Signed contracts for home resales rose to a nearly two-year high in January, an industry group said on Monday, further evidence of a budding recovery in the housing market.
The National Association of Realtors said its Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed in January, increased 2 percent to 97.0 - the highest reading since April 2010.
December’s reading was revised down to 95.1 from a previously reported 96.6.
Economists polled by Reuters had expected signed contracts, which lead existing home sales by a month or two, to rebound 1.0 percent after a previously reported 3.5 percent fall. Contracts signed were up 8.0 percent in the 12 months to January.
A nascent recovery is under way in the housing market, with the supply of both new and previously owned homes on the market being whittled down in recent months.
But with the foreclosure tide yet to recede and continuing to depress prices, recovery will be a long, drawn-out affair.
Hammered by the financial crisis that has led to ever diminishing income, a group of residents in northern Greece have joined forces with potato farmers to slash consumer prices and ensure producers can get their crop to markets by cutting out the middle man.
Hundreds of families turned up Saturday in this northern Greek town to buy potatoes at massively reduced prices, sold directly by producers at cost price. They lined up in cars and with bicycles, on foot and with scooters to collect their bags of spuds from a truck that flung its doors wide open and was doing a roaring trade in the parking lot of a local courthouse.
Farmers say it costs about 20 cents ($0.27) to produce a kilogram (2 pounds) of potatoes, but that wholesalers will only buy them for 10-12 cents to get the crop to supermarkets, where they sell for about 60-70 cents a kilogram. Faced with making a loss, many producers say they have been unable to even get their products to the market.
Greece’s severe financial crisis, now entering its third year, has seen pensions and salaries slashed and led to skyrocketing unemployment of over 20 percent. More and more people have been turning up at soup kitchens run by the church or local aid groups, and homelessness has been increasing.
Faced with an ever deepening recession, some local groups have begun coming up with novel ways to beat the financial crunch.
Ilias Tsolakidis, 54, part of a volunteer group in northern Greece, said he contacted a potato farmer in northern Greece last week and posted an advertisement on the internet offering consumers the chance to order directly from the producer at cost price. He was overwhelmed by the response: by Wednesday, all 24 tons of potatoes on offer had been sold, with 534 families putting in orders.
His motive, Tsolakidis said, was “to cover a financial gap in the family budget. You know, the situation in the financial crisis has become very difficult. We help producers (from the local area) on the one hand, and also the families of consumers.”
Kiki Pantelopoulou couldn’t agree more.
“I didn’t only do this because it’s in my interest,” said the 42-year-old as she loaded a sack of potatoes onto her bicycle. “My main concern is how to stop this situation. This way, we favor Greek products and therefore producers can at least make the cost price.”
Tsolakidis said that with demand so high, his group of volunteers would set up another sale next weekend, buying another 24 tons of potatoes from a different farmer this time.
Konstantinos Karanikos, 67, said his son helped him order sacks of potatoes from Saturday’s sale over the internet, but could only secure half the amount he wanted because the demand was so high. “We will order again next weekend,” he said. “The important thing is for the producer to be satisfied and the consumer to have cheap potatoes.”
With the crop being sold at cost price of 20 cents a kilogram, Lefteris Kostopoulos, the farmer who put his spuds up for sale Saturday, didn’t make any profit on the transaction. But, he said, at least he managed to break even and sell more than half of the produce he had stored up in a warehouse.
“This group’s move was very good. It helped us shift the amounts we had in the warehouses, and we didn’t give them to the wholesalers who are asking for 10-12 cents per kilo,” he said. “We might not make money here, because we’re essentially breaking even, but at least we aren’t making a loss.”
Kalypso Skouba, 44, said she hoped the new movement spread to other products soon, so she could buy more vegetables or fruit directly from producers.
“I bought potatoes today just to show that it can’t only be the middlemen who make money,” she said.
The battle of the bulge has been a big, fat failure for U.S. drugmakers. But that hasn’t stopped them from trying.
For nearly a century, scientists have struggled to make a diet pill that helps people lose weight without side effects that range from embarrassing digestive issues to dangerous heart problems.
But this week, federal health advisers endorsed the weight loss pill Qnexa even though the FDA previously rejected it over concerns that it can cause heart palpitations and birth defects if taken by pregnant women.
The vote of confidence raises hopes that the U.S. could approve its first anti-obesity drug in more than a decade. It also highlights how challenging it is to create a pill that fights fat in a variety of people without negative side effects.
“Having a drug for obesity would be like telling me you had a drug for the fever,” said Dr. Mitchell Roslin, chief of bariatric surgery at Northern Westchester Hospital in New York. “There can be millions of different reasons why someone is obese; it’s really a symptom of various underlying mechanisms.”
An effective and safe diet pill would be an easy sale in the U.S.: With more than 75 million obese adults, the nation’s obesity rate is nearing 35 percent. But the biggest problem in creating a weight-loss drug is that there’s no safe way to turn off one of the human body’s most fundamental directives.
For millions of years, humans have been programmed to consume calories and store them as energy, or fat. It’s this biological mechanism that makes it almost impossible to quickly lose weight by not eating. Cutting down on food instead sends stronger signals to the body to store more calories.
“Throughout most of human history calories were scarce and hard to get, so we have numerous natural defenses against starvation,” said Dr. David Katz of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center. “We have no defenses against overeating because we never needed them before.”
The drug industry has been on a nearly 100-year search for a drug that can help the body shed pounds. They’ve mostly failed to come up with an effective one and many of their experiments have proven fatal to patients:
_ Early attempts focused on speeding up metabolism to burn more calories. In the 1930s, doctors prescribed an industrial chemical called dinitrophenol, which accelerated metabolism, but also caused fever, swelling and deadly toxicity in some patients. The 1938 law establishing the Food and Drug Administration was a response to untested drugs like dinitrophenol.
_ In the `50s and `60s, amphetamines became a popular because they boost metabolism and suppress appetite. But the pills proved to be highly addictive, and doctors discovered they increase blood pressure and heart rate. The amphetamine phentermine remains approved for short-term weight loss, usually less than 12 weeks, though it is seldom prescribed because of the potential for addiction.
_ Perhaps the worst diet pill safety debacle came in the 1990s and involved the combination of phentermine and another weight loss drug marketed by Wyeth called fenfluramine. The combination of the two pills, dubbed fen-phen, was never approved by the FDA but more than 18 million prescriptions were written for it by the mid-90s.
But after studies in 1997 suggested that up to a third of patients taking fen-phen experienced heart valve damage, Wyeth was forced to recall two versions of fenfluramine and eventually paid more than $13 billion to settle tens of thousands of personal injury lawsuits.
_ In the last decade, drugmakers have moved toward other weight loss concoctions. Currently, the only drug approved for long-term weight loss in the U.S. is orlistat, which is sold as the prescription drug Xenical and over the counter as alli. The drug works by blocking the absorption of fat.
When launched in 2007, alli received a high-profile marketing push from drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline, complete with TV ads and a celebrity endorsement by country singer Wynonna Judd. But it never took off due to unpleasant side effects, including loose bowel movements. Educational pamphlets for alli even recommend people start the program when they have a few days off work, or bring an extra pair of pants to the office.
_ Most drugmakers now are focusing on medications that block brain signals associated with food craving and appetite. Vivus’ Qnexa is one of a trio of drugs seeking FDA approval. The diet pill, which was initially rejected due to the risks of heart palpitations and other safety issues, is a combination of two older drugs.
It uses amphetamine phentermine, which suppresses appetite. The other drug is topiramate, an anticonvulsant sold by Johnson & Johnson as Topamax. Topiramate is believed to make patients feel more satiated, though it’s unclear exactly how. J&J initially studied Topamax alone as a weight loss treatment but concluded the psychiatric side effects, such as memory loss and difficulty concentrating, were too significant.
Still, on Wednesday, a panel of FDA doctors and other advisers voted 20-2 in favor of approving Vivus’ Qnexa pill, which the drugmaker has resubmitted to the FDA for a second review.
The group touted the drug’s benefits, which include weight loss of nearly 10 percent for most patients taking the drug over a year _ the highest reduction reported with any recent diet pill. But panelists stressed that the drugmaker must be required to conduct a large, follow-up study of the pill’s effects on the heart.
The FDA is expected to issue its decision on Qnexa by mid-April.
“The potential benefits of this medication seem to trump the side effects,” said FDA panel member Dr. Kenneth Burman of the Washington Hospital Center in Washington DC. “But in truth, only time will tell.”
Tammy Wade of McCalla, Ala., is confident that the diet pill works. She lost nearly 40 pounds, dropping down to 167 while in a two-year Qnexa study.
“I never lost that much weight on any of the programs I’ve tried,” said Wade, who’s done everything from Weight Watchers to work out with a personal trainer.
Russia said Wednesday the world should not draw “hasty conclusions” over Iran’s most recent rebuff of U.N. attempts to investigate allegations the Islamic Republic hid secret work on atomic arms, but the U.S. and its allies accused Tehran of nuclear defiance.
Under international pressure to show restraint, Israel, which has warned repeatedly that it may strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, pointedly urged major world powers to mind their own business, saying it alone would decide what to do to protect the Jewish state’s security.
France said Iran’s continued stonewalling of the International Atomic Energy Agency “is contrary to the intentions” expressed by Tehran in its recent offer to restart talks over its nuclear activities.
In Washington, White House spokesman Jay Carney said while world powers have not yet reached a decision on those talks, Iran’s refusal to cooperate with the investigation “suggests that they have not changed their behavior when it comes to abiding by their international obligations.”
The IAEA’s acknowledgment of renewed failure came early Wednesday at the conclusion of the second trip in less then a month aimed at investigating suspicions of covert Iranian nuclear weapons work. The IAEA team had hoped to speak with key Iranian scientists suspected of working on the alleged weapons program, break down opposition to their plans to inspect documents related to nuclear work and secure commitments from Iranian authorities to allow future visits.
But mission head Herman Nackaerts acknowledged his team “could not find a way forward” in negotiations with Iranian officials. A separate IAEA communique clearly _ if indirectly _ blamed Tehran for the lack of progress.
“We engaged in a constructive spirit, but no agreement was reached,” it quoted IAEA chief Yukiya Amano as saying.
As on the previous visit that ended in early February, Iran did not grant requests by the IAEA mission to visit Parchin _ a military site thought to be used for explosives testing related to nuclear detonations, the statement said
The statement also said that no agreement was reached on how to begin “clarification of unresolved issues in connection with Iran’s nuclear program, particularly those relating to possible military dimensions.”
The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security said Wednesday it had new indications of hidden weapons work by Iran.
ISIS said that a cache of telexes to Western high-tech companies from the Physics Research Center in Tehran shows that from about 1990 to 1993, the center sought to purchase equipment and materials that could have been used in weapons research and development.
Tehran has acknowledged that the Physics Research Center in Tehran conducted nuclear-related research, but said the center’s work was limited to efforts to prepare Iran’s military and civilian population for dealing with a nuclear strike.
Iran insists it is using nuclear energy only to generate power, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei proclaimed Wednesday that possession of atomic arms is a sin as well as “useless, harmful and dangerous.” Iran asserts that the allegations of secret work on developing nuclear arms are based on fabricated U.S. and Israeli intelligence.
But in a 13-page summary late last year, the IAEA listed clandestine activities that he said can either be used in civilian or military nuclear programs, or “are specific to nuclear weapons.”
Among these were indications that Iran has conducted high-explosives testing to set off a nuclear charge at Parchin.
Other suspicions include computer modeling of a core of a nuclear warhead and alleged preparatory work for a nuclear weapons test and development of a nuclear payload for Iran’s Shahab 3 intermediate range missile _ a weapon that could reach Israel.
The IAEA trip and its aftermath was accompanied by renewed saber-rattling by Iran and Israel.
Iranian Gen. Mohammed Hejazi, who heads the military’s logistical wing, warned that Iran will “not wait for enemies to take action against us.”
“We will use all our means to protect our national interests,” he told the semiofficial Fars news agency.
His comments followed Iran’s announcement of war games to practice protecting nuclear and other sensitive sites, the latest military maneuver viewed as a message to the U.S. and Israel that the Islamic Republic is ready both to defend itself and to retaliate against an armed strike.
Israel and the U.S. have said military force remains a last-ditch option to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, but while Washington has recently tamped down its rhetoric _ and is thought to be urging Israel to practice restraint _ the Jewish state remains bellicose.
Russia, too, warned Israel against the consequences of attacking Iran, with Deputy Foreign Minister Gennyadi Gatilov telling the ITAR-Tass news agency Wednesday that such a strike “would be a catastrophe not only for the region but for the whole system of international relations.”
But Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman rebuffed both Washington and Moscow, telling Israel’s Channel 3 TV news the issue “is not their business.”
“The security of the citizens of Israel, the future of the state of Israel, this is the responsibility of the Israeli government,” he said. “We will make the best decision for the Israeli interest.”
Shannon Kile, head of the Nuclear Weapons Project at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, warned the risk of military conflict was rising _ and not necessarily through the threat of direct Israeli attack.
“There is an escalation dynamic under way, especially in the Persian Gulf, where you could have a conflict arising from an accident, a misunderstanding, from a local commander acting on his own initiative and I think that’s the problem,” Kile said.
In Paris, Foreign Ministry spokesman Romain Nadal said Tehran’s continued stonewalling of the probe, now in its fourth year, “is another missed opportunity for Iran” to ease suspicions about its nuclear goals and reconcile with the rest of the world. Nadal said Iran’s refusal to cooperate on the issue “is contrary to the intentions” of Iran’s recent offer to restart nuclear talks after a series of abortive meetings over the past two years.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Iran’s intransigence “is the path the leads to further international isolation.” But German officials were cautious when asked about the possibility of imposing yet more sanctions against Iran in response to the latest setback.
Britain, which would join the U.S., China, Russia, France and Germany in any nuclear negotiations with Iran, said it wasn’t yet clear what impact the IAEA visit’s failure might have on the international community’s response to Tehran’s recent offer of renewed talks.
“We share the IAEA’s disappointment. The IAEA genuinely wants to make progress and we want the Iranians to engage in meaningful talks,” a spokesman for Britain’s foreign ministry said on customary condition of anonymity in line with policy.
Russia urged renewed efforts to engage Iran on its suspected secret nuclear work.
“We must not make hasty conclusions,” Gatilov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, told reporters, calling for the IAEA to “continue contacts” with Iran on the issue.
The IAEA said no further talks were planned for the moment. But Iran’s envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh also said “more time was needed” for final agreement on the issue.
Timothy F. Geithner, who took over the Treasury Department in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and oversaw the almost doubling of U.S. public debt, has done better for investors than Robert Rubin while falling short of Henry Paulson.
Since Geithner assumed office in January 2009, returns on Treasuries have exceeded bonds of other countries by 0.3 percentage point on an annualized rate, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data. That
A suicide bomber detonated his car Sunday as a group of police recruits left their academy in Baghdad, killing 20 in the latest strike on security officials that angry residents blamed on political feuding that is roiling Iraq.
Police said the suicide bomber was waiting on the street outside the fortified academy near the Interior Ministry headquarters in an eastern neighborhood in the Iraqi capital. As the crowd of recruits exited the compound’s security barriers around 1 p.m. and walked into the road, police said the bomber drove toward them and blew up his car.
“We heard a big explosion and the windows of the room shattered,” said Haider Mohammed, 44, an employee in the nearby Police Sports Club, about 100 yards (meters) from the academy’s gate. He described a horrific scene of burning cars, scattered pieces of burned flesh and wounded people flattened on the ground.
“Everybody here knows the time when the recruits come and go from the academy,” Mohammed said. “This is a breach of security.”
Five policemen were among the dead; the rest were recruits. Another 28 recruits and policemen were wounded.
Officials at three nearby hospitals confirmed the casualties.
All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.
Iraq’s police are generally considered to be the weakest element of the country’s security forces, which are attacked in bombings and drive-by shooting almost every day. The last big assault on police came in October, when 25 people were killed in a string of attacks that included two bombers slamming explosives-packed cars into police stations.
Recruits, too, are a favorite target: Suicide bombers killed scores of young men lined up for security jobs or otherwise at training centers in Baghdad and the northern city of Tikrit in recent years. The public outcry that followed from lawmakers and residents after those attacks spurred the government to bolster training and recruiting centers with better protections.
But, as Sunday’s attacks showed, extremists are easily able to sidestep security measures. At Baghdad’s police academy, recruits generally are escorted out of the compound to ensure their safety. But once they get to the street outside, they are on their own.
It was at that point the bomber struck on Sunday. The group of recruits had left the compound’s barrier gates and were crossing the road to hail a taxi or bus ride home after finishing a two-week training course.
Shiite lawmaker Hakim al-Zamili, who sits on parliament’s security and defense committee, said the academy’s officials should have been more careful about letting the recruits go at the same time every day. He said that was a pattern that insurgents easily noted.
“This was negligence by security officials in charge of the academy security,” al-Zamili said.
Al-Zamili blamed al-Qaida for launching the attack but raised the possibility that it aimed to ramp up bitterness among Iraqis already exasperated with ongoing political fighting that has consumed the government for weeks. “The political feuds are contributing to such security violations because they are demoralizing the security members,” he said.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing, but suicide attacks are a hallmark of al-Qaida.
Al-Qaida’s potency in Iraq has thinned since its heyday five years ago, when the country teetered on the brink of civil war. But last week, Iraqi and U.S. officials acknowledged al-Qaida remains a viable threat, noting fears that local fighters in the Sunni-dominated insurgent network were shifting to Syria to aid forces opposing the regime of President Bashar Assad.
But some of Baghdad’s residents said Sunday’s attack likely was rooted in political turbulence that has shaken Iraq in recent weeks.
In findings that were expected to hike already-simmering sectarian tensions, a judicial panel last week said that at least 150 attacks and assassinations since 2005 were linked to Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, Iraq’s highest-ranking Sunni official.
The charges against al-Hashemi, who has sought haven from arrest in the autonomous northern Kurdish region, were first brought in December by the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Al-Hashemi has denied the charges and is expected to give a speech in coming days to defend himself.
“The people were expecting such attacks because of the current tense political atmosphere in the country,” said Ali Rahim, 40, a government employee. “Those poor recruits were looking to send the salary to their families and now they are going to be sent as dead bodies to these families.”
Al-Hashemi is a member of the secular but Sunni-dominated Iraqiya political bloc, which on Sunday accused the government of rehashing the charges on state TV at the risk of inflaming current strains.
Repeating the accusations against al-Hashemi “will provoke the public and create more tension as political blocs are working to defuse the tension and end the crisis,” Iraqiya spokeswoman Maysoun al-Damluji said in a statement.
The judicial panel’s findings against al-Hashemi are not legally binding, and he is entitled to a trial. But it opened the door to let 15 relatives of those killed in the attacks linked to al-Hashemi file lawsuits against him on Sunday.
General Mills Inc. is lowering is fiscal 2012 adjusted earnings forecast, saying it experienced softer volumes in the U.S. during December and January.
Its shares fell $1.43, or 3.6 percent, to $38.35 in premarket trading on Friday.
General Mills remains one of the most popular food brands in grocery stores. But like most of its peers, it has struggled with higher costs for everything from ingredients to labor and has raised its prices to help alleviate some of the pressure.
The Minneapolis company, which makes foods such as Cheerios cereal, Nature Valley granola bars and Hamburger Helper, said it now expects full-year adjusted earnings of $2 payday lenders.53 to $2.55 per share. Its prior guidance was for earnings between $2.59 and $2.61 per share.
Analysts polled by FactSet forecast earnings of $2.60 per share for the year.
For its fiscal third quarter, General Mills expects earnings of 54 cents to 56 cents per share. In the same period last year it made 56 cents per share.
General Mills plans to report earnings on March 21.
Australia added the most workers in 14 months in January and the jobless rate unexpectedly declined, spurring investors to increase bets the central bank will extend an interest-rate pause.
Payrolls rose by 46,300 last month, the most since November 2010, after a revised drop in December of 35,600, the statistics bureau said in Sydney today. That compares with the median estimate for an increase of 10,000 in a Bloomberg News survey of 25 economists. The jobless rate fell to 5.1 percent.
Stocks fell as traders boosted the odds Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Glenn Stevens will keep the benchmark borrowing cost unchanged March 6 after he unexpectedly paused at 4.25 percent rather than cut last week as resource investment drives growth. The central bank lowered the rate at back-to-back meetings last quarter as Europe
Greece’s international creditors have spelled out the austerity measures promised by Athens that have to be put into practice before it can receive new bailout cash, totaling more than euro2.5 billion ($3.31 billion).
Those budget cuts include:
_ euro1.076 billion ($1.43 billion) to be cut from the country’s pharmaceuticals spending
_ euro300 million ($397 million) in military budget cuts
_ euro270 million ($358 million) to be slashed from regular government expenditure and election-related budgets
_ euro190 million ($251 million) to be trimmed from subsidies to people living in remote areas
_ euro400 million ($530 million) in public investment budget cuts
_ euro300 million ($397 million) in budget subsidies to pension funds
Sales at U.S. retailers probably increased in January by the most in four months, spurred by the biggest gain in auto purchases since 2009, economists said before a report this week.
The projected 0.8 percent gain in retail receipts would follow a 0.1 percent advance in December, according to the median forecast of 65 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News before Commerce Department figures on Feb. 14. Industrial production jumped and the cost of living increased in January, other data may show.
The drop in unemployment to a three-year low is evidence of an improving job market that
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