits, plastic sheeting and water jugs for up to 5,000 families were being sent from Miami.

Some officials feared that the toll of casualties and damage would be on a par with tropical storm Jean, which left 2,000 dead in 2004.

Cuba was also counting the cost yesterday. Officials said the onslaught from Gustav in the western province of Pinar del Rio and the Isle of Youth was equivalent to the past 14 storms combined. “There are severe damages to the electrical system. It’s practically on the floor,” said the vice- president, Carlos Lage. “In terms of buildings and homes, roofs are generally gone. The island is exposed to the sky.”

Effective organisation minimised loss of life in Cuba, but could not save property. State media reported that 503 schools and 100,000 homes were affected. Some 3,306 tobacco curing barns were destroyed, along with thousands of tonnes of tobacco leaves, coffee and grapefruit.

Castro, the former president, said the damage was immense. “The photos and videos transmitted on national television reminded me of the desolation I saw when I visited Hiroshima.”

Cheney used his one-day visit to Georgia to reinforce battle lines in the increasingly direct struggle between Washington and Moscow for the upper hand along Russia’s southern border. His visit to Azerbaijan, Georgia and Ukraine was aimed at stressing America’s “deep, abiding interest” in the region, in response to the claim by Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, that Moscow had “privileged interests” in former Soviet states.

The US challenge was undermined by the collapse of Ukraine’s pro-western coalition on the eve of Cheney’s arrival in Kiev at the end of his three-country trip yesterday. The crisis threatened to derail President Viktor Yushchenko’s efforts to win Ukraine Nato and EU membership.

Cheney made clear however that it would not shake Washington’s deep involvement in the region, now focused on Georgia after last month’s conflict with Russia over South Ossetia.

Shrugging off Russian recognition of the breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, he declared the Bush administration’s “strong commitment to Georgia’s territorial integrity”. The US would stand with Georgia, he said, “as you work to overcome an invasion of your sovereign territory and an illegitimate attempt to change your country’s borders by force”.

He also made a point of reaffirming US support for Saakashvili, who Moscow has derided as “a political corpse”. In pointed contrast, Cheney told the Georgian leader: “You have been fearless in response to the occupation of your country and steadfast in your principles. We respect you.”

The two men made a joint appearance near an aircraft factory destroyed by Russian bombing, to watch a US military transport plane unload blankets, part of the $1bn in emergency aid the US has offered Georgia to help the country rebuild. The package makes Georgia the biggest recipient of US aid after Israel, Egypt and Iraq.

US officials stressed the package did not include aid to rebuild Georgia’s military. That will be decided later this year.

Georgian membership of Nato is due to be discussed at an alliance ministerial meeting in December. Russia insisted yesterday that such a move remained a red line in east-west relations. Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s representative to Nato, said Moscow would respond by halting co-operation with Nato over Afghanistan.

A recent study of those who live without found that about two-thirds fall into either the “crunchy granola set” or the “religious right, ultraconservative” camp, said researcher Marina Krcmar, a professor of communication at North Carolina’s Wake Forest University. Krcmar interviewed 120 people from 62 different households who do not watch television, as well as 92 people from 35 households with TV, and described her findings in a new book, “Living Without the Screen” (Routledge, 2008).

Aversion to television, it turns out, is a common ground for the very liberal and the very conservative.

“I interviewed one guy who was 31, single, an artist living in Boston, who saw himself as countercultural,” Krcmar told LiveScience. “The next day I had an interview with a religious woman with ten children who lived in the Midwest. These people seem like they would disagree about almost everything, but if you ask them about television the things that came out of their mouths were almost identical.”

Why do people give it up?

Krcmar herself lives on the dark side, having given up television about 13 years ago.

“It’s just something I don’t want in the home – it’s a perpetual annoyance, like a gnat,” she said.

The motivations for most people who abandon TV fall into three categories, Krcmar found.

Some give it up to avoid exposing their families to the excessive sex, violence, and consumerism they feel are promoted onscreen. Others object to the medium itself, claiming television intrudes too much into their lives, interferes with conversation and takes time away from the family. Finally, some people have a beef with the power and values of the television industry and don’t want its influence in their homes.

In contrast to the average American adult, who watches three hours of television a day, non-watchers fill their time with a plethora of activities.

“Non-viewers had a greater variety of things that they did with their free time than viewers did,” Krcmar said. “It’s not just that they were reading instead of watching TV. They were hiking and biking, and going to community meetings and visiting with friends. Overall, they tend to do more of everything.”

Are they right?

Science does in fact support many non-watchers’ worst fears about TV.

“The research tends to show that increased exposure to television and violence results in greater aggression in children,” Krcmar said. “That’s a pretty consistent finding.”

Though not all children become more violent, and everyone reacts uniquely, it’s fair to say that what we watch affects us.

When parents did cut television out of their homes, they reported that their kids didn’t bug them as much for junk food and toys advertised on TV. They also said giving up television made their children easier to manage.

“It’s sort of counter-intuitive, because people think their kids would drive them nuts without TV,” Krcmar said. “But parents found that kids became very good at entertaining themselves and didn’t need to be entertained all the time by something that was lively and active. They didn’t complain about being bored.”

Downsides of life without TV

People who had relinquished television didn’t report too many downsides. Most felt satisfied getting their news from newspapers and radio, and while some people said they felt less connected to pop culture, “many adults noted that as a point of pride,” Krcmar said.

Even most kids in non-watching households seemed to agree with their parents that they were better off without the reviled medium, though a number of kids around ages 10 to 13 said they resented feeling left out when other kids talk about shows and actors on television. By the time they reached later adolescence around age 14 and 15, though, most had come full circle and said they didn’t really like TV and didn’t mind doing without.

For those who want to experience some of the benefits of life without the tube, but don’t feel ready to go cold turkey, Krcmar said she thinks good things can come just by setting limits.

“I think you can have the benefits just by having kids watch less television,” she said. “Be selective about content. You don’t go to a restaurant and let them eat anything on the menu. Instead you say choose something that’s healthy that you would enjoy.”