China Nov official factory PMI hits seven-month high












BEIJING (Reuters) – China‘s official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index rose to a seven-month high of 50.6 in November from 50.2 in October, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Saturday.


The headline figure is in line with an economist poll by Reuters this week, and confirms a trend toward recovering growth in the world’s second-largest economy.












A PMI reading below 50 suggests growth slowed, while a number above 50 indicates accelerating growth.


While growth accelerated for large firms for the third month in a row, medium and smaller companies saw a retrenchment, with the decline more pronounced for the smaller firms, the NBS said in an accompanying statement.


“The improving numbers are mostly because of government investment. From the second quarter the government has unleashed a lot of projects, and that has started to be felt in the economy, but it’s not a very healthy recovery yet,” said Dong Xian’an, economist with Peking First Advisory.


The HSBC China flash PMI – which gathers more data from smaller, privately-held firms that have a strong export focus – signaled that November growth in the manufacturing sector had quickened for the first time in 13 months with a reading of 50.4 when it was published last week, reflecting a steady uptick in the economy.


China’s economic health has improved since September, with an array of indicators from factory output to retail sales and investment showing Beijing’s pro-growth policies are starting to gain traction.


Analysts said the end of a destocking cycle and a greater pace of investment would keep driving up domestic demand, and extend the recovery trend into the final quarter of this year.


Smaller and private firms are still pleading for greater access to credit and investment incentives, which have gone disproportionately to the state sector, particularly since the financial crisis of 2008-2009.


China’s annual economic growth dipped to 7.4 percent in the third quarter, slowing for seven quarters in a row and leaving the economy on course for its weakest showing since 1999.


Given the recent signs of recovery, many analysts expect the economy to snap out of its longest downward cycle since the global financial crisis, and start to trend upwards in the fourth quarter.


But economists also warn of downside risks from still cloudy external markets. The European debt crisis and listless U.S. economy continue to crimp demand from China’s two largest trade partners.


China’s central bank has moved cautiously in easing monetary policy to underpin economic growth, wary of reigniting inflation and fanning property prices which are still high.


It cut interest rates twice in June and July and lowered banks’ reserve requirement ratio by 150 basis points in three stages since last November, but has refrained from further cuts since July. The authorities have opted to inject liquidity via open market operations to pump short-term cash into money markets.


The official PMI generally paints a rosier picture of the factory sector than the HSBC PMI because the official survey focuses on big, state-owned firms, while the HSBC PMI targets smaller, private companies. There are also differing approaches to seasonal adjustment between the two surveys.


This year’s final HSBC PMI reading is due to be published at 0145 GMT on Monday.


(Reporting By Lucy Hornby; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)


Business News Headlines – Yahoo! News


Read More..

Noisy city: Cacophony in Caracas sparks complaints












CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — This metropolis of 6 million people may be one of the world’s most intense, overwhelming cities, with tremendous levels of crime, traffic and social strife. The sounds of Caracas‘ streets live up to its reputation.


Stand on any downtown corner, and the cacophony can be overpowering: Deafening horns blast from oncoming buses, traffic police shrilly blow their whistles and sirens shriek atop ambulances stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic.












Air horns routinely used by bus drivers are so powerful they make pedestrians on crosswalks recoil, and can even leave their ears ringing. Loud salsa music blares from the windows of buses, trucks with old mufflers rumble past belching exhaust, and “moto-taxis” weave through traffic beeping high-pitched horns.


Growing numbers of Venezuelans are saying they’re fed up with the noise that they say is getting worse, and the numbers of complaints to the authorities have risen in recent years.


One affluent district, Chacao, put up signs along a main avenue reading: “A honk won’t make the traffic light change.”


“The noise is terrible. Sometimes it seems like it’s never going to end,” said Jose Santander, a street vendor who stands in the middle of a highway selling fried pork rinds and potato chips to commuters in traffic.


Prosecutor General Luisa Ortega recently told a news conference that officials have started “putting an increased emphasis on promoting peaceful coexistence” by punishing misdemeanors such as violations of anti-noise regulations and other minor crimes. That effort has translated into hundreds of noise-related cases in recent years.


Some violators are ordered to perform community service. For instance, two young musicians who were recently caught playing loud music near a subway station were sentenced to 120 hours of community service giving music lessons to students in public schools.


Others caught playing loud music on the street have been charged with disturbing the peace after complaints from neighbors. Fines can run as high as 9,000 bolivars, or $ 2,093.


On the streets of their capital, however, Venezuelans have grown used to living loudly. The noisescape adds to a general sense of anarchy, with many drivers ignoring red lights and blocking intersections along potholed streets strewn with trash.


“This is something that everybody does. Nobody should be complaining,” said Gregorio Hernandez, a 23-year-old college student, as he listened to Latin rock songs booming from his car stereo on a Saturday night in downtown Caracas. “We’re just having fun. We’re not hurting anybody.”


Adding to the mess is the country’s notoriously divisive politics, which regularly fill the streets with marches and demonstrations.


On many days, the shouts of protesters streaming through downtown can be heard from blocks away, demanding pay hikes or unpaid benefits.


And the sporadic crackling of gunfire in the slums can be confused for firecrackers tossed by boisterous partygoers.


It’s difficult to rank the world’s noisiest cities because many, including Venezuela’s capital, don’t take measurements of sound pollution, said Victor Rastelli, a mechanical engineering professor and sound pollution expert at Simon Bolivar University in Caracas. But Rastelli said he suspects Caracas is right up there among the noisiest, along with Sao Paulo, Mexico City and Mumbai.


Excessive noise can be more than simply an annoyance, Rastelli said. “This is a public health problem.”


Dr. Carmen Mijares, an audiologist at a private Caracas hospital, said she treats at least a dozen patients every month for hearing damage caused by prolonged exposure to loud noises.


“Many of them work in bars or night clubs, and their maladies usually include temporary hearing loss and headaches,” Mijares said. For others, she said, the day-to-day noise of traffic, car horns and loud music can exacerbate stress and sleeping disorders.


Several cities have successfully reduced noise pollution, said Stephen Stansfeld, a London psychiatry professor and coordinator of the European Network on Noise and Health.


One of the most noteworthy initiatives, Stansfeld said, was in Copenhagen, Denmark, where officials used sound walls, noise-reducing asphalt and other infrastructure as well as public awareness campaigns to fight noise pollution.


But such high-tech solutions seem like a remote possibility in Caracas, where streets are literally falling apart and aging overpasses regularly lack portions of their guard rails. Prosecutors, angry neighbors and others hoping to fight the noise will have to persuade Venezuelans to do nothing less than change their loud behavior.


For Carlos Pinto, however, making noise is practically a political right.


The 26-year-old law student and his friends danced at a recent street party to house music booming from woofers in his car’s open trunk, with neon lights on the speakers that pulsed to the beat.


When asked about the noise, he answered: “We will be heard.”


___


AP freelance video journalist Ricardo Nunes contributed to this report.


___


Christopher Toothaker on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ctoothaker


Latin America News Headlines – Yahoo! News


Read More..

Apple overcomes last hurdle, iPhone 5 cleared for sale in China as Android continues to dominate












Read More..

Stephen King and Steven Spielberg’s “Under the Dome” gets series order from CBS












LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “Under the Dome” has landed under the wing of CBS.


The network has given a 13-episode, straight-to-series order for the project, an adaptation of the Stephen King novel of the same name.












The series will premiere in summer 2013.


King will executive-produce, along with Steven Spielberg, whose Amblin Television will produce the series in association with CBS Television Studios. Neal Baer, Justin Falvey, Darryl Frank, Stacey Snider and Brian K. Vaughan are also executive-producing. Niels Arden Oplev (“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”) will direct the first episode.


The series will revolve around a small New England town that is suddenly and inexplicably sealed off from the rest of the world by an enormous transparent dome. The town’s inhabitants must deal with surviving the post-apocalyptic conditions while searching for answers to what this barrier is, where it came from and if and when it will go away.


“This is a great novel coming to the television screen with outstanding auspices and in-season production values to create a summer programming event,” CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler said. “We’re excited to transport audiences ‘Under the Dome’ and into the extraordinary world that Stephen King has imagined.”


Showtime, which is owned by CBS, had previously been developing the project.


TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News


Read More..

Widower of woman denied abortion to sue Ireland












DUBLIN (AP) — The widower of an Indian woman who died in an Irish hospital after being refused an abortion plans to sue Ireland‘s government in the European Court of Human Rights.


Praveen Halappanavar confirmed his decision Thursday through his lawyer, Gerard O’Donnell.












His wife Savita died Oct. 28 in a hospital in Galway, western Ireland, one week after being admitted for severe pain amid a miscarriage.


Doctors refused to perform an abortion for three days while the 17-week-old fetus still had a heartbeat. Savita fell gravely ill after the dead fetus was removed and then suffered gradual organ failure. A coroner ruled she died from blood poisoning.


The case has forced Ireland to re-examine its two-decade failure to pass any laws governing when women can receive abortions to save their own lives.


Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News


Read More..

Argentina’s 11-Year War With Hedge Funds












Since it defaulted on its debt more than a decade ago, Argentina’s economy has engaged in a Cold War of sorts with international investors. Buenos Aires stuck bondholders with a take-it-or-leave-it exchange offer of 30¢ on the dollar, the harshest sovereign debt haircut in at least half a century.


Companies delisted. Foreign investors bolted. Argentina, meanwhile, was demoted from the league of “emerging markets” to that of less-developed “frontier” economies, alongside Bangladesh and Kenya—among which the South American nation has been struggling to remain. To inflict injury on these insults, late President Néstor Kirchner and the wife who succeeded him, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, have nationalized $ 24 billion in private pensions and assumed control of the country’s top energy company, which was majority owned by Spain’s Repsol (REP:SM). The government also instituted bizarre regulations, such as one that requires car importers to match their imports with exports of equal value.












However, a hardy group of “holdout” creditors, including U.S. institutional investors and a handful of elderly Argentinian pensioners, refused to participate in the nation’s 2005 and 2010 debt restructurings, wagering that they could band together to get better terms out of Buenos Aires. Last month’s scorched-earth volley: A court in Ghana, of all places, detained an Argentine frigate at the request of a hedge fund that says Buenos Aires owes it $ 300 million on old debt. Argentina just escalated the affair to the United Nations. All this at a time when the defiant Kirchner has rekindled nationalism over the Falkland Islands, over which Argentina went to war with the U.K. more than 30 years ago.


Now, the battle for the economic soul of the nation of 41 million—amid a raging international debate about the limits of creditor rights (Greece, anyone?)—is taking place in, of all places, New York. In courtrooms there, the aforementioned aggrieved hedgie, Paul Singer, is spearheading a campaign to wrest better payment on the debt he owns. Last week, U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa ordered Argentina to deposit $ 1.33 billion to pay the Singer-led holdouts. On Wednesday, an appeals court gave Argentina more time to fight the ruling.


The nervously awaited outcome could either sink Argentina’s economy or make it ever more hostile to the global capital markets. Or neither. Or both. Probably some titration therein. Fitch Ratings was sufficiently spooked by the standoff to say an Argentine default is now “probable.” It’s not just a matter of Argentina facing off with its creditors: Bondholders who agreed to the haircut don’t necessarily want to see the renegades made whole, especially if it threatens their own payments. Accordingly, Bush v Gore super lawyer David Boise has entered the crowded fray. It gets better: Theodore Olson, Boies’s Supreme Court opponent in Election 2000, could well end up arguing opposite Boies again. (At least they agree on something.) The boom in Argentina-related billable hours is an international incident unto itself. According to law firm White & Case, since Argentina’s default, jilted bondholders have filed at least 180 civil lawsuits against the country in the Empire State.


Confused? So is everyone else. This explainer, by Ohio State international financial law professor Steven Davidoff, is a must-read.


How, you ask, can Argentina possibly still wield any financial suasion abroad? Well, 1) Look at it on a map. 2) Try its steak. The geographically blessed nation has undeniable breadbasket appeal, with its abundance of soybeans, livestock, and minerals in a China-dominated world that wants ever more of those things.


Witness how very well Brazil, Colombia, and Peru have done during Argentina’s pariah decade. For all its faults, Argentina remains the continent’s No.2 economy. (Columbia is disputing that.) So even as its Merval stock index has been whittled to near-irrelevance by the delistings and falling international interest, it has more than quintupled since the nation’s financial meltdown.


“My view is that Argentina will stand more defiant than ever but at the same time, it will do whatever it can to make sure to keep servicing their debt and show the world community that they are the victims and that the ‘vulture funds’ are the bad guys,” says Santiago Maggi, managing partner with Latmark Asset Management in Miami.


“Without accessing capital markets, we have been punctually paying since 2005 with our own resources and we are going to continue to do so because we are going to honor our obligations as corresponds to a country that has recovered its self-esteem,” Kirchner said in a speech earlier this week.


Can she hang on long enough to be kept to her word? On top of legal and frigate-forfeiture problems, Argentina is mired in a deep recession marked by growing labor unrest, high inflation, and declining infrastructure.


Which, depending on Kirchner’s read, could call for more sticking it to los capitalistas.


Businessweek.com — Top News


Read More..

Rapper PSY wants Tom Cruise to go ‘Gangnam Style’












BANGKOK (AP) — The South Korean rapper behind YouTube’s most-viewed video ever has set what might be a “Mission: Impossible” for himself.


Asked which celebrity he would like to see go “Gangnam Style,” the singer PSY told The Associated Press: “Tom Cruise!”












Surrounded by screaming fans, he then chuckled at the idea of the American movie star doing his now famous horse-riding dance.


PSY’s comments Wednesday in Bangkok were his first public remarks since his viral smash video — with 838 million views — surpassed Justin Bieber‘s “Baby,” which until Saturday held the record with 803 million views.


“It’s amazing,” PSY told a news conference, saying he never set out to become an international star. “I made this video just for Korea, actually. And when I released this song — wow.”


The video has spawned hundreds of parodies and tribute videos and earned him a spotlight alongside a variety of superstars.


Earlier this month, Madonna invited PSY onstage and they danced to his song at one of her New York City concerts. MC Hammer introduced the Korean star at the American Music Awards as, “My Homeboy PSY!”


Even President Barack Obama is talking about him. Asked on Election Day if he could do the dance, Obama replied: “I think I can do that move,” but then concluded he might “do it privately for Michelle,” the first lady.


PSY was in Thailand to give a free concert Wednesday night organized as a tribute to the country’s revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who turns 85 next month. He paid respects to the king at a Bangkok shopping mall, signing his name in an autograph book placed beside a giant poster of the king. He then gave an outdoor press conference, as screaming fans nearby performed the pop star’s dance.


Determined not to be a one-hit wonder, PSY said he plans to release a worldwide album in March with dance moves that he thinks his international fans will like.


“I think I have plenty of dance moves left,” he said, in his trademark sunglasses and dark suit. “But I’m really concerned about the (next) music video.”


“How can I beat ‘Gangnam Style’?” he asked, smiling. “How can I beat 850 million views?”


___


Associated Press writer Thanyarat Doksone contributed to this report.


Asia News Headlines – Yahoo! News


Read More..

Facebook exec says company is reducing spam despite clogging your feed with brands you don’t like












Recent changes to Facebook’s (FB) Edgerank, the algorithm that’s responsible for displaying items on a user’s Newsfeed, have angered privacy groups who say the new policy will actually produce more spam than reducing it. According to Forbes’ Jeff Bercovici, Facebook’s VP of global marketing solutions Carol Everson said on Tuesday that the social network is reducing spam by using “Suggests Posts” – “non-connected page posts” that show a brand’s ads even if a user and their friends don’t “like” or support them. Bercovici argues that Facebook’s new approach to targeting brands at users contradicts its claims of reducing spam by doling out spam that users don’t connect with. 


As expected, Everson’s response to clogging the Newsfeed with brand ads that users don’t support was: “You may not be a fan of a brand, but maybe everyone in your network is talking about it, so we think you might be interested in it,” and she said there are “literally more than a thousand signals” that go into displaying “relevant” brand ads.












Get more from BGR.com: Follow us on Twitter, Facebook


Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News


Read More..

‘The Inbetweeners’ Canceled by MTV












LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “The Inbetweeners” now falls solidly in the “canceled” camp.


MTV has decided not to go forward with a second season of the scripted series, which premiered in August and was an adaptation of a British sitcom of the same name.












“While we won’t be moving forward with another season of ‘The Inbetweeners,’ we enjoyed working with the show’s creators and such a talented, funny cast,” an MTV spokesperson told TheWrap in a statement.


The series starred Joey Pollari, Bubba Lewis, Zack Pearlman, Mark L. Young and Alex Frnka as a group of “inbetweeners” – that is, kids who fall somewhere between nerds and jocks on the spectrum of teenage cliques.


The “Inbetweeners” cancelation follows the dropping of the MTV scripted effort “I Just Want My Pants Back” in May after one season.


TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News


Read More..

Small sachets are big help for clean water in developing world












SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Greg Allgood tears open a small sachet and dumps the powder into a large plastic container filled with brown, murky water. After about five minutes of stirring, clumps of sludge form and sink to the bottom as the water starts to clear.


“You let it settle, pour it through a cotton cloth and then you wait 20 minutes and it’s ready to drink,” said Allgood, the U.S.-based director of Procter & Gamble Co’s not-for-profit programme to provide clean water in developing nations and disaster zones.












“We reverse engineered a municipal water treatment plant, so something that costs tens of millions of dollars we can make for three and a half cents.”


P&G, a consumer products giant, works with international and local humanitarian groups such as Care, World Vision and Save the Children to get the sachets to areas where dirty water is a leading cause of illness and death.


One sachet purifies 10 liters (2.6 gallons) of water, enough for five people for one day, and it does not matter that the container and straining cloth are not clean. Shipping, duties and distribution, education and training by the groups on the ground take the final cost to about 10 U.S. cents per packet.


The dirt in Allgood’s demonstration came from his garden, where his dog likes to romp. Iron sulphate is the coagulant that pulls together soil, heavy metals and parasites. Chlorine – a precise 80 granules per sachet – kills viruses and bacteria, including those that cause cholera.


“When the water is really dirty, there aren’t a lot of low-cost technologies that work very well,” Allgood, who has a PhD in toxicology and is P&G’s point person in the Clinton Global Initiative, told Reuters in an interview before the formal opening of a new production plant in Singapore on Thursday.


“It seems strange to us but I hear it so many times – people see this and they say ‘Oh my God, I was drinking dirty water’.”


About 40 million sachets will be made this year at a plant in Pakistan and 100 million in Singapore, which is also P&G’s global disaster relief hub. The goal is to make 200 million a year by 2020, equal to 2 billion liters of clean water.


Many of the sachets are sent to development projects in Africa and emerging Asian countries but were also handed out to people hit by floods and other disasters in Pakistan, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Haiti, Allgood said.


Clean water is also vital to people with HIV/AIDS, he added, as their damaged immune systems make them very vulnerable to life-threatening diarrhoea and other infections.


“It goes well with Scotch,” Allgood joked, handing over a glass of clear, clean water that had been dangerous to drink 30 minutes earlier and now had only a slight taste of chlorine.


In Haiti after the devastating earthquake of 2010, he said, the sachets were part of relief supplies and he visited tents for cholera victims, showing aid workers how the powder works.


“I grabbed a bucket out of the place where the effluent was from where they washed the clinic. I went and treated it and told the World Vision folks we had to drink it,” he said. “They looked at me like I was crazy. But we did drink it.”


(Reporting by John O’Callaghan, editing by Elaine Lies)


Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News


Read More..