Finance & Business World

China is expecting foreign trade growth to slow this year to around 10 percent amid a grim outlook for exports, a state news agency reported Saturday.

The world’s second-largest economy’s foreign trade will be hurt by weak external demand, increasing trade competition, a stronger Chinese currency and other factors, the official Xinhua News Agency cited an official from the country’s top economic planning agency as saying.

“We expect more difficulties in foreign trade and the export situation will be grim in 2012, especially in the first half of the year,” said Zhang Xiaoqiang, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, according to Xinhua.

Last year, China’s foreign trade grew 22.5 percent to $3.6 trillion, according to data from the official General Administration of Customs released earlier in the week.

The data also showed that exports in December rose 13.4 percent, down slightly from November’s growth rate. In a new that sign the economy is slowing, import growth showed an unexpectedly sharp drop, falling to 11.8 percent, barely above half the previous month’s gain payday loans.

On Saturday, Zhang told a forum in Beijing that improving tax and insurance policies and providing financial support for small trading companies could help stabilize export growth, Xinhua said.

China’s relatively robust growth has been a rare bright spot for a struggling global economy. But growth has slowed in recent months after Beijing tightened lending and investment curbs to prevent overheating.

A slump in demand for Chinese goods abroad has prompted the government to reverse course and promise to help struggling exporters and shore up growth with more bank lending and other measures. It is unclear what impact the measures will have.

Chinese export growth has fallen steadily since August as Europe’s debt crisis and high U.S. unemployment hurt demand. But it has stayed in double digits, showing the competitive strength of Chinese exporters in global markets.

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The Obama administration will ask Congress to increase federal borrowing authority by $1.2 trillion as the nation approaches the debt limit set by law, according to a Treasury Department official.

The White House will send the request to Congress on Dec. 30, the day the debt is projected to rise to within $100 billion of the $15.194 trillion limit, the Treasury official told reporters today on condition of anonymity.

Congress will be notified under the terms of a deal to raise the limit worked out on Aug. 2 after months of wrangling between the administration and Republican lawmakers. Three days later, Standard & Poor

Bangkok authorities are telling more residents to leave as floodwaters threaten southwestern neighborhoods in the Thai capital.

Governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra said people should evacuate three neighborhoods due to surging water levels. He said Sunday pumps were operating around the clock and more pumps were being added to help drain the water.

Still, floodwaters are receding elsewhere. Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said previously the city center would have light flooding if the water penetrated that far but western areas of Bangkok were threatened with inundation savings account payday advance.

The national death toll from floods since late July has reached 536. More than 13.1 million people _ one in five Thais _ are affected.

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A faster iPhone with better software and an improved camera went on sale in seven countries on Friday as hundreds of buyers camped out for hours to be among the first to get one.

About 200 people were at Apple’s Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan as the iPhone 4S went on sale at 8 a.m. Steve Wozniak, who created Apple with Steve Jobs in a Silicon Valley garage in 1976, was first in line at a store in Los Gatos, Calif.

Many said the event resembled a remembrance to Jobs, who died last week, a day after Apple Inc. announced the new phone.

Emily Smith, a 27-year-old user experience designer in New York, checked in to the line on the location-centric social network Foursquare. She got a virtual Steve Jobs badge that read: “Here’s to the crazy ones. ThankYouSteve.”

Others joked that the 4S model stood “for Steve.”

Many people came out despite the fact that they could have ordered phones online and had them shipped to their homes or offices.

Apple and phone companies in seven countries started taking orders for the iPhone 4S last Friday. Apple said Monday that more than 1 million orders came in, breaking the record set by last year’s model, which was available in fewer countries and on fewer carriers.

The death of Jobs could be affecting sales. Marketing experts say products designed by widely admired figures such as Jobs usually see an upsurge in sales after their death.

Una Chen, a 24-year-old banker, said she was just happy to swap out her BlackBerry Bold for the new iPhone, particularly after a BlackBerry outage affected her phone this week.

“It’s not good to have a phone and not be able to use it,” Chen said.

Wozniak got in line at the California store even though he already had two new phones on the way. He told television station NBC11 on Thursday that while he waited for the store’s opening Friday morning, he planned on getting caught up on his email and chatting with fans.

In the U.S., sales were beginning at 8 a.m. in each time zone. They were available at Apple stores, along with those of the three partner carriers, AT&T Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp. and Verizon Wireless. Some Best Buy, Target and Walmart stores and authorized resellers also carried the phones.

The base model of the iPhone 4S costs $199 in the U.S. with a two-year contract. It comes with 16 gigabytes of storage. Customers can get 32 gigabytes for $299 and 64 gigabytes for $399. Customers have a choice of white or black.

The phones also debuted Friday in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Britain. They are coming to 22 more countries by the end of the month.

The phone _ Apple’s fifth _ has a faster processor and an improved camera compared with last year’s model. It has a new operating system that allows you to sync content without needing a computer. It also includes a futuristic, voice-activated service that responds to spoken commands and questions such as “Do I need an umbrella today?”

However, some customers and investors were disappointed that Apple didn’t launch a more radical new model _ an iPhone 5. It’s been more than a year since Apple’s previous model was released.

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Asian stocks opened lower Wednesday after Slovakia blocked a measure to expand Europe’s financial rescue program for heavily indebted countries.

The move sent markets south as worries intensified that a failure by Europe to contain its debt crisis could lead to a massive debt default by the Greek government.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index dropped 0.7 percent to 8,716.13. South Korea’s Kospi fell 0.3 percent to 1,790.30, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 1.4 percent to 17,894.31. Benchmarks in Australia, Taiwan, Singapore and mainland China were also lower.

Slovakia’s parliament rejected a bill Tuesday that would have strengthened the powers of a regional rescue fund to help bail out strapped economies in the eurozone.

The 16 other countries that use the euro have already signed off on the bill, but the measure requires unanimous support.

There are ways around Slovakia’s opposition, but the move temporarily sets back efforts to address Europe’s debt jam, which has been the most important issue for financial markets for months.

Greece has been on the brink of defaulting on its debt for months. If that happens, it would hurt European and U.S. banks by decimating the value of Greek government bonds they own. Those banks would then be less likely to lend to each other and to businesses. That could plug up an already weak global economy, with implications for everything from bank stocks to international trade.

The decision came after U.S. stock markets closed. The Dow Jones industrial average ended down 17 points after moving between small gains and losses throughout the day.

The Dow lost 0.1 percent to close at 11,416.3. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 0.1 percent to 1,195.54, and the Nasdaq composite rose 0.7 percent to 2,583.03.

Many market watchers think the volatility will continue until heavily indebted countries like Greece, Spain and Italy have established a clear path out of their current debt mess.

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Dow Chemical Co. and the Saudi Arabian Oil Co. say they’ve signed an agreement that advances their plan to build one of the world’s biggest chemical plants in Saudi Arabia. The $20 billion complex is expected to begin production in 2015.

The companies announced Saturday that they signed a joint venture agreement for Sadara Chemical Co., which will own the plant being built in the desert kingdom. It will generate an estimated $10 billion in revenue annually.

Dow and Saudi Aramco together are investing about $12 billion, and a portion of Sadara will be sold to shareholders in a public offering in 2013 or 2014. The complex, with 26 manufacturing units, will be the largest integrated chemical facility ever built in one go, the companies say.

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The Associated Press emphasized its efforts to strengthen state news reports and investigative and accountability journalism in its annual presentation to media executives Thursday.

AP leaders told the members of the Associated Press Media Editors that the news cooperative continues to beef up state news reports, despite staff reductions and budget pressures shared with the industry.

The news cooperative is continuing its “Broken Budgets” multimedia series launched this year. The joint reporting project with AP members expands statehouse coverage to explore cutbacks in state budgets. The series has examined dozens of aspects of state finances, from spending on roads and schools to the nuts-and-bolts of how states borrow and spend.

The AP has also changed staffing in some areas to expand early morning news.

“We have to take that breaking news and drive it faster than we ever had before,” said Kathleen Carroll, executive editor and a senior vice president for the AP.

The AP also told media executives that the company has expanded state photo reports and reaffirmed its commitment to investigative journalism, highlighting an award-winning “Aging Nukes” series that detailed problems at U.S. nuclear plants.

AP leaders said the company has never placed a higher priority on accountability journalism, putting a greater emphasis on seeking public records and fact-checking claims by political candidates and public officials. Across the company, AP staffers filed some 1,500 requests for public documents last year, said Kristin Gazlay, AP vice president and managing editor for financial news and global training.

Political editor Liz Sidoti said the AP is bulking up analysis pieces to check statements by politicians, at times assigning a dozen reporters to scrutinize facts at a single presidential debate fast cash advance loan. She told news executives to expect more analysis to guide political coverage, especially as politicians step up claims about the economy.

Sidoti said the cooperative considers its top assignment over the coming to year to cover “the economy intersecting with the presidential campaign.”

She predicted a lively year.

“We’re all going to have a very competitive presidential race to cover next year,” Sidoti said.

AP Director of Photography Santiago Lyon told the executives that increased cooperation has meant many more photos in the U.S.

Lyon said domestic photo transmissions were up 9 percent in the second quarter of this year. He also said AP is better sharing photo coverage plans with members to avoid overlap.

“We continue to make good progress toward increasing the quality, and the volume, of the state photo reports,” he said.

AP also presented a good-natured look at its famed AP Stylebook, created in 1953 and the definitive style guide for publishers in all formats. AP in the last year added a new guide on food and recipes to its 2011 Stylebook, and quizzed media executives on some of the year’s style changes.

Every hand in the room went up to identify the correct style on “email.” The editor of the AP Stylebook, David Minthorn, said it was the best-known style change of the year.

“It was the dropped hyphen heard by copy editors around the world,” he said.

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U.S. retail sales of video game hardware, software and accessories fell 21 in August to $649 million, according to market researcher NPD Group, partly because the popular “Madden NFL 12″ released later in the month than usual.

In its monthly report, the NPD Group said Thursday that video game software sales _ which refers to sales of the games themselves _ sank 34 percent in August to $265 million, compared with nearly $404 million in August 2010.

NPD analyst Anita Frazier said much of this drop stemmed from video game publisher Electronic Arts Inc.’s decision to release its latest “Madden” football game, “Madden NFL 12,” at the end of August, which is later than it usually rolls out a new version of the game. She added that the next several months includes a “strong release schedule” and that full-year game sales may end up flat or up slightly compared with 2010.

The research firm does not include game downloads and online games in its monthly retail sales data, so the numbers can sometimes show a decline even if more people are playing games on Facebook, their mobile phones and elsewhere payday loan.

Sales of video game hardware, which includes hand-held game systems and gaming consoles such as Nintendo Co.’s Wii and Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360, dropped 12 percent to $249 million from $283 million a year earlier. Sales of video game accessories inched down 1 percent to $135 million.

Adding in sales of PC games, overall U.S. sales dropped 23 percent overall to $670 million.

The top-selling games during the month included “Deus Ex: Human Revolution” from Square Enix Inc., “NCAA Football 12″ from Electronic Arts Inc. and “Call of Duty: Black Ops” from Activision Blizzard Inc.

For the current month, Frasier expects “Madden NFL 12″ to take the top spot.

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Missouri’s tough laws discourage Ralcorp takeover, report says

Unless Ralcorp Holdings’ shows some willingness to come to the table to negotiate a sale, ConAgra Foods won’t increase its $94 a share offer because of Missouri’s stringent laws on hostile takeovers, Reuters reported Tuesday, citing sources close to the matter.

Omaha, Neb payday loans in 1 hour.-based ConAgra has made several attempts to buy the St. Louis-based company this year only to be rebuffed by Ralcorp’s board of directors. Ralcorp’s stock closed Tuesday at $81.83 a share, signaling that shareholders also don’t have much faith a sale will proceed. (Lisa Brown)

U.S. plans to nix hundreds of rules

The back-to-school season got off to a strong start as discounts and high temperatures in July drove shoppers to air-conditioned malls.

But merchants worry that momentum won’t continue through the remainder of the second-biggest shopping period of the year as the weather cools and the deals dry up.

Despite a flow of bad economic news that kept consumer confidence shaky, a number of retailers reported July revenue on Thursday that beat Wall Street estimates, including discounter Target, department store Macy’s and luxury chain Saks payday loan lenders. The International Council of Shopping Centers’ preliminary tally of retailers’ revenue at stores open at least a year