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NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Inflation took a bigger bite out of consumers' wallets over the last 12 months, with September marking the biggest rise in three years. But at the same time, monthly price increases are starting to slow. The Consumer Price Index, the government's key measure of inflation at the retail level, jumped 3.9% in September from the year before. Higher food and energy prices again were the biggest culprits, with food 4.7% more expensive than a year earlier, and energy prices jumping 19.3%. Even core CPI, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, posted a 2% gain...

Latest dispatch from the Department of Dissent Is No Longer Patriotic: because they won't raise taxes, Republicans are more dangerous to US national security than al Qaeda. That is the view of Nicholas Kristof in his column, "Republicans, Zealots and Our Security", in today's New York Times. View excerpts here.

The maternity business has experienced a recession, too, it appears. Births fell 4% from 2007 to 2009, the biggest drop for any two-year period since the mid-1970s, according to federal government data released Thursday. The rate, 66.7 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, isn't the lowest in recent memory. The 1997 rate was an all-time low of 63.6. But the authors of the report say preliminary data show the birth rate continued falling through the first half of 2010. (Snip) Fewer families are having more than two children. Almost 75% of births in 2009 were first or second

N THE age-old war between cats and dogs, canines might just have struck the killer blow. A border collie called Chaser has been taught the names of 1022 items - more than any other animal. She can also categorise them according to function and shape, something children learn to do around the age of 3. Chaser follows in the footsteps of Rico, who trained at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Rico had a "vocabulary" of 200 words and could identify new objects in a group of familiar objects by a process of elimination, according to...

<p>US Treasuries suffered their biggest two-day sell-off since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, following a torrid month that has seen borrowing costs for western governments soar.</p> <p>Germany, Japan and the US have all seen their benchmark market interest rates rise by more than a quarter in the past month while the UK’s has risen by nearly a fifth.</p>

US President Barack Obama's trip to India next month is set to be the biggest ever by any US president in terms of the protocol and logistics.(Snip) He will be accompanied by US first lady Micehlle Obama and their daughters Malia and Sasha. Earlier, Obama's daughters Sasha and Malia were not to be part of the trip. But sources revealed that Michelle's opinion prevailed and now the girls would accompany the first American couple to India.

The biggest airline in the world will have the United name, Continental's globe logo and potentially far-reaching effects on air travel. Shareholders who on Friday approved combining the two companies hope the new airline attracts more top-dollar corporate travelers with its larger network while reducing costs. Some industry watchers expect the deal to lead to higher fares, but United and Continental say competition from low-cost airlines is sufficient to keep prices from rising.

NEW YORK (AP) -- The biggest increase in jobs in three years pushed interest rates to their highest level since before the worst days of the credit crisis in 2008. With the stock market closed for Good Friday, investors had a shortened day of trading in the bond market to react to the Labor Department's report that employers added the most jobs in March since before the recession began in December 2007. Treasury prices fell after the report, sending their yields higher. Bond prices tend to fall as investors' confidence grows and demand for safe-haven investments wanes. The yield on...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The government ran up the largest monthly deficit in history in February, keeping the flood of red ink on track to top last year's record for the full year. The Treasury Department said Wednesday that the February deficit totaled $220.9 billion, 14 percent higher than the previous record set in February of last year. The deficit through the first five months of this budget year totals $651.6 billion, 10.5 percent higher than a year ago. The Obama administration is projecting that the deficit for the 2010 budget year will hit an all-time high of $1.56 trillion, surpassing...

Earlier this week, the California Fair Political Practices Commission released its top 10 list of the biggest individual political spenders in the state between January 2000 and the end of 2009. It's a lot of money flying around: $266 million from the 10 donors alone. KQED's John Myers summed it up nicely. But if that wasn't enough, just a few months ago, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C., released a similar, but less-noticed study, which should cement the Golden State's place atop the national political spending pantheon. The study revealed, among other things, that California's tribal gaming...

Stephen Hawking believes that one of the major factors in the possible scarcity of intelligent life in our galaxy is the high probability of an asteroid or comet colliding with inhabited planets. We have observed, Hawking points out in Life in the Universe, the collision of a comet, Schumacher-Levi, with Jupiter (below), which produced a series of enormous fireballs, plumes many thousands of kilometers high, hot "bubbles" of gas in the atmosphere, and large dark "scars" on the atmosphere which had lifetimes on the order of weeks. It is thought the collision of a rather smaller body with the Earth,...

A massive cave recently uncovered in a remote Vietnamese jungle is the largest single cave passage yet found, a new survey shows. At 262-by-262 feet (80-by-80 meters) in most places, the Son Doong cave beats out the previous world-record holder, Deer Cave in the Malaysian section of the island of Borneo. Deer Cave is no less than 300-by-300 feet (91-by-91 meters), but it's only about a mile (1.6 kilometers) long. By contrast, explorers walked 2.8 miles (4.5 kilometers) into Son Doong, in Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, before being blocked by seasonal floodwaters—and they think that the passage is even...

President Barack Obama will propose raising new revenue through a greenhouse gas cap and emissions trading scheme when he unveils his first budget on Thursday, US media reported. The budget he will present assumes an emissions trading system will generate revenue by 2012, the Washington Post reported. Fifteen billion dollars of the money generated would be directed to clean-energy projects, the Post said, citing sources familiar with the document. Another 60 billion would go to tax credits for lower- and middle-income working families, and the rest to help families, small businesses and communities deal with higher energy costs, the paper...

WELLINGTON (AFP) - The largest squid ever caught began to reveal its secrets Wednesday, including beach ball-sized eyes that scientists said were the biggest known in the animal kingdom. The 495-kilogram (1,090-pound) colossal squid -- accidentally caught by a fishing boat in Antarctic waters in February 2007 -- is slowly thawing under the fascinated gaze of a team of scientists at the Museum of New Zealand. While defrosting took longer than expected Wednesday, one of the earliest revelations were eyes measuring 27 centimetres (11 inches) across with lenses of 10 to 12 centimetres in diameter. In comparison, a human eye...

AUSTIN, Texas - Everything's big in Texas — big pickup trucks, big SUVs and the state's big carbon footprint, too. Texans' fondness for large, manly vehicles has helped make the Lone Star State the biggest carbon polluter in the nation. The headquarters state of America's oil industry spewed 670 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 2003, enough that Texas would rank seventh in the world if it were its own country, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The amount is more than that of California and Pennsylvania — the second-...

The quasar OJ287 contains two black holes (this slightly dated illustration lists the larger black hole's mass as 17 billion Suns, though researchers now estimate it is 18 billion Suns). The smaller black hole crashes through a disc of material around the larger one twice every orbit, creating bright outbursts (Illustration: VISPA) The most massive known black hole in the universe has been discovered, weighing in with the mass of 18 billion Suns. Observing the orbit of a smaller black hole around this monster has allowed astronomers to test Einstein's theory of general relativity with stronger gravitational fields than ever...

'Biggest diamond ever' is found in South Africa By Sebastien Berger in Johannesburg Last Updated: 8:48pm BST 28/08/2007 It is either the greatest diamond find in history, or a case of fool's gold. The diamond claim was met with scepticism South Africa's diamond industry was surprised by reports that a small mining firm had found a stone estimated at 7,000 carats, twice the size of the Cullinan diamond, the largest ever found. Gems cut from the 3,106-carat Cullinan, including the Great Star of Africa, became part of the Crown Jewels after it was found in Gauteng Province in 1905. But...

Standing 6ft 5in on its hind legs and tipping the scales at 19st 10lb, Samson is a giant in every sense of the word. As Britain's biggest dog with a fearsome set of jaws to match, even the slightest growl is enough to make the bravest of postmen think twice before heading up the garden path.He boasts a 59in chest and a 29in neck, meaning he has to wear pony coats when it rains and has had to have an extra large collar fitted. The dog's paws are almost the size of dinner plates. While Samson's awesome build is impressive...

The killing of Mullah Dadullah Akhund in a joint military operation by US, Nato and Afghan army forces on 12 May is the biggest blow to the Taleban since it lost power in Afghanistan in December 2001. In recent months the Taleban have suffered a number of setbacks. Previous reports of his death or capture had proved untrue