Asia stocks retreat on gloomy economic outlook

BANGKOK (AP) ? Asian stocks fell Wednesday as recession among euro nations and slowing growth in China offset flickers of improvement in the U.S. economy.

Americans increased their retail spending in July by the most in five months, a gain of 0.8 percent over June, according to government figures released Tuesday. That's a potentially positive sign for the world's biggest economy as consumer spending is a mainstay of its growth.

But data showing stagnant inventories among U.S. companies, a sign that businesses remain wary of the future, tempered optimism. Concerns about China and Europe also weighed on sentiment.

Japan's Nikkei 225 index was down 0.7 percent at 8,868.03 and Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 1.3 percent to 20,026.53. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.4 percent to 4,274.70. Markets in South Korea and India were closed for public holidays.

Benchmarks in Singapore, Taiwan and mainland China fell. New Zealand and Indonesia rose.

"China's economy is slowing down, this is a concern," said Dickie Wong, executive director for research at Kingston Securities Ltd. In Hong Kong. "But it gives more room for the central bank of China to act and to do something to ease monetary policy."

A gloomy picture out of Europe also compounded worries. Although Germany, Europe's biggest economy, posted surprise growth of 0.3 percent in the second quarter on Tuesday, it was not enough to prevent the combined economy of the 17 countries that use the euro from contracting 0.2 percent.

Greece, Spain, Italy, Cyprus and Portugal are all in recession and all five are on the front-lines of Europe's debt crisis. France's economy was stagnant in the second quarter, underscoring concerns that it too is hovering on the edge of recession. It was the third-straight quarter without growth.

Analysts at Capital Economics said in an email commentary that "the big picture is that the economic growth required to bring the region's debt crisis to an end is still nowhere in sight."

Over the past few weeks, stocks, as well as the euro and the price of oil, have gained on hopes the world's major central banks will do more to shore up the global economy.

Many economists believe the U.S. Federal Reserve will try to stimulate the economy by launching another program of buying government bonds and mortgage-backed securities to keep interest rates low. They will be closely watching Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's speech on Aug. 31 at an annual economic conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Among individual stocks, Japan's Sharp Corp. plunged 11.9 percent and Panasonic Corp. fell 4.1 percent amid reports that the country's major electronics makers were cutting forecasts due to a slump in demand.

On Wall Street on Tuesday, the Dow Jones industrial average edged up marginally to 13,172.14. The Standard & Poor's 500 index was slightly down at 1,403.93. The Nasdaq composite index lost 0.2 percent to 3,016.98.

Benchmark oil was down 45 cents to $92.99 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 70 cents to end at $93.43 a barrel on the Nymex on Tuesday.

In currency trading, the euro fell to $1.2322 from $1.2330 in late trading Tuesday in New York. The dollar slipped to 78.78 yen from 78.79 yen.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/asia-stocks-retreat-gloomy-economic-outlook-054457968--finance.html

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Thriving careers: Jobs of tomorrow | Arne Ruhnau News

Telemarketing is a dying career according to Alan Townsend ? bad news for these workers at a call center in Colombia.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Technological advances are changing the jobs market, says Alan Townsend
• Postal service has been hit by new technologies and increased automation
• Data and information management is a huge growth area, he says
• Townsend says key to navigating the jobs market is to be versatile and adaptable

Editor?s note: Alan Townsend is VP, Sales Readiness and Business Operations for job site Monster Europe and is responsible for overseeing the strategy and implementation of Monster?s business operations across the region. He is an industry expert on global recruitment trends.

(CNN) ? Our surroundings are changing rapidly. Again
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st a backdrop of serious concerns about the Eurozone, projecting labor market activity can be particularly tough.

However, changing patterns of employment by occupation are largely dominated by longer-term trends rather than the cyclical position of the economy. To understand the natural evolution of the jobs market ? industries and career paths that are becoming extinct versus those that are advancing through a process of natural selection ? the jobs landscape needs to be viewed in the context of the most influential macro-trends.

Below are some of the careers that are thriving and dying due to the changing technological, economic, social and business landscape.

Alan Townsend

Dying careers

Postal service workers (including sorters, clerks and mail carriers)

The industry has had a tough time since the widespread adoption of email stole a large part of its consumer and business market share. Increased communication via phone and cloud computing is another contributory factor, but the main reason for the decline is that mail sorting is becoming automated, with robots replacing people.

In the United States, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has predicted a further 30% decline in the occupation by 2018. In fact, three of the top 10 occupations with the highest projected declines are a type of postal service worker. The U.S. service has already lost $11.6 billion this fiscal year.

According to another report by Accenture research, from 2008 ? 2009 Poste Italiane registered a 9.9% drop in its postal product volume in response to the increasing digitalization of mail. The amount of volume decline clearly made it more difficult to run a profitable business and will make it even more difficult in the future.

Office and administrative workers (particularly data entry clerks)

Revolutions in technology also continue to cause profound changes in the office and administrative market.
Alan Townsend

Revolutions in technology also continue to cause profound changes in the office and administrative market. Although it was hard-hit by the recession, the industry had in fact already been declining for years due to technological advancement boosting productivity and operational efficiency.

Word processing, voicemail and the internet all make it easier for skilled professionals to do clerical work themselves. With companies focused on cutting costs, secretaries and file clerks are no longer in demand. In the U.S. alone, word processors and typists are slated to lose 13,200 jobs by 2020 and data entry clerks are expected to lose 15,900 according to the BLS.

The European Centre for the Deve
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lopment of Vocational Training also estimated demand for occupations such as office clerks will decline by an average one million jobs by 2020 across Europe.

Manufacturing assembly jobs

In many developed economies manufacturing assembly jobs that require modest training and only a secondary school education are a thing of the past.

In the Unied Kingdom specifically, 400,000 manual jobs are forecast to disappear before 2020, reducing the combined employment share of these occupations from 18% to 16%. However, the industry does need people to manage the technology now running automated processes. As a result, higher skilled occupations, including managers, professionals and associate professional roles are projected to rise significantly by 2020.

Telemarketing and door-to-door sales

This type of sales is no longer efficient and has been replaced with internet and television advertising. In the United States, for example, door-to-door sales and telemarketer positions are expected to decline 15% and 11% respectively by 2018.

Thriving careers

The result of a data explosion ? combined with a need to leverage the data effectively to drive a competitive edge ? creates its own tidal wave in the jobs market
Alan Townsend

Data scientists

According to IBM, every day we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data ? so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. This data comes from everywhere: sensors used to gather climate information, posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos, purchase transaction records, mobile phone GPS signals and so on.

With technological innovation meaning that more data is now shared and stored by businesses, it follows that the result of a data explosion ? combined with a need to leverage the data effectively to drive a competitive edge ? creates its own tidal wave in the jobs market. Data and information management is a huge growth area. But it?s not just data management creating new job opportunities, its gathering, analyzing, storing and securing the data as well.

Research and design managers, particularly in engineering

Increased automation is the result of a need to reduce cost, which in turn is driven by a company?s need to become more competitive and grow market share ? a trend accelerated by pressures felt by the difficult economic situation.

These improved efficiencies support profitability and overall business growth, which spur recruitment demands. In the United Kingdom alone, manufacturing output growth is projected to average around 2.5% per annum, with particular growth in R&D-related industries, such as parts of chemicals and engineering.

Instead of killing jobs, technological advances are changing the nature of the roles available.
Alan Townsend

Computer programmers and network administrators

One key misperception among industry watc
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hers is that technology advancements results largely in the death of career opportunities. This is simply not the case. Instead of killing jobs, technological advances are changing the nature of the roles available. Computer programmers and network administrators are just two examples of roles in the IT sector that are seeing significant growth across the globe.

Medical assistants

There have been significant changes in the management of healthcare services, both in the United States and across Europe. As a result, more middle management positions have become available. In America, the Department of Labor projects 162,900 new positions will be added before 2018. In Europe in particular there is also likely to be significant growth in community and clinical nursing roles.

Where to go from here

The key to navigating this evolving jobs market is to follow the premise of Darwin?s own theory of evolution and be as versatile and adaptable as possible while career paths are naturally selected to align with the changing surroundings.

By monitoring and understanding the major trends that are affecting our global economy, our businesses and our lives, savvy industry watchers are able to shape their skill set and career in line with the key influences driving long-term opportunities.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Alan Townsend.

Source: http://arneruhnau.com/thriving-careers-jobs-of-tomorrow/

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Republican ticket faces growing pains, Dems attack

DENVER (AP) ? The newly shaped Republican presidential ticket is fighting growing pains amid charges from President Barack Obama's re-election team that challenger Mitt Romney favors his new running mate's controversial plans to overhaul Medicare and cut trillions of dollars from social programs.

The debate moves across five swing states as both campaigns operate at full strength for a second day.

Romney will spend Tuesday in Ohio on the final day of his multistate bus tour, having dispatched his vice presidential pick, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, to court voters and donors in Colorado and Nevada. For all the advantages of having a running mate to share the workload, the Republicans are working through the challenge of planning double the events, coordinating messaging on the road, handling new security stresses and simply getting to know each other.

All the while, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are linking Romney to Ryan's House Republican budget proposals, which could affect millions of Americans ? seniors in particular ? if enacted.

Obama is holding events in Iowa on the second day of a single-state bus tour, while Biden, who played the role of Obama's attack dog on Monday, is set to campaign in rural southern Virginia.

Two days after formally selecting Ryan to complete the GOP ticket, Romney publicly praised his running mate's work as necessary to protect the long-term survival of Medicare, the government-run health insurance program for the elderly.

Ryan has "come up with ideas that are very different than the president's," Romney said in Florida, the state with the highest percentage of residents age 65 and over. "The president's idea for Medicare was to cut it by $700 billion. That's not the right answer. We want to make sure that we preserve and protect Medicare."

Romney did not say so, but the plans Ryan produced in the past two years as chairman of the House Budget Committee retain the $700 billion in Medicare cuts even as they call for repealing Obama's health care plan. Romney said there may be differences between his own budget plan and Ryan's, but refused to detail them. Romney's staff said the former Massachusetts governor favored a plan to restore the $700 billion in cuts.

Looking to move past questions about Medicare, both Romney and Ryan are expected to focus on energy Tuesday. Romney will address what he's calling the Obama administration's "war on coal," according to his campaign. Ryan plans to promote Romney's "all-of-the-above" energy approach in Colorado. Once he moves to Nevada later in the day, Ryan will also highlight the president's response to the state's foreclosure problems.

Little more than 80 days remain in a campaign dominated by a weak economic recovery and a national jobless rate of 8.3 percent. Polls taken before Romney added Ryan to his ticket showed Obama with a slender advantage in a contest that will be decided in eight to 10 battleground states.

Romney planned three events across Ohio, starting in the eastern part of the state and continuing westward.

He will focus on coal in the area of the state near the West Virginia border. Obama's administration has pushed ahead with regulations on new power plants, making it harder to build new coal-fired plants. That's hurt places like Beallsville, where Romney will appear at the American Energy Corp.

Romney planned to appear in Ohio with Republican Sen. Rob Portman, whom Romney considered as a possible vice presidential running mate.

Ohio is likely the most difficult to win of the four must-win states Romney toured by bus; he also visited North Carolina, Virginia and Florida. But as Ryan visits other battlegrounds more than 1,000 miles away, Romney's team has showed some signs of the strain:

?Some of Romney's staff on the ground in Florida were on the phone Monday offering advice to the Ryan team in Iowa, while planning events coming up in Colorado and Nevada.

?There were none of the new Romney-Ryan placards at Romney's Florida event or Ryan's Iowa appearance Monday, leaving attendees waving the older Romney-only signs.

?Security officials didn't set up enough metal detectors to sweep the thousands of people who showed up in Florida, leaving many stranded outside barricades or on the street.

?At the Iowa State Fair, a protester managed to climb onstage with Ryan before his new security team dragged her away.

Ryan is scheduled to campaign at a Denver area high school Tuesday before addressing a rally in Las Vegas. The congressman is also expected to attend a private fundraiser with conservative mega-donor Sheldon Adelson.

Meanwhile, plans continued for the Republican convention in less than two weeks in Tampa, Fla., amid word that New Jersey's Gov. Chris Christie has been selected to be the keynote speaker.

The scheduling decision was confirmed by Republican officials directly involved in convention planning. The Republican officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the formal announcement was not planned until later Tuesday.

The Romney campaign also said Tuesday that Florida Sen. Marco Rubio will introduce Romney at the convention. Rubio campaigned with Romney in Miami on Monday. Before Ryan's selection, both Rubio and Christie had been under consideration to join the GOP ticket as Romney's running mate.

For his part, Obama is expected to call on Congress to extend expiring tax credits for wind energy production. The White House on Tuesday pointed to a new Energy Department report saying wind power installations "surged" in 2011, but warning that uncertainty over extending the wind energy tax credits threatens to "dramatically slow" the industry.

The report, released annually, emerged just as Obama was campaigning through politically competitive Iowa, a state that is among the leaders in wind power. The report estimated 75,000 U.S. jobs now depend on wind power. Of those, state officials say, 7,000 are in Iowa.

Romney has opposed extending the alternative energy credits, but several Iowa Republicans ? Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad and Sen. Chuck Grassley among them ? favor the credits. That may give Obama the chance to create a local wedge issue to appeal to unaligned voters.

Romney spokesman Ryan Williams said the Republican candidate would boost the wind industry by "promoting policies that remove regulatory barriers, support free enterprise and market-based competition, and reward technological innovation."

The Obama campaign also released a Web video Tuesday chiding Romney for ads in which he accused the White House of stripping work requirements from the welfare law. Independent fact checkers have found the premise of the ads to be false.

The Obama video shows Romney asking his opponent to "take your campaign out of the gutter." Then it urges, "Mr. Romney ... take your own advice."

___

Hunt reported from Florida. Associated Press writers Matthew Daly in Virginia and Ken Thomas in Iowa contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/republican-ticket-faces-growing-pains-dems-attack-142815656.html

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Video Conferencing Tools for Virtual Teams and Multiple Business ...

August 13, 2012

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Videoconferencing has changed the way entrepreneurs do business.

Today, a startup or small business with two or more locations can operate like a multinational corporation and communicate by simultaneous two-way video and audio transmissions. This type of visual collaboration has removed global communications barriers, improved workflow and made the world a smaller marketplace for conducting business.

Video conferencing solutions for startups can help keep teams connected in a much more personal way than simple emails and voice messages. Conferencing can also enable your company to have a local presence in lucrative markets without commuting.

Having well-connected offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and London, where everyone is on the same page, is no longer a pipe dream, and can increase your startups prestige and market reach.

If you?re unsure where to begin, here are four video conferencing options to help your startup make the world a much smaller marketplace.

Skype

Entrepreneurs can make free video calls from their home office or company office with Skype. Skype can act as an entry-level video conferencing solution for free high quality online video calls from anywhere in the world.

Their service allows users to communicate with peers by voice, video, and instant messaging over the Internet. Phone calls may be placed to recipients on the traditional telephone networks. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free of charge, while calls to landline telephones and mobile phones are charged via a debit-based user account system.

Intercall

Intercall is a conferencing solution designed to scale quickly to fit a growing small business and enterprise needs.? Intercall?s solutions adapt to companies that prefer to use their own video equipment to those that prefer to use Intercall?s for sophisticated videoconferencing.

Cost-effective web and audio conferences are also available through the platform for less formal meetings, as well as their ?Blue Jeans Network?, which permits users throughout the world, which might be on disparate devices and conferencing platforms ? such as Cisco, Polycom. Google or Skype ? to all connect seamlessly.

Intercall can also assist with renting conference rooms worldwide and setting up a call upon very short notice. In short, it has a lot of value-adds in addition to offering a world-class conferencing solution.

Page 1 Page 2

Source: http://yfsentrepreneur.com/2012/08/13/video-conferencing-tools-for-virtual-teams-and-multiple-business-locations/

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Ex-congressman's wife is run over by her own car

By Ziad Jaber and Andrew Mach, NBC News

The wife of former U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana died Saturday after she was run over by her own car, Bloomington, Ind., police told NBC News.

Police said 82-year-old Nancy Hamilton arrived in the parking lot of a veterinary clinic with a pet Saturday around 4:15 p.m., but her car was not shifted into park. As Hamilton walked behind the vehicle to retrieve her pet from the passenger side of the car, the car rolled backward, striking and running her over.

Alex Wong / Getty Images file

Former U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana testifies during a hearing in Washington, D.C., in 2006. His wife, Nancy, died Saturday.

Bloomington Police Capt. Joe Qualters said Hamilton was alone at the time, and he believes the incident to be entirely accidental.?

Monroe County Coroner Nicole Meyer told NBC News?Hamilton died from blunt force trauma to the head and suffered chest injuries. She was taken to the Indiana University Health Center in Bloomington where she died hours later.?

"This is so tragic," Charlotte?Zietlow, former Bloomington City Council president, told the Herald-Times. "They were going to have a life together."?

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Zietlow said she had just met with Lee and Nancy Hamilton at a party for Bloom Magazine last week. The former congressman and his wife were starting to settle into their new life in Indiana after decades of living in Columbus, Ind., and Washington, D.C., she said.?

Zietlow said Nancy was an avid painter and used oils and watercolors to paint landscapes and portraits of her children.

?She was just wonderfully cheerful, a great wife for him, and also led her own life,? Zietlow said, adding that Nancy had a brilliant smile. ?[Lee] was very, very stable, and it?s not easy to hold up a family when one person has to give up so much time to do a job. And it?s no ordinary job; it was serving the people of this country.? ?

Lee Hamilton, 81, represented southern Indiana in Congress for more than 30 years and was vice chairman of the 9/11 commission. He joined Indiana University in 1999 to create its Center on Congress. He remains the center's director.

Watch the most-viewed videos on NBCNews.com

Pat Williams, the former head of the Democratic Party in Monroe County, told the Herald-Times she met with the Hamiltons at the same party as Zietlow. She said she was delighted to hear they would be starting their retired life in Bloomington.

?Nancy always did it better,? Williams said. ?She was truly a beautiful person, and we were all saddened that she had so little time with us in the Bloomington community.?

The Hamiltons had three children ? Tracy, Deborah and Douglas ? and five grandchildren.

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Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/13/13258608-wife-of-former-us-representative-dies-after-being-run-over-by-her-own-car?lite

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Vatican judge orders trial for pope's butler, another Holy See employee in theft of documents

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/vatican-judge-orders-trial-popes-butler-another-holy-110429670.html

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Singapore Presents Amendments to Income Tax Bill

The Ministry of Finance (MOF) is still seeking feedback on the draft Income Tax (Amendment) Bill of 2012. The ongoing public consultation is set to close on August 13, 2012.

The proposed amendments to the Income Tax Act mainly revolve the 2012 Budget Statement recommendations. Salient components include, among others:

1. Providing a one-off cash grant to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) capped at S$5,000 to help them cope with inflation and escalating business costs;

2. Enhancing the PIC (Productivity and Innovation Credit) Scheme, such as providing faster access to more investment cash upfront, and relaxing the PIC Scheme?s qualifying conditions; and

3. Increasing Earned Income Reliefs to up to S$8,000 for the elderly and up to S$12,000 for handicapped individuals so as to encourage them to stay employed.

Furthermore, the 2012 Income Tax (Amendment) Bill sets forth various changes to existing Singapore tax policies after a review of the republic?s prevailing tax system. Some of the changes considered include the realignment of new accounting standards for small businesses, as well as revisions to the CPF-Minimum Sum Topping-Up scheme to benefit parents-in-law and grandparents-in-law.

Mr James Nuben, Head of Tax Division at Asiabiz Services, a Singapore company incorporation consultancy, expressed enthusiasm over the proposed amendments.

?These changes are an essential step to sustaining economic growth,? Mr. Nuben said. ?The timing is impeccable. Amid a slightly weakened GDP, we need to boost productivity and boost Singapore?s reputation as an ideal business location.?

Detailed consultation documents are available in the Ministry of Finance?s website, www.mof.gov.sg, as well as in the REACH consultation portal, www.reach.gov.sg. Respondents may send their comments to the MOF via the website, email, fax, or post.

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5. What is the Singapore income tax rate?

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Source: http://www.asiabizservices.com/singapore-presents-amendments-to-income-tax-bill

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