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PetroChina Ltd., China’s biggest oil and gas company, saw its third-quarter profit jump 7.8 percent as higher crude oil prices and output helped to offset losses in its refining business.
The Beijing-based company reported Thursday a profit of 37.4 billion yuan ($5.9 billion) in July-September, compared with 34.7 billion yuan a year earlier.
PetroChina reported a refining loss of 41.5 billion yuan ($6.5 billion) as higher costs for imported crude oil outpaced the gains in prices for its products.
But weakness in the refining sector was offset by a 45 percent increase in crude oil prices over the same period a year earlier, to $103.78 per barrel. The company’s output in the first nine months of the year rose 5.1 percent, to 959 free credit score.3 million barrels of oil equivalent.
Like other Chinese energy and resource companies, it has actively sought access to resources overseas to help diversify its risks and ensure a steady supply of oil and gas needed to power China’s fast-growing economy.
PetroChina increased its refining by 10 percent in January-September, or about 2.7 million barrels a day. But it derives a larger share of its revenues from oil and gas production than rival Sinopec, which is mainly a refiner, helping to shield it from losses due to government controls on fuel prices.
President Barack Obama is targeting vital North Carolina and Virginia this week, as he kicks off a three-day bus tour that is as much about campaigning for his jobs bill as it is shoring up support in two southern states he wrested from Republican control when he won the White House.
Obama’s 2008 victories in North Carolina and Virginia were due in large part to the states’ changing demographics and his campaign’s ability to boost voter turnout among young people and African-Americans. But nearly three years after his historic election, the president’s approval ratings in both states are sagging, in line with the national trend.
A Quinnipiac University poll out earlier this month put Obama’s approval rating in Virginia at 45 percent, with 52 percent disapproving. The same poll showed 83 percent of Virginians were dissatisfied with the direction of the country. In North Carolina, Obama has a 42 percent approval rating, according to an Elon University poll conducted this month. Most national polls put Obama’s approval rating in the mid- to low-forties.
The president’s bus tour comes as the battle in Washington over his jobs plan enters a new phase. While Obama had demanded lawmakers pass the $447 billion measure in its entirety, Senate Republicans have blocked those efforts, leaving the president and his Democratic allies to fight for the bill’s proposals piece by piece.
Since announcing his plan for putting Americans back to work last month, Obama has been traveling the country trying to build public support for his initiatives. The president’s itinerary has focused heavily on swing states, underscoring the degree to which what happens with his job bill is linked to his re-election prospects.
Obama starts his bus tour with a speech in Asheville, N.C., Monday morning and he will speak again later that day at a high school in Millers Creek, N.C. He’ll also speak Tuesday at a community college in Jamestown, N.C., and make stops in the southern Virginia cites of Emporia and Hampton, before wrapping up the bus tour Wednesday at a firehouse in North Chesterfield, Va.
While Obama won handily in Virginia in 2008, he barely squeaked out a victory in North Carolina, winning the state by less than a percentage point. John Davis, a longtime political analyst in North Carolina, said Obama won there in part because his campaign identified the state as a potential battleground early and established a dominant ground game, while the Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, was focused elsewhere.
But with North Carolina now firmly on the political establishment’s radar, Davis said thinks Obama will have a much harder time holding the state next November.
“This time I think Obama loses the advantage of a surprise like he pulled off in 2008,” he said.
The president faces significant obstacles in Virginia as well. While Democrats had hoped Obama’s victory signaled Virginia’s shift to a blue state, momentum has since strongly turned back in favor of Republicans, most notably with Gov. Bob McDonald’s win in 2009.
That shift has some Virginia Democrats, especially state legislators running in next month’s General Assembly elections, less than thrilled about Obama heading to their state this week. In coal-mining southwestern Virginia, Democratic state Sen. Phil Puckett has flatly renounced the president. With Republicans running television ads and erecting billboards showing Puckett campaigning for Obama in 2008, Puckett said in a television interview he would not support Obama in 2012.
The White House insists the president is focused more on the economy than elections. With the nation’s unemployment rate stuck at 9.1 percent, Obama’s goal this week will be to convince the public that his jobs plan will put out-of-work teachers, police officers and firefighters back on the job, while also repairing crumbling roads and bridges.
By breaking up elements of the plan into individual bills, the White House wants to force Republicans to voice their opposition one by one _ part of the Obama administration’s strategy of hanging blame for any eventual failure of the president’s economic policies on GOP obstructionism.
“Each time we’re going to ask Republicans to support the bill,” Obama said last week. “And if they don’t want to support the bill, they’ve got to answer not just to us, but also the American people as to why they wouldn’t.”
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama would use his stops this week to challenge Congress to get to work this week passing proposals in the bill, starting with initiatives that the administration says would prevent teacher layoffs. Obama will also call for lawmakers to prioritize his call for $50 billion in infrastructure spending.
Despite the president’s call for urgency, it could be November at the earliest before lawmakers take up the proposals in the bill, due to debate scheduled this week on appropriations bills and a planned vacation at the end of this month.
The president will be ditching Air Force One for much of his trip this week, traveling instead on a $1.1 million bus purchased by the Secret Service. The impenetrable-looking bus is painted all black, with dark tinted windows and flashing red and blue lights. Obama first used the custom-made bus during a similar road trip in August, when he traveled through Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois.
Obama’s time on the road will take him through small towns and rural swaths of both Virginia and North Carolina. In addition to his scheduled speeches, the president is sure to make unannounced visits to local restaurants or stop to greet supporters gathered along the road to watch his motorcade pass.
The effect is a campaign-style trip that allows the president to engage in a little retail politics, while also garnering the national media coverage typically afforded only to a sitting president.
Sony said Wednesday it has detected a large number of unauthorized attempts to access user accounts on its PlayStation Network and other online entertainment services.
The Tokyo-based company temporarily locked about 93,000 accounts whose IDs and passwords were successfully verified by the intruders. Sony has sent email notifications and password reset procedures to affected customers on the PlayStation Network, Sony Entertainment Network and Sony Online Entertainment services.
Sony said credit card numbers linked to the compromised accounts are not at risk. It has “taken steps to mitigate the activity” and is investigating any wrongful use of the accounts themselves.
The announcement follows an embarrassing data breach in April, which compromised personal data from more than 100 million online gaming and entertainment accounts and forced PlayStation Network to be shut for a month.
Sony confirmed the latest incidents after its security systems detected an unusually high number of log-in attempts that failed, said Sony spokesman Sean Yoneda. The company suspects that those responsible obtained large data sets from other companies or sources, which were then used to try to access Sony accounts.
“What happened in April was a breach on our servers as we said in our announcements,” Yoneda said. “But this time around, there was no intrusion on our servers. This was … taking someone else’s identity and trying to use that to access our services.”
The access attempts occurred between Oct. 7 and Oct. 10 and targeted accounts globally.
Sony’s customer service centers around the world have not seen a spike in user calls related to the incidents, Yoneda said.
Hurricane Jova roared toward a collision Tuesday night with a vulnerable Mexican coastline dotted with tourist resorts and flood-prone mountain villages, prompting evacuations and shutting down one of the country’s top cargo ports.
Jova weakened some as its center drew to within 78 miles (125 kilometers) of shore, but it still had maximum sustained winds of 100 mph (160 kph), the U.S. National Hurricane Center reported. The forecast path pointed to landfall between Barra de Navidad and the larger resort of Puerto Vallarta to the north around midnight.
As the storm’s outer bands of rain began hitting the coast, some vowed to ride out the storm, while others took refuge at shelters in towns like Jaluco, just inland from the beach community of Barra de Navidad.
“My house has a thatch roof, and it’s not safe,” said Maria de Jesus Palomera Delgado, 44, a farmworker’s wife who went to an improvised shelter at a grade school in Jaluco, along with her 17 children and grandchildren.
“The neighbors told us the house was going to collapse” if hit by the hurricane, she added as the children slept nearby on folding cots packed into a classroom.
In an another classroom, migrant farmworker Rufina Francisco Ventura, 27, fed her 2-month-old son. She said she had left the ranch where she plants chilies and tomatoes planning only to pick up some free blankets, but shelter workers “told me I shouldn’t leave here, because it’s going to hit hard.”
Jalisco state authorities evacuated about 200 people to shelters by Tuesday and was issuing alerts over loudspeakers placed in communities long the coast, telling people to take precautions as the hurricane approached, state civil defense spokesman Juan Pablo Vigueras said. The state had 69 shelters ready, he said.
Authorities also set up shelters for residents of inland towns, where the mountainous terrain could cause flash floods and mudslides, which often pose the greatest dangers in hurricanes
“We have about 100 officials working in these communities, telling people they should evacuate,” said Francisco Garnica, the duty officer at the Jalisco state civil defense office. But many were reluctant to leave their homes for fear they would be robbed. “They are worried about their possessions,” he said.
The Mexican army said it had assigned about 1,500 soldiers to hurricane preparedness and relief efforts.
Jova was expected to hit the states of Jalisco, Colima and Nayarit the hardest. About 183,000 people live in the center of the storm’s projected path, said Laura Gurza, chief of the federal Civil Protection emergency response agency.
The U.S. hurricane center in Miami warned that storm surge was expected to produce significant coastal flooding between the major seaport of Manzanillo, east of Barra de Navidad, and Cabo Corrientes, southwest of Puerto Vallarta Internet Payday loans.
Jova could unleash as much as 20 inches (50 centimeters) in isolated areas as it moved inland.
Hotels in Barra de Navidad and the neighboring beach town of Melaque dragged in beach furniture and advised their guests to leave the towns.
But some tourists seemed unfazed.
Bill Clark, a 59-year-old traveler from Santa Rosa, California, ate tacos at a street stand while enjoying a balmy Monday night.
“Some people are going out of town but I’m not really worried,” said Clark, who has been coming to the town of about 3,000 people since 1994. “I’m from California, I have been through earthquakes.”
Christoph Dietschi, 42, and his wife, four children and mother-in-law had checked in to a small beachside hotel in Melaque for a family wedding, but left Monday after the manager told them he couldn’t guarantee their safety or service when the hurricane hit. They rented an apartment in Manzanillo.
“It was better to leave because they can’t guarantee that everything would be OK for us. Maybe there is no electricity, no water, so it’s better to leave,” Dietschi said.
Dietschi walked Manzanillo’s cobblestone streets with his family under just one umbrella to the beach of La Audiencia on Tuesday afternoon to watch the gray sky and choppy sea before the hurricane.
“We still hope that Saturday everything is all right,” said Diestschi. His brother-in-law is scheduled to get married at a church in Barra de Navidad on Saturday.
Heavy rains in Manzanillo forced restaurants and stores to close Tuesday afternoon. Employees at convenience stores boarded up or taped their windows. Soldiers patrolled the main seaside avenue.
Authorities shut down Manzanillo’s port, the biggest cargo center on Mexico’s Pacific coast, and the nearby port of Nuevo Vallarta.
A hurricane warning was in effect for a 100-mile (160-kilometer) stretch of coast from just south of Puerto Vallarta to a point south of Manzanillo. A tropical storm warning was in effect farther south, to the port of Lazaro Cardenas.
At midafternoon, Jova was centered about 85 miles (140 kilometers) southwest of Manzanillo and was moving north-northeast at 6 mph (9 kph), the Hurricane Center said.
In 1959, an unnamed hurricane struck near Manzanillo, reportedly killing 1,000 people. Detailed reports on hurricanes were not available at the time.
The hurricane was expected to be dissipating by the time the Pan American Games start Friday in nearby Guadalajara.
Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Irwin regained some strength farther out in the Pacific with winds near 45 mph (72 kph). While it was expected to move eastward toward land, forecasts indicated it probably wouldn’t make landfall.
The Belgian state will buy the national subsidiary of embattled bank Dexia for euro4 billion ($5.4 billion) as part of a wider bailout of the lender, the first banking victim of a new squeeze in European credit markets.
The part-nationalization of Franco-Belgian Dexia, announced Monday, was triggered by other banks’ increasing reluctance to lend to it due to its exposure to highly indebted eurozone states like Greece and Italy and to struggling municipalities in the United States.
Banks depend on loans to one another for a large part of their daily financing, but can quickly withhold them if they sense there is a danger that a counterpart might collapse and not repay the money. Such fears intensified last week, pushing Dexia to need rescuing from the government.
Belgium’s caretaker prime minister Yves Leterme said the nationalization was necessary to insulate the Belgian retail bank from the risks of the wider group, Dexia SA. He said support from the state ensures that all of Dexia’s clients “can be sure and certain that their money is in full security.”
On top of the nationalization, the governments of Belgium, France and Luxembourg together will provide an additional euro90 billion ($121 billion) in funding guarantees for the bank for up to 10 years.
Belgium will provide 60.5 percent of these guarantees, 36.5 percent will come from France and the remaining 3 percent from Luxembourg.
At the same time, Dexia’s board is in negotiations with French banks Caisse des Depots et Consignations and La Banque Postale to find a solution to the financing of French local authorities, in which Dexia plays an important role.
Dexia said backing from the Caisse des Depots would reduce its short-term funding requirement by almost euro10 billion.
The announcement followed marathon negotiations between the three governments and the bank’s management.
Officials were worried that a collapse of the bank would exacerbate an already tight funding environment for banks in Europe, as analysts warn of a credit crunch similar to the one that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
At the same time, the Belgian and French governments were concerned that putting up more money for bank bailouts would threaten their credit rating and drive up interest rates on their bonds.
On Friday, Moody’s Investors Service placed Belgium’s Aa1 rating on review for a possible downgrade, due in part to the expected expense of guaranteeing that Dexia’s depositors will lose no money.
Belgian finance minister Didier Reynders said that the bailout would lift the country’s debt from around 97 percent of economic output to about 98 percent.
The French government, too, was under acute pressure to save Dexia as the bank is one of the country’s largest lenders to towns and cities.
France and Belgium already became part owners of the bank during a euro6.4 billion bailout in 2008.
Last week Dexia announced it was in negotiations with a group of international investors interested in buying its Luxembourg subsidiary.
At a news conference Monday, the bank’s management blamed the renewed problems on the risks that were piled up before they took over in 2008.
“We realized very quickly that we found ourselves in front of a very difficult mission,” said Chairman Jean-Luc Dehaene. Efforts to strip down Dexia’s balance sheet and shift funding from short-term to long-term were taken quickly, but management did not have enough time to get the lender back on track before it was slapped hard by the government debt crisis, Dehaene added.
The chairman insisted that Dexia faces a crisis of liquidity, not solvency _ meaning it is not bankrupt, but just doesn’t have the ready cash it needs in the short-term. That is why the bank managed to pass pan-European stress tests just this summer, Dehaene said.
Chief executive Pierre Mariani added that a threat to downgrade the bank’s credit worthiness by rating agency Moody’s last Monday, exacerbated by rumors during the week, “put some pressure on group funding.”
Dexia’s stock remained suspended Monday morning following steep losses early last week.
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Associated Press writer Don Melvin contributed to this story.
Renewable energy advocates, dissatisfied with how the state’s 2008 clean power law was implemented, want voters to help strengthen the measure.
P.J. Wilson, director of Columbia-based Renew Missouri, plans to file papers with the secretary of state’s office today as the first official step toward getting a revised a new renewable energy standard on the ballot next fall, he said.
The proposed rewrite of the state’s existing clean energy standard would require investor-owned utilities to get 25 percent of their electric generation from the wind, sun and other renewable resources by 2025. The current law requires 15 percent by 2021.
Just as importantly, it would clarify certain parts of the existing law that have been a source of sharp disagreements between Missouri’s small-but-growing renewable energy industry and the state’s biggest utilities.
In an emailed statement, Warren Wood, Ameren Missouri’s vice president of regulatory and legislative affairs, said the utility was still reviewing a copy of the ballot initiative it received late Wednesday. “It is premature for us to offer an opinion on the impact of this ballot initiative on our customers’ rates,” he said.
Renew Missouri and other supporters must collect almost 100,000 valid signatures from across the state by early May to get the measure on the ballot next fall. First, language for the petition must be approved by Secretary of State Robin Carnahan.
Two-thirds of Missouri voters approved the renewable energy measure three years ago. Polling conducted by Renew Missouri this summer suggested similarly strong voter interest in a law to aid renewable energy development. But not for the same reason, Wilson said.
“I wouldn’t be filing this if I didn’t think it had strong public support,” he said. “But I think the reason for voter support has shifted.”
The selling point then was energy security, he said. Today, it’s jobs.
The 2008 ballot measure drew no organized opposition. But months of contentious debate followed during the administrative rulemaking process at the Public Service Commission. In the end, a little-known legislative committee stripped a controversial provision from rules advanced by the commission.
The change allowed utilities to meet the green power mandate by purchasing so-called renewable energy certificates instead of building wind or solar farms in Missouri or contracting to buy renewable energy from neighboring states my credit score. Utilities can purchase the certificates from out-of-state renewable energy producers and count each of them as 100 kilowatt hours toward their mandated goals.
Renewable energy backers, including solar and wind companies that would have benefited from the rules as originally written by the PSC, balked at the change. Their dissatisfaction jump-started effort to rewrite the law and implement a stronger renewable energy standard.
The renewable standard being proposed by Renew Missouri would require utilities to develop renewable energy in or purchase it from Missouri or at least within the regional power grid.
It would also clarify ambiguity concerning the impact on electric rates. The existing law caps the impact on electric rates at 1 percent. The proposed ballot initiative would prohibit utilities from spending more for green power than they would spend to purchase or generate fossil fuel-based energy.
The rewrite of the law would also eliminate the legislative review of PSC administrative rules and prohibit Ameren Missouri from counting its century-old Keokuk, Iowa, hydroelectric plant toward the green power mandate.
Nationwide, 32 states and the District of Columbia have renewable energy mandates, according to the Department of Energy. Missouri is one of few states with a voter-approved law.
The current law requires utilities to gradually increase renewable energy sales until they reach the 15 percent target in 2021. The proposed goal of 25 percent by 2025 equals the renewable energy target in Illinois.
“It’s pretty middle of the pack,” Wilson, said.
Renew Missouri is recruiting and training volunteers to help collect petition signatures and soliciting donations to support the effort. The has conducted held training sessions around the state in recent weeks, including one at the St. Louis County Public Library in Frontenac on Thursday night.
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A security court in Bahrain on Wednesday sentenced 19 people, including a 16-year-old Iraqi soccer player, to up to five years in prison for taking part in Shiite-led protests against the Gulf nation’s Sunni rulers.
The decision brings the total number of people sentenced this week to at least 81, as Bahrain’s authorities step up prosecutions of hundreds of people arrested in the crackdown on dissent. Bahrain’s majority Shiites claim they face widespread discrimination. More than 30 people have been killed since February in Bahrain’s unrest, which was inspired by uprisings elsewhere in the Arab world.
On Wednesday, the court sentenced 13 people to five years in prison, and six people to one year terms for alleged attacks during the unrest, including trying to torch a police station, the Information Affairs Authority said in a statement. The verdicts can be appealed.
Family members, journalists and human rights activists attended the hearing, which took place in the Al-Khamees police station, according to the statement.
The detention of the Iraqi teenager, Zulfiqar Naji, sparked angry demonstrations in Iraq and as far away as Canada calling for his release Payday advance. It also prompted the Iraq government to make a plea to Bahrain on his behalf. Naji played for a local soccer club in Bahrain until his arrest.
The player’s father, Abdulameer Naji, said in July that his son was taken into custody from their Bahrain home in April on suspicion of participating in protests. The father has since fled to Iraq but the boy’s mother and several of his siblings have remained in Bahrain.
At least six players for Bahrain’s national soccer team were detained _ many of them beaten and tortured _ during months of political turmoil. One of them was sentenced to two years in prison.
Shiite Muslims represent about 70 percent of Bahrain’s 525,000 citizens, but claim they face widespread discrimination such as being blocked from high-level political and military posts. Protesters demand the 200-year-old ruling Sunni dynasty give up its hold on power and allow a freely elected government.
The latest setback in Greece’s financial crisis sent the Standard and Poor’s 500 index to its lowest level of the year, putting it on the edge of a new bear market.
The index, the benchmark for most U.S. stock funds, has fallen 19.4 percent since its high for the year on April 29. A 20 percent drop would signify the start of a bear market, ending a bull market that began in March 2009. The S&P 500 has gained 76 percent since then, including dividends.
European markets slumped, dragging U.S. stocks down along with them, after Greece said it will miss deficit reduction targets it agreed to as part of its bailout deal. Benchmark indexes in Germany, France and Spain all fell 2 percent.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 258.08 points, or 2.4 percent, to 10,655.30. The S&P 500 lost 32.19, or 2.9 percent, to 1,099.23. That’s below its closing low of 1,119 for the year, reached on Aug. 8.
Indexes measuring smaller stocks fell even more than the Dow and S&P, which are dominated by large companies. The Nasdaq composite slid 79.57, or 3.3 percent, to 2,335.83. The Russell 2000 index of small companies plunged 5.4 percent to 609.49.
All 10 company groups in the S&P index fell. Banks, energy, and consumer discretionary stocks had the steepest declines. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 1.75 percent from 1.91 percent late Friday as investors piled into lower-risk investments. The yield hit a record low of 1.71 percent on Sept. 22.
“The market is continuing to trade based on what is happening in Europe, and that is going to overshadow everything else,” said Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial. “The math (for the Greek bailout) didn’t add up a year ago, and the math doesn’t add up today. The market knows that and is waiting for the Europeans to acknowledge it.”
The renewed concerns about Europe’s debt problems pushed the euro down to $1.32 versus the dollar, a 9-month low. The stronger dollar could hurt large U.S. companies that rely on exports by making their products more expensive overseas. Coca-Cola Co. fell 3.2 percent to $65.42. Caterpillar Inc., which sells construction equipment globally, lost 4.5 percent to $70.55. Boeing, another large exporter, dropped 3.7 percent to $58.25.
“Everything that is coming out of Greece suggests that the dollar is only going to strengthen, which doesn’t bode well for the international firms,” said J.J. Kinahan, chief options strategist at T.D. Ameritrade. “It’s tough to be bullish on anything at the moment.”
The Dow briefly turned higher after 10 a.m., when the Institute of Supply Management said its gauge of U.S. manufacturing did better than Wall Street had predicted in September. The Dow and S&P turned mixed within 20 minutes, then took a sharp slide shortly after noon.
The slump started the market off on a weak note for the fourth quarter. Concerns that the U.S. economy is headed for another recession helped send the S&P 500 index, the basis for most mutual funds that invest in U.S. stocks, down 14 percent over the three months that ended in September. It was the worst quarter for the stock market since the financial crisis of 2008.
Some investors are also concerned that Friday’s jobs report will show that unemployment rose from 9.1 percent in September. “If I had to bet, I would say it’s more likely that more jobs have been lost than a surprise to the upside,” said T.D. Ameritrade’s Kinahan.
In corporate news, AMR Corp., the parent company of American Airlines, plummeted 33 percent to $1.98 as concerns flared up again that the company could be headed for bankruptcy protection. The stock hadn’t closed below $2 since 2003. American is considered the most vulnerable among U.S. carriers to an economic downturn.
Bank of America Corp. plunged 9.6 percent to $5.53, the lowest price for the stock since the financial crisis in 2008. The company has fallen 59 percent since January as investors fret that the nation’s largest bank will be hit with more settlements over mortgage securities that lost value after the housing bust.
Yahoo Inc. gained 2.7 percent, to $13.53, after the head of Chinese Internet company Alibaba Group Holdings said he would be interested in buying the company. Yahoo, which recently ousted Carol Bartz as its CEO, has been trying to decide whether to sell parts of the company.
Nine stocks fell for every one that rose on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was heavy at 5.8 billion shares.
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