2014 Davos meeting ends with cautious optimism

 The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) concluded here Saturday on a note of cautious optimism about the world economy.

The idea that global economy is on a bumpy path of recovery, but is shadowed by uncertainty, potential risks and challenges was shared by a couple of leading economists at the meeting, including Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund and Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank.

The hot political issues such as the Syrian crisis and Iran's nuclear program riveted more attention this year, with couples of political leaders expressing their views and positions via the platform of the WEF.

During the four-day meeting, over 2,500 participants from almost 100 countries, including more than 1,500 business leaders and over 40 heads of state or government, exchanged views on and probed into possible approaches to problems such as global economic recovery, financial outlook, new energy, health and climate change.

All the issues are under four major topics, namely Embracing Disruptive Innovation, Achieving Inclusive Growth, Meeting Society's New Expectations and Sustaining a world of 9 Billion.

 Source:  Xinhua

Hong Kong faces rising inequality

Rising income inequality is one of the major themes lined up at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. Hong Kong, as one of the busiest business hubs in Asia, is also facing the threat of growing wealth disparity.

Hong Kong: a city of contrasts. In these so-called cage homes, where it's dim, cramped and hot, Hong Kong's low-income earners make do with subdivided spaces, where toilets and kitchens are shared. A few train stops away, one finds the height of luxury towering over.

The contrast reveals the city's yawning gap between the rich and poor. The World Economic Forum warns rising inequality globally is the single biggest risk this year, even as economies in many countries begin to recover. The forum further warned of a lost generation of young people who don't have jobs.

"What do you do if your car breaks down, what do you do if your plumbing pipes don't work anymore? The young people don't want to do these jobs anymore," said Enzio von Pfeil, senior advisor from MCL Assets Limited.

A recent independent study says there are 160,000 more needy people in Hong Kong than identified by the government. About one in five Hong Kongers lives a poor and deprived life, struggling to afford three meals a day.

Hong Kong Chief Executive CY Leung made housing for the poor one of his top priorities in last week's policy address. The new target is to provide a total of 470,000 units in the coming ten years, with public housing accounting for 60 percent, Leung says.

While the statistics look dire, some experts say there are far more countries or regions other than Hong Kong suffering rising income inequality. And that's what the Davos forum hopes to achieve this week: achieving a consensus on how to stop that gap widening, and keep social upheavals from boiling over.

Source:  CCTV

Syria peace talks hit more trouble as rebel city 'starves'

The United States on Monday demanded that Syriaallow aid into the "starving" city of Homs, as talks aimed at ending three years of civil war hit more trouble over the future of President Bashar al-Assad.

The Syrian government said women and children could leave the besieged city and that rebels should hand over the names of the men who would remain. A U.S. State Department spokesman said an evacuation was not an alternative to immediate aid.

"We firmly believe that the Syrian regime must approve the convoys to deliver badly needed humanitarian assistance into the Old City of Homs now," said spokesman Edgar Vasquez. "The situation is desperate and the people are starving."

He said the people of Homs must not be forced to leave their homes and split up their families before receiving aid.

After long months of fighting, much of Syria's third biggest city has been reduced to rubble and people inside are under siege, cut off from supplies.

The city's fate has turned into a test of whether the first peace talks attended by both sides in the three-year war can achieve practical measures on the ground, while a broader political settlement seems as remote as ever.

"Once again, I tell you we never expected any miracle, there are no miracles here. But we will continue and see if progress can be made and when," said U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, the host of the talks.

Efforts to reach a political settlement have stumbled over the question of creating a transitional government, which the opposition and its Western backers believe would remove Assad from power. Assad's government refuses to discuss it.

Syria's government delegation presented a document for negotiation which did not mention a transition of power.

The government's "declaration of basic principles" said Syrians would choose a political system without "imposed formulas" from abroad. The opposition immediately rejected it.

Source: Reuters

Lancers produces $200 million freelancing gigs so far and it is still growing

Founded by Akiyoshi Yosuke (pictured below) in 2008, Lancers claims to be Japan’s largest freelancing site, producing over $200 million worth of accumulated freelancing gigs to date.

As a student freelancer himself in 2000, he found that it was a pain to find gigs. And while he was working for Nifty after he graduated, it gave him perspective from the other side of the table as a client. It was so hard to find good freelancers to work on ad hoc projects. In 2008, frustrated that there was no solution available, Yosuke decided to start Lancers, an online marketplace where clients can meet good freelancers.

He coughed out $90,000 and hired some engineers to build his site. Time was tough back in 2008 as it wasn’t the most ideal business environment for internet companies in Japan. But internal problems were Yosuke’s main curse. The contract with his engineer expired, leaving him stranded. With no one to help him, Yosuke took time to learn PHP and built Lancers all by himself.

With the site up, Lancers needed clients. While Lancers does offer a very reasonable pricing for freelancers, Japanese corporates are typically very risk adverse. Instead of providing a hiring model from the start, Lancers started to gain trust by allowing companies to crowdsource their problems to freelancers.

Freelancers who are interested will submit their work to the clients but only one will be picked and get paid. The competition model worked out well for Japanese corporates and Lancers gathered more successful case studies which helped to attract even more clients.

Finding clients brought upon another problem. With projects coming in, Lancers needed to find a way to accept payments online. Using the escrow payment model made sense. Clients pay Lancers, which will only release the money to freelancers once the job was completed.

Escrow payment wasn’t new in Japan as e-commerce sites selling physical goods were already using it. But somehow the banks didn’t feel comfortable about Lancers using escrow payment for services. So they didn’t approve transactions made by Yosuke’s startup.

“It was a huge problem but we kept fighting because crowdsourcing is not well known in Japan back then. I’ve to convince the banks that escrow payments for services is actually the same as physical goods. Thankfully, I managed to do it,” said Yosuke.

Profitable and growing

Lancers is now profitable every year despite having no external financing until recently. It was only in May 2013 when Yosuke accepted a $3 million investment from GMO Ventures Partners and Globis Capital.

Yosuke explained that the money was raised to launch new features and also to speed up Lancers’ growth. On October 2013, Lancers recorded $100 million worth of accumulated freelancing gigs. On January 2014, that figure doubled to over $200 million.

Yosuke says that even his competitor, Crowdworks’ transaction volume is “two to three times smaller than Lancers’.”

“Our growth rates are the same but we are bigger in volume. We believe we are the leader in this space,” claimed Yosuke.

There are several reasons why growth doubled. Firstly, Lancers launched ‘Lancers My Team,’ a new feature which allows clients to find not just one freelancers but multiple freelancers for their projects at one go. For example, if I needed someone to build a website, I could hire a team of two designers and three developers on Lancers’ platform.

Secondly, with additional funding, Lancers could afford to bump up its advertising budget, which saw the startup air ads on TV and increase online advertising efforts. Third, Yosuke’s book about crowdsourcing, which was recently launched a few months ago, gave Lancers some good exposure.

With 240,000 registered freelancers on Lancers and a team of 60, Yosuke is now attempting to expand outside of Japan which saw him launch a beta site in the Philippines to test the waters. “Once we step outside of Japan, we will be competing against global players like Odesk. It should be interesting,” said Yosuke.

Lancers declined to reveal revenue figures but did say that it is hoping “to IPO soon.”

Source: TECHINASIA

Apple’s 51M iPhones, 26M iPads And 4.8M Macs In Q1 2014 Set A Record, But Growth Slows

Analysts had predicted that Apple would have a strong day with hardware this quarter, anticipating between 54 and 56 million iPhones shipped according to Fortune, as well as around 25 million iPads and 4.6 million Macs. The real results showed Apple missing on iPhones with 51 million moved, but beating expectations for the rest slightly with 26 million iPads and 4.8 million Macs.

Remember that this is the quarter that holds the bulk of Apple’s holiday sales, spanning as it does October through December, 2013. iPod sales, which continued their downward trend, selling only 6 million units, vs. 12.7 million in the year ago period. That’s not surprising, though, and nothing Apple is likely very concerned about as people continue to move to multi-use devices like iPhones and iPads. The iPhone number is the one everyone will be watching and talking about.

iPhone and iPad sales were both up year over year, however. In fiscal Q1 2013, Apple sold 47.8 million iPhones, 22.9 million iPads and 4.1 million Macs. That makes this a record quarter for Cupertino on all counts, spurred by the introduction of the new iPhone 5c, 5s, iPad air and iPad mini, as well as new MacBook Pro models introduced in October. It was an incomparable year in terms of new hardware leading into the holiday quarter, and the numbers reflect that.

iPhone sales showed a 29.5 percent increase between Q1 2012 and Q1 2013, while iPads had just over 48 percent growth in shipments during the same period. This time around (between Q1 2013 and Q1 2014), the iPhone showed just 6.7 percent growth, while the iPad had only 8.4 percent increase in shipments. Those numbers likely won’t do much to curtail the impression that Apple is starting to struggle with how much room it has to grow those businesses, but they still represent record quarters.

Source: TechCrunch

Boeing examines "green diesel" as a sustainable aviation biofuel

Over the past few years, we've heard about "green" airliners running on a mixture of jet fuel and biofuels made from things like plants and recycled cooking oil. Now, Boeing is looking at blending jet fuel with green diesel, which is already used to fuel trucks.

Green diesel is derived from oil and fat-based feedstocks, as are the biofuels that have been used in planes before. It differs from biodiesel, however, in that it's not processed in the same fashion, and has a different chemical makeup.

According to studies conducted by Boeing, the blended aviation fuel should produce 50 percent less carbon dioxide than straight petroleum jet fuel. Additionally, green diesel should cost about the same as regular jet fuel, once US government incentives are factored in.

Existing production facilities that are already producing green diesel for ground transportation could conceivably meet up to one percent of the demand for jet fuel.

"We are collaborating with our industry partners and the aviation community to move this innovative solution forward and reduce the industry's reliance on fossil fuel," says Dr. James Kinder, a Technical Fellow in Boeing Commercial Airplanes Propulsion Systems Division.

Source: Boeing

Desert plants to be put to the test for aviation biofuel production

Whenever the topic of plant-derived biofuels is raised, the issue of turning valuable arable land over to the task of growing feedstock is generally not far behind. A discovery by the Sustainable Bioenergy Research Consortium (SRBC) that desert plants fed by seawater can produce biofuel more efficiently than other well-known feedstocks could help alleviate such concerns.

The SRBC, which is affiliated with the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi, is receiving funding from Boeing, Etihad Airways and Honeywell UOP to develop and commercialize a sustainable biofuel that emits 50 to 80 percent less carbon through its lifecycle than fossil fuels. Plants called halophytes, which are highly salt tolerant, could be the answer.

SRBC researchers found that halophyte seeds contain oil suitable for biofuel production and that the entire shrub-like plant can be turned into biofuel more effectively than many other feedstocks.

To test their findings, the SRBC team will create a test ecosystem over the coming year that will see two crops of halophytes planted in the sandy soil found in Abu Dhabi. The test site will use waste seawater from a fish and shrimp farm to nourish the plants, with the water then flowing into a field of mangroves before being returned to the ocean.

"The UAE has become a leader in researching desert land and seawater to grow sustainable biofuel feedstocks, which has potential applications in other parts of the world," says Dr. Alejandro Rios, Director of the SBRC. "This project can have a global impact, since 97 percent of the earth’s water is ocean and 20 percent of the earth’s land is desert."

Source: Masdar Institute

How solar cells are taking over sea, sky and space

The Turanor PlanetSolar cruises past Tahiti

Solar technology has evolved beyond just your grandpa's big, bulky photovoltaic panels on the roof. Advances in flexible, hyper-efficient and nano-scale materials of late has made it possible for solar cells to begin popping up in all kinds of shapes and places you might not expect. Here's a quick rundown of some surprising spots where solar technology dwells – be sure to flip through the gallery to get a full grasp on the scale of the increasingly solar-powered landscape.

Solar panels are great, so long has you can find the real estate on which to place them. One Swiss company is taking a novel approach to this limitation by creating floating islands of solar panels on Lake Neuchâtel. Each of the three planned 25-m (82-ft) diameter islands will be home to 100 photovoltaic panels for the next 25 years, for research and development purposes.

Meanwhile, with costs of fuel always seeming to be on the rise, shipping companies and other seafaring concerns are increasingly looking for ways of harnessing the power of that intense sun constantly beating down on vessels. We first saw one of the most impressive uses of "solar sails" in Shanghai in 2010, and since then others have looked at ways of equipping ships with panels in rigid sails. Given emerging flexible cell technologies, the day might also not be that far off when all of a ship's surfaces, even sails, are covered in solar cells. In that spirit we find the TURANOR PlanetSolar yacht, which completed a voyage around the world last year using the power of the sun.

In case you missed it, 2013 was a record-setting year for solar-powered flight, led by the Solar Impulse team completing the longest sun-fueled flight on its journey across America this summer.

Source: Gizmag

Games: Top multiplatform games to get excited about in 2014

 

The months following a console launch are often a defining period in the life cycle of a console, and there's one thing that every platform owner dreads – the game drought. Nintendo's Wii U suffered from a lack of quality software in the months following its release, as did the PlayStation 3 before it. Luckily, things don't look so bleak for Sony and Microsoft's new platforms, with a wealth of new titles hitting current (last?) and next (current?) gen systems alike.

Unlike last year's dire Alien Colonial Marines, developer Creative Assembly's Isolation is primarily a survival horror title, and it's exactly what fans of the franchise have been waiting for.

The game puts players on an eerie, giant and near-deserted ship with nothing but a motion sensor and their wits to defend them. It's clear that the developer has Ridley Scott's original in mind, with the majority of the story featuring only a single Xenomorph, and there being absolutely no weapons to help you fight it.

Visually, the title looks solid and Creative Assembly seems to have nailed the trademark Alien aesthetic. With so many big-budget first person shooters hitting the market late this year, Isolation looks set to provide a different sort of experience, but one that's every bit as compelling.

Source: Gizmag

Companies See Sharper Stock-Price Moves on Earnings in Fourth Quarter

       According to a report from the Wall Street Journal,shareholders usually reward companies that beat earnings estimates and punish those that fall short. But now, they’re doing so more than usual.

So far this quarter, companies that beat Wall Street’s profit estimates have outperformed the broader market by 3.5%, according to Adam Parker, Morgan Stanley’s top U.S. stock-market strategist. Those that missed earnings estimates lagged the market by 4.5%. In contrast, over the past five years, companies that beat forecasts outperformed by an average of 1.6%, according to Thomson Reuters, while those that missed underperformed by 3.4%.

Of the 126 companies that have reported, 69% have topped forecasts, according to FactSet. That lags behind the 73% of companies beating forecasts, on average, over the past four years.

The bar is being lowered for companies’ 2014 financial performance, according to the report. Analysts have cut their forecasts for per-share earnings for the full year by 0.7%, Morgan Stanley says.

Investors said they were focused on sales growth ahead of the fourth-quarter’s earning season, but sales figures are actually sparking less of a reaction than profits so far this quarter, Morgan Stanley found. Shares of firms that beat sales forecasts have outperformed by 3.2%, while shares of firms that missed forecasts have underperformed by 2.4%.

Sales growth is on pace to rise 0.9%, solidly above the 0.3% expected before the start of fourth-quarter reporting season, according to FactSet. Still, companies in the S&P 500 are showing the widest margin between sales and profits since the second quarter of 2012.

Cookies and Big Brother surveillance,The Age of ‘Infopolitics’ by Colin Koopman

We are in the midst of a flood of alarming revelations about information sweeps conducted by government agencies and private corporations concerning the activities and habits of ordinary Americans. After the initial alarm that accompanies every leak and news report, many of us retreat to the status quo, quieting ourselves with the thought that these new surveillance strategies are not all that sinister, especially if, as we like to say, we have nothing to hide.

One reason for our complacency is that we lack the intellectual framework to grasp the new kinds of political injustices characteristic of today’s information society. Everyone understands what is wrong with a government’s depriving its citizens of freedom of assembly or liberty of conscience. Everyone (or most everyone) understands the injustice of government-sanctioned racial profiling or policies that produce economic inequality along color lines. But though nearly all of us have a vague sense that something is wrong with the new regimes of data surveillance, it is difficult for us to specify exactly what is happening and why it raises serious concern, let alone what we might do about it

Our confusion is a sign that we need a new way of thinking about our informational milieu. What we need is a concept ofinfopolitics that would help us understand the increasingly dense ties between politics and information. Infopolitics encompasses not only traditional state surveillance and data surveillance, but also “data analytics” (the techniques that enable marketers at companies like Target to detect, for instance, if you are pregnant), digital rights movements (promoted by organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation), online-only crypto-currencies (like Bitcoin or Litecoin), algorithmic finance (like automated micro-trading) and digital property disputes (from peer-to-peer file sharing to property claims in the virtual world of Second Life). These are only the tip of an enormous iceberg that is drifting we know not where.

Surveying this iceberg is crucial because atop it sits a new kind of person: the informational person. Politically and culturally, we are increasingly defined through an array of information architectures: highly designed environments of data, like our social media profiles, into which we often have to squeeze ourselves. The same is true of identity documents like your passport and individualizing dossiers like your college transcripts. Such architectures capture, code, sort, fasten and analyze a dizzying number of details about us. Our minds are represented by psychological evaluations, education records, credit scores. Our bodies are characterized via medical dossiers, fitness and nutrition tracking regimens, airport security apparatuses. We have become what the privacy theorist Daniel Solove calls “digital persons.” As such we are subject to infopolitics (or what the philosopher Grégoire Chamayou calls “datapower,” the political theorist Davide Panagia “datapolitik” and the pioneering thinker Donna Haraway “informatics of domination”).

Today’s informational person is the culmination of developments stretching back to the late 19th century. It was in those decades that a number of early technologies of informational identity were first assembled. Fingerprinting was implemented in colonial India, then imported to Britain, then exported worldwide. Anthropometry — the measurement of persons to produce identifying records — was developed in France in order to identify recidivists. The registration of births, which has since become profoundly important for initiating identification claims, became standardized in many countries, with Massachusetts pioneering the way in the United States before a census initiative in 1900 led to national standardization. In the same era, bureaucrats visiting rural districts complained that they could not identify individuals whose names changed from context to context, which led to initiatives to universalize standard names. Once fingerprints, biometrics, birth certificates and standardized names were operational, it became possible to implement an international passport system, a social security number and all other manner of paperwork that tells us who someone is. When all that paper ultimately went digital, the reams of data about us became radically more assessable and subject to manipulation, which has made us even more informational.

We like to think of ourselves as somehow apart from all this information. We are real — the information is merely about us. But what is it that is real? What would be left of you if someone took away all your numbers, cards, accounts, dossiers and other informational prostheses? Information is not just aboutyou — it also constitutes who you are.

We understandably do not want to see ourselves as bits and bytes. But unless we begin conceptualizing ourselves in this way, we leave it to others to do it for us. Many government agencies and giant corporations are all too eager to continue the work of producing detailed data profiles of all of us. These profiles may be produced for varying purposes (targeting terrorists is not the same work as targeting consumers), but they all involve informational pictures of who we are — as well as who we can become. These agencies and corporations will continue producing new visions of you and me, and they will do so without our input if we remain stubbornly attached to antiquated conceptions of selfhood that keep us from admitting how informational we already are.

We need a concept of infopolitics precisely because we have become infopersons. What should we do about our Internet and phone patterns’ being fastidiously harvested and stored away in remote databanks where they await inspection by future algorithms developed at the National Security Agency, Facebook, credit reporting firms like Experian and other new institutions of information and control that will come into existence in future decades? What bits of the informational you will fall under scrutiny? The political you? The sexual you? What next-generation McCarthyisms await your informational self? And will those excesses of oversight be found in some Senate subcommittee against which we democratic citizens might hope to rise up in revolt — or will they lurk among algorithmic automatons that silently seal our fates in digital filing systems?

.Source: The New York Times

Alibaba unveils its first three mobile games

Today Alibaba unveiled the first three titles for its new mobile gaming branch, which the companyformally announced earlier this month.

The games are available on two of Alibaba’s mobile apps. Users who update Laiwang, Alibaba’s social messaging app, to the new 4.5 version, will notice a new tab under the “Explore” page with a castle icon. Pressing the tab takes users to the app’s new game center, which currently features two titles.

Meanwhile, users who open the Taobao mobile app will notice yet another new game center tab under the “My Taobao” page, which directs users to a third title.

Not unexpectedly, all three titles fit firmly in the “casual” genre, which have proven to be popular among game developers looking to reach broad audiences, and social networks looking to keep up user retention. Of the games on Laiwang, “Pa Pa Pa” bears a resemblence to Line’s Bubble Pop, while “Po Po Po” recalls Simon. Taobao’s “Crazy Toy,” meanwhile, has many of the trappings of King’s Candy Crush Saga.

Alibaba states that the Crazy Toy was developed by domestic games company EZJOY, and a quick Google search indicates that the game has been available for download through other means for at least several months. Pa Pa Pa and Po Po Po, meanwhile, appear to be entirely new games.

Specifics aside, what really matters here is timing. Alibaba’s rollout of its first set of mobile games comes on the same day as Tencent’s launch of WeChat 5.2, which soups up the app to include LinkedIn profiles, voice-to-text capabilities, and location sharing. Over the past several months, similar instances have occurred in which the two rival firms compete to stand in the media spotlight. Last December, Tencent’s WeChat and Alibaba’s Alipay Wallet introduced ticket booking features within days of each other.

Alibaba likely hopes that it can score a viral hit with these three titles, much like WeChat’s Tiantian game series won over fans upon their rollout last August. While the company’s commitment to developing mobile games isn’t yet clear, in its press release announcing its entry into the industry, it described Tencent’s stronghold in gaming as a Monopoly, and promised to give more revenues to developers than its competitor. Of course, the biggest challenge Alibaba faces in drawing attention and profits from its games is that most Chinese smartphone owners likely open WeChat far more often than they open Taobao or Laiwang.

Source: TECHINASIA

Market 2014 appraisal by Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist Liz Ann Sonders

"After five years of moving from crisis to crisis, 2013 was less volatile and the near-term forecast is for continued smoother skies. The U.S. government is unlikely to be shut down, the Fed's QE tapering has begun, the European debt crisis has eased substantially, banks have repaired their balance sheets, and even tensions in the Middle East have come off the boil. There remain risks, but the drama associated with many of these events has noticeably declined. But, does that mean smooth sailing for stocks? 

Not necessarily. We still remain optimistic that 2014 will end up being a positive one for equities, and history backs this up, as gains such as we saw in 2013 (more than 25%) are usually followed by decent advances the following year. However, we often comment how equities like to climb a "Wall of Worry" as evidenced by last year's steady and strong advance, despite some drama that could have derailed stocks. But the strong market returns have softened that worry and complacency could be a near-term hurdle for stocks. Investor surveys are indicating that sentiment has become a bit frothy and we are watching for more clear danger signs if gains continue. We can't forecast or time corrections any better than others; while last year taught investors about waiting on the sidelines for one to occur. We also know from history, that although midterm election years have often brought nasty corrections, they were also typically followed by robust returns over the subsequent couple of years. We do believe if a correction unfolds early in the year, it's more likely a buying opportunity than a sinister sign for the year and beyond".  

Improvements continue

"We would likely view a decent sized pullback as a relatively healthy pause in an ongoing secular bull market and would caution against trying to time around it. Our optimism is rooted in several key themes, including: an improving U.S. economy, a likely healthy earnings season, a still-extremely accommodative Fed, reduced fiscal drag, stabilizing global economic growth, and outsized corporate cash balances that we believe will feed into better capital spending this year.

With less drama, but more complacency, earnings season may take on added importance, especially forward-looking guidance by corporate leaders. Heading into fourth quarter earnings reporting season, expectations were relatively muted and it wouldn't be a surprise to see lowered estimates beaten at a higher-than-average rate. Given how much valuation has expanded over the past two years, earnings will likely have to shoulder more of the market's heavy-lifting this year. 

Economic growth may be gaining some traction after years of "new normal," sub-par growth The Institute for Supply Management's (ISM) Manufacturing Index posted a solid 57 reading for December, continuing the string of strong readings. Its employment component rose to 56.5, the highest reading since June 2011, while new orders were impressive at 64.2. We pay special attention to this last reading as it has tended to have a high correlation with both capital spending (as you can see in the chart below) and bottom-line earnings growth". 

Hong Kong brucia il 95 per cento del suo avorio

La maggior parte delle 32,6 tonnellate di avorio custodito in depositi segreti e sorvegliati a Hong Kong sono destinate a diventare cenere.

31 tonnellate di zanne d’elefante custodite in quattro depositi segreti a Hong Kong saranno avviate entro quest’anno a incenerimento. È il 95 per cento di tutto l’avorio attualmente sotto sequestro nel paese asiatico. Occorreranno due anni per bruciarle tutte.

La Cina è il maggior mercato mondiale per l’avorio, secondo il Wwf, usato per scopi decorativi e in minima parte per la medicina tradizionale. Hong Kong, il suo porto franco nella costa meridionale, è sempre stato lo snodo di un vasto traffico illegale. Ora, come annunciato dal portavoce di una commissione appositamente istituita Paul Shin, la maggior parte delle 32,6 tonnellate di zanne sono destinate a diventare cenere. Il rimanente sarà tenuto per motivi educativi e di addestramento del personale chiamato di vigilanza.

La decisione è giunta poche settimane dopo la decisione della Cina di bruciare 6,2 tonnellate di avorio sequestrato nel corso di un evento pubblico a scopo dimostrativo, ma anche Stati Uniti, Filippine, Kenya e Gabon hanno organizzato manifestazioni simili.

Circa 22mila elefanti sono stati uccisi illegalmente nel 2012 secondo un programma di monitoraggio della Cites. La popolazione totale di elefanti in Africa oggi va da 420mila a 650mila. Negli ultimi 10 anni è calata del 62 per cento nonostante il bando al commercio internazionale d’avorio del 1989. Erano milioni a metà del ventesimo secolo.

Fonte: LifeGate.it

Energy; Cos’è il fracking (o fratturazione idraulica)

Fracking è il termine inglese usato per definire la tecnica controversa della fratturazione idraulica (hydraulic fracturing) inventata già agli inizi del Novecento per estrarre gas naturale e petrolio dalle rocce di scisto, cioè quelle presenti nel sottosuolo che si sfaldano più facilmente.

Come funziona il fracking

La tecnica della fratturazione idraulica consiste nel perforare il terreno fino a raggiungere le rocce che contengono i giacimenti di gas naturale e successivamente iniettare un getto ad alta pressione di acqua mista a sabbia e altri prodotti chimici per provocare l’emersione in superfice del gas.

Il processo può essere intrapreso sia sfruttando fori già esistenti ed estendere la loro lunghezza, sia creandone di nuovi.

Cosa c’è che non va

L’uso massiccio del fracking negli Stati Uniti ha rivoluzionato il settore energetico, ma ha anche destato preoccupazioni sul fronte ambientale.

Il primo è l’enorme quantità di acqua che deve essere trasportata nei siti di esplorazione e usata per l’estrazione del gas causando sprechi e costi ambientali significativi.

Il secondo è l’utilizzo di sostanze chimiche potenzialmente dannose per la salute umana che potrebbero contaminare le falde acquifere presenti intorno all’area di estrazione. Solo l’80 per cento del liquido iniettato nel foro torna in superficie come acqua di riflusso, il resto rimane nel sottosuolo.

Il terzo è la possibilità che esista una correlazione tra il fracking e il verificarsi di scosse di lieve entità. Un caso che viene spesso citato è quello del 6 novembre 2011 quando un terremoto di magnitudo 5,7 ha colpito lo stato americano dell’Oklahoma dopo che un impianto aveva iniettato acqua ad alta pressione nel sottosuolo.

Le organizzazioni ambientaliste pensano che questa tecnica, che ancora una volta sfrutta i combustibili fossili, sia l’ennesima trovata delle compagnie petrolifere per costringere i governi a ritardare l’adozione di politiche energetiche basate sulle fonti rinnovabili, le uniche considerate sicure, pulite e inesauribili.

Perché i governi ci credono

Stati Uniti e Canada hanno trovato nel fracking una tecnica per aumentare la produzione energetica interna e ridurre la dipendenza da paesi terzi poco stabili. Secondo le previsioni, il gas estratto in questo modo potrebbe aumentare l’autosufficienza energetica dell’America del Nord e tagliare la domanda di altre fonti più sporche come il carbone per circa cento anni.

Il fracking in Italia, in Europa

Il gas di scisto è presente in molti stati occidentali oltre a Stati Uniti e Canada. In Europa, si trova soprattutto nei paesi orientali, dai Balcani alla Polonia, per non parlare della Germania. Alcuni giacimenti sono presenti anche in Spagna e in Italia, in particolare in Emilia Romagna. Pozzi già attivi si trovano in Ucraina e da poco anche nel Regno Unito.

Nel nostro paese, la commissione Ambiente della Camera dei deputati ha approvato una risoluzione che esclude ogni attività legata al fracking. La decisione, assunta in base al principio di precauzione, è simile a quella presa da altri paesi europei in attesa di conoscere meglio le conseguenze ambientali di questa forma di estrazione del gas.

Fonte: Lifegate.it

And this post shows what where the maritime boundaries Perú expected .

Map presented by Alain Pellet in the case of Peru – Chile during oral arguments before the International Court of Justice in the Hague in December 2012. [The dark blue zone indicates the contentious area.] Published in Wikimedia under the license: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported.

The upcoming date on which the International Court of Justice [en] (ICJ) in The Hague is set to deliver its judgment regarding the controversy surrounding maritime boundaries between Chile and Peru [en] is generating tremendous expectations and anxiety in both countries. 

The controversy originated as long ago as 1985 in a dispute over maritime sovereignty [en] of a 37,900 km² area in the Pacific Ocean. In 2008, when the parties were still unable to come to an agreement, Peru took its case to the International Court in the Hague in the hopes of having the issue resolved. The Court announced it would deliver its ruling on January 27, 2014.

Fallo sobre frontera maritima entre el Perú y Chile de la CIJ de La Haya

Por 15 a 1, la CIJ no se pronunció sobre el triángulo externo, porque ya está incluido en la zona marítima fijada 

     

La Corte Internacional de Justicia (CIJ) de La Haya definió hoy que la frontera marítima entre el Perú y Chile se inicie en el hito número 1 y se proyecte en paralelo hasta las 80 millas marinas. En este punto, el tribunal definió una línea equidistante.

Por 15 a 1, el tribunal no se pronunció sobre el triángulo externo, porque ya está incluido en la zona marítima fijada. 

Tras la decisión de la CIJ, el statu quo en la zona cambia. La corte le otorgó al Perú una zona marítima a la cual antes no teníamos acceso. 

     

Investigative Stories Delve Into the Use of Offshore Companies by Chinese

The first big China investigative story of the year has come from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which on Tuesday published, in tandem with several Western news organizations, a detailed look at the widespread use of offshore companies and tax havens by Chinese businesspeople and relatives of Communist Party leaders.

The investigation into Chinese activity primarily in the British Virgin Islands originated with a trove of financial documents leaked to the consortium, a non-profit group based in Washington. On Wednesday, the group published in both English and Chinese its second big story on China, a case study of a former Chinese oil industry executive who set up dozens of shell companies in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and the British Virgin Islands. The report also said that the leaked documents show China’s three large state-owned oil companies — the biggest players in an industry rife with corruption — and executives at those enterprises set up dozens of offshore shell companies between 1995 and 2008.

The case study lays out how Sun Tiangang, the former executive, made a fortune as an entrepreneur in the oil industry before having his main company and its assets seized by former employees allied with powerful state interests. The reporters, Alexa Olesen and Michael Hudson, based their narrative on interviews with Mr. Sun and on a lawsuit he filed last year in a United States district court in Los Angeles against Sinopec, one of the three giant Chinese state-owned oil enterprises and the fourth-biggest company in the world.

In the lawsuit, Mr. Sun accused Sinopec of working with police officials to illegally imprison him for five years, starting in 2005, and strip him of a company in the British Virgin Islands he had set up in connection to a profitable oil pipeline contract in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang. Even after Mr. Sun was released from jail in 2010, the lawsuit said, he was kept under a form of house arrest for two more years.

The lawsuit said Sinopec did not want to honor the  20-year contract and had built its own pipeline to move oil from the Tahe field in Xinjiang. Sinopec did not respond to repeated requests for comment from the reporters. Lawyers for the defendant have asked the U.S. court to dismiss the lawsuit because it is “a quintessentially foreign dispute,” according to a court filing.

Mr. Sun’s colorful tale brings into the spotlight many questionable practices common to business in China. One is the use of so-called reverse mergers to get Chinese companies listed on stock exchanges, but in a way that masks their identity and core business. This practice of backdoor listings has come under growing scrutiny by American officials. Mr. Sun got his oil pipeline joint venture onto the Hong Kong Stock Exchange by folding the British Virgin Islands company he had started, which was the majority shareholder in the oil pipeline business, into a food company that was listed on the exchange in 2001. Mr. Sun then changed the listed company’s name to GeoMaxima Holdings and spun off the food business.

The article explained that this was a way around what Mr. Sun regarded as onerous restrictions. At the time, companies registered in the British Virgin Islands could not list in Hong Kong, nor could a mainland-registered company unless it had approval from officials in Beijing, which was difficult to secure.

The overview published on Tuesday of Chinese use of offshore shell companies said that there are legitimate reasons to set up such companies. The practice started becoming popular among Chinese businesspeople in the 1990s because the executives wanted, among other things, to get around strict capital controls and investment laws that favored foreign companies over domestic ones.

But there are more shadowy motivations too. The companies are tax shelters, and they can also hide the identities of important stakeholders. Mr. Sun said that setting up a company in the British Virgin Islands costs just a few hundred dollars and “gives very strong cover” by allowing the real owner to stay off stage.

Forty percent of offshore business in the British Virgin Islands comes from China and other Asian nations, the report said, citing officials in the islands. Among the clients are executives at the three Chinese oil giants: the China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation, or Sinopec; the China National Petroleum Corporation, or PetroChina; and the China National Offshore Oil Company, or Cnooc. The report said there were no signs of illegal activity by these executives or the oil enterprises, but the secretive nature of the offshore companies makes it difficult to pinpoint why the companies were set up.

Executives at PetroChina have been detained as part of a wide-ranging corruption investigation by Communist Party officials. Party insiders say the main target of the investigation is Zhou Yongkang, the former member of the ruling Politburo Standing Committee who worked in the oil industry and, later, oversaw the domestic security agencies.

Two smaller companies implicated in the PetroChina investigation have ties to offshore shell companies that show up in the leaked documents.

Hua Bangsong, the founder of one of the two implicated companies, Wison Engineering Services, listed in Hong Kong, incorporated three Wison-related companies in the British Virgin Islands in 2003. Wison suspended its public trading in September and announced that Chinese officials had seized some books and records and had frozen some of its bank accounts as part of the investigation. It has said Mr. Hua is cooperating with officials.

The other company implicated in the investigation that has links to a British Virgin Islands company is Zhongxu Investment Co. Ltd., which manages gas stations for PetroChina and runs hydropower plants. Caixin, a respected Chinese news magazine, reported that Wu Bing, the head of Zhongxu, was taken away from the Beijing West Railway Station on Aug. 1 and has not been seen since.

Source: Sinosphere

U.S. Census Bureau Economic Indicators report

New Resisdential Sales
Sales of new single-family houses in December 2013 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 414,000. This is 7.0 percent (+/- 17.5%)* below the revised November 2013 estimate of 445,000.

New Residential Construction 

Privately-owned housing starts in December 2013 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 999,000. This is 9.8 percent (+/- 10.7%)* below the revised November 2013 estimate of 1,107,000.

U.S. New Home Sales fell 2.1% in November

New Home Sales

Released On 1/27/2014 10:00:00 AM For Dec, 2013 Prior Prior Revised Consensus Consensus Range Actual New Home Sales - Level - SAAR 464 K 445 K 450 K 420 K to 471 K 414 K

Market Consensus before announcement New home sales fell 2.1 percent in a deceptive November reading where the 464,000 annual sales rate exceeded what were solid expectations but looked soft against a sharply upward revised October, now at 474,000 versus an initial reading of 444,000. Underscoring the October revision was an even sharper upward revision to September, to 403,000 from 354,000. One factor favoring sellers is supply which was very thin at 4.3 months at the current sales rate versus 4.5 months in October. New homes on the market fell 12,000 in the month to 167,000.

Source: Bloomberg

Next move in U.S. stocks for direction?

       According to a report from the Wall Street Journal "turmoil in emerging markets last week smacked stocks across the globe, leaving many investors worried that the selloff will get worse before it gets better".

The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 3% over two days and notched its worst weekly loss in more than two years. The tumult has carried over into Asian and European trading on Monday, as Japan’s Nikkei fell below 15000 for the first time since mid-November and ended the day at a two-month low. European markets opened lower across the board, with the FTSE 100 the heaviest faller.

“This correction differs from your run of the mill,” said Sebastien Galy, a New York-based senior foreign-exchange strategist at Societe Generale.

Many traders are looking at the next move in U.S. stocks for direction on how steep the global pullback will get. The S&P 500 dropped to 1790 on Friday and closed below its 50-day moving average, a technical indicator that many traders use as confirmation of the market’s short-term direction. Holding above this chart line is generally a bullish sign, whereas falling below the indicator suggests tougher times ahead.

The 50-day moving average is “on everyone’s radar screen,” said Frank Cappelleri, a sales trader at brokerage firm Instinet.

But, he acknowledged it’s still too soon to suggest a much bigger correction is coming. Recent forays below the 50-day average have been followed by quick rebounds higher, a pattern that has played out repeatedly over the past few years.

That’s why Mr. Cappelleri is reluctant to say stocks are poised for a steep pullback.

“I’m not ready to make that call,” Mr. Cappelleri said. “If you looked at any of these indicators as a reason to get out of the market over the past 14 months, you would have been wrong. I’m giving the market the benefit of the doubt.”

In more than a year, the S&P 500 has broken below its 50-day moving average five times — December 2012, and April, June, August and October of 2013. In each instance, the index bottomed within a week, and in some cases on the same day.

The lowest close below the 50-day moving average during that time was 2.7% on June 24, after a three-day run below the indicator. The market suddenly reversed course, with the S&P 500 rising in 12 of the next 14 sessions, rallying 7% during that stretch.

But now, the market is significantly higher than it was then. And many investors say stocks are long overdue for a significant pullback. The S&P 500 hasn’t had at least a 10% drop since the summer of 2011.

Turmoil in emerging markets last week smacked stocks across the globe, leaving many investors worried that the selloff will get worse before it gets better.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 3% over two days and notched its worst weekly loss in more than two years. The tumult has carried over into Asian and European trading on Monday, as Japan’s Nikkei fell below 15000 for the first time since mid-November and ended the day at a two-month low. European markets opened lower across the board, with the FTSE 100 the heaviest faller.

“This correction differs from your run of the mill,” said Sebastien Galy, a New York-based senior foreign-exchange strategist at Societe Generale.

Many traders are looking at the next move in U.S. stocks for direction on how steep the global pullback will get. The S&P 500 dropped to 1790 on Friday and closed below its 50-day moving average, a technical indicator that many traders use as confirmation of the market’s short-term direction. Holding above this chart line is generally a bullish sign, whereas falling below the indicator suggests tougher times ahead.

The 50-day moving average is “on everyone’s radar screen,” said Frank Cappelleri, a sales trader at brokerage firm Instinet.

But, he acknowledged it’s still too soon to suggest a much bigger correction is coming. Recent forays below the 50-day average have been followed by quick rebounds higher, a pattern that has played out repeatedly over the past few years.

That’s why Mr. Cappelleri is reluctant to say stocks are poised for a steep pullback.

“I’m not ready to make that call,” Mr. Cappelleri said. “If you looked at any of these indicators as a reason to get out of the market over the past 14 months, you would have been wrong. I’m giving the market the benefit of the doubt.”

In more than a year, the S&P 500 has broken below its 50-day moving average five times — December 2012, and April, June, August and October of 2013. In each instance, the index bottomed within a week, and in some cases on the same day.

The lowest close below the 50-day moving average during that time was 2.7% on June 24, after a three-day run below the indicator. The market suddenly reversed course, with the S&P 500 rising in 12 of the next 14 sessions, rallying 7% during that stretch.

But now, the market is significantly higher than it was then. And many investors say stocks are long overdue for a significant pullback. The S&P 500 hasn’t had at least a 10% drop since the summer of 2011.