Both higher maximum and higher minimum temperatures can decrease rice yields.

MANILA, Philippines, July 9--Rising sea levels triggered by climate change pose an “ominous“ threat to some of the world’s most productive rice-growing areas, the International Rice Research Institute has warned.
The Philippines-based institution is devoting fresh efforts to mitigating the coming threat, but senior climate scientist Reiner Wassman said adequate funding had yet to materialize. “Some of Asia’s most important rice-growing areas are located in low-lying deltas, which play a vital role in regional food security and supplying export markets,“ Wassman told the IRRI magazine Rice Today, AFP reported.
“With Vietnam so dependent on rice grown in and around low-lying river deltas, the implications of a sea-level rise are ominous indeed.“
Wassman said the impact of global warming on the key cereal “will depend on the actual patterns of change in rice-growing regions.“
But he warned a threatened rise of between 10 and 85 centimeters (four to 34 inches) in sea levels over the next century which could have “enormous“ impacts on some countries, including key rice exporter Vietnam.
Wassman said both higher maximum and higher minimum temperatures could decrease rice yields. But he said the IRRI was optimistic it would be able to develop new varieties that could cope with higher temperatures.
Scientists are also confident that the resilience of rice production systems to climate extremes, such as floods and droughts, can be improved, he said.
However, he warned it unclear to what extent the impact of higher sea levels could be compensated for, and what the costs and socioeconomic consequences of any such changes would be.

Gazprom's headquarters in Moscow.

LONDON, July 9--Giant Russian energy firm Gazprom wants to be the world’s first firm with a stock market value of a trillion dollars, its deputy chief executive told the Sunday Times. Alexander Medvedev did not give a timetable for achieving the goal but the paper reported that executives at the firm, which is nearly half-owned by the state, believe it can be achieved within five to seven years, AFP reported.
Gazprom would have to quadruple its current 251 billion dollar (184 billion euro) market value to achieve the objective.
The firm is currently the eighth-most valuable in the world, with US oil and gas company Exxon Mobil, valued at $479 billion, topping the list, the Sunday Times said.
But Medvedev told the paper, “It’s not just a nice figure.“
He said that the removal of gas price controls in Russia, a revaluing of its reserves by western market, the introduction of cost controls plus diversification and acquisitions could push Gazprom towards its goal. Such ambitions risk fuelling fears among some Western politicians over the growing power of the group.
Gazprom controls around a quarter of the world’s gas reserves and has a monopoly on gas exports from Russia.
The company is also expanding into energy retail operations in Europe.

AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France, July 9--The head of the European Central Bank on Sunday called the success of the euro currency “remarkable“ and lauded reductions in unemployment levels throughout the continent. Jean-Claude Trichet said Europe currently has its “lowest unemployment level in 25 years“, adding that “to deny that economic and monetary stability is at the heart of the success would be an enormous error“. Speaking to a group of students and economists, he talked of “the euro’s remarkable success in Europe and worldwide“.
Trichet’s comments came ahead of a meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has attacked the ECB’s monetary policy, AFP wrote.
Sarkozy has frequently criticised the bank’s focus on inflation and wants a higher profile for the Eurogroup of finance ministers to act as a counterweight, much to the concern of Germany, which is deeply attached to the ECB’s independence from politics.
In an unprecedented move, the newly elected right-wing leader was expected to attend a Eurogroup meeting on Monday to outline his controversial budget policy.

NEW YORK, July 9--Complying with anti-money laundering laws has been much more expensive than banks anticipated, and some still aren’t meeting all requirements, a new survey says. Banks around the world saw compliance costs jump an average of 58 percent over the past three years--more than in the previous three years, and higher than the 43 percent increase banks predicted in 2004, said a survey commissioned by Swiss cooperative KPMG International, AP wrote.
Among the six regions surveyed, North American banks saw the highest percentage cost increase, with costs rising 71 percent over the last three years. The Middle East and Africa region was close behind with a rise of 70 percent. Banks’ compliance costs rose 58 percent in Europe; 37 percent in Asia; 59 percent in Central and South America; and 60 percent in Russia.
Most of the money went toward buying technological systems and hiring experienced personnel to monitor transactions, said the KPMG report, which did not measure the dollar value of the costs.
“A lot of institutions were not automated to the degree regulators were expecting them to be,“ said Teresa Pesce, US partner at KPMG’s forensic practice.
North America respondents said they predict a cost increase of 28 percent in the next three years. Globally, costs are expected to increase 34 percent in the next three-year period.
Many governments require that banks take steps to prevent money laundering. Money laundering involves making certain financial transactions to hide the source, nature or destination of illegal funds.
According to KPMG’s survey, 93 percent of North American respondents said they had a formal system in place, meaning 7 percent of banks were not in compliance with the Act’s testing requirements.

LONDON, July 9--One of Britain’s biggest trade unions has voted to boycott Israeli products over the plight of Palestinians, a spokeswoman for the union told AFP on Sunday. The Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU), which has 800,000 members across the country, decided by a substantial majority at its delegates conference in Brighton, southern England, on Wednesday to boycott products from Israel.
“We send a message to the Israel state by our support for a boycott of Israeli products and goods,“ said Barry Camfield, the union’s assistant general secretary.
“This is not a call to boycott dialogue or for industrial action. As with South Africa, a boycott played a key part in liberating that country from apartheid. Now, we work to liberate the Palestinian people from their suffering at the hands of the Israeli state’s military machine.“
TGWU spokeswoman Claire Ainsley said that about three-quarters of the 350-odd delegates at the conference voted in favor of the motion.
The decision by the union to boycott Israeli products comes on the heels of a call from the University and College Union (UCU), Britain’s largest trade union for academics, to boycott Israeli universities in May. If adopted by the UCU’s full membership, the boycott initiative could see British academics no longer writing for journals published by Israeli universities and refusing travel to Israel for conferences.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, July 9--The Southern African Development Community is preparing an economic rescue package for Zimbabwe which would include extending the rand monetary area into the impoverished country, reports said Sunday. This is in an effort by the 14-nation regional bloc to stabilize the exchange rate of the Zimbabwe dollar and curb inflation, now estimated at a world record 5,000 percent, AFP quoted The Sunday Independent as reporting.
The SADC secretariat Tomaz Salamao was tasked at a summit in March to study ways and means through which the regional trading bloc could assist in the economic recovery of Zimbabwe.
According to the new plan, Zimbabwe would be included in the multilateral monetary area (MMA), which now includes neighboring South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, and Swaziland, making the rand a legal tender in Zimbabwe, the paper said quoting unidentified sources.
The neighboring countries would also pump millions into the Zimbabwe reserve bank, effectively propping up the Zimbabwe dollar which has become almost worthless, and put its exchange rate with foreign currencies at the same level as the rand.
The paper said Salamao visited Zimbabwe on Thursday last week to discuss his plans with the government after briefing SADC leaders at the African Union summit in Ghana. Mugabe would first have to agree to fundamental political reforms in the negotiations with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change due to start in Pretoria on Monday, if the plan is to go ahead, the paper added.
The new efforts come as Mugabe embarked on drastic forceful measures to try and control runaway inflation, warning that his government would seize and nationalize firms perceived to be profiteering excessively in a bid to incite Zimbabweans to revolt against the state.
Several price freezing violators were arrested over the weekend.
Zimbabwe is in the throes of an economic crisis characterized by four-digit inflation, shortages of basic foodstuffs like cooking oil and sugar, and massive unemployment.

BEIJING, July 9--Millions of men working on construction sites in China’s cities often are not paid on time, not legally employed and suffer other forms of exploitation, according to a survey published Monday. Some 53 percent of the 5,000 migrant construction workers polled by the China Academy of Social Sciences and Tsinghua University said they did not have a legally mandated labour contract, according to the state-run China Daily newspaper, AFP wrote.
Even among those that had signed labour contracts, as all are supposed to by law, 41 percent said they were not given copies of the document and 17 percent said they did not understand its content.
According to the survey, laborers worked an average of 10 hours a day, 27 days a month, but only 31 percent of the workers said that they were regularly paid on time.
Despite the law mandating that workers receive medical and retirement benefits, only 13 percent of the migrant workers said they had retirement insurance and 31 percent had medical coverage, the report said. Forty-four percent of the migrant workers also said they were “looked down on“ by urban residents, while only 3.7 percent of the laborers said they spent their leisure time off the work site, it added.
China is undergoing an unprecedented urbanization process with over 130 million rural farmers descending on cities looking for jobs. More than 40 million of those migrants work in the construction industry, the paper said. The survey’s results, if extrapolated, suggests millions are exploited.
The poll was taken in the cities of Tianjin, Shanghai, Lanzhou, Guangzhou and Chongqing. The survey was published after a slavery scandal surfaced last month, shocking the nation with accounts of children and men being forced to work in brickyards with no pay and under disgusting conditions.
Labor rights activists and international critics often accuse Chinese authorities and business chiefs of turning a blind eye to Labour exploitation in preference for quick profits.