“Ode to Joy” for Royal Philharmonic Society’s 200th

LONDON (Reuters) – The British music society that commissioned Beethoven to write his Ninth Symphony and its “Ode to Joy” announced on Wednesday it will celebrate the society’s 2013 bicentenary by showing off its manuscript of the work on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Royal Philharmonic Society, founded in London in January, 1813, also will sponsor performances of Beethoven’s last symphony, splash out on commissions of new music and will digitize its archive held at the British Library, the society announced in the London pub where its founders used to meet.

“Some of the most famous works in the classical repertoire were either commissioned by the Philharmonic Society or premiered in the UK at Philharmonic Society concerts,” John Gilhooly, the society’s Irish chairman, told reporters.

“Works by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Rachmaninov, Sibelius, Wagner, Brahms, Bruckner and Delius, Debussy and Shostakovich, to name but a few,” Gilhooly continued, adding that the society had commissioned “over 60 composers in the last decade alone”.

The society will participate in exhibits in New York and London featuring manuscript versions of Beethoven’s last symphony which contains the “Ode to Joy” that has become a theme song for world peace and freedom.

The society’s archives record that in 1817 it paid Beethoven 50 guineas for the work. The society, which is not publicly funded and is financed by donations, got the “royal” tag in its centenary year.

Gilhooly said a much-photographed and copied bust of Beethoven that the society owns would be making a return visit to concert stages after having been squirreled away in the RPS headquarters for most of the past 30 years.

“It’s going to be a bit like the Olympic torch,” Gilhooly said. “It’s busted out in preparation for a grand tour.”

Founded by a group of professional musicians to make classical music available to a wider audience, the RPS said it was commissioning 16 new works by such prominent composers as Harrison Birtwistle, Wolfgang Rihm and Magnus Lindberg, some of them in conjunction with the Britten-Pears Foundation which is celebrating the centenary of British composer Benjamin Britten.

“I very much admire that they are sponsoring young composers, older composers, making it possible that music, even avant garde or little known music, is written and performed,” Alfred Brendel, one of the world’s most distinguished pianists and a RPS gold medal recipient, who retired from public performance several years ago, told Reuters at the launch event.

The exhibit of letters and manuscripts will be mounted in cooperation with the British Library and the Morgan Library and the Juilliard School of music in New York, which holds another copy of the Beethoven Ninth.

The American and British manuscripts of the symphony, annotated by Beethoven, will be seen together side by side for the first time since 1824 in New York later in the year, the society said.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

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Climate change threatens sweet smell of morning coffee

LONDON (Reuters) – Rising temperatures due to climate change could mean wild arabica coffee is extinct in 70 years, posing a risk to the genetic sustainability of one of the world’s basic commodities, scientists said.

Although commercial coffee growers would still be able to cultivate crops in plantations designed with the right conditions, experts say the loss of wild arabica, which has greater genetic diversity, would make it harder for plantations to survive long-term and beat threats like pests and disease.

A study by researchers at Britain’s Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in collaboration with scientists in Ethiopia found that 38 to 99.7 percent of the areas suitable for wild arabica will disappear by 2080 if predictions of rising temperatures pan out.

Because coffee is a highly climate-dependent crop, the increase of a few degrees of average temperature in growing regions can put at risk the future of Arabica coffee and the livelihood of millions of people who grow and produce it.

“The extinction of arabica coffee is a startling and worrying prospect,” said Aaron Davis, head of coffee research at the Royal Botanic Gardens, who led the study.

In a telephone interview, he said the findings made it even more important for organizations such as the World Coffee Research collaboration to continue work to improve the genetic strength of cultivated arabica by preserving wild types.

Researchers used computer modeling to analyze the influence of rising temperatures on the geographical distribution of wild arabica coffee.

The results, published in a the Public Library of Science journal PLOS ONE, showed a “profoundly negative influence” on the number and extent of wild arabica populations, the researchers said.

The researchers conducted two types of analysis. In the locality analysis, they found that the best outcome was for a 65 percent fall in the number of pre-existing bioclimatic ally suitable localities and the worst was for a 99.7 percent drop by 2080.

In the area analysis, the best outcome was a 38 percent reduction in suitable growing regions and the worst case was a 90 percent reduction by 2080.

Davis said the predictions were conservative, since the modeling did not factor in large-scale deforestation now taking place in Ethiopia and South Sudan, another Arabica coffee region.

“The models assume intact natural vegetation, whereas the highland forests of Ethiopia and South Sudan are highly fragmented due to deforestation,” the researchers wrote.

“Other factors, such as pests and diseases, changes in flowering times, and perhaps a reduction in the number of birds (which disperse the coffee seeds), are not included, and these are likely to have a compounding negative influence.”

Cultivated arabica coffee accounts for slightly more than 60 percent of global coffee production, with about 4.86 million tones produced this year and valued at around $ 16 billion in wholesale trade.

Exports of coffee also are crucial to the economies of countries including Brazil, Sudan and Ethiopia, where arabica coffee is thought to have originated.

(Additional reporting by Nigel Hunt; editing by Jane Baird and William Hardy)

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DIY homes ‘should be made easier’

7 November 2012 Last updated at 19:06 ET

By Kevin Peachey Personal finance reporter, BBC News

Homeowners should not consider it a “pie in the sky dream” to build their own property, according to the new housing minister.

Mark Prisk told mortgage lenders that self-built homes should be considered as one way to boost the UK housing market.

He said that only about 10% of new UK homes were self-built, compared with 60% in France and Germany.

But homebuilders and lenders said this would only ever be a niche market.

Building fund

Self-build has become more prominent through television shows such as Grand Designs and generally they involve an owner buying a plot of land and then hiring an architect to design a property.

Mr Prisk reaffirmed the government’s push for self-built homes at a conference in London organised by the Council of Mortgage Lenders.

He said that the UK was also well behind countries such as the US where 45% of new homes were self-built.

Continue reading the main story

A group of residents in Ashley Vale, in Bristol, were worried about the redevelopment of a former scaffolding site in the area.

So they formed a not-for-profit community action group which bought and developed the site itself.

When building work began on 20 self-built homes in 2001, the people involved had no trouble raising the finance.

Borrowing became more difficult when five bungalows were built about five years ago.

But in the third phase of the project two years ago, they only secured mortgages for flats and a community space when the building work was completed.

Despite the increasing difficulty in securing finance, Johanna Nicholls, who chairs the group, said that they were looking for new plots to build more affordable homes.

The government has set aside a £30m investment fund to promote self-build. Sites in North East Derbyshire and Peterborough have recently been approved for a slice of the funding.

The opportunity for individuals and communities to build their own homes was now a realistic option, he said, and lenders should give them the chance.

“I’m not pretending self-build is the entire answer, but it is an element I want to encourage you to incorporate,” he told the audience of mortgage lenders.

‘Crisis’

He said that the number of self-build mortgage products had increased.

However, the fact that these still numbered just over 20 meant that many in the industry only regarded this as niche part of the market, and nothing like sufficient to make a dent in the housing shortage.

“We welcome everyone building houses,” said Stewart Baseley, of the Home Builders Federation.

“There is plenty of room on the pitch for all these balls to be kicked about. But self-build is not the solution that will solve the housing crisis.”

Mark Clare, group chief executive of Barratt Developments, the UK’s biggest housebuilder, said that self-built homes still needed to be financed and expertise needed to put them up.

He said that there would be a one million shortfall of homes by the end of the year.

Some 110,000 homes were being built, but 250,000 new households were being created, as people lived for longer and got married later.

“This is going to get worse before it gets better,” he said.

Mr Baseley said that three times as many homes were built in the 1950s and 1960s, about half of which were for council housing.

“We are in the midst of a housing crisis,” he said.

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Canada firms to capitalize on nuclear trade with India

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Canadian firms will be able to export uranium and nuclear reactors to India for the first time in almost four decades under an agreement between the two nations, their prime ministers said, but more work is needed to implement the deal.

Once implemented, the agreement will end a ban on nuclear cooperation Canada imposed in 1976 after India secretly exploded its first nuclear bomb in 1974, commonly called the “Smiling Buddha”, using material from a Canadian-built reactor in India.

“Being able to resolve these issues and move forward is, we believe, a really important economic opportunity for an important Canadian industry, part of the energy industry, that should pay dividends in terms of jobs and growth for Canadians down the road,” Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Tuesday on a visit to New Delhi.

A negotiator with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), speaking on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the talks, said that what remained was a careful legal review of the language; translation into French and Hindi; and then a signing.

This is not expected to take very long, he said. The two sides have set up a joint committee to liaise on nuclear issues, but he said it would not be negotiating.

India aims to lift its nuclear capacity to 63,000 MW in the next 20 years by adding nearly 30 reactors. The country currently operates 20 mostly small reactors at six sites with a capacity of 4,780 MW, or 2 percent of its total power capacity, according to the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited.

Canada’s ambassador to India, Stewart Beck, said on Monday his country wanted to be able to track all nuclear material, but that India felt it only needed to report to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

It was not clear who made concessions in the talks and how effective the safeguards would be to ensure that Canadian material did not get used again for making nuclear weapons.

However, the CNSC official said India would now be required to notify Canada of any transfers to a third country and trade could only go to facilities that are safeguarded by the IAEA.

PROBABLY BEATING AUSTRALIA

Harper said the CNSC had worked to “achieve all of our objectives in terms of non-proliferation”.

Canada is in a race against Australia, its strategic ally but a commercial rival in the uranium business. Australia is also trying to nail down safeguards under which it too could sell uranium to India.

“We are effectively ahead of the Australians,” the CNSC official said, noting however that Russia and Kazakhstan were already supplying into India.

Opening up the Indian market would be a big help to Canada’s Cameco Corp, which is the world’s largest publicly traded uranium producer but which recently cut its long-term output targets due to the Fukushima disaster.

“Anytime we can reduce the roadblocks to selling our product around the world is always helpful,” Cameco chief executive Tim Gitzel told Reuters in Canada. “It opens a new market for us with the appropriate safeguards in place. So this is good news.”

Another potential beneficiary is Canadian engineering firm SNC Lavalin Group Inc, which bought the government’s commercial nuclear division, which designed the Candu reactor that is in use in numerous countries.

“As far as the sales of reactors goes, we would normally now request that Canada be accorded the same treatment as the Russians, the French and the Americans and that a site be designated in India for the implementation of at least a twin- unit Candu nuclear power station,” SNC Lavalin International President Ronald Denom, part of Harper’s delegation in India, told Reuters.

He also said it should open up the market to service the existing reactors in India.

Harper also said Canada welcomed foreign investment, after the country temporarily blocked Malaysian state oil firm Petronas’ C$ 5.17 billion ($ 5.19 billion) bid for gas producer Progress Energy Resources on October 20.

Late on Friday, Canada extended to December 10 its review of a $ 15.1 billion bid made in July by China’s CNOOC Ltd for Canadian energy producer Nexen Inc.

“Those decisions have to be taken looking at the global evolving economy in which we operate,” Harper said.

($ 1 = C$ 0.9965)

(Additional reporting by Julie Gordon in Toronto; Additional writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Jonathan Thatcher and Michael Roddy)

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Move over, Obama; Twitter had a big night too

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama called it – in less than 140 characters.

Around 11:15 pm EST, just as the networks were beginning to call the race in his favor, Obama took to Twitter to proclaim himself the winner over Republican candidate Mitt Romney.

“This happened because of you. Thank you,” Obama tweeted.

That the president would take his message to Twitter before taking the stage in Chicago underscored the tremendous role social media platforms like Twitter played in the 2012 election.

Minutes later, with the race called in his favor, Obama tweeted again.

“We’re all in this together. That’s how we campaigned, and that’s who we are. Thank you. -bo.”

Through the course of a long and bitter presidential campaign, Twitter often served as the new first rough draft of history.

Top campaign aides used the Internet tool to snipe at each other, the candidates used it to get out their messages and political reporters used it to inform and entertain.

On Election Night, the tweets were flowing.

By 10 p.m. EST, with the race still up for grabs, Twitter announced it had broken records.

There were more than 31 million election-related tweets on Tuesday night, making Election Night “the most tweeted about event in U.S. political history,” said Twitter spokeswoman Rachael Horwitz. Between 6 p.m. and midnight EST, there were more than 23 million tweets.

Horwitz noted the previous record was 10 million, during the first presidential debate on October 3.

“Twitter brought people closer to almost every aspect of the election this year,” Horwitz said. “From breaking news, to sharing the experience of watching the debates, to interacting directly with the candidates, Twitter became a kind of nationwide caucus.”

In the moments following Obama’s win, Twitter was in a frenzy, with a peak of 327,000 tweets a minute.

Another tweet from Obama, one that read: “Four more years” and showed a picture of him hugging his wife, became the most retweeted tweet in the history of the site.

‘FIRST TWITTER ELECTION’

Love it or hate it, Twitter and its role in politics appears to be here to stay.

For Rob Johnson, campaign manager for Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry’s failed presidential run, Twitter “changed the dynamic this cycle and will continue to play a bigger role in years to come.”

“We no longer click refresh on websites or wait for the paper boy to throw the news on our porch,” Johnson said. “We go to Twitter and learn the facts before others read it.”

The 2012 race was the first where Twitter played such an important role. Top campaign advisers like Romney’s Eric Fehrnstrom and Obama’s David Axelrod engaged in Twitter battles through the year.

With many political reporters and campaign staff on Twitter and Facebook, social media websites were often the first place news broke. Some top news stories were kept alive or thrust into the headlines after becoming hot topics on Twitter.

“It was one heckuva echo chamber,” Dante Scala, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire, said in an email.

Johnson said Twitter was the driving force behind some of the year’s biggest political news stories.

“The twitterverse shapes the news and public opinion,” Johnson said. “The Internet is truly a real and powerful tool in politics.”

In future elections, candidates and their campaign staffs will have to include social media as another battleground, Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons said.

“This was the first Twitter election and social media is now fully a part of our election mechanics,” Simmons said. “Going forward candidates must have an aggressive social media strategy if they want to win.”

(Editing by Mary Milliken and Peter Cooney)

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Election over but final Florida results still not in

MIAMI (Reuters) – Americans gave President Barack Obama a second term in office, but it still wasn’t clear early on Wednesday whether the president won the key battleground state of Florida.

The vote in the state, which introduced the terms “hanging chads” and “butterfly ballots” to the masses in its historic 2000 presidential election, was too close to call long after Republican challenger Mitt Romney conceded his loss.

Early Wednesday morning Obama was edging out Romney by about 45,000 votes, or 0.53 percentage points, out of a total of 8.27 million votes cast in Florida, with about 99 percent of the votes counted.

“It’s 1:42 in the morning and I just heard there are still people voting in Miami-Dade County,” tweeted Chris Cate, spokesman for Florida‘s Secretary of State, who is responsible for elections. “Kudos to their commitment to voting!”

The head of elections for Florida‘s Miami-Dade County, which accounts for about 10 percent of the state’s 12 million registered voters, said final results would not be available until Wednesday afternoon.

Until then, it may not be totally clear whether Obama won the state, which he carried in 2008.

At one church in Miami hundreds of voters were still in line when polls were due to close at 7 p.m.

“I believe that Obama is doing a good job and he’s going to do a better job,” said Michele Adriaanse, 59, who arrived to vote at 6.30 p.m. and finally cast her ballot shortly before midnight. “If we don’t give him the chance, things will go back to how they were,” she added.

Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Penelope Townsley told reporters the delay was due to “an extremely high volume of absentee ballots” and because long lines forced some precincts to remain open hours after their official closing time.

Florida accounts for 29 of the 270 votes in the electoral college a candidate needs to win the presidency. That is more than any other swing state, and by many accounts the fourth-largest state was a must-win for Romney.

Most recent polls had given Romney an edge over the incumbent in Florida, where the economic recovery has been slower than in other states and long-term unemployment has reached record highs.

But registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans in Florida by about 5 percentage points and Romney faced multiple headwinds in the state.

A plan by Romney’s vice presidential running mate, U.S. Representative Paul Ryan, to change the Medicare health insurance program for seniors was among the factors often cited as holding back Romney’s campaign in the retiree-heavy state.

He also suffered from an inability to make inroads among Hispanic voters, outside of the state’s conservative Cuban-American community.

Florida propelled former President George W. Bush to a wafer-thin victory in 2000 when he won the state by 537 votes.

SLOW-GOING

Complaints about voting procedures, long lines to cast ballots, restrictions on early voting and some possible irregularities have been heard repeatedly across Florida. There have been no claims of anything widespread or problematic enough to cast doubt on the credibility of the Florida outcome.

It also was not immediately whether U.S. Representative Allen West – the firebrand Republican lawmaker known for his blistering attacks on Obama and other Democrats – had won one of the country’s most closely watched congressional races.

West, a darling of the conservative Tea Party movement, had amassed one of the largest campaign war chests among House Republicans. His known supporters included organizations like Americans for Prosperity, the conservative political advocacy group funded by the billionaire Koch brothers.

But he faced a tough re-election challenge against Democrat Patrick Murphy, who had hammered the first-term Republican for the intransigence that led to gridlock in Washington.

Early Wednesday morning, West, 51, was trailing by 2,000 votes out of the 318,000 ballots cast.

Murphy, a 29-year-old businessman and political newcomer, had strong backing from party headquarters and was one of the best-funded Democratic challengers in the country.

A certified public accountant whose father runs a construction company in Miami, Murphy turned the race into a referendum on West, calling the Republican an extremist member of a “do-nothing” Congress.

The battle in Florida‘s new 18th district was seen as a test of whether a high-profile – some say polarizing – conservative could win one of the biggest swing districts in a perennial swing state.

(Reporting by Tom Brown; Additional reporting by David Adams; Editing by Paul Simao)

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Major markets flat on Obama win

7 November 2012 Last updated at 03:31 ET

Continue reading the main story

Major share markets were little changed after US President Barack Obama won a second term in office.

The UK’s main share index, the FTSE 100 rose by just 16 points in early trading, while Japan’s Nikkei ended down by two points.

The US dollar fell slightly, with the euro rising to $ 1.286 from $ 1.281.

Investor attention is now likely to focus on President Obama’s need to secure a deal with the US Congress over looming tax rises and spending cuts.

With the Republicans maintaining a majority in the House of Representatives, this may make negotiations to try to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff more difficult.

This could see nearly $ 600bn (£375bn) of tax increases and spending cuts hit the US economy in January.

The fear is that the tax increases and spending cuts that could be enacted if there is no agreement over deficit reduction may derail a fragile US economic recovery, and in a worst case scenario even push the economy into a recession.

“We head into the fiscal cliff, trying to find compromise where it wasn’t possible before,” said Rob Ryan, director of markets strategy, Asia-Pacific for Royal Bank of Scotland in Singapore.

Germany’s Dax index was up 48 points in early trading, while France’s Cac had rise by 35 points.

Broader concerns

Continue reading the main story

With Greece there are always a number of stages with any vote. It is a prolonged process to reach any conclusion”

End Quote Justin Harper IG Markets

The spending cuts and increased taxes are not the only concern among investors.

The US economy has been battling various other issues, not least the high levels of unemployment in the country, which have dented consumer sentiment and impacted growth.

Despite encouraging jobless numbers last week, unemployment continues to hover close to 8%.

There are concerns amongst some analysts that the jobs market may not improve anytime soon and that the recovery in the US will remain weak.

That does does not bode well for Asian economies as they rely heavily on US demand for exports and overall growth.

Euro woes

Investors have also been wary of the developments in the eurozone, where the Greek Parliament is set to vote on further budget cuts on Wednesday.

The parliament will vote on 13.5bn euros ($ 17.3bn; £10.5bn) of spending cuts, which include tax increases and cuts to pensions.

These cuts are key to determining whether Greece can get the next 31.5bn euro tranche of its European and International Monetary Fund rescue package.

Greece has warned that without this money, which will be used largely to recapitalise the country’s banks, it will be bankrupt by the middle of the month.

However, there have been protests in Greece against the proposed cuts.

Analysts said that there were fears that it may take some time before Greece is given the money.

“With Greece there are always a number of stages with any vote. It is a prolonged process to reach any conclusion,” said Justin Harper of IG Markets.

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Cautious reformers tipped for new China leadership

BEIJING (Reuters) – China‘s ruling Communist Party will this month unveil its new top leadership team, expected to again be an all-male cast of politicians whose instincts are to move cautiously on reform.

Sources close to the leadership say 10 main candidates are vying for seven seats on the party’s next Politburo Standing Committee, the peak decision-making body which will steer the world’s second-largest economy for the next five years.

Only two candidates are considered certainties going into the party’s 18th congress, which starts on Thursday: leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping and his designated deputy, Li Keqiang, who are set to be installed as president and premier next March.

Of the remaining eight contenders, only one has the reputation as a political reformer and only one is a woman.

Following are short biographies of the candidates, including their reform credentials and possible portfolio responsibilities.

XI JINPING

REFORM CREDENTIALS: Considered a cautious reformer, having spent time in top positions in Fujian and Zhejiang provinces, both at the forefront of China‘s economic reforms.

Xi Jinping, 59, is China‘s vice president and President Hu Jintao’s anointed successor. He will take over as Communist Party boss at the congress and then as head of state in March.

Xi belongs to the party’s “princeling” generation, the offspring of communist revolutionaries. His father, former vice premier Xi Zhongxun, fought alongside Mao Zedong in the Chinese civil war. Xi watched his father purged and later, during the Cultural Revolution, spent years in the hardscrabble countryside before making his way to university and then to power.

Married to a famous singer, Xi has crafted a low-key and sometimes blunt political style. He has complained that officials’ speeches and writings are clogged with party jargon and has demanded more plain speaking.

Xi went to work in the poor northwest Chinese countryside as a “sent-down youth” during the chaos of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, and became a rural commune official. He went on to study chemical engineering at Tsinghua University in Beijing and later gained a doctorate in Marxist theory from Tsinghua.

A native of the poor, inland province of Shaanxi, Xi was promoted to governor of southeastern Fujian province in 1999 and became party boss in neighboring Zhejiang province in 2003.

In 2007, the tall, portly Xi secured the top job in China‘s commercial capital, Shanghai, when his predecessor was caught up in a huge corruption case. Later that year he was promoted to the party’s standing committee.

- – - -

LI KEQIANG

REFORM CREDENTIALS: Seen as another cautious reformer due to his relatively liberal university experiences.

Vice Premier Li Keqiang, 57, is the man tipped to be China‘s next premier, taking over from Wen Jiabao.

His ascent will mark an extraordinary rise for a man who as a youth was sent to toil in the countryside during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

He was born in Anhui province in 1955, son of a local rural official. Li worked on a commune that was one of the first places to quietly revive private bonuses in farming in the late 1970s. By the time he left Anhui, Li was a Communist Party member and secretary of his production brigade.

He studied law at the elite Peking University, which was among the first Chinese schools to resume teaching law after the Cultural Revolution. He worked to master English and co-translated “The Due Process of Law” by Lord Denning, the famed English jurist.

In 1980, Li, then in the official student union, endorsed controversial campus elections. Party conservatives were aghast, but Li, already a prudent political player, stayed out of the controversial vote.

He climbed the party ranks and in 1983 joined the Communist Youth League’s central secretariat, headed then by Hu Jintao.

Li later served in challenging party chief posts in Liaoning, a frigid northeastern rustbelt province, and rural Henan province. He was named to the powerful nine-member standing committee in 2007.

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WANG QISHAN

REFORM CREDENTIALS: A financial reformer and problem solver with deep experience tackling tricky economic and political problems.

Wang Qishan, 64, is the most junior of four vice premiers and an ex-mayor of Beijing. But he has a keen grasp of complex economic issues and is the only likely member of the Standing Committee to have been chief executive of a corporation, leading the state-owned China Construction Bank from 1994 to 1997. As such, he may take a leading role in shaping economic policy, including trade and foreign investment.

Wang is an experienced negotiator who has led finance and trade negotiations as well as the Strategic and Economic Dialogue with the United States. He is a favorite of foreign investors and has long been seen as a problem solver, sorting out a debt crisis in Guangdong province where he was vice governor in the late 1990s and replacing the sacked Beijing mayor after a cover-up of the deadly SARS virus in 2003.

Wang is also a princeling, son-in-law of a former vice premier and ex-standing committee member, Yao Yilin. His possible portfolio could be chairman of the National People’s Congress (China’s rubber-stamp parliament), head of parliament’s advisory body, executive vice premier (responsible for economic issues) or the party’s top anti-corruption official.

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LIU YUNSHAN

REFORM CREDENTIALS: A conservative who has kept domestic media on a tight leash.

Liu Yunshan, 65, may take over the propaganda and ideology portfolio for the Standing Committee.

He has a background in media, once working as a reporter for state-run news agency Xinhua in Inner Mongolia, where he later served in party and propaganda roles before shifting to Beijing.

As minister of the party’s Propaganda Department since 2002, Liu has also sought to control China‘s Internet, which has more than 500 million users. He has been a member of the wider Politburo for two five-year terms ending this year.

Liu has not worked directly for the Communist Youth League, but is aligned to it through his lengthy career in an inland, poor province, long ties to the party’s propaganda system and close relationship with Hu Jintao.

- – - -

LI YUANCHAO

REFORM CREDENTIALS: A reformer who has courted foreign investment and studied in the United States.

Li Yuanchao, 61, oversees the appointment of senior party, government, military and state-owned enterprise officials as head of the party’s powerful organization department. On the Standing Committee, he could head the fight against corruption.

Li, whose father was a vice-mayor of Shanghai, has risen far since his parents were persecuted and he was a humble farm hand during the Cultural Revolution.

Politically astute, Li can navigate between interest groups, from Hu’s Youth League power base to the princelings.

As party chief in his native province, Jiangsu, from 2002 to 2007, Li oversaw a rapid rise in personal incomes and economic development, attracting foreign investment from global industrial leaders such as Ford, Samsung and Caterpillar.

He earned mathematics and economics degrees from two of China‘s best universities and a doctorate in law. He also spent time at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in the United States.

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ZHANG DEJIANG

REFORM CREDENTIALS: A conservative trained in North Korea.

Zhang Dejiang, 65, saw his chances of promotion boosted this year when he was chosen to replace disgraced politician Bo Xilai as Chongqing party boss. He also serves as vice premier in charge of industry, though his record has been tarnished by the downfall of the railway minister last year for corruption.

Zhang is close to former president Jiang Zemin who still wields some influence. He studied economics at Kim Il-sung University in North Korea and is a native of northeast China.

On his watch as party chief of Guangdong, the southern province maintained its position as a powerhouse of China‘s economic growth, even as it struggled with energy shortages, corruption-fuelled unrest and the 2003 SARS epidemic.

- – - – -

ZHANG GAOLI

REFORM CREDENTIALS: A financial reformer with experience in more developed parts of China.

Zhang Gaoli, 65, party chief of the northern port city of Tianjin and a Politburo member since 2007, is seen as a Jiang Zemin ally but also acceptable to President Hu, who has visited Tianjin three times since 2008. Zhang is an advocate of greater foreign investment and he introduced financial reforms in a bid to turn the city into a financial center in northern China.

He was sent to clean up Tianjin, which was hit by a string of corruption scandals implicating his predecessor and the former top adviser to the city’s lawmaking body. The adviser committed suicide shortly after Zhang’s arrival.

A native of southeastern Fujian province, Zhang trained as an economist. He also served as party chief and governor of eastern Shandong province and as Guangdong vice governor.

Zhang is low-key with a down-to-earth work style, and not much is known about his specific interests and aspirations. But with his leadership experience in more economically advanced cities and provinces, including party secretary of the showcase manufacturing and export-driven city of Shenzhen, he could be named executive vice premier.

- – - – -

WANG YANG

REFORM CREDENTIALS: Seen by many in the West as a beacon of political reform.

Wang Yang, 57, is party chief of the export dependent economic hub of Guangdong province. He was not included in a list of preferred Standing Committee candidates drawn up by Xi, Hu and Hu’s predecessor, Jiang Zemin, according to sources close to the leadership, but is firmly in the running.

Born into a poor rural family in eastern Anhui province, Wang dropped out of high school and went to work in a food factory at age 17 to help support his family after his father died. These experiences may have shaped his desire for more socially inclusive policies, including his “Happy Guangdong” model of development designed to improve quality of life.

Concerned about the social impact of three decades of blistering development, he lobbied for social and political reform. However, this approach has drawn criticism from party conservatives and Wang has more recently adopted the party’s more familiar method of control and punishment to keep order.

- – - – -

YU ZHENGSHENG

REFORM CREDENTIALS: Relatively low-key but considered a cautious reformer.

Yu Zhengsheng, 67, is party boss in China‘s financial hub and most cosmopolitan city, Shanghai.

His impeccable Communist pedigree made him a rising star in the mid-1980s until his brother, an intelligence official, defected to the United States. His close ties with Deng Pufang, the eldest son of late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, spared him the full political repercussions but he was taken off the fast track.

Yu bided his time in ministerial ranks until bouncing back, joining the Politburo in 2002. However, the princeling’s age would require him to retire in 2017 after one term.

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LIU YANDONG

REFORM CREDENTIALS: Uncertain.

Liu Yandong, who turns 67 this month, is the only woman given a serious chance to join the Standing Committee but is considered a dark horse. She is a princeling also tied to President Hu’s Youth League faction.

If promoted, she could head up parliament’s advisory body, but her age would also force her to retire after only one term.

Her bigger challenge is that no woman has made it into the Standing Committee since 1949. Not even Jiang Qing, the widow of late Chairman Mao Zedong, made it that far.

Liu, daughter of a former vice-minister of agriculture, is currently the only woman in the 25-member Politburo, a minority in China‘s male-dominated political culture. She has been on the wider Politburo since 2007 as one of five state councilors, a rank senior to a cabinet minister but junior to a vice-premier.

(Reporting by Terril Yue Jones, Ben Blanchard, Benjamin Kang Lim and Sui-Lee Wee in Beijing. Additional reporting by Chris Ip, Grace Li, Jean Lin, Young Wang, Alice Woodhouse and Julie Zhu; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Mark Bendeich)

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Ericsson eyes steady growth despite global downturn

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Telecoms gear maker Ericsson expects slower expansion in the more profitable services segment of its business and the same level of growth in its core mobile network equipment market, it said on Tuesday.

Competition and increased product commoditization have pressured prices in the industry for years. Europe’s debt crisis and weaker global growth squeezed vendors further.

The result is that Ericsson has seen profitable network sales slipping while it has gained from telecoms carriers outsourcing many of their operations, boosting sales of services like network management.

“This development will naturally imply a future business mix for Ericsson with more recurring software and services revenues,” CEO Hans Vestberg said in a statement.

“However, hardware will always be part of the mix and a key differentiator for Ericsson.”

Ericsson said it expected the market for telecoms equipment to show compound annual growth of 3-5 percent over the 2012-2015 period, the same as its previous forecast for 2010-2013.

The company, the world’s biggest supplier of mobile network infrastructure, said it expected growth of 4-6 percent in key segments of the overall market, but saw a slightly slower expansion in services compared to recent years.

Services have grown rapidly in recent years and hit 45 percent of group sales in the third quarter.

In the third quarter, Ericsson’s core profit fell 42 percent due to slower orders and a shift in business mix to less profitable contracts.

The company repeated that it expected this mix to continue over the next 3 to 4 quarters.

Rivals have also been suffering. Alcatel-Lucent said it may sell assets to strengthen its balance sheet after posting a second straight quarterly loss.

(Reporting by Niklas Pollard; editing by Patrick Lannin)

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Why “Skyfall” Will Be Biggest Bond Ever at the Box Office

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – The sky isn’t falling! The sky isn’t falling!

In fact, releasing “Skyfall” to foreign audiences 10 days ahead of its domestic release is a ploy that will pay off nicely: It will help make the first Bond film in four years the biggest 007 ever at the box office, the first to score over $ 600 million worldwide.

Daniel Craig‘s Bond already has been extremely consistent as 2008′s “Quantum of Solace” grossed $ 586 million worldwide while “Casino Royale” topped out at $ 594 million in 2006. But with foreign grosses for “Skyfall” alone already closing in on $ 300 million, the sky does indeed seem the limit.

“The huge overseas numbers for “Skyfall” have trumped all box-office news in the U.S. the last two weekends, and that buzz can only help punch up the grosses Stateside,” Exhibitor Relations senior analysts Jeff Bock told TheWrap Monday.

As the only new film in wide release, “Skyfall” will also benefit from no direct competition. The current No. 1, Disney’s family film “Wreck-It Ralph,” targets an entirely different demographic than the PG-13-rated Bond. A similar setup helped “Quantum of Solace” debut with $ 67 million, the highest opening the franchise has ever seen.

Bock and other analysts see “Skyfall” taking in more than $ 70 million and finishing its North American run with around $ 230 million.

As for Sony, it’s confident that “Skyfall,” will bow big, based on very positive reviews for the film, strong pre-sale figures and broad social media awareness.

And it had better. The film’s first week in the U.S. will be crucial, as the following weekend will see the debut of “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2.” Summit’s finale of the “Twilight” series has topped the pre-sales charts since tickets became available online more than a month ago, and it is projected to open in the $ 150 million range.

While the foreign bows weren’t intentionally set up to boost the U.S. release, Sony knew they could help. “The idea was to build worldwide momentum out of the U.K. and Western Europe,” Sony spokesman Steve Elzer told TheWrap. “We employed a similar pattern on ‘Quantum of Solace.’”

That film opened in the U.S. after rolling up $ 147 million from 47 countries in the previous two weeks. It wound up making $ 168 million domestically.

“The dating strategy for ‘Skyfall’ – here and abroad – was designed to take advantage of the very best play periods no matter where the film opens,” Elzer said. So timing it to align with European holidays – and avoid Halloween here – was a dollars decision.

The U.K. rollout – where Bond is one of the foremost cultural icons – coincided with the Half Term holiday, when students are on break. The debut in Catholic countries like Spain and France was timed to the long All-Saints Day weekend.

As a result, “Skyfall” has taken in a record-breaking $ 85.8 million from the U.K. in just 10 days. During that same period, it has already out-grossed “Quantum of Solace” and “Casino Royale” in France with $ 30 million.

Of course foreign success doesn’t necessarily translate with American audiences. Consider “Battleship,” the pricey aliens-at-sea saga from Universal that built a $ 230 million foreign cushion before it opened in the U.S. Unfortunately, it ran aground here, bowing to $ 25 million and topping out at $ 65 million.

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