Putin: American Behind Georgian Conflict

Putin Accuses U.S.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has accused the United States of orchestrating the conflict in Georgia to benefit one of its presidential election candidates. In an exclusive interview with CNN's Matthew Chance in the Black Sea city of Sochi on Thursday, Putin said the U.S. had encouraged Georgia to attack the autonomous region of South Ossetia. Putin said his defense officials had told him it was done to benefit a presidential candidate -- Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are competing to succeed George W. Bush -- although he presented no evidence to back it up. "U.S. citizens were indeed in the area in conflict," Putin said. "They were acting in implementing those orders doing as they were ordered, and the only one who can give such orders is their leader."

1.4 Billion Living In Poverty

World Poverty 'More Widespread'
The World Bank has warned that world poverty is much greater than previously thought. It has revised its previous estimate and now says that 1.4 billion people live in poverty, based on a new poverty line of $1.25 per day. This is substantially more than its earlier estimate of 985 million people living in poverty in 2004. The Bank has also revised upwards the number it said were poor in 1981, from 1.5 billion to 1.9 billion. The new estimates suggest that poverty is both more persistent, and has fallen less sharply, than previously thought. However, given the increase in world population, the poverty rate has still fallen from 50% to 25% over the past 25 years. "This is pretty grim analysis coming from the World Bank," said Elizabeth Stuart, senior policy advisor at Oxfam.

The End of Dollar Hegemony

The End of Dollar Hegemony Transcript

Studies Link Stress To Mental Health Of Unborn Child

Stress of war on mothers linked...

Pregnant women who endure the psychological stress of being in a war zone may be more likely to give birth to a child who develops schizophrenia, psychiatry researchers say. Dr. Dolores Malaspina, a professor of psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine and her colleagues analyzed medical records from more than 88,000 people who were born in Jerusalem from 1964 to 1976. Females born to women who were in their second month of pregnancy during the Six-Day War between Arabs and Israelis in June 1967 were 4.3 times more likely to develop schizophrenia than females born at other times, the team reported in Wednesday's online issue of the journal BMC Psychiatry. Males born to women at the same stage of pregnancy were 1.2 more likely to develop schizophrenia.

Ice storm babies prone to developmental delays

Babies born to women who were pregnant during the 1998 ice storm in Eastern Canada and faced unusual stresses show some developmental delays such as lower IQ scores, researchers have found. The study, to be published in September's issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, used data from 178 women who were pregnant during the ice storm. The researchers also examined 89 children who were born then. In January 1998, 30 people died and nearly 1,000 were injured when the storm dumped as much as 108 millimetres of freezing rain on parts of Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. More than three million Canadians lost power for as long as 40 days, according to the study.

Iranian Astronaut Within 10 Years

Iran Aims To Send An Astronaut...
Iran's space agency plans to send a manned rocket into space in the next 10 years, state television reported on Thursday. Space agency chief Reza Taghipoor said the exact date of the mission would be determined in the next year. The announcement is the latest signal of Iran's growing ambition to develop a space and satellite program and comes days after the country announced it had launched a dummy satellite into orbit. Taghipoor said the two-stage rocket, launched Sunday, released equipment that beamed flight data back to ground control, though U.S. officials said the rocket fell short of its claimed success.

2002 Ron Paul - Russian Strike On Georgia

1 in 464 At Risk Of Losing Home

U.S. Foreclosures Rise 55%

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. Bank seizures rose 184 percent to 77,295, the steepest increase since reporting began in January 2005, RealtyTrac Inc., an Irvine, California-based seller of foreclosure data, said today in a statement. More than 272,000 properties, or one in 464 U.S. households, got a default notice, were warned of a pending auction or foreclosed on.

Gene Doping Athletes

How "Gene Doping" Could Create Enhanced Olympians

Although athletes at the Beijing Olympics have been subjected to some of the most aggressive testing ever for performance-enhancing drugs, no case of so-called gene doping has yet been detected. But experts say Oympic athletes may soon be able to genetically enhance their muscles to be faster, stronger, and better able to recover after workouts—if they aren't already.Gene doping uses techniques similar to gene therapies developed to treat muscle-wasting diseases, such as muscular dystrophy. Injected into an athlete, a harmless virus could carry a performance-enhancing gene and splice it into a muscle cell, said Theodore Friedmann, a gene therapy researcher at the University of California, San Diego

US Education System Failing Youths

Intel Cites US Education 'Crisis'

The chairman of the world's biggest computer chipmaker has said the US "education system is in crisis and failing the youth of today". Craig Barrett, who made his "one political statement" at the Intel developers' forum being held in San Francisco, urged US politicians to act. He told the audience: "Nations are as strong as their educational systems. "The rest of the emerging world recognises this is the key to staying competitive."

Canada's Economic Slow Down

Slow Economy Take Toll...
The slowing economy is taking its toll on household finances, driving up debt at a faster pace than incomes and assets, new analysis from CIBC World Markets shows. “This is a fact because the economy is underperforming,” CIBC economist Benjamin Tal said in an interview about his analysis of household credit. In the first quarter of 2008, household debt in Canada rose almost 3 per cent but personal disposable income rose just 2 per cent, pushing the debt-to-income ratio up to 130 per cent from 122 per cent a year earlier. At the same time, the level of assets hardly changed during the first quarter of 2008, since the stock market was correcting and house prices were levelling off. So the debt-to-asset ratio rose to almost 18 per cent, a full percentage point higher than in early 2007 and the highest level since early 2003, the report shows.