Health & Lifestyle

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China now has the world's largest net-using population, say official figures. The news comes from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), which stated that 253 million Chinese went online by the end of June of this year. The total represents a 56.2% year-on-year growth - up by 91 million from June of last year, and up 43 million from December. The figure is higher than the 223 million that the US mustered in June, according to Nielsen Online.

Net penetration in the US stands at 71% compared to 19% in China suggesting it will eventually vastly outstrip the US. The development is significant because the US has had the largest net-using population since records of how many people were online started to be kept.

"This is the first time the number has drastically surpassed the United States, becoming the world's number one," said a statement from the CNNIC, the nation's official net monitoring body.

The 2008 figure is up 56% in a year, said CNNIC. Analysts expect the total to grow by about 18% per annum and hit 490 million by 2012.

About 95% of those going online connect via high-speed links. Take up of broadband has been boosted by deals offered by China's fixed line phone firms as they fight to win customers away from mobile operators. China's mobile phone-using population stands at about 500 million people.

Despite having a greater number of people online, China's net economy still has a long way to go to match or exceed that of the US or even that of South Korea.

Breaking it down further, 214 million of those on the Internet in China accessed via a broadband Internet connection.

The percentage of the population in China on the Internet now stands at 19%, still way below that of the United States, at 71%.

Comparing this to previous numbers, just in 2006 alone, there were 137 million Internet users in China. This shows that the number of people in the Internet in the country continues to grow at a rapid pace.

People under the age of 30 in China make up 69% of the total Internet users.

Figures from Analysys International said China's net firms reported total revenues of $5.9bn in 2007. By contrast net advertising revenue alone for US firms in 2007 stood at $21.2bn.

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Photos courtesy of dBTechno, AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, and DanWei.org

Original Source: dBTechno and BBC News

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We never did get the hovercrafts we were promised as kids, but we're getting closer. Imagine sailing above the Bourne Bridge on your way to the beach, while consuming less gas than the SUVs stuck beneath you in traffic.

A compact, two-seat plane with folding wings that can be pulled behind a car on a trailer will premiere at an air show in Wisconsin next week in a development that heralds a new genre of flying machines designed to bring the power-boating experience to the sky. Developed by two Stanford business school graduates, Kirk Hawkins and Steen Strand, the ICON A5 is the latest and arguably coolest plane to take to the skies under a new classification that the Federal Aviation Administration calls light-sport aircraft.

The A5's top speed is 120 miles per hour, and its maximum altitude is about 10,000 feet, in keeping with its Light-Sport Aircraft classification - a new class created to make personal aviation accessible to more people. It runs on auto gasoline and gets 18 to 20 miles to the gallon, according to Icon.  read more »

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Wall Street ended a volatile week with a moderate rebound Friday after better-than- expected economic data at least temporarily eased the worries of investors concerned about housing and the financial sector. Financials fell again on continued worries about the health of balance sheets, while technology stocks advanced. A day after a sharp drop in existing-home sales aided in pushing stocks sharply lower, economic news helped buoy the market on Friday.

The Commerce Department reported that factory orders for big-ticket manufactured goods, such as cars, appliances and machinery, rose by 0.8 percent in June, the strongest gain in four months and well ahead of Wall Street's expectations. But outside demand for defense equipment, orders would have been up only 0.1 percent. Another Commerce Department report showed that new-home sales dropped by a smaller-than-expected 0.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 530,000 units; the market expected sales to total 505,000. Although it marked the seventh decline in the past eight months, it stirred some hope that the housing market could be finding a bottom. Orders for durable goods rose 0.8% last month, far better than the 0.4% decline expected.

And there was good news about consumers, whose spending accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity. The Reuters/University of Michigan index of consumer sentiment for the first part of July came in at 61.2, while economists forecast a reading of 56.4. The reading was a slight rebound from a 28-year-low last month. "This is a market that's looking for any good signs," said John Massey, a fund manager at AIG SunAmerica Asset Management. "People are trying to find the light at the end of the tunnel."

Some experts said, however, that trading is likely to be uneven in the coming days as Wall Street awaits Friday's July employment report. Linda Duessel, equity market strategist at Federated Investors, said economic figures such as the durable-goods numbers are important because they reveal continued demand from abroad, which could help U.S. companies continue to rake in profits even if the U.S. economy isn't running at full steam. "That's good news for market participants as we try to find a footing in the market because we really don't want to see our weakness leak outside the U.S.," she said.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 21.41 points Friday, to 11,370.69, rebounding slightly from Thursday's decline of more than 280 points. Broader stock indicators also rose. The Standard & Poor's 500 index advanced 5.22, to 1257.76, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index jumped 30.42, to 2310.53. For the week, the Dow fell 1.1 percent and the S&P 500 lost 0.2 percent. Friday's tech rally left the Nasdaq up 1.2 percent for the week. Oil fell $2.23 to settle at $123.26 a barrel. Crude prices have fallen more than $20 in recent weeks, alleviating some of Wall Street's concerns about the impact of inflation on consumers' ability to spend.

The stock market's volatility during the week—rallying Tuesday and Wednesday only to erase those gains Thursday—illustrates tentativeness behind some of the bets investors are making, said Hugh Johnson, chairman and chief investment officer of Johnson Illington Advisors. He said the market tends to react to the latest headlines. "It's just news sensitive, and the real question is, 'What's the next news going to be? Good or bad?' That means that the market doesn't have a trend or a direction. It depends entirely on whether the news is going to be good or bad on any given day and that doesn't give you, as an investor, a lot of confidence."

For the second consecutive session, financial-services stocks were hard hit, with Dow components Bank of America losing 3.5 percent and Citigroup falling more than 1 percent. For the year, each is down more than 28 percent.

Europe gains: European stocks posted their first back-to-back weekly gains since May as better-than-estimated earnings and lower oil prices fueled a rally in carmakers, and banks climbed on speculation credit-market losses will abate. Europe's Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index increased 0.4 percent this week, extending its rebound from a three-year low on July 15 to 5.7 percent.

Asia falls: In Asia, stocks fell the most in six weeks, snapping a four-day rally. The MSCI Asia-Pacific index lost 2.8 percent. The index rallied 5.9 percent in the first four days of this week as concerns eased that bank losses will expand and oil tumbled.

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Photos courtesy of AFP, AP Photo/Ed Ou & Bebeto Matthews, and Independent.ie

Original Source: Chicago Tribune and NY Daily News

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PARIS: Ten years after it was introduced, France has ended the compulsory 35 hour work week. Legislators in France have voted to allow companies to sidestep the 35-hour workweek by negotiating individual overtime agreements with their employees. The new legislation, which was passed by Parliament late Wednesday night and which will take effect in September, is the boldest step yet in stripping what many view as an emblematic labor law, without quite getting rid of it. While the workweek limit is as good as buried, every hour beyond 35 that is worked will be considered overtime and will therefore be more expensive.

Labour Minister Xavier Bertrand denied that people would have more working hours imposing on them and said now "everything will be negotiated company by company." Under the new legislation no one in France can work more than 48 hours in a given week, including overtime. Right now, despite the current law, many French employees work longer than 35 hours a week but accumulate time off or overtime. They actually average 41 hours, compared with 41.7 in Germany, 43.1 in Britain, 41.3 in Italy and the EU average is 41.9. In terms of paid annual leave, the French are in the mid-range in Europe with 25 days holiday as guaranteed non-working days.

The new legislation opens the way for company-specific negotiated agreements between employers and labor unions about the number of hours a week and days a year an employee works. The new limits are more generous than before: For manual workers who are paid by the hour, the weekly maximum limit rises to 48 hours, in line with European Union legislation. For white-collar staff members, paid by the day, the annual maximum of days they can be asked to work will rise to 235 days from 218. Also up for negotiation is the amount of time an employee gets in compensation for the extra hours worked, as opposed to being paid for the overtime.

The new changes are likely to affect small and medium-sized businesses most. Many large companies benefited from the additional flexibility that the 35-hour week provided by allowing them to annualize work time, making staff members work more in high season and less in low season without having to pay costly overtime. Blue-collar workers have periodically complained that this practice ended up reducing their income.

But most employees, and particularly those with comfortable incomes and a preference for additional time off, have grown attached to the shorter workweek. Professionals, whose salaries are calculated on a daily basis rather than hourly, fear that they will lose a dozen extra holidays a year that they had enjoyed in compensation for working more than the legal 35 hours a week. Their dismay at the changes was on display Wednesday afternoon when hundreds protested outside the Senate building, sporting banners with slogans like "There is life after work." And the union that represents white-collar employees and management staff, CFE-CGC, published an open letter in French newspapers complaining about the changes.

The new legislation also includes rules to make labor unions more representative. Any union participating in negotiations on work time needs to have obtained at least 10 percent of the vote in company elections. But any union representing 30 percent or more of the internal vote is allowed to sign a binding agreement with management.

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Photos courtesy of The Economist, Reuters/Charles Platiau, and AFP

Original Source: euronews and International Herald Tribune

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July 24 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil traded near a seven-week low after reports showed demand in the U.S. and Japan, two of the three largest oil consuming countries, fell as high prices crimp fuel consumption. U.S. fuel demand averaged 19.9 million barrels a day last week, the lowest since January 2007, the Energy Department said yesterday. Japan imported 0.7 percent less oil in June than a year ago, the first decline in nine months, the Ministry of Finance said today.

"Our overall view is that oil prices are at a point that will bring about demand-side adjustments that will ultimately cause prices to be at a lower level," said David Moore, a commodity strategist with Commonwealth Bank of Australia Ltd. in Sydney. "There seems to be an intangible factor here where sentiment has swung quite sharply in the past couple weeks."

Crude oil for September delivery was at $124.23 a barrel, down 21 cents, at 11:36 a.m. Singapore time on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Yesterday, oil dropped $3.98, or 3.1 percent, to settle at $124.44 a barrel, the lowest close since June 4. Futures have lost 5 percent this week. Oil prices also fell as the Energy Department report showed that gasoline supplies rose 2.85 million barrels last week. Stockpiles of distillate fuel, a category that includes heating oil and diesel, climbed 2.42 million barrels. Brent crude oil for September settlement was at $125.10 a barrel, down 19 cents, on London's ICE Futures Europe exchange at 11:34 a.m. Singapore time. It dropped $4.26, or 3.3 percent, to close at $125.29 a barrel yesterday, the lowest settlement since June 4.

Demand has declined for three straight weeks, the Energy Department report showed. U.S. fuel consumption averaged 20.3 million barrels a day in the past four weeks, down 2.1 percent from a year earlier, the department said. Refineries operated at 87.1 percent of capacity last week, down 2.4 percentage points from the week before, according to the department. It was the lowest utilization rate since the week ended May 9. Refineries were forecast to operate at 89.5 percent of capacity last week, unchanged from the week before, according to the median of analyst estimates in the Bloomberg survey. Crude-oil inventories dropped 1.56 million barrels to 295.3 million. Stockpiles were forecast to decline 675,000 barrels, according to the survey results.

Oil has tumbled 16 percent from a record $147.27 a barrel on July 11, as a stronger U.S. dollar limited the appeal of commodities as a hedge against inflation and high prices cut fuel consumption. Prices also fell the past two days as Hurricane Dolly moved away from oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.

Energy companies evacuated some oil rigs as a precaution. That cut production in the Gulf by 4.7 percent, the U.S. Interior Department said yesterday. Companies that carried out evacuations include BP Plc, Noble Corp., Chevron Corp., Devon Energy Corp., Citgo Petroleum Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc.

Oil and other commodities may drop further and the dollar increase if the Federal Reserve boosts interest rates to curb inflation. Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser yesterday said higher mortgage costs and continued declines in house prices pose no bar to raising interest rates. Policy makers must increase borrowing costs before inflation expectations become "unhinged," Plosser said in an interview with Bloomberg Television yesterday.

The dollar traded at 107.74 yen at 11:11 a.m. in Singapore, after rising 0.5 percent yesterday, when it reached 107.97, the highest since June 26. The U.S. currency was at $1.5684 per euro, after rising 0.5 percent yesterday and touching $1.5670, the strongest since July 9.

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Photos courtesy of AP/Energy Department, Bloomberg News and LA Times

Original Source: Bloomberg