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Investors have bought $268 billion of corporate bonds in Europe so far this year 2009. The bond market has rebounded strongly as investors see bonds as cheap according to one portfolio manager. THey range from highly raterd bonds like EDF, to bonds with junk ratings like brewer Carlsberg and building materials maker Lafarge SA. Companies are issuing bonds to bolster their finances and as aprecaution if the credit markets tighten up again. European companies get about 70% of their funding from banks compared to 30% in the USA. This is bringing to life large stretches of Europe's markets and helping businesses finance operations.

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New York Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor, is President Obama's pick for the Supreme Court. Saying that Stomayor had arigorous intellect and a mastery of the law, President Obama went on to say at an announcement ceremony, that the judge's inspiring story was crucial in his decision. One that was made with deep reflection and careful deliberation. Obama quoted Justice Oliver Wendell Homes- "the life of the law has not beenlogic, it has been experience." And added his own words to those of Holmes- its vital that ajustice know "how the world works, and how ordinary people live." Sotomayor is from the Bronx part of New York City. Her parents immigrated from Puerto Rico and lived in a poor neighborhood. Her mother worked six day weeks to earn enough money to send her and a brother to Catholic school. From there she got into Princeton University, where she once felt like "a vistor landing in an alien country," but graduated summa cum laude. She went on to Yale law school, where she was editor of the Yale Law Journal, workwed for Robert Morgenthau in the district attorney's office in New York and later went into private practice. She was nominated by the first President Bush in 1991 to the federal appeals court on the advice of Senator Patrick Moynihan, and then by Bill Clinton to the appeals court in 1997. Judge Sotomayor takes pride in her ethnicity, gender and growing up in the poor part of the Bronx, and said in a2002 lecture- " I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who has'nt lived that life."...

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The baobab tree in Africa and its fruit which is becoming popular in Europe. THe writer talks about how a baobab inudsty without adequate protections built into place, could result in African people losing a source of household wealth, an important part of their diet and amedicine for many ailments.