Google says multiple services blocked in China

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google Inc said several of its online services have been blocked in China.

Traffic to Google’s services in China dropped sharply beginning Friday evening there, according to an online “Transparency Report” website operated by Google, which provides updates about access to its services in different parts of the world.

Among the sites affected were Google’s search engine and its Gmail web email product.

The disruptions come as China’s once-in-a-decade meeting to appoint new leadership gets underway.

A Google spokeswoman said the company did not know why the disruption was happening. Google said in a statement that it had “checked and there’s nothing wrong on our end.”

Google’s YouTube video service has been inaccessible in China since 2009, while access to other services in China are blocked sporadically.

In 2010 Google relocated its Chinese search engine to Hong Kong after a spat with authorities over censorship and cyber-attacks that Google said originated in China.

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic; editing by John Wallace)

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Nutella maker says will brave French tax hike

PARIS (Reuters) – The makers of the renowned Nutella food spread say they will not change the lucrative recipe even if France, its biggest market, endorses proposals to quadruple tax on a key ingredient of the gooey mix, palm oil.

Senators in France, where a left-wing government is hiking tax generally to help slash a bloated debt, have proposed a 300 percent tax hike on palm oil on the grounds that its production harms the environment and its consumption fuels obesity.

Frederic Thil, French director for Ferrero, the Italian firm that makes the sugary, chocolate-colored paste, sounded a defiant note in Le Parisien daily.

“The arguments are unfair and the repercussions would be catastrophic,” he told the newspaper.

More than 100 million jars of Nutella were sold in France alone in 2008, according to Ferrero, whose website says the recipe sold in large quantities across the Western world was invented in the backroom of an Italian pastry shop in 1944.

The main ingredients are sugar, milk powder, hazelnuts, cocoa, emulsifier, flavoring and palm oil, on which a tax of almost 100 euros per metric tonne is levied in France at the moment.

That tax would rise to 400 euros a tonne if the proposal floated by a Senate committee earlier this month secures majority backing in the Senate and in the lower house of parliament, the National Assembly.

France, which is keen to find other funding sources for a generous healthcare system in cash-strapped times, has already raised tax on sugary drinks and recently hatched plans to hike tax on beer to help plug the hole in public welfare finances.

Thil said the maker of Nutella, popular in many countries as a breakfast fare smeared onto slices of bread, would do all it could to limit the hit from any tax rise for consumers.

Palm oil, also extensively used in margarine, biscuits and crisps, makes up about 20 percent of the Nutella mix. The 300 percent tax rise, if passed on, would raise the cost of a 1-kilo jar or the spread by 0.06 euros, according to ASEF, an association of doctors that backs the tax hike proposal.

The other argument made for a tax increase is that it will encourage a shift away from intensive production methods that have prompted destruction of forests in countries such as Malaysia, a major exporter of palm oil.

(Reporting By Brian Love; Editing by Toby Chopra)

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Four days later, Obama wins Florida

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - President Barack Obama was declared the winner of Florida's 29 electoral votes Saturday, ending a four-day count with a razor-thin margin that narrowly avoided an automatic recount that would have brought back memories of 2000.

No matter the outcome, Obama had already clinched re-election and now has 332 electoral votes to Romney's 206.

The Florida Secretary of State's Office said that with almost 100 per cent of the vote counted, Obama led Republican challenger Mitt Romney 50 per cent to 49.1 per cent, a difference of about 74,000 votes. That was over the half-per cent margin where a computer recount would have been automatically ordered unless Romney had waived it.

There is a Nov. 16 deadline for overseas and military ballots, but under Florida law, recounts are based on Saturday's results. Only a handful of overseas and military ballots are believed to remain outstanding.

It's normal for election supervisors in Florida and other states to spend days after any election counting absentee, provisional, military and overseas ballots. Usually, though, the election has already been called on election night or soon after because the winner's margin is beyond reach.

But on election night this year, it was difficult for officials — and the media — to call the presidential race here, in part because the margin was so close and the voting stretched into the evening.

In Miami-Dade, for instance, so many people were in line at 7 p.m. in certain precincts that some people didn't vote until after midnight.

The hours-long wait at the polls in some areas, a lengthy ballot and the fact that Gov. Rick Scott refused to extend early voting hours has led some to criticize Florida's voting process. Some officials have vowed to investigate why there were problems at the polls and how that led to a lengthy vote count.

If there had been a recount, it would not be as difficult as the lengthy one in 2000. The state no longer uses punch-card ballots, which became known for their hanging chads. All 67 counties now use optical scan ballots where voters mark their selections manually.

Republican George W. Bush won the 2000 contest after the Supreme Court declared him the winner over Democrat Al Gore by a scant 537 votes.

The win gave Obama victories in eight of the nine swing states, losing only North Carolina. In addition to Florida, he won Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Virginia, Colorado and Nevada.

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Twin explosions strike southern Syrian city

BEIRUT (AP) — Syria‘s state-run news agency says two large explosions have struck the southern city of Daraa, causing multiple casualties and heavy material damage.

SANA did not immediately give further information or say what the target of Saturday’s explosions was.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the blasts went off near a branch of the country’s Military Intelligence in Daraa.

The Observatory, which relies on a network of activists on the ground, says the explosions were followed by clashes between regime forces and rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad.

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Weinstein Co., Clear Channel, Madison Square Garden Hosting Benefit Concert for Sandy Relief

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Clear Channel Media, The Madison Square Garden Company and The Weinstein Company are joining together to produce a benefit concert to raise money for victims of Hurricane Sandy.

The concert, titled “12-12-12,” will feature live music, although the producers did not reveal who would be performing. The roster should be an A-list one though, given that this is the same group of corporate entities that backed “The Concert for New York City,” a star-studded affair with the likes of The Who and Billy Joel on hand to raise money for 9/11.

The concert for Sandy Relief will be held on December 12, 2012, at Madison Square Garden in New York, and the money raised will be dispensed through the Robin Hood Relief Fund.

Hurricane Sandy slammed into the Eastern Seaboard last week, leaving 110 people dead and more than 1 million without power. Damage from the storm is estimated to be between $ 30 billion to $ 50 billion in economic losses.

“12-12-12″ will be produced by James Dolan, executive chairman of The Madison Square Garden Company; John Sykes, president of Clear Channel Entertainment Enterprises; and Harvey Weinstein, co-founder and chairman of The Weinstein Company.

In a joint statement, the producers said: “The Concert for New York City was a night filled with emotion, courage and tremendous hope when we came together as a city following the 9/11 attack. Once again, our city, as well as millions of our neighbors in the tri-state area, are in desperate need of our assistance as they recover from Hurricane Sandy and rebuild their lives. We have no doubt that the event we are planning will be filled with unforgettable music, entertainment and that uniquely American spirit of community, compassion and generosity.”

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Social media shakes up solitary online FX trading

LONDON (Reuters) – The solitary world of online foreign exchange trading is emerging from the shadows as solo investors turn to specialist social media networks to link up with their peers and seek market-beating strategies.

Individual or retail trading, estimated at 8-10 percent of the $ 2.5 trillion daily spot FX market, used to conjure an image of a lone trader with little contact with the outside world.

But that is changing. Thanks to specially tailored websites known as social trading networks, users are able to see and even copy the trades of top-ranked rivals, swap ideas and gauge the market mood in online chat with a community of contacts.

“In the world of trading there are a lot of signals but social media gives us the market sentiment and it is ideal for chatting to people across the world for trade ideas,” said Patrick Orini, who has been trading FX online since 2004.

Retail forex traders make their deals using personal accounts through brokers such as Alpari, FxPro and IronFX. Increasingly, traders are hooking up their broker accounts with social trading networks, such as eToro, Currensee and Tradeo.

Traders usually pay a subscription to use the service while the social network and the broker might share revenue on trades.

In a system reminiscent of microblog network Twitter, top players who make their trades visible can gather thousands of followers, some of whom pay to copy their strategies.

Orini’s trading account on a social trading network called Tradeo has 500 followers, of whom around 20 copy his trades.

If online investors do well in their trades, they will attract more followers and will be ranked higher on the trader “leaderboard” posted on the site.

Retail FX has grown over the last decade as brokers allow individual traders to take highly leveraged positions previously accessible only to institutional investors. The largest group of market players is based in Japan.

eToro, one the world’s largest social trading platforms has processed more than 20 million trades since it went live at the beginning of 2012.

Tradeo, a social network for forex traders based in Tel Aviv, launched three months ago and, according to its co-founder and CEO Jonathan Adest, the site has posted up to half a billion dollars of trades from around 10,000 traders since then.

“It’s not a broker, but a network for brokers — a bit like an online trading room,” Adest said.

He said Tradeo also combats a key hazard of online trading — inaccurate or bogus information. Traders often swap ideas on comment boards, but anonymity and low security makes it difficult to weed out spam.

“The idea of creating a niche social network for forex traders is to help verify commentators usually found in chat rooms and comment boards,” Adest said.

In its increased use of social media, online forex trading is catching up with developments in the equities market.

Retail equities trading is estimated to account for up to half of trade in UK small companies. Retail FX’s smaller share of the overall market reflects the fact that most trade is over-the-counter and lack of volatility that make it harder to turn a profit.

TWITTER

In the equities market, analysis of Twitter postings and news headlines has been used to predict stock price movements.

London-based hedge fund firm Derwent Capital is launching a new spread betting application for retail traders in January that will use Twitter’s 350 million daily tweets to create a sentiment indicator covering currency pairs and other assets.

Social media makes existing currency market sentiment models more effective, said John Hardy, head of FX strategy at Saxo Bank.

“It would be a new way to measure “sentiment” in real time, something that banks can do already via how people are actually trading…but the Twitter measures might be able to bring new nuances and sophistication,” he said.

Arguably, solo traders who hook up to social trading networks are seeking an edge in the “wisdom of crowds”.

“The reason why so many people, like myself, do share their activity and ideas is to help each other and build the community,” Orini said. “I got so many valuable ideas from other traders, that I’m more than happy to share my ideas as well.”

(Editing by Nigel Stephenson)

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Setback for first malaria vaccine in African trial

LONDON (Reuters) – The world’s first potential malaria vaccine proved only 30 percent effective in African babies in a crucial trial, calling into question whether it can be a useful weapon in the fight against the deadly disease.

The surprisingly poor result for the vaccine, which GlaxoSmithKline has been developing for three decades, leaves several years of work ahead before a protective malaria shot could be ready for countries that desperately need one.

Malaria, a mosquito-borne parasitic disease, kills hundreds of thousands a year, mainly babies in Africa, and scientists say an effective vaccine is key to hopes to eradicate it.

Philanthropist Bill Gates, who helped fund the GSK vaccine’s development, said further research was now needed to see whether and how it might be used.

“The efficacy came back lower than we had hoped, but developing a vaccine against a parasite is a very hard thing to do,” he said in a statement.

Results from the final-stage trial with 6,537 babies aged six to 12 weeks showed the vaccine provided “modest protection”, reducing episodes of the disease by 30 percent compared to immunisation with a control vaccine, researchers said on Friday.

That efficacy rate a year after vaccination is less than half the 65 percent in an earlier trial in babies which analysed protection rates after six months. It is also a lot less than the 50 percent rate seen in five to 17 month-olds.

Vaccinating babies, rather than toddlers, is the preferred option, since the new vaccine could then be added to other routine infant immunisations. A separate programme for older children would involve a lot of extra costs.

Eleanor Riley, a professor of immunology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said the results showed that GSK’s vaccine, called RTS,S or Mosquirix, is potentially useful, but “not the complete solution”.

“The slightly lower than expected efficacy will … affect the cost-benefit analysis that health providers and funders will have to undertake before deciding whether the vaccine represents the best use of limited financial resources,” she said.

NOT GIVING UP

Despite the setback, Britain’s top drugmaker said it would push ahead with developing RTS,S and GSK Chief Executive Andrew Witty said it could be an important tool in fighting malaria.

“We’ve been at this for 30 years, and we’re certainly not going to give up now,” he told reporters on a conference call.

GSK does not expect to make any profit from the vaccine, which would only be sold in poor countries.

Witty reiterated a promise that if RTS,S is ultimately approved for market, it would be priced at cost of manufacture plus a 5 percent margin, and the margin would be reinvested by GSK in malaria research.

Given the target market, it is governments and international groups that will fund the vaccine’s roll-out, and they now need more positive data before deciding whether it is worth buying.

“We will have to have more information to give us a clearer idea as to how useful this vaccine will be,” said Seth Berkley, CEO of the GAVI Alliance, which funds bulk-buy vaccination programmes for poorer nations.

In particular, Berkley told Reuters he wanted to see longer-term data, including the effect of booster shots, and an analysis of how the vaccine performed in different settings.

Details of the malaria trial, which is Africa’s largest ever clinical trial involving almost 15,500 children in seven countries, were presented at a medical meeting in Cape Town and published online by the New England Journal of Medicine.

Witty said he would have liked to have seen efficacy rates of around 50 percent in infants, but stressed that more data would become available before the trial ends in 2014 which may throw more light on why rates of success are so variable.

“It may open up a more customised approach to how this potential vaccine gets used,” he said.

Malaria is caused by a parasite carried in the saliva of mosquitoes. It is endemic in more than 100 countries worldwide and infected around 216 million people in 2010, killing around 655,000 of them, according to the World Health Organisation.

Control measures such as insecticide-treated bed nets, indoor spraying and anti-malaria drugs have helped cut cases and deaths significantly in recent years, but scientists say it will take an effective vaccine and many more years work to wipe out malaria.

Scientists around the world are working on other potential malaria vaccines but RTS,S is by far the furthest ahead in development.

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Obama: Americans agree with my debt plan

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama, laying down his marker for grueling "fiscal cliff" negotiations, said Friday he won't accept any approach to federal deficit reduction that doesn't ask the wealthy to pay more in taxes.

"This was a central question during the election," Obama said in his first postelection comments on the economy. "The majority of Americans agree with my approach."

The president, speaking in the White House East Room, said he wasn't wedded to every detail of the plans he outlined during the election, adding, "I'm open to compromise." But he offered no indication that he was willing to back down on his insistence that the wealthy pay more.

Republicans stood their ground. At the Capitol, Republican House Speaker John Boehner said he remains unwilling to raise tax rates on upper-income earners. But he left open the possibility of balancing spending cuts with new revenue that could be achieved by revising the tax code to lower rates and eliminate some tax breaks.

Obama said he had invited congressional leaders of both parties to the White House next week to start negotiations on averting the tax increases and automatic spending cuts due to hit in January. Both parties agree that those changes, the result of failed deficit-cut talks earlier this year, could send the economy back into recession.

The president avoided any mention of specific tax rates in his remarks, saying only that the wealthy should pay more. He also called on Congress to quickly pass an extension of tax cuts, first enacted by George W. Bush, for families making less than $250,000 a year.

Republicans, as they have throughout Obama's first term, say raising tax rates on wealthier Americans is a non-starter. Boehner said such increases would hurt small businesses just as they are trying to recover from the severe last recession.

"I'm proposing that we avert the fiscal cliff together in a manner that ensures that 2013 is finally the year that our government comes to grips with the major problems that are facing us," the speaker said. He said cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps, known as entitlement programs, have to be part of the equation.

Still, Boehner declined to provide specific proposals to avoid the fiscal cliff.

He did say that raising the debt limit, which the government will reach sometime in the spring, should be part of any negotiations. Pressed for details beyond that framework, he said he didn't want to limit ideas to address the problem. He burden is on Obama, he said.

"This is an opportunity for the president to lead," Boehner said. He repeated a version of that phrase four times during the 11 minutes he spoke. "This is his moment to engage the Congress and work toward a solution that can pass both chambers."

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Assad says will live and die in Syria

DOHA (Reuters) – President Bashar al-Assad said he would “live and die” in Syria and warned that any Western invasion to topple him would have catastrophic consequences for the Middle East and beyond.

Assad’s defiant remarks coincided with a landmark meeting in Qatar on Thursday of Syria’s fractious opposition to hammer out an agreement on a new umbrella body uniting rebel groups inside and outside Syria, amid growing international pressure to put their house in order and prepare for a post-Assad transition.

The Syrian leader, battling a 19-month old uprising against his rule, appeared to reject an idea floated by British Prime Minister David Cameron on Tuesday that a safe exit and foreign exile for the London-educated Assad could end the civil war.

“I am not a puppet. I was not made by the West to go to the West or to any other country,” he told Russia Today television in an interview to be broadcast on Friday. “I am Syrian; I was made in Syria. I have to live in Syria and die in Syria.”

Russia Today’s web site, which published a transcript of the interview conducted in English, showed footage of Assad speaking to journalists and walking down stairs outside a white villa. It was not clear when he had made his comments.

The United States and its allies want the Syrian leader out, but have held back from arming his opponents or enforcing a no-fly zone, let alone invading. Russia has stood by Assad.

The president said he doubted the West would risk the global cost of intervening in Syria, whose conflict has already added to instability in the Middle East and killed some 38,000 people.

“I think that the price of this invasion, if it happened, is going to be bigger than the whole world can afford … It will have a domino effect that will affect the world from the Atlantic to the Pacific,” the 47-year-old president said.

“I do not think the West is going in this direction, but if they do so, nobody can tell what is next.”

QATAR, TURKEY CHIDE OPPOSITION

Backed by Washington, the Doha talks underline Qatar’s central role in the effort to end Assad‘s rule as the Gulf state, which funded the Libyan revolt to oust Muammar Gaddafi, tries to position itself as a player in a post-Assad Syria.

Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani urged the Syrian opposition to set its personal disputes aside and unite, according to a source inside the closed-door session.

“Come on, get a move on in order to win recognition from the international community,” the source quoted him as saying.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmed Davutoglu delivered a similar message, saying, according to the source: “We want one spokesman not many. We need efficient counterparts, it is time to unite.”

An official text of a speech by Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid Mohamed al-Attiyah showed he told the gathering: “The Syrian people awaits unity from you, not divisions … Your agreement today will prove to the international community that there is a unity … and this will reflect positively in the international community’s stance towards your fair cause.”

Across Syria, more than 90 people were killed in fighting on Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

In Turkey’s Hatay border province, two civilians, a woman and a young man, were wounded by stray bullets fired from Syria, according to a Turkish official. Turkish forces increased their presence along the frontier, where officials have said they might seek NATO deployment of ground to air missiles.

Syria poses one of the toughest foreign policy challenges for U.S. President Barack Obama as he starts his second term.

International rivalries have complicated mediation efforts. Russia and China have vetoed three Western-backed U.N. Security Council resolutions that would have put Assad under pressure.

Syria’s conflict, pitting mostly Sunni Muslim rebels against forces dominated by Assad’s Alawite minority, whose origins lie in Shi’ite Islam, has fuelled sectarian tensions across the Middle East. Sunni Arab countries and Turkey favor the rebels, while Shi’ite Iran backs Assad, its main Arab ally.

“VICIOUS CIRCLE”

The main opposition body, the Syrian National Council (SNC), has been heavily criticized by Western and Arab backers of the revolt as ineffective, run by exiles out of touch with events in Syria, and under the sway of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

British Foreign Minister William Hague said London would now talk to rebel groups inside Syria, after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week criticized the SNC and called for a new opposition body to include those “fighting and dying”.

But the plan for a body that could eventually be considered a government-in-waiting capable of winning foreign recognition and therefore more military backing ran into trouble almost as soon as it was proposed by SNC member Riyad Seif.

The meeting has so far been bogged down by arguments over the SNC representation and the number of seats the rival groups – which include Islamists, leftists and secularists – will have in a proposed assembly. Seif said he hoped for agreement on that on Thursday night, although the talks may continue into Friday.

Senior SNC member Burhan Ghalioun said the participants were moving towards consensus: “The atmosphere was positive. We all agree that we don’t want to walk away from this meeting in failure,” he told reporters.

Seif’s proposal is the first concerted attempt to merge opposition forces to help end the devastating conflict.

The initiative would also create a Supreme Military Council, a Judicial Committee and a transitional government-in-waiting of technocrats – along the lines of Libya’s Transitional National Council, which managed to galvanize international support for its successful battle to topple Gaddafi.

Michael Doran of the Brookings Institute in Washington told a forum in Doha it would not work for Syria. “It’s not a ridiculous idea, but it’s not going to succeed,” he said.

A diplomat on the sidelines of the talks said international divisions in the U.N. Security council did not help.

“It’s a vicious circle. They are asking the opposition to unite when they admit they are not themselves united,” he said.

(Writing by Tom Perry and Samia Nakhoul; Editing by Alistair Lyon, Alastair Macdonald and Philippa Fletcher)

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On Twitter, pope to get different type of followers

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict already has 1.2 billion “followers” in the standard sense of the word but he soon will have another type when he enters what for any 85 year old is the brave new world of Twitter.

Vatican officials say the pontiff, who is known not to love computers and still writes most of his speeches by hand, will have his own handle by the end of the year.

“It will be an officially verified channel,” said a Vatican official.

Primarily the tweets will come from the contents of his weekly general audience, Sunday blessings and homilies on major Church holidays. They will also include reaction to major world events, such as natural disasters.

The leader of the world’s 1.2 billion or so Roman Catholics will not, of course, write the tweets himself, but he will sign off on them before they are sent in his name.

But even divine intervention might not help squeeze the gist of a papal encyclical, which can run to more than 140 pages, into 140 characters.

Those tweets will probably be limited to a link to a url with the entire document.

The papal handle has not yet been disclosed but it is widely expected to be @BenedictusPPXVI, his name and title in Latin.

The pope has given a qualified blessing to social networking.

In a document issued last year, he said the possibilities of new media and social networks offered “a great opportunity”, but warned of the risks of depersonalisation, alienation, self-indulgence, and the dangers of having more virtual friends than real ones.

In 2009, a new Vatican website, www.pope2you.net, went live, offering an application called “The pope meets you on Facebook”, and another allowing the faithful to see the pontiff’s speeches and messages on their iPhones or iPods.

The Vatican famously got egg on its face in 2009 when it was forced to admit that, if it had surfed the web more, it might have known that a traditionalist bishop whose excommunication was lifted had for years been a Holocaust denier.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; editing by Mike Collett-White)

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