China overtook Japan to become the world's second-largest economy in 2010AFP
TOKYO —
Japan and China will start direct currency trading this week, Tokyo said Tuesday, the first time Beijing has let a major unit other than the dollar swap with the yuan.
The move, which will scrap the greenback as an intermediary unit, comes as China introduces measures as part of a long-term goal of internationalizing its currency to rival the dollar.
The two-way trade will also be allowed to move in a wider range than the narrow band at which the dollar and yuan change hands, Dow Jones Newswires and the Nikkei business daily reported.
China will set a daily rate based on dealer quotes with trade allowed to move within a 3% band above or below that rate, the reports said, compared with a 1% band fixed to yuan-dollar trading.
The Chinese central bank earlier Tuesday introduced a rate of 7.9480 yuan for every 100 yen, Dow Jones said.
However, there will be no fixed rates in Tokyo trade with the currencies trading freely, according to the same media reports which provided no further details.
The yen does trade freely against other major currencies on global foreign-exchange markets, including the greenback, with the dollar buying 79.50 yen in Asian afternoon trade on Tuesday.
“From June 1, the yen-yuan exchange rate will be constantly indicated in both markets, facilitating full-fledged direct exchange trading,” Finance Minister Jun Azumi told a regular press briefing.
By not using the dollar as an intermediate currency “we can lower transaction costs and reduce settlement risks at financial institutions as well as making both nations’ currencies more useful”, he added.
The announcement comes as China introduces measures as part of a long-term goal of internationalizing the yuan to rival the dollar as the world’s benchmark currency.
Beijing’s tightly managed currency policy has triggered huge trade deficits in the United States, which accuses China of artificially undervaluing the yuan to boost exports, and has been a long-running source of friction between the world’s two largest economies.
On Tuesday, Beijing described yuan-yen trade as an “important step” in “strengthening cooperation between China and Japan in developing financial markets and mutually promoting direct trading between the two currencies based on market principle.”
China overtook Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy in 2010, and the neighbors are forging closer business ties despite frequent diplomatic spats over territorial claims and lingering historical animosities.
China is Japan’s largest trading partner, but about 60% of their mutual trade is denominated in U.S. dollars.
In March, Japan said it had won approval from Beijing to buy Chinese government bonds for the first time—Beijing does not allow investors to freely purchase its debt, requiring official approval instead.
Tokyo said it got the green light to buy Chinese government bond issues worth about 65 billion yuan ($10.25 billion), a relatively small amount that was seen as largely symbolic.
The economic powerhouses have also agreed to promote the use of their currencies in bilateral transactions—such as yuan-denominated foreign direct investment by Japanese companies in China—to reduce foreign exchange risks.
The yen, meanwhile, hit historic highs against the dollar last year, denting exporters whose products become less competitive overseas when the currency strengthens.
Japanese finance officials have vowed to step into foreign-exchange markets again to tame the value of the unit, which is increasingly seen as a safe-haven currency as the euro takes a hit owing to worries about the debt-hit eurozone.
Color us not stunned at all. China's Manufacturing PMI finally reverted to the reality that HSBC's Manufacturing PMI has been arguing for and fell for the first time in six months. The drop is the largest since February 2010. While still above 50 (though the lowest level of expansion in five months), or 50.4 technically, down from 53.4, and missing expectations of 52.0, it seems another engine of global growth just sputtered finally - as the real impact of a European depression and fiscally challenged US hit home.
And as a reminder, here is why unless "Europe is fixed" and quite soon, the situation will first get worse before it gets much worse:
A CANNIBAL killer suspect was being hunted last night — months after The Sun warned Scotland Yard that he was dangerous.
We showed cops sick film of a live KITTENfed to a snake and an email warning: “Once you kill and taste blood it’s impossible to stop.”
Luka Magnotta, 29, fled after a male pal was chopped up and eaten in Canada. Last night he was feared to be heading back to London.
Magnotta is believed to have written a chilling email to The Sun saying: “I’ll be back — and this time the victims won’t be animals.”
The terrifying message was sent after we quizzed him in London six months ago over a sick video of a KITTEN being fed alive to a giant snake.
We warned the Met Police then of our fears he would go on to kill — but theyDROPPED the case, saying it was outside their jurisdiction.
And last night the twisted gay porn star was being hunted across the world after a severed hand and a foot were mailed to the offices of two political parties in Canada.
A headless male torso was found in a suitcase dumped in rubbish behind Magnotta’s shabby apartment in Montreal.
Last night he was believed by cops to have fled back to Europe — possibly heading for London.
The baby-faced weirdo was placed on the FBI and Interpol “Most Wanted” lists — as police discovered a grisly video thought to be live footage of the murder.
The ten-minute film shows the victim being stabbed in a frenzy with an ICE-PICK, before being dismembered, sexually abused and his flesh EATEN with a knife and fork. We investigated bisexual Magnotta, 29, when he was in Britain last December after the vile kitten video was posted on the internet.
Two days later a misspelled email was sent to The Sun.
It told of the writer’s love for London and warned: “Well, I have to say goodbye for now. But don’t worry, in the near future you will be hearing from me again. This time, however, the victims won’t be small animals. I will however, send you a copy of the new video I’m going to be making. You see, killing is different than smoking... with smoking you can actually quit.
JOPPATOWNE, Md. (WJZ)—An already grisly murder takes an even more grisly twist. A college student tells police he killed a housemate and then ate parts of the victim’s heart and brain.
Mike Hellgren has more on the stunning details about this gruesome crime.
At the suspect’s bail review Thursday afternoon, a judge denied him bail. But the suspect remained calm. He said very little other than he was originally from Nairobi, Kenya, and had strong community ties to Maryland after living here for nine years. But details behind this stunning crime remain a mystery.
Investigators say 21-year-old college student Alexander Kinyua killed his roommate and then ate his heart and parts of his brain. He cut off his victim’s head and hands and stored them in his family’s townhouse on Terrapin Terrace in Joppatowne.
Family members there declined to speak to WJZ about the chilling crime.
But police say Kinyua’s brother is the one who found the remains, and his father called police.
Police say Kinyua’s brother went down to the laundry room of the house and saw a blanket on a box. He pulled off the blanket and saw two metal tins. Police say he opened them and saw a head and two hands. When Kinyua’s brother confronted him about this, police say Kinyua said they were animal remains and not human remains.
The brother then got his dad. The dad went downstairs and the items were gone.
“There was inconsistency in the stories of both the parents that were there. We found out that their stories when they were interviewed a second time did not match up with the first time,” said Maj. Douglas Verzi, Harford County Sherriff’s Office.After issuing a search warrant, authorities later found body parts at the home and in a dumpster of a neighboring church along Trimble Road, less than a mile from the home that the Kinyua shared with his roommate– 37-year-old Kujoe Agyei-Kodie, who vanished last week.
But what’s the motive? Police haven’t ruled out anything, including drugs.
They say Kinyua, while cooperative, confessed but would not reveal why he did it.
According to published reports, he recently posted online statements about cults, ethnic cleansing and school shootings.
Both Kinyua and Agyei-Kodie attended Morgan State University. That’s also where Kinyua was charged May 20 with a random attack on another student, leaving that victim with a fractured skull, arm and shoulder, and blinded in the left eye.
Kinyua was out on bond when he was arrested for Agyei-Kodie’s murder. His parents were trying to raise funds for his defense in the assault case, holding a fundraiser at a community church in Northeast Baltimore.
But in court Thursday, Kinyua was represented by a public defender.
Police have not ruled out the possibility of more arrests.
“By no means is the investigation over. We are looking at every angle. We are looking at is there a possibility that there are other suspects?” Verzi said.
The lead detector told WJZ he has no reason to believe that Kinyua was lying about eating the victim’s body parts.
Agyei-Kodie was a graduate student at Morgan State University and is from Ghana.
and back to the Zombie cannibal from the weekend, the actions really make you believe he was on drugs - but was he drugged by some unknown actor / agent .......
MIAMI (CBSMiami) – The man at the center of one of Miami’s most horrific crimes, a cannibal attack on the MacArthur Causeway, has left his on-again, off-again girlfriend thinking that Rudy Eugene was drugged unknowingly, or cursed.
Eugene’s girlfriend, who requested CBS4 News not use her name or show her face, said the attacker on the causeway was nothing like the man she knew and loved.
“Rudy Eugene was not no zombie or ‘Miami Zombie’ like they’re saying. He was a human being and that wasn’t him,” she said.
She described him as a “sweet loving gentleman” and a “hard working man” who worked at a car wash and dreamed of owning his own business.
Eugene, police said, ripped the face off 65-year-old Ronald Poppo, a homeless man who encountered Eugene on Saturday next to the Miami Herald building.
A witness described Eugene ripping at Poppo’s face with his mouth and growling at a Miami police officer who ordered him to get off the homeless man. The officer then shot and killed Eugene.
The head of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police, Armando Aguilar, speculated that he may have been high on LSD or “bath salts,” which can cause psychosis as the body overheats.
Eugene did strip off all of his clothes as he walked from Miami Beach to the mainland over the MacArthur Causeway before encountering Poppo and beginning the unprovoked, savage attack.
Eugene’s girlfriend said she believes he was drugged unknowingly. The only other explanation, she said, was supernatural, that someone put a Vodou curse on him. The girlfriend, who unlike Eugene is not Haitian, said she has never believed in Vodou, until now. “I don’t know how else to explain this,” she told CBS4 News partner The Miami Herald.
Toxicology reports on Eugene’s body have not been completed. Results could take between two weeks and two months.
Eugene’s girlfriend said she has no idea what caused the vicious attack but she saw no signs of any violence in the nearly five years they lived together.
“That wasn’t him, that was his body but it wasn’t his spirit. Somebody did this to him,” she said. She described Eugene as religious.
“He loved God he always read the Bible he would give you knowledge on the Bible. Everywhere he went his Bible went. When he left he had his Bible in his hand.” She said Eugene left her home about 5:30 Saturday morning.
She said his last words to her were, “I love you and I’ll be back.”
She never saw him again.
A friend of Eugene’s since they were teenagers told The Herald on Wednesday that Eugene had been troubled in recent years.
Joe Aurelus said Eugene told him he wanted to stop smoking pot, and that friends were texting Eugene Bible verses.
“I was just with him two weeks ago,”’ he said. They were at a friend’s house watching a movie and Eugene had a Bible in his hand.
“He was going through a lot with his family,” Aurelus said, and jumping from job to job.
“Rudy was battling the devil.”
According to the girlfriend, she didn’t know the man behind the cannibal attack was her boyfriend until Monday morning.
She told the Herald when Eugene left their home early Saturday morning, he was going to meet with a “homeboy.” An hour later, Eugene called her and said his car broke down. He told her “I’ll be home, but I’m going to be a little late. Then he said, I’m going to call you right back.” That was the last time she heard from him.
Saturday afternoon, when she hadn’t heard from him, she searched for him in North Miami and Miami Gardens where he has family and friends.
“I was worried. I couldn’t do anything. I just kept calling the phone,” she said. “I left messages saying, ‘Rudy, call me, I’m really worried.’”
She said Eugene never told her where he was going that morning, and she was surprised to hear reports that he’d been in South Beach for Urban Beach Weekend.
She said he told her he didn’t want to go to South Beach because of the heavy police presence. Eugene, who had been arrested in the past for possession of marijuana, told her he didn’t want to get arrested.
When she heard about the horrific attack on TV Saturday night, she had no idea it was Rudy.
Sunday, she searched for him again.
At 11 a.m. Monday, one of Eugene’s family members call her to tell her Rudy was dead.
“I immediately started to scream,’’ she said. “I don’t know when I hung up the phone, I was hysterical,” she told the Herald.
But it was not until the afternoon, when she left her home to grieve with the rest of Eugene’s family in North Miami Beach, that she heard even worse news: The man everyone was calling the ‘Miami Zombie’ was her boyfriend.
She didn’t believe it. “That’s not Rudy, that’s not Rudy,” she remembered saying aloud in shock.
“I’ll never be the same,” she said.
Despite the fact that he smoked marijuana, she said he didn’t use stronger recreational drugs and even refused to take over-the-counter medication for headaches, she said. He was sweet and well-mannered, she said.
China overtook Japan to become the world's second-largest economy in 2010AFP
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/31/2012 21:11 -0400
China overtook Japan to become the world's second-largest economy in 2010AFP
