Eeyore's News and View

China warns of "grim" fight against deadly bird flu 21 Jan 2009 00:29:01 GMT
Source: Reuters
BEIJING, Jan 21 (Reuters) - China faces a "grim" situation in preventing and controlling human cases of bird flu, the health minister said, after announcing four human infections in the last two weeks and three deaths.
Health Minister Chen Zhu called for hospitals to spare more resources in diagnosing and treating bird flu and more cooperation between agriculture authorities and his ministry, Xinhua news agency said.
A Chinese newspaper reported that the mother of a toddler diagnosed with bird flu had died of severe pneumonia earlier this month, but no samples had been taken to see if she had bird flu. She had been in contact with poultry before her death.
The toddler, and the three recent fatalities, have all fallen ill in areas where there have been no known cases of bird flu in birds. China vaccinates heavily for bird flu, raising concerns among some experts that the vaccines could be masking the presence of the virus.
"The current cases are separate cases. There's no connection," Shu Yuelong, vice director of virus control and prevention with the National Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, was quoted by Xinhua as saying.
"But these cases warn us to improve prevention and supervision over the epidemic and ensure early detection and diagnosis when new cases are found."
The H5N1 strain of flu remains largely a virus among birds, but experts fear it could change into a form that is easily transmitted among humans and could spark a pandemic that could kill millions worldwide.
Since the H5N1 virus resurfaced in Asia in 2003, it has infected 391 people, killing 247 of them, according to WHO figures released in mid-December.
At least 34 people have been infected in China and 23 have died.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/PEK277826.htm

Pakistan warns Petraeus over missile strikes
Pakistan on Tuesday expressed concern to key ally the United States over missile attacks against Islamist militants on its soil, ahead of an anticipated surge of US troops into neighbouring Afghanistan.
President Asif Ali Zardari and army chief General Ashfaq Kayani outlined Pakistan's position in talks with the visiting David Petraeus, the US commander for southwest Asia, said a Pakistani official.
Incoming US president Barack Obama, who was to be inaugurated in Washington just hours later, has identified battling Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in neighbouring Afghanistan one of his administration's priorities.
Yet a more aggressive US strategy is likely to further antagonise Pakistan, a conservative Muslim country that has reacted angrily to dozens of suspected US missile strikes on its northwest since August.
Pakistan sought to relay its concerns to the US about a domestic backlash against the weak civilian government caused by the missile strikes, believed to be the work of unmanned drones from the Central Intelligence Agency.
"Pakistan expressed concern over the drone attacks and hoped that the new administration will take into consideration the negative impact domestically of such attacks for the democratic government," said a government official.
"Of course Pakistan reiterated its firm commitment in fighting terrorism and the US side reaffirmed Washington's support for Pakistan's effort in counter-terrorism," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Petraeus, who is a key advocate of a major troop surge in Afghanistan, went subsequently into talks with Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, said local officials.
Taliban and Al-Qaeda are hunkered down in lawless areas of northwestern Pakistan where security forces have been accused of supporting the militants despite Islamabad's public support for the eight-year US "war on terror".
Zardari, who has been in office four months, has previously expressed hope that the strikes will stop, and Pakistan's powerful army has vowed to defend its sovereignty, even if that means clashes with US forces.
US embassy spokesman Lou Fintor confirmed only that Petraeus was in Islamabad for "scheduled meetings with senior Pakistani civilian and military government officials on issues of joint concern".
Last in Pakistan in November, Petraeus visited amid heightened tension between nuclear powers Pakistan and India following extremist attacks in Mumbai, which New Delhi blamed on Islamists coming across the border.
A Pakistani security official had said that the latest Petraeus talks would focus on those tensions, an expected surge of US troops in Afghanistan this year and the situation in the tribal border areas.
The US military announced in December that reinforcements of 20,000 to 30,000 troops will be sent to Afghanistan, where about 70,000 international troops are fighting alongside Afghan security forces.
Last week, Obama's incoming secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said the new US administration would try to deepen regional cooperation with Afghanistan, Pakistan and their neighbours to fight Islamist militancy.
"We have to look at Afghanistan and Pakistan together, particularly (in) the border region," where extremists have taken root, Clinton said.
Remnants of the hardline Taliban regime, which was toppled from power by the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, are waging an insurgency undermining the US-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Petraeus, lauded for turning round a Sunni insurgency in Iraq with a 30,000 troop "surge", this month called for a regional approach to resolving the conflict in Afghanistan, including Pakistan and perhaps even US foe Iran.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090120/wl_sthasia_afp/usafghanistanpakistanunrestmilitary_20090120130804
Tumbling peso makes Mexico a hot destination
MEXICO CITY — It's got sun, white-sand beaches and better yet — a battered peso.
Mexico is counting on its weakened currency against the dollar and its proximity to the U.S. to attract recession-shocked Americans and fuel its tourism industry — a major source of foreign income.
Tourism officials say Mexico saw 3% more visitors who spent an estimated 4% more in 2008, with tourists flocking to its beaches and cobble-stoned streets even during the global economic crisis. And, unlike most tourist destinations around the world, there is no sign that this year will be any different.
Cancun, Mexico's top beach destination, had an occupancy rate of more than 90% during the holiday season and officials expect at least 85% of the Caribbean resort's 31,000 rooms to be occupied during the winter months.
Cancun remains the preferred beach spot in Mexico for spring-breakers, with some 30,000 revelers expected to visit this year. The same amount came to Cancun last year, according to Quintana Roo state's Tourism Department.
Erin Erwin, a senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said she and five of her friends booked their spring-break trip to Cancun because it offered a good deal.
"The prices get so expensive, so I wanted to book my trip early, and my friends chose Cancun because it was really cheap out of all the destinations," Erwin, 21, said.
The group is paying about $1,000 each for five nights at an all-inclusive hotel.
"It's basically the environment for college kids. There is drinking, and having fun and there's sun and is warm and you lay out and not worry about anything," she said.
Jackie Lewis, managing director of studentcity.com, a website devoted to spring-break travel, said reservations for spring break in Cancun and Acapulco remain strong, mostly because they can find good deals.
"We've seen students who are asking for packages that are cheaper, so they may not be staying at the five-star hotels and looking for seven-nights all inclusive. They may be doing four or five nights at a four-star or three-star," Lewis said.
Mexico attributes the positive tourism trend to a tumbling peso, which lost 30% of its value in 2008. In August, it was trading at 10 to the dollar. Now it is 14 to the dollar.
Another advantage is the drop in jet fuel prices, which have made flying cheaper and Mexico more attractive to North Americans looking to save some money.
Brian Hoyt, a spokesman for Orbitz Worldwide Inc., which owns Cheaptickets.com and Orbitz.com, said the company's hotel bookings in Mexico were up 25% in the first 11 months of 2008, compared to the same period the prior year.
"There's never been a better time to travel (to Mexico) from a value standpoint than right now," Hoyt said.
The Tourism Department says more than 18 million tourists, about 80% from the U.S., visited Mexico between January and October 2008 and spent about $14 billion.
Mexico is counting on tourism to drive it through the global economic crisis, with more aggressive ad campaigns on the Internet, the construction of a $7.5 billion resort in the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa, and increased promotion in places like China, Russia and India, where the number of people with disposable income is rapidly growing.
That will likely pay off. With endless beaches, quaint colonial mountain towns, ruins, and booming cities filled with restaurants and museums, the industry employs some 2.25 million people.
The Caribbean, meanwhile, has seen a sharp drop in tourism prompting resorts to lay off workers. Cheaper rooms can still be found in the region's islands but experts say they are often offset by expensive airfare.
Jesus Almaguer, president of Cancun's Hotels Association, said Mexico is already drawing more North American tourists who would normally go to other Caribbean spots.
"We compete a lot for Canadian tourists with Jamaica and the Dominican Republic and I would dare to say that we're winning the battle this year," Almaguer said.
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/destinations/2009-01-20-mexico-tourism_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

Fundamentalist View: 'There will be only two London-listed banks left by the end of 2009'
Two years ago, the suggestion that nationalisation could happen in the United Kingdom would have been laughable.
By Tineke Frikee
Last Updated: 4:38PM GMT 20 Jan 2009
But the government is now the largest, or only, shareholder in Lloyds/HBOS, RBS and Northern Rock and it seems highly likely that HSBC and Standard Chartered will be the only UK-quoted bank shares by the end of 2009.
Even in these tough markets, however, it is worthwhile to continue to think about the need for long-term, inflation-beating investments to fund or supplement retirement. UK equities can do this over the long term because gross domestic product (GDP) – a measure of economic output – growth will return and plenty of companies are in decent shape to benefit from this.
In one or two years' time inflation could well raise its head again as emerging markets recover from their cyclical slowdown and capital injections start feeding through. Governments by that time also need to start paying down some of their mountains of accumulated debt, and inflation would help to erode this over time. Cash, government bonds and corporate bonds are unable to beat inflation over the long term.
We undoubtedly have a difficult period ahead for the UK economy with its structural bias towards financial services and household consumption. Both of these, we believe, are likely to deliver weak to no growth over the next few years as the deleveraging process continues and regulation intensifies. As a result the outlook for the UK equity market as a whole remains tough. Good stock selection will continue to be crucial. Those areas that have benefited from the credit boom continue to be best avoided.
We continue to avoid equity exposure to UK domestic banks despite the significant falls in their share prices. We are moving to a new world where thrift will, and should be, pre-eminent. Banks do not want to lend, and will not do so unless government compels them to. We believe 2009 banking bad debts will deteriorate at a rate that will still surprise negative market observers.
Many defaulting assets classes have not been tested in past recessions as they simply were not around on a meaningful scale, for example credit cards, innovative mortgages and private equity debt. These could well destroy all the bank capital that was raised in 2008. As a result, UK domestic banks remain short of equity capital with the UK government the only source of new capital. The trend towards nationalisation will continue, consistent with government objectives to force banks to lend more. As a result we think the outlook for UK bank stocks remains bleak. Government priority is to support the banking system, not bank shareholders.
But there are some very attractive dividend yields to be had in the UK. In fact, an investor can get 3.2 times more dividend yield on the FTSE All Share than on Bank of England base rates. According to Barclays Capital data going back to 1899, this is the highest the stock market dividend yield has ever been, even beating the last "highest ever" level (3.1 times) at the start of the World War II. There are still plenty of uncertainties around but, if we can make sure the dividend yields we get on our stocks or funds come through, then it may be that investors are starting to get paid to take on some additional risks.
We believe investors can find relative safety in dividends in those UK equities that offer comparatively safe defensive earnings – that is, shares with a lower risk of downgrades – exposure to globally diversified markets (to benefit from a translation back into the weak pound); a strong balance sheet (so expensive borrowing can be avoided), head room in the percentage of earnings that has been paid out as dividends (so this has room to rise in tougher times) and a firm dividend growth commitment at board level.
Many of the UK's mega cap companies – that is, very large companies with a big stock market capitalisation – tick most or all of these boxes. We favour companies like BP, Shell, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Vodafone, and British American Tobacco, but also many of the utilities. We believe BP and Shell will be able to meet their dividend commitments for a number of years – even at these levels of oil prices. In fact, Shell has at least maintained its dividend going all the way back to the World War II. At its last results, Vodafone's CEO explicitly stated that the company sees increasing its dividends as the primary reward to its shareholders. We believe Vodafone's dividend will grow by at least 3pc going forward from an already attractive dividend yield of nearly 6pc.
When it comes to picking funds offering income, we believe investors should analyse if these funds have grown their income consistently, even in prior periods of dividend cuts, such as 2001 and 2002. We also believe investment houses with their own analysts should offer greater confidence in avoiding companies which cut their dividends. Typically, in uncertain times like these, sell-side analysts tend to be late or wrong in their earnings and dividend forecasts.
Tineke Frikee is fund manager of Newton Higher Income, a £2.1bn unit trust that delivered returns of more than 22pc over the last five years, compared to 9pc growth in the FTSE All Share index.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/investing/shares/4298704/Fundamentalist-View-There-will-be-only-two-London-listed-banks-left-by-the-end-of-2009.html

Argentina Is Short of Cash – Literally
By GEORGE SELGIN
Suppose you want to ride the bus or feed a parking meter without exact change. Or suppose you just want to drop a few cents in a street musician's hat. Nothing easier, right? Not if you live in Argentina. Try doing any of these things there, and you could be in for a major hassle.
A sign asking customers to pay with exact change due to the lack of coins is displayed at a kiosk in Buenos Aires.
Why? Because Argentina is in the grips of a small-change shortage. Want change for a five-peso (about $1.70) note? Don't try getting it at a store, unless you plan to buy something -- and be ready in that case to have the merchant refuse your business rather than part with precious centavos, or to have him hand you bon-bons instead of coins. Banks aren't much help either. The law says they're supposed to give you up to 20 pesos worth of change; but most openly flout that rule, supplying just a few pesos worth, or even hanging out "No Change" signs, like the ones at retailers' kiosks.
Why the shortage? Argentina's central bank blames it on "speculators," meaning everyone from ordinary citizens, who stockpile coins, to Maco, the private cash-transport company (think of Brinks) that repackages change gathered from bus companies to resell at an 8% premium. But those explanations ring false. "Black marketeering" would not exist if coins were easy to get in the first place. After all, Argentines could just as easily hoard razor blades or matchbooks. Yet there's no shortage of those. What's so special about coins?
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The answer is that coins are supplied by the government alone. "Put the federal government in charge of the Sahara desert," Milton Friedman said, "and in five years there'd be a sand shortage." If Argentina wants to end the coin shortage, it ought to give up its monopoly.
Crazy? Not if history is the guide. Over two centuries ago, Great Britain faced a coin shortage more severe than Argentina's -- so severe that it threatened to stop British industrialization in its tracks. People struggled to get coins for everyday use. The average worker was lucky to make 10 shillings a week, while the smallest banknotes were for 10 times as much. So the coin shortage even prevented factories from paying wages.
Like Argentina's government today, the British government wasn't able to end the shortage. Yet the shortage did end -- thanks to private-sector action. Fed up with the government's inaction, British firms started minting their own coins. Within a decade a score of private mints struck more coins than the Royal Mint had issued in half a century -- and better ones: heavier, more beautiful, and a lot harder to fake. Yet they were also less expensive, since private coiners sold their products at cost plus a modest markup, like other competitive firms, instead of charging the coins' face value, as governments like to do. Finally, when those who had accepted the private coins for payment went back to the issuer to redeem them, issuers offered to exchange their coins for central bank notes at no cost.
Argentine firms today, including supermarket and retail chains like Carrefour and Wal-Mart, reputable banks like HSBC Bank Argentina, and transport companies like Metrovias, issuing their own centavos and one peso coins. By doing so they'd no longer be at the mercy of the government, or of private coin distributors with their hefty commissions. Ordinary citizens would benefit too.
So why hasn't private coinage already taken hold? Most likely because private firms don't expect the government to put up with it. In Great Britain, despite all the good they had done, private coins were banned in 1817, and issuers were confronted by a mass rush to redeem their coins. This happened, by the way, when official British coins were still in very short supply.
If Argentina wants to end the shortage, it ought, not only to tolerate private coinage, but to sanction it. It can do so, while eliminating any risk that such coinage would be abused, through very simple legislation. It should allow any private firm to issue distinctly marked coins, perhaps subject to some minimal capital requirements, while making it clear that no one need ever accept any privately issued coins, even as change for purchases.
Such a law may be all that's needed to solve the coin shortage, while also preventing anyone from forcing people to accept money they didn't trust. Anyone, that is, except the Central Bank of Argentina.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123111629554952657.html