China's house prices fall amid curbs
House prices in most Chinese cities have fallen as government policies aimed at cooling the property market start to take effect.
New home prices in 49 out of 70 Chinese cities dropped in November from the previous month, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Sunday.
In October 33 cities saw price falls.
Analysts say it is also further evidence that the Chinese economy is slowing and could encourage Beijing to focus policy more on growth.
Major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou saw prices fall marginally lower compared with October, the statement said
Chinese data does not give exact percentages, but according to calculations by Reuters average new home prices rose 2.2% in November, compared to a year earlier. That was the weakest rise in 2011 to date.
China's high property prices are a result of a stimulus package in late 2008 which was introduced to counter the effects of the global economic crisis.
It led to high housing inflation in 2009 and 2010.
Last year authorities starting implementing a slew of measures aimed at calming property markets, including higher deposits, limits on the number of houses people can own and in some cities, a property tax.
Last week China's leaders vowed to continue to curb house prices.
"China will stick to property tightening policies, push home prices back to reasonable levels and speed up construction of ordinary commercial homes to increase effective supply," said a statement made after the Annual Central Economic Work Conference in Beijing, which set out China's economic aims for 2012.
Vickers report on banks to be accepted in full - Cable
The government will accept the Vickers report into banking "in full", Business Secretary Vince Cable has told the BBC.
The report, launched in the wake of the financial crisis, recommended separating banks' retail business from their investment business.
Mr Cable said the government would proceed with separating the banks.
But the recommendation about the amount of capital banks should hold has been diluted, the BBC has learned. The chancellor will address MPs on Monday.
George Osborne will give a statement to Parliament after the government publishes its response to the report.
The BBC's Business Editor Robert Peston has learned that reform may not be the 100% as originally billed.
In one key area the banking industry has succeeded in getting the Treasury to water down one of Vickers' recommendations, he said.
This is the proposal that the biggest UK banks should have enough capital plus loans that could be converted into cash to cope with losses equal to one fifth of the size of their total balance sheet.
As Robert Peston understands it, HSBC has successfully argued that it would be disproportionately expensive for it to do this. In HSBC's case they are much bigger outside the UK than inside.
If they had to raise up to 20% of their global balance sheet they would have to raise huge amounts of expensive new capital or loans. The Treasury is to soften the blow. It will do this by requiring the big banks to raise capital and loans equivalent to 20% of that part of their balance sheet, which British tax payers would have to support in a crisis.
However, our correspondent said Sir John Vickers and his commissioners had been successful in achieving most of their aims, and the UK's financial system will be overhauled.
"Our banks will in the coming five years be forced to undergo significant financial, cultural and managerial reconstruction."
In the UK, the financial crisis started with Northern Rock being bailed out by the taxpayer, but went on to include both Lloyds and RBS receiving substantial sums of public money.
Chaired by Sir John Vickers, the Independent Commission on Banking was set up by the coalition Government last year to review the financial sector after the crisis.
It published its report in September and looked into ways of avoiding such bank failures in the future.
The report said it would "make it easier and less costly to resolve banks that get into trouble".
It recommended that a bank's retail business should be ring-fenced from its investment business, with this and other recommendations being implemented by 2019.
Mr Cable seems to be sticking to this timetable, promising that "primary legislation will be done in this parliament".
He told the The Andrew Marr Show: "Our big banks were at the very centre of the financial crisis, what the Europeans call Anglo-Saxon financial capitalism. It needs reform."
Separate entities
The report recommends that ring-fenced banks should be the only operations granted permission by the UK regulator to provide "mandated services", which include taking deposits from and making loans to individuals and small businesses.
It says that the different arms of banks should be separate legal entities with independent boards.
Another of its recommendations is that banks must have a buffer to absorb the impact of potential losses or future financial crises - of at least 10% of domestic retail assets in top-quality form, such as shares or retained earnings.
That is a stiffer target than the 7% recommended by the international Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.
It also says the biggest banks should go further than this and have a safety cushion of between 17% and 20% of assets, made up of highest-quality assets topped up with bonds that can be easily converted to equity.
The commission also recommends that steps should be taken to make it simpler to switch bank accounts.
The Vickers report wants a free current account redirection service to be formed by September 2013, with an improved system to catch all credits and debits going to a customer's old, closed account, including automated payments on debit cards and direct debits.
North Korea’s Kim Jong Il Dead at 69
North Korean state television reports that Supreme Leader Kim Jong Il has died at the age of 69.
An announcer said he died Saturday of physical and mental over-work. Some reports say he died from a heart attack, and was traveling on a train at the time.
Kim Jong Il came to power after his father, North Korea's founder Kim Il Sung, died in 1994. Reliable biographical information about Mr. Kim is scarce. He rarely appeared in public and his voice was seldom broadcast.
He may be best remembered for boosting North Korea's nuclear program, while millions of his countrymen and women were starving.
Late last year, Mr. Kim promoted his youngest son Kim Jong Un to the rank of four-star general, in what was seen as a bid to extend the world's only communist family dynasty to a third generation.
Analysts say it remains to be seen whether there will be a power struggle for leadership among the top generals or whether there will be another smooth generational transfer of power.
Death Toll from Philippines Storm Exceeds 650
The death toll from tropical storm Washi in the Philippines reached 652 people Sunday, as rescuers continued to search for more than 900 others still missing.
Washi struck the southern island of Mindanao Friday night, blanketing the area with heavy rain and high winds. Flash floods and landslides washed away entire houses with families inside in dozens of coastal villages in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan.
The Philippine Red Cross said most of the victims were women and children. Tens of thousands of people are homeless.
Local authorities suggested a mass burial for the victims because of health concerns. Apart from decomposing bodies, dead livestock lie scattered in the mud.
Much of the rescue effort has been focused on land, but authorities said rescuers in small boats have been able to pluck several survivors out of the waters along the coast.
Thousands of soldiers and police have joined in the rescue efforts, hampered by blocked roads and a lack of electricity.
Although the Philippines is hit by about 20 typhoons each year, the Mindanao region rarely gets severe storms.
Leaders around the world, including the United States, offered help Sunday. Pope Benedict said he would pray “for the victims, in large part children, the homeless and the many missing.”
Egyptian Activists, Security Forces Clash for 3rd Day in Cairo
Egyptian anti-government activists and security forces have engaged in a third day of street battles in Cairo. Protesters are demanding that the country's military rulers hand power to a civilian administration.
The anti-government activists threw rocks at security forces Sunday on a road leading from Tahrir Square to the seat of government. Egyptian soldiers set up concrete barriers on the road as riot police confronted the protesters. Egyptian security personnel in civilian clothes threw stones at the protesters from rooftops.
Egyptian state television said rocks and gasoline bombs thrown by rioters injured 24 police. There were no other reports of casualties.
On Sunday, the United Nations and the United States expressed concern about the violence in Egypt.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's office said he was “highly alarmed by the excessive use of force employed by the security forces against the protesters.”
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Sunday she was deeply concerned about continuing violence in Egypt.
Authorities say 10 protesters were killed and at least 500 other people were hurt in the first two days of rioting. Military officials say 164 people have been detained.
The anti-government activists protesting in Cairo want the military council to step down immediately. They accuse the council of manipulating the transition process to retain permanent powers. But other Egyptians want a stop to months of street protests to allow the voting to proceed.
Egypt's main Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, said Sunday its party secured the biggest share of party-list votes in the second stage of the parliamentary election last week. It said unofficial results from the nine Egyptian provinces that voted on December 14 and 15 show the Freedom and Justice party won about 40 percent of the party-list ballots.
The Brotherhood's party and the ultra-conservative Islamist Al-Nur party dominated the first stage of the election in Cairo, Alexandria and seven other provinces earlier this month.
An Egyptian military council is overseeing the three-month phased parliamentary election, and has promised to hand power to an elected president by July
In another development Sunday, Egyptian authorities say saboteurs blew up part of a pipeline carrying natural gas to Israel and Jordan, the 10th such attack this year. The latest blast happened near the town of El-Arish on the northern coast of the Sinai Peninsula. No fire was reported because the pipeline was disabled following a previous attack last month. No group has claimed responsibility for the series of pipeline blasts.
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More Protests in Russia Over Alleged Election Fraud
Thousands marched again Sunday in Moscow and St. Petersburg against alleged fraud in this month's Russian parliamentary elections.
The Communist party organized the Moscow protests while several different parties were behind the St. Petersburg march. But Sunday's protests were much smaller than those held across Russia last week.
Both the opposition and outside observers say there were widespread irregularities and outright fraud in the December 4 election, won by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's ruling United Russia party.
Despite unprecedented public outrage against United Russia, Prime Minister Putin is widely expected to win the March 4 presidential election and swap jobs with current president Dimitry Medvedev.
Mr. Putin was elected president in 2000 and 2004, but Russia's constitution made him ineligible to seek a third consecutive term in 2008.
Last month, Mr. Putin formally accepted his party's nomination to run again for the presidency. The job swap deal has angered many in Russia, who say it would strengthen authoritarian rule and clear the way for Mr. Putin to become Russia's longest-serving leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
Political turmoil flares in Iraq as U.S. pulls out
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is asking lawmakers to withdraw confidence from his deputy after Saleh al-Mutlaq made controversial comments this week over American forces withdrawing from Iraq, state media reported late Saturday.
In a recent interview with CNN, al-Mutlaq accused al-Maliki of amassing dictatorial power.
"There will be a day whereby the Americans will realize that they were deceived by al-Maliki ... and they will regret that," said al-Mutlaq, a leader within Iraqiya movement.
Al-Maliki's request followed word that Iraqiya, a powerful political bloc, won't participate in the country's parliament -- a move that would threaten Iraq's fragile power-sharing arrangement.
The Iraqiya bloc, a largely secular and cross-sectarian group headed by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, made the move on Friday night. The bloc is one of the largest and most powerful political groups in Iraq and boasts among its members the speaker of the parliament. The bloc had been in a power-sharing deal with al-Maliki's State of Law Alliance, backed mostly by Shiites.
Iraqiya accuses al-Maliki of trying to consolidate his own power rather than share it.
His rivals say, for example, that he still controls the country's security ministries and all decisions go through him. They also say that the hundreds of people seized by the government in October for backing terrorism and supporting the banned Baath Party are Iraqiya supporters.
Iraqiya spokesman Haider al-Mulla said the bloc has always warned about the deal's risks and says the State of Law Alliance has been violating the law.
"Iraqiya has always expressed its rejection to the policy of exclusion and marginalization, lack of power sharing, politicization of the judiciary, the lack of balance within the government institutions," al-Mulla said.
Al-Maliki won a second term as prime minister in 2010 after a months-long dispute among the leading parties in the country's parliamentary elections. The largely secular Iraqiya movement won two more seats than al-Maliki's party, but a merger of the premier's Shiite Muslim slate with a smaller Shiite bloc put him first in line to form a government.
There had been fears of renewed bloodshed between Iraq's majority Shiite and minority Sunni populations and that prompted U.S. officials to work out a power-sharing agreement, bringing the Iraqiya movement into the government.
Al-Mutlaq told CNN that Washington is leaving Iraq "with a dictator" who has ignored a power-sharing agreement, kept control of the country's security forces and rounded up hundreds of people in recent weeks.
He said he was "shocked" to hear U.S. President Barack Obama greet al-Maliki at the White House on Monday as "the elected leader of a sovereign, self-reliant and democratic Iraq."
"America left Iraq with almost no infrastructure. The political process is going in a very wrong direction, going toward a dictatorship," he said. "People are not going to accept that, and most likely they are going to ask for the division of the country. And this is going to be a disaster. Dividing the country isn't going to be smooth, because dividing the country is going to be a war before that and a war after that."
Neighboring Iran, predominantly Shiite and led by a Shiite regime, views al-Maliki as its man in Baghdad and has dictated the shape of the current government, al-Mutlaq said. But he said al-Maliki is playing games with both Washington and Tehran.
The last U.S. troops are scheduled to be out of Iraq by the end of December, nearly nine years after the 2003 invasion that topped Saddam Hussein. More than 4,000 Americans and an estimated 115,000 Iraqis died in the invasion and the years of insurgency and sectarian warfare that followed.
A Sunni who was originally barred from running because of allegations that he supported Hussein's Baath Party, al-Mutlaq said he has no authority within the government.
He said al-Maliki has flouted the power-sharing deal's provisions by refusing to name permanent ministers to lead the defense and interior ministries, which concentrates control over the military and police in the prime minister's hands.
He said U.S. officials, who brokered the power-sharing deal, either "don't know anything in Iraq and they don't know what is happening in Iraq, or because they don't want to admit the reality in Iraq, the failure in Iraq, the failure of this political process that they set in Iraq."
Along with Shiites and Sunnis, Kurds are a major player in Iraqi politics.
Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of parliament, said lawmakers discussed the Iraqiya move on Saturday and said it reflects "a level of mistrust between the blocs, the government, Iraqiya and others.
"The problem is that Maliki isn't sharing any security decisions with Iraqiya, he doesn't trust them and this is a big problem," he said. "Power-sharing was never power-sharing. We are in a government of conflict. Power-sharing was never successful.
"The Kurds don't want to take sides, we want them (Iraqiya and State of Law Alliance) to get together to solve their problems."
He is worried that the problem could morph into fighting between Sunnis and Shiites or violence against the government.
"This isn't just political," he said. "It's sectarian."
CNN
Barry Bonds’ House Arrest Sentence Delayed Pending Appeal
Barry Bonds will remain free while he appeals his conviction for giving misleading testimony before a grand jury, reports ESPN.
Bonds was sentenced in federal court Friday to 30 days of house arrest, two years of probation and 250 hours of community service — then the judge delayed the sentence pending an appeal likely to take a year or more.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston also put on hold a $4,000 fine against Bonds for his obstruction of justice conviction arising from a grand jury appearance eight years ago.
Prosecutors wanted the home run king to spend 15 months in prison. Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Parrella argued that home confinement wasn’t punishment enough, “for a man with a 15,000 square foot house with all the advantages.” Bonds lives on an estate in Beverly Hills.
Well-wishers hugged the 47-year-old Bonds in the hallway outside the courtroom after the hearing was over. He declined to speak in court.
A jury convicted Bonds in April of purposely answering questions about steroids with rambling non sequiturs in an attempt to mislead a grand jury investigating sports doping in December 2003. Bonds’ trial jury failed to reach a verdict on three other charges accusing Bonds of lying when he denied taking performance-enhancing drugs and when he denied receiving injections from someone other than his doctor.
Prosecutors in September dropped those deadlocked charges, giving up on another trial.
Bonds, Major League Baseball’s career leader with 762 home runs, now has 14 days to file his intention to appeal his conviction.
Bonds was one of two former baseball superstars to stand trial in doping-related cases this year. The trial of pitcher Roger Clemens was halted after just two days in July because prosecutors used inadmissible evidence. U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton has set a new trial for April 17.
Accused NFL Drug Dealer Sam Hurd Taps Former Death Row Attorney David Kenner
Accused Chicago Bears drug dealer Sam Hurd has hired high-powered defense attorney David Kenner to represent him in his federal drug dealing case.
The former wide receiver was arrested on Wednesday (December 14), after he met with an undercover agent in a Chicago restaurant and attempted to purchase multiple kilos of cocaine.
Federal prosecutors began investigating Hurd in July, when an informant tipped them off, claiming that Hurd was running a drug dealing network.
According to prosecutors, Sam Hurd admitted to an undercover agent that his drug dealing network was selling about 4 kilos of cocaine per week.
He was at the restaurant meeting with a confidential informant, to set up a deal, because he could not keep up with the demand.
The NFL star was attempting to purchase 5 to 10 kilograms of cocaine per week at a cost of $25,000 per kilo, along with 1,000 pounds of marijuana to distribute, per week. He also left the meeting with a package he believed contained a kilo of cocaine.
Sam Hurd’s attorney David Kenner is already well-known in Hip-Hop circles.
Kenner represented incarcerated drug baron Michael “Harry-O” Harris, who was allegedly an early investor in Death Row Records.
According to the documentary “Welcome to Death Row,” Kenner helped Harry-O form Godfather Entertainment, which was supposed to be the parent company for Death Row Records, which was co-owned by Marion “Suge” Knight and Dr. Dre.
Harry-O’s alleged ownership of Death Row Records set off a bitter battle for the label, which resulted in Suge Knight bankrupting the legendary imprint.
The company was eventually sold to Canadian based company Wide Awake Entertainment for $18 million in January of 2008.
David Kenner, along with Johnnie Cochran, was among the lawyers who represented Snoop Dogg in his 1996 murder trial, which ended in an acquittal for the rapper.
David Kenner is hopeful that he can successfully defend Sam Hurd against the federal drug dealing charges.
“Sam intends to fight these charges, and we intend to defend him fully,” David Kenner told the Associated Press. “We have complete confidence in him…they start off looking terrible, and then we end up with not guiltys.”
Sam Hurd’s coach Lovie Smith and other members of the Chicago Bears were shocked at his arrest.
Earlier in the summer, Hurd had signed a $5.15 million deal with The Bears.
He also earned a $1.35 million signing bonus and took home a base pay of $685,000.
But things could get worse for the disgraced NFL star, as reports are surfacing that he was providing drugs to other NFL players.
According to CBS Radio’s 670 The Score, federal prosecutors have a double-digit list of NFL players that are connected to the drug dealing network, in some manner.
Hurd is charged multiple offenses, including conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute more than 500 grams of cocaine, or half a kilogram.
He faces up to 40 years in prison and a $2 million fine if convicted.
Sam Hurd is currently free on $100,000 bail.
Deion Sanders Announces Divorce from Wife Pilar
Back in September we reported that football Hall of Famer, Deion Sanders, took to Twitter to deny that he and wife Pilar were getting divorced after 11 years of marriage.
The supposed reason for the divorce was that he didn’t want Pilar to become a reality TV star as crazy as it sounds. Here’s how he responded at the time:
“Ladies and gentlemen I never address Ignorance but I must at this point. I’ve never filed 4 divorce and hadn’t made a statement to Any media,” he tweeted.
Hmm, OK. Fast forward to today and this statement to TMZ from Mr. Sanders:
“Pilar and I have decided to end our marriage and move on to the next phase of our individual lives with mutual respect. We are friends and our top priority has and will continue to be the well-being of our children.”
He adds, “We arrived at this decision prayerfully and carefully in order to be able to pursue what is in both of our best personal interests.”
They have three children together and were married in 1999.