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saikang

Google now most valuable media company
Tue Jun 7, 2005 5:34 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - 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.

Googles 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.

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 Warners 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 Googles 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.

This all comes just 10 months after Google debuted in an initial public offering last August, priced at $85 a share. And it has led to some concerns that the company may be overvalued, a throwback to the hype of the dot.com era.

Googles sales last year, for instance, totaled just $3.2 billion while Time Warners stood at $42 billion. And Mountain View, California-based Google is trading at a sharply higher multiple than any other media company except Yahoo.

Google shares now trade at 50 times the average estimate of analysts surveyed by Reuters Estimate of earnings in 2005. Compare that with Time Warner, which trades at 22 times earnings, Disney, which trades at 21 times earnings, or Viacom, which trades at 19 times earnings.

Even so, not one of the 30 analysts polled by Reuters Estimates lists Google as a sell.

surpass 超越
debut 初次出現
market capitalization 市值
initial public offering 上市
deteriorate 轉壞
hyped 廣泛流傳
poll 點票

[ Last edited by saikang on 2005-7-18 at 06:03 PM ]

saikang

Second defector backs spy claims

Tuesday, June 7, 2005 Posted: 9:15 PM EDT (0115 GMT)

SYDNEY, Australia (CNN) -- A second Chinese defector has reinforced claims by fugitive diplomat Chen Yonglin that China is running a network of spies and paid informers in Australia.

The new claims were broadcast on Australian television on Tuesday night by a man who identified himself as Hao Fengjun. He said he was once part of Chinas internal security apparatus.

Chen, consul for political affairs at the consulate-general in Sydney, has been on the run since he left his post on May 26 and sought political asylum from the Australian government for himself, his wife Jin Ping and their six-year-old daughter Chen Fangrong.

Chen, 37, claims China has a network of 1,000 spies and informers in Australia and has kidnapped dissidents.

China has dismissed Chens claims as fabrications and says Chen just wants to stay in Australia.

But in an interview with Australian Broadcasting Corp. television on Tuesday night, the man who identified himself as Hao Fengjun said he believed Chens claim because of his own experience.

Speaking through an interpreter and with his fxx shadowed, Hao said he worked in the police office of the Security Bureau in China, but had applied for political asylum when he came to Australia as a tourist in February. He is on a bridging visa while he awaits the outcome of his application.

Hao said China sent out businessmen and students to overseas countries as spies, and also had spies under diplomatic cover in its missions abroad.

"They also infiltrate the Falun Gong and other dissident groups," he told the ABCs Lateline program.

A Chinese democracy organizer in Sydney says Chen is still in fear of his life, despite reassurances by Chinas ambassador in Australia.

Chin Jin, head of the Federation for a Democratic China in Australia, told CNN on Tuesday that Chen feared he fxxd execution.

defector 變節者
reinforce再強調
fugitive 逃亡
indentify表示身份
consul 外交會面
dissident 異見人士
political asylum 政治庇護
apparatus 器具
diplomatic  外交的
reassurance 再肯定
execution 處死

saikang

BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- A mountain flood that swept through a primary school in northwest China may have killed as many as 200 people, mostly children, state media said on Monday, quoting local villagers.

Most of more than 90 refrigerators at the local funeral home each contained the bodies of two children, villager Liu Zixia, whose daughter drowned, told the Shanghai Morning Post.

The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post quoted similar estimates by parents who went to the funeral home to identify their children.

The official death toll stood at 92, including 88 children, and 17 people were missing, Xinhua news agency said.

One distraught father told the China Daily he found the body of his son lying across a desk after Fridays flood at the school in Ningan, Heilongjiang province.

"The desks surface was only a little higher than the water level... His nose, ears and mouth were filled with garbage, and when I touched him, I found he was dead," he was quoted as saying.

Villagers staged sit-ins over the weekend and blocked major roads leading to Ningan to protest the inefficiency of the rescue operation and demand a full investigation, the South China Morning Post said.

It said many villagers had already found their childrens bodies by the time the rescue teams had arrived.

China suffers widespread flooding and drought each year, causing huge loss of life. Recent heavy rains and floods left more than 200 people dead in southern China.

funeral home 儐儀館
swept through 橫掃
state media 國營傳媒
garbage 垃圾
inefficiency 沒有效率
distraught 憤怒
agency 人員
quoted 被引述
garbage
rescue 迎救
investigate  調查
widespread  廣泛

saikang

BEIJING (Reuters) - China will soon announce a new system controlling the amount of clothing individual Chinese companies can sell to European markets, the Asian Wall Street Journal said on Wednesday.

The quota-allocation system, linked to a recent Sino-European agreement that limits the growth of certain Chinese clothing exports, is "a sign that the government is resigned to more restrictive access to overseas markets for several more years," the newspaper said on its Web site (www.wsj.com).

China and the European Union reached an 11th hour deal last week to limit growth in Chinese textile and clothing exports to Europe, averting the imposition of quotas that could have soured ties.

Europe and the United States have experienced an explosion of cheap Chinese chipments, unleashed by the abolition of global textile quotas at the end of 2004.

Washington has already slapped temporary restrictions on seven types of Chinese garment and textile products, provoking an angry response form Beijing.

The Wall Street Journal quoted people familiar with the matter as saying the new quota-allotment system also could be adapted for exports to the United States, "though this could depend on whether authorities reach a similar agreement in coming Sino-U.S. negotiations."


announce 宣佈
quota-allocation 配額分配
resign 放棄
avert 避免
imposition 施加
explosion 擴張
unleashed 放寬
abolition 棄用
restrictive 限制性
temporary 暫時
provoke 激發
response 反應
familiar with 熟識
authorities 官方
negotiation 談判

saikang

China farmers rally over Olympics land dispute

By Lindsay Beck

Thu Jun 16, 2005 05:33 AM ET

BEIJING (Reuters) - Hundreds of Chinese farmers protested in a Beijing suburb on Thursday after being forced from their property to make way for an Olympic stadium, the latest in a wave of land disputes in China.

Makeshift signs reading "Support the Olympics, resettle the farmers who have lost their land!" were strung up alongside a wide green-and-white banner proclaiming the site for the stadium and watersports complex for the 2008 Beijing Games.

Beyond it lay green fields the farmers of Maxingzhuang village say was their land before it was appropriated without compensation or resettlement being offered.

"Why are these people all waiting here?" said 36-year-old Ma Aihua, gesturing at the hundreds of farmers camped out on the road. "We are waiting for the government to respond."

Chinas Communist leadership frowns on displays of dissent, but popular protests against land seizures are becoming increasingly common as the countrys breakneck development encroaches further into the countryside.

On Saturday, six villagers were killed and 28 injured when hired thugs attacked farmers fighting to keep their land in northern Hebei province, domestic media reported.

The skirmish was caught on video, footage from which shows men armed with pipes and shovels pummelling farmers as what sound like gunshots go off in the background.

protest 抗議
suburb 市郊
Olympic stadium 奧運體育館
dispute 爭議
resettle 轉移居所
proclaiming 聲明
complex 大型建設
appropriate 沒收
compensation 賠償
gesture 做手勢
leadership 領導
frown 煩惱
popular 流行
seizure 搶走
breakneck 危險
encroach 慢慢侵入
countryside 郊外
injure 受傷
thug 殺手
domestic 本地
skirmish 爭執
caught on video 被錄影
shovel 剷
pummel  擊打
gunshot 鎗擊
background 背景

saikang

China Aids activists harassed

By Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
BBC News, Beijing  15 June, 2005

The report, by Human Rights Watch, says people working with Aids patients face intimidation and even imprisonment.

The report comes days after China published a new law to protect people with Aids from discrimination.

Chinas communist government may be changing its attitude to those with Aids, but it appears it is still deeply hostile to those trying to help.

According to Human Rights Watch, Aids activists working in badly hit areas of central China are regularly intimidated and have even been beaten up by thugs hired by the local government.
The report says local governments in central China fear publicity about their Aids problem will ruin the investment environment.

It also accuses the Chinese government of continuing to censor information that could help prevent high risk groups from catching the HIV virus.

It says websites that try to promote safe sex and educate intravenous drug users are regularly shut down.

China is thought to have about one million people with HIV.

The largest concentration is in the centre of the country, where tens of thousands of poor farmers contracted HIV through government-run blood buying schemes in the 1990s.

The United Nations says that without immediate action to educate the public, China could have 10 million people with HIV by the end of the decade.

harassed 被騷擾
intimidation 恐嚇
imprisonment 入獄
publish 刊登
discrimination 歧視
communist 社會主義
attitude 態度
hostile 極不友善
According to 根據
activists 活躍人士
regularly 經常
publicity 公開
censor 監察
promote 推廣
intravenous 血管注射
drug 毒品
concentration 集中
contracted 感染
schemes 規劃
immediate 立即
decade 十年

saikang

World Bank lends China $87 mln for renewable energy
Fri Jun 17, 2005 03:57 PM ET


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The World Bank said on Friday it would lend China $87 million to help expand the supply of renewable electricity in Asias economic powerhouse and giant energy consumer.

"Chinas abundant  undeveloped resources of small hydropower , wind, biomass, geothermal and solar energy... could help the country reduce  some of the environmental damage from its overwhelming dependence  on coal for large-scale , grid-based power generation ," the global  lender said.

The World Bank said the funds would support Beijings efforts to create a more competitive power market, to give producers access to better technology and to scale-up the capacity  of existing  renewal energy projects.

Goals of the project include boosting  Chinas production of renewable electricity and reducing carbon and other particulate emissions , the Washington-based development institution said.

The World bank fundswill be supplemented by a $40 million grant from the Global Environment Facility , a group that funds environmental projects in the developing world.

renewable energy 再生性能源
expand 擴大
powerhouse動力來源
consumer 消費者
abundant 大量
hydropower 水力發電
biomass 生物廢料
geothermal and solar energy 地熱性和太陽能能源
reduce 減少
environmental damage 環境破壞
overwhelming 過份
dependence 依靠
large-scale 大規模
grid-based 發電網基礎
power generation 發電
global 全球性
technology 科技
scale-up 擴大規模
capacity 能力
existing 現存
boosting 加強
carbon 炭
particulate 粒子
emissions 排放
development 發展
institution 機構
funds 基金
supplemented 補充
grant 經費
Facility 設備

saikang

BEIJING (Reuters) - The World Health Organization is seeking clarification from China about reports it urged farmers to use a human anti-viral drug to treat birds infected with a deadly strain of avian flu, breaking international guidelines.

Scientists fear the bird flu, which is infectious in birds but does not spread easily among humans, could mutate into a form capable of generating a pandemic in which millions of people without immunity could die.

The Washington Post reported on Saturday that Chinese farmers, acting with government encouragement, had tried to suppress major bird flu outbreaks among chickens with amantadine, possibly making it useless in fighting human influenza.

"We would certainly be seeking more information on this topic and would hope to have more clarification from China on this issue," said Roy Wadia, a spokesman for WHO in China.

"The use of drugs, not just in China but also around the world, should be carefully monitored and we have seen over the years that improper administration of medication or drugs can lead to drug resistance in the case of other diseases."

He declined to comment further.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization also declined to comment.

Researchers had determined that the H5N1 bird flu strain in Vietnam and Thailand had become resistant to amantadine, the Post said, adding they suspected it had been due to the drugs use on farms.

The Post, quoting international researchers, said the drug would no longer protect people in case of a worldwide avian flu epidemic.

The WHO has said the virus that first surfaced in poultry in Hong Kong and China eight years ago is "unstable, unpredictable and very versatile."

clarification 解釋清楚
urge 鼓勵, 建議
human anti-viral drug 人類抗病毒藥物
infect 傳染
deadly strain 致命品種
avian flu 禽流
guidelines 指引
mutate 特變
generate 產生
pandemic  大規模瘟疫
immunity 免疫
encouragement 鼓勵
suppress 壓抑
outbreak 爆發
amantadine 抗病毒藥物
possibly 可能
human influenza 人類流感
improper adminstration 不善管理
certainly 肯定
spokesman 發言人
monitor 監控
medication 醫藥
drug resistance 抗藥性
declined to comment 不以置評
suspect 懷疑
epidemic 疫症
surfaced 出現
poultry 家禽
unstable 不穩定
unpredictable 不能預計
versatile 多變的

saikang

HONGKONG/BEIJING (Reuters) - Industrial and Commercial Bank of Chinas sale of 450 billion yuan ($54 billion) in bad loans has been delayed, industry officials said on Tuesday, casting a shadow on the banks pre-IPO restructuring.

The auction of the bad loans to the countrys debt-clearing firms, which was initially planned for Sunday, is seen as a crucial step to help ICBC, Chinas top lender, to set up a joint-stock bank to pave the way for an initial public offering.

The South China Morning Post reported that the central bank, which has been coordinating the auction, told participants of the delay on Friday without giving a reason, but the paper quoted sources as saying that some asset managers had asked for more time to conduct due diligence.

The last-minute delay might hinder ICBC from meeting its deadline at the end of the month for the sale of the problem loans, which would help cut its bad loan ratio would to 2 to 3 percent from 16 percent, the paper said.

"The auction has been delayed, but we will definitely buy the assets when it takes place in the future," said an official at Great Wall Asset Mangement Corp., one of the debt-clearing firms.

A spokesman at ICBC said he was "alarmed" by the delay of the auction of the doubtful loans, but declined to comment further.

Some managers had argued that some of the assets should have been classified as a total loss and moved to debt-clearing firm China Huarong Asset Management along with 246 billion yuan of similar assets last month, the Hong Kong paper said.

The semi-official International Finance News said the auction would take place later this month before amending auction rules and sorting out disagreements between ICBC and the debt-clearing firms on how to classify the bad loans to be put on sale.

A spokesman at the central bank declined to comment.

State media have reported that ICBC had total non-performing loans of about 700 billion yuan in early 2005.


billion 十億
official 負責人員
casting a shadow 留下陰影
restructure 重組
auction 拍賣
initially planned 原本計劃
crucial 重要
joint-stock bank 發股銀行
initial public offering 上市
central bank 中央銀行
coordinate 協辦
partcipant 參與
conduct 作出
diligence 最後努力
delay 延遲
hinder 妨礙
deadline 限期
problem loans 問題貸款
definitely 肯定
assets 資產
takes place 發生
doubtful loan 可疑貸款
classified 分類
semi-official 半官方
amend 改變
sorting out 找出
non-performing loan 壞帳

saikang

Tuesday, June 21, 2005
20,000 HK credit card accounts put at risk

scmp

DENISE TSANG

Nearly 20,000 Hong Kong credit card accounts are at risk
following the worlds largest theft of electronic payment
data, card companies said yesterday.


Eight banks in Hong Kong have confirmed that some of their
customers had accounts that have been compromised.


But they say exposure is limited and risks low.


MasterCard and Visa said on Friday they had fallen victim
to a hacking operation that exposed 40 million credit card
accounts worldwide to the risk of fraud.


The hackers stole 200,000 cardholders names, account
numbers, expiration dates and security codes from servers
at Atlanta-based CardSystems Solutions, which processes
retail credit transactions for Visa, MasterCard and other
credit cards. The theft was made public on Friday.


In Hong Kong, Standard Chartered Bank, Citibank, HSBC,
Hang Seng Bank, Bank of East Asia, Bank of China, DBS Bank
and Liu Chong Hing Bank have all confirmed that at least
some of their customers card accounts were among those at
risk.


All claimed the exposure was limited and the risks low.
Under Hong Kong law and the customer contracts of the
credit card firms, individual users are automatically
protected against fraud, leaving issuing banks to bear the
liabilities. MasterCard said yesterday the number of Hong
Kong customer accounts at risk stood at 9,730, or a tiny
percentage of the total of 13.9 million affected
worldwide.

credit card 信用卡
theft 盜取
electronic 電子
payment 付款
compromised 調解協議
exposure 暴露(於風險中)
limit 限制
victim 受害者
hacking operation 駭客行動
worldwide 全球
fraud 騙
hacker 駭客
cardholder 卡持有人
expiration date 到期日
server 侍服器
security code 安全密碼
process 處理
transaction 交易
made public 被公開
claim 提出
contract 合約
automatically 自動地
protect 保護
issue 發出
liability 責任
percentage 百份率