New ID Rules Begin June 1 for Mexico, Canada trips

 

AP – FILE - This Jan. 29, 2008 file photo shows an electronic message board warning those crossing the border …

 

 

 

 

By MANUEL VALDES, Associated Press Writer – Sat May 30,

 

BLAINE, Wash. – New rules requiring passports or new high-tech documents to cross the United States' northern and southern borders are taking effect Monday, as some rue the tightening of security and others hail it as long overdue.

 

The rules are being implemented nearly eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks and long after the 9/11 Commission recommended the changes. They were delayed by complaints from state officials who worried the restrictions would hinder the flow of people and commerce and affect border towns dependent on international crossings.

 

In 2001 a driver's license and an oral declaration of citizenship were enough to cross the Canadian and Mexican borders; Monday's changes are the last step in a gradual ratcheting up of the rules. Now thousands of Americans are preparing by applying for passports or obtaining special driver's licenses that can also be used to cross the border.

 

"It's sad," said Steve Saltzman, a 60-year-old dual Canadian-American citizen as he entered the U.S. at the Peace Arch crossing in Blaine, Wash., on Thursday. "This was the longest undefended border in the world. Now all of the sudden it is defended, and not nearly as friendly."

 

Near the border crossing, local Blaine resident Mike Williams disagreed. "This concept was past due," said Williams. "Because it's not a safe world and it's becoming more dangerous all the time."

 

In one Texas border community, long lines were reported at a local courthouse as people rushed to apply for the required documents. But it remains to be seen if the new requirement will cause traffic backups at points of entry and headaches for people unaware of the looming change.

 

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials say they're confident the transition will be smooth.

 

"Our research indicates approximately 80 percent of the individuals coming in now, U.S. and Canadians, are compliant," and are crossing with proof of citizenship, said Thomas Winkowski, assistant commissioner for field operations at Customs and Border Protection.

 

The higher noncompliance areas, he said, are primarily U.S. citizens in the southern border region.

 

Travelers who do not comply with the new requirements will get a warning and be allowed to enter the U.S. after a background check, said Michele James, director of field operations for the northern border that covers Washington state.

 

"We're going to be very practical and flexible on June 1 and thereafter," James said.

 

The new rule, which also affects sea crossings, is the final implementation of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, a security measure crafted from recommendations from the 9/11 Commission.

 

It's part of a gradual boost in security along the northern border that has featured millions of dollars in upgrades and the hiring of hundreds of more customs officers and U.S. Border Patrol agents.

 

Before the new rule, travelers only needed to show identification, such as a driver's license, and orally declare their citizenship. In 2008, the federal government changed that rule to require proof of citizenship, such as a birth's certificate or a passport.

 

Winkowski said people expected delays at points of entry in 2008 after proof of citizenship became a requirement, but no serious backlogs appeared.

 

He said U.S. Customs and Border Protection will continue its outreach campaign through the summer to inform Americans of the new passport requirement.

 

Under the new rule, travelers also can use a passport card issued by the U.S. State Department to cross land borders. The card does not work for air travel. At $45 for first-time applicants, it's a more affordable alternative to the traditional passport, which costs $100. More than 1 million passport cards have been issued since last year.

 

Identification documents available under the "Trusted Traveler" programs are also accepted. Those require fees ranging from $50 to more than $100. These programs, developed by the U.S, Canadian and Mexican governments, allow vetted travelers faster access to the border. In some cases, members in these programs have their own lanes at border crossings.

 

Enhanced driver's licenses, which use a microchip to store a person's information, also can be used to cross the northern and southern borders. Washington state, Vermont, New York, and Michigan are the only states that offer them so far. An application process and interview are required for these licenses.

 

There will be some exceptions. Children under 16 traveling with family, people under 19 traveling in youth groups, Native Americans and members of the military will be able to use different forms of identification. Also, travelers in cruises that depart from a U.S. port, sail only within the Western Hemisphere and return the same port do not have to comply.

 

The U.S. State Department said there has been no spike in passport applications because of the June 1 deadline. The increase came in 2007 when it became required to show a passport for air travel to Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. That year a backlog of applications accumulated, affecting travelers nationwide.

 

The number of U.S. passport card applications, however, has increased as June 1 approaches, said Brenda Sprague, head of the passport division of the department's Bureau of Consular Affairs.

 

For states along the vast northern border, which for decades enjoyed fewer restrictions than the southern border, the changes sparked a wave of opposition when they were first proposed.

 

Concerns appear to have died down, however. In Washington state, for instance, the governor's office said it was pleased with the federal government's progress.

In the border town of Weslaco, Texas, Jesus Gonzalez said he crosses into Mexico about three times a month for medical needs, but he had not yet applied for any of the documents.

 

Asked if the new requirement would affect him, Gonzalez pointed back across the bridge toward Nuevo Progreso, Mexico: "It's going to affect them more," he said. "Businesses are going to hurt a tad bit and I feel sorry for them."

__

Associated Press Writers Eileen Sullivan and Matthew Lee in Washington, D.C., and Christopher Sherman inMcAllen, Texas contributed to this report.

 

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090530/ap_on_re_us/us_border_crossing_rules

 

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World's Undiscovered Gas and Oil is Largely North of Arctic Circle

ARCTIC OIL: The estimate comes at a time when a shrinking Arctic icecap due to global warming is making exploration more feasible. (Nabil Najjar / For the Times/ October 3, 2007)

From the Los Angeles Times

The most likely place for oil in the Arctic is off northern Alaska in the Chukchi Sea, the researchers report. But conservationists warn of drilling in the fragile environment.

By Margot Roosevelt

May 29, 2009

 

A full 30% of the world's undiscovered gas and 13% of its undiscovered oil are estimated to be located north of the Arctic Circle, U.S. Geological Survey researchers said in a paper published Thursday in Science magazine.

The estimate is relatively small compared with known reserves in the major oil-exporting countries, but it is likely to greatly benefit Russia, which has the largest territory in the region, the researchers noted. However, they said, the most likely place for oil in the Arctic is off northern Alaska in the Chukchi Sea.

The study, presented by Donald L. Gautier and colleagues, is the first detailed, peer-reviewed and geologically based assessment of natural resources in that region. Most of the undiscovered oil and gas will be found underwater, on continental shelves, the researchers said.

The estimate comes at a time when a shrinking Arctic icecap due to global warming is making exploration more feasible. Tensions have risen among nations around the Arctic Circle over how the resources should be exploited.

 

Republican Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has endorsed increased exploration. But conservationists warn that plunging drilling pads into the frozen Beaufort and Chukchi seas and in Bristol Bay could open the door to a catastrophic oil spill in one of the most fragile environments on Earth.

 

Source: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-na-arctic-oil29-2009may29,0,3651730.story?track=rss

 

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Google Wave Could Transform Net Communications

May 29th, 2009

 

What do you get when you use e-mail, instant messaging, blogs, wikis and other collaboration tools as a starting point for an entirely new communications model?

 

The answer is Google Wave.

 

Google previewed its latest Web-based application at the Google I/O developer’s conference this week. The Google Maps team, lead by Lars and Jens Rasmussen, developed the application to allow people to communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps and other tools.

 

Wave is the Rasmussens’ answer to questions like: Could a single communications model span all or most of the systems in use on the Web today, in one smooth continuum?

 

And what if we tried designing a communications system that took advantage of computers’ current abilities, rather than imitating nonelectronic forms? It took the brothers two years to come up with some answers that take the form of Wave.

 

Catching the Wave

 

In Google Wave you create a wave, which often starts with instant messaging, and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets and even feeds from other sources on the Web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly.

 

“It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave,” said Lars Rasmussen, a software engineering manager at Google.

 

“That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use ‘playback’ to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.”

 

Wave is an HTML 5 app, but it can also be considered a platform with a rich set of open APIs that allow developers to embed waves in other Web services, and to build new extensions that work inside waves.

 

Source: http://www.techeroid.com/2009/05/29/google-wave-could-transform-net-communications/

 

Posted via web from Pulse Poll

The Future of US Capitalism

Published  by Davide Accomazzo, Adjunct Professor of Finance

 on May 4, 2009 in America's Financial Crisis, Economics and Public Policy

The financial turmoil of the last eighteen months has brought to everyone’s attention the problems and dichotomy of our present monetary and financial systems. While we are now dealing with the consequences of too much credit, it is also important to note that a system without credit (and—much to the delight of the populists—without bankers) would be a much poorer and less innovative social system.

So far, the attempted solutions suggested have varied from more leveraged credit to the substitution of the fiat currency system and the central bank with a gold-linked scheme.

 

The problem with most of these suggestions is a massive confusion about how the U.S. system really works, how it should work, and how we would like it to work (and here it gets really problematic as every individual interest invariably jockeys for a better position).

The issue with a fiat currency system is that it is backed by the credibility of the government and the central bank, which should be acting independently as a guardian of the currency. Governments have inherent conflicts of interest and may feel pressured to regularly weaken the currency as a means of veiled taxation; other sectors of the population will also look favorably on consistent inflation to reduce the burden of borrowing. The central bank is supposed to act independently to counterbalance these inherent social and political dynamics.

Unfortunately, in the case of the U.S. and many other countries, the central bank, is hardly independent or focused on one true objective of financial stability. In reality, a central bank’s independence is very limited; true independence would require practically no accountability and a large degree of secrecy, which comes, of course, with its own problems.

 

The fine balance between a government’s and a society’s pull toward credit excesses and the countervailing force of the central bank is the key to successful economies.

One way for the U.S. to begin heading back in that direction would be to simplify the objectives of the central bank (i.e., the Federal Reserve) and eradicate its current internal conflicts between credit management, currency management, growth management, price stability and banking supervision. In other forums, I have advocated that system supervision and price stability (including currency) should be the only focus of any central bank.

 

The Federal Reserve’s obsession with uninterrupted growth and constant business cycle management is a political objective completely inconsistent with its true existential mandate.

Recent populist calls for the dismantling of central banks around the world as a solution to this problem are very disingenuous and they miss the level of complexity our system has reached over decades. A potential return to some sort of gold standard and the eradication of the central bank will accomplish nothing positive. A financial system built on credit is far superior to no credit at all, but because of the system’s inherent instability, there is a great need for fiscal management and strict regulatory supervision.

 

The answer is a better, more functional and less sclerotic central bank—not a system left to its own devices.

The unfortunate truth (and yes I do believe in free markets and in maximum rational levels of freedom in every aspects of society) is that full free markets have never existed and cannot exist for two reasons: the natural tendency of humans to jockey for personal (or group) interests and the reflexivity of market action, which distorts self-adjusting dynamics.

 

As far as having a gold-linked currency goes, the shiny metal has had its chances over history and has invariably failed to function in the best interest of society at large.

The fact is that gold is subject to the same credibility issues of governments and central banks (that is, the idea of its value is still based on collective faith). Gold failed during the times of the Spanish empire, which drowned in a sea of inflation, during the California gold rush, and during the Great Depression. Gold is certainly not the answer at a systemic level, but it is an accepted temporary hedge, and until better checks and balances are found in our present system, it is an asset that deserves a small place in most portfolios.

Socialism (and certainly communism) in classic terms were concerned with gaining control of the means of production; nowadays that is a trivial issue and quite impossible to accomplish when most means of production are held offshore and a larger percentage of the economy is represented by services. The key to today’s socialism is control of capital creation—the unholy union of governments and central banks. Gov-centralbank-ism?

 

The future of capitalism will depend on our ability to clarify the objectives of central banks as well as America’s ability to create modern institutional checks and balances.

 

Note: The current fiat monetary system is based on a currency that is backed simply by faith and trust in the government. In other words, the currency is not at the present time convertible into anything—it is just a piece of paper that tracks relative interest rates and rates of growth among countries. Ultimately, currency value rests on the faith investors have in the government that the real value will not be debased. In the past, currencies have been linked to commodities (usually gold or silver) with a conversion ratio—this served to limit government actions to inflate the money supply and debase real purchasing power. During this economic mess there have been many voices that have invoked a return to some sort of gold standard. And as the everyday business of economic life is being thrown into question, calls for a move to some kind of socialism and away from the supposedly free markets are being made.

 

Source: http://gbr.pepperdine.edu/blog/index.php/2009/05/04/857

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Euro Zone Interest Rate Falls to Zero

By MATTHEW SALTMARSH

Published: May 29, 2009

 

PARIS — The annual inflation rate for the euro area was unchanged over the year to May, compared to a 0.6 percent gain in April, the European Union statistics agency said Friday in a preliminary report.

 

A breakdown of the data is not yet available, but analysts said the drop was largely attributable to lower energy and food price inflation, while core inflation, which excludes those volatile prices, probably also fell noticeably.

 

The annual rate of zero percent in May was below analyst expectations of a rise of 0.3 percent, and was the lowest level of inflation since Eurostat started producing comparable data in 1996.

 

The rate is likely to dip into negative territory in coming months, due to the high base comparison from mid-2008, before turning positive late this year and rising further in 2010, said Martin van Vliet, an economist at ING in Amsterdam.

 

“The severe contraction in activity has created a huge margin of spare capacity in the economy, which will exert strong downward pressure on core prices going forward,” he said. “There remains a real risk that the euro zone will see more than a whiff of deflation.”

 

In Germany, Europe’s largest economy, consumer prices unexpectedly posted the first annual decline since at least 1996 this month. Growing unemployment and feeble wage increases are also likely to keep a lid on any significant rise in prices for some time, analysts said.

 

The most powerful German union, IG Metall, reached a wage deal in November for a 4.2 percent rise through April 2010. The deal by the union, which represents 3.6 million workers at companies like Siemens and Daimler, consisted of two pay rises each of 2.1 percent, starting Feb. 1. The second increase was due to take effect starting May 1, but many firms, in agreement with unions, are deferring it.

 

Figures from the European Central Bank released Friday showed a further decline in monetary and credit growth. Annual growth in M3, a broad measure of money supply, posted its sixth consecutive monthly decline in April, falling to 4.9 percent from 5 percent in March.

 

Annual growth in bank lending to the private sector also continued its decline in April, falling to 2.4 percent from 3.2 percent, with annual growth in lending to the household sector and the non-financial corporate sector also slowing.

 

Still, the E.C.B. continues to argue against the likelihood of a deflationary spiral taking hold. The bank’s vice president, Lucas Papademos, said this week that “temporary disinflation does not constitute a persistent, broad-based and self-sustaining decline in the overall price level.”

 

The bank’s president, Jean-Claude Trichet, said this month that the inflation gauge would accelerate again in the second half of the year. The E.C.B. aims to keep inflation just below 2 percent.

 

Separate data released Friday showed that retail sales in Germany unexpectedly grew in April, raising hopes that consumer spending could help support the economy after a record slump in gross domestic product in the first quarter.

 

Sales rose by 0.5 percent from the previous month in seasonally adjusted terms, the Federal Statistics Office said. Year-on-year, sales fell by 0.8 percent.

 

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/business/global/30euro.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

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Facebook’s New Russian Shareholder Planning Its Own IPO

 

By Robert Andrews - Thu 28 May 2009

 

Facebook may not be rushing to go public, but Digital Sky Technologies, the Russian investment fund that just paid $200 million for 1.96 percent of the social network, does plan to IPO.

 

CEO, co-founder and former Mail.ru chief Yuri Milner tells Slon.ru (via Yakov): “Our model ... is to exit via IPO ... An IPO’s timing is dependent on the state of world markets and the willingness of Digital Sky Technologies for the event ... I think it will happen within the next three years.” No info on this point, but it’s quite possible DST would float in London rather than Moscow.

 

DST was already a major-league online investor before buying part of Facebook, holding big interests in Russia’s leading portal Mail.ru, its top social nets Odnoklassniki.ru and Vkontakte.ru (a Facebook clone), dating site Mamba, link exchange Sape.ru plus Poland’s Nasza-Klasa.pl. Does its latest buy make a Facebook IPO more or less likely? Consider the case of Mail.ru, whose own likely

 

IPO was called off last year when DST upped its stake to a majority.

 

DST’s own shareholders include Arsenal football club shareholder Alisher Usmanov, Renaissance Partners, Tiger Global and Goldman Sachs, plus partners Miler, London-based Alexander Tamas and ex hedge fund boss Gregory Finger.

 

Usmanov bumped his stake up by another two percent to 32 percent this week. Russia’s internet audience is Europe’s fourth largest, behind Germany, the UK and France, April figures from comScore said Wednesday.

 

Source: http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-facebooks-new-russian-shareholder-planning-its-own-ipo/

 

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On the Web, Streams Are Replacing Pages

By Joseph Tartakoff - Wed 27 May 2009

 

The Inside Word is a weekly feature that looks at unusual industry debates and discussions unfolding on the blogs of employees at digital-media companies.

 

Poster: John Borthwick

 

Blog name: THINK / Musings

Company: Betaworks

 

Backstory: Borthwick leads New York City-based tech investor Betaworks, whose network includes buzzy startups like Twitter, bit.ly, stocktwits and Tumblr. Borthwick blogs only occasionally but says he was moved to post this month when he noticed that companies in Betaworks portfolio were getting an increasing amount of traffic “via social distribution” networks.

 

Blog Entry: Perhaps it’s not surprising that Borthwick, given the heavy social-media component in the Betaworks portfolio, is an advocate of the “stream,” epitomized by the Facebook newsfeed and by Twitter. But in his blog post, he goes so far as to say that the stream has replaced the “page” as the metaphor for the web: “For 15 years, the primary metaphor of the web has been pages and reading,” Borthwick writes.

 

“The metaphors we used to circumscribe this possibility set were mostly drawn from books and architecture (pages, browser, sites, etc.). Most of these metaphors were static and one way. The stream metaphor is fundamentally different. [It’s] dynamic, it [doesn’t] live very well within a page and [is] still very much evolving.”

 

One implication: Since people are finding information via sites like Twitter or Facebook, website traffic will no longer always be steady, Borthwick argues. In a given month, there will be days when traffic will be way above average and sites should try to take advantage of this: “So what to do when a burst takes place? I have no real idea [what’s] going to emerge here, but cursory thoughts include making sure the author is present to manage comments etc., and build in a dynamic mechanism to alert the crowd to other related items.”

 

Post-script: In a followup exchange, we asked Borthwick what this might mean for advertisers, who are used to buying against a relatively consistent level of traffic. He said tools would emerge so that advertisers could put offers in front of crowds when they suddenly show up on a site. “It’s early days, but if the traffic flow changes, the way ad (dollars) work will shift as well,” he said.

 

Please e-mail suggestions for future editions of the Inside Word to joe@paidcontent.org

 

Photo credit: Mary Hodder

 

Source: http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-the-inside-word-the-web-is-not-dry/

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Geithner Goes to China Hat in Hand

By Greg Robb,

MarketWatch

 

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is about to get on a plane and travel half-way around the world to manage what is probably the world's worst marriage-of-convenience.

 

Mutual mistrust, competition and rivalry complicate a U.S.-China relationship that, on the other hand, has been so lucrative for both sides and the global economy. The two sides got closer during the recent recession, but there are new strains on the horizon.

 

China's currency has moved lower in recent weeks, riding on the back of the dollar. Criticism is sure to follow. With one of the few economies growing in the global recession, by all rights China's currency should be on the rise. Experts said this love/hate bilateral relationship is well-established.

 

U.S. policy towards China constantly swerves "between marriage and a nasty divorce," said Clay Lowery, a former Treasury official during the George W. Bush administration.

 

Over the past two decades, China has created an export machine that provides U.S. consumers with inexpensive goods while both American and Chinese companies benefited.

 

This has been accomplished, in part, by China keeping its currency low relative to the dollar. The byproduct is a wide bilateral trade gap and China becoming the largest foreign holder in U.S. Treasury securities.

 

China now holds $1.55 trillion in dollar assets, according to Brad Setser of the Council of Foreign Relations. As a result, China can look forward to an estimated $50 billion in interest payments on the debt this year.

 

China needs the U.S. to survive and prosper and the U.S. needs China to buy our debt, said Timothy Adams, who also served in the Bush Treasury. Washington has never been comfortable in this relationship. A debate continues at the highest levels of government whether China's rise is peaceful or a threat.

 

Beijing, on the other hand, is focused on respect and is not keen to listen to lectures from a U.S. government that has had to spend over a trillion dollars rescuing its banking sector.

 

Recession hasn't changed things

 

There had been some hope that the severe recession over the last 18 months would have altered this bilateral relationship. The theory went that with the U.S. consumer tapped out, China would focus on building up its own domestic consumer market. But experts say this hasn't happened, at least to the extent required. Instead, Chinese exporters have doubled down on the return of the U.S. consumer and have increased their capacity. Exporters appear to have political muscle in China to block meaningful reform.

 

At the same time, the U.S. budget deficit is projected to reach record levels for the next several years.

 

"We've got to hope China still has an appetite for our debt," given the "ocean of red ink" coming down the road, said Adams. Given this backdrop, the Obama administration wants to "make nice" with Beijing, said Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics.

 

Geithner wants to assuage China's concerns about U.S. monetary policy and the stability of its U.S. holdings and will not push for China to strengthen its currency versus the dollar, Weinberg said.

 

"Geithner has no leg to stand on to insist on more revaluation ... and he knows this," Weinberg said.

 

Geithner is also going to China to prepare the ground for high-level talks between the two countries to be held in Washington in the latter half of the summer. The talks are modeled after the program started by former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Key Cabinet officials from both countries meet to try to rescue issues from the clutches of bureaucrats.

 

Geithner and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will share the stage, with Geithner shepherding economic issues, and Clinton handling environmental and political issues.

 

Geithner wants to be "low key" in his dealings with China, agreed Nicholas Lardy, a top China watcher in Washington for the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

 

Obama officials want to move away from what they see as the "lecturing mode" of the Bush administration, Lardy said. Congress has no appetite to fight China for fear that the tension might hurt the recovery. But if the jobless rate hits double-digits, then the focus of the public's ire may shift from Wall Street back to China, Lardy said.

 

"The rhetoric has cooled but not disappeared. It will come back," Adams said. Setser said most recent trends in the currency market are already fanning the flames. The dollar has fallen to five-month lows in currency trading, and because China's currency is pegged to the dollar, it has come down as well.

 

"China's currency has been depreciating in real terms even though it is generally thought that China's economy is going to do better than the rest of the global economy," Setser said.

So we're back at square one with the yuan tightly pegged as the dollar is weakening, just like 2002 to 2005, he said. Other Asian countries are scrambling to weaken their currencies to compete with China.

 

Dean Baker, co-director of the liberal-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, said that the U.S. should go so far as to try to negotiate an appropriate bilateral currency rate with China, say 5 yuan to the dollar. If the talks are not successful, the U.S. should simply set a rate.

 

He said that complaints in Congress and the White House over the past decade about China's currency have amounted to "stagecraft." Not all experts are so glum. Lardy of the Peterson Institute said China's recent stimulus package "was the gold standard in terms of its response to the global economic crisis."

 

China put money in the hands of the population, he said. Car sales, for instance, rose dramatically. If China can continue this policy, it may offset renewed tension, Lardy added. For clues on how Geithner's meeting went, Setser suggested focusing on whether there in progress on China's making a contribution to the International Monetary Fund.

 

During the Group of 20 meeting in London, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that China planned to contribute $40 billion to the IMF but no official announcement from China has been forthcoming.

 

A senior Treasury official told reporters that this topic may come up in Geithner's meetings. Geithner will meet with the highest level of Chinese officials on Monday and Tuesday. But both sides of the marriage are likely to keep mum about their difficulties, at least in public. In the near term, "it looks like nothing on the horizon that is dealing with these problems," noted Desmond Lachman, an expert on global economics at the American Enterprise Institute.

 

Source: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/geithner-goes-to-beijing-to-manage-bad-marriage

Posted via web from Global Business News

OPEC Set To Leave Output Unchanged

Opec bets on recovery to boost price

By Javier Blas in Vienna

Published: May 28 2009

 

The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries delivered on Thursday its most optimistic message about the global economy and the oil market since the start of the financial crisis last summer triggered a precipitous fall in prices from a record $150 a barrel to $30.

 

“We are beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel,” Abdalla El-Badri, Opec secretary-general, said after the cartel agreed to leave its production level unchanged, betting that the global recovery would push oil prices to $75-$80 a barrel.

 

“We are seeing [oil demand in] the US picking up,” Mr El-Badri added. “But, above all, which is the most important, we are seeing demand in China and India and Asia as a whole.”

 

Because oil demand was closely correlated with economic activity, Opec’s cheerful view was a signal the global economy was slowly strengthening, analysts said.

 

Ali Naimi, Saudi minister and one of the world’s most senior energy policymakers, added to the upbeat sentiment, saying: “The price is good, the market is in good shape and the recovery is under way, so what else could we want?”

 

Oil prices rose immediately to a fresh six-month high of more than $64 a barrel.

David Kirsch, an oil market analyst at PFC Energy, said in Vienna that Opec was leaving behind its worries about the global economy, last expressed at its March meeting. “Opec is witnessing early signs of economic recovery and financial flows into commodities,” Mr Kirsch said.

 

Opec delegates said that Saudi Arabia appeared confident that the flow of money into commodities – as investors worried about a pick-up in inflation or a further weakening of the US dollar – would help the cartel to support oil prices. Speculative flows, long an Opec foe, could turn into an ally, analysts said.

 

Nonetheless, behind the scenes some Opec members such as Venezuela and Algeria expressed their unease about the precarious balance between supply and demand, and high inventories.

 

The International Energy Agency, the western countries’ oil watchdog, forecast that global oil demand would drop this year by 2.6m barrels a day, the steepest fall since 1981.

 

In addition, crude oil inventories in developed countries both onshore and floating in tankers are near record levels. Those concerns echo the scepticism of many traders in the physical market about Riyadh’s view of rising oil demand. Few analysts on Wall Street share Saudi Arabia’s forecast that oil prices would rise to $75-$80 a barrel by the end of the year.

 

Opec’s communiqué reflected the nervousness of some of its more bearish members, saying that the cartel was ready to “respond swiftly to any developments which might place oil market stability and their interest in jeopardy”.

 

At the same time, the oil cartel’s ministers “reiterated the firm commitment to the individually agreed production allocations”, a sign that the group is concerned about some member states pumping above the officially sanctioned levels.

 

The group has announced three big output cuts since September, totalling a record 4.2m barrels a day – about 5 per cent of global oil demand – but it delivered about 80 per cent of the promised reduction last month, down from 85 per cent in March.

 

The official output ceiling of Opec’s core members, excluding Iraq, stands at 24.8m b/d. Opec will review the oil market in a meeting scheduled for September 9.

 

Data from the US Energy Information Administration showed that crude oil stockpiles fell more than expected as refinery utilisation jumped. Crude stockpiles fell by 5.4m barrels, compared with the expectation for a drop of 700,000 barrels.

 

Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7c3b46ee-4b56-11de-b827-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

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World First: Japanese Scientists Create Transgenic Monkeys

AFP - Thursday, May 28

PARIS (AFP) - - In a controversial achievement, Japanese scientists announced on Wednesday they had created the world's first transgenic primates, breeding monkeys with a gene that made the animals' skin glow a fluorescent green.

 

The exploit opens up exciting prospects for medical researchers, they said.

It could eventually lead to lab monkeys that replicate some of humanity's most devastating diseases, providing a new model for exploring how these disorders are caused and how they may be cured.

 

"Great advances in pre-clinical research can be expected using these models," the team said. But other voices warned of a potential ethics storm, brewed by fears that technology used on our closest animal relatives could be turned to create genetically-engineered humans.

 

In a study published in the British journal Nature, a team led by Erika Sasaki of the Central Institute for Experimental Animals at Keio University reported on experiments on common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus), a small monkey native to Brazil.

 

They introduced a foreign gene, tucked inside a virus, into marmoset embryos that were then nurtured in a bath of sucrose.

 

The gene codes for green fluorescent protein (GFP), a substance that was originally isolated from a jellyfish and is now commonly used as a biotech marker. An animal tagged with GFP glows green when exposed to ultraviolet light, proving that a key gene sequence has been switched on.

 

The transgenic embryos were then implanted in the uterus of seven surrogate mother marmosets.

 

Three of recipients miscarried. The other four gave birth to five offspring, all of which carried the GFP gene.

 

In two of these five, the GFP gene had been incorporated into the reproductive cells. A second generation of marmosets was then derived from one of the two.

 

The work is important, because medical researchers have hankered for an animal model that is closer to the human anatomy than rodents.

 

Mice and rats, genetically engineered to have the symptoms of certain human diseases, are the mainstay of pre-clinical lab work, in which scientists test their theories before trying out any outcome on human volunteers.

 

But many disorders, especially neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, are so complex that they cannot be reproduced meaningfully in rodents because their biology is different.

 

Hopes for a non-human primate model have until now been dashed by the failure to insert a gene into a monkey's sperm and eggs -- the "germline" that ensures that the inserted DNA is passed on to future generations rather than lost.

 

The first genetically-modified monkey was born in 2000. Known as ANDi (the initials of "Inserted DNA," spelt backwards), the rhesus carried the GFP gene but not in its reproductive cells.

 

The latest exploit thus opens up hopes of eventually breeding colonies of transgenic primates with inherited traits that closely replicate human disease.

 

"This is the first case ever established in the world that an introduced gene was successfully inherited (by) the next generation in primates," the researchers said in a press relase.

 

Future plans include creating transgenic marmosets that replicate human diseases such as Parkinson's and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

 

In a commentary also published by Nature, Gerald Schatten and Shoukhrat Mitalipov, primate research specialists in the US, praised the achievement as "undoubtedly a milestone" but sounded caution.

 

They said marmosets were not as useful as baboons or rhesus monkeys in replicating some diseases, notably HIV and tuberculosis.

 

Another question was the random insertion of a foreign gene in the monkey's genetic code. This may have caused some of the miscarriages and, if previous research is a guide, could unleash cancer.

 

Scientists also have to address legitimate public concern about animal welfare and the need for "realistic policies" to prevent genetically-engineered babies, they warned.

 

"There are many unanswered questions," Helen Wallace, of GeneWatch UK, a British NGO that monitors the ethics of gene research, told AFP.

 

"It's a big step from making a fluorescent green marmoset to making a marmoset that replicates a human disease, it's a much more complicated thing to do.

 

"There's also a very important ethical debate, firstly about the animals themselves and secondly about what this might lead to in the future, whether it might be ethically justified to genetically engineer humans."

 

Source: http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20090528/tts-science-biotech-genes-monkey-c1b2fc3.html

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Virgin Looking At Playboy—But Will Branson Buy?

 

The first issue of Playboy 1953

By David Kaplan 

- Wed 27 May 2009

 

While a number of PE firms have reportedly balked at Playboy (NYSE: PLA) Enterprises’ $300 million asking price, actual billionaire playboy Richard Branson’s name has been increasingly mentioned as a prospective buyer.

 

The Chicago Tribune, picking up a piece from the UK’s Daily Mail, says the Virgin Group chairman could be interested in making a play for the adult-themed media company. Both Playboy and Virgin have said no comment, but the rumors have sent Playboy’s stock up to $3.12 today after shares had been been hovering around $1.15 two months ago.

 

It’s hard to say whether Branson is the person to turn it around, but Playboy did thrive under another out-sized personality of Hugh Hefner. While the 83-year-old Hefner still owns a majority stake and serves as chief creative officer, he stepped back long ago from the day-to-day running of the company, which currently has a market cap of $100 million.

 

Playboy had been banking on a major digital revamp, which was completed last January, but it clearly made little positive difference in Q1, when digital revenue fell 39 percent—though to be fair, Playboy said the move to outsource e-commerce was part of the reason for huge decline.

 

In the meantime, while the speculation is rampant about who if anyone will buy the company, it certainly has distracted observers from wondering who or when Playboy will choose to permanently replace Christie Hefner, who left the company and handed the role of Chairman and CEO to Jerry Kern in December on an interim basis.

 

Source: http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-virgin-looking-at-playboy-but-will-branson-buy/

Posted via web from Global Business News

Global Newspaper Sales Inched Up in 2008

AFP - Thursday, May 28

BARCELONA, Spain (AFP) - - Global newspaper sales inched up last year, contradicting gloomy predictions that dailies face extinction, as gains in Africa, Asia and Latin America offset slumps in Europe and the US, an industry group said Wednesday.

 

Newspaper sales grew 1.3 percent worldwide last year from 2007 to 539 million daily, a rise of 8.8 percent over the past four years, said Gavin O'Reilly, president of the World Association of Newspapers.

 

"The sector continues to grow," he said at the start of a two-day WAN conference in Barcelona, adding media commentators were making a "mistake" when they predicted the death of daily newspapers.

 

Dailies in wealthier nations are struggling due to the impact of the Internet and the slump in advertising caused by the economic downturn. Several US newspaper groups have declared bankruptcy in recent months, including the Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun and several other newspapers.

 

Two major US dailies, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Rocky Mountain News, have shut down in the past few months, and dozens of others are threatened. But in other markets like Asia, where a growing middle class is boosting the market for daily newspapers, the print media is thriving.

 

The Indian print media industry recorded growth of 16 percent in 2007 over the previous year, according to a study by PriceWaterhouse Coopers presented at the conference.

 

The relative health of the sector in the region was underscored earlier this month when the Wall Street Journal began printing a regional edition of the business newspaper in India, the world's second-most populous nation.

 

O'Reilly said advertising revenues at dailies around the world fell by about 5.0 percent last year and predicted the drop should be even steeper in 2009 but he said the sector would "rebound" once the global economic downturn ends.

 

He said the sector was facing a period of "hyper change" with the appearance of new platforms for the distribution of information such as the Internet and mobile telephones, but it would find ways to adapt to this new environment.

 

"The future is only online," he said.

 

Two-thirds of respondents in a survey carried out by PriceWaterhouse Coopers in seven countries that was presented Wednesday at the conference said they were willing to pay for general news content online.

 

Analysts predict that the advent of better mobile Internet technology such as the reader-friendly Apple iPhone combined with new payment systems will eventually make it easier for newspapers to flourish in the digital age.

 

The Wall Street Journal has had success in providing both free and paid content, reserving the deeper analysis, opinion and insight for paying readers only. It has just over one million online subscribers.

 

Rupert Murdoch, whose News International owns the Journal, has said he expects his other titles to start charging too for full access. Finnish print media group Sanoma, one of the five largest magazine publishers in Europe with 220 titles and operations in more than 20 countries, has also built up a strong Internet presence which makes a key contribution to its bottom line.

 

"There is no free content," the head of Sanoma's news division, Mikael Pentikainen, told the conference. Sanoma, which publishes the Nordic regions largest broadsheet, Helsingin Sanomat, earns about 1.35 billion euros (1.88 billion dollars) per year from its print newspapers compared to 150 million euros from its online operations.

 

WAN represents 18,000 newspapers from over 120 countries.

 

Source: http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20090528/ttc-spain-media-internet-industry-newspa-0de2eff.html

Posted via web from Global Business News

Ballmer on Bing, the Economy, and More

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, on stage at D: All Things Digital with Walt Mossberg, introducing the company's revamped search engine, dubbed Bing.

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET)

May 28, 2009 8:18 AM PDT

by Ina Fried

 

CARLSBAD, Calif.--Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer kicked off his speech Thursday talking about the economy, though he also plans to show off Microsoft's revamped search engine within minutes.

 

In a speech at D: All Things Digital, Ballmer was asked by moderator Walt Mossberg to discuss the economy and how long the downturn will last. Ballmer said that he didn't expect the economic collapse to be a 50-year-thing, but it won't turn around in three months either. (Thanks for narrowing that down)

 

"People generally agree this is a different recession," Ballmer said. "To think that things would be back in a year seems naive to me." Had the economy not tanked, Ballmer said the company's research and sales and marketing would have continued to improve. "You'll do less new," he said, in today's economy.

 

Update 8:20 a.m. PT: 

 

The talk is turning to search. Ballmer says Microsoft is willing to "upgrade" its talent when necessary. "We're obviously where we are in search, " he said. "We want to do better, no question." 

 

8:22 a.m. PT: 

 

More on search. "It takes persistence," Ballmer siad. "We certainly flailed with Windows before we got it right," Now showing video on the introduction of search. Jokes about their naming plans and failed Yahoo bid. And it's... BING. "We wanted something that unambiguously said search," Ballmer said, explaining why Microsoft decided to rebrand Live Search.

 

8:30 a.m. PT: 

 

Ballmer now talking about why Bing. He said the company wanted something that was short, could be used as a verb and didn't have "negative or unusual" connotations. He put the renaming in context. "This is a very important step," Ballmer said. "It doesn't substitute for innovation." Yusuf Mehdi comes on stage to demo Bing. Ballmer interrupts to position how far Microsoft has come. "There's no way to just change the whole game in one step," he said. "There's a lot of unmet needs in this category."

 

8:35 a.m. PT: 

 

Demo showing some of the key features. For example, search identifies best match, sometimes hiding other results when there is one clear match that someone is looking for. Also includes customer service phone numbers when you search for a company like Amazon.com or Microsoft itself.

 

8:40 a.m. PT: 

 

Now showing the main interface of Bing--it's left hand navigation and breaking down of searches by categories. It's a mix of human and computer categorization, Microsoft said. On the video search site, when you hover over a thumbnail result it starts playing right from the thumbnail.

 

8:45 a.m. PT:

 

On to product search. Mehdi howing how it includes user and professional reviews gathered from a variety of sites. Travel search gets integration with the Farecast site Microsoft bought. Farecast helps predict whether current rates and fares will go up or down.

Mossberg hits on one of the questions I raised about all the integration of content from other sites directly into Bing. "How about all these people that expect to make money off their Web sites," Mossberg asks. "Were not trying to get in the way of copyright holders," Ballmer said. "We're not trying to live off other people's work. We are just trying to make a good product." Ballmer notes some of different ways content gets there. Some is licensed he said, other is what can be crawled "under copyright law." "We license content to be in here," Ballmer said. "That's a way to do it."

 

8:45 a.m. PT: 

 

Mossberg asks Ballmer what makes him think this will do the trick. Ballmer says that phrasing implies things will change overnight, which they won't. "My timeframe is 'lots of years'" Ballmer said. Mossberg noted that Ask had an improved engine at one time that gained share after a relaunch, but the gains faded. "Ask was not consistent," Ballmer said. "They didn't keep pounding and pounding."

 

8:55 a.m. PT: 

 

So how much is Microsoft spending on ads? "We'll have a big budget," Ballmer said. "It was big enough that I had to gulp when I approved it," he said, adding that a gulp in a $60 billion company is a big thing.

 

8:57 a.m. PT: 

 

The talk is shifting to smartphones. Ballmer, not surprisingly, tries to paint the PC as the more important mobile devices. "Most wireless data goes over PCs," he said. "It doesn't go over phones." That said, Ballmer agreed that "smartphones are going to increase like crazy."

He said that 500 million smartphones a year are going to be sold over time. "I want to sell a very significant percentage of all of those through our partners," he said. "That is very important financially to us, strategically to us."

 

8:59 a.m. PT: 

 

The talk turns to Netbooks. Walt Mossberg notes that the research the conference organizers did shows most people don't plan to buy a Netbook even when the economy improves. Ballmer says that has more to do with "fuzziness" around the Netbook brand. He said the figure would be a lot higher if the question asked how many people plan to by a notebook computer.

 

9:01 a.m. PT: 

 

Windows 7 is "on track" for holiday season. Mossberg asked about enterprise adoption. Would Windows 7 be faster than Vista? "Vista was faster than XP, ironically," Ballmer said. "Windows 7 has the potential to be faster still than Vista (in the enterprise)"

 

9:04 a.m. PT: 

 

On to questions. The first one comes from a venture capitalist that sees the new Office "ribbon" user interface as a productivity drain. Ballmer said that "any time you make any change in the user experience of any thing you are going to have people" that don't like it.

"When they change the (Wall Street) Journal, I always hate it for a while," Ballmer said. "Software has that same characteristic."

 

9:05 a.m. PT: 

 

Next question is on search. User asks whether if he is searching for a "Hilton" in "Paris" he gets the result he wants or, perhaps some other result would come up. (I'll do that search and let you know what happens).

 

9:07 a.m. PT:

 

Esther Dyson asks about Microsoft's healthcare business. Ballmer said that the company is investing in several areas, including business intelligence that can merge together several different electronic health records. That's important, Ballmer said, because it is unlikely that even as records go digital that people will have just one place where all their health data is stored. "You are going to have several records," Ballmer said.

 

9:04 a.m. PT:

 

A question on Netbooks and Windows 7. Ballmer says computer makers will be able to use Windows XP as well as many versions of Windows 7. Have you met with Yahoo recently?

"I think there's a lot that can make sense in terms of a search partnership, not an acquisition," Ballmer said. "Whether such a thing will happen I don't know."

As for a meeting, Ballmer noted that Carol Bartz left a message for Ballmer in a book that the D makeup artist had people sign. "The makeup couldn't fix me if it tried," Bartz wrote, according to Ballmer.

 

9:14 a.m. PT: 

 

Ballmer's done.

 

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10251087-56.html

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