U.S. loses in the largest fighter sale in 15 years in India

April 29, 2011, 3: 21 am EDT by James Rupert

(Updates with the India declined comment to the second paragraph, the sixth paragraph analysts comment).

April 29 (Bloomberg)--the India of the Defence Ministry opted for European in U.S. aviation for the order of the world more large fighter aircraft in 15 years, the lobbying efforts by the President Barack Obama.The U.S. of snubbing is "deeply disappointed" after the India said this week that Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. "does". "were not selected for purchases" for the warplane, the US Embassy in New Delhi said in a statement, quoting Ambassador Timothy Roemer. Ministry of defence the India will not comment on the reports, he screened the aircraft from the France of Dassault Aviation SA and the European Aeronautic, defence & space Co., said the spokesman of the Sitanshu Kar Department by phone today.The contest of the order of the India can be even more so with the approval by the cabinet of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh required following the final recommendation of the Ministry of defence. "Obama has sought to strengthen ties with the India, second-fast world economic growth major, to stimulate exports and growth in employment than the United States struggles to bring down high unemployment rates."A remaining uncertainty is the determinative nature of the strategic partnership U.S. - Indian could outweigh the purely technical and operational considerations "which gave an advantage to European companies, said Kapil Kak, Indian air former vice Marshal who is the Director of the Centre for air power studies"a group of New Delhi.AircraftLockheed more aged, based in the suburbs of Washington in Bethesda, Maryland, has offered his F-16 fighter aircraft, while Chicago-based Boeing is intended to sell the F/A-18 Super Hornet. These aircraft were first designed in the years 1970 and the Lockheed F-22 advanced fighter and the most expensive in the U.S. arsenal, was not offered for sale.Preference of the Department for the latest European models "is not a political choice," said V.K. Kapoor, a former lieutenant-general who oversees the India military markets. "It was a technical assessment by the book that the American F - 16 and F/A-18 in spite of their updates are not the future generation aircraft," Kapoor said by telephone. "They can stay current for another 5 or 10 years, but this agreement will determine the operational capability of the air force for the next 30 years."Trade NegotiationsThe Ministry of defence will open discussions with Dassault and EADS "to see how to obtain the best overall agreement of enterprises," Kak said, quoting officials of the air force. "We can expect that will begin in June and take eight or nine months," he said.Lockheed closed a 0.1% to $79.06 in New York yesterday, when the Standard & Poor 500 advanced by 0.4% of Stock index. Boeing acquired 3.2 78.55% $ after Citigroup Inc. raised its estimate of price on society.The United States is "respectful of the procurement process" and will continue to "develop our partnership of defence with the India", Roemer said in the statement.Boeing said in a statement, he was disappointed and will request a debriefing of the Indian air force on the decision.Saab AB the Sweden said that its Gripen fighter was abandoned from consideration to the planned purchase of 126 jets, an agreement that said Kak can extend to 200 or more reason for attrition among the fleet of MiG - 21 Indian air force, which some have been built in the years 1970.Indian spending spokesman for State arms export Russia, Rosoboronexport, Vyacheslav Davidenko, declined in a telephone interview to comment on the exclusion declared of State-controlled OAO United Aircraft Corp.Foreign Governments and businesses in difficulty to recover from the global recession are competing to sell the $120 billion of dollars of weapons that the India can buy of the year next to 2017 according to an estimate of last year by the Confederation of Indian industry and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Pvt.India has tripled its defence budget to 32 billion of this year, the 10th world these past ten years, they are trying to counter a quadrupling of spending in the same period by neighbors China.Obama led a delegation of Heads of business, including Jim McNerney of Boeing, during a visit to India of November, where the President has urged increased trade between the two countries that he said will support tens of thousands of American jobs. French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived a month later with the CEO of Dassault and EADS, and President Dmitri Medvedev the Russia to exert pressure for military sales.The short ListIndia of the Defence Ministry issued letters to EADS and Dassault asking them to extend the validity of their offers for the contract of combat aircraft, the Press Trust of India reported, citing company sourcesthat he did not identify. Site Web military affairs based in New Delhi Stratpost said that the letters were published on April 27, "effectively making up the short list" for the purchase. "" We have seen indications for almost two months now that the Indian air force seems inclined to shortlist the Eurofighter and the Rafale, "respectively built by EADS and Dassault, said Kak. The India air force can operate about 30 of its squadrons of 40 air desired due to the aging of its MiG-21 and Dassault Mirage of the years 2000, he said.Twenty-one air force MiG has crashed between 2007 and 2010, Indian Defence Minister A.K. Antony said Parliament last year.Buy weapons of the India has been slowed by the sensibilities of the officials on the corruption scandals in previous purchases, a who helped defeat in the 1989 election the Party of the Congress of the drive Singh, say analysts as Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, researcher for South Asia at the International Institute for strategic studies in London.Since years 1980aucun Indian Government has made a purchase of arm of the invitation to tender opened a value as much as $ 100 million, or approximately 1% of the size of deal of hunting, Roy-Chaudhury and other analysts say. "I have been personally assured levels highest Indian Government that the acquisition of this machine has been and will be transparent and fair,"said yesterday Roemer. His statement was released by the Embassy of the United States hours after he announced that he has offered his resignation for "personal, professional and family reasons".

-With the help of Gopal Ratnam Washington, Lyubova Pronina in Moscow and Karthikeyan Sundaram in New Delhi. Editors: Mark Williams, Ben Richardson

To contact the reporter on this story: James Rupert in New Delhi to jrupert3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Hirschberg in Hong Kong to the phirschberg@bloomberg.net

View the original article here

Video: Chernobyl: 25 years later

text is null
Parameter name: text

View the original article here

Cheaper houses in 40 years does not lure buyers

反序列化操作“Translate”的响应消息的正文时出现错误。读取 XML 数据时，超出最大字符串内容长度配额 (8192)。通过更改在创建 XML 读取器时所使用的 XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas 对象的 MaxStringContentLength 属性，可增加此配额。 第 2 行，位置为 8678。
反序列化操作“Translate”的响应消息的正文时出现错误。读取 XML 数据时，超出最大字符串内容长度配额 (8192)。通过更改在创建 XML 读取器时所使用的 XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas 对象的 MaxStringContentLength 属性，可增加此配额。 第 1 行，位置为 10474。
April 19, 2011, 9:12 AM EDT By Kathleen M. Howley

(Updates with March housing starts in 13th paragraph.)

April 19 (Bloomberg) -- Victoria Pauli signed a one-year lease last week to stay in her rental home in Fair Oaks, California. She had considered buying in the area, where property prices have slumped 57 percent since a 2005 peak.

In the end, she decided it wasn’t worth it.

“I know people who have watched their home values get cut in half, and I know people who are losing their homes,” said Pauli, 31, who works as a property manager for a real estate company. “It’s part of the American dream to want to own your own home, and I used to feel that way, but now I tell myself: Be careful what you wish for.”

The most affordable real estate in a generation is failing to lure buyers as Americans like Pauli sour on the idea of home ownership. At the end of 2010, the fourth year of the housing collapse, the share of people who said a home was a safe investment dropped to 64 percent from 70 percent in the first quarter. The December figure was the lowest in a survey that goes back to 2003, when it was 83 percent.

“The magnitude of the housing crash caused permanent changes in the way some people view home ownership,” said Michael Lea, a finance professor at San Diego State University. “Even as the economy improves, there are some who will never buy a home because their confidence in real estate is gone.”

Worse Than Depression

Historically, homes have been a safer investment than equities. During 2008, the worst year of the housing crisis, the median U.S. home price declined 15 percent, compared with a more than 38 percent plunge in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

Americans stay in their homes for a median of eight years, according to the National Association of Realtors in Chicago. Someone who bought a home in 2002 and sold in 2010 saw a 4.8 percent increase in value, based on the annualized median price measured by the group. The average annual gain in the past 20 years was 4.2 percent.

Falling prices have made real estate the best buy in at least four decades. Housing affordability reached a record in December, according to National Association of Realtors data that go back to 1970. The group bases its gauge on property prices, mortgage rates and the median U.S. income.

The median U.S. home price tumbled 32 percent from a 2006 peak to a nine-year low in February, data from the Realtors show. The retreat surpassed the 27 percent drop seen in the first five years of the Great Depression, according to Stan Humphries, chief economist of Zillow Inc., a Seattle-based real estate information company.

Not Risk-Free

“If we’ve learned anything from this mess, it’s that housing is not a risk-free investment,” said Michelle Meyer, a senior economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research in New York. “Everyone knows someone underwater in their mortgage or struggling to sell a home.”

About 11 million U.S. homes were worth less than their mortgages at the end of 2010, according to CoreLogic Inc., a Santa Ana, California-based real estate information company. An additional 2.4 million borrowers had less than five percent equity, meaning they’ll be underwater with even slight price declines, according to the March 8 report. The two categories add up to 28 percent of residences with mortgages.

Future Plans

The share of Americans who said they plan to purchase a home in the next six months tumbled 23 percent in March, according to the Conference Board research firm in New York. The National Association of Realtors probably will say tomorrow that existing-home sales were at a 5 million annual rate in March, up 2.5 percent after a 9.6 percent plunge in February, according to the median estimate of 74 economists surveyed by Bloomberg.

Work began on 549,000 houses at an annual pace in March, up 7.2 percent from the prior month, figures from the Commerce Department showed today in Washington. The gain failed to make up for ground lost in February, when starts fell to the lowest level in almost two years.

The drop in homebuyer confidence may be temporary. Home sales probably will rise 4.1 percent to 5.1 million in 2011, with the biggest increases in the second half of the year, the Mortgage Bankers Association said in an April 14 report. In 2012, sales may climb 5.9 percent to 5.4 million, the highest pace since 2007, the Washington-based trade group estimated.

A rebound in home sales depends on the availability of jobs, the mortgage association said. The unemployment rate probably will decline every quarter of this year and next, falling to 7.9 percent by 2012’s end, the trade group said. It was 8.8 percent last month, the lowest in two years.

Improving Employment

“We expect that purchase activity will pick up slowly as the improvement in the job market eventually leads to greater willingness to buy,” the mortgage bankers group said.

Borrowing costs are at historic lows. The average U.S. rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage was 4.69 percent last year, the lowest in annual data going back to 1972, according to mortgage financier Freddie Mac, based in McLean, Virginia. The rate in March was 4.84 percent, the company said.

By 2012’s fourth quarter, the average fixed rate may rise to 6 percent, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

“If you can jump through the hoops to get a mortgage, and there will be hoops, then this is an amazing time to purchase real estate,” said Robert Stein, a senior economist at First Trust Portfolios LP in Wheaton, Illinois, and the former head of the Treasury Department’s Office of Economic Policy. “There are going to be a lot of people kicking themselves a few years from now because they didn’t take advantage of the low prices and the low mortgage rates.”

Tighter Lending

Cheap financing hasn’t done enough to boost home sales in part because lenders are being more selective with applicants, according to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Fed policy makers have described the housing market as “depressed” in statements following their last eight meetings.

“Although mortgage rates are low and house prices have reached more affordable levels, many potential homebuyers are still finding mortgages difficult to obtain and remain concerned about possible further declines in home values,” Bernanke said in Congressional testimony last month.

The share of banks reporting tighter mortgage standards in the first quarter rose to 16 percent, the highest since 1991, according to the Fed’s Senior Loan Officer Survey.

Federal regulators are proposing rules that may make lending even more stringent, including a requirement that banks and bond issuers keep a stake in home loans they securitize if the mortgage borrowers have imperfect credit and down payments of less than 20 percent. Borrowers who don’t meet the criteria would pay higher rates to compensate lenders for risk.

Fannie Phase-Out

As mortgage requirements rise, rates could follow as Congress and the Obama administration consider phasing out government-controlled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The companies hold federal charters mandating they increase the availability of mortgages through securitization. In Fannie Mae’s case, that order goes back to the Great Depression, when it was created as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

“There are a lot of unsettled policy issues on the table right now that, if they’re not handled right, could further set back the housing market,” said Richard DeKaser, an economist at Parthenon Group in Boston. “Fannie and Freddie have historically lowered interest rates, and eliminating them will increase the cost of home ownership.”

Lowest in Decade

The U.S. home ownership rate dropped to 66.5 percent in the fourth quarter, the lowest in more than a decade, according to the Census Department. The rate probably will retreat another percentage point by 2013, according to Meyer, of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and Lea, the finance professor. That would put it back to a 1997 level.

“People will still aspire to own their own homes,” Lea said. “They’ll just be a lot more practical about it.”

Pauli, the California renter, said she has no such aspirations, at least for now. She pays $1,500 a month for her three-bedroom, single-family home with a two-car garage, granite kitchen countertops and stainless-steel appliances. Her neighbors who bought before the housing crash typically have mortgage payments of about $2,800 a month, Pauli said.

“I don’t see myself purchasing, even with all the great prices I see,” Pauli said. “Going to bed every night worrying about your home value doesn’t sound like a good time to me.”

--Editors: Kara Wetzel, Daniel Taub

To contact the reporter on this story: Kathleen M. Howley in Boston at kmhowley@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kara Wetzel at kwetzel@bloomberg.net.

View the original article here

RCMP used Taser on a boy of 11 years BC.

The RCMP confirmed that one of his officers used a Taser for a boy of 11 years after a knife to Prince George, BC.

Police used stun weapon electric after responding to a call 911 about an incident at a home in the city at about 5: 30 p.m. PT Thursday.

After officers arrived at the residence, "police confirmed that a 37-year-old man was allegedly stabbed by a 11-year-old man," the RCMP Superintendent Brenda Butterworth-Carr, Commander of the detachment of Prince George, said Friday.

Butterworth-Carr said officers located the young suspect to a neighbouring property.

"The efforts to get out of the individual in the House, and when he came out of the House, conducted energy weapon was deployed by a member," said Butterworth-Carr.

The statement to the police provided that no details on what led the police to use the weapon.

She said the boy was detained and taken to the hospital for evaluation.

The victim of aggression remains at the hospital in good condition with injuries threatening life, said.

Butterworth-Carr did not refer to the condition of the boy or say if he was still in custody.

An independent investigation into the incident will be conducted by the service Police of West Vancouver, she said.

Accessibility links

View the original article here