Just Economic Info

Apple released its newest iPad in China on Friday after settling a lawsuit over ownership of its name and requiring buyers to place orders in advance to control crowds.

Watched by security guards, a few dozen shoppers waited outside stores in Beijing and Shanghai, which opened on time at 8 a.m. That was in contrast to the chaotic scene outside Apple's main Beijing store in January, when some customers who wanted to buy a new iPhone shouted and threw eggs after managers delayed the opening due to safety concerns about the hundreds of people waiting.

Sun Xufei, a 32-year-old computer technician who was the first customer in line in Shanghai, said he had put off buying an iPad so Apple had time to develop "a perfect one." The 30 customers in line when the store opened were outnumbered by the reporters watching them.

"I am very surprised to see there is nobody here waiting," Sun said.

Apple Inc. cleared a potential legal hurdle to the release when it paid $60 million this month to settle a dispute with a local company, Shenzhen Proview Technology Ltd., over ownership of the iPad name. Apple said it bought global rights to the iPad name from Proview in 2009 but Chinese authorities say the rights in China were never transferred.

China is Apple's second-largest market after the United States and the source of much of the Cupertino, California-based company's sales growth.

Qu Hongyu, a 20-year-old university student in Shanghai, expressed frustration that Apple waited four months after the new iPad debuted abroad to release it in China.

Qu said she could have asked a friend abroad to send her one, "but I think it's better to get the product here, because I don't want to owe somebody a favor."

Asian stock markets wavered Friday as weak U.S. data kept sentiment in check despite continued hopes for new stimulus measures in major economies.

Investors have been anticipating further moves by China to prop up slowing economic growth and also have continued to believe the U.S. Federal Reserve will announce additional pro-growth measures despite Fed chairman Ben Bernanke giving no indication of that in his two-day testimony to lawmakers this week.

The mood of optimism in markets the past few days linked to stimulus hopes was tempered by a batch of weak economic U.S. data. Weekly jobless claims rose 34,000 to a three-week high of 386,000 and an indicator of regional manufacturing was much weaker than anticipated. Homes sales and leading economic indicators were also soft.

"The outlook ... is clouded by uncertainty surrounding the Chinese and US economies, in addition to lingering risk of a blowout in Europe," analysts at DBS Bank in Singapore said in a report. "Growth in China has been especially critical in driving growth in Asia, and even global growth."

Japan's Nikkei 225 was down 0.9 percent at 8,717.60 while Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 0.2 percent to 19,602.21.

Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was little changed at 4,206.10 and China's Shanghai Composite dropped 0.4 percent to 2,175.75.

Markets in Singapore, India and New Zealand were down while Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines rose.

In the U.S. on Thursday, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.3 percent to 12,943.36 and the broader S&P 500 index gained 0.3 percent to 1,376.51 as strong corporate earnings buoyed investors.

Benchmark oil was down 53 cents at $92.13 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract surged $2.79, about 3 percent, to $92.66 in New York on Thursday, its highest level since mid-May.

In currencies, the euro was down 0.1 percent to $1.2260. The dollar fell 0.2 percent to 78.62 yen.

With a cheeky smile and playful nature, little Liang Xiaoxiao acts just like any other child.

As she plays with other toddlers and kicks around a football, she doesn't have a care in the world.

However, the three-year-old's size compared to the other children she plays with clearly shows that all is not well.

It is believed the youngster is the world's tiniest girl.

She was born with a weight of 1.05kg and a height of just 33cm. But three years on she is only 54 cm tall and weights just 2.5kg.


Doctors in Huaihua, China, believe that a genetic mutation has stopped the youngster from getting any bigger.

But as these pictures show, it clearly hasn't dented the love of her mother who proudly watches her child play at the Children's Hospital of Hunan Province in Changsha, China.

This week one of the world's smallest surviving babies was finally allowed home.

Born weighing just 9.5 ounces, smaller than a can of soda, Kenna Claire Moore is recorded as the fourth-smallest surviving baby in the world.

After spending the first six months of her life in intensive care, when she finally left Presbyterian Hemby Children's Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S, on Tuesday, it was no ordinary discharge.

Born at only 25 weeks - a typical pregnancy lasts 40 weeks - doctors were not sure how long little Kenna would survive, but after 183 days of fighting for her life, parents Nicki and Sam Moore finally got to take her home in what they said was 'the happiest day of our life'.

Her teeth are falling out and she’s had collagen injections for her wrinkles – but Zara Hartshorn is no middle-aged woman trying to recapture her youth.

In fact, she’s only 15 with a rare and incurable disease that makes her look decades older than her school pals.

The genetic defect affects fewer than 30 people in Britain – but heartbreakingly her mum Tracey and sister Jolene, 23, have it too.

Yet despite getting plenty of support at home, Zara has faced years of bullies branding her “granny” and even beating her up.

She’s been humiliatingly turfed off a bus because she couldn’t prove she was eligible for a child’s ticket.

And when she started at one school she was mistaken for a teacher.

Now Zara has chosen to speak out in a bid to defy the bullies and raise ­awareness of her condition.

She said: “It makes me really angry sometimes – but I do everything normal 15-year-olds do and try not to let it get me down.”

Zara, Jolene and Tracey, 41, have lipodystrophy, which decays bones and destroys fatty tissue beneath the surface of the skin, causing premature ageing.

So while many girls use make-up to appear older to get into pubs or 18-rated films, Zara has the opposite problem.

She said: “It’s impossible to get a child’s ticket at the cinema and when I wear my school uniform people think I’m in fancy dress.

“Growing up with lipodystrophy has been really hard.

“Children started being cruel to me when I was at primary school, calling me ‘baggy face’ and ‘granny’.

“I’ve been physically assaulted at school because of how I look so Mum took me out of school for a term when I was 10 after the bullying got so bad.

“It wasn’t until secondary school I found a group of friends who accepted me for who I was, not how I looked.”

But outside school many people refuse to believe she’s so young.

Zara said: “I was once refused a child’s bus ticket in front of everyone. I went red, got off and walked home. In my first week at one school the teacher handed me a lesson plan. I said, ‘I’m not a teacher, I’m a pupil.’

“I’ve never felt so on the spot in my life – I just wanted to die.

“The same thing happened a year later when I changed teachers.”

Zara went on: “My teeth seem to be really weak and even though I brush regularly I’ve lost four already.

“Two are at the front, which makes me very self-conscious and I don’t like to smile with my mouth open.”

In 2010 Zara went to Japan to have collagen injections in her face from a world expert on lipodystrophy.

Initially the jabs smoothed wrinkles but the implant later broke down.

Zara said: “I was really excited about having collagen because I thought it might change my appearance, so I was gutted when it went wrong.

“In the future I’d like a facelift to see if I can get rid of the skin under my chin and wrinkles around my eyes.”

But despite the ravages of her condition, Zara dreams of being a beauty therapist when she leaves school.

And she already knows a thing or two about keeping skin clear.

She said: “One good thing about the condition is Jolene, Mum and me have never had a spot or skin blemish.

“I used to wear lots of make-up but now I’m more accepting of myself – some people are worse looking than me.” There are other upsides, too. Zara quipped: “I can get served cigarettes and alcohol – if I want.”

And she insists she has no trouble attracting boyfriends.




She said: “I’ve had a few and they all tell me they don’t care how I look, they like me for my personality.

“Mum raised her kids to speak their minds and be confident about who they are – what you see is what you get.”

She added: “Of course I still get upset sometimes.

“Recently someone told me I looked like I was 30 and I got really angry.

“Another time a guy asked if Jolene was my mum.

“I said, ‘She’s my sister, you idiot’ – but Jolene was really upset.”

Mum Tracey admitted she was racked with guilt after realising she had passed the condition on to her own children.

She said: “I worry what the future holds for my daughters.

“I’ve had abuse for the way I look my whole life. Other children didn’t want to play with me and later I became volatile and would lash out at people.

“The only men interested in me were a lot older.

“Then I started drinking to blot out the pain and had one abusive relationship after another because I couldn’t stick up for myself.”

She added: “Each day I look in the mirror and see the face of a woman twice my age.

“But I’m so proud of the way Jolene and Zara handle themselves.”

Tracey is also mum to Gareth 24, Michael, 21, Tommy, 19, Rosie, 20 and Chloe, 16, who don’t have the defect.

Her husband Lawrence, 62, is bedbound through a stroke and lung cancer and Tracey is now his full-time carer.

Meanwhile, experts insist there are ways to smooth out the “dented” skin even if they can’t cure the condition.

London-based dermatologist Stefanie Williams said: “A plastic surgeon might transfer fat from one area of the body to the dented area. Other treatments involve filling the dent with injectable fillers or implants.”

China's economic woes that have brought growth to a three-year low will continue for some time, but the slower expansion remains within expectations, Premier Wen Jiabao said Sunday.

Speaking during a tour of the southwestern city of Chengdu, Wen said Chinese need to recognize the seriousness and complexity of the challenges the country faces. But he added that China's economic fundamentals remain favorable.

"At present, our country's economic growth rate remains within the target range set earlier this year and we are seeing the effectiveness of stabilization policies," Wen said in remarks posted on the central government's official website.

The government will prioritize job creation and provide financial aid and tax breaks to companies suffering from slowing exports due to sinking overseas demand, Wen said. Private investment will be encouraged and the government will promote industrial upgrading and urbanization to spur consumption, he said.

"All regions and departments need to proceed with even greater determination and courage," Wen said.

His comments follow the government's announcement Friday that the world's second-largest economy grew by 7.6 percent in the three months ending in June over a year earlier. That was the lowest since the first quarter of 2009 during the depths of the global financial crisis.

Growth was down from the previous quarter's 8.1 percent, damping hopes that China can make up for US and European weakness, but in line with the government's official target of 7.5 percent for the year

Private-sector forecasters say the economy may have bottomed out during the first two quarters and China still is likely to achieve its target for the year.

Export growth has fallen and consumer spending weakened despite stimulus measures including two interest rate cuts since the start of June. The government also is pumping money into the economy through higher investment by state-owned industry and more spending on low-cost housing and other public works.

However, Beijing is moving cautiously after its 2008 stimulus pushed up inflation and spurred a wasteful building boom. Authorities have said curbs imposed on building and home sales to cool surging housing prices will remain in place. (nvn)