In Gesture, Iran Provides Nuclear Document After two years of stonewalling, Iran has given the United Nations? nuclear watchdog agency a document showing how to cast uranium metal into hemispheres to form the core of an atom bomb.... Read Full Article The Cautious U.S. Boom In Oil Shale Oil companies are hoping that new techniques for extracting oil from shale, aimed at overcoming old obstacles, can hit the jackpot.... Read Full Article Charges Of Price Fixing On European Christmas Trees PARIS ? The state prosecutor for serious economic crimes charged the Christmas Tree Growers Association with anticompetitive price fixing and said he would bring the growers to court in the spring.... Read Full Article A Night Out With: Rock On, Mr. Director Fred Durst, the frontman for the rap-metal group Limp Bizkit, has his directorial debut at the Tribeca Film Festival.... Read Full Article Sputnik Turns 50 How the first artificial satellite gave birth to the space age and changed our everyday lives forever.... Read Full Article |
Tree NewsANC votes to rename streets after party activistsDURBAN council, which provoked riots last year after it tried to rename its main streets after revolutionaries, faced an opposition walkout after it announced fresh plans to change the street names of some of the city’s all-white suburbs.Read Full Article Brazen fraudster feted by Latin brassRobert Vesco, a swashbuckling Wall Street financier and conman whose frauds made headlines, has died as a fugitive in Cuba, aged 71.Read Full Article HP to buy EDS for $US12.6 bn in challenge to IBMHewlett-Packard plans to buy technology outsourcing company Electronic Data Systems to better compete against IBM, but Wall Street questioned whether the $US12.6 billion deal for a slow-growing company was overpriced.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 Cherie Blair memoir ’tells all’If Cherie Blair had any desire to shield herself and her family from the public spotlight during her life at No. 10 Downing Street, she seems to have thrown it to the wind now that Tony Blair is no longer prime minister.Read Full Article External News for: treeFrazee adds ladies luncheon to Festival of Trees celebration - DL-OnlineAkron Leader PublicationsFrazee adds ladies luncheon to Festival of Trees celebrationDL-OnlineWhat makes the Frazee Festival of Trees unique among other festivals of its kind is that the displays are not done by professional decorators; rather, ...Reception, performance kick off center's 20th festival of treesGadsden TimesFrazee Lions has Giving TreeFrazee Vergas ForumFestival Of Trees Entries SoughtAzJournal.comThe Wenatchee World Online -Akron Leader Publications -The State Journal-Registerall 45 news articles »Frazee adds ladies luncheon to Festival of Trees celebration - DL-OnlineAkron Leader PublicationsFrazee adds ladies luncheon to Festival of Trees celebrationDL-OnlineWhat makes the Frazee Festival of Trees unique among other festivals of its kind is that the displays are not done by professional decorators; rather, ...Reception, performance kick off center's 20th festival of treesGadsden TimesFrazee Lions has Giving TreeFrazee Vergas ForumFestival Of Trees Entries SoughtAzJournal.comThe Wenatchee World Online -Akron Leader Publications -The State Journal-Registerall 45 news articles »Market Street Holds Annual Tree Lighting - Woodlands Online, LLCChicago TribuneMarket Street Holds Annual Tree LightingWoodlands Online, LLCMarket Street kicked off their holiday festivities with their Annual Holiday Tree Lighting Ceremony which took ...Tyrone planning spectacular tree lighting Dec. 4Fayette Daily News25th Love Light Tree lighting is SundayWilkes Journal PatriotTree Lighting Ceremonies In Northeast FloridaNews4Jax.comThe Canadian Press -WTVY -The Daily Collegian Onlineall 39 news articles »Frazee adds ladies luncheon to Festival of Trees celebration - DL-OnlineAkron Leader PublicationsFrazee adds ladies luncheon to Festival of Trees celebrationDL-OnlineWhat makes the Frazee Festival of Trees unique among other festivals of its kind is that the displays are not done by professional decorators; rather, ...Reception, performance kick off center's 20th festival of treesGadsden TimesFrazee Lions has Giving TreeFrazee Vergas ForumFestival Of Trees Entries SoughtAzJournal.comThe Wenatchee World Online -Akron Leader Publications -The State Journal-Registerall 45 news articles »Market Street Holds Annual Tree Lighting - Woodlands Online, LLCChicago TribuneMarket Street Holds Annual Tree LightingWoodlands Online, LLCMarket Street kicked off their holiday festivities with their Annual Holiday Tree Lighting Ceremony which took ...Tyrone planning spectacular tree lighting Dec. 4Fayette Daily News25th Love Light Tree lighting is SundayWilkes Journal PatriotTree Lighting Ceremonies In Northeast FloridaNews4Jax.comThe Canadian Press -WTVY -The Daily Collegian Onlineall 39 news articles »Moore Tree Farm to donate to Trees for Troops program - Ithaca JournalKFBB NewsChannel 5Moore Tree Farm to donate to Trees for Troops programIthaca JournalGROTON -- Moore Tree Farm in Groton is donating real Christmas trees as part of the nationwide Trees for Troops program, sponsored by Christmas Tree Farmers ...Heavy rains good for Christmas tree growersTuscaloosa NewsTree Farmers Grow Christmas Cheer Year-RoundKFBB NewsChannel 5Derby tree farm cuts Christmas tree for governorKSN-TVMonroe News Star -Houma Courier -Topeka Capital Journalall 17 news articles » |
i8news.com |