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German retail sales rose unexpectedly by 0.4 per cent month-on-month in May, their third consecutive increase, in a sign lower inflation rates are encouraging consumers to spend despite the threat of job losses.
Year-on-year, sales fell by 2.
But the annual comparison was distorted somewhat because there was one sales day less in May 2009 than in the prior year.9 per cent, the fifth month in a row that they have declined, figures from the Federal Statistics Office figures showed on Wednesday. “Consumption is examining quite robust in this recession.
“These are good figures,” said Juergen Michels, an economist at Citigroup in London. A clear fall in inflation is helping as it boosts purchasing power.1 per cent drop in the seasonally-adjusted month-on-month figure and a 1.”
Economists surveyed by had forecast a 0.
Figures released last week showed consumer prices rose a meagre 0.1 per cent drop on an annual basis.
The slowdown in inflation and resilience in the labour market thanks to government short-term work subsidies to prevent mass layoffs has encouraged price-conscious Germans to spend, giving modest support to the economy at a time when manufacturers are struggling badly.1 per cent year-on-year in June after stagnating in May.
In the first quarter of 2009, gross domestic product in Europe’s largest economy slid by 3.
In the first quarter of 2009, gross domestic product in Europe’s largest economy slid by 3. Private consumption was a positive contributor. But that was largely attributable to a sharp decline in exports and capital investment. Oppenheim, said Germany was living on “borrowed time”.
Still, with unemployment expected to pick up in the second half of the year, Ulrike Kastens, an economist at Sal. “Consumption will remain stable over the summer but by the autumn, many companies will have to decide whether they want to keep workers on short-time or lay them off.
“The recession has not yet hit the labour market,” she said. .”
Despite relative stability in retail sales so far, the downturn is already contributing to a shake-up in the sector.”.
Its rival Metro hopes to acquire about 60 of its Karstadt department stores and merge them with its own Kaufhof chain to create a new “German Department Store Inc.5 per cent month-on-month and declined by 3.5 per cent month-on-month and declined by 3.2 per cent on the year. In the first five months of 2009, sales were down by 2.3 per cent in real terms year-on-year.
The data were based on sales from seven states accounting for around 76 per cent of retail activity in Germany.

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China postponed the deadline for personal-computer makers to include state-backed anti-pornography software on new PCs after US officials and business groups urged it to scrap the rule.
The government is delaying mandatory installation of the Green Dam-Youth Escort software after PC makers demanded more time, the Beijing-based Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said in a statement on its Web site yesterday. Computer vendors had been required to include the software from today, according to a May 19 notice by the ministry. “Because it was raised at the last minute, there wasn’t much time for the vendors to react.
“What was required was a bit of a testing period for the vendors,” said Bryan Ma, vice-president at researcher IDC in Singapore.
The software, which the Chinese government said is designed to block pornographic sites, also limits access to political content, tightening censorship of the world’s biggest Web market by users, university researchers said.”
Business groups representing US technology companies including Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Microsoft told China Premier Wen Jiabao last week that Green Dam may undermine computer security.
The adoption of Green Dam was opposed by more than 74 per cent of Chinese Internet users participating in an online survey last month by Renminwang, a Web site run by the official People’s Daily newspaper. “It’s a win-win situation if the government can learn a lesson from this, as it will improve their governance. . The ministry will keep providing a free version of the software and install it in PCs in schools and Internet cafes.”
The ministry said it is soliciting opinion to improve the plan for Green Dam’s adoption, without saying whether it had set a new deadline.
`Barrier to trade’
China should revoke its mandate for the software, which poses a “possible barrier to trade,” US Trade Representative Ron Kirk said June 24.
The Information Technology Industry Council, whose members include Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Microsoft, was among 22 industry groups in North America, Europe and Japan that signed a June 26 letter to Wen urging the government to review the software requirement, citing concerns about freedom of information and system reliability. Kirk and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in a joint letter to Chinese officials last week the software requirement may violate World Trade Organization rules. Kirk and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in a joint letter to Chinese officials last week the software requirement may violate World Trade Organization rules.
The industry ministry said in its statement yesterday that the software is for the public good and doesn’t infringe on trade, technology or privacy issues and complies with WTO regulations.
Government control of the Internet will be increased through the implementation of Green Dam, a “substandard product” developed by companies with little experience in such software, according to a June 12 report by OpenNet Initiative, which includes researchers at the University of Cambridge, University of Oxford and University of Toronto.
Largest web market
US State Department spokeswoman Megan Mattson said yesterday the country “welcomes the opportunity to engage with the relevant Chinese authorities on our concerns regarding the software. The program doesn’t obstruct the free flow of information, it said.
Hewlett-Packard and Dell, the world’s two biggest PC makers, said they are reviewing the requirement.”
China, which passed the US last year as the world’s biggest Internet market, had 316 million Web users at the end of March, the state-owned Xinhua News Agency reported in April.
Hewlett-Packard said in an e-mail it’s working with the ITI trade group “to seek additional information, clarify open questions and monitor developments on this matter.
“We’ll continue to advise customers worldwide about widely available Web-filtering software that has been thoroughly tested and we know performs well on Dell computers,” Texas-based Dell said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.”
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New Zealand’s best known palaeontologist, self-taught Havelock North fossil hunter Joan Wiffen, has died aged 87.

Mrs Wiffen, who became known as the Dinosaur Lady, died suddenly in Hastings Hospital on Tuesday.

Mrs Wiffen was the author and co-author of more than a dozen scientific papers and wrote of her achievements in her book Valley of the Dragons.

Her dig at Maungahouanga in Hawke’s Bay was the first known site where dinosaurs lived in New Zealand.

But she had only a brief secondary education – her father believed higher education was wasted on girls and she was expected to get married and have a family.

Born in 1922 and brought up in the King Country and Hawke’s Bay during the 1930s Depression, Mrs Wiffen later recalled marvelling at the presence of sea shells high in the hills.

The couple raised their two children at Haumoana near Hastings, and the family hobby was rock collecting – they gathered minerals and fossils from throughout New Zealand and Australia.

She served in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force during World War 2 and worked for six years as a clerk before marrying Pont Wiffen in 1953. .

Her husband enrolled in night classes in geology, and when he was ill, she went in his place and recalled being “green with envy” when someone found a fossil shell in mudstone.

Mrs Wiffen went on to find bones from half a dozen other dinosaurs, including an armoured ankylosaur, a hypsilophodont, as well as a pterosaur flying reptile, and marine reptiles, such as mosasaurs and plesiosaurs.

Following an old geological map indicating reptilian bones in the Te Hoe Valley, she found the tail bone of a theropod dinosaur in the Maungahouanga valley in northern Hawke’s Bay in 1975. I dug it out and asked a colleague to break it open with a hammer,” she said afterwards.

In 1999, she found bone from one of the largest known dinosaurs, a titanosaurid: “I saw a partly exposed concretion (sedimentary rock) about the size of a rugby ball in the stream bank.”

Friends and family helped her recover heavy sandstone rock from which she extracted the fossils with painstaking cutting and grinding and use of acid baths.

“I immediately saw a bone structure inside that looked different from the bone of a marine reptile.

In 2004, she accepted the Morris Skinner Award from the United States-based Society of Vertebrate Palaeontology for outstanding and sustained contributions to scientific knowledge.

In 1994, she received an honorary doctorate from Massey University and the following year a CBE.

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There will be no further inquest into the deaths of five members of the Bain family in 1994 unless ordered by the Solicitor-General or the High Court.

David Bain, 37, was acquitted of the murders of his parents and three siblings at a retrial which ended last month in the High Court at Christchurch.

He had spent 13 years in prison after originally being convicted of the crimes.

The verdicts placed the accuracy of the family’s death certificates into question.

The defence case at the retrial was that his father, Robin Bain, killed the family members and then committed suicide.

Judge MacLean said today the inquest that was opened by the Dunedin coroner was completed in terms of the provisions of the Coroners Act 1988.

Chief Coroner Neil MacLean said last month he would discuss the matter with former Dunedin coroner Jim Conradson and current Dunedin Coroner David Crerar to assess the death certificates and whether they felt an inquest was needed.

“There is no open inquest into the deaths.

A Crown Law spokesperson said no requests for an inquest had been received, and referred to a test in a Solicitor-General’s 2005 report into a request for a second inquest in the 1997 Berryman case.”

Any further coronial investigation into the deaths could be undertaken only following an order by the Solicitor-General or by the High Court, he said.

The test in that report said the Solicitor-General could order another inquest if satisfied new facts had been discovered which would “make it desirable to hold another inquest”.

That inquest was to re-examine where liability lay in the death of beekeeper Kenneth Richards, killed when a bridge built by the army for Keith and Margaret Berryman collapsed under the weight of his truck. .

They could also apply to the High Court for an order for a new inquest for “reason of fraud, rejection of evidence, irregularity of proceedings, or discovery of new facts, or for any other sufficient reason”

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An elderly man has been dragged to his death after his foot became trapped as he attempted to get off a train in the Auckland suburb of Newmarket.

The man, who was believed to be in his 70s, slipped as he was getting off the train at the Newmarket station.

His foot became stuck and he was dragged for several metres by the train until it stopped just under the Newmarket Broadway overbridge, police said.15pm. .

Newmarket Business Association chief executive Cameron Brewer said he had never had any complaints about the safety of the temporary platform on Kingdon Street at Newmarket station.

Police and rail workers were removing the body this afternoon.

“It has been operating for over 18 months, since the old station was decommissioned.

Both the Kingdon Street and Remuera Road temporary platforms are set to be removed in January 2010, when the new central Newmarket rail station is opened, Mr Brewer added. In fact people have been calling for the platform to be made permanent because it has been working well,” he said.

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Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia has heralded a foreshore and seabed review as a landmark day in which ”the conflicts and divisions of the last five years can at long last be rectified”.

The 150-page report issued today recommends the controversial Foreshore and Seabed Act, which enshrined Crown ownership of the foreshore and seabed, be repealed.

Mrs Turia said the report recognised that the Act was ”indeed built on shaky foundations” and must be repealed..

”[It] talks about a nation divided and it concludes the Foreshore and Seabed Act severely discriminated against Maori, took away our right to go to court, drew on legal tests developed in other jurisdictions foreign to our own country and was . simply wrong..”

It also concluded the 2004 Act, passed by the former Labour government, had caused ”much anguish and concern to Maori”. The Act has to be the single biggest land nationalisation statute enacted in New Zealand history,” Mrs Turia said.

”Those words are the voice of reason the Maori Party has been waiting five long years to hear.

”This is a unifying document.

The reports findings had caused ”a very emotional day” for she and her Maori Party colleagues.

It made up for being called ”haters and wreckers” by the likes of former prime minister Helen Clark.”

Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples said the report contained some strong language, which was ”only right”.

”When we came in [to Parliament] people said we had no chance of getting to this position here so we’re excited.

”When we came in [to Parliament] people said we had no chance of getting to this position here so we’re excited. While the government is yet to announce its position on the review, repeal of the Act seems almost certain. A review of the Act was written into its deal to go into government with National.

It recommended Government recognise that Maori with traditional interests in the coastal area have some form of customary title to it and the public have an interest in access and navigation.

WHAT’S IN THE REPORT

The report said the law failed to recognise Maori property rights as recognised by the courts and advanced the general interests of the public at the expense of Maori.

It proposed the Government start with a new interim law that would repeal the Foreshore and Seabed Act.

The panel sets out a number of possible options to achieve its recommendations including:

* Negotiated settlements within iwi and hapu;

* Allow the courts to settle title issues; and

* A mixed model of negotiated settlements at a regional and national level.

”Both must be respected and provided within the limits necessary to accommodate the other,” the report said. .

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ANZ Bank may buy Royal Bank of Scotland Group units in at least five Asian countries as Britain’s biggest government- controlled bank splits its assets in the region to attract buyers, three people familiar with the plan said. . The assets on sale may fetch about $US1.
Standard Chartered is seeking RBSs businesses in China, India and Malaysia, two of the people said.8 billion), one of the people said.5 billion ($1. ”The growth in the Asian markets I think will be a positive for them.
”ANZ is getting a nice mix,” said Peter Vann, who manages more than $750 million at Constellation Capital Management, including ANZ Bank shares.”
ANZ Chief Executive Officer Michael Smith is expanding in Asia as swelling bad loans at home squeeze profit, prompting the bank to cut its dividend for the first time since the 1991 recession. It’s a nice little diversifying earner.
ANZ Banks shares slipped 1. Smith, who previously headed HSBC Holdings’ Asian division, is aiming to increase the proportion of income derived from the continent to 20 per cent.26 in Sydney, trimming this year’s advance to 6.4 per cent to $16.
Government bailout
RBS is seeking to trim its operations in 36 countries that make up two-thirds of its international business after posting the biggest loss in British corporate history last year.3 per cent.
ANZ disclosed its interest in RBSs Asian units on May 27 and the negotiations are continuing, said Paul Edwards, a spokesman for the bank.
CEO Stephen Hester, who replaced Fred Goodwin after RBS sought a government bailout, is breaking up the banks Asian operation after potential bidders showed more interest in buying individual operations than the whole business, the people said.
Michael Strachan, a spokesman for RBS in Edinburgh declined to comment.
For ANZ, the outcome remains unknown, he said.
ANZ sold $2. Gabriel Kwan, a Hong Kong spokeswoman for Standard Chartered, also declined to comment.
Expansion in Asia
The Australian bank said in January it paid $US114 million to increase its stake in Indonesias PT Bank Panin to benefit from rising demand for banking in Asias third-most populous nation.5 billion of shares in May to fund a bid for RBS’s Asian assets.
ANZ has more investments in Asia than its Australian rivals, including a 20 per cent stake in Shanghai Rural Commercial Bank.
ANZ has more investments in Asia than its Australian rivals, including a 20 per cent stake in Shanghai Rural Commercial Bank. It also has a holding in Saigon Securities and a stake in Malaysia’s AMMB Holdings.
HSBC, which also focuses on emerging markets, declined to comment through its London spokesman Patrick McGuinness.
Standard Chartered Chief Executive Officer Peter Sands said on March 17 the bank may consider purchases in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The bank raised 1.8 billion pounds in a December rights offering.
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