Tue 25 May 2010
Concerns over North Korea Shake Markets and Euro
Posted by admin under Markets , World News No Comments
(From the nytimes.com) Global stocks skidded Tuesday and the euro resumed its fall, as reports that North Korea had threatened its southern neighbor jolted nerves already frayed by concerns about public sector finances in Europe. Wall Street was headed for a fall at the start of trading. “We’re seeing the same problems with Europe,” Philippe Gijsels, head of research at BNP Paribas Fortis Global Markets in Brussels, said, “except now attention is focused more on Spain,” where the central bank took over a failing lender, CajaSur, over the weekend and four smaller banks just agreed to merge. (more…)
(From the ft.com) The telephone has not stopped ringing at the Rand refinery in South Africa this week. Panicking German dealers and banks have been desperate to get their hands on krugerrands, the world’s most popular gold coin. “We have some extraordinary sales to German customers,” says Deborah Thomson, the Rand treasurer. The refinery, which usually sells 2,000 coins to each customer at a time, says that last week it received an order from one German bank for 30,000 coins. Another bank requested 15,000 coins. 
(From Science Daily) A new study led by the University of Adelaide’s Environment Institute in Australia has ranked most of the world’s countries for their environmental impact. The research uses seven indicators of environmental degradation to form two rankings — a proportional environmental impact index, where impact is measured against total resource availability, and an absolute environmental impact index measuring total environmental degradation at a global scale. 
“Trading Barbs with China —of tires, chickens and unintended consequences” — recent headline in the WSJ 
(From the FT.com) Three people with links to the US consulate in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez were gunned down at the weekend by “drug cartel hit teams”, according to a US official. A consulate employee and her husband, both US citizens, were murdered while driving in the violent border city, which neighbors El Paso, Texas. Their baby daughter, who was sitting in the back seat, survived the attack. 
(From the N.Y. Times) One of the world’s foremost experts on comparing national school systems told lawmakers on Tuesday that many other countries were surpassing the United States in educational attainment, including Canada, where he said 15-year-old students were, on average, more than one school year ahead of American 15-year-olds. 
Members of California Task Force 2 (CA-TF2), Los Angeles County Fire’s Heavy Urban Search and Rescue Task Force, have been demobilized. The Task Force was mobilized on March 1 for possible deployment to Chile following the country’s 8.8 magnitude earthquake, and received word late yesterday from the United States Agency for International Development, U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (USAID-OFDA) that it could stand down.
California Task Force 2 (CA-TF2), Los Angeles County Fire’s world-class Heavy Rescue Task Force, has been mobilized for deployment to Chile to help rescue and recover earthquake victims in Latin America, following a 8.8 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Maule, Chili. 
(From the N.Y. Times) The magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck off the coast of Chile early Saturday morning occurred along the same fault responsible for the biggest quake ever measured, a 1960 tremor that killed nearly 2,000 people in Chile and hundreds more across the Pacific. Both earthquakes took place along a fault zone where the Nazca tectonic plate, the section of the earth’s crust that lies under the Eastern Pacific Ocean south of the Equator, is sliding beneath another section, the South American plate. The two are converging at a rate of about three and a half inches a year. 
The message reads; “The earthquake in Haiti is a reminder of just how fragile our world is. In response to the devastation that affected so many, we are partnering once again with Soles4Souls to lend a helping hand.” That is how Craig Levra’s, President & CEO of Sports Chalet, note started in a call for helping in the Haitian earthquake relief effort. 
(From Science Daily) The death toll in the massive 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti Jan. 12 is expected to continue to rise in the coming days, likely in large part because of corruption and resulting shoddy construction practices in the poor Caribbean nation, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder seismologist. 
(From the N.Y. Times) As tension rose here in the battered Haitian capital, relief workers scrambled on Friday to deliver desperately needed food, water and medical care, recover survivors still trapped in the rubble and collect thousands of decaying bodies from the streets. 
(From the FT.com) Barack Obama on Thursday sought to reassure the people of Haiti that help was on its way, as the IMF announced $100m in immediate assistance for the quake-stricken island. 
(From Reuters) The death toll from Haiti’s earthquake could be between 45,000 and 50,000, with a further three million people hurt or homeless, a senior Haitian Red Cross official said on Thursday. “No one knows with precision, no one can confirm a figure. Our organization thinks between 45,000 and 50,000 people have died. We also think there are 3 million people affected throughout the country, either injured or homeless,” Victor Jackson, an assistant national coordinator with Haiti’s Red Cross said.
(From the wsj.com) The crystal ball has dropped and confetti has showered the crowd of hundreds of thousands of revelers in Times Square who are greeting 2010 with cheers. With hugs and kisses, partygoers tried to look forward to a more hopeful decade after 10 years marred by war, an uncertain economy, terrorism and the threat of environmental catastrophe. 
