Nov 8, 2011

Chinese banks to get liquidity boost

BEIJING-- China's cash-strapped banks may soon get an injection of capital, thanks to fiscal funding, not a loosening of government policy.
More than 1 trillion yuan (about $158.2 billion) of treasury deposits are expected to be allocated by the Ministry of Finance (MOF) to government departments in November and December, according to a report by China International Capital Co Ltd (CICC), the country's top investment bank.
China allocated 700 billion yuan of deficit in the 2011 Budget adopted in March this year.
MOF data showed fiscal revenues amounted to about 1.2 trillion yuan between January and September. That implies fiscal expenditure will top 1.9 trillion yuan in the fourth quarter of this year.
As the massive fiscal funding was made near the year-end in the past years, CICC predicts the country's banks will boost their capital strength by 1.2 trillion yuan.
Liquidity conditions for Chinese banks started to improve since the beginning of November, after People's Bank of China (PBOC), the country's central bank, stopped draining liquidity from banking sector through its open market operations this week.
Last week, PBOC released 96 billion yuan of cash into the money market in its first liquidity injection through open-market operations in four weeks.
Expectations of a partial easing of the country's credit-tightening measures have heightened in recent weeks after Premier Wen Jiabao said on October 25 in the northern municipality of Tianjin that the government will fine-tune its macro control policies "when the time is right."
In China's money market, the Shanghai Interbank Offered Rate (Shibor), which measures the cost for banks to borrow from one another, of different terms headed for different directions on Monday.
Overnight the Shibor edged up 0.33 basis points to 3.0933 percent, while the Shibor for one-week and two-week rose 7 basis points and 2.04 basis points to 3.5683 percent and 3.6296 percent, respectively.
The one-month Shibor weakened 15.33 basis points to 4.9242 percent, indicating banks' liquidity outlook in the coming month.

Tokyo starts radiation checks on city's food

The Tokyo metropolitan government on Tuesday began a large-scale investigation into the extent of radioactive material in the city’s food stores.

The city began monitoring the radioactivity of edible goods on sale in shops of various sizes throughout the capital and will continue the checks until the end of March 2012, TBS reported. Officials say the data will be available online at the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Public Health website from Wednesday.
The institute says it intends to randomly purchase and test around 20-30 items, such as vegetables, fruit, fish, eggs, tofu and dairy products, each week from stores throughout the capital. The center says it will prioritize foodstuffs grown and processed in Japan, products eaten regularly by the average family, and food that is often given to children, TBS reported.

Authorities said that any items found to contain more than 50 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram will be subjected to more thorough testing, while products with a cesium level of more than the government-set safety limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram will be withdrawn from sale.

An official at the Bureau of Social Welfare and Public Health told TBS that the measure is being carried out to reassure the people of Tokyo that their food is safe.

Strong quake hits southern Japan


TOKYO – A fairly strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 has hit off the shores of Japan's southern Okinawa Island.

Officials said the quake Tuesday about 135 miles (220 kilometers) away from the island was not expected to cause a tsunami. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

Northeastern Japan was devastated by a massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11 that left nearly 20,000 people dead or missing. Japan, which lies along the Pacific "Ring of Fire," is one of the world's most seismically active countries

Nov 3, 2011

Transparent steel church has an open wall policy

When the subject of church architecture comes up, what’s the first thing that you picture? Gothic cathedrals, stained glass windows, and high ceilings? Well now you can add see-through steel walls to that list. This unique church pulls off the seemingly contradictory feat, and makes for a visually stunning work of art.
The secret to its “transparency” is that it takes on a style that’s similar to window shutters, leaving at least several inches of open space in between each layer of alloy. It makes for quite the unique sight to behold, both from the outside and the inside. However, if you’re envisioning a congregation of worshippers getting drenched by rain and pelted with snow, you need not worry, for this isn’t really a church at all.
The building is actually an artistic structure called Reading Between the Lines. It was created by duo of Belgian architects Pieterjan Gijs and Arnout Van Vaerenbergh (known collectively as Gijs Van Vaerenbergh). Residing in the rural Belgian countryside, they describe it as a “visual experience,” with no practical purpose beyond that. The artists characterize it with the metaphor of a line drawing in space, and say it was inspired by the large volume of vacant churches in the area.

Nov 1, 2011

World to be hit by more weather disasters, scientists say

WASHINGTON — Freakish weather disasters — from the sudden October snowstorm in the Northeast U.S. to the record floods in Thailand — are striking more often. And global warming is likely to spawn more similar weather extremes at a huge cost, says a draft summary of an international climate report obtained by The Associated Press.
The final draft of the report from a panel of the world's top climate scientists paints a wild future for a world already weary of weather catastrophes costing billions of dollars.
The report says costs will rise and perhaps some locations will become "increasingly marginal as places to live."
The report from the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be issued in a few weeks, after a meeting in Uganda.
It says there is at least a 2-in-3 probability that climate extremes have already worsened because of man-made greenhouse gases.
This marks a change in climate science from focusing on subtle changes in daily average temperatures to concentrating on the harder-to-analyze freak events that grab headlines, cause economic damage and kill people.

The most recent bizarre weather extreme, the pre-Halloween snowstorm, is typical of the damage climate scientists warn will occur — but it's not typical of the events they tie to global warming.
"The extremes are a really noticeable aspect of climate change," said Jerry Meehl, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "I think people realize that the extremes are where we are going to see a lot of the impacts of climate change."

The snow-bearing Nor'easter cannot be blamed on climate change and probably isn't the type of storm that will increase with global warming, four meteorologists and climate scientists said.
They agree more study is needed. But experts on extreme storms have focused more closely on the increasing numbers of super-heavy rainstorms, not snow, NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt said.
The opposite kind of disaster — the drought in Texas and the Southwest U.S. — is also the type of event scientists are saying will happen more often as the world warms, said Schmidt and Meehl, who reviewed part of the climate panel report.
No studies have specifically tied global warming to the drought, but it is consistent with computer models that indicate current climate trends will worsen existing droughts, Meehl said.
Studies also have predicted more intense monsoons with climate change. Warmer air can hold more water and puts more energy into weather systems, changing the dynamics of storms and where and how they hit.
Thailand is now coping with massive flooding from monsoonal rains that illustrate how climate is also interconnected with other manmade issues such as population and urban development, river management and sinking lands, Schmidt said.
In fact, the report says that "for some climate extremes in many regions, the main driver for future increases in losses will be socioeconomic in nature" rather than greenhouse gases.
There's an 80 percent chance that the killer Russian heat wave of 2010 wouldn't have happened without the added push of global warming, according to a study published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
So while in the past the climate change panel, formed by the United Nations and World Meteorological Organization, has discussed extreme events in snippets in its report, this time the scientists are putting them all together.
The report, which needs approval by diplomats at the mid-November meeting, tries to measure the confidence scientists have in their assessment of climate extremes both future and past.
Chris Field, one of the leaders of the climate change panel, said he and other authors won't comment because the report still is subject to change. The summary chapter of the report didn't detail which regions of the world might suffer extremes so severe as to leave them marginally habitable.
The report does say scientists are "virtually certain" — 99 percent — that the world will have more extreme spells of heat and fewer of cold. Heat waves could peak as much as 5 degrees hotter by mid-century and even 9 degrees hotter by the end of the century.
Weather Underground meteorology director Jeff Masters, who wasn't involved in the study, said in the United States from June to August this year, blistering heat set 2,703 daily high temperature records, compared with only 300 cold records during that period, making it the hottest summer in the U.S. since the Dust Bowl of 1936.
By the end of the century, the intense, single-day, heavy rainstorms that now typically happen only once every 20 years are likely to happen about twice a decade, the report says.
The report said hurricanes and other tropical cyclones — like 2005's Katrina — are likely to get stronger in wind speed, but won't increase in number and may actually decrease. Massachusetts Institute of Technology meteorology professor Kerry Emanuel, who studies climate's effects on hurricanes, disagrees and believes more of these intense storms will occur.
And global warming isn't the sole villain in future climate disasters, the climate report says. An even bigger problem will be the number of people — especially the poor — who live in harm's way.
University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver, who wasn't among the authors, said the report was written to be "so bland" that it may not matter to world leaders.
But Masters said the basics of the report seem to be proven true by what's happening every day. "In the U.S., this has been the weirdest weather year we've had for my 30 years, hands down. Certainly this October snowstorm fits in with it."
by msnbc"

Justice Department Sues South Carolina Over State's Strict Immigration Law

COLUMBIA, S.C. – The federal government filed a lawsuit Monday seeking to stop implementation of South Carolina's tough new immigration law, arguing that the legislation that requires law officers to check suspects' immigration status is unconstitutional.
Federal officials and state officials had met to discuss the issue a week ago.
The government wants a judge to stop enforcement of the legislation, which requires that officers call federal immigration officials if they suspect someone is in the country illegally following a stop for something else, U.S. Attorney Bill Nettles told The Associated Press.

"The Department of Justice has many important tasks," Nettles said. "Two of those important tasks are the defense of the constitution and ensuring equality is afforded to all."
The lawsuit filed in federal court names Gov. Nikki Haley as a defendant. A spokesman for the Republican, the daughter of immigrants from India, said the state was forced to pass its own law because there is no strong federal immigration law.
"If the feds were doing their job, we wouldn't have had to address illegal immigration reform at the state level," Rob Godfrey said. "But, until they do, we're going to keep fighting in South Carolina to be able to enforce our laws."
A spokesman for state Attorney General Alan Wilson, who will act as Haley's attorney, said he had not seen the complaint.
South Carolina's law, which takes effect Jan. 1, also mandates that all businesses check their new hires' legal status through a federal online system. Businesses that knowingly violate the law could have their operating licenses revoked.
The law says all law enforcement officers are required to call federal immigration officials if they suspect someone is in the country illegally. The question must follow an arrest or traffic stop for something else. The measure bars officers from holding someone solely on that suspicion. Opponents railed against the measure as encouraging racial profiling.
The law also makes it a felony for someone to make fake photo IDs for illegal residents and creates a new law enforcement unit within the Department of Public Safety to enforce state immigration laws. It also makes it a felony for illegal immigrants to allow themselves to be transported.
Nettles said the law is unconstitutional and violates people's right to due process.
The U.S. Justice Department has been reviewing immigration-related laws passed by several states and is challenging similar laws in Arizona and Alabama. Last week, Nettles met with Wilson on the issue, but no details of that meeting were released.
Assistant attorney general Tony West said Monday the agency continues to review similar laws in Utah, Indiana and Georgia. He quoted Haley saying South Carolina's law would cause illegal immigrants to move elsewhere.
"Pushing undocumented individuals out of one state and into another is simply not a solution to our immigration challenges," West said. "It ultimately creates more problems than it solves."
Justice department officials said South Carolina's law, like Alabama's and Arizona's, diverts federal resources from high-priority targets, such as terrorism, drug smuggling and gang activity. They contend the laws will result in the harassment and detention of foreign visitors and legal immigrants, as well as U.S. citizens, who can't immediately prove their legal status.
A deputy assistant attorney general said the agency sent a letter to Alabama schools reminding them that children can't be denied enrollment. Unlike the laws in other states, Alabama's required schools to check students' immigration status. That provision, which has been temporarily blocked, would allow the Supreme Court to reconsider a decision that said a kindergarten to high school education must be provided to illegal immigrants.
The Justice Department has set up a hotline and email address for complaints regarding Alabama's law, and officials said they're coordinating with colleagues in other federal agencies -- including the labor, agriculture, education, and health agencies -- to ensure federal money's not being used to discriminate.
In a news release, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said South Carolina's law "diverts critical law enforcement resources from the most serious threats to public safety and undermines the vital trust between local jurisdictions and the communities they serve, while failing to address the underlying problem: the need for comprehensive immigration reform at the federal level."
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has challenged the similar laws in other states, several weeks ago sued to block the South Carolina law from taking effect in January.
"It definitely puts a spotlight on the issue and heightens our arguments," Andre Segura, an attorney with the ACLU's immigrants' rights project, said Monday.