Friday, April 13, 2012
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Unusual hail, heavy rain, snow hit southern Saudi
High areas in the southern Saudi province of Aseer witnessed unusual rough weather that included the fall of heavy rain, wind, hail, snow that resulted in the drowning of two children and two men.
Some areas of the southern region were covered in almost a white sheet of snow as rain continued to fall on Wednesday.
The municipality head Saraj al-Ghamidi told Al Arabiya that vehicles were successful in removing snow from the streets and thoroughfares.
The unusual weather had trapped citizens of the province’s al-Areen Center but the civil defense authorities managed to rescue them.
The weather also swept away farms in two villages in the province.
Residents said this weather is unprecedented.
The Aseer region is located in the southwestern part of Saudi Arabia and has an area of 80,000 Km2 and a population of 2.1 million. It borders on the west by the Red Sea. Unlike the rest of kingdom, it has a high annual rainfall (15-57 cm) which increases the risk of drowning in lake water.
Al Arabiya News
Royal Canadian Mint to create digital currency
The Royal Canadian Mint wants to get rid of pocket change — and it’s enlisting hacker-types for help.
Less than a week after the government announced the penny’s impending death, the Mint quietly unveiled its digital currency called MintChip.
Still in the research and development phase, MintChip will ultimately let people pay each other directly using smartphones, USB sticks, computers, tablets and clouds. The digital currency will be anonymous and good for small transactions — just like cash, the Mint says.
To make sure its technology meets the gold standard in a world where digital transactions are gaining steam, the Mint is holding a contest for software developers to create applications using the MintChip.
The old-fashioned prize? Solid gold wafers and coins worth about $50,000.
It’s such an unusual move from the crown corporation, which has been in the coin-making business for more than 100 years, that Hacker News questioned whether it was an “elaborate hoax.”
It’s not, the Mint’s chief financial officer Marc Brûlé said Tuesday.
Commerce is changing and the Mint has always been innovative, Brûlé said. (For instance, it did an initial public offering of exchange traded receipts of its gold holdings last year.)
“There’s been a very huge growing digital economy that is really going to be fueled by smartphones and mobile being the next big thing,” he said.
Despite the variety of payment options, he said there are “still no cost effective electronic solutions” for low value transactions that can be used regardless of a person’s age or credit standing.
MintChip, a secure microchip, will be able to do this by letting people transfer small amounts of money (for an iTunes song or a newspaper) with no personal information attached to it, he said.
The Mint’s move into the digital market is a reflection the competitive payments industry, Interac spokeswoman Caroline Hubberstey said.
Despite a December 2011 government report claiming Canada’s payments system is “outdated” and “has simply not evolved,” Hubberstey said it the industry is “highly competitive and rapidly changing.”
Interac pegs the value of small cash and coin transactions (under $20) at $90 billion, and companies big and small want a share of that market as it turns digital, Hubberstey said.
“Players you wouldn’t have thought of before” are looking for ways to get into the market of secure transactions, she said.
“You’re seeing competitors that have been in the space in a while and new competitors looking at the payments market as an opportunity.”
The payments industry’s last major shake happened in the mid-90s when debit card use took off. As more smartphones adopt Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, which lets users hover their phones over NFC-enabled devices to make payments, mobile payments are expected to soar.
Interac, Mastercard and Visa already have contactless cards that use near field communication (NFC) chips for small payments at gas stations and grocery stores.
PayPal, Google and Visa have introduced digital wallets where consumers control all their cashless payments from one place. Companies Square and Payfirma let people accept credit card payments on their smartphones.
The difference with MintChip is it doesn’t plan to link to a person’s bank account or credit card information. And unlike BitCoin, a peer-to-peer hosted digital currency with a fluctuating value, MintChip is simply a new way to exchange Canadian dollars. Plus, it’s backed by the Canadian government.
It’s still too early for specifics such as how the Mint will make a profit from this, how it will prevent hackers from stealing cash, whether the money is anyway traceable or who exactly will load a chip with money, but Brûlé said the response to the contest has been tremendous.
Developers may have been skeptical about MintChip, but the 500 contest spots were filled in just four days.
The star
Philippines sends second ship amid China stand-off
The Philippines says it has withdrawn its largest warship from a continuing stand-off with Chinese boats in the disputed South China Sea.
Earlier on Thursday a Philippine coastguard vessel arrived in the area, known as the Scarborough Shoal.
The Philippines also says China has sent a third ship to the scene.
The Philippine foreign minister said negotiations with China would continue. Both claim the shoal off the Philippines' north-west coast.
The Philippines said its warship found eight Chinese fishing vessels at the shoal when it was patrolling the area on Sunday.
It did not say why the warship had been pulled back. "That is an operational undertaking I can't discuss with you," Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario was quoted by AFP news agency as saying.
"We are pursuing the diplomatic track in terms of coming to a resolution on the issue," Mr Del Rosario said.Differing views
In a statement, the Philippines said that its navy boarded the Chinese fishing vessels on Tuesday and found a large amount of illegally-caught fish and coral.
Two Chinese surveillance ships then apparently arrived in the area, placing themselves between the warship and the fishing vessels, preventing the navy from making arrests.
The Philippines summoned Chinese ambassador Ma Keqing on Wednesday to lodge a protest over the incident. However, China maintained it had sovereign rights over the area and asked that the Philippine warship leave the waters.
China's state-run newspaper China Daily claimed in an editorial that the Chinese fishermen were "harassed" by the Philippine ship.
"China should take more measures to safeguard its maritime territory," the newspaper stated.
"The latest moves by China's two neighbours are beyond tolerance," it added, also referring to Vietnam. "They are blatant challenges to China's territorial integrity."
However, the Global Times newspaper added that China "has the patience to work out solutions with the countries concerned through negotiation".
The stand-off comes as the Philippines prepares for joint naval exercises with the United States from the 16 to 27 April near the disputed area.
Six countries claim competing sovereignty over areas in the South China Sea, which is believed to contain huge deposits of oil and gas.
Along with China and the Philippines, they are Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan.
China's claim includes almost the entire South China Sea, well into what the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea recognises as the 200-mile-from-shore Exclusive Economic Zones of other claimants.
That has led to occasional flare-ups and to competition to occupy islands, reefs and sandbars.
Profits will plummet and stocks will plunge 43%
The S&P 500 just broke a five-day losing streak today, but the index is still down from its highs.
Market bear Gary Shilling was on Bloomberg TV today saying that with a hard landing in China and a strong dollar, he expects the operating earnings of S&P 500 companies to drop to $80 this year.
He said this would almost guarantee a major bear market with a PE ratio low of about 10, which implies that the S&P 500 index should be around 800—a 43 percent decline from its recent level.
"Bear in mind that the analysts have been cranking their numbers down. They started it off at north of a 110, then 105, they're now 102. They're moving in my direction.
But yeah I think that's true because as you just mentioned you've got the foreign earnings that don't look good because of the recession unfolding in Europe, a stronger dollar so there are translation losses, hard landing in China and the U.S. I think we could see a moderate recession led by consumer retrenchment, and I think that kind of earnings estimate is not unreasonable."
Shilling said that while the U.S. is "the best of the bad lot", it doesn't necessarily mean that people will rush into U.S. stocks if things turn worse in Europe and China. He also said the Fed has been driving stocks and that investors are ignoring other crucial aspects of the economy like housing, consumer spending, and profits.
Shilling said he is sticking with his "quartet"; i.e. he's long treasuries, short stocks, short commodities and long the dollar.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/gary-shilling-sp-500-to-fall-43-percent-2012-4?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheMoneyGame+%28The+Money+Game%29&utm_content=Google+Reader#ixzz1rqCTj8qC
Fall in safe haven assets threatens global financial stability... IMF
Demand for so-called "safe-haven" assets has been rising, driven by regulatory changes and investors' reduced risk appetite. However, the supply of safe assets is dwindling because of the fall in the number of AAA-rated countries and the drying up of the securitisation market, the Washington-based institution said.
The IMF said the drop in the number of countries whose sovereign debt qualified as "safe" would reduce the supply of safe assets by $9 trillion (£5.5 trillion) from 2016 – equivalent to 16pc of the total.
"Safe asset demand is expanding at the same time the universe of what is considered safe is shrinking," the IMF said in a chapter of its Global Financial Stability Review released ahead of the full publication next week.
The imbalance could lead to "more short-term volatility jumps, herding behaviour and runs on sovereign debt", it added, and "[increase] the price for safety in global markets".
Higher prices could force investors to buy riskier assets. "The tightening market for safe assets can have considerable implications for global financial stability, including an uneven or disruptive pricing process for safety," the report said. As investors try to find "scarce safe assets, they may be compelled to move down the safety scale, prompting the average investor to settle for assets that embed higher risks".
The report advised governments to minimise the impact by easing in new regulations that require banks to hold larger volumes of safe assets: "Although regulatory reforms to make institutions safer are clearly needed, insufficient differentiation across eligible assets to satisfy some regulatory requirements could precipitate unintended cliff effects – sudden drops in the prices – when some safe assets become unsafe and no longer satisfy various regulatory criteria."
The Telegraph
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