Jason Welker

• Swiss investments stagnated in the second quarter as a 1.0 per cent increase in construction made up for a 0.9 per cent decline for equipment in the machinery and aircraft industries.

• nflux of juice brands which apart from being economical are fortified with vitamins and minerals, are low in calories compared to soft drinks

• esearch firm Ovum,
• "Tapping into the creativity of app developers,
• forming industry-wide collaborations,

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• ew orders are falling,
• New orders are falling, but wages are rising. Many firms are doing even worse and some have gone bankrupt,
• creative destruction.
• a consumer-driven economy.
• Lewis turning point,

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• Oil prices fluctuated
• Insufficient pipeline capacity
• 150,000 barrels a day.
• down 2.3 per cent to $118.50
• $103.37 US.

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• Disney's China division and Marvel Studios, which created the "Iron Man" film series and was acquired by Disney in 2009, will work with DMG to film "Iron Man 3" in China for release in May 2013, the two companies said.
• Disney Chief Executive Robert Iger has expressed big ambitions for China in film, television and retail. The Burbank, Calif., company last week announced plans to form an animation incubator in China with Internet company Tencent Holdings Ltd.    and the Ministry of Culture's China Animation Group.

• straining to ramp up production to meet soaring demand
• But for every plane they delivered, they won more than two fresh orders
• At Boeing’s Renton factory near Seattle the existing version of the 737 is now being turned out at a record rate of 35 a month,
• after a recent speeding-up of the two assembly lines
• The plan is to increase the production rate further, to 42 a month by 2014.

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• several recent, highly publicized measures by the central government to improve the lot of peasants had produced only a modest effect on their lives.
• an abolition of agricultural taxes for peasants, the cancellation of school tuition fees for their children and new pension and health care plans
• Since most peasants here have only a glancing contact with the cash economy, the tax exemption is largely irrelevant.
• they were still squeezed by a proliferation of other school fees.
• participation fees and deductibles placed the pension and rural health insurance plans out of their financial reach.
• the central government is out of touch with rural realitie
• local government is filled with venal officials who shower spending intended for the rural poor on provincial towns and cities
• provincial results had much more to do with the success of local officials in creating an attractive investment climate
• "Very often poverty is related to a health shock or an injury, or the lack of an able-bodied person,"
• if there are few able-bodied people, you have to work on safety net issues."
• ven families with members who migrated east for work remained stuck in poverty,

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• instead of buying modern medicines.
• barter economy, seldom coming into contact with cash.
• people are too poor to heat their homes in the winter and many lack basic comforts like running water.
• Mobile phones
• are seen as an impossible luxury
• there are still 300 million poor in China
• Poverty is most severe in China's geographic and social margins, whether the mountainous areas or deserts
• or areas dominated by ethnic minorities
• where population densities are among the greatest in China
• the land there just cannot support those kinds of numbers,
• there has always been major discrimination against grain-based areas in China
• The profit you can get from a hectare of land from vegetables, or a fish farm or oils, is so much more
• money intended for them is appropriated by corrupt local officials
• forced to fend for themselves on the theory that they can make do with income sent home by migrant laborers
• the situation in the border regions is more complicated, because if things go wrong there, it becomes more than a poverty problem.
• the official poverty level of $94 a year,
• Last month, the World Bank's estimate of the number of poor people in China was tripled to 300 million from 100 million, after a new survey of prices altered the picture of what a dollar could buy.

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