Morning News Roundup (11 July)

Sorry about the missed day yesterday, but things are crazy this week--my parents are still in town with Mrs. F's yet to come, my duties as promotional czar for the West Seattle Garden Tour have been hotting up (takes place this coming Sunday), and I was still recovering from the shock of France's ouster from the World Cup. (Oh, and it was my 39th birthday.) Excuses, excuses... so here we go:

• Breaking: At least five explosions have taken place in the Indian financial capital, Mumbai (Bombay), police say. It is not yet clear what caused the blasts and police are not confirming the location of the explosions, which occurred during evening rush hour. [BBC]
  
  
• President Bush will probably issue his first veto if the Senate approves a bill to expand federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research, White House aide Karl Rove told a newspaper's editorial board. The House has already passed the stem cell legislation, co-sponsored by Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., and Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del.
  
  Rove said he believes the legislation will pass the Senate with more than 60 votes sometime this month _ "and as a result the president would, as he has previously said emphatically, veto the Castle bill." [WaPo]
  
  
• “Rising interest rates and persistently high gasoline prices will pinch consumer spending more than previously estimated, weakening the U.S. economy for the rest of the year.” [ThinkProgress' ThinFast]
  
  
• Italian defender Marco Materazzi has acknowledged that he insulted Zinedine Zidane in Monday morning's (AEST) World Cup final, saying he did so because the French skipper was "super arrogant".
  
  Zidane, 34, floored Materazzi with a headbutt to the chest in the second half of extra-time in Monday's final and was sent off, missing a penalty shoot-out in which he would have been expected to take one of France's spot-kicks.
  
  "I held his shirt ... for only a few seconds, he turned toward me and scoffed at me, looking at me with super arrogance up and down [and said]: 'If you really want my shirt, you can have it later.' It's true, I shot back with an insult," Italian newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport quoted Materazzi as saying. [ABC]
  
  
• Average number of calories of oil that are used to make each calorie of food Americans eat: 7 [Harper's Index from June]
  
  
• The production of biodiesel from low-quality coffee, from the oils extracted from urban runoff, or from cattle fat is a pioneering initiative in Brazil, where efforts are under way to diversity the raw materials used as clean fuels, the consumption of which is on the rise.
  
  Under the Brazilian system for the voluntary addition of two percent biofuel to petroleum diesel (B-2), the demand currently stands at about 800 million litres annually. This mixture will be obligatory beginning in 2008, and the proportion will rise to five percent in 2013, driving up total biodiesel consumption to an estimated 2.5 billion litres a year.
  
  Coffee beans of lower quality, which represent about 20 percent of the national coffee harvest, are emerging as an alternative raw material for biodiesel. [IPS]
  
  
• A new study shows that global warming could wither many premium vineyards in California and across the nation by the end of the century. [ThinkProgress' ThinFast]