Ignorance, Greed, and Entitlement

Visiting Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his Chinese host President Hu Jintao attended a launch ceremony for the long-awaited pipeline linking the world’s biggest oil producer with the largest energy consumer.

The deal reached last year — which will see China receive oil for 20 years in exchange for 25 billion dollars in loans — is the centrepiece of a new era of energy cooperation between the two neighbours.

“Malaysia has a good reputation overseas. (But) what is happening to politician Anwar Ibrahim damages Malaysia a lot,” he said at an investment conference in Kuala Lumpur.

“I think it is not a major issue but it is definitely a thorn. I think this has gone on for a long, long time. It looks bad overseas.”

Analysts expect exports to decelerate further with the potential impact of frayed relations with key trade partner China over a territorial dispute casting a shadow over Japan’s economic outlook.

While demand for steel and automobile-related products saw Japan’s exports jump 15.8 percent to 5.22 trillion yen year-on-year in August, this was below July’s 23.5 percent rise and the slowest pace since December 2009.

But many view the government’s tough labour reforms and belt-tightening moves as inevitable, and even necessary, and a low turnout is expected.

A poll published Friday in the newspaper Publico said only 18 percent of workers backed the strike, and 71 percent believed it would not force the government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to change course.

Profumo’s dramatic exit following a shareholder rebellion over Libya’s growing stake in the bank rocked Italy’s financial elite and weighed down Unicredit’s share price at a time when the country’s economy is being scrutinised by investors because of its high debt levels.

Profumo, who oversaw a major international expansion by the bank in central and eastern Europe, resigned late on Tuesday after losing a shareholder confidence vote during a four-hour board meeting.

The Hajigak iron ore mine in central Afghanistan is believed to hold up to two billion tonnes of high-grade iron ore, the raw material of steel making.

“The Hajigak iron ore deposit is open for tender as of today,” mines minister Wahidullah Shahrani said at the site of the deposit.

Michael Geoghegan also admitted he was never approached to replace Stephen Green as chairman, following a day of drama Friday which saw him announce his retirement after 37 years with the lender.

Two new people were named to lead the bank, with Geoghegan being replaced as chief executive by HSBC’s head of investment banking, Stuart Gulliver.

From his prison cell, the company’s founder Huang Guangyu has waged a bitter war against GOME management, asking shareholders to vote Tuesday on his proposal to oust chairman Chen Xiao while installing his sister and lawyer on the company’s board.

Huang, sentenced in May to 14 years in jail for bribery and insider trading, is also trying to block the Hong Kong-listed firm from issuing new equity that would dilute his family’s position as its biggest shareholder.

“The new rules will force banks to go back to simplicity, to the core business which would benefit banks that were respecting the core business in the first place,” said Arturo Bris, professor at the business school IMD.

He underlined that banks in developing markets tend to adopt basic banking — deposits and loans — unlike western investment-oriented banks which have developed complex derivative products that were blamed for setting off the global financial crisis.

Lacking money and experience, Zhao and her husband sought the help of the Tianjin Women’s Business Incubator.

“We had to do something,” Zhao told AFP in an interview, explaining the couple’s decision to start a small business.

One day after President Barack Obama pressed Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on currency in a meeting in New York, Obama’s allies in Congress approved a measure that accuses Beijing of killing US manufacturing jobs with its yuan.

The House Ways and Means Committee, which writes tax laws, voted to expand the powers of the Commerce Department to allow it to impose tariffs when another nation is found to be manipulating its currency’s value.

Lula described the sale of the paper in the state-run oil company as “the most auspicious moment in world capitalism,” before ringing the trading bell in Sao Paulo’s Bovespa stock exchange to signal the start of the operation.

The head of the exchange, Edemir Pinto, told reporters that the Petrobras sale now made Sao Paulo the second-biggest stock exchange in the world, in market value, after that of Hong Kong.

In another move involving a high-profile media figure, Time Warner’s CNN said Friday that it was replacing CNN US chief Jon Klein with Ken Jautz, who had been running its tabloid-format sister channel.

Zucker, in a memo to NBC Universal employees, said “when Comcast assumes control of NBC Universal, I will leave the company.

The world’s largest retailer has been hit by weakness in the United States, where low-income shoppers are particularly vulnerable to unemployment and higher petrol prices. It has responded by focusing on cost cuts and international growth.

Buying Massmart, South Africa’s third-largest listed retailer by value, would give Wal-Mart a considerable network in Africa’s biggest economy and a foothold in 13 other countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Unilever’s biggest acquisition in a decade will add brands such as V05, TRESemme and Nexxus to Unilever’s existing Dove and Sunsilk, and make it the world’s leading company in hair conditioning and the second largest in shampoo.

Analysts said the price of the deal looked high but could be justified by as-yet unspecified cost savings and by skewing Unilever’s business to more high growth, high margin categories compared to its other food and detergent businesses.

Proceeds from global equity capital markets underwriting activity have fallen to $496.14 billion from $544.96 billion so far this year.

But the number of deals has increased 5.6 percent to 2,817 deals compared with a year earlier as banks have been willing to underwrite smaller offerings.

Knight, a top U.S. market maker for individual investors, and the other four largest market makers discussed this problem with federal securities regulators on Thursday, Jamil Nazarali, Knight’s global head of electronic trading, told reporters on Friday.

“It happens for hundreds of millions of shares per day,” Nazarali said, adding that this type of market manipulation is hard to prove. The gaming costs Knight “tens of thousands of dollars” per day on some days, he said on the sidelines of a Security Traders Association conference here.

Anheuser-Busch is planning price hikes on some of its Budweiser beers later this year (although it’s also going to give away free samples to 500,000 people at bars and restaurants in the coming weeks).

So is inflation dangerously low or is it creeping higher?

No dollar value was given to the agreements signed during a state visit by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, but they included documents on cooperation in coal, natural gas, nuclear energy and renewable energy.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin told reporters in Beijing that Russia is in talks with Chinese partners on plans to launch natural gas supplies to China starting in 2015, according to the state ITAR-Tass news agency.

Comcast Corp. and General Electric Co., which currently owns NBC, said Sunday that Burke will work with Zucker during the transition. Zucker, who has spent his entire career at NBC, said last week that he would be stepping down after the change in control, telling employees in an e-mail that he understood the new owners would want to have one of their own at the helm.

The possibility of a change-in-command had been looming since last December, when Comcast agreed to buy a 51 percent stake in NBC Universal from Fairfield, Conn.-based GE. That deal, worth $13.75 billion, still hasn’t cleared regulatory hurdles, but is expected to be completed around the end of the year.

Despite lingering concerns about the hidden oil from BP’s massive spill, sand-sculpting artists were etching masterpieces in a weekend competition designed to boost tourism and erase the images of oil-stained beaches.

“The media about the oil spill could give you an impression that all beaches were negatively affected. I don’t think it’s that bad. I think things have been cleaned up,” said sand artist Katie Corning of Fort Meyers Beach. “Many of the sculptors coming here this weekend live along the Gulf Coast and are concerned about letting people know that the beaches are healthy and beautiful.”

BP’s lead investigator acknowledged that the company’s probe had limitations.

Mark Bly, head of safety and operations for BP PLC, told a National Academy of Engineering committee that a lack of physical evidence and interviews with employees from other companies limited BP’s study. The internal team only looked at the immediate cause of the April disaster, which killed 11 workers and unleashed 206 million gallons of oil into the Gulf.

The malicious code, called Stuxnet, was designed to go after several “high-value targets,” said Liam O Murchu, manager of security response operations at Symantec Corp. But both O Murchu and U.S. government experts say there’s no proof it was developed to target nuclear plants in Iran, despite recent speculation from some researchers.

Creating the malicious code required a team of as many as five to 10 highly educated and well-funded hackers. Government experts and outside analysts say they haven’t been able to determine who developed it or why.

Customs officers who usually look at 2 percent to 10 percent of goods in shipments began checking up to 95 percent this weekend, said employees of cargo companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen, a major port near Hong Kong. Customs officials gave no explanation for the change, they said.

“Normally it takes one or two days but now it’s going to be about a week,” said Mary Deng, an administrator for Shenzhen Hyun Young International Transportation Co. The company handles shipments of Chinese-made furniture, clothing and other goods to Japan.

That means an end to the hoarding, rationing and even pumpkin profiteering that have been going on since heavy rain ruined last year’s harvest and caused a shortfall. But the country’s top producer says this year’s crop is healthy and cans are arriving in stores.

“I was a little panicked,” Jamie Lothridge of Toledo, Ohio, said about the prospect of a another season low on pumpkin. The avid baker bought more than 25 cans last fall and was down to her final few this month when she called Libby’s to make sure it would be back.