Reasons Why You Should Avoid Bottled Water

August 16, 2010

Natural News

By: Cindy Jones-Shoeman

Many Americans buy bottled water across the United States every day; this practice stems from the belief that drinking more water is good for a person. Yes, water is truly the best thing a person could ever drink, but bottled water is not the best way to do it. In fact, drinking bottled water is a bad idea. There are several reasons why people should stop drinking bottled water now.

Bottled Water is Usually Just Tap Water

That’s right. Bottled water, most of the time, is simply tap water from whatever municipality the bottling company is located in. Sometimes it’s purified and filtered; sometimes it’s not.

Why would a person want to spend a dollar or two on water that comes straight out of the faucet? At the very least, when a person pours water out of his own tap, he usually knows what’s in his city’s water, and he can filter it before drinking it. But there are no labels on bottled water that report to consumers what is in the city water poured into a bottle.

Bottled Water Harms the Environment

Here’s a frightening fact: 2.5 million plastic bottles are thrown away every hour in the United States. Yes, 2.5 million an hour. Imagine how that amount contributes to swelling landfills as well as the ever-growing plastic vortex in the Pacific Ocean.

Drinking water in one’s kitchen from a cup produces little waste in regard to the environment. But if a person consumed all her daily water from bottles, imagine how quickly that would add up. Bottled water is bad for the planet.

Drinking Bottled Water Exposes Consumers to Harmful Chemical

No, that chemical doesn’t come from the water; it comes from the plastic. Many plastic bottles contain the chemical bisphenol A, also known as BPA, which can leach into the water in the bottle.

Why is this a problem? Studies indicate that BPA exposure is toxic and exposure can cause myriad health problems and can wreak havoc on hormone levels. The FDA is, in typical fashion, moving slowly on the issue, so it is up to consumers to keep themselves safe.

Buying Bottled Water Puts More Money into the Pockets of Big Business

Do people really want to hand over their primary drinking source to big business? It’s one thing when a company supplies a product and then tries to convince consumers they have a need for it; it’s another thing when they take a real need out of people’s hands.

According to the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Americans spend approximately 4 billion dollars a year on bottled water. That money goes into the pockets of the very companies that also try to hook people on soft drinks containing caffeine, sugar, and other potentially harmful additives.

But What About Healthful Bottled Water?

Forget “healthy” bottled water. It’s a fallacy. John Robbins reports that many of these so-called healthful bottled waters, ones that are marketed as containing vitamin, mineral, and herbal supplements, are nothing more than “sugar-water.”

As with any product, a consumer would do best to read the labels of these kinds of products. When a water product contains sugar, how healthy can it be for a person? It’s not, no mattered how it’s hyped.

Bottled Water is Bad!

It doesn’t matter what companies claim; bottled water is a bad idea. People will be healthier and the environment will be better cared for if people don’t spend their money on bottled water.

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ADA Calls On You To Help Improve Student Nutrition

August 16, 2010

Natural News

by: Jonathan Benson

The American Dietetic Association (ADA) recently published a position paper that urges local schools and their surrounding communities to work together to improve the nutritional quality of food in schools. The ADA is also advocating for better nutrition education programs to assist students in making healthy lifestyle choices.

“[W]hen nutrition education, physical activity and a healthful school environment are ensured, learning is enhanced and students develop lifelong, healthful eating habits,” explains the ADA in its paper.

The group also contends that, since dietary habits are established when children are very young, it is important for nutrition education programs to be implemented as early as possible. Establishing a healthy diet and a pattern of regular exercise will also go a long way to prevent illness from developing later in children’s lives.

On August 5, the U.S. Congress reauthorized the national child nutrition programs with the help and input of the ADA. Though somewhat conventional in approach, as it primarily follows the official Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the programs are a good start towards improving the overall health and well-being of today’s children.

These policies include revamped school lunch and breakfast programs designed to improve the nutritional quality of the food served, and better incentives for children to pick healthy options over less healthy ones.

Another goal of the program is to link more nutrition experts to local schools where they can provide expertise and help support ongoing efforts to maintain the integrity of the various initiatives.

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Offshore Wind Turbines Could Power The Entire Planet

August 16, 2010

Natural News

By: David Gutierrez

Offshore wind turbines could provide enough electricity for the entire world if connected into the right kind of grid, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Delaware and Stony Brook University and published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.

A major drawback of wind power is that as weather patterns fluctuate, the amount of power generated also fluctuates — making electricity unreliable. To test a way around this problem, researchers examined five years’ worth of wind speed data from 11 different monitoring stations along the East Coast of the United States. They found that as expected,wind turbines placed at any of these monitoring stations would fluctuate in their power-generating capacity over time.

The researchers then modeled what would happen if all 11 turbines were connected to each other into one power grid.

“When we simulate a power line connecting them, called here the Atlantic Transmission Grid, the output from the entire set of generators rarely reaches either low or full power, and power changes slowly,” the researchers wrote. “Notably, during the five-year study period, the amount of power shifted up and down but never stopped.”

The researchers said that for wind power to meet more of civilization’s energy needs, turbines need to be strategically sited taking regional weather patterns into account, so that one turbine will be in wind while another is experiencing a lull.

“A north-south transmission geometry fits nicely with the storm track that shifts northward or southward along the U.S. East Coast on a weekly or seasonal time scale,” researcher Brian Colle said. “Because then at any one time a high or low pressure system is likely to be producing wind (and thus power) somewhere along the coast.”

The study confirms that making wind power into a major energy source would require the construction of a massive new energy infrastructure. Critics of wind and solar power have pointed out that because these power sources require such large-scale construction, their fossil fuel and other environmental footprint is much greater than is usually supposed.

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Smoking Makes You Stupid

August 16, 2010

Natural News

By: David Gutierrez

Smoking is directly correlated with a lower IQ, according to a study conducted by researchers from Tel Aviv University in Israel and published in the journal Addiction.

Researchers tested the IQs of more than 20,000 healthy men between the ages of 18 and 21 who were either serving in the Israeli military or who had recently completed their service. Twenty-eight percent of the men in the sample smoked, while 3 percent were former smokers and 68 percent had never smoked.

The average IQ of the smokers was 94, compared with 101 among the non-smokers. Men who smoked more than a pack of cigarettes a day had an average IQ of 90. Although a normal IQ falls between 84 and 116, the difference observed in the study is still considered significant.

In twin pairs where one brother smoked and the other did not, the smoker consistently tested at a lower IQ.

The study could not prove whether smoking caused a lower IQ or having a lower IQ predisposed people to smoke, but the researchers did rule out the possibility that low socioeconomic status produces both smoking and a lower IQ.

“In the health profession, we’ve generally thought that smokers are most likely the kind of people to have grown up in difficult neighborhoods, or who’ve been given less education at good schools,” said researcher Mark Weiser, also of Tel Hashomer Hospital. “But because our study included subjects with diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, we’ve been able to rule out socioeconomics as a major factor.”

Weiser noted that people with lower IQs are also more likely to suffer from other forms of drug addiction and to have health and weight problems.

“People on the lower end of the average IQ tend to display poorer overall decision-making skills when it comes to their health,” he said.

“Our study may help parents and health professionals help at-risk young people make better choices.”

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Antibiotics On The Verge Of Becoming Useless

August 16, 2010

Natural News

By: Jonathan Benson

The journal Lancet Infectious Diseases recently published a sobering piece about how antibiotics are becoming wholly ineffective as treatments for infection. According to the report, even the most powerful antibiotics available are largely inadequate at tackling the emerging forms of new and powerful “super” bacteria.

Antibiotic overuse has become a pandemic problem. They are used in animal feed to make animals grow more quickly and they are handed out like candy by many doctors to people with almost any ailment. And they are simply not working anymore to fight infection.

Published by Professor Tim Walsh and his colleagues, the paper explains how a new gene called NDM 1 is changing the way infectious bacteria survive. The NDM 1 gene passes among bacteria like E. Coli andKlebsiella pneumoniae and makes them resistant to antibiotics. Even carbapenems, the most powerful antibiotics available, are no match for these new bacteria.

“This is potentially the end. There are no antibiotics in the pipeline that have activity against NDM 1-producing enterobacteriaceae. We have a bleak window of maybe ten years where we are going to have to use the antibiotics we have very wisely, but also grapple with the reality that we have nothing to treat these infections with,” explained Walsh in a recentGuardian piece.

According to Dr. Livermore, director of the antibiotic resistance monitoring and reference laboratory at the U.K. Health Protection Agency, the entirety of modern medicine could collapse as a result of antibiotics becoming useless.

“A lot of modern medicine would become impossible if we lost our ability to treat infections,” he emphasized.

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FDA Approves ‘Week-After’ Pill

August 16, 2010

The Washington Post

By: Rob Stein

The Food and Drug Administration approved a controversial new form of emergency contraception Friday that can prevent a pregnancy as many as five days after sex.

The decision to allow the sale of the pill, which will be marketed under the brand name “ella,” was welcomed by family-planning proponents as a crucial new option to prevent unwanted pregnancies. But critics condemned the decision, arguing that it was misleading to approve ella as a contraceptive because the drug could also be used to induce an abortion.

Ella can cut the chances of becoming pregnant by about two-thirds for at least 120 hours after a contraceptive failure or unprotected sex, studies have shown. The only other emergency contraceptive on the market, the so-called morning-after pill sold as Plan B, is significantly less effective, becomes less effectual with each passing day and will not work after 72 hours.

Supporters and opponents both said the decision marked the clearest evidence of a shift in the influence of political ideology at the FDA. The last time the FDA considered an emergency contraceptive — making Plan B available without a prescription — the decision was mired in controversy amid similar concerns voiced by antiabortion activists. After repeated delays, Plan B was approved for sale to women 17 and older without a prescription.

Ella, which was approved in Europe last year and is available in at least 22 countries, was unanimously endorsed by an FDA advisory committee less than two months ago. Women will need a prescription but could keep a supply at home.

“Women’s health advocates appreciate that the review process for ella was consistent with standard FDA procedure and based on scientific evidence, not politics,” said Kirsten Moore, president of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project. “Approval of ella is further evidence that the FDA is committed to restoring scientific integrity in its decisions.”

For their part, critics said the decision reflected the abortion-rights stance of the Obama administration.

“They are choosing political ideology and the abortion industry’s radical agenda over women’s health and the safety of their children,” said David Bereit, director of the Fredericksburg-based antiabortion group 40 Days for Life.

If the history of Plan B is any indication, ella’s approval is likely to mark the beginning of many years of political and regulatory battles over the drug.

Critics are already concerned that ella’s approval as a contraceptive will make it eligible to receive federal tax subsidies, which are banned for the abortion pill RU-486,. They also are concerned that ella will be included in the services that health plans will have to pay for under the new health-care overhaul law.

“By misclassifying ella as emergency contraception, this administration has paved the way to covertly allow federal funding for abortion,” said Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), who called on Obama to issue an executive order prohibiting federal funds from paying for ella.

Ella is also likely to exacerbate a long-running debate over whether doctors have an obligation to write prescriptions for medication they oppose on moral grounds and whether pharmacists have an obligation to fill them. Many doctors and pharmacists refuse to write or fill prescriptions for Plan B or refer patients elsewhere for it.

“I am certain that pharmacists will refuse to fill prescriptions for” ella, said Karen L. Brauer of the group Pharmacists for Life International.

Plan B prevents a pregnancy by administering high doses of a hormone that mimics progesterone. It works primarily by inhibiting the ovaries from producing eggs. Critics argue that it can also prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the womb, which some consider equivalent to abortion.

Ella, known generically as ulipristal acetate, works as a contraceptive by blocking progesterone’s activity, delaying the ovaries from producing an egg. But progesterone is also needed to prepare the womb to accept a fertilized egg and to nurture a developing embryo. That’s how RU-486 prevents a fertilized egg from implanting and dislodges growing embryos. Ella’s chemical similarity to RU-486 raises the possibility that it might do the same thing, perhaps if taken at elevated doses. But no one knows for sure whether the drug would induce an abortion, because the drug has never been tested that way.

Critics, however, are convinced it will and fear that a woman who does not realize she is pregnant will use the drug, unwittingly giving herself an abortion. They also worry that men will slip ella to unsuspecting women. And, the critics say, a woman might knowingly use ella to try to abort a fetus, putting herself at risk for potentially serious complications that have been reported among a small number of women using RU-486 and possibly damaging her developing child if it doesn’t work.

The Family Research Council and several other groups announced plans Friday to launch a campaign publicizing ella’s possible abortion potential.

“Ella is an abortion drug,” said Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America. “It operates the same way as RU-486, the abortion drug. Many women may be comfortable taking a contraceptive but would object to taking an abortion drug.”

Proponents dismiss the concerns, saying that ella has been tested only within five days of unprotected sex and there is no evidence that it works as anything other than a contraceptive. HRA Pharma of Paris, which makes ella, has no plans to test it as an abortion drug, but it did not appear to cause any problems for the handful of women who became pregnant after taking the drug, according to company officials. Studies involving more than 4,500 women in the United States show ella is safe, causing only minor side effects, such as headaches, nausea, abdominal pain and dizziness, the FDA said.

“Ella will become an important option for women,” said Vanessa Cullins of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Watson Pharmaceuticals, which will market the drug in the United States, hopes to make ella available by the end of the year. The price has not yet been announced.

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Cattle ‘Cloned From Dead Animals’

August 16, 2010

BBC News

By: Pallab Ghosh

Farmers say it is being done because it is only possible to tell that the animal’s meat is of exceptionally high quality by inspecting its carcass.

US scientists are using a variety of techniques to assess which animals have exceptional qualities.

These attributes include meat quality, productivity or longevity.

These exceptional animals are cloned to be used as breeding stock, with the aim of raising the quality of herds on beef, dairy and pig farms in the US.

There is a long tradition of resurrecting dead animals for cloning – Dolly the sheep being a case in point.

The head of the leading US animal cloning company has said that European farmers will fall behind the rest of the world unless they are allowed to use such techniques to improve the productivity of their livestock.

The aim of livestock cloning is to clone the best animals to produce the best beef.

But some cattle farmers believe it is impossible to pick the best quality animals until their meat has been properly analysed.

That is why there are cloned bulls here that have been produced from the cells taken from the carcasses of dead animals.

Brady Hicks of the JR Simplot company in Idaho said his organisation was among many that had tried out the technique successfully.

“The animals are hanging on a rail ready to go to the meat counter,” he told BBC News.

“We identify carcasses that have certain carcass characteristics that we want, but it’s too late to reproduce the genetics of the animal. But through cloning we can resurrect that animal.”

It would cost them around $4,000 to buy a high quality bull to breed from. So for cloning to be worthwhile, the technology has to produce animals that are substantially better than the ones that can be obtained via traditional methods.

At the moment, the technique is at an experimental phase. Beef, pig and dairy farmers are all trying to establish whether cloning is an economic proposition.

Two years ago, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ruled that meat and milk from cloned animals were safe to eat. Ever since then, products from the offspring of cloned animals have entered the food chain

Supporters of the technology say that costs will come down – and as farmers become better able to identify their exceptional animals, cloning technology will begin to pay big dividends.

Mark Walton believes that the use of cloning in agriculture will eventually become the norm – not just in the US but across the world.

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Last Afghan WikiLeaks ‘Out In A Couple Weeks’

August 16, 2010

BreitBart

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange vowed Saturday to publish the last batch of secret documents on the Afghan war in “a couple of weeks”, despite Pentagon pleas they would put further lives at risk.

Asked at a press conference in Stockholm when the final batch of 15,000 classified files on the Afghan war would be published, Assange said that “We’re about half way through, so a couple of weeks.”

The announcement at a seminar on the control of information came after the Pentagon on Friday renewed pressure on the whistleblower website not to release the documents, saying they posed greater risks than previously released files.

“We still are hopeful that WikiLeaks will not publish those documents and put further lives at risk,” said Pentagon spokesman Colonel David Lapan.

“We are concerned that the additional documents that they have may cause even greater risks than the ones they released previously,” he said, calling them “potentially more damaging”.

However, the Australian former computer hacker said that “We proceed cautiously and safely with this material as it was always intended… line by line.”

Assange vowed that all the documents would be published but that there would be some redactions including “the names of innocent parties that are under reasonable threat”.

WikiLeaks has already released 76,000 classified documents about the war, including of allegations that Pakistani spies met with the Taliban and that deaths of innocent civilians at the hands of international forces were covered up.

But the documents also included the names of some Afghan informants, prompting claims that the leaks have endangered lives.

The website said last month that it had delayed the release of the final 15,000 documents “as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source”.

“After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits.”

Daniel Schmitt, a WikiLeaks spokesman in Germany, has previously said that the site wanted to open a line of communication with the Pentagon to review the final documents, in order to “make redactions so they can be safely published.”

The Pentagon however has insisted it never received any such request from WikiLeaks, while Assange said on Thursday that the site had received “no assistance, despite repeated requests, from the White House or the Pentagon“.

The site, which styles itself as “the first intelligence agency of the people,” was founded in December 2006 and invited would-be whistleblowers from around the world to make anonymous contributions.

The Pentagon and the Federal Bureau of Investigation swiftly launched an investigation into the case when it came to light July 25.

WikiLeaks has never identified the source of the Afghan files but suspicion has fallen on Bradley Manning, a US Army intelligence analyst under arrest for allegedly leaking video of a 2007 US Apache helicopter strike in Baghdad in which civilians died.

In an open letter to Assange, media rights group Reporters with Borders said it “regrets the incredible irresponsibility you showed when posting your article ‘Afghan War Diary 2004 – 2010′ on the WikiLeaks website on 25 July.”

The group said WikiLeaks had in the past played a useful role by making public information that exposed violations of human rights committed in the name of the US “war against terror”.

“But revealing the identity of hundreds of people who collaborated with the coalition in Afghanistan is highly dangerous.

“It would not be hard for the Taliban and other armed groups to use these documents to draw up a list of people for targeting in deadly revenge attacks,” it said.

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China Favors Euro Over Dollar

August 16, 2010

Bloomberg

By: Candice Zachariahs and Ron Harui

China, whose $2.45 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves are the world’s largest, is turning bullish on Europe and Japan at the expense of the U.S.

The nation has been buying “quite a lot” of European bonds, said Yu Yongding, a former adviser to the People’s Bank of China who was part of a foreign-policy advisory committee that visited France, Spain and Germany from June 20 to July 2. Japan’s Ministry of Finance said Aug. 9 that China bought 1.73 trillion yen ($20.1 billion) more Japanese debt than it sold in the first half of 2010, the fastest pace of purchases in at least five years.

“Diversification should be a basic principle,” Yu said in an interview, adding a “top-level Chinese central banker” told him to convey to European policy makers China’s confidence in the region’s economy and currency. “We didn’t sell any European bonds or assets, instead we bought quite a lot.”

China’s position may make it harder for the greenback to rebound after falling as much as 10 percent from this year’s peak in June as measured by the trade-weighted Dollar Index. The nation cut its holdings of U.S. government debt by $72.2 billion, or 7.7 percent, through May from last year’s record of $939.9 billion in July 2009, according to the Treasury Department, which releases new data today.

U.S. Concerns

Concern the U.S. economy is faltering was underscored by the Federal Reserve on Aug. 10. Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the central bank will reinvest principal payments on its mortgage holdings into Treasury notes to prevent money from being drained out of the financial system, its first expansion of measures to spur growth in more than a year.

“The pace of economic recovery is likely to be more modest in the near term than had been anticipated,” the Federal Open Market Committee said in a statement after meeting in Washington. “The Committee will keep constant the Federal Reserve’s holdings of securities at their current level.”

Asian central banks holding some 60 percent of the world’s foreign-exchange reserves are turning away from the dollar. Concerned about weakening U.S. growth and the Treasury’s record borrowing, they are switching toward euro assets to safeguard reserves, driving gains in the 16-nation currency. South Korea, Malaysia and India reduced their holdings of Treasuries, U.S. government data show.

Cutting Treasuries

The allocations to dollars in official foreign-exchange reserves declined in the first three months of the year, to 61.5 percent from 62.2 percent in the final quarter of 2009, the International Monetary Fund said June 30.

The yen’s share was 3.1 percent, up from 3 percent, The euro’s was 27.2 percent, little changed from 27.3 percent, even after the currency tumbled 5.7 percent versus the dollar during the first quarter on speculation that nations including Greece will struggle to rein in their budget deficits.

“Short of concerns of a default, the investor community in terms of big reserve managers will probably be forced to invest in the euro zone,” said Dwyfor Evans, a strategist in Hong Kong at State Street Global Markets LLC, part of State Street Corp. which has $19 trillion under custody and $1.8 trillion under management. “They can’t be putting all of their eggs in one basket, which is U.S. Treasuries.”

Dollar Index

The Dollar Index’s 5.2 percent drop in July, the biggest decline in 14 months, failed to dissuade most foreign-exchange forecasters from predicting the greenback will strengthen against the euro and yen by December.

The dollar traded at $1.2817 per euro as of 7:13 a.m. in New York from $1.2754 last week, when it rose 4.1 percent. The greenback was at 85.60 yen after falling to 84.73 yen on Aug. 11, the weakest since July 1995.

The U.S. currency will climb to $1.23 per euro by Dec. 31 and to 92 yen, based on median estimates of strategists and economists in Bloomberg surveys. Economists forecast U.S. growth will be 3 percent this year, compared with 1.2 percent for the region sharing the euro and 3.4 percent for Japan.

“There’s no sign of panic or urgency from the Fed and that supports our view that this is a temporary soft patch and the U.S. economy will fight its way through,” said Gareth Berry, a Singapore-based currency strategist at UBS AG, the world’s second-largest foreign-exchange trader. UBS forecasts the dollar will rise to $1.15 per euro and 95 yen in three months.

Slower Growth

Japan’s economy expanded at the slowest pace in three quarters, missing the estimates of all economists polled, the Cabinet Office said today in Tokyo. Gross domestic product rose an annualized 0.4 percent in the three months ended June 30, compared with the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey for annual growth of 2.3 percent.

Slowing purchases of Treasuries by Asian nations haven’t hindered President Barack Obama’s ability to finance a projected record budget deficit of $1.6 trillion in the year ending Sept. 30. Investor demand for the safest investments compressed yields on benchmark 10-year Treasurynotes to a 16-month low of 2.65 percent today, even after the U.S.’s publicly traded debt swelled to $8.18 trillion in July.

U.S. mutual funds, households and banks in May boosted their share of America’s debt to 50.2 percent, the first time domestic investors owned more Treasuries than foreign holders since the start of the financial crisis in August 2007.

‘Concrete Steps’

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao urged the U.S. in March to take “concrete steps” to reassure investors about the safety of dollar assets. The nation, which is the largest overseas holder of Treasuries, trimmed its stockpile of U.S. debt to $867.7 billion in May, from $900.2 billion in April and a record $939.9 billion in July 2009.

Increases to its holdings made between June 2008 and June 2009 amid the global financial crisis were mostly in short-term securities, signaling a “lack of confidence” in the U.S. ability to reduce its debt, UBS said in a research note Aug. 9.

“China has confidence in Europe’s economy, in the euro, and the euro area,” Yu said. A member of the state-backed Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Yu was selected by the official China Daily to question Treasury secretary Timothy F. Geithner during his June 2009 visit to Beijing about risks the U.S.’s budget deficit will undermine the value of its debt.

Chinese Purchases

Chinese purchases of Europe’s bonds come in the wake of measures taken by European policy makers to allay concern the sovereign-debt crisis will threaten the single-currency union. In May, they announced a loan package worth as much as 750 billion euros ($956 billion) to backstop euro-area governments.

That month, foreign investors were net buyers of euro-zone debt as the 16-nation currency plummeted by the most since January 2009. Foreigners purchased 37.4 billion euros of bonds and notes after buying 49.7 billion euros in April, the latest data from the European Central Bank show.

China’s concern is mirrored by neighboring central banks that are building up foreign-exchange reserves as they sell local currencies to maintain the competiveness of exporters, according to Faros Trading LLC, which conducts currency transactions on behalf of hedge funds and institutional clients.

Indonesia’s central bank and Thailand’s prime minister said in the past month they are watching the performance of their nation’s currencies amid speculation gains will curb exports. Taiwan’s dollar has depreciated in the final minutes of trading on most days in the past four months as policy makers bought dollars, according to traders familiar with the central bank’s operations who declined to be identified. Exports account for about two-thirds of Taiwan’s gross domestic product.

‘Rapidly Diversifying’

“Asian central banks, other than China, don’t want to be caught holding all of the dollars when China is rapidly diversifying,” said Brad Bechtel, a Connecticut-based managing director with Faros Trading. “When sentiment shifts and people start getting very bearish on the euro again, beware central banks might be aggressively buying euros on the other side.”

The yen has climbed 8.4 percent against the dollar this year. China bought a net 456.4 billion yen of Japanese debt in June, after purchasing 735.2 billion yen in May, which was the largest in records dating from 2005, according to Japan’s Ministry of Finance data.

“China’s policy of steady and relatively rapid accumulation of foreign-exchange reserves means they have to be invested somewhere,” said Greg Gibbs, a currency strategist at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in Sydney. “It is easy to imagine that given the low yields in the U.S. and the debt crisis in Europe, China is now willing to invest more of these reserves in the yen.”

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The Government Wants Me In Jail!

As I write this, the government has a huge team working full-time to get me in jail! I believe the government wants to ban my books, stop the radio show, and get me banned for life from TV, radio and the internet. The government knows that millions listen to the information I share. They want me stopped from revealing the truth about government and corporate corruption. They do not want you to know the truth about non-drug and non-surgical ways to cure and prevent disease. They do not want you to know how the government, media, and corporations are controlling you in all aspects of your life. I need your support.

Please help me fight. Please support my legal defense fund.

I will be on trial soon fighting for my freedom. The legal costs have been in the millions. This new trial will probably cost me another million or more! Please click here to make a donation of any amount to my legal defense fund.

Remember what this case is about. I wrote the Weight Loss Cure book. I quoted it on TV. Over 5 million people bought the book. The government says I misrepresented the contents of the book yet no one complained to the FTC! There are no “victims”. The people who bought the book overwhelmingly said they loved the book! People thank me for writing and selling the book! This case is smoke and mirrors. The government wants me in jail for writing the book and quoting it on TV. And they, in effect, fined me 37 million dollars! This is an outrage!

Please support my legal defense fund now. I need your help and support. All your donations go directly to pay for legal expenses. Any amount will help no matter how small. Donate now by clicking here.

-KT