Stock futures off on China worries, France caution
* Adding to market anxiety, International Business Machines Corp’s quarterly results failed to impress investors used to a robust showing from the technology bellwether. That added to worries over lackluster corporate information technology spending. IBM (IBM.N) shares fell 4.6 percent to $178 in premarket trade.* China’s economic growth slowed in the third quarter to its weakest pace since early 2009. Gross domestic product rose 9.1 percent in the quarter from a year earlier, but was down from 9.5 percent in the previous period.* Moody’s cautioned it may slap a negative outlook on France’s Aaa credit rating in the next three months if the costs for helping to bail out banks and other euro zone members stretch its budget too much.* “Growth concerns in China along with renewed euro debt concerns are bringing some hesitation into the futures market,” said Andre Bakhos, director of market analytics at Lek Securities in New York. “However, investors are looking for some key earnings reports that could change investor perception.”* S&P 500 futures fell 3.9 points and were below fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures dropped 21 points, but Nasdaq 100 futures rose 11.25 points.* Investors awaited September’s Producer Price Index, due at 8:30 a.m. EDT.* Corporate earnings remained in high gear, with results coming early Tuesday from Bank of America Corp (BAC.N).* Results are also due from Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Intel Corp (INTC.O), Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N), and Johnson & Johnson. (JNJ.N)* U.S. planemaker Boeing Co (BA.N) predicted more sales cancellations for its delayed Dreamliner 787 after a Chinese airline scrapped 24 orders, but said the overall order book for the new long-range aircraft remained strong.* U.S. stocks suffered their worst loss in two weeks on Monday after comments from Germany’s finance minister renewed investor fears over Europe.
From a single hashtag, a protest circled the world
It turns out, with enough momentum and a keen sense of how to use social media, it actually is.The Occupy movement, decentralized and leaderless, has mobilized thousands of people around the world almost exclusively via the Internet. To a large degree through Twitter, and also with platforms like Facebook and Meetup, crowds have connected and gathered.As with any movement, a spark is needed to start word spreading. SocialFlow, a social media marketing company, did an analysis for Reuters of the history of the Occupy hashtag on Twitter and the ways it spread and took root.The first apparent mention was that July 13 blog post by activist group Adbusters (r.reuters.com/suc54s) but the idea was slow to get traction.The next Twitter mention was on July 20 (r.reuters.com/tuc54s) from a Costa Rican film producer named Francisco Guerrero, linking to a blog post on a site called Wake Up from Your Slumber that reiterated the Adbusters call to action (r.reuters.com/vuc54s).The site, founded in 2006 “to expose America’s fraudulent monetary system and the evil of charging interest on money loaned,” is a reference to the biblical verse Romans 13:11 that reads in part: “The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.”Guerrero’s post was retweeted once and then there was silence until two July 23 tweets — one from the Spanish user Gurzbo (r.reuters.com/wuc54s) and one from a retired high school chemistry teacher in Long Island, New York named Cindy tweeting as gemswinc. (r.reuters.com/xuc54s)Gurzbo’s post was not passed along by anyone but Cindy’s was, by eight people, including a Delaware-based opponent of the Federal Reserve, a vegan information rights supporter, a Washington-based environmentalist and an Alabama-based progressive blogger.Again, there was relative silence for nearly two weeks, until LazyBookworm tweeted the Occupy hashtag again on August 5. (r.reuters.com/zuc54s) That got seven retweets, largely from a crowd of organic food supporters and poets.HASHTAG REVOLTThe notion of Occupy Wall Street was out there but it was not gaining much attention — until, of course, it did, suddenly and with force.Social media experts trace the expansion to hyper-local tweeters, people who cover the pulse of communities at a level of detail not even local papers can match.In New York, credit goes to the Twitter account of Newyorkist, whose more than 11,000 tweets chronicle the city in block-by-block detail. His was one of the first well-followed accounts to mention the protests in mid-September.Trendistic, which tracks hashtag trends on Twitter, shows that OccupyWallStreet first showed up in any volume around 11 p.m. on September 16, the evening before the occupation of lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park began. Within 24 hours, the tag represented nearly 1 of every 500 uses of a hashtag.The first two weeks of the movement were slow, media coverage was slim and little happened beyond the taking of the concrete park itself. But then a demonstration on the Brooklyn Bridge prompted hundreds of arrests and the spark was ignited.On October 1, #OccupyBoston started to show up on Twitter. Within a couple of weeks, #OccupyDenver and #OccupySD and others appeared.The Occupy Wall Street page on Facebook started on September 19 with a YouTube video of the early protests. By September 22, it reached critical mass.”Newcomers today, welcome! Feel free to post. Advertise your own pages of resistance. Network until it works,” read one posting meant to inspire protests elsewhere.For young activists around the world, who grew up with the Internet and the smartphone, Facebook and Twitter have become crucial in expanding the movement.They are pioneering platforms like Vibe that lets people anonymously share text, photos and video over short distances for brief periods of time — perfect for use at rallies.”No one owns a (Twitter) hashtag, it has no leadership, it has no organization, it has no creed but it’s quite appropriate to the architecture of the net. This is a distributed revolt,” said Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor at City University of New York and author of the well-known blog BuzzMachine.Some reports say the protesters have raised as much as $300,000 in donations to cover everything from pizza to video equipment but others put the figure much lower.The Alliance for Global Justice, which calls itself “the fiscal sponsor for Occupy Wall Street,” has raised $23,200 via WePay.com.OCCUPY EVERYWHEREAs of Monday afternoon, Facebook listed no fewer than 125 Occupy-related pages, from New York to Tulsa and all points in between. Roughly 1 in every 500 hashtags used on Twitter on Monday, all around the world, was the movement’s own #OWS.The websites keep proliferating — We Are the 99 Percent, Parents for Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Together, even the parody Occupy Sesame Street (concerned mostly with the plight of monsters living in garbage cans).Online streaming video has also been a huge resource for the protesters, using cheap cameras and high-speed wireless Internet access.Supporters, opponents and the merely curious got the chance last Saturday to watch the Occupy Wall Street protesters decide whether to occupy a major public park, Washington Square Park, in the Greenwich Village area.They saw warnings the police were about to arrive in riot gear and with horses, vans and buses to take away protesters if there were mass arrests. Local media reported about 10 arrests among the 3,000 or so people in the park.As the seconds to a possible confrontation ticked down, the tension led to various reactions from those watching online.”Anyone arrested is a political prisoner,” said one.”Here comes Czar Bloomberg’s Cossacks,” said another, in reference to New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg and the appearance of the mounted police.There were “we are watching” messages of support from cities across the United States and some who found it the best entertainment going on a Saturday night.”So much more exciting than a TV show” was one comment.
U.S. hopes IAEA report clearer on Iran nuclear fears
But it is too early to say if the report about Iran’s uranium enrichment program could prompt Tehran’s referral to the U.N. Security Council, Glyn Davies, the U.S. envoy to the watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, told reporters in Santiago on the first stop of a Latin American trip to study uses of nuclear power.”We expect the IAEA to begin to get more explicitly into the issue of what is called the possible military dimensions of the Iranian nuclear program,” Davies said. “I hope what we’ll see from the IAEA is sort of a sharpening of the case.”“We’ll see whether there’s enough there for further action by the board of governors of the IAEA,” referring to the possibility of reporting Iran to the U.N. Security Council.The United States and its allies have urged IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano to declare plainly whether he believes there have been military aspects to Tehran’s nuclear activities and whether such work may still be going on.Such a move by the IAEA could raise pressure on Tehran and offer more arguments for Western powers to tighten sanctions on the major oil producer.Sanctions against Iran are effective, Davies said, and have slowed the country’s nuclear program.President Barack Obama said on Thursday that an alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States will prompt Washington to apply the toughest possible sanctions to further isolate Tehran.SYRIAN REACTOR PROBEDavies said he didn’t know what progress would be made at a planned meeting between United Nations nuclear inspectors and Syrian officials this month to try to kick-start a long-stalled probe into a suspected reactor site bombed to rubble in Syria by Israel in 2007.”The Syrians have said once again they’ll cooperate… I don’t know where it’s going to go,” he said.U.S. intelligence reports have said that before the Israeli raid, Dair Alzour had housed a nascent, North Korean-designed reactor intended to produce plutonium for atomic weaponry.Syria says it was a nonnuclear military facility, but the IAEA concluded in May that Dair Alzour was “very likely” to have been a nuclear reactor that should have been declared.”They (Syria) have been covering up like nobody’s business,” Davies said. “Obviously there is a bit of hierarchy of safeguard cases … and for us, Iran looms largest.”Davies is also set to visit Peru, Argentina and Brazil.
Senate approves China yuan bill, House fate unclear
The legislation, which Beijing has warned could spark a trade war, would allow the U.S. government to slap countervailing duties on products from countries found to be subsidizing their exports by undervaluing their currencies.Some U.S. lawmakers contend China’s yuan is undervalued by as much as 40 percent, giving Chinese producers an unfair advantage in international markets and costing U.S. jobs.The Senate’s 63-35 vote puts the bill, which is designed to pressure Beijing into letting the yuan rise in value, in the hands of the Republican-controlled House, which may never vote on the bill despite rank-and-file support.House Speaker John Boehner last week said it would be “dangerous” for Congress to get involved with a foreign country’s exchange rate.Another top Republican, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, said President Barack Obama should clarify his position on the bill, which has drawn warnings from Beijing.”What I would like to see is where the administration is. Clearly they’ve got concerns as well,” Cantor, the No. 2 House Republican, told reporters.Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the fate of the bill was unclear but its message expressed the country’s mood.”I don’t know whether this bill in the form that its passing the Senate will ever end up as a piece of legislation coming from the Congress,” Clinton told Reuters in an interview. “But it does reflect a great deal of frustration on the part of the American people.”If the House were to pass the bill, Obama would face a dilemma. Signing it would anger China, whose cooperation the United States needs both on the economic front and in global hot spots such as North Korea and Iran.But vetoing the bill would not play well in industrial heartland states like Ohio and Michigan, and could undercut Obama’s bid for second term.A leading Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, on Tuesday repeated his vow to crack down on China over currency on his first day in office if elected.SENDING A STRONG MESSAGEMany U.S. economists say China holds down the value of its yuan to give its exporters an edge in global markets. China says it is committed to gradual currency reform and notes that the yuan has risen 30 percent against the dollar since 2005.A key provision of the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2011 would require the Commerce Department to consider whether undervalued currencies act as an effective export subsidy that justify the United States applying countervailing duties in response.Obama, who has preferred dialogue with China to punitive measures, last week said China was “gaming” the international trade system. But he has not taken a formal position on the bill and cautioned that it must be compatible with World Trade Organization rules.However, he has not said how the legislation might run afoul of WTO rules. The authors of the legislation say trade lawyers have found that it complies.Boehner has the power to block the bill in the House, even though backers of the legislation say it has 225 House co-sponsors, including 61 Republicans — enough for passage if it came to a vote.Senator Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican and former U.S. trade negotiator, told Reuters he supported the legislation, even though he preferred the Obama administration lead a multilateral effort to pressure China to revalue the yuan.”I have some concerns about the legislation, which I’ve expressed … But I think it’s time to send a strong message,” he said. “This is an opportunity to raise the visibility of the issue and to encourage the administration to address it more vigorously.”China has mounted an intense lobbying effort in Washington to kill the legislation.A 12-member “Congressional Liaison Team” inside the Chinese embassy has been meeting with aides to key lawmakers, making phone calls to congressional offices and speaking to the White House on the issue, according to Chinese and U.S. officials.
Deals of the day — mergers and acquisitions
** The family that runs 99 Cents Only Stores
changed buyout partners to take the retailer private at
a higher price than an earlier proposal in March, marking the
latest private equity backed deal in discount retail.** Broadband technology and software provider ARRIS Group
Inc said it is to buy BigBand Networks for
$2.24 per share in cash to strengthen its networked video
technology capabilities.** Western Wind Energy said it received an
unsolicited takeover bid from Algonquin Power and Utilities
for at least C$150 million ($145.5
million).** Canada’s B2Gold Corp said it agreed to buy Auryx
Gold Corp for about C$130 million in a cash-and-stock
deal.** Jones Group Inc , a maker of clothing,
shoes and accessories, is in talks to sell its stagnating
jeanswear division for up to $400 million as it focuses on its
more profitable luxury brands.** Sinopec International Petroleum Exploration and
Production Corp (SIPC), a wholly-owned unit of state-owned
Sinopec Group, has completed the purchase of an 18 percent stake
in Chevron Corp’s Indonesian deep-water project for $680
million, a Sinopec official told Reuters on Tuesday.** Payment processor Heartland Payment Systems Inc
said its unit Heartland School Solutions acquired
privately held School-Link Technologies Inc for an undisclosed
amount, to expand its market share in the school services
payments industry.** Murata Manufacturing Co plans to acquire
Finland’s sensor maker VTI Technologies for 20 billion yen ($261
million), including debt, as it seeks to expand in the growing
market for smaller and low-energy sensors.** Eurasian Natural Resources Corp plans to buy the
outstanding 75 percent of Kazakh coal producer Shubarkol Komir
for up to $600 million plus assumed debt of about $50 million.** UK-based holding company Chime Communications PLC
said it will buy Gulliford Consulting Limited for an initial
consideration of 2.5 million pounds ($3.9 million) in a cash and
stock deal.
Meet the Duchess of Holiday Weekends
Blog Guy, it’s me, the guy you got hooked on photos of that duchess…
I guess that narrows it down to about nine million guys.
I need fresh pictures, but the last time I asked, you gave me a duchess made of butter and a chick with gross fingernails. So this time, I’ll be clearer.
No names, please.
Okay, um, she’s a duchess, she got married recently and she’s a member of a royal family… Is that enough for you to go on?
Sure, say no more. I’ve got just what you want. Presenting, Spain’s Duchess of Alba Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart y Silva, dancing at her wedding a few days ago.
No! She’s not the one I wanted to see! What the hell kind of duchess is this?
The kind you get on a long holiday weekend, pal. Just shut up and enjoy watching her dance…
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Top: Spain’s Duchess of Alba Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart y Silva (R) dances flamenco with her son Cayetano Martinez de Irujo after her wedding with Alfonso Diez at Las Duenas Palace in Seville, October 5, 2011. /Pool
Right and left: The duchess dances flamenco beside her husband, Alfonso Diez outside Las Duenas Palace after their wedding in Seville, October 5, 2011.
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