People collect water fresh from the Black Tiger Spring in Jinan, the capital of eastern China's Shandong province, July 25, 2004. (AFP File Photo)

BEIJING, June 8--The water crisis in China, where 300 million people already do not have access to drinkable water, will peak in 2030 when the population hits 1.6 billion people, a senior government official was quoted on Wednesday as saying.
According to Reuters, Chinese leaders have made “clean water for the people“ a top priority in the world’s most populous country where widespread flooding and drought cause huge loss of life each year.
China’s population officially hit 1.3 billion in January.
“In 2030, the population will reach 1.6 billion and there will be 1,760 cubic meters of water resources per person,“ Qiu Baoxing, vice minister of construction, was quoted as saying by the official People’s Daily.
That represents nearly 400 cubic meters less per person than in 2004.
China had 21 percent of the global population and only 7 percent of the world’s total water resources, Qiu said. Measured against its economy, China consumed five times more water than the global average.
Over-exploration of groundwater, heavy pollution and widespread waste are taking a heavy toll on the country’s limited liquid assets.
Domestic industries and residents discharged 200 billion tons of untreated waste water into rivers every year and 90 percent of rivers that passed through Chinese cities were polluted, Qiu said.
Exacerbating the problem was the uneven distribution of water in China, particularly in the drought-prone north.
The region was home to one third of the country’s people but only 6 percent of its water, Qiu said, noting per-capita water reserves in the northern city of Tianjin were one-ten thousandth of those in mountainous Tibet.
China has launched an ambitious South-North water diversion scheme, but pollution and failure by regional governments to improve waste treatment were ruining available supplies, an official said on UN World Water Day in March.

WASHINGTON, June 8--The World Bank plans to increase its efforts in Africa to help countries mired in poverty achieve growth rates similar to the continent’s
economic stars, the bank’s top official for Africa said on Tuesday.
To show the bank’s commitment to Africa, new World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz will travel there next week on his first foreign trip since taking over on June 1.
The former US deputy defense secretary will visit Africa’s two major powers--Nigeria and South Africa--and also stop in Rwanda and Burkina Faso.
Gobind Nankani, the bank’s vice president for Africa, told Reuters in an interview that policies under Wolfowitz would seek an overall growth for African countries that would benefit both the poor and the more successful nations.
With 334 projects and commitments of $16.6 billion, the development bank is the largest provider of development assistance to Africa.
“We see the World Bank as stepping up its efforts in Africa on the lending side but also stepping up its efforts on the analytical side,“ Nankani said.
“In particular, our sense is that for a significant dent in poverty reduction, we need to support countries to implement more bold policies for accelerated shared growth.“
The bank’s increased focus on Africa also comes as the world’s wealthiest nations try to agree on a plan to free the continent from a crippling debt burden and poverty.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W. Bush met in Washington earlier on Tuesday on an ambitious proposal by Blair to dramatically increase new assistance to Africa and cancel the continent’s debt.
The World Bank’s Nankani, noting the disparity in growth rates among African countries, said the bank’s role in Africa has expanded to help increase African nations’ access to markets and promote more regional integration and private sector development.

MUMBAI, India,
June 8--India’s Reliance Energy announced plans Wednesday to spend $11 billion to build the world’s biggest coal-based power plant that would generate 12,000 Megawatts of electricity.
Reliance is a unit of telecoms-to-energy conglomerate Reliance Industries, India’s largest private sector company.
Reliance Energy chairman Anil Ambani told shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting the plant in the eastern Indian state of Orissa “will be the world’s largest pit-head coal-based power plant.“
The project is separate from others planned by Reliance Energy.
Reliance Energy has already started work on one of the world’s largest gas-based power plants in Uttar Pradesh at an estimated cost of $2.4 billion that will generate 3,740 Megawatts. It is also setting up a 1,000-Megawatt gas-based plant in Uttar Pradesh.
The coal power project announcement came in the wake of media reports last weekend of a possible settlement between Anil Ambani and his elder brother, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani.
The two have been publicly battling for control of the conglomerate founded by their late father, Dhirubhai Ambani, since last November.
Ambani, who did not comment on the ownership tussle, reaffirmed at the shareholders’ meeting that Reliance Industries will supply gas for the Uttar Pradesh projects.
Reliance Energy shares on the Mumbai Stock Exchange were up 6.5 rupees or 1.18 percent at 556 rupees while Reliance Industries gained 7.70 rupees or 1.41 percent to 555.5 rupees, outpacing the overall market which was up 0.97 percent
Media reports last weekend said Mukesh Ambani would retain control over the oil, gas and petrochemicals businesses of Reliance and Indian Petrochemicals Corp as part of a settlement between the two brothers.

LONDON, June 8--A pensions ’timebomb’ said to be facing rich countries as the post-war Baby Boom heads off into retirement may in fact be easily defused, according to a study published on Wednesday, AFP reported.
Its authors say the pensions problem, far from causing national budgets to implode and burdening younger generations, should be entirely manageable provided people work a little longer to match their greater life expectancy.
Better health and a longer expectation of life will mean that, in 2050, someone who is 50 is likely to have the same outlook and keenness to work as a person who was 40 in 2000, the study argues.
“Populations will be older in the future. But on the other hand, the average person may have an even longer time horizon,“ claim authors Warren Sanderson, an economist at the State University of New York and Sergei Scherbov of the Vienna Institute of Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
“In those areas of life where the planning horizon is important, such as in savings and in the maintenance of skills relevant to leisure or employment, the older people of the future could act as though they were effectively younger, because they will be looking forward to more years of life.
Their study, published in the British science journal Nature, uses this concept of “prospective age“--the remaining years of life expectancy for a citizen of average age--as the basis for forecasting how things might look in Germany, the United States and Japan.
Working closely on these two factors--the population’s median age and prospective age--is essential for defusing the pensions bomb, the authors say.
The younger the population’s age, the more people there are of working age to pay for the pensions of retirees under the usual “pay as you go“ state pension scheme.
And the longer the remaining life expectancy, the greater potential for a person to continue working and contributing to that scheme.

A Logan is driven in the car park of the Dacia factory in Mioveni, northwest of Bucharest, Romania, June 2. (AFP File Photo)

PARIS, June 8--An automobile that officially goes on sale in France this week illustrates the complex economic and political realities that led French voters to reject the European Union constitution in a referendum, AFP said.
Many of those who voted against the constitution May 29 expressed concern about the country’s stubborn unemployment rate of more than 10 percent, and specifically about the danger of jobs being lost to low-cost competition from the new EU member countries of eastern Europe.
The new Logan by Renault, a mid-sized, Romanian-built family sedan that retails for about half the price of a similarly-sized car built in France, represents just such a transfer of jobs and technology to the east.
The Logan will go on sale across France on Thursday for 7,500 euros ($9,200) for the basic model to 8,500 euros for the high-end version with power steering, onboard computer and air conditioning.
That is about 50 percent more than its price in its home market, partly explained by the need to fit anti-block brakes and other safety equipment required by legislation in the European Union, which Romania hopes to join in 2007.
Despite the relatively low cost of the Logan and its lack of sophisticated electronics, Renault insists that the model is a high-quality modern automobile--unlike Communist-era products such as the Russian Zhiguli that was based on an obsolescent Fiat design and came to the West as the Lada with a strongly negative image.
In fact, the simplicity of the Logan could be a selling point among people who distrust the electronic gizmos on modern autos--particularly since Renault has been having highly publicized problems with the electronic cruise control on some of its Western-built models.

PARIS, June 8--After three lean years, international air travel faces a brighter future as ticket sales take off and costs drop, but the future is overshadowed by high fuel costs and an excess capacity that may force new mergers.
With the important exception of the big US companies, airlines--the chief clients at the Paris Air Show this month--have seen matters improve this year, AFP said.
“Parts of the industry are profitable,“ Giovanni Bisignani, director general of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), acknowledged at the end of last month at its annual general meeting in Tokyo.
But overall he painted a somber picture of the state of the industry’s health and IATA does not see an overall return to balance until next year, with losses totaling six billion dollars (4.88 billion euros) in 2005.
Since 2001 airlines have been hit by a series of hammer blows, including the global economic slowdown, the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) epidemic and the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“Losses between 2001 and 2004 exceeded $36 billion,“ Bisignani said at the Tokyo meeting.
In 2004, “North American carriers lost nine billion dollars. Efficiency gains cannot make up for structural problems. Labor costs remain high. And low-cost competition at major hubs drove yields down,“ he said.
“European carriers posted a profit of $1.4 billion. Yields were better. And consolidation helped capacity management.
“Asian carriers posted $2.6 billion in profit. Strong growth fuelled by China and low labour costs are the competitive advantage. And India may be the next great market for the industry.“

A sign outside the Nasdaq Market Site in New York welcomes Google, August 19, 2004. (Reuters File Photo)

NEW YORK, June 8--Google Inc. took over the top spot as the most highly valued media company this week, surpassing Time Warner Inc. in just 10 months of trading as a public company.
Google’s share price on the Nasdaq rose another $2.18, or 0.75 percent, to close at $293.12 on Tuesday, an all-time high. Stock market analysts have suggested the stock could go as high as $325 or $350 a share, Reuters reported.
With a current stock market capitalization of more than $80 billion, Google is now worth more than any other media company in the world. That includes Time Warner, created five years ago when AOL purchased Time Warner for $106 billion in a much-hyped combination of old and new media.
But Time Warner’s share price has deteriorated since the dot.com bubble burst--its market capitalization on Tuesday stood at $78.1 billion--and investors view Google as the hot internet and media company these days.
Other, more traditional, media companies trail Google’s stock market worth by even more. Viacom Inc. and Walt Disney Co., for instance, hold stock market capitalization of between $54 billion and $55 billion.
Even Yahoo Inc., seen as one big internet media competitor, carries a market value some $27 billion less than that of Google.