After The Caudillo Michelle Bachelet, the president of Chile, is one of a growing number of female heads of state in Latin America. But for her, the political being personal goes way beyond gender.... Read Full Article Marketing Company Is Being Acquired The Catalina Marketing Corporation agreed to be acquired by ValueAct Capital, in a deal that values the company at nearly $1.6 billion.... Read Full Article British Papers Blunder In Missing Girl Case Several tabloids have apologized to the parents of a missing 4-year-old for their faulty reporting in the case.... Read Full Article Unmasked Suspect Denies Sex Charges Canadian pedophile suspect Christopher Neil denies charges that he molested underage children in Thailand.... Read Full Article Microsoft To Put Voice-Activation Software In Hyundais With both Ford and Hyundai as customers, Microsoft’s software could potentially be put into more than eight million vehicles worldwide each year.... Read Full Article |
Lower NewsWhy is there no investigation into dodgy phone-ins?Whether it’s The Bill or Ashes to Ashes, police work, as seen on the telly, looks terribly exciting. There’s lots of running about, for a start, and in general terms the police seem pretty busy trying to catch criminals, of which there appear to be, in any given week, hundreds, thousands if you include Eighties daytime reruns and late night movies. It’s tiring just watching this stuff, so perhaps it is time for a slower-moving cop show, Snooze Squad, a brand new series in which a group of fraud investigators spend a lot of time looking at very complicated spreadsheets before going down the pub to do not very much. Tough work, but the graphics would be amazing.Read Full Article Amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius allowed to compete in BeijingHe had become a curiosity and was in danger of becoming a sporting sideshow, but Oscar Pistorius, whose lower legs were amputated as a child, was finally cleared yesterday to compete at the Beijing Olympics against the fastest men in the world.Read Full Article Tempus: Recession cryThe worrying disclosure in HSBC’s first quarter trading update is not the multi-billion dollar writedowns, which came to $2.6 billion in the investment banking business and $3.2 billion in HSBC Finance, the US operations. These are expected and came in lower than some estimates. It is the bank’s downbeat view of the US economy that is of concern.$Read Full Article Mervyn King to grimace and bear bad newsWhen the Bank of England’s Governor unveils its latest prognosis for the economy this week, he is likely to adopt his sternest demeanour. The message from Mervyn King may not be quite as bleak as Churchill’s famous admonition that he had “nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat”, but it may not be far off. The Bank’s hardline decision last week to keep interest rates on hold despite the latest spate of dreadful news over worsening economic conditions gave a foretaste of the granite-hard façade that it is set to present to the country in its latest quarterly Inflation Report on Wednesday. The “no change” verdict on interest rates from Threadneedle Street can only have appeared to much of the country at large like an exercise in monetary sado-masochism. Yet the harsh reality that confronts the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is that it remains trapped between an economic rock and a hard place. Far from easing as the economic outlook has grown darker, the conflicting pressures confronting the MPC – from faltering growth and activity on the one hand and simmering inflationary pressures on the other – have intensified. The deluge of ever more dismal economic indicators now leaves little doubt that the economy is facing its most testing two-year stretch since the early Nineties. Yet as the going gets much tougher, the persistence of the inflation threat condemns the Bank to talk, and act, tough, too. The MPC’s mission to ensure that inflation hits its 2 per cent target over the medium term leaves it scant room for manoeuvre. It is forced to act only cautiously, even as the demands for more aggressive and urgent action escalate. The Bank’s dilemma seems set only to be become more acute through the summer, as the Inflation Report is likely to spell out. If anything, the MPC’s latest assessment is likely to understate the full scale of dangers to growth prospects that have emerged. At the heart of the heightened risks is the increasingly dire straits of the housing market, which appears to be locked into a vicious downward spiral triggered by the mortgage lending drought. The severe squeeze on the availability of home loans is combining with falling house prices to cause demand in the property market to dry up, with cautious buyers holding out for the much lower prices they expect in future. As demand and market activity drop, and the supply of unsold houses grows, prices fall farther and faster. In turn, that farther deters would-be buyers and makes lenders become even more cautious, fuelling an ever steeper downward slide. The scale of these trends is underlined by the Council of Mortgage Lenders’ data, highlighted by Michael Saunders, of Citigroup, which shows the drastic tightening of lending conditions since the start of the year. The number of new home loans agreed plunged by more than 30 per cent in the first quarter, compared with the same period a year earlier. In March, approvals of new mortgages fell to the lowest since 1992. Although the Bank of England’s £50 billion lifeline, designed to ease the funding pressures on lenders, may limit the squeeze, Mr King has been bluntly candid that it is far from intended as a cureall for the mortgage market. The clear peril for the economy is that the toll on sentiment and household wealth from an increasingly severe housing correction now sees the credit crunch mutate into a brutal consumer crunch as households pull back their spending. The Bank tends to play down the repercussions of falling house prices for consumer demand. Yet signs are already accumulating that the consumer may embark on a full-scale retreat from the high street. Consumer confidence has slumped to 15-year lows, while polls show that concern over the state of the economy is at its highest levels since 1993. As other signs of economic weakness pile up, it is becoming painfully clear that Britain, far from being better placed than its rivals to weather global economic squalls, as the Chancellor and Prime Minister claim, is markedly worse off. As Mr Saunders argues, the UK is left badly exposed by the highest household debt burden in the Group of Seven leading industrial economies, alongside severely inflated house prices and low household savings. The price of a protracted period of living beyond our means may now have to be paid. Long years of high spending, as well as heavy borrowing excess. are making the fallout from the credit crunch more painful and the boost from the Bank’s limited easing of interest rates less potent. Yet, worse still, the same past excesses, in the form of a swollen current account deficit, are adding to the acute pressure on a sharply weakening pound, already hit by Britain’s worsening growth outlook. Sterling’s steep slide – by about 12 per cent in the past year - is aggravating the Bank’s inflation headache by raising the nation’s import bills and further curbing its scope to cut base rates to underpin faltering growth. With the pound set to tumble still farther, oil prices having surged to record levels of above $120 a barrel and the cost of food in global markets soaring, the City expects that the Bank will raise its forecasts for inflation this week. It is likely to give warning that headline consumer price inflation will rise above 3 per cent over the summer, forcing Mr King to pen what will be only his second explanatory letter to the Chancellor. Against this background, the Governor can be expected to make it brutally plain on Wednesday that further easing of interest rates will be only limited and gradual. Ultimately, the extent of the slowdown now taking hold in the economy will quell the inflationary threat that the Bank is, for now, compelled to prioritise over risks the growth.$Read Full Article Emo on the web: exploring a subcultureThe suicide of a schoolgirl who had apparently become obsessed with ‘emo’ culture has, once again, drawn attention to the movement and its teen followers. Recording a verdict of suicide after Hannah Bond, 13, had hanged herself, the coroner noted that she had “become an aficionado of the emo fad.”Read Full Article External News for: lowerWorld Markets Close Lower; Gold Shines - Ticker MagazineMiamiHerald.comWorld Markets Close Lower; Gold ShinesTicker Magazine4:30 PM New York, 9:30 PM London, 8:30 AM Sydney – US stocks struggled as the world markets edged lower and commodities priced hovered near their recent ...US Stocks Remain Lower As Dell, Trichet Prompt Move To SafetyWall Street JournalUS stocks open lower; technolgy leads lossesMarketWatchUS STOCKS-Futures point lower after Dell, dr Horton resultsReutersRTT News -The Associated Press -TheStreet.comall 996 news articles »World Markets Close Lower; Gold Shines - Ticker MagazineMiamiHerald.comWorld Markets Close Lower; Gold ShinesTicker Magazine4:30 PM New York, 9:30 PM London, 8:30 AM Sydney – US stocks struggled as the world markets edged lower and commodities priced hovered near their recent ...US Stocks Remain Lower As Dell, Trichet Prompt Move To SafetyWall Street JournalUS stocks open lower; technolgy leads lossesMarketWatchUS STOCKS-Futures point lower after Dell, dr Horton resultsReutersRTT News -The Associated Press -TheStreet.comall 996 news articles »Big Easy Beat - The Hullabaloo Onlineguardian.co.ukBig Easy BeatThe Hullabaloo OnlineA federal judge ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers could be held responsible for flooding damage in St. Bernard Parish and in the Lower 9th Ward because ...In New Orleans, Elation Over Katrina Liability RulingNew York TimesEffects of judge's Katrina ruling could be hugeLos Angeles TimesCourt rules against Corps in MRGO Katrina floodingExaminer.comThe Associated Press -ThePopTort (blog) -ABC Newsall 1,015 news articles »World Markets Close Lower; Gold Shines - Ticker MagazineMiamiHerald.comWorld Markets Close Lower; Gold ShinesTicker Magazine4:30 PM New York, 9:30 PM London, 8:30 AM Sydney – US stocks struggled as the world markets edged lower and commodities priced hovered near their recent ...US Stocks Remain Lower As Dell, Trichet Prompt Move To SafetyWall Street JournalUS stocks open lower; technolgy leads lossesMarketWatchUS STOCKS-Futures point lower after Dell, dr Horton resultsReutersRTT News -The Associated Press -TheStreet.comall 996 news articles »Big Easy Beat - The Hullabaloo Onlineguardian.co.ukBig Easy BeatThe Hullabaloo OnlineA federal judge ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers could be held responsible for flooding damage in St. Bernard Parish and in the Lower 9th Ward because ...In New Orleans, Elation Over Katrina Liability RulingNew York TimesEffects of judge's Katrina ruling could be hugeLos Angeles TimesCourt rules against Corps in MRGO Katrina floodingExaminer.comThe Associated Press -ThePopTort (blog) -ABC Newsall 1,015 news articles »Airline stocks drift lower with broader market - MarketWatchAirline stocks drift lower with broader marketMarketWatchBy Shawn Langlois, marketwatch SAN FRANCISCO (marketwatch) - Airline stocks succumbed to broader market selling on Friday, closing slightly lower even as ...Cloud Peak Energy trades lower in coal producer's IPOMarketWatchEnergy stocks head lower at opening bellMarketWatchall 13 news articles » |
i8news.com |
