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In a letter addressed to Bob Dudley, BP managing director, National Incident Commander Thad Allen said tests had detected a “seep a distance from the well and undetermined anomalies at the well head.” The letter was posted yesterday on the website of the joint information center for the spill.

No decision was announced on whether BP will be ordered to open the valves sealing the well, which would allow oil to resume flowing. BP would resume efforts to capture the oil and funnel it to vessels at the surface after the well is opened.

When it comes to national security, all too often no expense is spared and few questions are asked – with the result an enterprise so massive that nobody in government has a full understanding of it. It is, as Dana Priest and William M. Arkin have found, ubiquitous, often inefficient and mostly invisible to the people it is meant to protect and who fund it.

The articles in this series and an online database at topsecretamerica.com depict the scope and complexity of the government’s national security program through interactive maps and other graphics. Every data point on the Web site is substantiated by at least two public records.

Because of the nature of this project, we allowed government officials to see the Web site several months ago and asked them to tell us of any specific concerns. They offered none at that time. As the project evolved, we shared the Web site’s revised capabilities. Again, we asked for specific concerns. One government body objected to certain data points on the site and explained why; we removed those items. Another agency objected that the entire Web site could pose a national security risk but declined to offer specific comments.

We made other public safety judgments about how much information to show on the Web site. For instance, we used the addresses of company headquarters buildings, information which, in most cases, is available on companies’ own Web sites, but we limited the degree to which readers can use the zoom function on maps to pinpoint those or other locations.

Our maps show the headquarters buildings of the largest government agencies involved in top-secret work. A user can also see the cities and towns where the government conducts top-secret work in the United States, but not the specific locations, companies or agencies involved.

However, Moody’s lead analyst for Ireland Dietmar Hornung said it was a “gradual, significant deterioration, but not a sudden, dramatic shift”, and the agency believed Ireland has “turned the corner”.

The general government debt-to-GDP ratio was at 64 per cent at the end of last year, up from 25 per cent before the financial crisis took hold, and is continuing to rise.

“Today’s downgrade is primarily driven by the Irish government’s gradual but significant loss of financial strength, as reflected by its deteriorating debt affordability,” said Mr Hornung.

The support provided to the banking system, which includes the transfer of billions of euro worth of loans from banks to the National Asset Management Agency, was also cited as a key factor in the rating downgrade. Recapitalisation measures already announced may reach €25 billion, the agency said, but Anglo Irish Bank may require further support.

“While we do not expect the government – not even in a moderately stressed scenario — to incur permanent losses in excess of 25 per cent of the country’s 2009 GDP as a result of these obligations, we believe that the uncertainty surrounding final losses would exert additional pressure on the government’s financial strength,” the agency said in a statement.

The move comes just over a year after Moody’s last downgraded the country’s rating. On July 2nd 2009, the agency gave the bonds a Aa1 rating, with a negative outlook.

Today the Whangarei Growers Market is a thriving venture providing a living for around 30 local producers. Many more seasonal suppliers jostle for space throughout the year.

The market was started 12 years ago by Robert Bradley and Murray Burns in what has been likened to a David and Goliath struggle.

Robert Bradley says the supermarket chains were using their buying power to dictate prices, with low returns driving small to medium sized growers out of business.

Tomato grower and market co-founder Murray Burns was one of those whose margins were being whittled away.

“The only way to deal with that was to get much bigger or close down – and we wanted to do neither,” says Murray.

The pair were inspired by the concept of village markets in Europe and the United Kingdom, and a resurgence of farmers’ markets in the United States.

They found other growers who shared their predicament and a group of 12 held the first market in a car-park in Whangarei in 1998.

It now takes place every Saturday morning and, when Country Calendar visited, everything from fruit, vegetables, meat, eggs, milk and cheese to macadamia nuts and olive oil was on sale. The market has a rule that all produce must originate in Northland.

The local-only principle has kept struggling growers afloat and encouraged new businesses that may not otherwise have been viable. Asparagus, for example, is now grown in Northland for the first time in many years.

The market is also a venue for growers and consumers to meet face-to-face – there is a requirement that growers are also the stallholders.

At the peak of the growing season, the market attracts up to 6000 shoppers over the four hours it is open. Around 50 pallets, or 2000 cases, of produce is sold each Saturday.

Robert Bradley says the key to success has been offering significant qualities of high quality local produce at moderate prices.

Many similar markets have sprung up around the country in the last decade but the Whangarei enterprise deliberately distances itself from the popular farmers’ market movement.

Robert believes some of the newer markets have got sidetracked into “food fashion”.

The statistics show that 32 soldiers killed themselves in June, the highest number in a single month since the Vietnam era. Twenty-one of them were on active duty, while 11 were in the National Guard or Army Reserve in an inactive status.

Passage by Congress of the national health care legislation has had an unintended consequence to the nation’s coin collectors, vest-pocket dealers who buy and sell coins, and larger dealers who are frequent buyers of coins that collectors periodically liquidate as they trade up their collections for better coins, or simply sell to take a small profit or loss.

What has happened is that effective Jan. 1, 2012, the whole system of giving and receiving Internal Revenue Service 1099 forms will be turned on its head and all persons (including corporations) who are in business will now have to give 1099 tax reporting forms for coins and other goods that they sell as well as buy.

The responsibility for issuing forms kicks in at $600 for coins or bullion – not a very high level and one that has already started sounding alarm bells. It doesn’t matter in what form payment is made, whether cash, check, credit card, or Yap stone money, the $600 threshold applies.

There’s a bill introduced by Rep. Dan Lungren (H.R. 5141), which has gathered over 80 members of Congress as co-sponsors to repeal this section. Evidently, however, the drafters of the provision think there is a $17 billion loophole that this plugs.

The Industry Council for Tangible Assets is alerting member dealers and the public at large in the hope that some sense of outrage will lead to a ready modification before the law becomes operational in 2012.

Form 1099 is used to report independent contractor income, income from dividends, income from other things – and is one of the reasons why children receive tax bills for work or labor or services performed.

Section 9006 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Public Law 111-148, signed into law by President Obama this spring) turns 1099 forms into reporting forms not only for independent contractor’s income – what they have long been used for – but also to show sales, gains and losses on purchases and sales of goods as part of a trade or business.

The section reads (in relevant part) “SEC. 9006. EXPANSION OF INFORMATION REPORTING REQUIREMENTS. (a) IN GENERAL. – Section 6041 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 is amended by adding at the end the following new subsections:

‘‘(h) APPLICATION TO CORPORATIONS. – Notwithstanding any regulation prescribed by the secretary before the date of the enactment of this subsection, for purposes of this section the term ‘person’ includes any corporation that is not an organization exempt from tax under section 501(a).

‘‘(i) REGULATIONS. – The secretary may prescribe such regulations and other guidance as may be appropriate or necessary to carry out the purposes of this section, including rules to prevent duplicative reporting of transactions.’’

(b) PAYMENTS FOR PROPERTY AND OTHER GROSS PROCEEDS. –

Subsection (a) of section 6041 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 is amended –

(1) by inserting ‘‘amounts in consideration for property,’’ after ‘‘wages,’’
(2) by inserting ‘‘gross proceeds,’’ after ‘‘emoluments, or other’’, and
(3) by inserting ‘‘gross proceeds,’’ after ‘‘setting forth the amount of such.’’

The property section means that if B. Max Mehl was selling coins to another major dealer of that era, a 1099 would have to be issued. When he bought from the public, the same thing is also required. The “report” does not necessarily measure profit or loss, but it does show activity.

The purchase was enough to move the entire global cocoa market, sending the price to the highest level since 1977, and triggering rumours and intrigue in the City.

It is unclear which person, or group of traders, was behind the deal, but it was the largest single cocoa trade for 14 years.

The cocoa beans, which are sitting in warehouses either in The Netherlands, Hamburg, or closer to home in London, Liverpool or Humberside is equivalent to the entire supply of the commodity in Europe, and would fill more than five Titanics. They are worth £658 million.

Analysts said it was very unlikely that a chocolate company, such as Nestle or Kraft, or even their suppliers, would buy such a huge order in one go and that is was probable that one or a number of speculators, possibly hedge funds, had attempted to corner the market. By doing this, they would have control of the entire supply in Europe, forcing the price yet higher.

Eugen Weinberg, an analyst with Commerzbank, said: “For one buyer it would likely be a little bit too large. It would be a crazy number. That said, if you’re cornering the market …”

“If it looks like cornering, feels like cornering and the price difference between Europe and the US is so large, it probably is cornering.”

“There is some play taking place. No one really knows what is going on.”

Andreas Christiansen, president of the German Cocoa Trade Association, said the “hefty” price move was “a mirror of what can be done if people control the physical stock”.

Cocoa prices, which had been on the rise this year, rose 0.7 per cent yesterday, to £2,732 per metric ton. By contrast, cocoa being traded on the US exchange fell.

This is the highest price for cocoa in Europe since 1977, and comes after a series of weak harvests in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, the main areas where the crop is grown. Fears of floods in the Ivory Coast have sent prices even higher, as speculators have bet on another poor harvest, and a shortage of supply.

At the same time demand is on the increase, especially as China and India develop an ever sweeter tooth.