Eeyore's Important News and view

Customs officials rely on intelligence October 20, 2008 - 5:40am
J.J. Green, WTOP Radio
WASHINGTON - Millions of people come in and out of the U.S. every year. Does Customs and Border Protection have what to needs to separate the tourists from criminals? The short answer is no. The agency has been forced to rely on intelligence.
"We process 420 million people a year. That's over and beyond the population of this country," says Commissioner Ralph Basham.
That number of people, on top of 12 million maritime containers that are processed, leaves Basham with needing to know who and what are among them.
But Basham says, "You can't interdict or inspect your way through this problem."
Basham is aware of how the large amount to keep track of creates a problem for Customs personnel by blending border and port responsibilities.
"They're under tremendous stress out there," Basham says. "The stakes here are incredibly high."
Whether it's terrorists or weapons of mass destruction slipping through the cracks, concerns are high during this election season because of the perceived vulnerability of the U.S.
That's where the Intelligence Operations and Coordination Office (IOCO) comes in. Its job is to collect, analyze and disseminate intelligence about threats and prevent them from penetrating the U.S. It's also the agency's responsibility to ensure that intelligence is completely integrated into Customs' interdiction, apprehension and enforcement operations.
Other obligations include detecting and identifying illegal aliens, alien smuggling groups, drug traffickers and other criminal groups, and helping to prevent them from penetrating the United States.
Basham says in order to combat all of those problems, "…we have to get that information before they (threats) even get here."
With limited resources stateside, in addition to other methods, the IOCO uses intelligence-sharing agreements abroad to collect information about visitors and cargo to determine if any are threats.
http://wtop.com/?nid=778&sid=1500244

Update on our own homegrown 5th Columnists here in the USofA
Fort Dix plot case to start Monday in New Jersey October 20, 2008 - 4:30am
By GEOFF MULVIHILL Associated Press Writer
CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) - The arrests seemed like a startling wake-up call to America: Federal authorities said a group of would-be terrorists were foiled in a plot to sneak onto a New Jersey military base and kill soldiers.
The federal government argues that the May 2007 capture of Serdar Tatar, Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer and the brothers Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka saved innocent lives. Defense lawyers contend there was no plot and that the government paid people to get them to discuss one.
Opening arguments were due to be made Monday.
The case will be watched closely because it represents a type of pre-emptive prosecution that has grown more common in U.S. terrorism cases since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks _ which troubles some experts.
The five defendants _ all foreign-born Muslim men in their 20s who have spent much of their lives in the southern New Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia _ face charges of attempted murder, conspiracy and weapons offenses and could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted on all counts.
It took most of three weeks just to seat 12 jurors and six alternates from a pool of 1,500 potential jurors. The seated jury includes four men and eight women, one of whom is the mother of a veteran who was wounded in Iraq.
More than 200 people are on the list of potential witnesses in the trial, which is expected to stretch into December.
Government prosecutors are expected to portray the men as hateful to America and sympathetic to terrorists.
Defense lawyers had been trying to get evidence that the men had anti-Semitic views barred from trial. They also tried to prevent government prosecutors from showing videos that the men allegedly watched that included scenes of Americans being beheaded in Iraq.
U.S. District Judge Robert Kugler said prosecutors could present that evidence. But he said the videos must be stopped before any actual beheadings are shown.
Authorities said the five prepared for an attack by scouting out military bases, buying weapons and by training in paintball games and a shooting range in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania.
The case is complicated because no attack was carried out. Prosecutors are trying to prove not only that they arrested the right men, but that the suspects were planning a crime.
Defense lawyers are likely to argue that while their clients may have spoken ill of America and even rooted for terrorists, that does not mean they intended to kill soldiers. They will also question the character, motives and role of two paid government informants who made hundreds of hours of secret recordings that form the bulk of the evidence in the trial.
Lawyers for the suspects have suggested that if there was a plot, informants prodded their clients into it.
___
On the Net:
Court Web site with trial information: http://www.njd.uscourts.gov/FortDixTrial/index.html

European markets buoyed by banks, Japan index up 3.6%
HONG KONG (AP) — European markets opened strongly Monday after solid gains in Asia, with financial stocks doing well on hopes that the crisis in the markets has abated amid signs banks may be less wary of lending to each other.
Britain's FTSE 100 index of leading shares was up 68.74 points, or 1.7%, at 4,131.75, while Germany's DAX was 82.98 points, or 1.7%, higher at 4,864.31. The CAC-40 in France was 50.23 pints, or 1.5%, stronger at 3,380.15.
Those gains follow the 3.6% advance on Japan's Nikkei 225 to 9,005.59 and the 5.3% jump in the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong to 15,323.01.
Financial stocks were doing particularly well in Europe. In Germany, shares in Deutsche Bank AG were up more than 3%, while Commerzbank AG was 1.4% higher. In Britain, Lloyds TSB PLC and Royal Bank of Scotland PLC shares were both 2% higher.
The biggest gainer in Europe was Amsterdam-listed ING Groep NV after the Dutch government injected euro10 billion ($13.4 billion) into the financial company over the weekend. Its shares were up 23%, almost recouping most of last Friday's losses.

Energy stocks were also up as oil prices rose another $2 a barrel to over $73 on mounting talk that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will cut production at the end of this week in an attempt to shore up prices that have fallen by 50% in three months.
In spite of the early rally, confidence in the markets remains fragile given last week's extreme volatility and interbank lending rates that remain abnormally far above central bank benchmarks, a sign of distress in credit markets.
"We would be slightly more confident in suggesting that equities have reached a trough if we were to see some normalization in money market spreads or a reduction in measures such as equity market volatility," said Peter Dixon, an analyst at Commerzbank.
"The fact that both remain elevated suggests that we cannot make such a call with any degree of certainty," he added.
Particular focus will be on interbank lending rates this week and whether the logjam in credit markets is breaking, in light of the flurry of activity by governments over the last couple of weeks. There are growing signs that the government bailouts of banks around the world, the coordinated interest rate reductions announced earlier this month and massive liquidity boosts by central banks, are beginning to reduce lending rates between banks.
Overnight, the Hong Kong interbank offered rate, known as Hibor, for three-month loans tumbled to 3.66% from 4.19 as the territory's de facto central bank pumped more money into the financial system.
Divyang Shah, a strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, thinks that three-month interbank rates could fall "aggressively" this week.
On Friday, the interbank lending rate for three-month dollar loans fell for the fifth day running, the first weekly decline in three months. It dropped 0.08% to 4.42%, while the three-month Euro Interbank Offered Rate, or Euribor, fell almost 0.045 percentage points to 5.045%.
"Early indications are that 3-month Libor could fall by around 0.24% today," said Shah.
Earlier in Asia, South Korea's Kospi climbed about 2.3% after the government's announcement Sunday to provide up to $100 billion to secure banks' maturing foreign currency debt and another $30 billion for the banks. Financials led the way, with Hana Financial Group up 8.4% and KB Financial Group Inc., the holding company for top South Korean lender Kookmin Bank, adding 3.2 percent
The nation's stocks and currency have spiraled lower in recent days as analysts questioned the ability of the country's financial institutions to acquire dollars to refinance loans.
Mainland China shares, meanwhile, recovered early losses to edge higher in spite of new government figures showing the country's economic growth eased to 9% in the third quarter of this year — its slowest in more than five years.
The reading, while still robust, fed into anxiety that deteriorating financial and economic conditions around the world were damaging Asian growth.
Investors, though, were relieved by lower third-quarter inflation data and pledges of fresh government intervention to support the economy. Shanghai's key index, down more 0.7% in the morning, ended 2.25% higher at 1,974.01.
In Tokyo, shares moved higher amid hopes for better-than-expected corporate earnings.
Panasonic Corp. jumped 8.87% after the Nikkei business daily reported over the weekend that, helped by strong TV sales, the electronics giant would beat its interim operating profit forecast by more than 20 billion yen ($197.3 million).
Steelmakers Nippon Steel Corp. and JFE Holdings Inc. also gained on reports that they would be raising their profit forecasts for the year ending March 2009.
Elsewhere, Australia's benchmark moved up 4%, boosted by gains in resource companies. New Zealand and Singapore were also higher, while Taiwan shares lost ground.
The general upswing defied Friday's mixed performance on Wall Street, where the Dow fell 127.04, or 1.41%, to 8,852.22, as investors balanced an easing in credit markets with more bearish news about the housing market.
The dollar traded at 102.24, up about 0.48, and the euro gained to 1.3496.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/markets/2008-10-20-global-markets-monday_N.htm


Britain releases UFO files, dispels some mysteries October 20, 2008 - 6:55am
By RAPHAEL G. SATTER Associated Press Writer
LONDON (AP) - Alitalia pilot Achille Zaghetti thought it was a missile.
Zaghetti was at the helm of a jet from Milan to London's Heathrow Airport on the evening of April 21, 1991 when a flying object streaked across his field of vision.
"At once I said, 'look out, look out,' to my co-pilot, who looked out and saw what I had seen," Zaghetti wrote in his report. "As soon as the object crossed us I asked to the ACC (area control center) operator if he saw something on his screen and he answered 'I see an unknown target 10 nautical miles behind you.'"
An investigation later ruled out a missile _ but never ruled anything in, either.
The close encounter is one of many reported UFO sightings among 19 files that Britain's National Archives posted Monday to the Web. The new material covers UFO sightings between 1986 and 1992.
While the 1,500-page batch of documents debunks a host of UFO sightings, others like Zaghetti's near-miss with a UFO remain unexplained.
On June 17, 1991, four passengers on a Hamburg, Germany-bound Dan Air 737 spotted "a wingless projectile pass below and to the left of the aircraft" as the flight climbed out of London's Gatwick Airport.
"It would seem to have passed fairly close by as the passengers were able to see it quite clearly," the Civil Aviation Authority wrote in its report.
More disturbing was a sighting a month later by crew aboard a Gatwick-bound Britannia Airways Boeing 737, who saw a "a small black lozenge-shaped object" zipping past about 100 yards (90 meters) to the left of the aircraft.
The airport confirmed seeing an object on its radar and clocked it traveling at 120 miles (190 kilometers) per hour. Air traffic controllers quickly warned the next aircraft to turn out of the object's flight path, although by then the object had disappeared from view.
Speculation centered on a weather balloon released in the area the same day, but an investigation could not determine what the UFO was.
Monday's release is the second batch of UFO files that Britain's military has put out this year. David Clarke, a UFO expert who has worked with the National Archives, said in the next few years, a total of 160 UFO-related files will be made available to the public.
Some things in the newly released files were either unhinged or unverifiable.
One correspondent tells the military he was shouted at by aliens while sleeping outdoors. Another writes in "with extraordinary news," saying the "legendary 'feathered serpents'" are waiting for permission to land on earth. One U.S. pilot's tale of being ordered to shoot down a UFO over eastern England, forwarded to the Ministry of Defense by a UFO enthusiast, was kept on file though the military turned up no evidence of it in its official records.
Occasionally, though, officials got to the bottom of the sightings.
On a clear November afternoon in 1992, an office worker called the Ministry of Defense, saying a strange shimmering object was descending slowly over London's Regent's Park.
"As call progressed, it became clear that the object was a kite," an unidentified military staffer noted drily in his write-up.
___
On the Net:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

Scientists have new clue to mystery of sunken Confederate sub
By Bruce Smith, Associated Press
CHARLESTON, S.C. — It's long been a mystery why the H.L. Hunley never returned after becoming the first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship in 1864, but new research announced Friday may lend credence to one of the theories. Scientists found the eight-man crew of the hand-cranked Confederate submarine had not set the pump to remove water from the crew compartment, which might indicate it was not being flooded.
That could mean crewmembers suffocated as they used up air, perhaps while waiting for the tide to turn and the current to help take them back to land.
The new evidence disputes the notion that the Hunley was damaged and took on water after ramming a spar with a charge of black powder into the Union blockade ship Housatonic.
Scientists studying the sub said they've found its pump system was not set to remove water from the crew compartment as might be expected if it were being flooded.
The sub, located in 1995 and raised five years later, had a complex pumping system that could be switched to remove water or operate ballast tanks used to submerge and surface.
"It now really starts to point to a lack of oxygen making them unconscious," said state Sen. Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston and the chairman of the South Carolina Hunley Commission, formed to raise, conserve and display the sub. "They may have been cranking and moving and it was a miscalculation as to how much oxygen they had."
In excavating the sub, scientists found little intermingling of the crew remains, indicating members died at their stations. Those bones likely would have been jumbled if the crew tried to make it to the hatches in a desperate attempt to get out.
"Whatever occurred, occurred quickly and unexpectedly," McConnell said. "It appears they were either unconscious because of the concussion (from the attack) or they were unconscious because of a lack of oxygen."
Archaeologist Maria Jacobsen cautioned that scientists have not yet examined all the valves to see if the crew may have been trying to surface by using the pumps to jettison ballast.
"Can we definitely say they weren't pumping like mad to get water out of the tanks? No we cannot," she said. "I'm not really at a point where I think we should really be talking about what these guys were doing at the very end because we simply don't know all the valve settings."
But she said scientists can definitely say the valve that would have been used to remove water from the crew compartment was closed.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2008-10-17-hunley_N.htm


Germany approves bailout terms, sets salary cap October 20, 2008 - 5:26am
The sculpture "Hammering Man" by U.S. artist Jonathan Borofski is seen in front of the bank towers in Frankfurt, central Germany, Monday, Oct. 20, 2008. The German Cabinet on Monday approved the conditions banks will have to meet to benefit from its euro480 billion (US$645 billion) bailout plan. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)
By GEORGE FREY AP Business Writer
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) - The German Cabinet on Monday approved terms that banks will have to accept in order to benefit from its euro480 billion ($645 billion) bailout plan _ including a salary cap of euro500,000 ($670,200) for top bank managers.
Those managers would also be obliged to forgo bonuses and dividend payments as long as their banks were indebted to the government.
The federal bailout plan approved by parliament Friday includes up to euro400 billion ($538 billion) in lending guarantees for banks, plus as much as euro80 billion ($107 billion) to recapitalize banks and, if necessary, buy up risky assets.
Leaders of Germany's largest commercial banks said this weekend that they would not immediately seek money on those terms.
Josef Ackermann, the chief executive of Germany's biggest private bank, Deutsche Bank AG, has said his company does not need capital from the state.
Martin Blessing, the CEO of Germany's No. 2 bank, Commerzbank AG, was quoted as saying by the Bild on Saturday newspaper that his company would look at the package and see "whether it comes into question for us."
Yet the salary cap approved Monday has to be a major sticking point for some banks.
According to Deutsche Bank's 2007 annual report, Josef Ackermann's total compensation including salary, benefits and shares amounted to almost euro14 million (US$18.9 million) last year.
Commerzbank's annual report said its outgoing CEO Klaus-Peter Mueller received total compensation of euro3.2 million ($4.32 million) in 2007, not including shares and some other benefits. The company's new chief executive since May, Martin Blessing, received compensation of euro2 million ($2.7 million) in 2007, not including shares and some other benefits.
The seven German Landesbanks are currently reviewing whether to take up the government's bailout package offer.
A spokesman for HSH Nordbank said the bank was still looking at the package, while a spokesman for Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg told The Associated Press it was not interested in any bailout compensation.
"LBBW stands in the point of liquidity and capital, and in comparison to the sector, is in good shape" the bank's chief executive, Siegfried Jaschinski, said last week.
LBBW is Germany's largest state bank.
State bank BayernLB, however, said it wants to accept money from the package as soon as possible.
"It's about achieving a fast stabilization," said Erwin Huber, BayernLB's administrative board chief and the finance minister of the southern state of Bavaria said Monday on the ZDF-Morgenmagazin television program.
Huber didn't say how much the bank would seek to borrow, but said in order to meet the government's conditions for the money, the bank would have to be restructured, partially privatized or merged with another bank.
BayernLB and other public-sector wholesale banks _ which are owned by a combination of state governments and municipally backed local banks _ have faced hefty write-downs as a result of the subprime lending and credit crisis.
Last week, state banking officials confirmed that Bayern LB was discussing a possible merger with Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg, also in the country's economically strong south.
In the interview Monday, Huber said he was in favor of the conditions that government has imposed on banks.
"Performance has to be linked with responsibility," he said.
___
On the Net:
http://www.bayernlb.de/
http://www.lbbw.de/
http://www.db.com/
http://www.commerzbank.com/

ING bank accepts €10bn Dutch cash injection
ING, the Dutch savings bank which has more than a million savers in the UK, is to get a €10bn capital injection from the Netherlands authorities, the latest bank to be affected by the global credit crisis.
ING is the Netherlands' largest listed bank, with 85m customers worldwide, and is one of the world's top 20 financial institutions. It operates under its own name in this country, and recently took control of 180,000 accounts from failed Icelandic banks Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander and Heritable Bank.
ING has grown strongly in the UK on the back of its well-received savings products and has become a household name, regularly appearing in best-buy tables. It also took over the failed UK investment bank Barings in the 1990s.
At a press conference tonight the Dutch finance minister, Wouter Bos, said the government would get preference shares in ING worth €10bn in return for the cash injection. The shares will pay the government annual interest of 8.5%.
The Dutch government will also appoint two members of the bank's supervisory board - the equivalent of its board of directors. The bank is scrapping its dividend payout to shareholders and its senior executives have agreed to forfeit their annual bonuses and limit their pay-offs to a maximum of one year's salary.
ING said it would now review pay packages for the board and senior managers to link incentive schemes "to long term value creation and risk"
The funds will push up its so-called Tier 1 capital ratio to around 8% from 6.5% now. The Dutch government recently announced it had set aside €20bn to support Netherlands banks if necessary and ING is the first to apply for aid.
The capital injection is similar to those carried out by other governments around the world who have coordinated policy to try and prevent a general collapse of the global banking system.
In a statement ING said it "appreciates the measures the Dutch government is taking to boost confidence and stabillity in the Dutch financial system".
Until recently ING had insisted that its declining profits were mainly a result of losses on its investments in shares, rather than losses related to US sub-prime mortgages. But it has clearly been hit by the general loss of confidence and falling share prices that have affected other banks so deeply.
On Friday, ING warned that it expected to post a €500m loss for the third quarter of the year, its first such loss since being formed in 1991 and one which sent its shares down 27% to a 13-year low.
The move could send new tremors through European banking shares when markets open tomorrow, because ING has until now been seen as being more robust than Belgian-Dutch rival Fortis, which was rescued last month by the Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourg governments.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/19/ing-bank-dutch-cash-injection

This one is thanks our financil editor at FRC, 411 man
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Busi ... 1Cb01.html
Global storm hits China's sea-commerceBy Chris Stewart HUA HIN, Thailand - The stunning growth at China's shipbuilders, shipping lines and ports over the past few years is juddering to a halt as cash-strapped US consumers cut demand for Chinese goods and banks balk at lending to potential customers. A weather gauge for the industry, the Baltic Exchange Dry Index, has dropped like a barometer in a typhoon as slowing international trade has left too many ships seeking business from too few customers. The measure, which tracks sea freight prices for commodities such as coal, hit a five-and-a-half year low last week, down 87% from a record in May. Carriers hauling iron ore from Australia to feed Chinese steel mills run by Shougang Corp, Jiangsu Shagang Group and otherindustry giants face a drop in seaborne iron trade of as much as 10% as steelmakers cut production, according to JP Morgan Securities analyst Johnson Man Leung. The drop-off in international trade and future outlook has helped to drive down shares in China Cosco Holdings, the world's top transporter of resources, almost 90% in the past 12 months, dropping faster than even the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index, itself down 66% this year. The global economic slowdown will push some shipping lines into bankruptcy, investor Marc Faber said during a shipping conference in Singapore on October 14, Reuters reported. A glut of new vessels is adding to woes, with Goldman Sachs estimating that this may help drive shipping fees down 40% next year and 47% the year after, according to the July 28 Reuters report Even where traders have goods they want to transport, many are struggling to persuade banks to grant guarantees of payments for the goods. Such letters of credit and other credit lines for trade are frozen, Bloomberg reported last week, citing the managing director of an Asia-based shipping company. "Nothing is moving because the trader doesn't want to take the risk of putting cargo on the boat and finding that nobody can pay," the executive said. The downturn comes as Cosco and other carriers in the region are facing higher costs from tighter regulations and covering piracy risks. The European Union has forced an end this month to shipping conferences, alliances of carriers that set prices in concert and which are viewed in some parts as the equivalent of piracy in a free-market world. That should intensify competition and put further downward pressure on shipping prices. Piracy of a more traditional sort, notably off the coast of Somalia, is driving up the cost of insurance cover. Hijackings in the area, on the most direct route between Asia and Europe, have driven insurance costs up 10-fold this year for shipping passing through the Gulf of Aden, according to Lloyd's List, a trade publication. The alternative route, around the bottom of South Africa, adds to cost by being thousands of kilometers longer. Ship operators are also facing increased costs as they come under pressure to cut emissions of greenhouse gases from their vessels, at present excluded from national measures of carbon dioxide emissions under the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. Ships carry about 90% of the world's traded goods by volume and are estimated to contribute between 2.7% and 3.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The industry's top regulatory body United Nation's International Maritime Organization (IMO) in London this month discussed how best to rein in emissions. Further talks are to be held "early in 2009", the IMO said on its website after its recent meeting. Failure to reach agreement may lead the UN to impose its own emissions rules in December 2009. Shares of shipbuilders are also tumbling as an excess of capacity limits demand for new orders and tightening credit forces cancellations while higher raw material costs squeeze margins. China State Shipbuilding, the country's leading shipbuilder, is down about 87% since January 8. "We expect to see massive downward revisions on shipbuilders' earnings over the next 12-month period, driven by recent sharp increases in plate prices and other key raw material prices," Macquarie Group analyst E S Kwak said in an August research note. Steel prices jumped about 30% in the first half. At least 21 orders were cancelled at China's shipyards in the first eight months this year and more can be expected, said Bao Zhangjing, chief researcher at China Shipping Industry, a unit of China State Shipbuilding, citing data from shipping services company Clarksons. The maritime sector needs about US$300 billion over the next three to four years to fund construction of vessels that are already on order, according to Nordea Bank Finland, Bloomberg reported this month. At least a quarter of container ships, dry-bulk vessels and oil tankers on order are not financed, the report said, citing Hong Kong-based ship lessor Seaspan Corp. The number of contracted new ships in China in the first half this year declined 48% from a year earlier to 455, with a 45% drop in carrying capacity, reducing the country's share of the global market to 33.7% from 42.96%, Ireland-based ResearchandMarkets said in a report last month. New orders may decline a further 16% a year in 2009 and 2010, Macquarie's Kwak wrote. China Export-Import Bank, the state's largest provider of shipping finance, had by June cut the percentage of lending to as low as 65% of order values from 80% in the past, the South China Morning Post reported. The bank cut loan facilities to overseas shipowners - China's shipbuilders exports about 80% of their output - by between 30% and 40% in the first three months this year, said Li Li, a ship financing director in the bank's export credit department. China State Shipbuilding and China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation dominate the sector in China, but the number of private shipbuilders, now about 3,000 compared with fewer than 400 a decade ago. These yards are particularly feeling the pinch, as their small asset base gives them little in the way of collateral when seeking loans. The head of a private shipbuilder in Taizhou city in Zhejiang Province, who preferred to remain anonymous, told Asia Times Online that part of the money for shipbuilding came from banks, but "it's difficult for us to get money from [official] banks." Instead cash is "borrowed from friends and underground banks". He said soaring steel prices and labor costs are also hurting the company's margins. "A ship's price is fixed when the contract is signed, but raw material prices have jumped higher than expected," he said. The most difficult problem facing private shipbuilders is capital, said Bao. "The chance for new and emerging private shipbuilders to receive lending from banks is low given their limited assets," he said. China's ports are also feeling the pinch, with throughput growth slowing to single-digit figures from 22% last year, the South China Morning Post reported on October 17, citing Daiwa Institute of Research director Geoffrey Cheng. Shanghai, the country's biggest port, increased throughput 9% in the first nine months to 21.08 million 20-foot equivalent units, a pace that is short of the 11% full-year growth target indicated by an official at Shanghai International Port Group, the report said. Throughput at Shenzhen, the mainland's second-biggest port, dropped 2.4% last month, the first decline in seven months, while the nearby Shekou Container Terminal, owned by China Merchants Holdings (International), saw growth tumble to 11% in September from 31% in August and 39% in July. The slowing growth may lead China Merchants Group to delay for a year construction of a new berth in Qingdao, northeastern China, the South China Morning Post reported, citing a company official said, while plans for expansion at Dachan Bay in Shenzhen would be postponed. Cosco Pacific, which has interests in 17 mainland port projects, is also suffering setbacks, with growth easing to below 17% in September from 22.4% in the first eight months of the year. Even so, the strength of China's economy, which expanded by 9% in the third quarter, means some fair winds are blowing for shipping-related companies, helped by the government encouraging domestic spending to play a bigger part in the economy and reduce dependence on exports. Growing riverine trade on China's extensive inland waterways, as economic growth is encouraged away from the coastal areas, will also help to reduce slack. An official at CSC Nanjing Tanker Corp, China's leading crude carrier and a subsidiary of the China Changjiang National Shipping (Group) Corp, said: "As the company focuses on domestic oil transport, the impact of the slowing global economy is limited." China's shipbuilders are also benefiting from strong output resulting from existing orders. Their output in the first half of 2008 jumped 42.5% year-on-year, compared with a 29.4% jump in 2007 and an average annual compound output growth of 24%. That helped to drive China State Shipbuilding's first-half profit up 80.6% to 1.95 billion yuan (US$285 million). The country's ship repair and ship-breaking industry is also enjoying a boom, with sales income up 76% year-on-year in the first half, 24 percentage points faster than the same period last year, ResearchandMarkets said. Chris Stewart is the Thailand-based Business Editor for Asia Times Online. With additional reporting by Olivia Chang, Asia Times Online senior reporter.