The era of falling food prices has come to an end with the world population set to add another 2 billion people, according to Cargill Inc., the U.S. farm commodities trader.
The United Nations
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Haiti’s biggest employer has named a new chief executive to run Digicel, the mobile phone company announced Wednesday.
The Jamaica-based private company is bringing in Damian Blackburn to replace Maarten Boute, who will be leaving in March to spend more time with his family, Digicel spokeswoman Antonia Graham said.
Boute added in an email message that he was going “to do a deep recharge of (his) batteries” as he and his wife await the birth of their second child.
The new head, Blackburn, recently CEO for Digicel Honduras, has more than 14 years of experience in the telecommunications industry. He will oversee operations for the company’s largest market, Haiti, which accounts for about a quarter of its 11.1 million subscribers.
Digicel, whose Irish CEO Denis O’Brien promoted development in Haiti before the 2010 quake, has invested $600 million in the impoverished Caribbean nation since it began work in 2006 short term personal loan. The company’s foundation has also done charitable work such as building schools and helping with other infrastructure projects.
In recent months, the company erected street signs in the capital and road signs in the countryside and last year spent $18 million to renovate the historic Iron Market damaged in the quake.
In November, Digicel and Marriott International announced plans to build a $45 million, 173-room hotel in Port-au-Prince. The hotel is slated to open in 2014.
Digicel’s competitors include Voila and Natcom, a joint venture created last year between Vietnam’s Viettel and the Haitian government to replace the state-run Teleco.
For the first time, Indian prosecutors are taking Google, Yahoo, Facebook and other networking sites to court for refusing to remove material considered insulting to Indian leaders and major religious figures.
Government officials are upset about material insulting to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, ruling Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi and major religious figures. Some illustrations have shown Singh and Gandhi in compromising positions and pigs running through Mecca, Islam’s holiest city.
On Friday, the federal government told a New Delhi court that there was sufficient material to proceed against 21 social networking sites for offenses of “promoting enmity between classes and causing prejudice to national integration,” according to the Press Trust of India news agency.
The cases, which PTI said name companies including Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft, represent a new risk of doing business in the nation of more than 1 billion people, which is looking to technology to boost its economy and standard of living. The dispute highlights India’s difficulty in balancing the Internet culture of freewheeling discourse with its homegrown religious and political sensitivities.
Convictions could bring fines and up to five years’ imprisonment, through prosecutors have named only the companies involved rather than any executives. Metropolitan Magistrate Sudesh Kumar on Friday asked India’s External Affairs Ministry to serve summons to officials of foreign-based companies for court appearances March 13 my credit score.
In December, Telecommunications Minister Kapil Sibal said he had spoken repeatedly with officials from major Internet companies over the past three months and asked them to come up with a voluntary framework to keep offensive material off the Internet. He said that the companies told him there was nothing they could do.
There was no immediate comment by the networking sites after Friday’s court proceedings.
However, Facebook said last month that it would remove content that “is hateful, threatening, incites violence or contains nudity.”
Google said in a December statement that it removes content that violates local law and its own standards.
“But when content is legal and doesn’t violate our policies, we won’t remove it just because it’s controversial, as we believe that people’s differing views, so long as they’re legal, should be respected and protected,” Google said in a statement in December.
Sibal had shown reporters Web illustrations showing Singh and Gandhi in compromising positions as well as a site showing pigs running through Islam’s holy city of Mecca, a clear insult to Muslims.
Sibal said the Internet companies had told him that they were applying U.S. standards to their sites, and he objected, saying that they needed to be sensitive to Indian sensibilities.
all at the same time, without being forced to close down a program.
But the cool part is the controls. First, the TV’s built-in cameras use face recognition to automatically sign users into their personal profiles. Then, users can issue voice commands like "channel 34" or "guide" to control the TV. They can also use gesture controls for Web browsing, adjusting the volume and more.
Overall, the experience looks like what would happen if Apple’s (, Fortune 500) Siri voice assistant and Microsoft’s (, Fortune 500) Kinect motion-sensor system had a baby TV.
Content is accessed through the Smart TV Hub. That menu includes other features like "Family Story" — which can upload photos and videos from a mobile device to the TV — and special hubs for fitness content and for kids.
The ES8000, along with most of the other devices Samsung announced Monday, didn’t get a release date beyond "sometime this year."
On Sunday, the company unveiled a device called the InTouch, which converts regular TVs into smart TVs payday loans for bad credit. The $199 converter is a low-cost option for customers to add Internet browsing, Skype voice calling and a keyboard remote, without having to buy a new TV.
Samsung’s Monday keynote also included more on the TV and Internet-connected fronts: a 55-inch Super OLED TV, as well as connected washer/dryer and connected camera line.
In addition, two Samsung devices will soon make their 4G network debuts: the Galaxy Note phone, and the Galaxy Tab 7.7 tablet.
Samsung closed the keynote with two computer announcements. The new Series 9 Notebook is "the thinnest premium notebook on the market," the company says, at just a half-inch thick and 2.2 pounds. It boots up in just under 10 seconds.
Like many of the CES exhibitors, Samsung also unveiled a super-thin ultrabook: the Series 5 Ultra. Samsung says Web browsing on the laptop is twice as fast as on last-generation notebooks.
U.S. stocks rallied Tuesday, kicking off the new year on a high note, as investors welcomed upbeat reports on economic activity around the world.
The Dow Jones industrial average () jumped 180 points, or 1.5%, to end at 12,397. The S&P 500 () gained 19 points, or 1.5%, to 1,277. The Nasdaq () added 43 points, or 1.7%, to 2,649.
The gains came after reports on manufacturing growth in China and India came in better than expected over the weekend. On Tuesday, a report showed U.S. manufacturing activity grew at a faster rate in December.
U.S. markets were closed Monday for the New Year holiday.
"There were no major negative headlines out of Europe, and we had some data suggesting the global economy is expanding," said Dan Greenhaus, chief global strategist at BTIG.
Investors scooped up shares of companies that would benefit from a strengthening global economy.
Bank stocks, which were among the worst performing sectors last year, led the Dow higher. Bank of America (, Fortune 500), Citigroup (, Fortune 500) and JPMorgan (, Fortune 500) all posted strong gains.
Industrial names Caterpillar (, Fortune 500) and Alcoa (, Fortune 500) were also higher, as were multinationals such as GE (, Fortune 500), Microsoft (, Fortune 500) and 3M (, Fortune 500).
But traders say the market is vulnerable to concerns about the debt crisis in Europe, which has been the main driver of stock prices for several months.
Stocks in 2012: Choppy but higher
"At least for today, there’s no disaster in Europe," said Art Hogan, a managing director at Lazard Capital Markets. "The market remains focused on what’s going on in the eurozone."
Meanwhile, oil prices surged more than 4% on continued anxiety over Iran’s growing threat to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.
U.S. stocks finished little changed Friday, bringing to an end a year in which the S&P dropped just 0.04 point — the smallest annual change in history. The Dow rose 5.5% for the year, while the Nasdaq lost 1.8%.
Economy: The Institute of Supply Management’s survey of manufacturing purchasing managers rose to 53.9 from 52.7. That’s a bit better than the 53.4 forecast of economists surveyed by Briefing.com.
Any reading above 50 signals expansion in the sector.
The Commerce Department said construction spending jumped 1 quick guaranteed personal loans.2% in November, after a revised 0.2% decline in October. Analysts surveyed by Briefing.com expect construction spending to have risen by 0.5%.
Over the weekend, the Chinese government released its official reading on manufacturing activity, showing the sector expanded slightly in December, after contracting the month before. And on Monday, a report compiled by HSBC and Markit showed India’s manufacturing activity picked up significantly during the month.
The manufacturing data "provides further evidence that global industrial production is likely to be stabilizing in the months to come," analysts at Barclays Capital wrote in a note to clients.
The Federal Reserve plans to give even more detailed forecasts about where it expects its key interest rate to be years from now, according to minutes of the Fed’s December meeting released Tuesday.
Companies: Chesapeake Energy (, Fortune 500) shares rose after the Oklahoma City-based energy company announced it completed a venture with an affiliate of French oil company Total () that gives the French firm a 25% stake in more than 600,000 acres in eastern Ohio, an area rich in shale oil.
20 Stocks For January 2012
Mead Johnson Nutrition () shares gained after two U.S. government agencies said they have completed their investigation of Enfamil and found the baby formula safe to use. The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had stepped in after a newborn baby died of a rare bacterial infection that they suspected could be linked to the powder-based infant formula.
World markets: European stocks also rose. Britain’s FTSE 100 () added 2%, the DAX () in Germany added 1.5% and France’s CAC 40 () gained 0.4%.
The Hang Seng () in Hong Kong added 2.4%. Markets in Shanghai () and Tokyo () were both closed for an extended New Year holiday.
Currencies and commodities: The dollar fell against the euro, the British pound and the Japanese yen.
Oil for February delivery added $4.20, or 4.2%, to $103.03 a barrel.
Gold futures for February delivery rose $33.70 to end at $1,600.50 an ounce.
Bonds: The price on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury fell, pushing the yield up to 1.96% from 1.87% late Friday.
U.K. manufacturing (PMITMUK) shrank less than economists forecast in December as demand increased in Germany and China.
A gauge of factory output based on a survey by Markit Economics and the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply rose to 49.6 from a revised 47.7 in November, the groups said in an e-mailed statement today. The median forecast of 19 economists in a Bloomberg News survey was for a drop to 47.3 from an initially reported 47.6 in November. A level below 50 indicates contraction.
The sovereign debt turmoil in Europe, the U.K.
An economic planning conference of China’s top leaders is expected to endorse fine-tuning of policies to support growth while seeking to keep inflation in check.
The powerful Politburo of the ruling Communist Party met last week and announced plans to keep a “prudent” monetary policy that would curb price hikes while adopting “pro-active” spending to promote growth. That has set the tone for the meeting in Beijing that begins Monday.
China has made headway in slowing price hikes but weak demand for exports from the European Union and U.S. has raised worries the economy may slow too quickly, worsening labor unrest just as the party prepares for a succession to a new generation of leaders next year.
Since leaders are stressing continuity, no major shifts in policy are expected from the closed door economic work conference, which reportedly will end on Wednesday.
Export growth has fallen steadily since hitting a peak of nearly 36 percent in March, and data released over the weekend showed exports slowed further in November, as did imports, with the overall trade surplus plunging 35 percent.
Adding to those concerns is a cooling of the property sector _ a mainstay of growth but also politically sensitive due to prices having surged beyond what most ordinary families can afford.
China’s economic growth abated to 9.1 percent in the July-September quarter from 9.5 percent in the first half of the year, but many economists are forecasting it will fall below 9 percent in 2012 payday loan.
“We believe the risks are skewed to the downside,” Standard Chartered Bank said in a report released Monday. It said that for China to maintain a growth rate of 8.1 percent next year, it would need to keep relatively high rates of capital investment that may prove difficult giving funding shortages for banks, property developers, local governments and many small businesses.
The report also noted China’s struggle to “rebalance” its economy toward greater reliance on domestic consumer demand, rather than exports and investment in construction.
“Despite talk of ‘rebalancing,’ progress has been limited in recent years,” the report said. The share of investment in the overall economy exceeded 50 percent last year, up from 43 percent in 2008.
Instead of the massive stimulus spending ordered in late 2008 to counter the global crisis, analysts say authorities are more likely to rely on tax cuts and administrative measures to help encourage more consumer spending.
But while Beijing strives to encourage more domestic demand and reduce its reliance on construction investment and exports to drive growth, it is also vowing to focus more on boosting its trade with emerging economies that are more dynamic than those in the U.S. and crisis stricken Europe.
Deep into overtime, negotiators from 194 nations worked straight through a second night, parsing drafts and seeking compromises to map out the future pathway to fight global warming.
Delegates, working on little sleep, huddled with allies to prepare for a decisive meeting later Saturday, when it will become clear whether the diverse and long-bickering parties can come together on a plan to extend and broaden the global campaign to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
“We think it’s important not to give up now. We have come a long way,” said a weary Connie Hedegaard, the European commissioner on climate issues, speaking more than 12 hours after the two-week conference had been scheduled to close Friday evening.
But she was concerned that the process was taking so long that ministers would leave before decisions could be adopted, costing hard-won momentum. “It would really really be a pity if we lose that now,” she told The Associated Press.
Small island countries and the world’s poorest nations lined up behind an EU plan to begin talks on a future agreement that would come into effect no later than 2020.
As negotiations progressed, the United States and India eased objections to compromise texts, but China remained a strong holdout, EU officials said on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the continuing talks.
Under discussion was an extension of binding pledges by the EU and a few other industrial countries to cut carbon emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. Those commitments expire next year.
The EU, the primary bloc bound by commitments under the 1997 protocol, conditioned an extension on starting new talks on an accord to succeed Kyoto. The talks would conclude by 2015, allowing five years for it to be ratified by national legislatures. The plan insists the new agreement equally oblige all countries _ not just the few industrial powers _ to abide by emission targets.
Developing countries are adamant that the Kyoto commitments continue since it is the only agreement that compels any nation to reduce emissions. Industrial countries say the document is deeply flawed because it makes no demands on heavily polluting developing countries. It was for that reason that the U.S. never ratified it.
Host country South Africa organized the final stages of negotiations into “indabas,” a Zulu-language word meaning important meetings that carry the weight of a rich African culture.
At the indaba, the chief delegate from fewer than 30 countries, each with one aide, sat around an oblong table to thrash over text. Dozens of delegates were allowed to stand and observe from the periphery of the room but not to participate.
After the first meeting that ran overnight into Friday morning, conference president Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, who is South Africa’s foreign minister, drafted an eight-point compromise on the key question of the legal form of a post-2020 regime. The wording would imply how tightly countries would be held accountable for their emissions.
But the text was too soft for the Europeans and for the most vulnerable countries threatened by rising oceans, more frequent droughts and fiercer storms.
With passion rarely heard in a negotiating room, countries like Barbados pleaded for language instructing all parties to dig deeper into their carbon emissions and to speed up the process, arguing that the survival of their countries and millions of climate-stressed people were at risk.
Nkoana-Mashabane drafted new text after midnight Saturday that largely answered those criticisms. The U.S. told the indaba it could live with the language, but the reactions of China and India were not clear.
Retailers just got an early Christmas gift: Americans are expected to spend more than they did last year during the holidays.
Retail sales in November and December are expected to be up 3 percent during what is traditionally the biggest shopping period of the year, according to research firm ShopperTrak said Tuesday.
The sales predication, which matches the outlook from the International Council of Shopping Centers on Friday, would be below last year’s 4.1 percent spike _ and the 5-plus percent gains during boom economic times. But it’s still above the 2.6 percent average gain over the last 10 years and is considered respectable growth given the down economy.
“Clearly, consumers will remain surgical in their spending,” said Bill Martin, ShopperTrak, co-founder. “But the Christmas season should still be quite satisfactory.”
The industry is still waiting for a widely-watched forecast on Oct. 6 from the National Retail Federation, the nation’s largest retail trade group. But the ShopperTrak and ICSC predictions are the first look at how retailers might fare during the shopping period that can account for up to 40 percent of merchants’ annual revenue. Retailers are worried that many Americans are saddled by concerns about their jobs, the stock market and the overall U.S. economy, which could lead to them cutting back on holiday shopping.
So far, consumers still are spending on necessities, as shown during the critical back-to-school spending, the second-biggest shopping period of the year. However, they’re expected to continue to shop for bargains, a buying habit many picked up during the recession.
Customers also are expected to do more research online before they head to stores _ and browse less when they are in stores. As a result, customer traffic in the store is expected to be down 2.2 percent, according to ShopperTrak, which measures foot traffic in 25,000 stores in the U.S. and blends those figures with economic data.
“Every shopper in a store will be more valuable than last year, and retail stores should be ready to convert their holiday shoppers into sales,” said Martin.
When consumers do head out to the stores for the holidays, the divide that’s been seen this year between luxury purchases and bargain shopping is expected to continue.
ShopperTrak says specialty shops that sell low-end clothing and accessories may feel the need to cut prices to compete with discount chains, but that upscale stores will likely be able to cash in on consumers looking for goods they feel will hold up over long-term use.
The retail analyst expects clothing and accessories sales to rise 2.7 percent over the holidays, but for its traffic to dip 1.1 percent compared with a year ago.
Electronics and appliance sales are expected to rise 1.2 percent from the previous year, but traffic is predicted to fall 4.9 percent. ShopperTrak says the category will likely be hurt as consumers do comparison shopping and then buy online as well as the lack of any “hot” holiday product that will draw in more shoppers. The demise of many of the nation’s consumer electronics chains, such as Circuit City, has also left consumers with fewer places to shop.