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Feb. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Americans bought more cars, clothing and electronics last month, factory assembly lines kept humming, and home construction accelerated, as the U.S. economy roared into 2006, economists said before government reports this week.

Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) -- The dollar may rise for a sixth week against the euro, the longest stretch since August 2000, as traders speculate Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke will signal higher interest rates in his first appearance before Congress, a Bloomberg survey shows.

Strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran's nuclear sites as a "last resort" to block Teheran's efforts to develop an atomic bomb. (Philip Sherwell, News Telegraph.com)

Tehran (dpa) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday that the Palestinians and "other nations" will eventually remove Israel from the region.

A former special investigator for the Pentagon during the Iraq war said he found four sealed underground bunkers in southern Iraq that he is sure contain stocks of chemical and biological weapons. But when he asked American weapons inspectors to check out the sites, he was rebuffed. (NYSUN)

The four-week average of seasonally adjusted new (unemployment)claims fell to 276,500, the lowest since April 2000. The average number of new claims is nearly 50,000 lower than it was for most of 2005. (CBS Market Watch)

SAPPORO -- The Hokkaido Prefectural Government is considering outlawing the purchase of used underwear from teenage girls, local government officials said. (Mainichi News)

On Tuesday night, Lehman Brothers paid Greenspan $250,000 to meet with 15 of its most important clients in Lehman's executive dining room in New York.(NY POST)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta says travelers could soon boldly go where no passengers have gone before -- into space .He told a group of space entrepreneurs today that he expects to issue permits for test flights next year. If those are successful licenses for passenger space travel could then be issued and paying space travelers could be lifting off from the United States by 2008. (AP)

Three years ago, the Internet was virtually unknown in Iraq. Today, Baghdad has dozens of Internet cafes like ShreifiNet, which consists of three sparely decorated rooms with a total of 34 computers and a satellite dish on the roof. Most of the cafes also transmit wireless services to home Internet users in the surrounding area for a monthly fee; in parts of central Baghdad there are about 20 overlapping wireless networks. (NYT)

CHICAGO (AP) -- First came temperature futures, then frost-day futures. Now - futures involving how much snow falls at Logan Airport in Boston or New York's Central Park.In the latest evidence that almost anything goes in the marketplace, meteorologically speaking, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange said Thursday it will begin trading snowfall futures and options contracts later this month.

France has secretly modified its nuclear arsenal to increase the strike range and accuracy of its weapons. The move comes weeks after President Jacques Chirac warned that states which threatened the country could face the "ultimate warning" of a nuclear retaliation.( The Guardian)

Hence it comes about that all armed Prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed Prophets have been destroyed. Niccolo Machiavelli

TOKYO — A U.S. trade body is to investigate a complaint that Toyota Motor Corp.'s (TM) popular Prius and Highlander hybrid models infringed a patent, according to the body's website. (FOX NEWS)

SAN FRANCISCO — Manuel Villanueva realizes he has been getting a pretty good deal since he signed up for Netflix Inc.'s (NFLX) online DVD rental service 2 1/2 years ago, but he still feels shortchanged. That's because the $17.99 monthly fee that he pays to rent up to three DVDs at a time would amount to an even bigger bargain if the company didn't penalize him for returning his movies so quickly.Netflix typically sends about 13 movies per month to Villanueva's home in Warren, Mich. -- down from the 18 to 22 DVDs he once received before the company's automated system identified him as a heavy renter and began delaying his shipments to protect its profits. (FOXNEWS)

Bush should have known better. In a capital city that is full of shameless political scams, ethanol is perhaps the most egregious. There has probably never been a specific topic around which so much disinformation is spread. Ethanol lowers our reliance on fossil fuels! Ethanol helps clean the environment! Ethanol will save the family farm! (Kevin Hasset Bloomberg)

A recent careful study by Cornell University's David Pimentel and the University of California at Berkeley's Tad Patzek added up all the energy consumption that goes into ethanol production. They took account of the energy it takes to build and run tractors. They added in the energy embodied in the other inputs and irrigation. They parsed out how much is used at the ethanol plant. Putting it all together, they found that it takes 29 percent more energy to make ethanol from corn than is contained in the ethanol itself. (Kevin Hasset Bloomberg)

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Half a million flag-waving Lebanese packed central Beirut on Tuesday, a year to the day after the assassination of former premier Rafik al-Hariri, giving new impetus to Lebanon's anti-Syrian coalition.