An elderly woman counts small yuan notes on a street in Xiangfan, ChinaÕs central province.

BEIJING, Aug. 8--The gap between rich and poor in China and other Asian countries is growing, hurting anti-poverty efforts and possibly fueling unrest, the Asian Development Bank said in a report Wednesday. China has had Asia’s second-biggest and second-fastest-growing wealth gap since the 1990s, exceeded only by war-wracked Nepal on both counts, the bank said in an annual survey, AP reported.
China has seen thousands of protests in recent years, some of them violent, over land seizures and other economic grievances blamed on the growing gap. The communist government has made improving incomes for the poor a priority, warning last year that inequality has reached “alarming and unacceptable“ levels.
“High inequality, particularly high absolute levels of inequality, leads to a disruption in social cohesion. You could have street demonstrations which could lead to violent civil wars,“ Ifzal Ali, the bank’s chief economist, said at a news conference.
Ali said it was inappropriate to speculate when asked whether China should expect worse unrest. But he cited the experience of Nepal, where he said a recently ended, decade-long civil war was most intense in areas with highest inequality.
Tensions over China’s growing gap between urban elite, who have profited most from two decades of economic reform, and the poor majority are a key political issue for communist leaders. They have promised to spread prosperity by spending more on social programs for the countryside and the urban poor.
Ali said China’s poorest people have benefited from its boom--which saw the economy expand by 11.9 percent last quarter--but incomes for the richest 20 percent have grown much faster.
Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh also saw rapid growth in the gap between rich and poor, the bank’s report said.
China’s Gini coefficient, a measurement of inequality in income distribution, was 47 in 2004, the most recent year for which figures were available, up from 40.7 in 1993, according to the bank. That brought China close to the levels of Africa and Latin America, which have the greatest inequality, Ali said.
The growing wealth gap is a byproduct of globalization, which has brought higher incomes to urban, skilled, English-speaking workers in China, India and other countries, the bank’s report said.

Carlos Slim Helu

NEW YORK, Aug. 8--Microsoft founder Bill Gates has lost his claim as the world’s richest person, ceding the title to Mexican telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim Helu, according to Fortune magazine.
By most calculations, Gates has been considered for at least the past decade to be the wealthiest person alive, but strong performance by Slim’s holdings on the Mexican stock exchange in recent months had pushed Gates into second place, AFP wrote.
“By our calculations, the 67-year-old Slim has amassed a $59 billion fortune, based on the value of his public holdings at the end of July,“ Fortune magazine reported in its latest edition, due to hit newsstands this week.
“This number puts him just ahead of perennial number one, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose net worth is estimated to be at least $58 billion.
Mexican financial website Sentido Comun reported last month that Slim had overtaken Gates, and put his personal fortune at almost $68 billion. “Gates is selling off his single greatest source of wealth, Microsoft stock, to fund his foundation, while Slim’s fortune is growing at a stunning clip. His net worth jumped $12 billion this year alone,“ Fortune said.
Slim’s family holdings represented more than five percent of Mexico’s gross domestic product last year and companies under his control make up one third of the Mexican stock market, according to Fortune.
The magazine labeled him a modern-day John D. Rockefeller, the US industrialist who amassed a huge personal fortune in the early 20th century.
Slim’s holdings include banking, automotive and especially telecoms interests. His Telefonos de Mexico controls 92 percent of Mexico’s phone lines.

ANKARA, Turkey,
Aug. 8--Turkey plans to invest more than $4 billion in South Russia’s Krasnodar Territory, where the 2014 Winter Olympic Games will be held, the head of the Turkish-Russian Business Council said Tuesday. Turut Gur said that by the end of the current year Turkish investment in the region will reach $1 billion, RIA Novosti reported.
In late 2006, the Krasnodar governor signed an agreement in Istanbul on a 770-million-euro ($1b) investment program comprising 330 projects.
A Krasnodar deputy governor said last month private investment in Sochi, a Russian resort city chosen to host the 2014 Winter Olympics, could exceed $20 billion.
“There are plans to establish over 3,000 investment sites, and European investors have already started showing great interest,“ Yevgeny Muravyev said. “Substantial investment will go into construction, with plans to build four cement plants to guarantee that cement demand in the region is met.“
Maxim Perov, a senior official at the Russian Regional Development Ministry, said private investors would be more likely to invest in tourism, services, and infrastructure, ranging from restaurants and thoroughfares to telecommunications and transport.
Perov said even if the sea and mountain resort had lost the Olympic bid, it would have attracted investment anyway. “The International Olympic Committee’s decision [in favor of Sochi] has acted as a catalyst, an incentive to develop the entire region,“ the official said.
Officials are currently considering establishing an interdepartmental agency to handle arrangements for the 2014 Winter Olympics. An International Olympic Committee coordination commission will visit Russia August 27-28 to discuss a general plan for the preparation of the 2014 Winter Olympics.

NEW DELHI, India, Aug. 8--India has placed curbs on overseas borrowing to cut massive foreign currency flows into the economy that led the rupee to strengthen sharply against the dollar this year, a statement said Wednesday. The country’s finance ministry said Indian companies that borrow more than $20 million from overseas must now seek central bank approval for the loan as well as permission to bring the money home, AFP wrote.
“Henceforth external commercial borrowing (of) more than $20 million per borrowing company would be permitted only for foreign currency expenditure for permissible end-uses,“ the statement said. “Such funds would be continued to be parked overseas until actual requirement.“
The move was expected to sharply curtail a splurge by Indian companies seeking credit from abroad which comes at rates of interest as much as 4 percentage points below rupee loans.
In the financial year ended March overseas borrowing by Indian firms rose more than 700 percent to $24 billion.
At the same time, Indian firms have bought dozens of companies abroad in deals that totaled $26 billion including Tata Steel’s buyout of Britain’s Corus at more than $12 billion.
The borrowing has combined with billions of dollars invested in India’s stock market since the start of the year that led the rupee to rise to a near decade high of 40.28 against the dollar by July end.
India already has curbs on overseas borrowings and strict rules on share swaps that make it necessary for many companies seeking to buy assets abroad to pay cash raised both locally and abroad.
An Indian company is allowed to borrow a maximum $500 million from abroad in a financial year, according to current rules.

NEW YORK, Aug. 8--US consumers are increasingly shifting their attention from traditional, advertising-supported media to entertainment such as the Internet, video games and cable TV, which consumers pay for, a new report says. As a result, the boom in online advertising is expected to continue, with all Internet advertising spending--including ads on Web sites of traditional media outlets--overtaking print newspaper advertising in 2010 as the largest advertising category, according to a report released Tuesday by media investment firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson, AP wrote.
From 2001 to 2006, the average amount of time spent by the typical consumer on paid media has jumped 19.8 percent. Over the same period, overall time spent with traditional or ad-supported media --such as broadcast television, radio and newspapers--declined 6.3 percent, the study found.
The study expects total Internet advertising to grow an average of 21 percent through 2011, including online-only outlets such as Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. as well as digital revenues from traditional media outlets such as newspaper publishers and TV broadcasters.
In 2010, that would put overall online ad spending at $54 billion (-39.1 billion), overtaking print-only newspaper advertising as the largest advertising category, which is expected to stand at $51.5 billion (-37.3 billion) that year.
At the same time, the study also predicted rapid growth in the amount of digital advertising that newspapers would take in, jumping from $3.2 billion (-2.3 billion) last year to $7.7 billion (-5.5 billion) in 2010.
As of 2006, ad-supported media still had a 53.8 percent share of the total amount of time people spent with media, versus 46.2 percent on for-pay media, which include the Internet, cable and satellite TV, movies seen in theaters, books and recorded music.
At the same time, the study found that the total amount of time spent on all types of media actually declined slightly last year for the first time since 1997, dipping 0.5 percent to an annual total of 3,530 hours.
Leo Kivijarv, vice president of research at PQ Media, a media research consulting firm that worked on the report, said the slight decline came after several years of growth amid rapid adoption of new kinds of hardware and services such as high-speed Internet connections, satellite TV and digital video recorders.

SINGAPORE, Aug. 8--Research aimed at disputing the scientific consensus on global warming is part of a huge public misinformation campaign funded by some of the largest carbon polluters in the world, former US Vice President Al Gore said Tuesday. “There has been an organized campaign, financed to the tune of about US$10 million (euro7.2 million) a year from some of the largest carbon polluters, to create the impression that there is disagreement in the scientific community,“ Gore said at a forum in Singapore. “In actuality, there is very little disagreement.“
Gore likened the campaign to that of the millions of dollars spent by US tobacco companies years ago on creating the appearance of uncertainty and debate within the scientific community on the harmful effects of smoking cigarettes, AP wrote.
“This is one of the strongest of scientific consensus views in the history of science,“ Gore said. “We live in a world where what used to be called propaganda now has a major role to play in shaping public opinion.“
After the release of a February report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of the world’s top climate scientists, that warned that the cause of global warming is “very likely“ man-made, “the deniers offered a bounty of US$10,000 (euro7,250) for each article disputing the consensus that people could crank out and get published somewhere,“ Gore said. “They’re trying to manipulate opinion and they are taking us for fools,“ he said. He said Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, is one of the major fuel companies involved in attempting to mislead the public about global warming. Last year, British and American science advocacy groups accused ExxonMobil of funding groups that undermine the scientific consensus on climate change.
He urged businesses to recognize that reducing carbon emissions is in their long-term interest. While Washington should lead by example, developing nations also have to play a part. “Countries like China, just to give an example, which will next year be the largest emitter in the world, can’t be excluded just because it’s technically a developing country,“ Gore said.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Aug. 8--The creation of a pan-African women’s bank could help reduce poverty in Africa by empowering women, the organizers of a women’s conference to be held in Johannesburg later this year said Tuesday. “You cannot fight poverty if you are not ready to save money. Our goal is the creation of a pan-African bank for women before 2010,“ said Eno Ben-Udensi, director of Nigeria’s ’Glorious Women’ organization that initiated the project. “Poverty is the cause of violence, crime, unemployment, divorce, prostitution. That’s why we are focusing on this issue.“
The second Pan-African Women Conference will see women involved in politics, economics, religion and education debating ways to free women and their families from the shackles of poverty through economic empowerment, AFP said.
“One of the issues that came out at last year’s conference was the need to start saving schemes as women in Africa. We know that we cannot eradicate poverty with credit,“ said Sindy Dastile, managing director of South African cooperative Masimbonge, which finances micro-businesses run by women.
The conference, to be held from October 15-17, will bring together some 3,000 delegates from 53 countries.
Ben-Udensi said women’s affairs ministers from Angola, Somalia, Rwanda, Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo would attend the conference, as well as Kenyan women’s activist and 2005 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai.

PARIS, Aug. 8--The IMF should use the election of a new leader as an opportunity to debate steps to make the institution more responsive to emerging market and developing countries, the French foreign ministry said Tuesday. “Boosting the role of emerging market and developing countries in the governance of the International Monetary Fund requires more than simply reforming the quota system,“ spokesman Hugues Moret told a press briefing, AFP reported.
He was referring to the mechanism by which an IMF member’s financial contribution and voting power are determined.
“It also concerns such factors as diversity of personnel, the method by which consensus decisions are taken and a climate of confidence with member states.“
The naming of a new IMF managing director “will be an opportunity to open a debate on such matters,“ Moret said.
France, backed by the European Union, has put forward former French finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn as a candidate to become the IMF’s next managing director. He would replace Rodrigo de Rato, who is to step down in October.
Strauss-Kahn as a candidate has already visited several African countries and Brazil and is expected in Russia on Thursday. He is over the next several weeks to visit China, India, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the ministry said.
South African President Thabo Mbeki said in late July after conferring with Strauss-Kahn that the former French minister would make the IMF “more representative of emerging countries.“
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said he was satisfied with reforms proposed by Strauss-Kahn.