SINGAPORE, Nov 11 (Reuters) - World Bank President Robert Zoellick said on Wednesday that the U.S. dollar's role as a reserve currency was "relatively secure", but the Chinese yuan will provide an alternative over time.
"Over the next 10-15 years, you will firstly see renminbi to be internationalised and provide an alternative," he said at a World Bank conference in Singapore.
http://137.229.36.30/cgi-bin/magnetometer/gak-mag.cgi
Two children play with snow covering a car in Beijing November 10, 2009. Four to 7 centimeters of snow is expected in the next four days with a temperature drop of over 10 C. [CFP]An official from the capital weather modification office who refused to be identified told China Daily yesterday that the second snow in Beijing was also artificially induced but refused to reveal further information.
On Oct 31, the first snow in the capital city this winter was partly induced by 186 doses of silver iodide, a compound used in cloud seeding. More than 16 million tons of snow fell on the city, Zhang Qiang, director of the municipal weather modification office, said earlier.
Without advance notice, the weather manipulation led to another big mess yesterday in Beijing, with traffic and flight delays.
The snow brought traffic to a crawl in the morning rush hour. Municipal transport authorities used more than 6,000 tons of thawing agent to clear the roads to ease congestion.
The snow also caused a four-hour shutdown of the Beijing Capital International Airport, with nearly 200 flights cancelled.
Beijing's first artificially induced snow on Oct 31 also caused hundreds of flight delays and cancellations, triggering complaints from the public.
Data from the National Meteorological Center (NMC) suggested yesterday's snowfall in most downtown areas of the city exceeded 10 mm, the index for a snowstorm.
Haidian district in northwest Beijing recorded 18.5 mm of snowfall, the heaviest in the city, according to the NMC.
The NMC said on its website on Monday that the local weather departments are taking the opportunity to manipulate the weather with rain and snow induction, relieving the drought in the south and water shortage in the north.
With weather modification no longer a strange concept to most Chinese, some experts think that the governments and people depend too much on the weather control.
"No one can tell how much weather manipulation will change the sky. Past experiments showed that it can bring about 10 percent to 20 percent of additional rain or snow," Xiao Gang, professor from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told China Daily.
"We should not depend too much on artificial measures to get rain or snow, because there are too many uncertainties up in the sky," Xiao said.
Heavy snow also swept other parts of North China yesterday, causing air travel delays and highway closures.
Taiyuan airport in Shanxi province was closed yesterday morning, leaving almost 1,000 passengers stranded.
All highways in Shanxi were closed, officials from the provincial transport bureau said. They gave no timetable for reopening as the snow was predicted to last till tomorrow.
Transport authorities in Hebei province had reopened sections of the Beijing-Shenyang and Tangshan-Tianjin highways by noon yesterday. Six other highways are still closed as of yesterday.
He Lifu, chief forecaster of the NMC, said yesterday that in the coming three days heavy snow will hit Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hebei and Shandong with the temperature drop of as much as 20 C.
Shijiazhuang Meteorological Bureau in Hebei province issued a yellow alert for snowstorm yesterday morning, predicting that the highest temperature will be minus 1 C.
The strong cold air has trapped thousands of travelers on the road or at the airport due to the frozen streets and heavy fog in many cities.
More than 10,000 passengers had to stay in the Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport, which was shut down for more than 8 hours because of the dense fog. Another 200 flights were cancelled in Shanghai.
http://www.am770chqr.com/News/National/Article.aspx?id=158568MONTREAL - Scores of slogan-chanting supporters of Quebec independence blasted the British monarchy and pelted soldiers with eggs in a lone sour note to Prince Charles' otherwise pleasant day trip to Quebec on Tuesday.
Chanting a variety of political messages including the famous independence call, "Le Quebec aux Quebecois," about 200 demonstrators intially blocked the prince's path into an event where he was to salute members of a historic regiment.
Shield-and baton-wielding riot police eventually moved into the crowd, shoving protesters back hundreds of metres to clear a path for Charles' motorcade. Police confirmed several arrests but gave no exact number.
The nosiy anti-monarchy crowd was the biggest of the day for the prince, who drew small but enthusiastic gatherings at earlier events throughout the day.
Even the protest itself was cordial at times: despite all the shouted swear words and crude hand gestures, some in the crowd graciously picked up debris and handed it over to police for safe disposal.
Most demonstrators either waved Fleur-de-lis flags or brandished signs with slogans such as Down With the Monarchy as they gathered outside the building housing the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada.
A few pelted eggs in the soldiers' direction. Some sat in the middle of the street chanting as members of the Montreal police riot squad moved in.
The protest delayed the prince's scheduled arrival for 45 minutes, but Charles eventually made it in.
Patrick Bourgeois, one of the protesters, said the British monarchy has exploited people all over world and that Quebec is no exception.
The symbol of the monarchy has been resented by many French-Canadians for centuries, and Bourgeois and others said members of the Royal Family had no business being in Quebec.
Bourgeois also linked the prince's visit with the military mission in Afghanistan which features British and Canadian soldiers.
"Quebec is against the war in Afghanistan," said Bourgeois, a member of the pro-independence Reseau de Resistance du Quebecois.
"And now it's our chance to pass that message to Prince Charles and many people across Canada." FULL STORY
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., unveiled a sweeping 1,136-page bill Tuesday that, in enacted, would bring about the most comprehensive overhaul of financial regulation since the Great Depression. What upset bankers most was his call to strip the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. of their bank supervisory powers in favor of a new Financial Institutions Regulatory Administration. Dodd said that would stop banks for shopping for the regulator of least supervision. ;
Hundreds of residents who were evacuated from the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Gulfport, Miss., after Hurricane Katrina destroyed it are looking at their last Veteran's Day in Washington. For almost all of them, it couldn't come too soon. With 10 months to go before the rebuilt facility reopens on the Mississippi Coast, the veterans talk of little else but getting back to Gulfport.
Senate Democrats, struggling to reach agreement on how to overhaul the country's health care system, got some practical political advice Tuesday from former President Bill Clinton, whose own effort collapsed 15 years ago.
Love her or hate her, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is at the peak of her political power, and she seems to be reveling in the high drama of the moment.
Obama administration officials breathed a collective sigh of relief Sunday when Iraq's parliament, after weeks of delays, approved a law to hold national elections in January, very likely permitting a major post-election withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq.
Police say Richard Heger, 67, broke into a local tow shop's storage lot to reclaim his 1967 pickup, stole a tow truck to tow it away, did $7,000 damage to the tow company's gate and more damage to a restaurant's sign when the truck broke loose, then lied about his identity to police and spun stories involving President Barack Obama and the CIA.
The term "sanctuary city" is used as shorthand to describe any city that doesn't allow city staff or police to ask people about their status or report them to immigration authorities - with exceptions for suspected criminal activity and when state and federal law requires it.
Sharon Cook is either a hero or a villain. She is either due your thanks for doing everything in her power to protect children from obscenity or she is due your disdain for wantonly taking away the constitutional rights of the patrons of one Kentucky county library.
Goldman Sachs' response to McClatchy's investigative series "Goldman Sachs: Low Road to High Profits."
Garland "Andy" Barr, 36, a former aide to Gov. Ernie Fletcher, became the first Republican to formally announce his candidacy for the seat held by U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler, D-Ky.
Former Kentucky GOP state Rep. Steve Nunn has been indicted on charges that he killed his former fiancee, Amanda Ross, and violated a domestic violence protection order she had received against him. Ross was found shot early on Sept. 11 in front of her town house in Lexington and died later that morning.
| All telecoms companies and internet service providers will be required by law to keep a record of every customer’s personal communications, showing who they have contacted, when and where, as well as the websites they have visited. | |
| The Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences is holding its first ever conference on alien life, the discovery of which would have profound implications for the Catholic Church. | |
| Not much optimism from one of CNBC’s favorite bulls. Yet even Costa is wrong about today’s market direction as 7 shares of SPY move the market up by almost half a percent. In the meantime, the gold creep higher continues. | |
| …footage broadcast Tuesday by the Al-Jazeera news channel showed Taliban insurgents handling weapons and ammunition, including mines with US markings on them. | |
| British scientists begin a new study on Tuesday to consider how human DNA is used in animal experiments and to determine what the boundaries of such controversial science might be. | |
| Federal Reserve Governor Daniel Tarullo argues that we should not break up the too big to fails or reimpose Glass-Steagall because.... | |
| Everyone in Britain should have an annual carbon ration and be penalised if they use too much fuel, the head of the Environment Agency will say. | |
| Twenty years after the Berlin Wall fell, World Trade Organisation chief Pascal Lamy called Monday for world governance to be strengthened around the G20, international organisations and the UN. | |
| Mom always told you not to play with your food. She probably didn't tell you that you could get arrested for it though. | |
| Defense contractor KBR may have exposed as many as 100,000 people, including US troops, to cancer-causing toxins by burning waste in open-air pits in Iraq, says a series of class-action lawsuits filed against the company. | |
| Dropping acid to boost the Pentagon’s psychic powers was just the start. The Men Who Stare At Goats, the upcoming movie based on Jon Ronson’s non-fiction book of the same name | |
| Not that a million bucks goes that far these days. | |
San Francisco's, Joe Rosenthal, took this infamous photo of the US Marine Corp,
Scott Roeder confessed Monday to killing Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller, saying he had no regrets because "preborn children were in imminent danger." Roeder, 51, said that he didn't consider what he did to be murder and that he had no intention of changing his plea to guilty. "There is a distinction between killing and murdering," he said. "I don't like the accusation of murder whatsoever, because when you protect innocent life, that's not murder."
After pleading guilty to stalking a former girlfriend, Blake Hall, a leading figure in Idaho and national politics for 25 years, was fired Monday as a deputy prosecuting attorney in eastern Idaho and resigned from the Republican National Committee.
Vincent Mosby signed a marriage contract and paid a dowry in a religious ceremony in August, police said. Mosby, 23, didn't legally wed his 14-year-old bride, however, because Missouri law won't allow it without a judge's order. Police said she was pressured into the union because her mother and stepfather thought she was going to be sexually active with a boy her age.
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the suspect in the Fort Hood shootings, once regularly attended a Falls Church, Va., mosque that the FBI has linked to two of the 9/11 hijackers, but the congregation's current spiritual leader Sunday insisted the government's claims of connections are wrong.
For five desperate minutes, emergency room doctors at UC Davis Medical Center frantically tried to revive Scott Hawkins. In those five minutes, the 23-year-old student was hooked up to life support monitors, air pumped into his weakened lungs as he bled on a gurney.
State courts in Kansas will have to close their doors for one week each month beginning in February if the Legislature doesn't restore $8 million to the judiciary budget. The courts would close and place staff on involuntary unpaid leave the weeks of Feb. 15, March 15, April 5, May 10 and 24, and June 7, Kansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Davis said in a letter to court employees.
When Raul Renato Castro was a baby, his father was convicted of molesting a 5-year-old relative and was sentenced to prison. Now, 14-year-old Castro is accused of molesting 4-year-old Alex Christopher Mercado and drowning the child in a bathtub on Oct. 30. Researchers say the circumstances don't surprise them.
Twelve of the dead were members of the military. One was a civilian.The alleged gunman, Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, remains in critical condition and has not regained conciousness, base officials said. A memorial service has been scheduled for Tuesday at Fort Hood. The White House announced that President Barack Obama would attend.
Quran Mahammed Jones allegedly beat Scott Hawkins to death in their dorm suite before he was shot by police officers responding to a report of a disturbance. Court documents say that when police arrived they faced Jones in the common area of the suite with a "crazed look in his eyes." Jones remained hospitalized but has been charged with murder and assault.
On Thursday, federal prosecutors accused former Mi Ranchito restaurant employees Arnoldo Bazan and his wife, Yini De La Torre - niece of the restaurant co-founder - of mixing the pesticide into salsa Aug. 30 and sending at least a dozen people to the hospital.
Many of the doctors who cared for the wounded from Thursday's rampage had seen similar wounds during rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan. But few were prepared for the grim and chaotic scene that unfolded as ambulance after ambulance began ferrying gunshot victims to the hospital emergency room.
The day John Timoney was sworn in as Miami police chief in 2003, 11 of his troops stood trial for concocting evidence and planting guns in a spate of shootings. Seven would be convicted. Within two years, Timoney's administration would clean up the mess, turning a sometimes trigger-happy force into one where no officer fired a weapon for 20 months. Bad cops were punished. Crime dipped. Now the chief finds himself in a very public political fight, with his Miami career on the line.
When Jaycee Lee Dugard resurfaced in August, she denied being the 11-year-old girl kidnapped in 1991 and defended Phillip Garrido as a "great person." She became defensive as officers questioned her, then asked for a lawyer. She tried to convince police she was fleeing an abusive husband in Minnesota. Then the young woman told police the truth, ending the 18-year mystery of her disappearance.
Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist suspected of killing 12 soldiers at Fort Hood Thursday, was in the "deployment window" and was headed for Afghanistan, not Iraq, as some sources had reported. Witnesses said he shouted the traditional Muslim blessing "Allahu Akbar" as he opened fire.
Federal prosecutors accused former restaurant employees Arnoldo Bazan and his wife, Yini De La Torre of mixing pesticide into salsa Aug. 30 at the restaurant her uncle founded and sending at least a dozen people to the hospital. Prosecutors allege the couple poisoned the salsa to make customers sick so the restaurant would be blamed and hurt financially.
The massive base -- one of the largest U.S. Army bases in the world -- has seen its share of incidents. Until the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007 -- ironically, the gunman in Thursday's bloodshed also attended Virginia Tech -- the Fort Hood area was the scene of the deadliest mass killing in U.S. history -- the 1991 Luby's Cafeteria killings that took 23 lives.
A pair of charred dolls were discovered this week in the backyard of burn victim Michael Brewer's Deerfield Beach home, according to a report released by the Broward Sheriff's Office on Thursday.
At least 12 people were killed and 31 wounded in a mass shooting at Fort Hood Army Base near Killeen, Texas, when at least one gunman opened fire on soldiers preparing to be deployed. The shooting broke out at the base's readiness center at about 1:30 p.m. The gunman, identified as Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, was captured alive. Investigators were trying to determine if he had accomplices.
Jonathan Edward Drake, 23, is being held in the Ada County Jail on a felony charge of aggravated battery after Boise police say he sprayed lighter fluid on a woman late Wednesday night and then threatened her with a lighter.
A well-known Bradenton nuisance-animal trapper, who admitted to staging the capture of a 14-foot python on July 25, has been arrested on charges stemming from the hoax.
"Retail spending in Macau has been growing at a compound annual growth rate of 17% since 2004, and Sands China's retail positioning has essentially provided it with a call option on any growth in PRC visitor discretionary spend," analysts at one syndicate bank said, adding that they currently ascribe very little value to the company's retail franchises as Macau's retail market is still at a nascent stage.
However, the retail assets are part of what makes Sands China different from Wynn Macau, which listed in Hong Kong last month. Essentially, Sands China has a much more diversified revenue strategy that, alongside the gambling, also puts a lot of weight on conventions, entertainment and hospitality. One analyst report dubs the company as a pioneer in developing the integrated resorts business model. Its focus on the mass market, which has higher profit margins than the VIP segment, also sets it apart from Wynn, which is primarily targeting high-rollers and VIPs.
The interest in the stock was evident as investors, including a couple of local tycoons, crowded into Sands China's luncheon meeting in Hong Kong yesterday. During the roadshow, the management will also visit Singapore, Europe and the US, including a gaming conference in Las Vegas, where it will get a chance to meet with specialist US investors. FULL STORY
November 10, 2009The ongoing discord between Japan and the United States over the relocation of U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma has demonstrated that the bilateral alliance has come to a turning point.
The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ)-led administration's attempt to rely less on the United States has chilled bilateral relations.
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's remarks in his talks with Chinese and South Korean leaders in Beijing in mid-October that "Japan has tended to rely excessively on the United States. We'll work out policies that attach more importance to Asia" have angered the United States.
In a meeting with Senior Vice Foreign Minister Koichi Takemasa two days later, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell criticized Hatoyama for making the remarks without consulting Washington and asked Takemasa about what the prime minister precisely meant.
Hatoyama's remarks, which pleased Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, have raised concern within the U.S. administration that Tokyo is distancing itself from Washington.
The first summit between Hatoyama and U.S. President Barack Obama in New York on Sept. 23 was aimed at demonstrating their efforts to nurture mutual trust rather than negotiate outstanding bilateral issues.
However, Japan-U.S. relations have been strained since then. A senior Foreign Ministry official says bilateral ties have entered a "period of winter-like hardship" while a high-ranking official at the Defense Ministry warns they have worsened to an "alarming level."
The discord is attributable partly to Japan's decision to withdraw Maritime Self-Defense Force troops from missions in the Indian Ocean to refuel foreign vessels engaged in the war against terror and Hatoyama's proposal for the formation of an East Asian Community.
However, the main cause of the discord is the Hatoyama administration's indecisiveness over the relocation of U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Okinawa Prefecture.
The Cabinet is divided over the relocation. The prime minister is seeking to postpone a final decision until after the Nago mayoral election in January, in consideration of the DPJ's election campaign pledge to relocate it out of the prefecture, as the city was designated by the previous government as the site for the relocation.
Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada has called for the integration of Futenma base with U.S. Kadena Air Base in Okinawa Prefecture. Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa has urged that the base be relocated to an offshore area of Camp Schwab in Nago within this year in line with the bilateral agreement.
Aides to Hatoyama said the prime minister should make a final decision without narrowing differences within the Cabinet.
"We should leave it until the prime minister makes a final decision. If Japan obeys what the United States says whenever bilateral relations are strained, we can't end our reliance on the United States," one of them said.
Some government officials are even attempting to take advantage of the conflict within the administration to demonstrate the DPJ's efforts to transform the bureaucrat-dominated government into one led by politicians.
The government is also trying to use the Futenma relocation issue as a litmus test for whether it can end its reliance on the United States and achieve an equal partnership between the two countries.
Campbell, who initially chose to take a wait-and-see attitude toward the Hatoyama administration, is now under fire from within the Obama administration for making an error in his initial response to Japan's new administration.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who visited Japan on Oct. 20 and 21, strongly pressured Tokyo to go ahead with the agreed-upon plan to relocate Futenma base in Ginowan to Nago.
However, it only stirred opposition in Japan. "He acted as if he were the commander of occupation forces. He tightened the screw too much, causing it to break," said one Japan-U.S. diplomatic source.
In the upcoming summit in Tokyo, Hatoyama and Obama intend to reconfirm that they will strengthen the bilateral alliance without having in-depth discussions on the Futenma issue. However, it reflects their sense of crisis.
Bruce Klingner, a senior researcher at the conservative Heritage Foundation, predicts that Japan-U.S. relations will remain chilled after the two countries settle their dispute over the Futenma relocation. Klingner, a former Central Intelligence Agency official, also pointed out that current bilateral ties are similar to U.S.-South Korean ties under the administration of President Roh Moo-hyun, who was supported by anti-U.S. forces. (By Takashi Sudo and Yu Takayama, Political News Department)
(This is the first part of a three-part series on the Japan-U.S. alliance)
Scott Roeder confessed Monday to killing Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller, saying he had no regrets because "preborn children were in imminent danger." Roeder, 51, said that he didn't consider what he did to be murder and that he had no intention of changing his plea to guilty. "There is a distinction between killing and murdering," he said. "I don't like the accusation of murder whatsoever, because when you protect innocent life, that's not murder."
After an intense three-month campaign for the votes of North Carolina's House members, players in the health care debate are now likely to focus their full attention on Sen. Kay Hagan, a moderate, pro-business Democrat, who is regarded as one of a handful of senators who could play a pivotal role as the Senate takes up the landmark legislation to expand access to health insurance. Hagan has already been the subject of television commercials by the pharmaceutical industry, two mailers by Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina and hundreds of pickets at her Raleigh district office.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger estimated Monday that California's budget will fall out of balance by $5 billion to $7 billion this fiscal year, on top of a $7.4 billion gap already projected for 2010-11.
Ian Pearl, a 37-year-old who lives in Southwest Ranches, Fla., is the inspiration for "Ian's Law," legislation being introduced by two New York state legislators that would require insurance companies to get approval from the state before dropping coverage plans for existing clients.
Cuba's blogosphere has taken on a decidedly harsher face in recent months. Some Cubans whose blogs once focused largely on the frustrations of daily life are moving toward sharp-edged commentaries against the Castro government and activities that some fear will eventually lead to a crackdown by the communist government.
A federal judge has taken the rare step of ordering self-described anti-terrorism investigator Paul David Gaubatz to remove from his Web site some 12,000 documents that his son allegedly stole from the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
As an underdog U.S. Senate candidate courting the GOP's conservative wing, Marco Rubio takes a hard-line position against illegal immigration: no amnesty. But as the powerful speaker of the Florida House, presented with a slew of bills aimed at curbing illegal immigration, he didn't put a single proposal up for a vote.
Bank of America said Monday it has lent nearly $760 billion in the past year, or almost $17 for every dollar it has received in government loans. In its third-quarter Impact Report, the bank highlighted recent consumer-friendly changes, such as an effort to pull back on overdraft fees and a "clarity commitment" to mortgage and home-equity borrowers, giving them a one-page, plain-language summary of the terms of their loans.
After pleading guilty to stalking a former girlfriend, Blake Hall, a leading figure in Idaho and national politics for 25 years, was fired Monday as a deputy prosecuting attorney in eastern Idaho and resigned from the Republican National Committee.
Let me tell you a few things I believe: I believe that in most cases, I have no right to judge your culture by the standards of mine. I believe what seems exotic to me might be enlightened to you. I believe no culture has a monopoly on morality.
But I also believe you don't run down your daughter because she has a page on Facebook and won't marry the guy you choose. That is not honor. It is, in fact, the opposite — an act of appalling cowardice suggestive not simply of religious extremism, but of a people in fear of the sexuality and independence of women.
US President Barack Obama (right) with Chinesecounterpart Hu JintaoHe made the suggestion in an essay published a week before the London Group of 20 summit.
Clearly aiming at an international audience, the central bank took the unusual step of publishing the paper in English at the same time as it issued the Chinese version........ FULL STORY