China: More blue-collar workers finding work abroad

A new study highlights the gap between the number of qualified personnel leaving China compared to those settling here. In its Annual Report on Chinese International Migration for 2014, the Beijing-based think tank the Center for China and Globalization says more than 9 million Chinese nationals have emigrated in the past 23 years, taking with them billions of dollars in assets along with their technical know-how.

Source: CCTV

China: Tens of millions travel back home for Spring Festival

Spring Festival is just around the corner, and millions of people are on their way back home before the Lunar New Year. China's transportation authorities said railway transportation is to reach its peak on Tuesday, with 7 million journeys expected.

40% of these trips will be made in and out of South China. And in East China, over 200 extra train services are provided in populous cities.

On Monday, over 1 million journeys were made via water transportation. And over 97 million journeys were made via railways, an increase of 9.4% compared with the same period last year.

Beijing railway authorities said there was a huge increase in the cancellation of journeys in recent days. An average of 130,000 tickets were refunded per day, and they remind travellers to keep trying their luck if they have not had luck yet purchasing their ticket home.

Source: CCTV

China industrial profits up 2.2%, faster than 2012

Profits at China's industrial companies rose at a faster pace last year compared to 2012.

December profits for industrial companies with annual revenues of more than 20 million yuan reached 942.5 billion yuan. That's up 6 percent year on year, but slower than November's growth. Industrial profits totalled 6.28 trillion yuan for 2013, up 12.2 percent from 2012.

The growth rate was nearly 7 percent higher than in 2012. 35 of 41 industrial sectors earned more last year than in 2012. Electricity suppliers, automakers and non-metallic mineral manufacturers were among the big earners thanks to strong sales and cost cutting. Energy industries, meanwhile, underperformed due to weak demand.

Source: CCTV

China: Anti-corruption campaign impacts prepaid cards

Gift cards are a sensitive topic in this gift-giving season of Chinese New Year, as the government's anti-corruption campaign hits some gift card spending. Our reporter Feng Xin gets us the outlook for the industry.

One week before Chinese New Year, a woman wanders outside a major shopping mall in west-central Beijing, asking passers-by if they'd like to cash in any gift cards by selling them at a discount. She looks at the cards, and they walk off together.

Two scalpers who spoke on condition of anonymity say their business has declined by two thirds this year. That’s after last year when each of the scalpers could exchange between 60,000 to 90,000 yuan in gift cards every day.

The picture is much different for Yufu Payment, one of Beijing's two major prepaid card companies. The company's issuance and sales of gift cards actually went up 85 percent in 2013.

"Chinese people pay a lot of attention to gift giving and receiving during the holidays. We saw a significant boost in sales during the holiday season," said Tong Lu, assistant to president of Yufu Group.

The latest available research on gift cards was done by a private consulting company in 2011.

The company says the market for single-purpose cards; that is, cards that a store issues for use only within its own doors - is expected to reach 1-point-8 (T) trillion yuan in 2013. That's 30-percent growth from 2010.

The smaller multiple-purpose card market, like the cards issued by Yufu Payment, is expected to reach 300 (B) billion yuan in 2013. That's three-fold growth from three years ago. Multiple-purpose cards are issued under a license authorized by China's central bank and can be used in a variety of shops.

Growth for the single-purpose card market, however, is experiencing a bigger slowdown.

"The single-purpose card has been around for a long time but suffers from old age and anti-corruption efforts. The government campaign has impacted card demand," said Wang Weidong, senior analyst of Iresearch.

The one-mile financial street in the heart of Beijing pretty much houses the complete business chain of gift cards. From prepaid card companies who issue gift cards, to shopping malls and to scalpers who wander around the area, the chain can get quite extensive.

Prepaid card issuers profit from bank interest and commissions paid by shops. Customers see the cards as an effective form of employee benefits or gifts because the taxes are lower. And when the card holders want to cash out, scalpers are happy to scoop up the cards and sell them elsewhere for a profit.

"I think the scalpers will in fact stimulate growth of the prepaid card industry because they extend the demand for prepaid cards. They make these cards have one more function, which is to turn into cash," said Wang Weidong.

The extra grey area largely remains unregulated, however. The Prepaid card Regulatory Committee says complete data on China’s prepaid card market won't be available until this spring. That's when most listed companies issue their yearly reports.

Source: CCTV

Alibaba's growth rate cools off ahead of expected IPO

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's scorching growth may be cooling off - but just ever so slightly.

The privately held Chinese online marketplace posted 51 percent revenue growth during the July-September quarter compared with a year prior, the lowest rate in three quarters, while margins shrank for the second consecutive period. But it swung from a loss one year ago to $792 million in net income ahead of what is billed as the biggest initial public offering since Facebook Inc's 2012 float.

The figures were disclosed Tuesday by Yahoo Inc, which holds a 24 percent stake in the Chinese company and reports Alibaba's results one quarter in arrears as part of its own financial disclosures.

Alibaba had set a breakneck pace for itself during the first two quarters of 2013, logging top-line growth of 71 percent and 61 percent, respectively.

Alibaba reported revenue of $1.78 billion during the September quarter, up from $1.18 billion.

Aside from decelerating revenue growth, Alibaba's margins also shrank from 74 percent to 70 percent, according to Yahoo.

But that could suggest the company is priming itself for a public market debut rather than any weakness in its business, said B. Riley analyst Sameet Sinha.

"It's a function of them making the investments before the IPO," Sinha said. "I'm sure the bankers are telling them not to do the margin acceleration before the IPO, show it after the IPO. That's what gets the stock moving."

Expectations have been building for months around Hangzhou, China-based Alibaba, with bankers predicting an IPO that could raise up to $15 billion and value the company at more than $100 billion - sums that have drawn comparisons to the frenzied Facebook offering in 2012.

Shares of Yahoo, which has struggled to revive its own core business, closed at $38.22, up 4.3 percent, but then fell to $36.80 in extended trade following the release of Alibaba's revenue.

Source: Reuters

Asia in countdown to Lunar New Year

The Spring Festival is not only celebrated in China, but also in many other Asian countries.

In Seoul, the capital of South Korea, the streets are packed with people hoping to stock up on traditional products for the festival.

"These chestnuts are big so they’re good," said a South Korean woman.

Malls and supermarkets are also attracting people with pretty gift boxes. And this year it seems that punters are being particularly health conscious, with sales of health foods up by 17 percent.

And heading south to Vietnam. On the eve of little new year, a week before the main celebrations, people here made zongzi, or glutinous rice dumplings wrapped in leaves. They also wrote calligraphy and prayed for good fortune for the coming year. A bamboo pole was also erected, with limestone powder covering the ground around it. One tradition is to mark out a bow and arrow shape with the powder.

"The bow can ward off evil spirits and misfortune. And the spell I said is used for praying to the god of heaven to give peace to this land," said a Vietnamese man.

Lion and dragon dancing is also an indispensable feature of the festival here.

And in Singapore, the festive atmosphere is no different. Streets are crowded with shoppers here as the new year is only days away.

And it's not just in countries where the Lunar New Year is traditionally celebrated that events are taking place. In Iran over 3,000 personalities gathered to celebrate the "Spring Festival in Iran" event, hosted by the Chinese embassy. Dancers from Iran's Red Dragon Kong Fu Team performed lion dances; some performers were particularly young. Chinese food and even TCM were popular parts of the event.

"More and more Iranian people are accepting Traditional Chinese Medicine. Iran also has its own traditional medicine but people think Chinese medicine can also be helpful," said a Philippine man.

So it seems that across the region and further afield the impending festivities are creating quite a buzz.

Source: CCTV

Asian Stocks Up After Turkey Raises Rates

                  According to a report from the Wall Street Journal  " asian markets rose early on Wednesday, with Japanese stocks leading the region higher, after a hefty interest rate hike in Turkey restored confidence in emerging markets".

"The Turkish lira surged after the country's central bank yanked the cost of borrowing higher in an attempt to shore up the currency, which has weakened sharply in recent sessions. The overnight lending rate was raised to 12% from 7.75%.

The U.S. dollar was last trading at 2.1784 Turkish lira — a 3.3% fall from the 2.2520 lira level just before the announcement, and significantly below the 2.39 lira peak that the greenback hit on Monday".

"The move gave a broad boost to global sentiment, which has taken a battering in recent sessions, as a selloff in emerging markets spread to developed economies. The easing tension led to a softer yen, a currency that had benefited from safe-haven buying as other assets were sold.

The dollar was last at ¥103.16, compared with ¥102.94 late Tuesday in New York. 

The weaker local currency gave Japanese stocks a boost, with the Nikkei up 1.5% in early trade.

Away from Japan, markets were also recovering from their recent declines, with South Korea's Kospi up 0.7% and Australia's S&P/ASX 200 0.4% higher.

There are still potential hurdles for emerging markets, as the Federal Reserve is scheduled to finish its policy meeting later in the global day. Investors will be looking to see whether the central bank will take further steps to roll back its bond-buying program".

Rare winter storm brings ice and snow to U.S. South

A rare blast of snow, sleet and ice hit the U.S. South on Tuesday, prompting residents accustomed to more moderate weather to scramble for supplies and face dangerously slick roads.

The southern cold snap is part of an arctic front that has put much of the Northeast and northern Plains under warnings and advisories for dangerous wind chills. Temperatures in parts of those regions could feel as cold as minus 30 Fahrenheit (minus 34 Celsius) on Tuesday, the National Weather Service said.

Schools and government offices across a wide swath of the country were closed. Airlines canceled or delayed thousands of flights, and officials closed roads as conditions worsened.

North Carolina and South Carolina were expected to get the most snow, while the heaviest ice accumulation was forecast from Louisiana to the Carolinas, the weather service said.

Temperatures between 10 and 20 degrees colder than normal were expected to continue for much of the eastern United States. In Washington, D.C., the National Gallery's skating rink shut down, with officials saying it was too cold for skaters to be out on the ice.

"We're getting a bit of everything," said Jody White, a police sergeant in Opelousas, Louisiana. "It's cold. The sleet is coming down in patches."

In Alabama, two people died and five others were hospitalized after a seven-car crash on an iced-over bridge near Montgomery, said Robyn Litchfield, an Alabama Department of Public Safety spokeswoman.

Lawmakers in South Carolina canceled this week's session of the state legislature due to weather concerns, and Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant declared a state of emergency for at least three dozen counties.

The storm took a toll on air travel across the region, with more than 3,000 U.S. flights canceled and hundreds of others delayed, according to flight tracking website FlightAware.com.

In New Orleans, which last got an inch of snow in 2008, freezing rain and sleet were likely through most of the afternoon and would possibly turn into snow in the evening, said Danielle Manning, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Slidell, Louisiana.

Winter weather advisories were also issued for a wide swath of eastern and central Texas for Tuesday, with predictions of up to 1 inch of snow near the state's border with northern Louisiana.

Freezing temperatures and rain snarled the morning commute through large parts of central Texas and Louisiana, where roads and bridges were iced over. Police in Austin, Texas, reported about 100 crashes caused by icy roads but said there had been no fatalities.

News Websites Proliferate, Stretching Thin Ad Dollars

              According to a report from the Wall Street Journal:  "in the past few months, about a dozen companies have announced new ventures related to online news, often in specialized areas such as media or technology. The latest is former Washington Post journalist Ezra Klein, who has been hired to launch a general-news site at Vox Media, owner of the tech and media website the Verge.

The new publishers are confident in their prospects, citing increased Internet usage and marketers' desire to reach highly targeted audiences through niche content sites and new forms of digital advertising".

But ad buyers and industry executives say the proliferation of new sites and automation in ad sales is driving down advertising pricing—by as much as 70% in some cases—making it tougher for sites to turn a profit from traditional online advertising. More news sites means more ad space is available.

Since the dawn of the Internet, news-related websites have come and gone. Web entrepreneur Jason Calacanis this week is launching Inside.com, a mobile news startup. Some 15 years ago there was another Inside.com, unrelated to the one debuting this week. Other warning signs abound. Earlier this month, AOL Inc.  said it would sell a majority interest in its troubled network of local news sites, Patch, to a turnaround expert. AOL had for years struggled to sell enough ads to make the business profitable.

Gigaom, a digital content company focused on the media and tech sectors, is in the process of closing its Paidcontent.org site, which it acquired in 2012, opting to consolidate staff and coverage at its flagship site.

"People don't appreciate how difficult it is to do interesting journalism that is monetizable and sustainable over time," said Jim VandeHei, the president and CEO of Politico and Capital New York. "We would never build a media product based around [web] traffic and advertising. That is a fool's play in this day and age," Mr. VandeHei said.

He hopes subscriptions will eventually account for about half of revenue, with the rest coming from ads and conferences—another lucrative side business for news .

Gigaom has shifted away from traditional advertising to focus on selling customized research, and makes money from hosting conferences.

"There is no way you can have enough page views and scale to make enough money to support a great editorial brand," said Gigaom's Mr. Walborsky.

Among the flood of new entrants: Yahoo Inc.  is launching a site focused on technology news, a niche where dozens of established media sites and blogs already vie for page views. Comcast Corp.'s  NBCUniversal is financing technology journalists Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, formerly of The Wall Street Journal, in the launch of Re/Code.

Helping drive the latest boom is a belief that established news media outlets, including websites of newspaper and magazines, don't much appeal to younger people who rely on social media or other newer outlets for their news.

The high prices that some sites have fetched serve to fan the flames. The most obvious was AOL's $315 million purchase of Huffington Post in 2011. 

Ad sales trends aren't in their favor, though. And increased use of automated ad exchanges—known as programmatic ad buying—is contributing to the downward spiral. Programmatic allows for marketers to bid on placement for their ads in real time, which makes it easier for advertisers to find lower-cost space on media outlets.

Most of the sites are closely held and don't disclose their financial performance. Some, including BuzzFeed and Vice, say they are already profitable. Vice Media is expected to generate around $500 million in revenue for 2014, at a profit margin between 25% to 30%, according to a person close to the company.

Neither company relies on traditional digital advertising, however.

Vice Media earns most of its money by licensing the online video content it produces to television distributors, and by getting marketers to underwrite its content in exchange for promoting their brands. BuzzFeed eschews traditional display ads altogether, relying instead on "sponsored content," in which marketers agree to underwrite a story or video in return for having their brand logo displayed adjacent to stories or online videos. The new Inside.com said it wants to add sponsored content once it has reached greater scale.

Yahoo reported a Q4 0.33 cents a share

  Yahoo Inc.  on Tuesday reported a fourth-quarter profit of $351.67 million, or 33 cents a share, compared with a profit of $273.65 million, or 23 cents a share for the year-earlier period. Adjusted revenue, minus traffic acquisition costs, was $1.2 billion, down from $1.22 billion. Adjusted profit was 46 cents a share. Analysts polled by FactSet on average were expecting Yahoo to report a profit of 39 cents a share, on adjusted revenue of $1.2 billion. The company reported a 6% year-over-year decline in display ad revenue, a bigger drop than consensus estimates. Yahoo shares fell more than 5% after-hours.

Source: Marketwatch

Don't Cry for me Argentina Part II

Argentina, whose currency collapsed last week, is another case in point. Blessed with great natural wealth, the Argentines have resented the oligopolies who control their resources, and try to vote themselves rich with depressing regularity. One government after another offers handouts to the querulous voters, who have learned that this practice breeds inflation and currency devaluation. The Argentine game is to be first in line at the public trough, and first in line at the foreign exchange counter to get out of local currency before it collapses yet again. 

The industrial countries have the same kind of problem just below the surface. In America, fewer than half of adults available to work with a high school education or less actually are working. 
That is, only 58% of the noninstitutional adult civilian population with only a high school degree is counted in the labor force. For adults with less than a high school diploma, the labor participation rate falls to just 44%. Deduct the unemployed, and the result is that less than half of Americans without college are at work. That's why 60 million Americans are on food stamps, and why a third of all American households have at least one member receiving means-tested government subsidies. 

Meanwhile employers report shortages of skilled labor in numerous fields. It is hard to find skilled machine operators, who require the equivalent of a couple of years of college math to master the computer controls on industrial equipment, for example. 
Spain's unemployment rate remains at 26%. Spanish workers are now willing to take jobs at 700 euros (US$957) a month making clothing to compete with Chinese imports. That's roughly what better-qualified Chinese workers earn with overtime. The low end of the European labor market, that is, already has converged with the high end of the Chinese labor market. 

The problem isn't inequality of income, but inequality of knowledge. One pilot flying a modern military aircraft could destroy the whole of an ancient civilization. One farmer from Nebraska can replace a hundred in Egypt. A thousand years ago, everyone knew how a watermill worked; 200 years ago, most people knew how a steam engine works; how many people today know how a computer works? 

East Asia is faring better than the rest of the world in this great transformation because its culture imposes a merciless meritocracy. The West should be able to do better than this. If we can't, we can see our future in Argentina. 

After E. Snowden Scandal: Government Reaches Deal With Tech Firms on Data Requests(Or Big Brother is Watching You, Blues)

            According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, "the Obama administration agreed Monday to let technology companies make more information public about how often the government monitors Internet use, a move that aims to ease public distrust and corporate complaints about snooping.
  The pact will allow Facebook,Microsoft,Apple,Google and Yahoo and other technology firms to disclose more aggregaten information about the demands they receive from the government. However, the numbers would be released in broad ranges and the agreement doesn't give the companies new ways to block demands they view as intrusive".
"The agreement represents another concrete consequence of the revelations about government spying by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. Earlier this month, President Barack Obama said the U.S. would stop storing huge amounts of phone-call data in NSA computers, though where that data would be stored has yet to be decided".

Monday's agreement also suggests the Obama administration would rather reach compromises on such disclosures than wait to see whether courts or Congress order more far-reaching transparency measures.

The pact on disclosures focuses specifically on the government's scrutiny of Internet traffic, and doesn't apply to the phone-records program that also has been the subject of intense debate since Mr. Snowden's revelations. It aims to strike a balance between the companies' desires to say more about government searches and the government's interest in not having the details of such requests revealed in a way that would tip off targets of investigations.

Among the biggest changes under the agreement: For the first time, companies can disclose how many court orders they receive from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a specialized tribunal for national-security matters whose decisions typically are secret.

Also, companies can give out more information about National Security Letters they 

receive from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, an area where some disclosure already was permitted. And they may say in general terms how many customer accounts are involved, a disclosure that could help the companies fight back against perceptions that huge numbers of customers are affected by government surveillance.

"If the assumption is those secret programs are widespread, that causes customers of technology companies to lose trust in those technology companies," said Matthew Prince, chief executive of CloudFlare Inc., a San Francisco cybersecurity company.Mr. Prince said the agreement may not do much to alleviate the concern that the NSA's reach is "broad and far-reaching."Many big tech firms say the government spying revelations are hurting their businesses not just among American consumers but also overseas, where they are trying to expand.

Turkish central bank sharply hikes all main interest rates

Turkey's central bank sharply raised all of its main interest rates on Wednesday, bowing to market pressure to stem a slide in the lira fuelled by political turbulence at home and fears about cuts in U.S. monetary stimulus.

At an emergency policy meeting, the bank raised its overnight lending rate to 12 percent from 7.75 percent, its one-week repo rate to 10 percent from 4.5 percent and its overnight borrowing rate to 8 percent from 3.5 percent.

Source: Reuters

Top bankers expect EU stress tests to reignite banking M&A

Bankers expect a thorough European Central Bank (ECB) health check of the euro zone's largest banks to reignite domestic and cross-border merger activity by rebuilding confidence among lenders.

The sovereign debt crises that nearly caused a break-up of the single currency in 2011/12 has generated mistrust among banksand caused an effective breakdown of cross-border bank investment flows as they hoarded capital at home.

The initial increase in merger activity is expected to take place within single countries as weaker companies restructure and accept effective takeovers by domestic rivals, but bankers believe this will then spread to a pan-European level.

"The pre-conditions are there," Deutsche Bank  CEO Anshu Jain said when asked whether the EU health checks on banks and the move towards banking union would bring cross-border deals.

However, Jain added that progress will not come overnight. "I am not predicting a wave (of deals)," he said.

Bankers say that the latest checks on capital and stress tests of banks' resilience to shocks must be rigorous, pointing to the 2011 tests that found no weaknesses among Spanish and Irish banks, even though the countries subsequently asked for bailouts of their banking sectors.

European Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said that banks are already preparing for the results of the stress tests by raising capital on the market, with about 80 billion euros raised to strengthen banks over the past couple of years.

There is unlikely to be significant further consolidation in the Spanish banking sector, which has already shrunk from about 50 players at the start of the sovereign debt crisis to fewer than 10.

ITALIAN DEALS?

Italian banks, however, appear still to have some way to go as the likes of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena and Banco Popolare , the country's third and fourth-largest banks respectively, seek to raise more capital.

Mid-sized Italian banks are candidates for mergers, Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco and the CEOs of Italy's two largest banks, UniCredit  and IntesaSanpaolo , told Reuters in interviews in Davos.

"For sure, some (mid-level) banks will need some additional capital. It's possible to start to see consolidation at that level," UniCredit CEO Federico Ghizzoni said.

"It will be interesting to see what happens after the asset quality review, not only in Italybut also at the European level," he said, adding that he expects cross-border deals.

Source: Reuters

F

Facebook eyes options for low-power server technology

Facebook Inc's hardware whiz in charge of revolutionizing data centers lauded on Tuesday low-energy server technology which is expected to compete against heavyweight Intel Corp.

Speaking at a conference in San Jose, California, on Tuesday, Open Compute Project head Frank Frankovsky said Facebook's three-year push to help companies design better data center gear was gaining momentum and paying off with a range of cost-saving improvements.

"It might be coming to fruition about six months after the most optimistic among us thought, but we are absolutely going to see pointed to plans by a handful of companies to launch server chips based on low-power technology licensed from ARM Holdings, whose technology is widely used in smartphones.

a much more rich ecosystem in CPU choice as we move through 2014 and into 2015," said Frankovsky.

Intel dominates the server market with its powerful Xeon processors and stands to lose if server chips based on a rival architecture catch on. Intel has launched its own low-power chips in anticipation of a move toward microservers by major Internet players likeFacebook and Google.

Struggling with a shrinking PC industry, chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices has been developing and testing ARM-based chips for servers. Sunnyvale, California-based Applied Micro Circuits is also launching its own ARM-based server processors.

For some kinds of data-center workloads, several low-power chips working together can work more efficiently than one of Intel's brawny server chips, proponents of microservers say.

With off-the-shelf data center products falling behind Facebook's growing technical requirements, the world's top social media network in 2011 launched the Open Compute Project to push major technology companies to design and build hardware better-suited to running massive-scale Internet services.

Over the past three years, efforts by Facebook to make its infrastructure more efficient have saved the company over $1.2 billion, said Jay Parikh, vice president of infrastructure.

Source: Reuters

Gunmen kill Egyptian general; ousted Mursi defiant at trial

Islamist militant gunmen on a motorcycle killed a top Interior Ministry official in Cairo on Tuesday in the latest blow to a military-backed Egyptian government struggling to curb violence and suppress dissent.

General Mohamed Saeed, head of the ministry's technical office, was shot in his car outside his home in daytime.

A Sinai-based militant group inspired by al Qaeda, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, said it carried out the attack against the "apostate, criminal" Saeed.

The shooting occurred hours before deposed President Mohamed Mursi appeared in court on charges of kidnapping and killing policemen after a jailbreak during the 2011 uprising that ended President Hosni Mubarak's three decades of autocracy.

Army chief Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ousted Mursi in July after mass protests against his rule and is expected to declare soon that he will run for president. With no challenger in sight, that would effectively return Egypt to military rule.

A Sisi presidency would delight many Egyptians, but would anger the Muslim Brotherhood, which helped Mursi become Egypt's first freely elected leader. The government has since declared it a terrorist group. The outlawed Brotherhood denies any links to the militants now waging an increasingly potent insurgency.

Also on Tuesday, gunmen killed a policeman guarding a church in October 6 city, west of Cairo, security sources said.

The Brotherhood says Sisi's removal of Mursi was a coup that reversed the democratic gains of the anti-Mubarak revolt. Hundreds of people have been killed in clashes between the security forces and Mursi supporters since August.

The authorities have crippled the Brotherhood's power to put large crowds in the streets, but now face Islamist violence that recalls an armed uprising crushed by Mubarak in the 1990s.

In its claim of responsibility for Tuesday's attack, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis warned Sisi, the interior minister and their aides that the group would soon avenge the state's crackdown on militants.

At Mursi's trial, held in a police academy in Cairo, the deposed president was held in a glass cage with a sound system controlled by the court to prevent him shouting slogans against Sisi as he did in previous court sessions. Human rights groups see Mursi's treatment as part of a wide crackdown on opposition.

Mursi insisted he was still Egypt's true president and raged at the judge, asking: "Who are you? Don't you know who I am?"

At times Mursi, in a white track suit, paced in his cage. Other Brotherhood leaders, held in a separate glass cage, waved to people in the courtroom. The trial was adjourned to February 22.

Source: Reuters

Ukraine PM resigns amid unrest, parliament revokes anti-protest laws

Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov resigned on Tuesday while deputies loyal to President Viktor Yanukovich, acting to calm violent street protests, back-tracked and overturned anti-protest laws they rammed through parliament 12 days ago.

The first real concessions by Yanukovich since the crisis erupted two months ago brought cheers from several thousand demonstrators on Kiev's Independence Square, focal point of the protests. Opposition leaders said they would continue to harness street power to wring more gains.

The 66-year-old Azarov tendered his resignation as parliament met for an emergency session to work out a deal that would satisfy the opposition and end protests in the capital Kiev and in other cities in which six people have been killed."We have to change not only the government, but the rules of the game as well," declared boxer-turned-politician Vitaly Klitschko. "We are sure the struggle will continue," he said.

Yanukovich quickly accepted his resignation and that of his cabinet. First Deputy Prime Minister Serhiy Arbuzov will step in as acting prime minister and other ministers will stay on in caretaker roles until a cabinet is formed.

A Russian-born hardliner who has referred to the protesters as "terrorists", Azarov was publicly humiliated by Yanukovich's offer at the weekend to give his job to former economy minister Arseny Yatsenyuk, another opposition leader, in an effort to stem the rising protests against his rule.

The opposition has been calling consistently for the resignation of the Azarov government since the crisis started. But Yatsenyuk and other opposition leaders rejected Yanukovich's offer of top government posts, seeing it as a trap intended to compromise them in front of their supporters on the streets.

The steward of the heavily-indebted economy through hard times and recession, Azarov backed the November decision to walk away from a free trade pact with the EU - the move which sparked the mass street protests. He took the heat in parliament, defending closer ties with Russia in a stormy debate.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov resigned on Tuesday while deputies loyal to President Viktor Yanukovich, acting to calm violent street protests, back-tracked and overturned anti-protest laws they rammed through parliament 12 days ago.

The first real concessions by Yanukovich since the crisis erupted two months ago brought cheers from several thousand demonstrators on Kiev's Independence Square, focal point of the protests. Opposition leaders said they would continue to harness street power to wring more gains.

"We have to change not only the government, but the rules of the game as well," declared boxer-turned-politician Vitaly Klitschko. "We are sure the struggle will continue," he said.

The 66-year-old Azarov tendered his resignation as parliament met for an emergency session to work out a deal that would satisfy the opposition and end protests in the capital Kiev and in other cities in which six people have been killed.

Yanukovich quickly accepted his resignation and that of his cabinet. First Deputy Prime Minister Serhiy Arbuzov will step in as acting prime minister and other ministers will stay on in caretaker roles until a cabinet is formed.

Azarov, a loyal lieutenant of Yanukovich since the president was elected in February 2010, said he was stepping down to help find a political compromise "for the sake of a peaceful settlement of the conflict".

A Russian-born hardliner who has referred to the protesters as "terrorists", Azarov was publicly humiliated by Yanukovich's offer at the weekend to give his job to formereconomy minister Arseny Yatsenyuk, another opposition leader, in an effort to stem the rising protests against his rule.

The opposition has been calling consistently for the resignation of the Azarov government since the crisis started. But Yatsenyuk and other opposition leaders rejected Yanukovich's offer of top government posts, seeing it as a trap intended to compromise them in front of their supporters on the streets.

The steward of the heavily-indebted economy through hard times and recession, Azarov backed the November decision to walk away from a free trade pact with the EU - the move which sparked the mass street protests. He took the heat in parliament, defending closer ties with Russia in a stormy debate.

REPEAL OF LAWS

Parliament went into emergency session on Tuesday with ministers loyal to Yanukovich saying they would press for a state of emergency to be declared if the opposition leaders did not rein in protesters and end occupation of municipal and government buildings across the country.

But then Yanukovich loyalists, clearly under pressure from the president and his aides to make a U-turn, voted to repeal anti-protest legislation they had pushed through on January 16.

The crisis has revealed a sharp divide within Ukraine between those mainly from the Russian-speaking east who favour warmer ties with former Soviet master Moscow and those in the west who want better relations with the EU.

In turning away from Europe, Azarov's government had argued that improving ties with Russia was urgently needed to win a financial bailout. Moscow responded last month with an offer of $15 billion in loans and discounts on gas.

But the chaos could now put that lifeline in jeopardy. Ratings agency Standard & Poors cut Ukraine to CCC+ on Tuesday.

"The downgrade reflects our view that the significant escalation of the political turmoil in Ukraine makes the expected financial support package from Russia less certain should the government of President Yanukovych fall," it said.

In Brussels, President Vladimir Putin promised Russia would not cut off Ukraine if its government changed.

"Regarding your question whether we will review our agreements on loans and the energy sector if the opposition will take power ... No, we will not," Putin answered a reporter's question after three hours of talks with EU leaders.

The aid was to "support the people of Ukraine, not the government. It's the people, the common people that suffer."

A leader of 'Right Sector', a radical nationalist group involved in violent clashes with police, said members would stick to a truce which has held for several days as long as authorities adopt a conciliatory approach.

"If they (the authorities) make a move to compromise we will reduce our activities," Petro Yarush told reporters.

Talk of a state of emergency being declared in the former Soviet republic of 46 million made the European Union's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, hastily bring forward a visit. She was due to arrive in Kiev on Tuesday night"

Source: Reuters

Novel on schizophrenic wins Costa Book Award

Debut author and mental health nurse Nathan Filer's novel "The Shock of the Fall", about a schizophrenic young man dealing with guilt, was named as the winner of the Costa Book Award for 2013 on Tuesday.

Filer beat novelist and bookmakers' favorite Kate Atkinson, for "Life After Life", biographer Lucy Hughes-Hallett for "The Pike", poet Michael Symmons Roberts for "Drysalter" and author and political cartoonist, Chris Riddell, for "Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse", to win the honor and prize money of 30,000 pounds at the awards ceremony in London.

"This book stood out in a very good list," Rose Tremain, chair of the judges panel, said in a statement.

"The voice in which the author has chosen to tell his story is perfectly aligned with the subject matter and very well sustained to the end."

The Costa Book Awards, named after a coffee shop chain, is the only major British book prize open solely to authors resident in the United Kingdom and Ireland and recognizes books across five categories - First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children's Book - published in the last year.

Filer, 32, is a writer and lecturer in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. He is a qualified mental health nurse and for many years worked for the mental health service in Bristol where he still lives.

Source: Reuters

Chinese become world's top tipplers of 'lucky' red wine

China has overtaken France and Italy to become the world's number one consumer of red wine, although the United States remains the world's biggest tippler of all types of wines, the wine and spirits trade association VINEXPO said on Tuesday.

China drank 1.865 billion bottles of red wine last year, or in trade terms 155 million nine-liter cases, contributing to a 136 percent increase in consumption over five years.

That beat France into second place for red wine and Italy into third, VINEXPO said, based on figures compiled by the London-based International Wine and Spirit Research firm.

The reason for the massive surge in red wine drinking in China, apart from growing affluence, is the Chinese preference for red over white on cultural grounds based on the color, said Guillaume Deglise, the new CEO of VINEXPO.

"Red is the color of luck and good fortune and white is the color of death" in China, Deglise told Reuters.

"So you don't want to drink white, why would you?"

As the Chinese market matures, Deglise said he also expected an increase in consumption of white wines and champagne.

Overall, the United States remains the world's top wine consumer, VINEXPO said, with China remaining in fifth place and not expected to change that ranking in the immediate future, the organization said.

Since 2011 the United States has been the world's largest wine consumer, with consumption expected to hit 385 million cases by 2017.

The figures were released ahead of the VINEXPO Asia-Pacific exhibition to be held in Hong Kong on May 27-29.

The event will feature 1,300 exhibitors and is expected to draw 18,000 visitors, a spokesman for VINEXPO said.

iPhone 5s Owners Gobbling “Unprecedented” Levels Of Data, Study Finds

Users of flagship smartphones such as Apple’s iPhone 5s and Samsung’s Galaxy S4 are continuing to suck down more data than their tablet-wielding counterparts, according to a large-scale survey of mobile data consumption in 2013 conducted by JDSU (which last year bought mobile data analytics company Arieso, the company that previously ran the annual survey).

Last year’s mobile data consumption survey, which looked at 2012 data, also found flagship smartphone device users outpacing the data consumption rates of tablet users.

But the most data thirsty phone users of all have an iPhone 5s burning a hole in their pocket.

As with the 2012 study, the 2013 survey examined the data demands of more than one million subscribers using more than 150 different devices over a single, 24-hour weekday in a Tier-1 European market, which had a mixture of urban and suburban morphologies. But for the first time the survey also studied a developing market for comparative purposes — with a further one million+ subscribers studied in this market over the same 24-hour period. 

To ensure statistical validity the study only looked at the data demands of popular devices — i.e. those represented by at least 1,000 subscribers (conversely, the most popular devices had subscriber rates of well over 10,000 apiece).

The results are pretty telling about the habits of flagship smartphone owners, if not entirely surprising. You guys are a data-demanding bunch. Especially if you happen to own the latest iPhone.

Continuing the trend of the past three years’ findings, the 2013 study found that mobile subscribers using Apple’s flagship smartphone are the most data-hungry smartphone users of all. And they’re getting hungrier still: users of the new iPhone 5s are even more data-hungry than previous top-of-the-line iPhone owners — with the study describing them as the most voracious smartphone users it’s yet seen, with “unprecedented increases in uplink and downlink data demands”.

According to the findings, iPhone 5s users demand 7x as much data as iPhone 3G users in developed markets (the study uses the iPhone 3G as its mid-range benchmark device), and 20x as much data in developing markets.

The most data-demanding device in 2013 was the iPhone 5 — but iPhone 5s users are demanding a fifth (20%) more data than iPhone 5 users in developed markets, and 50% more data in developing markets.

Owners of Apple’s current flagship phone also have a greater data consumption than the Android-based Samsung Galaxy S4, which had a 5x data generation rate vs the iPhone 3G in developed markets and 11x in developing markets.

The SGS4 did rank a lot higher for uplink data generation — coming third in developed markets (vs sixth place for the iPhone 5s). The study goes on to note that the average user of the SGS4 generates almost as much uplink data as eleven iPhone 3G users in the developing market it analysed.

The SGS4′s “prolific” uplink data generation usage is described as “consistent with the improved high-resolution 13-megapixel primary camera and the 2-megapixel front-facing camera”. (The iPhone 5s has an 8MP rear camera.)

Both Apple and Samsung are amply represented in the top data gobbling devices across developed and developing markets, as the below tables from the report show:

Source: TechCrunch