Week 2

Swooping deep into mid-February, with Valentine’s Day bearing down upon us like a horde of rabid wolves, the serious news is speckled with reports about love, sex and chocolate. Sex is good for you claims the BBC – like we needed them to tell us that. And, hey, if you don’t have time for exercise in your day, one hour of passion burns 300 calories. Even better, the endorphins released during orgasm make your hair shine and wrinkles disappear. So forget Butox and gym, sex is cheaper – most of the time – and much, much more fun.

Chocolate prices are on the rise. It appears the nice men and women at Nestle, Mars and Kraft connived to fix the price of chocolate, candy and all things sweet. A sudden, inexplicable, across-the-board increase in chocolate prices tipped regulators off. Spokespeople for the chocolate companies claimed it was all coincidence and blamed it on the rising price of Cacao. Luckily we trust big business about as much as we trust the Japanese with whale research.

More intrigue and skullduggery from the wheeling-dealing world of high finance as Microsoft offer over $40bn in a bid to takeover Yahoo. “No,” say Yahoo, alleviating the fears of millions of yahoo account holders whom had already started planning their move over to Google. Anything to get away from the Windows Vista experience…

And on the subject of Terrorism, the Paris Dakar Rally has moved as far away from Paris and Dakar as possible: to Argentina and Chile. The horn of Africa was just too unstable and terrorism too rampant. It seems they forgot about FARC and Hugo Chavez. But that’s narco-terrorism, or petro-terrorism, which are a little different from the self-exploding, religious version. With narco- and petro-terrorists you can negotiate, if you have enough money, oil, or cocaine.

And, after effectively sidestepping due process for the last five years, prosecutors in the US will seek the death penalty for the six Guantanamo prisoners allegedly involved in the September 11 attacks. Human rights advocates are concerned that the Military Tribunal – no civil trial for terrorists, remember – will steamroll over the rights of the accused. Families and friends of those killed in the attacks don’t care. Revenge, in all its forms, is sweet. At least the Secretary of Homeland security has promised them a fair trial; just like the chocolate guys and the Japanese.

Then there is Clinton and Obama, neck and neck, tooth and nail, hammer and tongs. If they can say the same thing over and over in different words, so can I. Not much more to say really. Compared to them McCain is a breath of fresh air, even if you don’t agree with his politics.

And while all this was happening the most read stories on the CNN website were: Reasons you’re not having sex and: Ex-prison boss says: Orgies were common.

That’s all until next week. And remember to ask yourself, “Who stands to gain most from Valentine’s day?”