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Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse: An intense second tremor rocked Haiti early Wednesday, disrupting rescue and recovery operations in Port-au-Prince following last week’s devastating 7.0 earthquake.
2009 was a horrible year for trend-trading. We don’t have the data for 2008, but we can imagine that wasn’t so hot a year either.
Automated Trading System Blog tracked about twenty trend-trading firms, only to find that they for the most part horribly underperformed. Trend trading has been in the dumps lately:
See the full list of firms’ trading results at Au.Tr.Sy Blog >
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Amnesty International has called for arms transfers to the Somali government to be suspended until there are adequate safeguards to prevent weapons from being used to commit war crimes and human rights abuses.
In its latest briefing paper on the country, Amnesty International details US shipments of arms, including mortars, ammunition and cash for the purchase of weapons to the Transitional Federal Government (TFG).
These transfers were made despite substantial risks that such types of weapons could be used in indiscriminate attacks by TFG forces, or diverted to armed groups opposed to the TFG, who also commit gross and widespread abuses.
“International concern for the future of the Somali government has not been matched by an equal concern for the human rights of civilians,” said Michelle Kagari, Amnesty International Deputy Director for Africa.
“Mortar attacks continue to claim lives – it is time for international donors to apply tighter controls to their support for the government”
Amnesty International’s briefing also details growing international programmes of military and police training for TFG forces, despite a lack of adequate oversight procedures.
The training is delivered in Somalia itself and in Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti and Uganda. The European Union, France, Germany and Italy are involved, or have pledged funding for it.
Amnesty International calls for all states providing, financing or planning military and police training for the TFG to provide training in international humanitarian law and on arms management. They should also press for the establishment of oversight procedures for TFG forces.
A UN arms embargo on Somalia has been in place since 1992 but states can apply to the UN Sanctions Committee for exemptions to supply security assistance to the Somali government.
Amnesty International is urging the committee to apply criteria for assessing the risk that exemptions to the arms embargo will contribute to war crimes and human rights abuses, and to deny authorisations on this basis.
To be effectively implemented, Amnesty International argues that such criteria need to be enshrined in international law and universally applied to all arms transfers. The organisation calls on states to establish such common standards in an international Arms Trade Treaty.
Somalia has been mired in armed conflict since the collapse of the Siad Barre government in 1991. Conflict intensified and unlawful killings of civilians increased after Ethiopian troops entered Somalia at the end of 2006 to help the TFG fight against several armed opposition groups from whom it has been seeking to regain territorial control.
Despite a peace agreement between the TFG and one armed group, the appointment of a President issued from the former armed opposition and the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from Somalia, armed opposition groups have continued attacks against the TFG. In May 2009, they launched a major offensive against the TFG, which currently only controls a small part of the capital Mogadishu.
In 2009, indiscriminate attacks by all parties to the armed conflict have resulted in thousands of civilians killed and hundreds of thousands displaced. The number of people internally displaced within Somalia is now 1.5 million and some 3.7 million are dependent on humanitarian assistance for their survival.
Octomom Nadya Suleman sure knows how to pick a great plastic surgeon! This doc deserves an award for re-sculpting Suleman, a mother of 14, and her battered body just a year after she gave birth to more than a half dozen tots. The publicity-hungry multi-mama recently posed in a beach shoot for Star Magazine and the images of Octomom’s slender frame have been doing the internet rounds this week. Here’s a peek:
We all know that every single detail on a modern Formula One car has to do with aerodynamics nowadays. And that’s the logical progression of the policy introduced by the International Automobile Federation (FIA) regarding engine development inside the series. Once the teams were not allowed to further increase their engines’ performances, it was only natural for the engineers and designers to start focusing on other ways to improve the car’s capabilities while on track.
But that’s basic infor… (read more)
A special version of the Fiat 500 created in collaboration with the Italian jeanswear house, DIESEL, was displayed in Berlin at a show dedicated to youth fashion, introducing Midnight indigo blue, a special body color, and the 1.3 Multijet II 95 HP (Euro 5) with Start&Stop system fitted as standard. According to the Italian carmaker, almost 6,000 cars have already been ordered worldwide, out of the 10,000 available in total.
In Berlin, within Bread & Butter, the Diesel stand will present its … (read more)
Calculated Risk reminds us that December’s falling housing starts, reported this morning, was actually decent news, in the sense that less new starts means we can work down the total inventory of excess housing faster.
As I’ve noted before, this is both good news and bad news. The good news is the low level of starts means the excess housing inventory is being absorbed – a necessary step for housing (and the economy) to recover. The bad news is economic growth will probably be sluggish – and unemployment elevated – until residential investment picks up.
Sure, there is a negative side in that fewer starts means less work for homebuilders, but we can’t have our cake and eat it too.
So more accurately, perhaps the decline in new starts is good news for anyone concerned about housing prices, while bad news for anyone who works in the industry and needs income in the near term.
Overall, as Calculated Risk highlights, if the overarching housing problem is that too many houses were built during the boom, then we should want new starts to slow down, as a long-term fix. This is healthier than rooting for even more housing supply to be created just to give us a short-term jolt of economic activity.
Check out Calculated Risk’s full analysis here >>>
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It’s no secret that Nintendo hasn’t been proliferating the online sales front, and for some of the developers on WiiWare, the company just isn’t making enough effort to promote the service. As a result, many games on
The characters of Gossip Girl are known as much for their dramatic storylines as they are for their head-turning style selections — and the remainder of Season 3 promises plenty of both.
According to Entertainment Weekly, a blast from the past is on its way to the hit primetime soap as Serena van der Woodsen prepares to meet her long-lost father, William van der Woodsen. We hear Dirty Sexy Money alum Billy Baldwin will portray the elusive pop of Everyone’s Favorite Uptown Girl in at least three episodes airing in April.
Gossip Girl airs Wednesday nights on The CW.
Over the years we’ve shown many examples of times when it makes much more business sense not to enforce your intellectual property rights, but reader Jerry Leichter sends in another example. It discusses how Apple is benefiting from not going after those who copy its iPhone UI, suggesting that Apple’s aggressiveness in such lawsuits with PCs helped Microsoft win the personal computer war in the 80s and 90s:
The more different competitors Apple faces in smartphones, the better it fares. One major reason why Apple lost its pioneering position in graphical desktop PCs to Microsoft in the 90s was related to the company’s efforts to stamp out rivals in “look and feel” lawsuits during the late 80s that shut down windowing products from HP and GEM, leaving Microsoft free rein to consolidate a competitive-free monopoly juggernaut around its own Windows product.In this decade, Apple has conspicuously refrained from attacking rivals on copyright or patent infringement issues in both the iPod and iPhone markets, outside of defensive measures it has taken against patent challenges from Creative and more recently Nokia. Competing in the market has historically worked out much more successfully for Apple than trying to compete in court.
I think it’s a good point — and accurate that Apple is better off not enforcing its IP, and that Microsoft was helped by Apple’s mistake last time around, but I doubt that’s why Apple isn’t doing it this time around. My guess is that the reason it didn’t bother this time was because it lost so badly when it tried to go after Microsoft for copying the “Windows” look and feel. Still, it is a good example where sometimes it really does help to have more people recognize your user interface — even if sometimes they’re using it from someone else.
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Motorola and Windows Mobile has had a stormy on again, off again relationship in the last 12 months, but until now we had all believed Windows Mobile 7, like a baby had just to prevent a divorce, would fix everything.
Unfortunately it appears that was overly optimistic. CNET Asia spoke to Spiros Nikolakopoulos, vice president and general manager for Asia Pacific and International Distribution for Motorola’s Mobile Devices business, to find out more about the company’s plans.
When asked about the smartphones Motorola intended to release in 2010, Spiros said:
“There will be between 20 and 30 smartphones globally and, at this moment, all of them will run Android. Naturally, not all will be available everywhere as it depends on the company’s partnership with the various telco operators in each country. For non-smartphone models, they will run either Brew or the Motorola’s own operating system.”
With Windows Mobile 7 handsets strongly expected to arrive this year, it appears clear Motorola will not be a launch partner, and after having placed all bets on Android, may never make a Windows Mobile handset again.
Of course the company is only aiming for 5% of the global handset market, and clearly see a role of complete irrelevance for itself soon.
Good luck Motorola.
Read more here.
Or do we stop outer town shopping mall retail park developments and try and preserve our traditional central shopping zones? if so how?
Or does it matter? Is internet shopping the way forward? Can any shop compete knowing that every single item you could possibly think of , is for sale at anytime of the day with just the click of a mouse?
Discuss…..
We’re skeptical of aggregate price numbers compiled by the government. Inflation rarely begins with smooth increases in general prices. Instead, it pops up in bubbles and distortions in the economy, only leading to a more general rise in prices once it is really out of control.
But you cannot ignore the government numbers because the central bankers watch them closely. So here’s the skinny on today’s PPI.
The big jump in food prices, which rose 1.4 percent in December, means that the lives of cash strapped Americans facing the prospects of losing their job or continuing unemployment just got even more difficult.
Here’s the full write up from the Associated Press:
Inflation pressures at the wholesale level eased in December as a drop in energy prices offset a big jump in food costs.
The Labor Department said Wednesday that wholesale prices edged up 0.2 percent last month, much slower than the 1.8 percent surge in November. Energy prices, which had been up for two months, fell in December.
The price performance at the wholesale level combined with last week’s benign reading on consumer prices supported the view that inflation is not a problem.
That gives the Federal Reserve room to keep interest rates low to boost the country out of a deep recession.
Meanwhile, the Commerce Department reported that construction of new homes and apartments fell 4 percent in December to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 557,000 units as bad weather hit much of the country.
But applications for new housing projects shot up 11 percent to an annual rate of 653,000, a better-than-expected performance indicating that builders are ready to ramp up production in 2010.
The 0.2 percent overall increase in wholesale prices was slightly higher than the flat reading economists had expected while the unchanged reading on core prices was lower than the 0.1 percent advance analysts had forecast.
Energy costs fell by 0.4 percent in December as the price of gasoline dropped by 3.2 percent, the biggest one-month decline since September. Natural gas prices fell by 1.9 percent, the biggest decline since last May.
Food costs rose by 1.4 percent, the third straight month of higher food costs. The December jump was led by a 9.4 percent rise in pork prices, the biggest increase in a decade, and a 3.7 percent increase in the cost of dairy products, the largest advance in more than two years.
The rise in food costs accounted for one-fifth of December’s overall 0.2 percent rise in wholesale inflation.
The flat reading for core prices, which excludes food and energy, was helped by a 1.2 percent fall in the cost of light trucks, a category that includes sport utility vehicles.
For the 12 months ending in December, prices at the wholesale level were up 4.4 percent compared to a 0.9 percent drop in wholesale prices in 2008. That big swing reflected a rise in energy costs in 2009.
Core inflation at the wholesale level was much better behaved last year, rising by 0.9 percent after having surged by 4.5 percent in 2008.
Last Friday, the government reported that consumer prices edged up a slight 0.1 percent in December with core prices up the same amount. That finished off a year in which consumer prices rose by 2.7 percent, reflecting higher energy costs during the year. Excluding food and energy, core consumer prices were up 1.8 percent, matching the rise in 2008.
Many economists are looking for inflation pressures to moderate even more in 2010 as the worst recession since the 1930s keeps exerting downward pressure on prices.
The low inflation has allowed Federal Reserve officials to push a key interest rate to its lowest level on record. The Fed’s target for banks’ overnight lending rate has been at 0 to 0.25 percent for more than a year now. Many analysts believe the Fed will keep rates low for much of 2010 because of their belief that the economy will not be growing fast enough to keep the unemployment rate from rising.
The jobless rate currently stands at 10 percent and many forecasters believe it will keep climbing and hit 10.5 percent by the middle of this year before starting to decline.
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Todas as fotos desta primeira parte do thread são do forista GRGM. Eu alterei um pouco as legendas.
1 – O edifício da direita é o Ministério Público
2 –
3 – o edifício da esquerda é o Unibanco.
4 – Edifício Sampaio Moreira, de 1924
5 – O Martinelli, de 1929.
6 – Banco do Brasil… Tem 143 metros e é de 1955.
7 – Banespa – O mais alto edifício do mundo fora dos EUA quando construído.
8 – O hall de entrada do Banespa
9 – O lustre tem 13 metros de altura e 1,5 tonelada!
10 – Largo do Café
11 – À direita está a Bovespa (Bolsa de Valores de São Paulo)
12 – Bovespa no centro.
13 – Edifícios antigos e o Unibanco.
14 –
15 – Estatua na Praça do Patriarca.
16 – Unibanco de novo
17 – Praça do Patriarca
18 – Praça do Patriarca e o pórtico de entrada da Galeria Prestes Maia (subterrrânea).
19 – Interior da Galeria Prestes Maia. Essa é a estátua de Moisés, em uma de suas laterais.
20 – Edifício Matarazzo, atual Prefeitura de São Paulo. É projeto do arquiteto italiano Marcello Piacentini, o arquiteto favorito de Mussolini.
21 – Edifícios na Praça do Patriarca
22 – Otros edifícios
23 – À esquerda está o edifício dos Correios e à direita o "Mirante do Vale", o edifício mais alto do Brasil, de 1960.
24 – Viaduto Santa Ifigênia, de 1913 em estilo art-nouveau e totalmente importado da Bélgica.
25 – Viaduto do Chá no centro.
26 – Várias vistas dos edifícios do vale do Anhangabaú.
27
28
29
30
31 – Praça na estação "São Bento" do metrô.
32 – Rua perto da Bovespa.
33 – Theatro Municipal
34 –
35
36
The well known Japanese electronics producer Panasonic’s Indian arm, Panasonic India revealed its intentions to enter the country’s automotive market by 2012.
The company said that it already has a good position on India’s in-car entertainment (ICE) systems market and, at the present time, is negotiating with the country’s top carmakers in order to sell its products to them. Panasonic intends to introduce these products in late 2011 and has consequently set a high financial goal.
"Go… (read more)
The Urban Land Institute (ULI) released the call for submissions for the Amanda Burden Urban Open Space Award. The award is given by the Urban Land Institute (ULI) in partnership with Amanda Burden, New York City’s Planning Commissioner. The winner, the site selected as the most outstanding public space that ”enriches and revitalizes a community” in the U.S., will receive a $10,000 cash prize. According to ULI, the prize is “intended to celebrate and promote vibrant, well-used urban open spaces.”
To enter the award competition, the space must be outdoors, at least 10,000 square feet in size and have been open to the public for at least one year and not more than ten years. The award seeks to recognize a public space that is:
The application deadline is February 19, 2010.
In addition to the cash prize, the winning project will be recognized in an awards ceremony held in conjunction with ULI’s Spring Council Forum, as well as showcased in ULI’s publications and conferences. Learn more about how to apply
Also, check out the Project for Public Spaces’s Great Public Spaces site, where you can nominate a great public space.
Lastly, The Huffington Post recently posted “Landscape Architecture around America,” featuring multiple parks and gardens around the U.S. You can vote and see which public spaces were listed in the top five by Huffington Post readers.
Image credit: Central Park ice skating rink, New York City. Wired New York.
The High Priestess of Homemaking knows her way around the kitchen, and it seems domestic goddess Martha Stewart, 68, is no stranger to working the stripper pole either.
Google’s new found moral fiber in the censorship debacle in China has made a lot of waves and has split opinions on the motives behind the move. The future of its search engine in China is as unclear as when Google made the announcement but, as the dust begins to settle, some details are beginning to shape up.
Last week, Google … (read more)
On Tuesday night, E!’s First Lady of Late Night, Chelsea Handler, stopped by for what will likely be her final appearance on The Jay Leno Show. Perhaps not surprisingly, the outspoken star has something to say about the late night fray going on over at NBC. We’ve got two words for you: Team Ellen!
Filed under: Car Buying, Marketing/Advertising, Smart, Earnings/Financials
Intent on putting 2009 – and its devastating 41-percent sales plunge – into distant memory, Smart USA is rolling out its first lease incentive program designed to kick-start sales (along those lines, former Saturn general manager Jill Lajdziak was appointed as president of the company just two weeks ago). Smart has run pilot leasing programs in the past, but this is the first program offered nationwide.
Launched two years ago, sales of the tiny Fortwo were initially strong. However, as the novelty wore off the unimpressive subcompact and gas prices dropped, customers grew cold. The failing economy only made matters worse. First year sales were 24,622 units. In 2009, Smart USA moved just 14,595 cars.
The terms of the Daimler Financial Services deal include a 36-month/10,000-mile lease with less than $2,000 out of pocket. Payments are $169 plus tax. The program is scheduled to run through the end of February.
Gallery: Review: 2009 Smart ForTwo
[Source: Automotive News – Sub. Req.]
Report: Smart looking to stem the gloom with first U.S. lease program originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
