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...told, by the time I took office, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan approached a trillion dollars. Going forward, I am committed to addressing these costs openly and honestly. Our new approach in Afghanistan is likely to cost us roughly $30 billion for the military this year, and I will work closely with Congress to address these costs as we work to bring down our deficit...
...with childhood obesity-related diseases costing Spain roughly $3.7 billion annually - or 7% of total health care costs - the government has decided to take drastic measures. If passed, the new legislation will prohibit schools from selling foods high in fat, sugar and salt, and require them to inform parents of the nutritional content of all meals served in their children's school cafeterias. Those measures are hardly unique - plenty of European countries place strict controls on what their children eat in school. Both France and England, for example, have banned vending machines selling junk food on school grounds...
Dubai's financial crisis may have calmed a bit now that the central bank of the United Arab Emirates has promised to stand behind the city-state's banks with fresh liquidity. After all, the U.A.E., to which Dubai belongs, has perhaps $700 billion accumulated from petroleum riches - a resource that Dubai, which is apparently stuck with tens of billions of dollars in debt, does not enjoy...
Creditors, therefore, had to go to the negotiating table to be able to wring out payment. Dubai's on-balance-sheet debt seems to be about $80 billion (and some observers believer there could be a substantial amount of off-balance-sheet debt as well). About 40% of the official debt is held by British banks, 30% by E.U. firms, about 9% by U.S. institutions and 7% by Japanese ones. According to a source close to Dubai World, the city-state's representatives now wants to write off some $30 billion of its debt...
Sheik Mo, as he's dubbed by the media, was tweeting in London last week when officials back home stunned financial markets by announcing a request for a six-month repayment standstill on part of the sheikdom's $80 billion debt. The immediate issue is Dubai's inability to come through on a $3.52 billion tranche due in mid-December. Yet, with some 400 property projects already reportedly frozen in Dubai, the news raised the specter of a gigantic default that would sink exposed creditors around the world. "Inspired by Islamic artifacts," read the sheik's post on Twitter during...