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NEW YORK
Doubts about China’s breakneck plans to expand high-speed rail across the country have been underscored by a bullet train wreck that killed at least 36 people.
Railways Minister Sheng Guangzu has already apologized to the victims of Saturday’s crash, and their families. A train rammed into the back of another one that stalled after being hit by lightning in China’s deadliest rail accident since 2008. Six carriages derailed and four fell about 65 to 100 feet (20 to 30 meters) from a viaduct.
The Railway Ministry and government officials haven’t explained why the second train was not warned there was a stalled train in its path.
The accident is the latest blow to China’s bullet train ambitions. Designed to show off the country’s rising wealth and technological prowess, the national prestige attached to the high-speed rail project is on a par with China’s space program.
Beijing plans to expand the high-speed rail network _ already the world’s biggest _ to link far-flung regions and is also trying to sell its trains to Latin America and the Middle East.
Last month, it launched to great fanfare the Beijing to Shanghai high-speed line, whose trains can travel at a top speed of 186 miles (300 kilometers) per hour. The speed was cut from the originally planned 217 mph (350 kph) after questions were raised about safety.
In less than four weeks of operation, power outages and other malfunctions have plagued the showcase 820-mile (1,318-kilometer) line. The Railways Ministry previously apologized for the problems and said that summer thunderstorms and winds were the cause in some cases.
Official plans call for China’s bullet train network to expand to 8,000 miles (13,000 kilometers) of track this year and 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometers) by 2020.
China’s trains are based on Japanese, French and German technology, but the manufacturers are trying to sell to Latin America and the Middle East. That has prompted complaints that Beijing is violating the spirit of licenses with foreign providers by reselling technology that was meant to be used only in China.
Saturday’s accident involved the first-generation bullet trains, which were launched in 2007 and have a top speed of 155 miles (250 kilometers) per hour _ slower than the new Beijing to Shanghai trains.
The Ministry of Railways said in a statement on its website Monday that the accident had killed 36 people and injured 192 direct payday lenders.
The crash happened when a bullet train traveling south from the Zhejiang provincial capital of Hangzhou lost power in a lightning strike, stalled and was hit from behind by a second train in Wenzhou city.
Three top officials at the Shanghai Railway Bureau were sacked after the accident, and state-controlled media have raised questions, especially as rail travel moves hundreds of millions of people a year.
In an editorial entitled ‘Train crash lesson for railway progress,’ the Global Times said the accident should be “a bloody lesson for the entire railway industry in China.”
The newspaper said the collision casts doubt on China’s high-speed railway expansion plans because the country “lacks experience” as it seeks to join the top ranks of railway engineering.
It said China’s high-speed railway has become “the newest target of public criticism,” adding the accident should lead to “safer, not slower, railway transportation.”
China’s transportation authority ordered local departments at an emergency meeting Sunday to launch thorough safety overhauls to “resolutely curb” severe traffic accidents, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The order follows a number of recent accidents, including a fire on a long-distance bus on Friday that killed 41 people.
The China Daily said in an editorial that the rapid development of China’s high-speed network has eased travel for passengers, but safety worries could keep them off high-speed trains.
This is because “the higher the speed of the trains, the more sophisticated the technology will be and the greater the risk if there is a failure of any link in the safety chain,” it said.
The paper called for better training of railway employees and efforts to make sure the railways are not vulnerable to extreme weather conditions.
State broadcaster CCTV reported Monday that a 2-year-old girl pulled from one of the derailed carriages 21 hours after the crash had undergone a three-hour operation. It said she had suffered lung, kidney and leg injuries and is now in intensive care. Her parents died in the crash.
In April 2008,a regular-speed train traveling from Beijing to the eastern coastal city of Qingdao derailed and crashed into another train, killing 72 people and injuring 416.
LONDON—James Murdoch scaled the rungs of the global media empire that his father built. Now scandal taints the heir apparent, threatening to derail the expected succession and shaking the assumption that the Murdoch dynasty would preserve its tight grip over the multibillion-dollar business.
Founder Rupert Murdoch, 80, has long expressed a wish to hand his publicly traded News Corp. to his offspring, and he retains the voting power to make key decisions. But shareholders and board members are said to be troubled by revelations of wrongdoing on Murdoch’s watch, and feel the U.S.-based company needs fresh leadership.
Bloomberg News is reporting that two anonymous sources within News Corp. “have begun questioning the company’s response to the crisis and whether a leadership change is needed.”
Shares in News Corp. tumbled Monday to $14.98, down 13 per cent since July 4 — the day the Guardian newspaper reported that News of the World journalists had hacked into the voicemail belonging to murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.
A pivotal moment for the Murdoch family comes Tuesday when the media mogul and his son testify before British lawmakers investigating the hacking and alleged police bribery at a now-shuttered tabloid, News of the World.
“The future is looking increasingly grey” for James Murdoch, said Ivor Gaber, professor of political journalism at City University London. “There are now investors, particularly in the United States, who are suggesting that the time has come to end the Murdochs’ dynastic hold on News Corp.”
Some analysts believe Murdoch is positioning 42-year-old daughter Elisabeth as a successor in the event that 38-year-old James, chief executive of his father’s European and Asian operations, is forced to step aside or faces arrest.
“At the end of the day, that’s what made it a success. It’s ‘Brand Murdoch,’” said Richard Hillgrove, a London-based public relations consultant and former commentator for Murdoch-owned newspapers in New Zealand. “He’s going to do anything in his power to make sure it stays that way.”
Hillgrove described Elisabeth Murdoch, who is expected to join the board of News Corp. in October, as the “likely contender” for leadership of the company and noted that she appears “untainted and pretty clean” in comparison to the pressure bearing down on her brother, James.
There have been unconfirmed reports in the British media of family tension and dissatisfaction on the part of Elisabeth with how the company has been run; some observers speculate people close to the family have leaked information to elevate her stature.
However, a suit in the United States has questioned News Corp.’s move in February to buy Shine Group., the television production company founded in Britain by Elisabeth, in a $670 million deal viewed by some shareholders as overpriced and fueled by nepotism. And while the company is successful, Elisabeth lacks experience at the highest levels of international management.
Another Murdoch son, 39-year-old Lachlan, is on the board of News Corp., but he quit a high-level position in the company in 2005 and does not have a management role. He is saddled in part by the legacy of a failed investment in an Australian telecoms company a decade ago.
Chase Carey, the American deputy chairman and president of News Corp., could step in to head the group as an option from outside the family. He previously worked with Fox television, a company holding.
Murdoch crafted a behemoth over the decades, acquiring newspaper, television, publishing and entertainment interests in Asia, Europe, the United States and Latin America. New York-based News Corp., which employs more than 50,000 people, said it had total assets as of March of $60 billion, and total annual revenues of $33 billion, though the scandal has pushed down share prices.
In 2001, a former wife of Rupert Murdoch predicted that there would be heartache among her children — James, Lachlan and Elisabeth — when the time came to choose his successor. At the time, Anna Murdoch Mann told the Australian Women’s Weekly magazine that she would prefer that none of her children took the reins.
“I think they’re all so good that they could do whatever they wanted, really,” she said. “But I think there’s going to be a lot of heartbreak and hardship with this. There’s been such a lot of pressure that they needn’t have had at their age.”
The accusations of phone hacking and police bribery by journalists at the News of the World reached into the elder Murdoch’s inner circle with the arrest Sunday of Rebekah Brooks, former head of his British newspaper unit.
James Murdoch did not directly oversee News of the World, where the phone hacking of celebrities and others allegedly occurred, but he approved payments to some of the paper’s most prominent hacking victims, including 700,000 pounds ($1.1 million) to Professional Footballers’ Association chief Gordon Taylor.
He said he “did not have a complete picture” when he approved the payouts. Still, commentators view his position as fragile because of questions about whether the criminal investigation will go higher up the chain of command at News Corp. Additionally, the company could be liable under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars American companies from bribing foreign officials for business.
Journalists at the News of the World hacked the voice mail of mobile telephones in an attempt to get information for stories that would help sell newspapers, and allegedly paid police for information that could also be used in the production of news reports.
Louise Cooper, an analyst in the London office of the brokerage BGC Partners, described years of speculation about who would take control after Rupert Murdoch as a perpetual process of “one’s up, another one’s down” that focuses on the tycoon’s children. In the end, she said, it is the patriarch’s decision.
“He still has absolute control over that company,” Cooper said. She said that barring further revelations about the involvement of James Murdoch in the scandal, “it’s difficult to write him off completely.”
Rupert Murdoch controls News Corp. through a family trust that holds 40 per cent of the company’s Class B voting shares. The succession question has centred on James, Elisabeth and Lachlan, children by Murdoch’s second marriage to Anna Torv, later Anna Murdoch Mann after she remarried.
Elisabeth is married to prominent British public relations executive Matthew Freud. She resigned as managing director of British Sky Broadcasting, a lucrative satellite broadcaster in which News Corp. is the biggest shareholder, in 2000 to go her own way. This month, Murdoch dropped a bid to take full control of BSkyB in response to the uproar over phone hacking.
Lachlan Murdoch, once seen as the heir apparent, had been elevated to deputy chief operating officer of News Corp. by the time he quit in 2005 to go back to Australia.
That left James as the expected heir. He has been chairman and CEO of the company’s European and Asian operations since 2007, and later became deputy chief operating officer of News Corp.
Rupert Murdoch has another daughter, Prudence, from his first marriage to Patricia Booker; she is married to Alasdair MacLeod, who stepped down last year after 20 years as a News Corp. executive, most recently as managing director of the Australian newspapers.
Murdoch also has two daughters, 9-year-old Grace and 7-year-old Chloe, with his third wife, Wendi Deng. She was a junior News Corp. executive in Hong Kong before marrying Murdoch in 1999 at the age of 32. Her name has occasionally cropped up in succession speculation in the past.
Falling gas prices brought truck buyers back to General Motors showrooms last month. Still, pump prices remained high enough that shoppers snapped up smaller cars as well.
GM sales rose 10 percent in June from a year ago. The Detroit car company said it sold 215,000 cars and trucks last month, up from 194,828 a year ago. The result indicates the auto industry’s slow recovery from the recession is back on track after a brief slump in May.
GM said that cheaper gas lured more pickup truck buyers with Chevrolet Silverado sales rising 5 percent and GMC Sierra sales up 8 percent compared with a year earlier. Any jump in pickup sales helps GM and other Detroit automakers, which sell more than five times as many pickups as foreign-based brands.
Still, GM’s sales were led by smaller, more fuel-efficient models like the new Chevrolet Cruze compact. Gas prices averaged $3.68 per gallon in June. That’s cheaper than the average for May, but hardly cheap. Sales of the Cruze more than doubled the sales of the car it replaced, the lackluster Chevrolet Cobalt.
GM’s small-car and crossover sales also got a boost from earthquake-related shortages of Japanese models that persisted through June.
GM is the first major car company to report U.S. sales on Wednesday. Earlier, Volkswagen of America Inc. said its U.S. sales rose 35 percent in June on strong demand for its Jetta midsize sedan and other models. Industry analysts expect overall U.S. sales to rise 13.5 percent from last June.
Even with sales rebounding in June, GM backed off a bit from its sales forecast for the year payday loans online. Don Johnson, vice president of U.S. sales, said he now expects the total sales to be at the low end of the company’s previous prediction of 13 million to 13.5 million vehicles.
Johnson blamed the change on stubbornly high unemployment, which contributed to the decline in May. Total U.S. sales fell 3.7 percent in May after a string of double-digit monthly increases.
Johnson sees the slow recovery continuing through the rest of the year. He said that even with unemployment around 9 percent, 91 percent of the country is still working, and many are driving older cars.
“There are still people out there looking for a vehicle and in many cases need to replace their vehicles,” Johnson said.
The average car on the road now is 10.6 years old, according to the Polk research firm.
Automakers expect to sell around 1.1 million cars and trucks in June. That’s up 5 percent from May, when parts shortages caused by the March earthquake in Japan, $4-per-gallon gas and a lack of deals caused a slump.
But the pace of sales has slowed from the beginning of this year. Like GM, some analysts are starting to question the strength of the recovery. J.D. Power and Associates lowered its full-year sales forecast from 13 million vehicles to 12.9 million, saying the sluggish economy could take a bite out of sales even if car shortages ease by this fall.
A unique initiative to improve labour relations at auto parts giant Magna International is fizzling.
Aurora-based Magna and the Canadian Auto Workers say they continue talking about expanding the
Germany has reported another three deaths in its E. coli outbreak _ bringing the total to at least 47.
The Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s disease control center, said Monday that 46 deaths have now been reported in the country. One person has died in Sweden, and officials say one death in the U.S. may be linked to the outbreak.
The number of new infections has declined significantly over recent weeks but overall numbers are still rising _ due largely to delays in notification guaranteed payday loans.
The disease control center says 3,801 people have been reported sick in Germany. That includes 834 suffering from a complication that can lead to kidney failure.
A further 119 cases have been reported in 15 other countries.
The source has been traced to a sprout farm in northern Germany. It’s unclear how the sprouts were contaminated.
Kevin Garland still remembers the pessimistic prediction of a well-wisher when she took over as executive director of the National Ballet of Canada a decade ago.
OTTAWA—The Harper government will bring in back-to-work legislation Monday to end the postal strike and get mail moving again.
Declaring that the two sides have had “ample amount of time” to reach a settlement, Labour Minister Lisa Raitt said she would force an end to the Canada Post labour dispute if necessary.
The government was preparing to introduce the legislation Monday afternoon though it could take several days to become law.
The move sparked an angry reaction from New Democrats who accused the Conservatives of meddling in collective bargaining loan for people with bad credit.
It’s possible NDP MPs could delay a legislated end to the dispute.
Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae accused the Conservatives of doing little to safeguard defined benefit pensions, one of the issues at the heart of the Canada Post dispute.
Investors largely put aside their concerns about the Greek financial crisis Monday and focused instead on value. Stocks rose broadly after the market shook off its longest weekly losing streak in nearly a decade.
The downturn brought the S&P 500 close to its average level over the prior 200 days. So long as the index doesn’t sink far below that level, many technical traders see it as a sign to start buying stocks again. The S&P is now 6 percent below the 2011 high it reached on April 29.
“In the short term, stocks have been oversold, and you’re going to get some sort of bounce, whether justified or not, just for technical reasons,” said Paul Simon, chief investment officer for Tactical Allocation Group, which has $1.5 billion in assets under advisement.
The S&P 500 index rose 6.86 points, 0.5 percent, to close at 1,278.36. The Dow Jones industrial average added 76.02 points, or 0.6 percent, to 12,080.38. The Nasdaq composite gained 13.18, or 0.5 percent, to 2,629.66.
Health care companies like Aetna Inc. and Humana Inc. rose 1 percent, the largest gain among the 10 industry groups that make up the S&P 500 index. Financial companies like Morgan Stanley, which lost 1.9 percent, were the only group to lose ground.
The S&P 500 notched its third straight day of gains, the longest stretch of increases in the stock market for nearly a month. The index eked out a tiny gain last week, breaking a six-week losing streak driven by concerns that U.S. economic growth would falter in the second half of the year and that Greece’s debt crisis would spread. It was the S&P’s longest slide since 2002.
Signs that the European financial crisis may be contained helped ease investors’ concerns. European Union officials in Luxemburg said Monday that the EU would take steps to prevent Greece’s debt problems from affecting other struggling countries like Ireland and Portugal.
European leaders failed over the weekend to agree on releasing more financial aid to Greece, saying the country must first agree to more budget cuts. Greece’s recent efforts to slash spending have led to street protests and political turmoil in Athens. The Greek government faces a confidence vote on Tuesday.
Prime Minister George Papandreou’s newly-reshuffled government is expected to prevail in the vote, and officials say they expect Greece to get its next installment of emergency loans in July. If Greece were to default, it could trigger losses for the banks that hold Greek bonds and more turmoil in financial markets.
Some analysts say investors are ready to move beyond the Greek crisis and focus on corporate earnings and the U.S. economy.
“There’s a little fatigue about hearing about the same problems, and there’s no shock factor anymore,” said Oliver Pursche, president of Gary Goldberg Financial Services. Traders are now starting to look ahead to the Federal Reserve’s two-day policy meeting, which begins Tuesday, and the next round of corporate earnings reports that begin in July, he said.
Analysts expect that operating earnings per share for companies in the S&P 500 index rose 14 percent in the second quarter. They also expect the Fed to keep interest rates at nearly zero, a record low.
Among U.S. companies, PNC Financial Services Group Inc. fell 2 percent after saying it would buy the U.S. retail operations of Royal Bank of Canada for $3.45 billion. The deal will make PNC the fifth biggest U.S. bank with 2,870 branches.
Whole Foods Market Inc. gained 2.2 percent after a BMO Capital Markets analyst upgraded the stock following a recent sell-off. And Wal-Mart stores Inc. rose 0.4 percent after the Supreme Court blocked a sex discrimination lawsuit brought against the retailer by a large group of female employees.
Two stocks rose for every one that fell on the New York Stock Exchange. Consolidated volume came to 3.1 billion shares.
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