NEWS,06.06.2013

Walmart offers everything - even love

They came for the low prices and stayed for the lifetime commitment.

A couple that met in a North Carolina Walmart returned to the same store to hold their wedding ceremony.

Wayne Brandenburg said he would casually browse through the store a few times a week and that was where he met his future wife, Susan, who was working there as a cashier.

“I’d ask her how she was that day and tell her she looked very nice,” he said.

He was a widower and Susan was working at the store after her divorce.

Wayne built up the courage to ask her on a date and began taking Susan’s favourite lunch to Walmart each day.

“He was very much a gentleman and I looked forward to seeing him,” she said.

A year later, Wayne proposed.

Susan accepted but the couple was not officially married until six years later.

When they were trying to decide where to hold the reception, Wayne came up with the idea of getting married in the same store where they had met.

The wedding cake even came from the store’s bakery and the couple was reportedly joined by family, friends and even some store customers who stopped in to observe the ceremony.

While the story may sound a bit unusual, it’s actually somewhat common, according to one study.

In fact, Psychology Today says Walmart is the most popular place for Americans to fall in love at first sight.

Greek March unemployment rises

Greece's jobless rate rose again in March, reflecting the pain of a crippling recession after years of austerity under the country's international bailout.

Record joblessness is a major angst for Greece's coalition government as it scrambles to hit fiscal targets and show there is light at the end of the tunnel after years of unpopular tax rises and cuts to wages and pensions.

Unemployment rose to 26.8% from a downwardly revised 26.7% in February, according to statistics service data released on Thursday and is more than twice the average rate in the euro zone which hit 12.2% in April.

"It's long-term unemployment that is the most worrisome as the percentage is higher than 60%," said economist Angelos Tsakanikas at think tank IOBE, adding that the proportion of jobless people out of work for more than a year had been around 45% in 2008.

Those aged between 15 and 24 remain the hardest-hit, even though the jobless rate for that age group eased to 58.3% in March from 64.2% in February.

As the economy shrinks for a sixth straight year and with 1.3 million people officially without jobs - more than the population of neighbouring Cyprus - the pain is felt across the board.

Borrowers have fallen behind on loans and fewer workers are paying into pension funds.

Since the crisis erupted in 2009, Greece's jobless rate has tripled as hundreds of thousands lost their jobs or businesses and about 700 to 1 000 Greeks have been losing their jobs daily, according to estimates.

Once rare in a country where family ties are strong, rising numbers of homeless people, some of them old and sick, have also become a common sight across Athens.

Six out of 10 people on the street lost their home in the past two years and 47% of those have children, according to a study by Klimaka, a nongovernmental organisation.

In the capital's most rundown areas, ordinary Greeks who lost their jobs as a result of the country's economic crisis sleep outdoors side by side with Aids patients, drug addicts and others on the fringes of society.

Scrambling for ways to ease the pain for Greeks, Athens wants to tap about €170m of EU regional development funds to launch job programmes and has asked the European Commission to approve the move.

A turnaround will take time to be felt in the labour market even if recovery sets in next year as authorities predict.

The central bank projects unemployment will peak at 28% before it starts to decline in 2015.

India hikes gold duty to stem demand

India, the world's top gold consumer, on Wednesday hiked import duty on the precious metal to stem surging demand and reduce the country's ballooning current account deficit.
Gold purchases are one of the biggest contributors to India's current account deficit - the broadest measure of trade - which widened to just under five percent from 4.2% the previous year as imports outpaced exports.
The import duty on gold had been raised from six percent to eight percent, Revenue Secretary Sumit Bose told the Press Trust of India news agency.
The import duty hike was the second since the start of the year. Last year the government doubled the duty on gold to four percent.
Indians bought 162 tonnes of gold last month, twice the customary amount, as they sought to exploit a slide in global prices.
The hike is part of a wider set of measures to improve the finances of Asia's third-largest economy, which faces stubbornly high inflation, a sharp slowdown in growth as well as the hefty current and fiscal account deficits.
Ratings agencies have threatened to downgrade India's sovereign investment rating to junk status unless the government takes steps to clean up the nation's finances.
India has long been the world's biggest buyer of gold with purchases strongest during the religious festival and wedding seasons.
Last year's rise in the import duty on gold dampened demand temporarily but purchases soon picked up again.
Many Indians - especially in rural areas where there are few banks - buy gold in the form of jewellery, bars and coins as a hedge against inflation.
Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has said that gold imports must be curtailed, leading the Reserve Bank of India to take separate steps to curb imports.
Gold has fallen 16% since the start of the year as investors bet that the US Federal Reserve may soon start unwinding its financial stimulus as the US economy shows signs of recovery.

 

China to cut coal use amid protests

China is considering plans to cut coal consumption in some major industrial regions, people familiar with the policy said, as part of measures to reduce air pollution - an issue that has triggered a surge in public protests.
In a plan to be released this month, China may set a target to reduce coal use in a heavily polluted region in the north spanning Beijing, Hebei and Tianjin by a combined 100 million tonnes a year by 2015, said a person who has been involved in the policy discussions.
That region consumed an estimated 375 million tonnes of coal last year, around a tenth of the national total, with Hebei province, China's main steel producer, alone responsible for about 300 million tonnes.
Tackling a dependence on coal a major cause of smog and acid rain though, will test China's resolve to clean up its air, water and soil after decades of rapid industrial growth.
Previous attempts by Beijing to rein in its industrial polluters have not always succeeded, with growth-obsessed local governments often turning a blind eye to violations. Fierce lobbying by powerful state-owned utilities also appears to have put paid to a recent plan to raise national coal standards and ban low-grade imports.
Jiang Kejun, a senior researcher at the Energy Research Institute, a think-tank run by the National Development and Reform Commission, said precise targets were still being debated, but a decision was expected soon.
"These targets should be included in the plan, but we are actually still in the process of setting the precise numbers it isn't a particularly easy thing to do," said Jiang, who is involved in drawing up the policies.
China was previously committed to slowing the rate of coal consumption growth, but recent pollution scares appear to have increased its resolve to tackle problems caused by excessive coal combustion.
In January, thick, hazardous smog shrouded Beijing and other industrialised northern Chinese cities for more than a week, with many blaming excessive coal-burning by power plants, steel mills and other industrial facilities.
Steel capacity curbs
The new pollution plan is also expected to ban capacity expansions in steel and other polluting industries in major cities, and force firms to run emissions control equipment. Companies that fail to comply face higher power prices and the threat of having their power and water supplies cut off, officials familiar with the policy told Reuters last week.
China has sought to use the growing public clamour against air pollution to get tough on high-polluting, high-energy consuming industries like steel, cement and aluminium, which have been sapped by crippling levels of overcapacity.
Local industry is responsible for 49% of Beijing's pollutant emissions, vehicles 22 percent, and drift from surrounding provinces, including Hebei, 24.5%, according to a 2011 study. Coal-burning makes up more than 90 percent of sulphur dioxide emissions.
National Targets
China is also looking to reduce coal consumption in the big manufacturing regions of the Pearl River and Yangtze River deltas by 50 million tonnes each though analysts say those figures are unlikely to be enough to change China's overall energy consumption patterns.
"Those are relatively small numbers in the grand scheme of things," said Bill Durbin, analyst at consultancy Wood Mackenzie in Beijing.
"We're looking at total coal consumption of nearly 4 billion tonnes and expect to see that rise, simply because there is a lack of alternatives for baseload power generation, particularly as you move to the central and western regions."
Last October, in its 5-year plan on air pollution, China identified the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and the Pearl and Yangtze river deltas as "pilot zones" to control coal consumption.
It also said China would seek to reduce the share of coal in the national energy mix by promoting renewables and building new gas storage facilities in key cities. Around half of China's total energy comes from coal, far more than anywhere else in the world.
China has already said it aims to keep national coal production capacity to within 4.1 billion tonnes by 2015, up from 3.24 billion tonnes in 2010.
According to the China Coal Industry Association, China's total consumption is still likely to hit 5 billion tonnes by 2020. Wood Mackenzie, in a report published on Tuesday, said China's coal demand would double to 7 billion tonnes by 2030.
"If they cap coal consumption then they will have to raise investment in natural gas, but we're not seeing enough investment that would allow gas to displace coal," said Durbin.
The lack of reliable data is likely to make coal cuts difficult. In Hebei, unregulated private steel mills with a history of underreporting output use large amounts of coal. Monitoring nationally will be an even bigger challenge.
Last year's 5-year plan said special emissions restrictions would be imposed in 47 big cities, banning capacity growth in thermal power, steel, construction materials, coking, non-ferrous metals and chemicals.

US companies add more jobs

Hiring by US firms was sluggish in May while a sharp rise in mortgage interest rates last week weighed on what had been a buoyant housing market, adding to signs the economy had lost some momentum in the second quarter.

A separate report from the Federal Reserve characterised the pace of the economic expansion as "modest to moderate" since mid-April as hiring remained relatively subdued.

The Fed's Beige Book of economic conditions is prepared as research for policymakers to use at their next meeting on June 18-19, a meeting that will be watched for any indications as to when the Fed may pull back on its stimulus programme.

Private employers added 135 000 jobs in May, the ADP national employment report showed, an acceleration from April but missing forecasts for a gain of 165 000.

April's private payrolls were revised to an increase of 113 000 from the previously reported 119 000 gains.

"The number was weak," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, which jointly developed the report.

"The data is suggesting that instead of job growth stepping up, it's actually stepping down as we move into the summer months," Zandi told reporters.

"It's not like we're falling off a cliff...it just feels like we're throttling back a little bit."

The ADP report showed manufacturers had shed payrolls in May and a separate report indicated jobs growth in the vast services sector was weak last month, with a gauge of employment at services firms falling to its lowest in close to a year.

Expansion

Economic growth is expected to cool in the current quarter from the 2.4% rate in the first three months of the year, partly due to fiscal belt-tightening in Washington.

Economists still largely expect the recovery should regain traction in the second half of the year.

The goods producing sector cut 3 000 jobs in May, with a drop of 6 000 positions at manufacturing firms, which could be partially due to defence spending cutbacks, Zandi said.

Wall Street was down over 1% by mid-afternoon, while the weak data helped push Treasury debt prices higher.

The dollar was weaker against a basket of currencies.

Activity in the US services sector picked up slightly in May, with the institute for supply management's services index edging up to 53.7 last month from 53.1 in April and that topped economists' expectations for 53.5.

A reading above 50 indicates expansion in the sector.

The May figure was still off this year's peak of 56.0, which was hit in February.

The forward-looking new orders component rose, but the employment measure slipped to the lowest level since last July at 50.1 from 52.0.

Even with the lacklustre growth, the services industry held up better than its manufacturing counterpart, which contracted in May, according to data from ISM released earlier in the week.

Data on Wednesday added to signs of a slowdown in manufacturing as new orders for factory goods rose in April but not enough to reverse the prior month's plunge.

In a busy day for economic releases, yet another report showed unit labour costs fell in the first quarter by 4.3%, the most in four years, although the reading appeared to be distorted by a shift in employee compensation at the end of last year to avoid a tax hike.

Nervousness the Fed may taper bond purchases sooner than had been expected, sent fixed 30-year mortgage rates up 17 basis points to average 4.07% in the week ended May 31, the Mortgage Bankers Association said.

Last week's interest rate was the highest since April 2012 and the first time rates have been above 4% since early May last year.

Demand for refinancing was hit hardest by the acceleration in rates, with applications slumping 15.0%.

The gauge of loan requests for home purchases - a leading indicator of home sales - held up relatively better, falling just 1.6%.

$200m credit card hacking ring busted

Eleven people in the United States, the UK and Vietnam have been arrested and accused of running a $200m worldwide credit card fraud ring, US and UK law enforcement officials said on Wednesday.
Federal prosecutors in New Jersey said they had filed charges against a 23-year-old man from Vietnam.
They said in a statement that authorities in Vietnam had arrested Duy Hai Truong on May 29 in an effort to break up a ring he is accused of running with co-conspirators, who were not named in the statement.
"One of the world's major facilitation networks for online card fraud has been dismantled by this operation, and those engaged in this type of crime should know that they are neither anonymous, nor beyond the reach of law enforcement agencies," Andy Archibald, interim deputy director of the National Cyber Crime Unit, said in a statement on the British government's Serious Organized Crime Agency website.
The arrests were coordinated by the three countries, the statement said.
The arrests come as law enforcement officials around the world are cracking down on Internet-related heists.
Two weeks ago, authorities raided Liberty Reserve, a Costa Rica-based company that provided a virtual currency system used frequently by criminals to move money around the world without using the traditional banking system.
Earlier last month, authorities arrested seven people involved in a $45m heist in which hackers removed limits on prepaid debit cards and used ATM withdrawals to drain cash from two Middle Eastern banks.
"It's rare that you find actual human beings behind these things," said Mark Rasch, a former cyber crimes prosecutor and now a lawyer in private practice in Bethesda, Maryland. "Usually you can tie them to organizations or hacker handles, but it's harder to find individual people."
Rebekah Carmichael, a spokeswoman for New Jersey US Attorney Paul Fishman, said the charges were filed in New Jersey's federal court because some of the victims of the scheme are residents of the state.
Prosecutors claim Truong and accomplices stole information related to more than a million credit cards and resold it to criminal customers through the websites www.matteuter.biz and www.mattfeuter.com, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in New Jersey.
According to the complaint, Truong hacked into websites that sold goods and services over the Internet and collected personal credit card information from the sites' customers. "The victims' credit cards incurred, cumulatively, more than $200m in fraudulent charges," the complaint said. The scheme began in 2007.
"Like many 'carder' cases, this is an international conspiracy," Rasch said, adding that a recently passed computer crime law in Vietnam had made it possible for Vietnamese authorities to participate in the multinational sting.
Although Truong has been charged in the United States, he does not have a US-based lawyer because he is being held in Vietnam, Carmichael said.

NEWS,08. AND 09.05.2013

Brazil wins race for next WTO director

The World Trade Organisation has settled on Roberto Azevedo of Brazil, a well-known diplomat and consummate insider in Geneva circles, to serve as its director general for the next four years, officials said on Tuesday.

The directorship is chosen by consensus in a complex and secretive process, and the runner-up is expected to concede afterward. Diplomats emerged from consultations Tuesday to rush past journalists out of the building, barely acknowledging that Azevedo had defeated Mexican former trade minister Herminio Blanco in the final round.
Two diplomats confirmed Azevedo's selection to journalists on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to reveal the winner ahead of the formal announcement, but Azevedo also re-tweeted that he has been chosen for the job and comments from various trade circles began trickling in.
A formal announcement on his selection is not expected until Wednesday.
In Washington, Jack Colvin, a vice president of the National Foreign Trade Council, said Azevedo's selection reflects "his extensive experience and deep familiarity with international trade institutions and processes on behalf of Brazil and the focus he has placed on consensus-building in Geneva."
Under WTO rules, a meeting of member-nations must be convened no later than May 31 to formally appoint Azevedo. The selection - not an election - spanned months of consultations among ambassadors from all 159 members, most of them nations but also some territories such as Hong Kong and Macau.
Azevedo is to take over the organisation on September 1 from Pascal Lamy of France, who has been the director-general for eight years.
He is poised to become the first Latin American to head the Geneva-based trade organisation since its creation in 1995. He won out in a field that originally had nine candidates at the start of this year.
Azevedo will be taking over an organisation whose role as a multilateral forum for negotiations is, according to insiders and observers, in growing doubt.
In recent years, the WTO has been used more as forum to settle trade disputes and monitor policy than as a host for serious trade negotiations. That tendency reflects the rise of regional and bilateral trade negotiations among the major powers.
Azevedo, who has insider knowledge of the WTO's workings, calls himself a consensus-builder between developed and developing countries. He says he will set aside his Brazilian hat to take on the global role.
But it has been no secret during the selection process that member nations wanted the next director to come from a developing nation after having a director from one of Europe's major economies.
The original nine candidates also included contenders from Ghana, Costa Rica, Indonesia, New Zealand, Kenya, Jordan and Korea.

China's exports jump 14.7% in April

China's trade accelerated in April in a possible positive sign for its shaky economic recovery.

Exports rose 14.7% over a year earlier, up from March's 10% growth, customs data showed Wednesday. Imports gained 16.8%, up from the previous month's 14.1%.
The stronger data suggest growth of the world's second-largest economy might be improving after an unexpected decline to 7.7% in the first three months of the year from the previous quarter's 7.9%.
Some analysts suggest Chinese trade data are distorted by reporting errors and unreliable as an economic indicator. Still, April's stronger numbers might help to reassure companies and investors after the weaker first-quarter growth jolted global financial markets.
"Subdued actual export growth in April points to sluggish global demand," said RBS economists Louis Kuijs and Tiffany Qiu in a report. "Reasonable import growth suggests domestic demand has held up better so far."
Surveys by HSBC Corp. and a Chinese industry group showed Chinese manufacturing growth weakened in April. HSBC said new export orders fell for the first time this year.
Some analysts have warned China's recovery is being shored up by state-led investment and bank lending and could be vulnerable if trade or investment weakens. The weaker-than-expected first quarter numbers prompted the World Bank and private sector analysts to trim forecasts for full-year growth, though to still robust levels of about 8%.
Chinese leaders are trying to nurture self-sustaining growth driven by domestic consumption instead of trade and investment. But consumer spending is growing more slowly than they want.
A Cabinet statement last month promised to improve the role of consumption as a driver of economic growth. It pledged changes in medical, pension and other policies but gave no details. Analysts say more government spending on such social programs will be required to free up household budgets for consumer spending.
April's stronger gains in imports compared with exports caused China's global trade surplus to narrow by about 1%, though to a still-wide $18.2bn.
China runs a deficit with most of its trading partners, which supply oil, other raw materials and industrial components, and makes up for it by running large surpluses with its US and European export markets.
China's exports to Europe, hurt by the continent's debt troubles, declined 6.5% to $25.9bn and the surplus with the 27-nation European Union narrowed by 32% to $7.9bn.
Trade with some European countries suffered even bigger declines. Germany's imports of Chinese goods fell 7.2% and France's by 6.7%.
Exports to the United States edged down by a fraction of 1% to $28.1bn while the trade gap with the US narrowed by 13% to $14.7bn.
China's data on exports have been under scrutiny since some analysts pointed out last year that they failed to match up with its trading partners' lower figures for their purchases of Chinese goods.
Some analysts suggested Chinese exporters might be inflating values on customs declarations as a way to evade Beijing's currency controls and bring money into the country for investment.
Kuijs and Qiu of RBS said that after factoring out irregularities, they estimated China's exports rose only by about 5.7% in April, about 9 percentage points lower than the reported level. They said they saw no obvious irregularities in import data and no reason to inflate the values of goods.

Slovenia scrambles to avert bailout

Slovenia pledged on Thursday to sell 15 state firms including its second-largest bank, biggest telecoms operator and the national airline under a crisis package to avert an international bailout.
Prime Minister Alenka Bratusek said value added tax would rise from 20% to 22% from July but that the government was still in talks with unions on planned cuts to the public sector wage bill.
She said the budget deficit would soar to 7.8% of national output this year but the government aimed to bring it down to 3.3% in 2014.

Finance Minister Uros Cufer said the package would result in total savings of around €1bn in spending cuts and revenues.

US jobless claims fall to 5-year low

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits dropped to its lowest level in nearly 5-1/2 years last week, signaling labour market resilience in the face of fiscal austerity.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell 4 000 to a seasonally adjusted 323 000, the lowest level since January 2008, the Labor Department said on Thursday.
Claims for the prior week were revised to show 3 000 more applications received than previously reported. Economists polled by Reuters had expected first-time applications to rise to 335 000 last week.
US stock index futures pared losses on the report, while Treasury debt prices trimmed gains. The dollar trimmed losses against the yen.
The third straight weekly decline in claims pushed them further below the 350 000 mark, which economists normally associate with a firming labour market.
Claims are showing no sign of a pick-up in layoffs even as other parts of the economy such as manufacturing start to show strain from tighter fiscal policy.
"It's nice to see improvement in claims. We are not worried about the separation side of the equation. We continue to be worried about the hiring side," said Jacob Oubina, senior economist at RBC Capital Markets in New York.
A Labor Department analyst said no states had been estimated and there was nothing unusual in the state-level data.
The four-week moving average for new claims, a better gauge of job market trends, dropped 6 250 to 336 750 - the lowest level since November 2007.
Coming on the heels of data last week showing surprising strength in the labor market, the claims report could further assuage fears of an abrupt slowdown in the economy.
Employers added 165,000 new jobs to their payrolls in April and hiring in the previous two months was stronger than initially reported. The unemployment rate dropped to a four-year low of 7.5%.
The improvement in employment contrasts sharply with other data, including retail sales and manufacturing, that have suggested a cooling in the economy at the end of the first quarter, which persisted early in the April-June period.
The slowdown in activity after the economy expanded at a 2.5% annual pace in the first three months of the year has been blamed on higher taxes which went into effect on January 1 and $85bn in government budget cuts known as the "sequester."
The claims report showed the number of people still receiving benefits under regular state programs after an initial week of aid dropped 27 000 to 3.0 million in the week ended April 27. That was the lowest level since May 2008.

Obama set to renew focus on jobs

President Barack Obama travels to Texas on Thursday to put his focus back on job creation and economic growth after giving intensive attention to gun control legislation and immigration reform.
The president is due to hold events around the country to draw attention to his efforts to boost economic growth through jobs that benefit the middle class, a White House official said.
The trip comes as a poll shows Americans say what they want most from politicians in Washington is job creation and helping the economy grow.
In a visit to the Austin, Texas, area, Obama is due to visit Applied Materials which makes semiconductors and other technology, and a high school focused on math and science. He will also meet local residents and entrepreneurs.
Obama's jobs tour follows some policy frustrations for him. The president failed to persuade Congress to accept expanded background checks for gun buyers, a disappointing setback to his efforts to toughen gun rules after the December murders of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.
He is also at an impasse with congressional Republicans over a deficit reduction deal that he insists should include higher tax revenues, which Republicans oppose.
The president does appear to be making headway in his efforts to change immigration laws to open a path to citizenship for a portion of the 11 million people who are in the United States without proper documentation. However, final legislation is months off.
In the meantime, a Gallup poll released Tuesday found 86% of those surveyed this month ranked creating more jobs as their top priority for action by Congress and the president, tied at 86% with helping the economy grow.
Lower on the priority list were reducing the federal deficit at 69%, reforming the tax code 59%, reducing gun violence 55% and reforming immigration 50%.
The U.S. economy is recovering slowly after the deep recession of 2007-2009. Despite some encouraging signs of economic resurgence, such as stock market record highs, the jobless rate, while falling, remains at an elevated 7.5%.
The president will announce a competition for locations to site three manufacturing institutes where businesses, government and educational institutions will get funding to develop new technologies, the White House official said.
He will also issue an executive order requiring that newly released government data be made freely available in easily readable formats.
The president's jobs tour is also likely be a chance for him to argue that across-the-board spending cuts referred to as sequestration that went into effect March 1 are slowing economic growth and should be replaced.
The spending reductions went into force after congressional Republicans balked at the president's insistence that any alternative spending cuts be offset by some tax increases.
Some Republicans have welcomed the cuts as necessary austerity measures to check government overspending.

Cameron: Britain must stay in EU

British Prime Minister David Cameron took on critics in his own Conservative party on Thursday, saying it would be wrong for Britain to leave the European Union.
Some pessimists "say there is no prospect of reforming the European Union, you simply have to leave", Cameron told an investment conference
"I think they are wrong ... I think it is possible to change and reform this organisation."
Cameron came under renewed pressure from EU sceptics this week when former finance minister Nigel Lawson said the prime minister's plan to renegotiate Britain's commitments to the EU before a planned membership referendum in 2017 were doomed to fail and the country should leave the bloc.
Cameron used his speech on Thursday to underscore his determination to keep on narrowing Britain's budget deficit at a "sensible and measured pace" and to help push for new trade deals between the EU and the United States and Canada.
He also said he would continue to defend Britain's financial services industry against some European measures such as a planned financial transaction tax which has been agreed by most countries in the eurozone and would affect the City of London.
"We shouldn't spend our time in politics endlessly bashing banks and financial institutions. If you want the economy to recover and if you want the economy to grow, you have got to play to your strengths," Cameron said.

G7 finance chiefs to discuss bank reforms

Some of the world's most powerful finance chiefs will meet in an English stately home on Friday and Saturday to try to speed up banking and finance reforms, with Cyprus' near meltdown fresh in their minds.
Finance ministers and central bank governors from the Group of Seven industrialized economies probably will not break new ground on how to fix the weak world economy as discussions at the International Monetary Fund took place just three weeks ago.
Officials from two of the G7 economies said the talks - on Friday and Saturday at a 17th-century country house 40 miles northwest of London - were likely to focus more on the slow progress of reforms to banking and finance around the world.
"It's very rare for a G7 to focus on financial regulation," one of the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The emergency rescue of Cyprus in March acted as a reminder of the need to finish an overhaul of the banking sector, five years after the financial crisis began.
"It makes sense for the G7 financial leaders to send out a message, from high up, that global efforts to ensure financial stability via appropriate regulation must continue," the official said.
Germany may come under renewed pressure to give more support to a banking union in the euro zone as it did at the recent IMF/G20 meeting in Washington.
The idea was proposed last year to help strengthen the single currency area but Berlin worries it may foot the bill for future bank bailouts.
While the first step - to create a single bank supervisor under the European Central Bank - looks set to be in place by mid-2014, a second pillar, a 'resolution' agency and fund to close failed banks, is in doubt. And there is little prospect that a third leg, a single deposit guarantee scheme, will ever see the light of day.
"We welcome those discussions," a senior US Treasury official told reporters in Washington. "I think Cyprus just further highlighted the importance of moving to break that feedback loop between sovereigns and bank balance sheets."
Another G7 official said new rules for derivatives trading and the Basel III plan for minimum bank capital levels were running behind schedule and would be among the issues the G7 would discuss, as well as the risk of a reversal in soaring share prices in some countries which contrasts with weak growth.
But some of the officials said they said they did not know why Britain, which is chairing the G7, had called the meeting.
"I am really annoyed that I've got to give up my weekend for this," one complained, adding the talks could have taken place on the sidelines of IMF's meetings in Washington in mid-April.
A British finance ministry official said there was value in informal talks among the world's biggest industrialized economies but declined to comment on the agenda.
Changed role for G7
G7 finance ministers and central bank governors used to hold global markets in their thrall when they met, given the combined financial firepower of the group's members - the United States, Germany, Japan, Britain, Italy, France and Canada.
But it lost its mantle as the main forum for thrashing out differences over the global economy in 2009 when responsibility was passed to the wider Group of 20 which includes emerging heavyweights such as China, Brazil and India.
Since then, the G7 has met on the sidelines of G20 and IMF meetings but has held few standalone meetings although officials say the smaller grouping makes for more open discussion.
"As often is the case, the G7 is a photo opportunity. But it's important that it stays together as a forum to address the issues," said Marc Chandler, global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman in New York.
The U.S. official said Washington would keep up its calls on Europe to boost demand and maintain its focus on Japan's aggressive monetary policy which has raised US concerns about a weakening of the yen.
A Canadian official said discussions would again focus on the right degree of belt-tightening for debt-laden countries which are struggling to get their moribund economies growing and have relied heavily on massive central bank stimulus.
No communique and no formal decisions are expected at the meeting which would instead help prepare the way for a G20 leaders' summit in Russia in September.
It comes at a relatively good time for its host, UK finance minister George Osborne. He will be able to point to a few signs of life in Britain's stagnant economy that have taken some of the heat out of criticism of his austerity policies.
The meeting will also be a chance for the G7 to get to know new members of the group - such as the finance ministers of the United States and Italy - and to bid farewell to Mervyn King, who retires from the Bank of England in June.

NEWS,30.04.2013

Willem-Alexander sworn in as Dutch king

The Netherlands' Willem-Alexander was sworn in as Europe's youngest monarch on Tuesday after his mother, queen Beatrix, abdicated and his country hailed the avowedly 21st-century king with a massive, orange-hued party.
Beatrix, 75, shed a tear before signing the act of abdication at the Royal Palace in Amsterdam, witnessed by Willem-Alexander, 46, his Argentine-born Queen Maxima, 41, and members of the government.
A cry went up from the 25 000 crowd in the Dam, the main square opposite the palace where the signing was shown on giant screens.
Willem-Alexander, Maxima and Beatrix appeared in front of the crowds on the palace balcony, bedecked in roses and oranges, before heading for the enthronement ceremony in the neighbouring Nieuwe Kerk.
Beatrix accompanied the king and queen's three daughters to the church, including their eldest, now Princess of Orange Catharina-Amalia, 9.
The Dutch monarch is sworn in before a joint session of the houses of parliament in the deconsecrated church, rather than crowned, because church and royalty are separated in the Netherlands.
The king entered the church at a stately pace with Maxima under an awning of fishing nets, an ancient tradition in the seafaring nation.
Before taking his oath, the king thanked his "dear mother" for the "many beautiful years during which she was our queen."
"I'm treading in your footsteps. I have a clear vision of my office. But no one knows what the future brings," he said.
"Wherever that path leads and however far it goes, I will carry your wisdom and warmth with me," he said.
Ermine-lined cloak
The king swore "to preserve the independence and territory of the kingdom to the best of my ability ... so help me God."
His ermine-lined cloak has been criticised by animal rights activists in the Netherlands, but Willem-Alexander noted that it is old and so no blood had recently been shed for it.
MPs and senators then swore an oath to the king, although 16 MPs have refused to do so saying they have already pledged allegiance to the constitution.
A who's who of royals-in-waiting, including Britain's Prince Charles, Spain's Prince Felipe and Japan's Prince Naruhito and his wife, Crown Princess Masako, attended the ceremony.
Princess Masako is on her first trip abroad in nearly seven years, while Prince Charles also attended Beatrix's enthronement in 1980.
Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan and International Olympic Committee head Jacques Rogge also attended.
Police escorted two republicans from in front of the royal palace shortly before the abdication after they brandished a large sign reading: "I'm not a subject".
They were escorted to an authorised protest area but police later apologised for detaining the anti-monarchists.
Willem-Alexander is the first Dutch king since 1890 and the first of a new wave of relatively youthful European monarchs.
"Beatrix has been queen for 33 years, our queen," Ruud, 49, told AFP on the Dam after the abdication, a tear in his eye.
"She was a stabilising factor and a symbol of our country. It's sad to see her go after all these years, a page in our collective history is turning."
Million visitors
Amsterdam's population is set to double with around a million visitors flooding the city's streets and canals to mark the abdication and enthronement.
Over 10 000 police have been deployed in Amsterdam, with authorities saying they had arrested 70 people since Monday.
The monarchy is popular in the Netherlands, but some question the cost of the royal household and republicans are seeking to get the king's €825 000 tax-free salary reduced.
While Beatrix was known for her formal court, Willem-Alexander has already said that he will not be a "protocol fetishist".
Beatrix's enthronement in 1980 was marred by violent protests and running street battles over a housing crisis that left the city looking like a war zone.
Anti-royalists this time have been allotted six locations in Amsterdam to stage protests. But only around 100 republicans turned up for a protest at just one of the locations, an AFP correspondent reported.
Koningslied
Preparations for the day have been overshadowed by a rancorous debate about the event's official song, known as the Koningslied, which many considered ill-fitting, with its mix of traditional and rap music.
The nation will now sing the Koningslied as one on Tuesday evening, just before the royal family heads off on a water pageant behind Amsterdam's central train station.
Maxima is largely responsible for having made her husband popular after an allegedly boozy youth which earned him the nickname "Prince Pils".
Ever smiling, she has mastered the Dutch language and even taken a charity swim in Amsterdam's canals, endearing herself further in a country that expects their royals to be at once normal and regal.
Speaking ahead of the enthronement, Willem-Alexander said that "people can address me as they wish because then they can feel comfortable".
He stressed he wanted to "be a king that can bring society together, representative and encouraging in the 21st century".

Cyprus parliament approves €10bn bailout

Cyprus's parliament approved on Tuesday an EU bailout including provisions to impose substantial losses on bank depositors and wind down one of the island's biggest banks.
With a razor-thin majority of just two votes, lawmakers approved terms accompanying €10bn ($13.10bn) in aid from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
In a show of hands, 29 lawmakers from the three parties in the centre-right government approved the motion, with 27 voting against.

Government officials had warned the island would fall into chaotic default, unable to pay salaries or pensions, as early as next month without emergency funding.

"Unfortunately the (bailout) is a one-way street for us. It will avert disorderly default and gives, albeit with many hurdles, some prospect of getting us out of the storm," said Averof Neophytou, head of the governing right-wing Democratic Rally party.

The bailout was unlike any other aid deal, controversially forcing depositors to foot the cost of recapitalising banks exposed to debt-crippled Greece.

Opposition parties argued that the bailout would keep Cyprus in perpetual bondage to foreign lenders.

"A 'yes' from Cyprus's parliament is by far the biggest defeat in our 8 000-year history," said lawmaker George Perdikis of the Greens party at an extraordinary parliamentary session opened on Tuesday.

"Its democratically elected representatives have a gun to their head to agree to a deal of enslavement," he said.

Cyprus, the euro zone's third smallest country, is bracing for at least two more years of economic misery and record unemployment as terms on the bailout start to bite.

Attempts to agree a deal triggered financial chaos last month when parliament rejected a plan to make both insured and uninsured depositors pay a levy to fund the recapitalisation of banks heavily exposed to debt-crippled Greece.

It was followed by a two-week bank closure. The fallback option was to wind down one of the banks, Laiki, and impose losses of up to 60% on uninsured deposits - over €100 000 - in a second, Bank of Cyprus.

About 300 demonstrators gathered outside parliament on Tuesday, calling politicians "thieves". One group brought along a fake gallows, which they said was for lawmakers.

Communist AKEL, in government until it lost presidential elections in February, said Cyprus should seek alternative forms of funding, including possibly an exit from the euro currency. The island adopted the single currency in 2008.

"We know leaving the euro is an equally painful option, but reinstating a national currency could offer prospects for growth in the future," AKEL leader Andros Kyprianou said.

AKEL had made the initial application for financial aid in June 2012.

US home prices rise, helps economy

US home prices rose in February at their fastest rate in almost seven years, a fresh sign the housing market recovery will help counter the drag on the economy from government belt tightening.
The S&P/Case Shiller index of 20 metropolitan areas released on Tuesday showed single-family home prices rose 9.3% in February from a year earlier.
The data reinforces the view that rising home prices could make Americans feel better about spending this year, helping counter a hit to economic growth from tax hikes and government spending cuts.
"This will be a powerful positive fundamental not only for housing but presumably helpful for consumer spending as well," said Stephen Stanley an economist at Pierpont Securities in Stamford, Connecticut.
Another report showed US consumer confidence rebounded in April as Americans felt better about the outlook for the economy and their income prospects.
The Conference Board, a private industry group, said its index of consumer attitudes rose to 68.1. Economists polled by Reuters had expected a reading of 60.8.
Still, there appears to be a growing risk that weakness in the labor market and broader economy could dial down the housing recovery's strength. Hiring slowed dramatically in March and economic growth was lackluster in the first quarter, raising fears the economy could struggle to cope with Washington's austerity drive.
Business activity in the US Midwest unexpectedly contracted in April to its lowest level since September 2009 as a gauge of employment pulled back, another report showed.
The Institute for Supply Management-Chicago business barometer fell to 49, falling short of economists' expectations for 52.5.
Other recent data has pointed to less steam building in the housing market, but rising prices could give construction firms more incentive to build new homes and increase inventories. A dearth of homes on the market has held back sales.
The S&P/Case Shiller index showed prices gained 1.2% in February on a seasonally adjusted basis from January, topping forecasts for a 0.9% gain.
Following a spectacular collapse that fueled the 2007-09 recession, the housing sector appears to have turned a corner and prices have been rising since February 2012.
More monetary stimulus
The data came as the Federal Reserve prepared to open a two-day meeting on monetary policy. Yields on US government debt fell on the prospect the Fed would continue buying bonds to support the economy. US stock prices also fell.
A recent slew of weak US growth data has raised expectations the Fed will keep its pace of bond buying at $85bn a month throughout the year.
The Fed has kept overnight interest rates near zero since late 2008 and it has tripled its balance sheet to about $3 trillion through purchases of securities, which are aimed at pushing longer-term borrowing costs lower.
A separate report showed US labour costs rose a modest 0.3% in the first quarter, pointing to a lack of inflationary pressures that could give the Fed space to continue its monetary stimulus.
Wages and salaries, which account for 70% of employment costs, increased 0.5% in the first quarter, and were up 1.6% in the 12 months through March, according to the report from the labour department.
Workers' benefits rose 0.1% during the quarter, the slowest pace since 1999. The data may have been distorted by an error found in benefits data for sales and office workers, but the department said the data error probably did not have a major impact.

 

Germany to invest more in Africa

Germany is to increase its economic investment in South Africa and other African states, Foreign Affairs Minister Guido Westerwelle said in Pretoria on Monday.
His country was seeking partners in Africa to do business with as equals, he told reporters after meeting his South African counterpart Maite Nkoana-Mashabane in Pretoria.
"This is a strategic decision of the government in Germany to seek new opportunities in Africa, especially in South Africa. We think Africa is a continent of opportunities.
"We need investments. We need to trade and establish partnerships between equals. We need partnerships in skills development, vocational training, education and science."
Westerwelle is leading a Germany business delegation which has toured Ghana and will be heading to Mozambique.
South Africa was, however, Germany’s "most important economic and political partner" on the continent.
"Last year, our trade was around €14bn and over 600 German companies provide over 90 000 jobs in South Africa," he said.
"South Africa is also an important partner to us in world politics. We followed with close attention the Brics [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa] summit you hosted in March. It shows how the world is changing and there are new heavyweights like South Africa and we are seeking close co-operation."
He lauded South Africa for its interventions in strife-torn countries on the African continent.
"We value highly South Africa’s commitment to peace and security in Africa, for instance the mediation efforts by former president Thabo Mbeki in Sudan. We pay tribute to your peace-keeping efforts."
Nkoana-Mashabane said Germany extensively supported South Africa’s development priorities and had allocated around R3.4m during the 2012/13 period.
She said Germany was South Africa's third largest trading partner and its second largest investor.
"Africa is on a massive infrastructure building [exercise] which will help unlock the potential of our continent."

EU to protect savers from bank collapses

Depositors should be the very last to suffer losses when a bank collapses, according to a proposal being discussed by European Union countries and seen by Reuters, which would shield savers from the kind of losses they face in Cyprus.
The idea comes as member countries finalise a new draft law for the European Union that could make losses for larger savers a permanent feature of future banking crises. EU officials, however, are nervous that such a regime will panic savers, prompting them to withdraw money.
In the paper, outlining the process of 'bailing in' savers and other steps to deal with troubled banks, officials in Brussels said that it might be wise to put depositors behind all bondholders when dividing losses from a bank collapse.
Small savers, with less than €100 000, will, in any event, be protected. But officials also raise the possibility of allowing national exemptions from losses for big depositors in their country if a bank fails.
By striking such a compromise, officials hope to rebuild confidence after a botched attempt earlier this year to impose losses on depositors in Cyprus - initially also aimed at small savers although this was later changed.
A more favourable treatment of big depositors in the new EU law, charting how to deal with failing banks in a regime that could start in 2015, is backed by the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Ireland, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, is also pushing for such concessions ahead of a meeting of EU finance ministers in May.
"This would mean that they are not excluded from bail-in, but other creditors would first absorb losses to their capacity before eligible depositors are bailed-in," officials said in the paper, dated April 29.
Before any such softening of provisions, however, EU diplomats will need to convince Germany, which remains sceptical about making such concessions, according to one official familiar with the talks.
Policymakers have sought to portray the losses suffered by depositors at two of Cyprus's banks as a one-off, but experts believe it marks a change in approach in how Europe deals with troubled banks, sparing taxpayers who have been on the hook for previous bailouts.
"After Cyprus, a number of states would like more clarity," said one official who is involved in the discussions.
"It may be that we give depositors preference, which means that they have a higher likelihood of getting back their money."