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Moore, an oceanographer who has made the study of the patch his full-time occupation, believes there is about 100 million tonnes of plastic circulating in the northern Pacific - or about 2.5 per cent of all plastic items made since 1950.

About 20 per cent of the junk is thought to come from marine craft, while the rest originates from countries around the Pacific like Mexico and China.

Instead the plastic slowly photodegrades, becoming brittle and disintegrating into smaller and smaller pieces which enter the food chain and end up in the stomachs of birds and other animals.

"It is not like going to a parking lot after a rugby match. It is not like a landfill," he says.

"The material is breaking down continually. It is photodegrading all the time. It is what I call a kaleidoscope or an alphabet soup. You won't see it from a satellite shot of the ocean. You only see it from the bows of ships," he says.

The Earth scientist James Lovelock, working with Chris Rapley of the Science Museum in London, devised a plan to put giant tubes into the seas to take surface water rich in dissolved CO2 to lower depths where it will not surface. The idea is to take CO2 out of the short-term carbon cycle, cutting the gas in the atmosphere. Critics say it may bring carbon locked away in the deep ocean to the surface.

The also say that it could lead to substantial changes in commercial fish stocks, threatening food security for millions of people

The head of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission, Alejandro Anganuzzi, said catches fell by about 30% last year, seriously affecting the industry.

But this illustrates the problem. If the bank marks the bond to market (38 cents), they will have to take huge losses. But if the government even pays the current S&P estimated value, the bank will have to write the bond down further, and the taxpayers will probably take huge losses too. Unless a bank has been very aggressive with their write downs, buying the toxic assets doesn't help - or is a gift from taxpayers to shareholders.

The lay-up area at King Harry Ferry on the River Fal is already so full of dormant ships that Carrick harbourmaster Andy Brigden has had to reject a request to accommodate a further fleet of seven vessels. Southampton, meanwhile, has become the temporary home of four large ships totalling over 300,000 tonnes, and it is reported that additional moorings will be laid to accommodate further arrivals.

For the full-year 2008, international cargo traffic was down 4.0%, passenger traffic showed a modest increase of 1.6%, and the international load factor stood at 75.9%.

Proceeds from sales of Boeing 737-800 in Q3 2009 - €21.2m each. (Eight aircraft sold for roughly €169.6m).

The performance of manufacturing index rose 2.9 points to 36.6 from December, the Australian Industry Group and PricewaterhouseCoopers said in a report released in Canberra today. A reading below 50 signals manufacturing is shrinking.

The research was conducted for The Sunday Times over the last two months in three provinces vital to Chinese trade – Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu. It found that the global economic crisis has scythed through exports and set off dozens of protests that are never mentioned by the state media.

On January 9, Xiao said, 14 security officers from the local labour bureau broke into his office, confiscated 600 legal case files, 160 law books, his computer, his photocopier, his television set and 100,000 yuan in cash.

“That evening I was ambushed near the office by five strangers who forced a black bag over my head and then threw me into a shallow polluted canal,” he said. His landlord has since given him notice to quit his rented home.

Xiao said he was defying bribery and threats to speak to the foreign media because he wants international businesses to know what is really happening in “the workshop of the world”.

Unter dem Eindruck wachsender Unzufriedenheit in der Bevölkerung hat China sein Militär zu absolutem Gehorsam gegenüber der Kommunistischen Partei aufgefordert. Die Forderung wurde bei einem Treffen der zentralen Militärkommission unter Leitung von Präsident Hu Jintao formuliert. Nach einem Bericht der amtlichen Nachrichtenagentur Xinhua trifft die chinesische Verteidigungspolitik auf "komplizierte Veränderungen im internationalen und heimischen Umfeld."

Officials blame emissions from Shanxi's large coal and chemical industry for the problems there.

Mit 172 (Vorjahr: 239) Aufträgen im Wert von 13,3 (15,4) Mrd. Euro sei die Beschäftigung der Werften rechnerisch nur noch für weniger als drei Jahre gesichert, teilte der Verband mit. Hinzu komme, dass wegen der Krise die Finanzierung von 29 Schiffen aus dem Auftragsbestand wackelt.

               Q-o-Q  Y-o-Y
Hungary        -1.0%    -4%
Poland         -0.7%    -3%
Czech Republic -1.0%    -4%

The drop eclipsed the previous record of 8.5 percent decline set in November, the Trade Ministry said today in Tokyo. Economists predicted a month-on-month decrease of 8.9 percent.

* Fuel, light and water charges +1.8% (Previous: +4.8%)
* Food +3.6% (+3.7%)
* Education +0.7% (+0.7%)
* Clothes and footwear +0.5% (+0.5%)
* Furniture and household utensils +0.2% (+0.2%)
* Housing +0.1% (+0.2%)

* Miscellaneous +0.0% (+0.2%)

* Medical care -0.4% (-0.5%)
* Reading and recreation -0.4% (-0.5%)
* Transportation and communication -5.1% (-2.3%)

Dutch pension funds, which in total managed 736 billion euros in September, usually buy extra stocks when equity markets go down to keep up the weight of share investments relative to other asset classes, Dutch central bank data has shown.

But metal workers fund PME, which managed 18.7 billion euros at the end of December, will keep its weight for stocks at 20 percent of total assets for 2009 from a 38 percent target in 2008.

The marches, complete with Soviet-style red flags and banners, pose a challenge to a government which has faced little threat from the fragmented opposition and politically apathetic population during the boom years fuelled by oil.

The defaulted Russian loan was only a small fraction of RBS’s mounting problems, and the size of the total Russian debt pales in comparison to the size of the subprime residential mortgage mess in the US, for example. Still, if Russia now initiates a process of international debt restructuring, it is likely to shake the already troubled global financial system further.

The amount of cash held in these accounts is huge. In December 2008, it was an amount equal to 30 percent of UK GDP. The growth of these deposits is even more shocking. Between September 1997 and April 2008, they increased by 450 percent.

Its UK Quarterly Property Index showed commercial properties lost 26.4% of their value last year - the most since records began in 1987.

The funds shed $94.5 billion in asset value in the five months ended Nov. 30, according to a study released today by Commonfund and the National Association of College and University Business Officers. The loss, the biggest in 35 years, compares with a 29 percent decline in the same period by the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, including reinvested dividends.

Here is the Philadelphia Fed state coincident index release for December.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia has released the coincident indexes for all 50 states for December 2008. The indexes decreased in all 50 states for the month (a one-month diffusion index of -100). For the past three months, the indexes increased in three states, Louisiana, North Dakota, and Wyoming, and remained unchanged in one state, Alaska.

Compared with December 2007, the index declined 14.1 percent, the biggest year-over-year decrease since February 1996. During the fourth quarter, tonnage was down 6.0 percent from the same quarter in 2007.

The snowpack on California's mountains is carrying only 61 percent of the water of normal years, according to the survey by the state Department of Water Resources. Last year the snowpack held 111 percent of the normal amount of water, but spring was the driest ever recorded.
[...]
December through January tend to be the wettest months but thus far the Sierra has only received one third of its expected annual snowfall.

"A third of normal is devastating," said Elissa Lynn, a meteorologist with the state. "January is the biggest month for precipitation in the Sierra."

The country's central bank is introducing seven new notes in an effort to stave off economic collapse.

John Robertson
Harare-based economist

The WFP says it has cut the ration to meet increased demand and cope with a shortfall in donations. It says it requires another $65m to keep feeding Zimbabweans until the end of March. But donors are reluctant to put more resources into the beleaguered African state and what aid there is has been partly diverted to the cholera crisis that has claimed 3,000 lives.