Economy may skirt direct hit from Hurricane Sandy

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Hurricane Sandy is shaping up to be one of the biggest storms ever to hit the United States but even with the severe damage that is expected, the blow to the economy is seen as short-term.

Economists say some of the impact caused by businesses closing will be offset by reconstruction efforts, and point to catastrophic storms like Katrina, which devastated New Orleans but did not deal lasting damage to the national economy.

Still, Sandy’s sheer breadth – 10 states have declared a state of emergency – means it could hurt this quarter’s economic output, even if the long-term impact ultimately proves neutral.

Gross domestic product in the region between New York and Washington amounts to some $ 2.5 trillion, so that every day the region’s economy grinds to a halt amounts to about $ 10 billion in foregone output, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.

At the local level of course, the destruction can be severe, and vary in direction depending on the industry affected.

Peter Morici at the University of Maryland estimates that Sandy will cause about $ 35 billion to $ 45 billion in losses and damages but then be followed by as much as $ 36 billion in recovery spending.

Damage caused by last year’s Hurricane Irene totaled as much as $ 20 billion, he said.

Predicting the impact of Sandy is made all the harder by complexity of the rare, hybrid “super storm” involving other weather systems that could get trapped over the Northeastern United States and amplify inland flooding.

“The range of possible scenarios for Hurricane Sandy remains enormous. There are examples of natural disasters ultimately exacting only minimal toll – Irene – and others having an outsized impact, such as Hurricane Katrina when the (New Orleans) levees broke,” said Eric Lascelles, chief economist RBC Global Asset Management Inc. “Really, it is a game of probabilities.”

Disaster modeling company Eqecat forecast economic losses caused by Sandy at $ 10 billion to $ 20 billion.

The toll from Katrina in 2005 exceeded $ 100 billion by most accounts. U.S. economic growth slowed in the quarter immediately after the devastation inflicted on New Orleans but bounced back quickly.

The U.S. economy grew 2 percent in the third quarter of 2012, picking up from earlier in the year but still a weak number, as consumer spending helped to offset a worrisome pullback in business investment. Many analysts were already concerned that retail sales could suffer later this year.

Retailers bear a significant brunt of any storm’s economic impact as shoppers stay at home. But the last-minute scramble for supplies and emergency goods has a moderating effect on the overall sales declines.

Still, Evan Gold, a senior vice-president at Planalytics, a Philadelphia consulting firm that advises businesses on weather-related matters, was less optimistic about seeing any upside, particularly with Sandy hitting so close to the holiday season.

“If consumers in this part of the country are spending hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to buy things like generators, or after the storm, to do clean-up, that is likely going to cut into budgets that people might have for their holiday shopping,” said Gold.

FORECASTERS CHANNEL METEOROLOGISTS

One thing economists do agree on is that data releases in coming weeks will be even harder than usual to forecast. For instance, the impact of Sandy is likely to skew figures on weekly jobless benefit applications and chain store sales.

“The monthly economic data will become more volatile – October retail sales, vehicle sales, and industrial production will be hurt, but they will bounce back in November and December,” Zandi said.

“Restaurants will be hurt, but grocery stores will benefit; general merchandise stores will lose business, but online retailing should get a boost, he added. “Of course, if the storm knocks out major infrastructure like refineries, cell towers, trains, sea and airports, then the economic damage will be more severe and difficult to recover from.”

The hurricane has the potential to cause some of the largest losses the global insurance industry has faced this year, but nothing that would strain insurers financially aside from hurting earnings this quarter, according to analysts.

(Additional reporting by Phil Wahba and Ben Berkowitz; Editing By Bill Schomberg and Sandra Maler)

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Pole gets 30 years for killing 6 on Channel Island

LONDON (AP) — A Polish builder who killed six people, including his wife and children, on the British Channel Island of Jersey has been sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Damian Rzeszowski, 31, carried out the knife attack in August 2011 at his home. He was said to have become depressed after his wife admitted to an affair.

Rzeszowski was convicted of six counts of manslaughter but cleared of murder. On Monday, Judge Michael Birt sentenced him to 30 years in jail for each victim, but the sentences are to run concurrently.

Rzeszowski’s victims were his wife Izabela Rzeszowska, 30; 5-year-old daughter, Kinga; 2-year-old son, Kacper; father-in-law, Marek Gartska, 56; his wife’s friend Marta De La Haye, 34; and her 5-year-old daughter, Julia.

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Facebook disaster team releases Hurricane Sandy update list

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“Argo” rises above “Cloud Atlas” as Sandy spooks

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Acclaimed Iran hostage thriller “Argo” brought home its first box-office win over a quiet weekend, leading movie charts with $ 12.4 million in U.S. and Canadian ticket sales as would-be moviegoers hunkered down for Hurricane Sandy.

The tally for “Argo,” directed by and starring Ben Affleck, topped the $ 9.4 million for new sci-fi drama “Cloud Atlas“. Halloween-themed animated film “Hotel Transylvania” scared up $ 9.5 million from Friday through Sunday, narrowly edging “Cloud Atlas“, studio estimates showed.

After two weeks in the No. 2 spot, “Argo” moved into the lead and lifted its domestic sales to $ 60.8 million through three weekends.

The movie, produced by Warner Bros. and GK Films for $ 44 million, tells the story of a mission to rescue U.S. government employees from Iran in 1979. The film has earned Oscar buzz after stellar reviews from critics and an “A+” grade from audiences polled by CinemaScore.

Dan Fellman, president of theatrical distribution for Warner Bros., a unit of Time Warner Inc, attributed the film’s jump to “great word-of-mouth”, which he called “the best form of advertising”.

“Cloud Atlas“, also from Warner Bros., fell short of industry forecasts for a $ 13 million debut at North American (U.S. and Canadian) theaters. Fellman said the film did better in larger cities, but struggled in the South and Midwest.

The film, starring Tom Hanks and Halle Berry, cost $ 100 million to make. Many in Hollywood thought the story, based on a philosophical novel by David Mitchell, was too complex to bring to the big screen.

The nearly three-hour film with six interweaving stories divided critics, with the harshest reviewers saying it would try audiences’ patience with multiple storylines and century-hopping plots. The film’s stars also shift characters. Hanks, for example, is a shady doctor in the 1840s, a nuclear scientist in the 1970s and a simple valley-dweller in the distant future.

But “Cloud Atlas” also drew praise as an ambitious and well-acted epic. Sixty-one percent of reviews on the Rotten Tomatoes website recommended the film.

“Hotel Transylvania” set a record for a September film opening in North America when it opened on September 28, and has performed solidly since then.

In the family comedy, Frankenstein, the Invisible Man and other monsters gather for a party at a high-end resort operated by Dracula. Their celebration is disrupted when a boy discovers the hotel and falls in love with Dracula’s daughter but must deal with her overprotective father.

The president of worldwide distribution for Sony Corp‘s Sony Pictures studio, Rory Bruer, wasn’t entirely surprised that the weeks-old movie beat “Cloud Atlas“, despite the latter movie’s buzz.

“Anything at this point doesn’t surprise me,” Bruer said. “It’s like an annuity that keeps on giving and giving.”

Paul Dergarabedian, box office analyst at Hollywood.com, said the Halloween weekend gave the film a boost, and is “still the number one choice for families” among the spooky seasonal films currently playing.

This weekend was fairly quiet at the box office in North America, which Dergarabedian attributed to Hurricane Sandy, a storm menacing the East Coast of the United States.

However, the new James Bond movie “Skyfall” whipped up a storm of its own overseas, taking $ 77.7 million in 25 countries. The latest installment of the British spy saga took the top spot in all 25 countries, broke the all-time Saturday attendance record in the United Kingdom, and was the biggest film opening there of 2012. It will open in the United States on November 9.

Rounding out the weekend’s top five, low-budget horror sequel “Paranormal Activity 4″ grossed $ 8.7 million at domestic theaters. “Silent Hill: Revelation 3D” and “Taken 2″ tied for fifth place, each pulling in $ 8 million.

Two other new films failed to crack the top five.

New Halloween-themed comedy “Fun Size” brought in $ 4.1 million at domestic theaters, landing in tenth place. The $ 14 million production tells the story of a boy who goes missing among trick-or-treaters, sparking his teen sister’s frantic search to find him before her mother comes home.

Sports drama “Chasing Mavericks” disappointed, failing to break the top ten. The movie stars Gerard Butler in the story of a surfer who tries to conquer one of the biggest waves on Earth.

“Silent Hill: Revelation 3D” was released by Open Road Films, a joint venture between theater owners Regal Entertainment Group and AMC Entertainment Inc. Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom Inc, released “Fun Size” and “Paranormal Activity 4″.

“Chasing Mavericks” was distributed by News Corp’s 20th Century Fox studio. Sony Corp’s movie division released “Hotel Transylvania“.

(Reporting by Lisa Richwine and Andrea Burzynski; Editing by Will Dunham and Dale Hudson)

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Trans fats raise cholesterol, not blood sugar: study

(Reuters) – Although much-criticized trans fats raise levels of “bad” cholesterol, they don’t appear to have a lasting impact on blood sugar levels, according to a U.S. study.

Researchers, writing in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found that both blood sugar and insulin, the hormone that keeps blood sugar levels in check, were similar regardless of how much trans fat people ate.

The link between trans fats and high cholesterol levels is widely accepted, but there has been a lack of clarity on the effect on blood sugar control, which is involved in diabetes.

“Although evidence from cohort studies has suggested that trans fatty acid (TFA) consumption may be associated with insulin resistance and diabetes, randomized placebo-controlled trials have yielded conflicting results,” wrote lead researcher Christos Mantzoros of Harvard Medical School in Boston.

Trans fats, technically known as trans fatty acids, are found in animal products and chemically processed vegetable oils. In response to studies linking high consumption of the substances to an increased risk of heart disease, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has required food makes to disclose trans fats on nutrition labels.

Some cities and states have banned them in restaurants or schools.

Montzoros and his colleagues pooled the results from seven experiments, including 208 people.

In five of the studies, the participants’ blood sugar, insulin and cholesterol levels were monitored for several weeks under a diet of high trans fat consumption, and again for a few weeks when the trans fats were substituted for other fats, such as palm or soybean oil.

Two of the studies compared people who ate a diet that included trans fats to others who ate a diet without trans fats.

There were no changes in blood sugar or insulin levels during the times when people ate trans fats, compared to when they ate the other fats,” Mantzoros’s group reported.

However, the researchers found that during the trans fat-eating weeks, “good” HDL cholesterol went down and “bad” LDL cholesterol went up.

“They saw what you would expect to see” regarding cholesterol, which shows that the studies were well done, said Mark Pereira, an expert in public health and nutrition at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Pereira, who was not involved in the study, said it isn’t definitive proof that trans fats can’t influence blood sugar levels.

Although several weeks is enough time to see an effect on cholesterol, he said, a potential impact on metabolism might not show up until later.

“If you’re going to control weight and switch around fats in the diet, it might take a lot longer, because these fatty acids are being gradually incorporated over time into tissues in the body,” he added.

But even if trans fats do have an impact on blood sugar control, Pereira said, it’s becoming a moot point as the amount of trans fats people eat in the United States has diminished considerably.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/Rky6va

(Reporting by Elaine Lies)

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Trans fats raise cholesterol, not blood sugar: study

(Reuters) – Although much-criticized trans fats raise levels of “bad” cholesterol, they don’t appear to have a lasting impact on blood sugar levels, according to a U.S. study.

Researchers, writing in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found that both blood sugar and insulin, the hormone that keeps blood sugar levels in check, were similar regardless of how much trans fat people ate.

The link between trans fats and high cholesterol levels is widely accepted, but there has been a lack of clarity on the effect on blood sugar control, which is involved in diabetes.

“Although evidence from cohort studies has suggested that trans fatty acid (TFA) consumption may be associated with insulin resistance and diabetes, randomized placebo-controlled trials have yielded conflicting results,” wrote lead researcher Christos Mantzoros of Harvard Medical School in Boston.

Trans fats, technically known as trans fatty acids, are found in animal products and chemically processed vegetable oils. In response to studies linking high consumption of the substances to an increased risk of heart disease, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has required food makes to disclose trans fats on nutrition labels.

Some cities and states have banned them in restaurants or schools.

Montzoros and his colleagues pooled the results from seven experiments, including 208 people.

In five of the studies, the participants’ blood sugar, insulin and cholesterol levels were monitored for several weeks under a diet of high trans fat consumption, and again for a few weeks when the trans fats were substituted for other fats, such as palm or soybean oil.

Two of the studies compared people who ate a diet that included trans fats to others who ate a diet without trans fats.

There were no changes in blood sugar or insulin levels during the times when people ate trans fats, compared to when they ate the other fats,” Mantzoros’s group reported.

However, the researchers found that during the trans fat-eating weeks, “good” HDL cholesterol went down and “bad” LDL cholesterol went up.

“They saw what you would expect to see” regarding cholesterol, which shows that the studies were well done, said Mark Pereira, an expert in public health and nutrition at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Pereira, who was not involved in the study, said it isn’t definitive proof that trans fats can’t influence blood sugar levels.

Although several weeks is enough time to see an effect on cholesterol, he said, a potential impact on metabolism might not show up until later.

“If you’re going to control weight and switch around fats in the diet, it might take a lot longer, because these fatty acids are being gradually incorporated over time into tissues in the body,” he added.

But even if trans fats do have an impact on blood sugar control, Pereira said, it’s becoming a moot point as the amount of trans fats people eat in the United States has diminished considerably.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/Rky6va

(Reporting by Elaine Lies)

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Taskforce to rescue High Streets

28 October 2012 Last updated at 20:30 ET

By Emma Simpson Business correspondent, BBC News

Senior figures from across the banking, retail and property sectors have signed up to a new industry-wide group, the Distressed Retail Property Taskforce.

They are joining forces to find ways to rejuvenate failing town centres.

The Taskforce may be one of the most significant developments since Mary Portas’s much-talked-about review of the High Street.

Its first priority will be to find out how big the problem of retail property indebtedness is across the UK.

Empty, dilapidated shops are a familiar scene across many of Britain’s struggling town centres.

Whole swathes of retail – from shopping centres to run-down or shuttered-up shops – are worth far less than they used to be, with landlords unable or unwilling to invest, yet loath to sell and write off their debts.

Many landlords are also slow to cut the rents they demand in order to attract new tenants, because they have to earn a minimum rental income to keep up with their debt payments.

Stalemate

Often, the properties are no longer worth enough to repay those landlords’ debts.

And that means the landlords and the banks that lent them the money to buy their properties in the first place, find themselves in the same boat together.

Both face the same dilemma – whether to invest in the property in the hope of selling it at a higher price in the future, or instead to throw in the towel and sell off the property even if this means a big loss for both the landlord and its lender.

In many cases, however, landlords and their banks have simply ducked this hard choice, and are instead trying to struggle on with idle or dilapidated retail space.

The challenge for the Distressed Retail Property Taskforce is how to break the stalemate.

It is the first time an industry-wide body has been formed to look at indebted properties, and several big banks are also taking part.

Its first task is to find out the true scale of the problem.

The Distressed Retail Property Taskforce will spend around six months gathering hard evidence on the true scale of the problem and the towns worst affected.

Life support

The big challenge is to try to come up with some solutions, according to Mark Williams, the chairman of the new body.

“The Taskforce recognises that our high streets are going through a structural recalibration, rather than an economic cycle from which we will emerge over time,” he said.

And tough choices, he says, will have to be made:

“We have too many shops, the wrong size and under-invested. So the change in town centres that is required is significant and will require public and private sectors coming together to find ways of financing these changes.

“What we’re talking about are essentially infrastructure projects that can future-proof our towns for the next 50 to 60 years,” he said.

Last week, the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, made clear that the issue of over-indebted businesses is exercising his mind of too:

“I am not sure that advanced economies in general will find it easy to get out of their current predicament without creditors acknowledging further likely losses, a significant writing down of asset values and recapitalisation of their financial systems.”

The problem for the banks is that turning off the life support machine on distressed property could cause too many losses for their balance sheets to bear.

The taskforce has the challenge of trying to come up with a workable, long-term solution.

BBC News – Business

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Ukraine’s opposition doing well in election

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) —

Ukraine’s opposition parties performed strongly in Sunday’s parliamentary vote, according to an exit poll, but President Viktor Yanukovych‘s party could still retain control of the legislature as its members are likely to sweep individual races across the country.

The West is paying close attention to the conduct of the vote in the strategic ex-Soviet state, which lies between Russia and the European Union, and serves as a key conduit for transit of Russian energy supplies to many EU countries. An election deemed unfair would likely turn Ukraine further away from the West and toward Moscow.

Opposition parties alleged widespread violations on election day, such as vote-buying and a suspiciously high amount of home voting, but a local election monitor said those violations were isolated. Authorities insisted the election was honest and democratic.

The Fatherland party, led by the jailed charismatic former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the Udar (Punch) of world boxing champion Vitali Klitschko and a nationalist party together received more than 50 percent of the vote on party lists, outnumbering Yanukovych’s Party of Regions and its traditional ally, the Communist Party.

Both Yanukovych’s and Tymoshenko’s parties claimed victory, saying the election showed the voters trust them to lead the country.

However, only half of the parliament’s 450 seats are split proportionately between the winning parties. The other half is filled by the winners of single-mandate races, where Yanukovych loyalists are expected to make a strong showing. In the election, each voter had two ballots, one with party names and one with the name of candidates in specific constituencies. No exit poll numbers were available for the individual races.

With Yanukovych under fire over the jailing of his top rival, Tymoshenko; rampant corruption and slow reforms, the opposition made a strong showing.

Tymoshenko’s Fatherland party is poised to get about 25 percent of the proportional vote, the Udar (Punch) led by world boxing champion Vitali Klitschko is set to get around 15 percent and the nationalist Svoboda (Freedom) party receives some 12 percent. The Party of Regions polled 28 percent and the Communists nearly 12 percent.

If the three opposition groups unite, they could get 127 parliament seats versus 98 seats gained by the Regions and Communists. The distribution of the remaining 225 seats is expected to be clear Monday.

Opposition forces hope to garner enough parliament seats to weaken Yanukovych’s power and undo the damage they say he has done: the jailing of Tymoshenko and her top allies, the concentration of power in the hands of the president, the snubbing of the Ukrainian language in favor of Russian, waning media freedoms, a deteriorating business climate and growing corruption.

The strong showing by the far-right Svoboda (Freedom) party which campaigns for the defense of the Ukrainian language and culture but is also infamous for xenophobic and anti-Semitic rhetoric emerged as a surprise and showed the widespread disappointment and anger with the ruling party.

It remains to be seen whether Tymoshenko’s group, Klitschko’s party and Svoboda can forge a strong alliance and challenge Yanukovych.

The election tainted by Tymoshenko’s jailing on charges of abuse of office has also been compromised by the creation of fake opposition parties, campaigns by politically unskilled celebrities, and the use of state resources and greater access to television by Yanukovych’s party.

___

Yuras Karmanau in Kiev contributed to this report.

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HTC seeks to reverse sliding smartphone sales

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Taiwan’s HTC Corp. enjoyed three golden years as the first company to make smartphones based on Google’s Android software. Now, it is struggling to halt a slide in sales and keep its status as a global brand in a market increasingly divided between Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.

An early maker of smartphones sold under brands like HP and Compaq, HTC started stamping its own brand on phones in 2006. Taiwanese company surged into the fast lane two years later with its Android smartphones that appealed to consumers because of competitive prices on the free operating system and their strong design.

But its sales faltered from the second half of 2011, partly because its limited financial resources put it at a strong disadvantage to aggressive marketing drives by Samsung and Apple. And unlike its American competitor, it lacked a distinctive flagship phone that captured the hearts of consumers as a must-have product. Instead it produced many phones, trying to cater to a wide range of consumers.

HTC on Friday reported a 79 percent drop in third quarter profit to 3.9 billion New Taiwan dollars ($ 99 million) on revenue of NT$ 70 billion. It was HTC‘s fourth consecutive fall in quarterly profit.

Worse may be to come. It predicted revenue will drop to NT$ 60 billion in the fourth quarter despite traditional pre-Christmas buying and its introduction of two new models running on Microsoft’s Windows 8 software.

“HTC is undergoing a difficult period of trial and error,” said Stephen Su, market analyst at Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute.

“Its technology is good and its design capability is Taiwan’s best,” he said. “But like other Taiwanese makers, HTC falls behind in the area of practical application.”

Su said HTC’s unfamiliarity with Western markets puts it at a disadvantage in developing products for Western consumers — in contrast to Apple, which always seems to be one step ahead of consumer sentiment, not only in the West, but all around the world.

HTC was founded in 1997 as a contract electronics manufacturer. Under its chief executive Peter Chou, the company focused decisively on smartphones in 2006, collaborating with U.S. carriers in marketing efforts.

HTC’s performance reached its peak in the April-June period of 2011, when it shipped 12 million phones and its revenue totaled NT$ 125 billion.

The company’s salvation may lie in pursuing alliances with tablet computer and TV makers so HTC phones can share entertainment and other programs with multiple devices just like iPhones do. The Taiwan maker has not publically addressed the question of a prospective alliance.

China‘s vast market could also offer HTC very good growth prospects. Economic ties and trade between China and Taiwan, which Beijing considers a breakaway province, have blossomed in recent years, providing new avenues of growth for many Taiwanese companies.

“The greater China market may be HTC’s opportunity if they can make phones with features desired by the Chinese and possibly extend that experience to design products for Western consumers,” said Su.

In China’s fast growing smartphone market, HTC is expected to sell 6 million phones this year, ranking 10th, according to Taiwan’s Topology Research Institute.

That would put it well behind Samsung’s projected 32 million, Apple’s 15 million and even Nokia’s 11 million, the organization said. Total Chinese smartphone sales in 2013 will likely hit 256 million, up 36 percent on 2012, it said.

Dennis Chan, an analyst with Taiwan’s Yuanta Core Pacific Securities, said that despite its current troubles, HTC can bounce back if it can come up with a new phone that resonates with consumers.

“The company is now rolling out only a few models instead of multiple phones to meet every taste as it used to,” Chan said. “It will remain a recognized brand for high- and middle-end phones. But it needs to launch a flagship model with distinctive features to really turn things around.”

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Justin Timberlake apologizes for “distasteful” homeless video

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Singer Justin Timberlake apologized on Friday for what he called a “distasteful” video that features homeless people in Los Angeles congratulating him and new wife Jessica Biel on their wedding.

The video was made by a friend of Timberlake’s and intended as a humorous gift for the couple’s lavish wedding in Italy last week. The joke backfired when gossip website Gawker got hold of the video and celebrity news site TMZ.com tracked down one of the homeless men, who said he had been paid $ 40 for appearing in it.

In an open letter on his website, Timberlake said he had no knowledge of the video and “had absolutely ZERO contribution to it” but agreed that it was “distasteful” and was “made as a joke and not in any way in mockery”.

“My friends are good people. This was clearly a lapse in judgment which I’m sure no one who is reading this is exempt from. But, I don’t believe it was made to be insensitive. More so, I think it was made as a joke on me not having that many friends attending my own wedding (which IS kind of funny if you think about it),” the “Sexyback” singer said.

“Like many silly rumors that I have been made aware of about the week: It was NOT shown at my wedding…I think we can all agree that it was distasteful, even though that was not its intention.”

Timberlake signed off lightheartedly, saying “I’m having my friend do at least 100 hours of community service… Boom.”

Gawker was forced to remove the video from their site earlier this week when they were threatened with a lawsuit from attorneys representing Timberlake’s friend, Justin Huchel, who said the film was stolen and was made “to be used and exhibited privately at Justin Timberlake’s wedding as a private joke without Mr. Timberlake’s knowledge”.

Timberlake, 31, a former member of 1990s boy band N’Sync who has forged a Hollywood acting career, married “Total Recall” actress Biel, 30, in southern Italy last week with close friends and family in attendance.

People magazine secured the rights to exclusive pictures and details of the three days of festivities, where Biel wore a flowing pink designer wedding dress and Timberlake performed a song he had written for his new wife.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant and Andrew Hay)

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