NEWS,10 AND 11.06.2013

New London finance jobs rise 20%

The number of job vacancies in London's financial services sector rose 20% between April and May as employers took comfort from more stable financial markets, a recruiter said on Monday.
Job vacancies in one of the world's top financial centres rose to 6 426 last month, up from 5 355 in April, according to Morgan McKinley's London Employment Monitor.
London's banks and financial services companies have slashed thousands of jobs in recent years following a wave of banking scandals and a protracted period of economic weakness. However, the sector still employs over 1 million people in Britain and contributes almost 10% of gross domestic product, according to TheCityUK, which promotes UK financial services.
The May employment monitor results showed confidence about the potential for business growth was steadily returning, Hakan Enver, operations director at Morgan McKinley Financial Services, said in a statement.
"As we approach the mid-year point, we have seen less volatility both in the financial markets and also in the wider global economy. Although the market remains highly sensitive to macroeconomic issues, sentiment has slowly been improving since the start of the year," Enver said.
However, the number of job opportunities appearing in May was almost 60 percent lower than in May 2012. Enver said this reflected the impact of the large scale redundancies made last year, which have outweighed the number of roles becoming available, and a trend for filling vacancies internally.
The survey, based on Morgan McKinley's weekly records of new permanent and temporary job vacancies and new candidates registering with the firm for employment, also found that the number of job seekers rose by 7% month-on-month in May as job security became less of a concern.
On average, workers moving to new roles last month pocketed an 8% pay rise versus a 12% gain in April.
The smaller pay rise was down to firms having spent some of their hiring budgets earlier in the year, feeling less pressure to snap up top candidates as markets calmed and people returning to work after a period of redundancy.

Saudi prince sues Forbes - report

Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has sued Forbes magazine for libel in a British court, alleging its valuation of his wealth at $20bn was short of the mark by $9.6bn, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported on Friday.
The prince, a grandson of Saudi Arabia's founder and nephew of King Abdullah, had attacked the US magazine's ranking of world billionaires as flawed and biased against Middle Eastern businesses after he was ranked number 26 in this year's list.
An official at the High Court in London confirmed that Prince Alwaleed had filed a defamation suit against Forbes, its editor Randall Lane, and two of its journalists on April 30. Details of the claim were not immediately available.
Through his Kingdom Holding Company, Prince Alwaleed owns large stakes in Citigroup, News Corp and Apple Inc, among other companies. He is also owner or part-owner of luxury hotels including the Plaza in New York, the Savoy in London and the George V in Paris.
This year's Forbes World Billionaires list was published on March 4, and the following day Kingdom Holding said the valuation process used "incorrect data" and "seemed designed to disadvantage Middle Eastern investors and institutions".
The public spat attracted a lot of comment, but Forbes stuck by its estimate of Prince Alwaleed's wealth and published an in-depth article in its March 25 issue entitled "Prince Alwaleed and the curious case of Kingdom Holding stock".
The article gave details about how Forbes had arrived at the figure of $20 billion and criticised what it described as a lack of transparency by Kingdom Holding in detailing its assets.
The article also described Prince Alwaleed's marble-filled, 420-room Riyadh palace, his private Boeing 747 equipped with a throne, and his 120-acre resort on the edge of the Saudi capital with five homes, five artificial lakes and a mini-Grand Canyon.
The High Court official in London said the two journalists named in the defamation claim were Kerry Dolan, the author of the article, and Francine McKenna, who was credited with additional reporting.
No date has been set for a court hearing in the case, which is in its very early stages, the official said.
The law firm Kobre & Kim, which the Guardian said was acting for Prince Alwaleed in the suit, declined to comment. New York-based Forbes could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Guardian article quoted the magazine as saying: "We're very surprised at claims that Prince Alwaleed has decided to sue Forbes, particularly if he has done so in the United Kingdom, a jurisdiction that has nothing whatsoever to do with our recent story which raised questions about his claims about his wealth."
Media lawyer Jonathan Coad, of the London firm Lewis Silkin, said London was seen as a more attractive place than New York to bring defamation suits because US libel law made higher requirements of claimants.
"In the US, a high-profile claimant has to prove firstly that the article was untrue and secondly that the publisher knew that the article was untrue, which is what we call malice. Those are two hurdles that a UK libel action does not present," said Coad, who is not involved in the Prince Alwaleed case.
Under British libel law, a claimant has only to prove that a publication was defamatory. Then the burden of proof passes to the defendant, who has several possible defences, including that the publication was true.

Obama to name Furman as chief economist

President Barack Obama on Monday will nominate longtime adviser Jason Furman to be his new chief White House economist, an administration official said.
Furman, who will replace economist Alan Krueger as chair of the White House's Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), has a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and has advised Obama since his 2008 election campaign.
"Furman has been a key adviser to the president and has contributed to most every major proposal on jobs and the economy," said the White House official who declined to be identified. Obama will announce the appointment at 14:10.
Krueger, who was confirmed as CEA chair in November 2011, is returning to his professor post at Princeton University, from which he has been on leave. He had to return to the school by this fall in order to maintain his tenure, according to one source.
Furman is currently assistant to the president for economic policy and principal deputy director of the White House National Economic Council (NEC), which is run by Gene Sperling, and was an economist in the Clinton administration.
The CEA advises the president on domestic and international economic policy based on data and economic research. The chairman is a cabinet member and requires Senate confirmation.
Former colleagues said Furman would be effective because of his good relationship with the president and White House staff.
The appointment is likely a sign that budget and tax fights with Congress will continue to play a high-profile role in White House economic policy. It could also raise the profile of the CEA within the White House itself.

 

Opec keeps oil demand forecast steady

Opec kept its world oil demand forecast for 2013 virtually unchanged in its latest update on Tuesday, but tipped downward revisions given the deteriorating economic climate.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) said it expected world demand this year to reach 89.65 million barrels per day (mbpd), a slight drop from the forecast of 89.66 mbpd in its previous monthly report.
This would represent a rise of 780,000 bpd from 2012 oil demand, said the cartel which pumps about 35% of the world's crude.
Most of the increased demand is due to China and other countries not in the OECD club of advanced economies.
But Opec warned "the current forecast is subject to downward revisions not only in the OECD but also in emerging economies."
The latest Chinese manufacturing and export data raised concerns about a slowdown in Chinese growth, while growth in advanced economies is also expected to be lower than initially expected.
The Opec report noted that oil demand from debt crisis-wracked Europe declined for the 20th straight month in April.
"General expectations for the region's oil consumption during 2013 have once more weakened since last month's projections," said Opec.
Despite concerns about weakening global demand for oil, the cartel decided at its latest ministerial meeting at the end of last month to keep its output ceiling unchanged at 30 mbpd as the price per barrel of crude has hovered around $100.
However it warned it stood ready to act to support the price of oil.
The report, citing non-Opec sources, noted that international sanctions were having an impact on Iran's oil output, which fell to 2.64 mbpd in May, down from a level of 3.63 mbpd in 2011.
The International Energy Agency, the energy analysis arm of the 34-nation Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), releases its updated oil market forecasts on Wednesday.

US approves a nearly $1trn farm bill

The US Senate approved a sweeping, $955bn farm bill late Monday that sets out agriculture policy for the next five years, including expansion of crop insurance and reduction of food stamps.
The bill, which allocates some $955bn on nutrition and conservation programs, commodities and other agriculture spending, passed 66-27 with broad bipartisan support, and goes to the House of Representatives for consideration.
It slashes some $24bn from the federal deficit compared with the previous farm bill, a consideration Democrats hope will beef up the likelihood of passage in the Republican-led House where members have expressed intent to cut even more.
Agriculture is among the biggest US industries, accounting for at least 16 million jobs, and Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, chair of the Agriculture Committee, has called passing the farm bill this year a top priority.
"It's been a long road," she said on the Senate floor, referring to how last year's farm bill passed by the Senate was not taken up by the Republican-controlled House, causing the Senate version to expire at the end of 2012.
"I'm very optimistic we will get this done" and on to President Barack Obama's desk for his signature.
Stabenow accused House Republicans of having "walked away from rural America last year," but "this year it looks like it's going to be different."
House Speaker John Boehner suggested as much Monday in a statement saying the House will begin "vigorous and open debate" on its version of the farm bill later this month.
But Boehner hinted at a potential showdown, particularly over dairy provisions from last year that Boehner opposes, but that were kept in the 2013 bill.
"I oppose those provisions and will support efforts on the House floor to change them appropriately," he said, but he urged House members to come forward with possible solutions.
"Let's have the debate, and let's vote," he said.
By far the largest part of the bill, some $760.5bn over 10 years - the chunk of time over which the costs are calculated - addresses nutritional programs including food stamps, which the legislation cuts by some $4bn.
House lawmakers have called for even deeper cuts in the food stamp program as part of their goal of slashing a further $15bn from the overall bill.
It also marks a major transition from direct payments to farmers, a decades-old policy that helps shield growers from risk, to a market-based crop insurance system.
The new crop insurance plan would cost $89bn over 10 years.

Snowden: Russia will consider asylum

Russia would consider granting asylum to the American who has exposed top-secret US surveillance programmes, if he were to ask for it, President Vladimir Putin's spokesperson said on Tuesday.
Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stopped short of saying Moscow would accept Edward Snowden, but pro-Kremlin lawmakers spoke out in favour of the idea, tapping into a lingering Cold War rivalry with the United States and a vein of anti-American sentiment Putin has often encouraged.
"Promising Snowden asylum, Moscow takes upon itself the defence of people persecuted for political reasons," Alexei Pushkov, chairperson of the international affairs committee in the lower house of parliament, said on Twitter.
"There will be hysteria in the United States. They recognise this as their right alone," he said.
Putin and other Russian officials have often accused the United States of hypocrisy, saying it tries to impose standards of human rights, freedom and democracy on other nations while falling far short of them itself.
Snowden, who provided the information for reports that revealed broad monitoring of phone call and Internet data by the US government, fled to Hong Kong and has said he hopes that Iceland might grant him asylum.
He is not known to have mentioned the possibility of asylum in Russia, but Peskov was quoted in Russian daily Kommersant as saying Moscow was open to such an approach.
Asked whether Russia would be inclined to grant an asylum request, the spokesperson said: "It is impossible [to say] now. No one has applied yet. If he says: I request [political asylum], then we will consider it".

US assesses damage after NSA leak

The Obama administration has launched an internal review to assess damage to US national security from last week's leak of top-secret details of National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance programmes, a senior US intelligence official said.

The review is separate from an initial criminal investigation into the leak opened by the justice department, the official told.
The administration's review will examine the extent of damage to national security programs from the disclosures by Edward Snowden, of details of NSA's collection of phone call and e-mail data, the official said.
It will be co-ordinated by the National Counter-intelligence Executive (NCIX), a branch of the director of national intelligence's office, the official said.
Snowden, who had been working at the NSA as an employee of contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, went public in a video released on Sunday by Britain's Guardian newspaper.
In the interview, he described being disturbed by the NSA's broad monitoring of phone call and internet data from large companies such as Google and Facebook.
The company said on Tuesday that it had terminated Snowden's employment on Monday for violations of its code of ethics and policies.
It said he had been an employee for less than three months and had a salary of $122 000.
Snowden's revelations have prompted a broad national debate about the balance of American's privacy rights and national security measures, especially as they have developed since the 11 September 2001, attacks in the United States.
A team of national security, law enforcement and intelligence officials was scheduled to brief House of Representatives members later on Tuesday about the NSA's surveillance programmes. The Senate will be briefed on Thursday.
Snowden "a traitor"
House Speaker John Boehner defended the NSA programmes and their congressional oversight, saying he had been briefed on the programmes and that Americans were not "snooped on", unless they communicated with a terrorist in another country.
"He's a traitor," Boehner said of Snowden in an interview.
"The disclosure of this information puts Americans at risk, it shows our adversaries what our capabilities are, and it's a giant violation of the law."
Many other lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, have also called for swift punishment.
But Senator Rand Paul, a Republican popular with the Tea Party movement that campaigns against intrusive government, said he was reserving judgment on Snowden.
He said such civil disobedience happened when people felt like they had no other options.
"I think most Americans don't want this surveillance," Paul said

Cyber-snooping backlash builds in Berlin

German outrage over a secret US internet spying programme is building before a visit by Barack Obama next week, with senior members of Chancellor Angela Merkel's government demanding a full explanation from the president when he lands in Berlin.

Merkel's spokesperson has said she will raise the issue with Obama in talks next Wednesday. That could cast a cloud over the visit, designed to celebrate US-German ties on the 50th anniversary of a famous speech in which President John F Kennedy declared: "Ich bin ein Berliner".

Government surveillance is an extremely sensitive topic in Germany, where memories of East Germany's feared Stasi secret police and its extensive network of informants are still fresh in the minds of many citizens.

In a guest editorial for Spiegel Online on Tuesday, Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said reports the United States could access and track virtually all forms of internet communication were "deeply disconcerting" and potentially "dangerous".

"The more a society monitors, controls and observes its citizens, the less free it is," she said.

"The suspicion of excessive surveillance of communication is so alarming that it cannot be ignored. For that reason, openness and clarification by the US administration itself is paramount at this point. All facts must be put on the table."

Germans still enamoured of Obama

Opposition parties have jumped on the issue, keen to put a dampener on the Merkel-Obama talks and prevent them from boosting the chancellor as she gears up for a September parliamentary election in which she is seeking a third term.

"This looks to me like it could become one of the biggest data privacy scandals ever," Greens leader Renate Kuenast told.

Obama is due to land in Berlin on Tuesday night, hold talks and a news conference with Merkel on Wednesday and then give a speech in front of thousands at the Brandenburg Gate.

It is his first trip to the German capital since he passed through in 2008 during his first campaign for the presidency, giving a speech at the Victory Column in the Tiergarten park that attracted 200 000 adoring fans.

Five years on, Germans are still enamoured of Obama: A poll last week showed 82% view him favourably.

But his failure to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison, extensive use of drones to kill suspected al-Qaeda militants and the latest revelations about the secret surveillance programme, codenamed Prism, have tempered enthusiasm.

Grounds for 'massive concern'

According to documents leaked to the Washington Post and Guardian newspapers, the programme gave US officials access to e-mails, web chats and other communications from companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter and Skype.

Obama has defended it as a "modest encroachment" on privacy and reassured Americans that no one is listening to their phone calls.

But US law puts virtually no eavesdropping restrictions on the communications of foreigners, meaning in theory that Washington could be delving into the private Internet communications of Germans and other Europeans.

Peter Schaar, the German official with responsibility for data privacy, said this was grounds for "massive concern" in Europe.

"The problem is that we Europeans are not protected from what appears to be a very comprehensive surveillance programme," he told the Handelsblatt newspaper. "Neither European nor German rules apply here, and American laws only protect Americans."

Swiss want answers on US spy claims

Switzerland on Tuesday revealed that it has asked the United States to explain an alleged CIA blackmail operation to spy on the Alpine country's banks, exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The Swiss foreign ministry told AFP that it was aware of media reports about the issue and that it had sent the US embassy in the capital Berne a diplomatic note seeking "clarification".
The ministry also confirmed that Snowden was accredited as a diplomatic attaché at the US permanent mission to the United Nations in Geneva from March 2007 to February 2009.
"The role of members of permanent missions in Geneva is to represent their country at international organisations based in Switzerland," the ministry said.
"In line with the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations, Switzerland expects members of diplomatic missions in Berne and permanent missions in Geneva to respect the laws and rules of the country," it added.
Snowden, a 29-year-old technology expert and US government contractor, has turned whistleblower to reveal Washington's so-called PRISM programme.
The programme enables the National Security Agency to issue directives to internet firms such as Google or Facebook to gain access to emails, online chats, pictures, files and videos uploaded by foreign users.
Snowden has said that it was in Geneva - where his diplomatic role was a cover for his work for the US intelligence agency, the CIA - that he first considered going public.
Disillusioned
"Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world," he told the British newspaper The Guardian.
"I realised that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good," he added.
Snowden claimed there was an operation in which an agent made friends with a banker, got him drunk so he was stopped for driving while intoxicated, and then helped him escape legal action.
In exchange, the man allegedly spied on Swiss banks to garner data for US tax authorities on money stashed abroad by Americans.
Speculation is raging in Switzerland's media over the banker's identity, amid a debate over a take-it-or-leave-it deal proposed by Washington to fine Swiss banks that allegedly abetted such tax evasion.
Discharged from the army after an accident in 2003 just before he could deploy to Iraq, Snowden worked at the National Security Agency for various outside contractors, including Dell and Booz Allen Hamilton.

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,27 AND 28.05.2013

Europe needs a youth jobs plan - govts

Europe must urgently tackle youth unemployment, the French, German and Italian governments said on Tuesday, urging action to rescue an entire generation who fear they will not find jobs.
Ministers called for a mixture of measures including helping small companies and boosting apprenticeships.
Some 7.5 million Europeans aged 15-24 are neither in employment nor in education or training, according to EU data. Youth unemployment in the EU stood at 23.6% in January, more than twice as high as the adult rate.
"We have to rescue an entire generation of young people who are scared. We have the best-educated generation and we are putting them on hold. This is not acceptable," Italian Labour Minister Enrico Giovannini told a conference in Paris.
Germany in particular, weary of a backlash as many in crisis-hit European countries blame it for austerity, has over the past weeks taken steps to tackle unemployment, striking bilateral deals with Spain and Portugal.
Its labour and finance ministers told the conference that, to help young people find jobs, Europe must continue on the path of structural reforms to boost its competitiveness as well as make good use of available EU funds, including €6bn that leaders have set aside for youth employment for 2014-20.
"We need to be more successful in our fight against youth unemployment, otherwise we will lose the battle for Europe's unity," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said.
While Germany insists on the importance of budget consolidation, Schaeuble spoke of the need to preserve Europe's welfare model.
If US welfare standards were introduced in Europe, "we would have revolution, not tomorrow, but on the very same day," Schaeuble told students at the Sciences PO political science institute hosting the conference.
While all agreed on the urgency needed to tackle youth unemployment, ministers offered no concrete plans, insisting Europe must be pragmatic and work on various strands.
Schaeuble said this was why Germany had also decided to strike deals with countries such as Spain and Greece.
"Let's be honest, there is no quick fix, there is no grand plan," said Werner Hoyer, head the European Investment Bank.
Together with ministers, he said policies aimed at boosting youth employment must focus on small and medium-sized enterprises as they are the main entry point to the labour market for most.
More than half of Spain's under 25-year-olds are jobless, as are nearly 40% in Portugal. In Greece, youth unemployment shot to a record 64% in February.
In March 2013, the lowest youth unemployment rates were in Germany and Austria, both below 8%, highlighting the wide disparities within the EU.
The youth employment crisis will be a central theme of a June EU leaders' summit, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel has invited EU labour ministers to a youth unemployment conference in Berlin on July 3.
Following up on an idea aired earlier this month, French President Francois Hollande urged the euro zone to work towards a joint economic government with its own budget which could take on specific projects including tackling youth unemployment.

Bashir threatens to cut South Sudan oil

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir warned on Monday he will order the flow of oil from South Sudan to be cut off if Juba provides assistance to rebels in South Kordofan and Darfur.
Bashir said he would "completely close the pipeline" that carries oil from South Sudan to ports on Sudan's Red Sea coast.
He was speaking at a ceremony after the army recaptured Abu Kershola town in the far north of oil-rich South Kordofan, which rebels seized a month ago.
In March Sudan and South Sudan, which split from Khartoum in July 2011, signed detailed timetables to resume the flow of South Sudan oil through a major pipeline in the north that runs to a port on the Red Sea, and eight other pacts to normalise relations.
Bashir said on Monday that all of the nine agreements must be respected.
"Failure to abide by any agreement will nullify the nine accords," he said.
Bashir's remarks come less than a month after the Khartoum government announced that South Sudanese petroleum had returned to Sudan's main Heglig facility.
Heglig, along the disputed border with South Sudan, is where the export pipeline begins a journey of about 1 500 kilometres (930 miles) to the Port Sudan terminal on the Red Sea.
The pipeline will carry oil that will bring billions of dollars in revenue to both impoverished nations once exports resume.
But Khartoum accuses South Sudan of backing rebels fighting in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states as well as in Darfur claims which Juba denies.
Gibril Adam, a spokesperson for the rebels, said the fighters pulled out of Abu Kershola to ease a government blockade on the town that was taking its toll on residents there.

Crisis-hit Italians swap cars for bikes

Bikes are outselling cars in cash-strapped Italy, but while cyclists in Milan say their city is ready for a two-wheel lifestyle, there are daily nuisances for riders on Rome's busy streets.
Some cities in Italy have bike-sharing initiatives, bike paths and public awareness schemes, while cyclists are still barely tolerated in others.
Giulietta Pagliaccio, head of the Italian Federation of Friends of the Bicycle, said: "The economic crisis has had repercussions for everyone, including in transport.
"There's been a small revolution in terms of lifestyle.
"We have seen a lot of people who have re-discovered this means of transport because it's ease, it's simplicity, its speed for short distances... " she said.
There were 2 000 more bicycles sold than cars in Italy in 2011 - a differential that rose to more than 200 000 units last year, according to figures from an association of biking businesses and the transport ministry.
The car sector has been hit by what the head of auto giant Fiat, Sergio Marchionne, dubs "Carmageddon" - with a 20% drop in sales in 2012.
Pagliaccio said Rome was a particularly "difficult" city for cyclists and that in general conditions were worse in the southern half of the country, with poorer quality roads and few bicycle paths.
Benefits
She said mentalities were beginning to change, except for a few motor die-hards "who would drive from their bedroom to the kitchen if they could" - but that politicians remained "very behind" in terms of bike-friendly policies.
"They are afraid of losing votes.
"It's terrifying since everything is done in this perspective, without a long-term urban vision," she said.
Piero Nigrelli, head of bicycles of an association of biking businesses, said it was "breathtaking to what point politicians lack awareness of the bicycle's value".
He said Germany boasts about seven million cycling tourists a year who generate €9bn in turnover and only "a modest investment in bike paths" would be needed to bring such benefits to Italy.
In the Italian capital, those who use existing routes complain of daily trials, from junk strewn across the paths, to stretches along the riverbank which periodically flood and in one case a path blocked by a sprawling Roma camp.
Famed for its annual Giro d'Italia bike race, Italy has yet to embrace bicycles as a form of transport, though a "Bikemi" bike-sharing scheme in Milan has been enthusiastically received by locals and sales in foldable models are on the up.
Specialist shops in the economic capital have begun stocking bikes specifically designed for urban life, such as the British Brompton model, which folds up neatly and has a handle so it can be pulled along like a suitcase.
The world's oldest bicycle-making company, Bianchi, famed for kitting out biking champions such as Fausto Coppi, has branched out into electric bicycles to meet a growing demand from Italians keen to swap four wheels for two.
"Customers are asking now for high-range commuter models...they are looking for a long-term investment that supports the idea that they are turning away from the car," said Bob Ippolito, head of Bianchi.
Commuter bikes are now the company's fastest selling models - up 35% last year - which is partly because some customers "instead of having two cars, now prefer to have a car and a bicycle", he said.

Romanians protest shale gas plans

Thousands of Romanians protested on Monday against plans by the US company Chevron to explore for shale gas in eastern Romania.
"I have three children and I want them to grow up within a safe environment with clean water. Exploring for shale gas threatens to contaminate ground water," Alina Secrieru, a 39-year old nurse from the Barlad region told AFP.
"No fracking", "Chevron go home", "We say no to shale gas", read some of the banners carried by protesters who came from Barlad and surrounding villages.
Chevron obtained a vast concession in this poor and rural area of Romania to prospect for shale gas.
"This area survives on agriculture. If our water gets contaminated by the extraction of shale gas, agriculture will die and this area as well," said Constantin, a water specialist who was among the protesters.
He refused to give his last name out of fear of losing his job as most of the local politicians are now defending shale gas drilling.
Chevron has said in the past that all its activities "have, and will continue to be conducted in compliance with Romanian laws, EU requirements and stringent industry standards."
Shale gas drilling has fuelled controversy around the world.
The technique to extract the gas, hydraulic fraction or fracking, has been banned in countries such as France and Bulgaria but is widely used in some US states.
Fracking is a process whereby liquid products, including water and chemicals, are pumped deep into oil or gas-bearing rock to cause fractures and release the hydrocarbons.
Environmentalists say the method poses serious threats that include contaminating ground water and triggering earthquakes.
Romania together with Britain, Hungary, Poland and Spain strongly pleaded for developing shale energy during the last European council on energy.
Protesters lashed at centre-left Prime Minister Victor Ponta, accusing him of flip-flopping on his position against shale gas.
Ponta, in power since May 2012, had slammed the previous government's decision to grant Chevron and other oil groups concessions to prospect for shale gas.
His government last year adopted a moratorium on drilling, putting Chevron's operations on hold.
But since the moratorium expired in December, Ponta said he was in favour of exploration.
"Politicians have let us down but we want to remind them that the people in this area are against the exploration of shale gas. People here care about their environment" said Lulu Finaru, a notary who helped organise the protest.
A US Energy Information Administration study said the joint reserves for Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary were around 538 billion cubic metres (19 trillion cubic feet), among the biggest in eastern Europe.

China 'steals' Australia spy agency plans

Chinese hackers have stolen top-secret blueprints to Australia's new intelligence agency headquarters, a report said on Tuesday, but Foreign Minister Bob Carr insisted ties with Beijing would not be hurt.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation said the documents taken in the cyber hit included cabling layouts for the huge building's security and communications systems, its floor plan, and its server locations.

Carr said the government was "very alive" to the threat of cyber attacks on national security, adding that "nothing that is being speculated about takes us by surprise".

But he refused to confirm or deny China was behind the attack.

"I won't comment on whether the Chinese have done what is being alleged or not," he said.

"I won't comment on matters of intelligence and security for the obvious reason: We don't want to share with the world and potential aggressors what we know about what they might be doing, and how they might be doing it."

'Enormous areas of co-operation'

While Australia has a long-standing military alliance with the United States, China is its largest trading partner and the two countries have been forging closer ties.

Carr insisted that the relationship would not be damaged by the allegations, which follow several other hacking attacks on government facilities in the past two years.

"It's got absolutely no implications for a strategic partnership," he said. "We have enormous areas of co-operation with China."

The revelations saw Canberra came under pressure to launch an independent inquiry into the "sorry saga" by opposition politicians, but Prime Minister Julia Gillard declined to comment on "these unsubstantiated reports".

The state broadcaster's investigative Four Corners programme said the attack on a contractor involved with building the new Canberra headquarters of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation was traced to a server in China.

It cited security experts as saying the theft exposed the agency to being spied on and may be the reason for a cost blowout and delays to the opening of the building, which was supposed to be operational last month.

Deepening concern

Des Ball, from the Australian National University's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, said the blueprints would show which rooms were likely to be used for sensitive conversations, and how to put devices into the walls.

"Once you get those building plans you can start constructing your own wiring diagrams, where the linkages are through telephone connections, through wi-fi connections," he was quoted as saying.

The report, which did not say when the alleged theft took place, comes amid deepening concern about aggressive state-sponsored hacking by China.

In 2011, the computers of Australia's prime minister, foreign minister and defence minister were all suspected of being hacked, with the attacks reportedly originating in China.

At the time, Canberra said cyber attacks had become so frequent that government and private networks were under "continuous threat".

Beijing dismissed the allegations as "groundless and made out of ulterior purposes".

Earlier this year, computer networks at the Reserve Bank of Australia were hacked, with some said to be infected by Chinese-developed malware searching for sensitive information.

This followed Chinese telecoms giant Huawei being barred in 2012 from bidding for contracts on Australia's ambitious $35bn broadband rollout due to fears of cyber attacks.

N Korea kidnap numbers 'much higher'

The number of Japanese people kidnapped by North Korea decades ago to train its spies may be far higher than previously thought, a report said on Tuesday, citing a former Pyongyang agent.

Between 1965 and 1985, a team of around 120 North Korean troops repeatedly abducted young Japanese fishermen, the conservative Sankei Shimbun reported, citing a government interview with a formerly high ranking North Korean military official.

One of the missions involved the snatching of a man in his 30s from a boat in waters off Aomori prefecture in northern Japan, the report said. The vessel and its remaining four crew members were sunk, it said.

The issue of Japanese kidnapped by North Korea is a running sore in relations between the two countries.

Pyongyang admitted in 2002 its agents had snatched some young Japanese in what Tokyo said was an operation to train spies in Japanese language and customs.

Following a summit between then-prime minister Junichiro Koizumi and Kim Jong-Il, the late North Korean leader, five of those who were taken were allowed to return to Japan, along with their Korea-born offspring.

Pyongyang insisted at the time that all the others had died.

‘Acts of terrorism’

But suspicions persist in Japan that the isolated state has not come clean about the scope of its abductions and the issue colours all of Tokyo's dealings on North Korea.

Asked about the report, Keiji Furuya, the state minister in charge of the kidnap issue, declined to comment, saying he could not give specifics about what the government discovered.

Japanese officials say they believe many of the hostages are still alive, and say the kidnapping of at least 17 nationals during the 1970s and 1980s - some of whom were as young as 13 - were "acts of terrorism"

The Sankei report on Tuesday, which did not name the defector or say where the interview with him took place, comes as Japan has struck out alone to re-engage with North Korea.

Earlier this month a top aide to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Pyongyang in a move that appeared to take Washington and Seoul by surprise.

The US and South Korea have pushed for North Korea to re-join a six-party forum, which also involves Japan, China and Russia.

Those talks, which were derailed by nuclear and missile tests that began at the end of 2012, are aimed at curbing North Korea's atomic ambitions.

But despite the keen threat felt by Tokyo, which lies within easy reach of North Korean weaponry, the kidnapping issue trumps all others because of its domestic resonance.

Japan would not resume aid to even a completely de-fanged North Korea unless all abduction cases have been settled, Furuya said earlier this month.