Excellent Article by Ted Turner.. (A little old, (from 2004) but his point is even more relevant in 2007)

Last year, Brazil surpassed the U.S. as the largest exporter of soybeans. That followed its scoring the No. 1 spot in beef exports in 2004. Brazil now hopes that demand for biofuels will help make it the world's agricultural superpower.

House Democrats have passed a piece of legislation that was crafted on the back of recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission in their 2004 final report. The bill is a tonic for big government, increased federalization of America, and mandates expansion of no fly lists, terror watch lists and further government surveillance of American citizens.

The current outbreak follows food-borne illnesses from cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, strawberries, raspberries, cantaloupes and unpasteurized apple and orange juices over the last several years. In 2004, produce-related outbreaks surpassed those associated with beef, poultry or fish, with 86 outbreaks, compared with 29 in 1997.

The Defense Department has tightened policies on the use of wireless local-area networks (WLANs), in a memo released earlier this month, which requires beefed up encryption and security since the last DOD wireless policy memo was released in April 2004.

A price index is a numerical time series measure designed to help compare how the prices of some class of goods and/or services, taken as a whole, differ between time periods or geographical locations. In the latter case, these are known as purchasing power parity measures. The class of goods can be quite broad; in a consumer price index, for instance, the class of goods is roughly "things bought by a typical urban consumer". As an example of a narrower index, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics has a price index for "steel mill products". Sometimes an index will be very specific, as in the US Energy Information Administration index entitled "Gasoline - All Grades".By design, a price index reduces all the distinct prices for the class of goods in question to a single number. On one hand, doing this has the potential to cut through the noise and make it easy to see the big picture. On the other hand, it has the risk of hiding potentially important details; for instance, a price index can potentially increase even though a sizable minority of the prices are actually decreasing. The usefulness of a price index may therefore depend on both the nature of the particular dataset and the intended use of the index.Price indexes have several potential uses. For particularly broad indexes, the index can be said to measure the economy's price level, and the extent to which there is inflation. This information is useful to central banks as they plan out monetary policy. A broad index can also be used to estimate changes in the cost of living. This can be useful in, for example, contract negotiation; one party, for instance, may be more willing to accept a certain salary if it's scheduled to automatically increase as costs go up. Price indices can also be used to help measure other economic statistics such as Gross Domestic Product.More narrow price indexes can help producers with business plans and pricing. Sometimes they can also be useful to help guide investment.Some notable price indexes include:Consumer price indexProducer price indexPersonal consumption expenditures price index