WASHINGTON - August 21, 2008 - U.S. consumers should brace for the biggest increase in food prices in nearly 20 years in 2008 and even more pain next year due to surging meat and produce prices, the Agriculture Department said on Wednesday.

TOKYO, Japan - August 19, 2008 - The Bank of Japan delivered its bleakest assessment of the economy since the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and 1998 in a sign that a global slump ignited by the tight credit market in the United States might be spreading too quickly for Japan to avert recession.

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

LONDON, England - August 19, 2008 - The U.S. money supply has experienced the sharpest contraction in modern history, heightening the risk of a Wall Street crunch and a severe economic slowdown in coming months.

WASHINGTON - August 19, 2008 - The deepening toll from the global financial crisis could trigger the failure of a large U.S. bank within months, a respected former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund claimed today, fuelling another battering for banking shares.

WASHINGTON - August 17, 2008 - The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) reported Friday that the United States Mint has suspended sales of American Eagle gold coins to their network of authorized purchasers.

NEW YORK - August 16, 2008 - America's biggest banks have suffered unprecedented losses from the ongoing credit crisis, and that's made some investors question whether the big financial conglomerates should be broken up in order to survive.

NEW YORK - August 15, 2008 - Cookie retailer Mrs. Fields Famous Brands LLC said on Friday it plans to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to help restructure its business, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

MOSCOW, Russia - August 21, 2008 - The West’s deteriorating relations with Moscow were plunged into deep freeze yesterday when the United States and Poland sealed a deal that will place a key part of Washington’s “Son of Star Wars” anti-missile system on Polish soil. Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. Secretary of State, flew to Poland from the NATO meeting that condemned Russia’s military presence in Georgia, to sign the agreement with Radoslaw Sikorski, the Polish Foreign Minister.

MOSCOW, Russia - August 20, 2008 - The Russian aircraft carrier “Admiral Kuznetsov” is ready to head from Murmansk towards the Mediterranean and the Syrian port of Tartus. The mission comes after Syrian President Bashar Assad said he is open for a Russian base in the area.

WASHINGTON - August 18, 2008 - Half a dozen Blackwater Worldwide security guards have gotten target letters from the Justice Department in a probe of shootings in Baghdad that killed 17 Iraqis, The Washington Post reported.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - August 14, 2008 - Faced with desertions by his political supporters and the neutrality of the Pakistani military, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, an important ally of the United States, is expected to resign in the next few days rather than face impeachment charges, Pakistani politicians and Western diplomats said Thursday.

WASHINGTON -August 18, 2008 - Homeland security officials in the Washington area plan to dramatically expand the use of automated license plate readers to prevent possible terrorist attacks.

DES MOINES, Iowa - August 16, 2008 - State records show that a $50,000 judgment has been awarded to two retired schoolteachers who were strip-searched during a 2004 campaign stop by President Bush.

MIAMI, Florida - August 16, 2008 - A Florida man is dead after being repeatedly shocked by a Taser stun gun.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - August 14, 2008 - Europe today edged closer to recession for the first time since the single currency was introduced in 1999, after the economy shrank by 0.2 per cent during the second quarter.

NEW YORK - August 14, 2008 - Banks repossessed almost three times as many U.S. homes in July as a year earlier and the number of properties at risk of foreclosure jumped 55 percent as falling prices made it harder to sell or refinance.

SADDLE BROOK, New Jersey - August 13, 2008 - Authorities said a son held Bergen County sheriff's officers at gunpoint as they tried to evict his 88-year-old mother from her foreclosed home.

NEW YORK - August 11, 2008 - The failure of IndyMac Bancorp, Inc. and seven other banks this year may erase as much as 17 percent of a government insurance fund and raise premiums for all banks, from Franklin National of Minneapolis to Bank of America Corp.

WASHINGTON - August 11, 2008 - The Federal Reserve is reporting that more banks are tightening lending standards on home mortgages, consumer, and business loans as a deepening credit crisis exerts a heavier toll on the economy.

NEW YORK - August 11, 2008 - Five of North America's largest credit unions are reporting big paper losses on mortgage-related securities, a sign that housing-market distress is spreading even to the most risk-averse financial sectors, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) said on Monday.

LONDON, England - August 10, 2008 - The CBI, the UK's largest employers' organization, has warned that the UK economy is deteriorating faster than it previously thought.

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana - August 13, 2008 - A judge threw out murder and attempted murder charges Wednesday against seven New Orleans police officers accused of gunning down two men on a bridge in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

MONTREAL, Quebec, Canada - August 11, 2008 - Rioting broke out late Sunday in a Montreal neighborhood where police shot a young man to death over the weekend. A police officer was shot in the leg, stores were looted and firefighters were pelted with beer bottles.

MOSCOW, Russia - August 11, 2008 - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has accused Washington of undermining Russia’s attempts to restore peace in the South Ossetian conflict zone. Putin said a decision by the U.S. military to fly 800 Georgian soldiers from Iraq to Georgia showed America was ‘trying to get in the way’.

PHOENIX, Arizona - August 8, 2008 - Four Mexican army soldiers entered southern Arizona and pointed their rifles at a U.S. Border Patrol agent early this week, the Border Patrol said.

Road to Depression
(to the tune of “Road to Morocco”)
by Brent-Emory..Johnson

We’re off on the road to Depression
Where is it, it’s just south of Hell
Where poverty and sickness
Are a way of life
We’ve lost our inspiration
All we have left is strife
Our economic ship has run aground
Like a nation that’s gone bankrupt
We’re Depression-bound!

We’re travelin’ the road to starvation
Just moving as fast as we can
When the truckers who deliver
All our food and drink and more
Stop truckin’ due to high fuel costs
Oh, it will make us sore
‘Cause the shelves will all be empty
At the supermarket store
If we don’t stop fooling around
Then our children will go hungry
We’re Depression-bound!

We’re walking a path of destruction
Our country is going down for good
For years we’ve lived beyond our means
But now our debts are due
It’s time to pay the piper
Who so long supported you
If you listen you can hear the sound
Of America collapsing
We’re Depression-bound!

We’re making our way to extinction
There isn’t so much left for us to do
Our businesses have closed their doors
The manufactories
Have shut down operations
And moved them overseas
The king of despair has been crowned
He has wrapped us in his arms
Oh, we’re Depression-bound!

We’re off on the road to Depression
It isn’t a smooth running ride
Our hopes and dreams have gone away
We have no more time for those
Survival is at stake now
That’s just the way life goes
When our government controls us all
Tyranny then grows
If we ever hope to rebound
We’d better reverse course ‘cause
We’re Depression-bound!

We’re keeping the home fires burning
Each day is much harder than the last
There still remain a vaunted few
Who tirelessly aspire
To help restore our way of life
To standards that are higher
All that we’ve lost must be found
If we’re ever gonna fix this
We’re Depression-bound!

NEW YORK - August 7, 2008 - Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, reported July sales at stores open a year or more rose 3%, short of analysts' expectation that sales would grow 3.4%. Wal-Mart shares fell over 5%.

• Ann Taylor is closing 117 stores nationwide.
• Eddie Bauer will close more stores after closing 27 stores in the first quarter.
• Cache, a women’s retailer, is closing 20 to 23 stores this year.
• Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug, Catherines are closing 150 stores nationwide.
• Talbots, J. Jill are closing stores. Talbots will close all 78 of its kids and men's stores plus another 22 underperforming stores. The 22 stores will be a mix of Talbots women's and J. Jill.
• Gap Inc. is closing 85 stores.
• Foot Locker will close 140 stores.
• Wickes Furniture is going out of business and closing all of its stores. The 37-year-old retailer that targets middle-income customers, filed for bankruptcy protection last month.
• Levitz, the furniture retailer, announced it was going out of business and closing all 76 of its stores in December. The retailer dates back to 1910.
• Zales, Piercing Pagoda plan to close 82 stores by July 31 followed by closing another 23 underperforming stores.
• Disney Store owner has the right to close 98 stores.
• Home Depot is closing 15 more stores amid a slumping U.S. economy and housing market. The move will affect 1,300 employees. It is the first time the world's largest home improvement store chain has ever closed a flagship store.
• CompUSA (CLOSED).
• Macy's has closed 9 stores.
• Movie Gallery video rental company plans to close 400 of 3,500 Movie Gallery and Hollywood Video stores in addition to the 520 locations the video rental chain closed last fall as part of bankruptcy.
• Pacific Sunwear is closing 153 Demo stores.
• Pep Boys, auto parts supplier, is closing 33 stores.
• Sprint Nextel is closing 125 retail locations, with 4,000 employees following 5,000 layoffs last year.
• J. C. Penney, Lowe's and Office Depot are all scaling back.
• Ethan Allen Interiors plans to close 12 of 300 stores to cut costs.
• Wilsons the Leather Experts is closing 158 stores.
• Bombay Company will close all 384 U.S.-based Bombay Company stores.
• Dillard's Inc. will close another six stores this year.

NEW YORK - August 4, 2008 - Wall Street takes a look at 8 larger retailers that are in real trouble. Some are at risk for bankruptcy and each of them could have to cut operations so much that their revenue would be a fraction of what it is now.

WASHINGTON - August 4, 2008 - Consumer spending, after adjusting for inflation, fell in June as shoppers were hit with the biggest increase in prices in nearly three decades.

NEW YORK - August 1, 2008 - The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation revealed on Friday that it had issued warnings to four small U.S. banks that lacked sufficient reserves to cover potential loan losses.

KUWAIT CITY, Kuwait - August 7, 2008 - Two additional United States naval aircraft carriers are heading to the Gulf and the Red Sea, according to the Kuwaiti newspaper Kuwait Times.

PHOENIX, Arizona - August 7, 2008 - According to federal prosecutors more than 40 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen from popular retailers and restaurants.

WASHINGTON - August 7, 2008 - The Department of Defense continued its controversial mandatory anthrax vaccinations program despite high ranking Bush regime officials acknowledging there were problems with the vaccine within months of the Bush regime taking office - well before the events of 9/11 and the October 2001 anthrax letters.

TRENTON, New Jersey - August 6, 2008 - Small towns that will soon have to pay for their State Police patrols hope that drivers who break the law, and not local taxpayers, foot the bill.

CONCORD, New Hampshire - August 4, 2008 - Two men have been sentenced to prison for helping tax evaders Ed and Elaine Brown.

SAN FRANCISCO, Kalifornia - August 1, 2008 - Garbage collectors would inspect San Francisco residents' trash to make sure pizza crusts aren't mixed in with chip bags or wine bottles under a proposal by Mayor Gavin Newsom, who has developed a reputation for disregarding state and federal laws in pursuit of his own personal and political agenda.

WASHINGTON - July 31, 2008 - A House committee voted yesterday to cite former top White House aide Karl Rove for contempt of Congress, as its Senate counterpart explored punishment for alleged Bush regime misdeeds.

ALBANY, New York - July 30, 2008 - Warning of an approaching economic calamity, Gov. Paterson yesterday called an emergency session of the state Legislature - and raised the specter that New York may have to sell off roads, bridges and tunnels to close a massive budget deficit.

CHICAGO, Illinois - July 29, 2008 - Customers showing up for lunch at Bennigan's restaurants in Chicago and across the country found quite a surprise Tuesday morning, when all the corporate-owned locations had signs on display reading "closed for business."

NEW YORK - July 28, 2008 - The duds say it all - and it's depressing.

Taking a cue from the grim economy, this fall's fashions at Banana Republic, Gap and H&M are featuring a distinctly Depression-era trend of cloche hats, pencil skirts, conductor caps and baggy, vintage-style dresses.

WASHINGTON - July 28, 2008 - U.S. regulators took over two banks on Friday and sold them to Mutual of Omaha Bank, the sixth and seventh bank failures this year as financial institutions struggle with a housing bust and credit crunch.

NEW YORK - July 28, 2008 - According to The New York Times, Financial Times, and other noteworthy publications, hedge funds and other investors are buying up farms, farmland, fertilizer, grain elevators, shipping equipment and other necessities for producing food.

WASHINGTON - July 30, 2008 - In a little-reported brief filed late Tuesday with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Bush regime asked the court to keep any review of the warrantless wiretapping law passed earlier this year by Congress secret.

WASHINGTON - July 30, 2008 - On January 2, 2008, Army Staff Sergeant Ryan Maseth was electrocuted while taking a shower at the Legion Security Forces Building in Baghdad. Press reports have indicated that contractor KBR ignored repeated warnings about the unsafe wiring.

JERUSALEM, Israel - July 30, 2008 - The United States has agreed to place advanced missile detection systems in Israel.

WASHINGTON - July 29, 2008 - Senator Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator and a figure in Alaska politics since before statehood, has been indicted on seven counts of falsely reporting hundreds of thousands of dollars in services he received from a company that helped renovate his home.

By Jerome Corsi

July 28, 2008 - The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America is dead, says Robert A. Pastor, the American University professor who for more than a decade has been a major proponent of building a North American Community.

NEW YORK - July 28, 2008 - Soaring corn and soy prices on top of rising construction costs and tight credit markets have pushed about a dozen U.S. biofuel plants to file for bankruptcy protection, experts said.

Critics of the president let loose before the judiciary committee. One Republican calls it 'impeachment lite.'

WASHINGTON - July 26, 2008 - Call it the un-impeachment hearing.