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Saturday, December 17, 2011

Arabs may take Syria peace plan to United Nations (Reuters)

BEIRUT (Reuters) ? Arab states may ask the U.N. Security Council to endorse their peace plan aimed at ending a Syrian crackdown on protests against President Bashar al-Assad, Qatar's foreign minister said after talks with Arab League ministers on Saturday.

Expressing frustration that Syria had not implemented the plan, six weeks after it was first agreed, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani said the window for an Arab solution to the crisis was closing.

"If this matter is not solved in the weeks ahead, or couple of months, it will no longer be in Arab control," Sheikh Hamad told journalists after an Arab ministerial committee meeting in Qatar. "That is what we told the Syrians from the beginning."

Syria has conditionally approved a plan to send monitors to oversee implementation of the November 2 Arab League initiative, which calls on Assad to withdraw the army from urban areas, release political prisoners and hold talks with opponents.

But Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby said Damascus was objecting to the League's call for protection of Syrian civilians, saying members of the security forces were also being killed in the turmoil.

For a graphic http://link.reuters.com/dup55s

The United Nations says Assad's crackdown on the protests, inspired by uprisings across the Arab world this year, has killed more than 5,000 people. Authorities blame gunmen for the violence and say 1,100 soldiers and police have been killed.

The Arab League suspended Syria and declared economic sanctions against Damascus over its failure to implement the initiative. The United States, European Union and neighboring Turkey have also imposed sanctions.

Long-time Syrian ally Russia took a step closer to the Western position on Thursday when it presented a surprise draft resolution at the United Nations which stepped up its criticism of the bloodshed in Syria.

Sheikh Hamad said that, in response to Moscow's move, the Arab League would meet on Wednesday to decide whether "to ask the Security Council to adopt the Arab initiative and Arab resolutions instead of resolutions from other states."

"We are not talking about military action but we will ask the Security Council to adopt the Arab initiative," he added.

Any referral of the Arab plan to the United Nations would be likely to anger Damascus, which has accused unnamed Arab countries of trying to set the stage for foreign intervention.

The unrest is the most serious challenge to the 11-year rule of Assad, 46, whose family is from the minority Alawite sect and has ruled majority Sunni Muslim Syria since 1970.

An armed insurgency has begun to eclipse civilian protests, raising fears Syria could descend into civil war.

Two days ago army deserters killed 27 soldiers and security personnel in the southern province of Deraa, an activist group said. On Friday, activists said security forces shot dead at least 19 people during protests by hundreds of thousands.

IRAQI MISSION

Shi'ite-led Iraq, which opposed the Arab League sanctions on its neighbour and fears that unrest in Syria will spill across the frontier and upset its own delicate sectarian balance, sent a delegation to Damascus on Saturday.

Assad met the Iraqi delegation that included National Security Adviser Faleh al-Fayad and "affirmed that Syria dealt positively with all proposals submitted to it," the official news agency SANA report.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's media adviser Ali al-Moussawi said the delegation would meet government officials and representatives of the Syrian opposition in Syria. "And we ready to meet members of the opposition outside Syria," he said.

The main exile opposition Syrian National Council was meeting in Tunisia on the first anniversary of the self-immolation of a jobless Tunisian graduate Mohamed Bouazizi, the incident that set off a wave of revolts around the Arab world.

Syrian protesters have expressed growing frustration that the Arab League, which surprised many when it suspended Syria and subsequently announced sanctions against Damascus, has since then extended the deadline for Syrian compliance several times.

Hundreds of thousands demonstrated on Friday, according to the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, under the slogan of "The Arab League is killing us."

The British-based Observatory said 19 people were killed by security forces on Friday, but the state news agency SANA said there were no fatalities, despite what it said were several attacks by "armed terrorist groups" against security forces.

It also reported that security forces defused several explosives in Damascus and Hama provinces on Friday.

(Additional reporting by Waleed Ibrahim in Baghdad and Sami Aboudi in Dubai; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111217/wl_nm/us_syria

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Analysis: China's $300 billion fund a wake-up call to U.S. (Reuters)

BEIJING (Reuters) ? China's plan for a new $300 billion sovereign wealth fund is as much a warning to Washington as it is a body blow to Brussels.

It's the clearest sign yet of Beijing's waning faith in bonds issued by Europe and the United States. Europe's festering debt debacle, record low yields on U.S. Treasuries and a depreciating dollar all add weight to the view in China that the time is ripe to change investment tack.

"China has decided that real assets are better than broken debt fix promises and low interest rates," says Paul Markowski, president of MES Advisers and a long-time external adviser to China's monetary policymakers on global financial markets.

Beijing has watched for two years as Europe's crisis has choked growth and demand in China's biggest export market and stoked default risks on the near $800 billion of euro zone government bonds it is estimated to own.

It has been a painful lesson.

After all, China had actively bought euro assets to guard its $3.2 trillion reserve pile against over-exposure to U.S. dollars, which have lost about a third of their value in the last 10 years as U.S. Treasury yields have sunk to record lows.

Reuters reported last week that the People's Bank of China plans to create the new vehicle with two funds, one for Europe and one for the United States, making China in aggregate the world's biggest sovereign wealth fund investor. The plan originated before Europe's debt crisis, sources said.

That gels with comments from investment sources with links to China's monetary authorities and foreign reserve managers who detect a clear desire in Beijing to acquire real assets in return for supplying fresh funds to bridge U.S. deficits and recapitalize European financial institutions and governments.

HAPPIER RETURNS

The $300 billion figure is consistent with the sum that Markowski and others calculate China has in excess reserves -- the amount beyond what Beijing would need to tackle a balance of payments crisis or a domestic funding emergency.

"They want underlying assets. Equities, corporate bonds, real estate -- anything that governments want to flog," said one source involved in foreign exchange trading for official institutions such as central banks.

The source singled out bidding for the Portuguese government's stake in utility firm Energias de Portugal, which would net roughly 2.5 billion euros for Lisbon, as typical of the path indebted countries will have to follow in future to persuade reserve managers to part with additional cash [ID:nL6E7NC0UN].

Granted, Chinese investors won't be warmly received everywhere -- a sovereign wealth fund showing up in Paris or Madrid with an offer to buy up public infrastructure would probably come away disappointed.

"It's easier said than done," said one Hong Kong based investment banker who has advised Chinese clients on overseas acquisitions. "One idea is that China could buy up agricultural land. They've also eyed ports in the past. They just don't want to do anything that's politically unpopular."

There are domestic pressures, too. China Investment Corp (CIC), the country's existing sovereign wealth fund, was sharply criticized within China for money-losing investments in U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley and private equity firm Blackstone Group in 2007.

But with a European debt crisis and the U.S. triple-A rating no longer a given, China's state investors have good reasons to push into new kinds of assets.

"There is a great deal of discomfort (among reserve managers) over what the concept of a risk-free asset is," said Gary Smith, the London-based global head of official institutions at BNP Paribas Investment Partners.

Doubts about the safety of government bonds in developed markets where fiscal balance sheets are battered and inflation risks are high in the face of exceptional monetary stimulus have seen Smith's clients allocate new cash to inflation-linked bonds this year and even move into higher risk emerging markets.

"Of course your risk goes up if you invest in emerging markets, but if your risk has already gone up in what you previously considered risk-free assets, then the relative disadvantage of emerging markets has gone down."

That analysis speaks volumes to reserve managers and wealth funds, opening up a raft of new investment opportunities that developed economies had not previously had to compete against.

Data shows China's shift into real-world assets is under way.

China's outward foreign direct investment (FDI) hit $68 billion in 2010 after more than doubling in 2008 to $52 billion from $23 billion in 2007, according to Karl Sauvant, executive director of the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment at Columbia University and an expert on global FDI.

Sauvant's institute estimates China will strike $1-2 trillion in FDI deals over the coming decade, adding to its existing portfolio of over $300 billion.

ONCE IN A LIFETIME

Whether China's change of focus is all borne of European debt and dollar debasement or a desire to move China's economy up the value chain, a new mood in Beijing is evident to many.

"Many foreign firms have advanced technology and they are having business difficulties and at the brink of bankruptcy. This is the opportunity that occurs only once in a thousand years," Zheng Xinli, an influential government adviser, was quoted as saying last week by Hong Kong's Wen Wei Po newspaper.

It's at least the best time in 15-20 years to buy European listed equity, even adjusting for the tattered price-tags on European financial stock, says JP Morgan analyst Mislav Matejka.

Euro zone shares are trading at a 46 percent price-to-book value discount to the United States, making it the cheapest region in the world for a global equity investor, says Matejka.

Independent China policy expert Andy Xie agrees.

"European stocks are cheap," said Xie. "Many European companies earn profits all over the world. It makes sense for Asian central banks to shift their reserves from overpriced government bonds like US Treasuries into such stocks. It would pump money into the euro zone through a channel that benefits Asian countries over time."

(Additional reporting by Michael Flaherty; Editing by Don Durfee, Brian Rhoads and Dean Yates)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/china/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111214/bs_nm/us_china_wealth

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Friday, December 16, 2011

Unwanted online sexual exposures decline for youth, new research finds

ScienceDaily (Dec. 15, 2011) ? A new study from the University of New Hampshire Crimes against Children Research Center finds declines in two kinds of youth Internet sexual encounters of great concern to parents: unwanted sexual solicitations and unwanted exposure to pornography. The researchers suspect that greater public awareness may have been, in part, what has helped.

The study found that the percentage of youth receiving unwanted online sexual requests declined from 13 percent in 2005 to 9 percent in 2010. Youth experiencing unwanted pornography exposure declined from 34 percent to 23 percent over the same period.

On the other hand, youth reports of online harassment increased slightly from 2005, up from 9 percent to 11 percent.

The study, "Trends in Youth Internet Victimization: Findings From Three Youth Internet Safety Surveys 2000-2010," was recently published online in the Journal of Adolescent Health. It is based on national surveys of youth ages 10 through 17 conducted in 2000, 2005, and 2010.

"The constant news about Internet dangers may give the impression that all Internet problems have been getting worse for youth but actually that is not the case," said lead author Lisa Jones, research associate professor of psychology at the UNH Crimes against Children Research Center. "The online environment may be improving."

Jones pointed out that unwanted sexual solicitations are down more than 50 percent since 2000, when attention first was drawn to the problem.

"The arrests, the publicity and the education may have tamped down the sexual soliciting online" said author Kimberly Mitchell, research assistant professor of psychology at the UNH Crimes against Children Research Center. "The more effective safety and screening features incorporated into websites and networks may have helped reduce the unwanted encounters with pornography."

Jones said harassment may not have fallen because attention to that online problem has been more recent. "Hopefully, the new focus on online harassment will produce some of the same improvements in this problem that we have seen in sexual solicitations," she said.

The authors cautioned that unwanted sexual solicitations should not be understood as necessarily communications from adult online predators. Previous research has found that while youth do not know the source of all the unwanted sexual solicitations they receive, when they did know, half were believed to come from other youth.

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Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111215113512.htm

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Italian appeals court says why it cleared Knox

FOR USE AS DESIRED, YEAR END PHOTOS - FILE -In this Oct. 3, 2011 file photo, Amanda Knox breaks in tears after hearing the verdict that overturns her conviction and acquits her of murdering her British roommate Meredith Kercher, at the Perugia court, central Italy. Italian appeals court threw out Amanda Knox's murder conviction and ordered the young American freed after nearly four years in prison for the death of her British roommate. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito, File)

MILAN, Italy (AP) ? The Italian appeals court that overturned Amanda Knox's murder conviction in the slaying of her British roommate gave the reasons for its ruling on Thursday: the evidence that had been used by a lower court against the American and her Italian boyfriend just didn't hold up.

Those shortcomings included no murder weapon, faulty DNA, an inaccurate time for the killing, and insufficient proof that Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were even at the location where the crime occurred. So said the Perugia appellate court in its long-awaited reasoning behind its October ruling that reversed the lower court's convictions.

British college student Meredith Kercher was found slain in a pool of blood on her bedroom floor in Perugia, Italy, on Nov. 2, 2007.

Knox and Sollecito, who had just begun dating at the time of the murder, were arrested several days later, then convicted in what prosecutors' portrayed as a drug-fueled sexual assault. They were sentenced to 26 years and 25 years, respectively, in proceedings that made headlines around the world.

On Thursday, the appellate cited among the other failed elements of the prosecutors' case DNA evidence, which was undermined during a re-examination in the appeals trial, and the failure to conclusively identify the murder weapon. The appellate court even contradicted the lower court's time of death, saying it happened at around 10:15 p.m., not after 11 p.m. The court said the "building blocks" used to construct the case had failed.

The appeals court also said there was no proof of the prosecutors' claim that Knox and Sollecito had helped a third man, who was convicted separately, of sexually assault Kercher, nor was there evidence that the pair had simulated a burglary by throwing a rock through a window to remove suspicion from themselves, as prosecutors alleged.

The appeals court said the lower court had arrived at a verdict "that was not corroborated by any objective element of evidence and in itself was not, in fact probable: the sudden choice of two young people, good and open to other people, to do evil for evil's sake, just like that, without another reason."

"It is not, therefore, sufficient that the probability of the prosecutors' hypothesis is greater than the hypothesis of the defense, not even when they are notably greater in number, but it is necessary that every explanation that differs from the prosecutors' hypothesis is, according to the criteria of reasonability, not at all plausible," the court said.

The only elements of the prosecutors case that were proven, the appeals court said, were the charge of slander against Knox, who was convicted of falsely accusing a bar owner of killing Kercher, and the fact that the Knox and Sollecito alibis did not match.

That the alibis were out of synch "is very different" from the prosecutors' claim of false alibis, the court said.

The proven elements combined, the court said, are not enough to support convictions against Knox and Sollecito.

"The only elements that are sustained don't allow the belief, even when put together, that the guilt of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito for the crime of murder ... has been proven," the court said.

After her conviction was thrown out, Knox, 24, returned immediately home to Seattle. She was credited with time served for the conviction of slander for accusing bar owner Diya "Patrick" Lumumba of carrying out the killing.

Prosecutors contended a kitchen knife found at Sollecito's house was the weapon because it matched wounds on Kercher's body and carried traces of Kercher's DNA on the blade and Knox's on the handle. However, the court-ordered review discredited the DNA evidence, saying there were glaring errors in evidence-collecting and that below-standard testing and possible contamination raised doubts over the DNA traces on the blade and on Kercher's bra clasp.

In addition, the defense cast doubt on the knife, questioning why Knox and Sollecito would return it to Sollecito's home if it had been used in the murder. They maintain the real weapon has yet to be found.

A third defendant in the case, Rudy Hermann Guede of the Ivory Coast, was convicted in a separate trial of sexually assaulting and stabbing Kercher. His 16-year prison sentence ? reduced on appeal from an initial 30 years ? was upheld by Italy's highest court in 2010.

The appeals court also expressed incredulity that the two would have cooperated in such a crime with Guede, with whom there is no proof of any relationship. "For example, there is no evidence of phone calls or text messages between the three," the court said.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2011-12-15-EU-Italy-Knox/id-936b1caa6ffa4481a29cbaa8d9a6b212

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Thursday, December 15, 2011

Meizu MX review

A quick tag search for "Meizu" on Engadget takes us all the way back to April 2006, where we saw the launch of the Chinese company's M6 Mini Player with MP4 playback. But in fact, if you go as far back as early 2003 (before Engadget was even born) you'll also dig up the Meizu MX, which was eventually launched towards the end of the year. Confused? Well, bear with us here: this MX was Meizu's first ever product, a simple 128MB or 256MB MP3 player that unfortunately bore much resemblance to the Cowon iAudio CW300, albeit with different guts. Was this a case of shameless cloning or just an OEM product being rebadged? Our money's on the latter, but only with Monopoly bills.

Skip past the darker times and fast forward to about nine years later, Meizu would launch another MX, but now it's a totally different animal: a 1.4GHz dual-core Android smartphone that can handle a tad more than just music playback. Of course, company founder Jack Wong and his gang aren't the only players on the paddy field, as we also have the similarly powerful Xiaomi Phone already taking the lead in the Chinese Android enthusiast market. Adding more fuel to the fire is that shortly after the Xiaomi Phone's debut, Wong responded to a related forum post by accusing a certain someone -- which is believed to be Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun -- of abusing his or her old position as an angel investor to deviously walk away with Meizu's trade secrets. Alas, we'll probably never know the truth, so we shall simply observe whether the new Meizu MX will bite back hard and good. Read on for our full review on Meizu's second Android handset.

Gallery: Meizu MX review: packaging and hardware