US pork giant Smithfield now officially owned by a Chinese meat processor

Smithfield Foods shareholders overwhelmingly approved on Tuesday the $4.7 billion purchase of the pork giant by a Chinese meat processor, clearing the last remaining major hurdle to close the deal.

More than 96% of the votes, representing 76% of shares outstanding, were cast in favor of the purchase by Shuanghui International. Smithfield announced in May it would be acquired by Shuanghui for $34 a share, the largest takeover of a U.S. company by a Chinese firm.

Washington lawmakers have expressed concerns that the purchase of Smithfield by a Chinese company could squeeze U.S. pork supply as more of the meat goes overseas while leaving the U.S. susceptible to food safety concerns that have plagued Chinese companies, including Shuanghui. They also have worried that the acquisition would lead to additional takeovers of U.S. food companies by Chinese firms. Read more >>

Global population of billionaires surge

Billionaire Chauffeur (Photo credit: Tc Morgan)

Jon Oringer
Being a billionaire isn't so special anymore. A new study from Wealth-X and UBS finds that the global population of billionaires has surged past 2,000. Their combined wealth totals $6.5 trillion-more than the combined gross domestic product of France and Germany.

Previous estimates placed the world's billionaire population at between 1,200 and 1,600.

The World Ultra Wealth Report found that just under 200,000 people in the world are worth $30 million or more. The $30 million-plus group, labeled the "ultra-wealthy," grew by 6 percent in 2013 and have a combined fortune of $28 trillion.

Surprisingly, most of the growth in the number of ultrawealthy was in the U.S. and Europe rather than in emerging markets. Luxury brands have been calling China, Brazil, Russia and other emerging countries the future of wealth. But economic slowdowns in China and Brazil led to a drop in their number of billionaires this year. Read more >>

China Officially Backs Russia On Syria

Until now China had kept a relatively low profile on the Syria issue, occasionally issuing veiled support for the Assad regime. That changed at today's G-20 meeting in Russia, when China's vice-finance minister Zhu Guangyao officially launched the Syrian axis of Russia and China, both of which now indirectly support the Assad regime, and oppose US-led military intervention.

From the FT: "China warned on Thursday that military intervention in Syria would hurt the world economy and push up oil prices, reinforcing Vladimir Putin’s attempts to talk US President Barack Obama out of air strikes. “Military action would have a negative impact on the global economy, especially on the oil price – it will cause a hike in the oil price,” Chinese vice-finance minister Zhu Guangyao told a briefing before the start of the G20 leaders’ talks." Read more >>

Russia Sends Missile Cruiser "Moskva", Destroyer And Frigate To Syria

"Moskva" Wikipedia)

It was just yesterday, when we reported on the build up of Russian naval forces in the Meditteranean, in this case two new marine-carrying amphibious assault ships, that we made a simple forecast: "Our prediction: the next ship to be dispatched in direction Syria will be the missile cruiser Moskva, the "flag ship of the Black Sea fleet" and more of its affiliated warships... That, and a whole lot of submarines." We were right.

RUSSIA SENDS MISSILE CRUISER MOSKVA TO EAST MEDITERRANEAN: IFX
RUSSIA SENDS DESTROYER, FRIGATE TO EAST MEDITERRANEAN: IFX
RUSSIA HAS WARSHIPS, SPY VESSELS MONITORING MEDITERRANEAN: IFX
RUSSIA PREPARED TO ADJUST SIZE OF MEDITERRANEAN BUILDUP: IFX

The deployment is, more than anything, symbolic. It means Russia will no longer take US military build up  in the region on the sidelines. Because while the Mediterranean build up is inevitable (and can be tracked here), the next step will be the arrival of Russian air and land-based support in Syria. Oh, and China. Let's not forget China. Read more >>

Russia and China step up warning over Syria strike

Russia and China have stepped up their warnings against military intervention in Syria, with Moscow saying any such action would have "catastrophic consequences" for the region.

The US and its allies are considering launching strikes on Syria in response to deadly attacks last week. The US said there was "undeniable" proof of a chemical attack, on Monday.

UN chemical weapons inspectors are due to start a second day of investigations in the suburbs of Damascus. The UN team came under sniper fire as they tried to visit an area west of the city on Monday.

A spokesman for UK Prime Minister David Cameron says the UK is making contingency plans for military action in Syria. Mr Cameron has cut short his holiday and returned to London to deal with the Syrian crisis.

Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich has called on the international community to show "prudence" over the crisis and observe international law.

"Attempts to bypass the Security Council, once again to create artificial groundless excuses for a military intervention in the region are fraught with new suffering in Syria and catastrophic consequences for other countries of the Middle East and North Africa," he said in a statement. Read more >>

China's Internet hit by biggest cyberattack in its history

Internet users in China were met with sluggish response times early Sunday as the country's domain extension came under a "denial of service" attack.

The attack was the largest of its kind ever in China, according to the China Internet Network Information Center, a state agency that manages the .cn country domain.

The double-barreled attacks took place at around 2 a.m. Sunday, and then again at 4 a.m. The second attack was "long-lasting and large-scale," according to state media, which said that service was slowly being restored.

Official state media said the attack targeted websites with the .cn country domain, as well as the popular microblogging site Sina Weibo.

Denial of service attacks aren't technically "hacks," since they can be done without breaking into any systems. Typically, DoS attacks overwhelm a website's servers by flooding them with requests. That makes websites unreachable or unresponsive.

To bring down bigger sites, attackers will sometimes organize large numbers of infected computers to send requests all at once. Read more >>

Gold Surges To Its Best Day In 13 Months

With gold now up an impressive 13.1% from its post-Bernanke lows 3 weeks ago (notably more than the +8.8% in US equities), it appears the physical demand is quietly catching up to the paper supply. As we noted here, shorts covered around 11% of their positions in the last week and we suspect today's surge is yet more covering as the massively over-crowded paper-short gold position starts to unwind.

Of course, this surge is disappointing to many (including China we suspect) as the 'transitory' end of the price beatdown means we can buy less physical (and take immediate possession) now than at the June lows of $1180. With gold testing its 50DMA for the first time since February, we suspect the momo crowd will be quick to jump ship should we push on through. Read more >>

Russia holds biggest war games in decades

President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday watched Russia's biggest military maneuvers since Soviet times, involving 160,000 troops and about 5,000 tanks across Siberia and the far eastern region in a massive show of the nation's resurgent military might.

Dozens of Russia's Pacific Fleet ships and 130 combat aircraft also took part in the exercise, which began on Friday and continue through this week. Putin watched some of the drills on Sakhalin Island in the Pacific, where thousands of troops were ferried and airlifted from the mainland.

Russia's Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov assured foreign military attaches on Monday that the exercise was part of regular combat training and wasn't directed against any particular nation, though some analysts believe the show of force was aimed at China and Japan. Read more >>

China to join Russia for largest naval drills with foreign partner

China will join Russia later this week for its largest-ever naval drills with a foreign partner, underlining deepening ties between the former cold war rivals along with Beijing's desire for closer links with regional militaries.

China has long been a key customer for Russian military hardware, but only in the last decade have their militaries begun taking part in joint exercises.

China's defence ministry said on Tuesday that its navy would send four destroyers, two guided missile frigates and a support ship for the exercises, which start on Friday in the Sea of Japan and run until 12 July.

The ships departed on Monday from the port of Qingdao, where China's Northern Fleet is based, and headed for the rallying point in Peter the Great Bay near Vladivostok.

"This marks our navy's single biggest deployment of military force in a China-foreign joint exercise," the ministry said. Read more >>

Bank Of China Declares Moratorium On Transfers, Online Banking

A Bank of China HK$20 note 

From Caijing, google translated. We hope the gist of the narrative in Mandarin is far less scary, because if the translation is even remotely accurate, then all hell may be about to break loose in China.

From Caijing: Bank of China, Bank of suspension of transfers morning counters were unable to apply for online banking

Update: Customer service said, now silver futures transfer service has been fully suspended, online banking, the counter can not be handled, and now has the background system response, recovery time is not yet known

Following the ICBC, the Bank of China also go awry again. This morning, the Bank of China Bank moratorium on transfers, online banking, counters are inoperable.

10:00 many, many people began to receive messages sent to the Bank of China, "the end result of the Bank of China Bank failures, bank customers can not carry on through the Bank transfers, please Bank online banking, bank counter or use of other bank transfer system, Bank system will be restored promptly notify you." large number of transfer business banking needs of the people turned to online banking, counter, but according to the instructions of the public still found text messages can not handle.

Reporters call the BOC, customer service said, now silver has been fully suspended phase transfer services, online banking, the counter can not be handled, and now has the background system response, recovery time is not yet known.

As of 12:00, the Bank customer service said handle part of the user's online banking has been restored. Read more >>

Faltering Economy in China Dims Job Prospects for Graduates

China's FIRST McDonald's (Photo credit: flickr.Marcus)

A record seven million students will graduate from universities and colleges across China in the coming weeks, but their job prospects appear bleak — the latest sign of a troubled Chinese economy.

Businesses say they are swamped with job applications but have few positions to offer as economic growth has begun to falter. Twitter-like microblogging sites in China are full of laments from graduates with dim prospects.

The Chinese government is worried, saying that the problem could affect social stability, and it has ordered schools, government agencies and state-owned enterprises to hire more graduates at least temporarily to help relieve joblessness. “The only thing that worries them more than an unemployed low-skilled person is an unemployed educated person,” said Shang-Jin Wei, a Columbia Business School economist.

Lu Mai, the secretary general of the elite, government-backed China Development Research Foundation, acknowledged in a speech this month that less than half of this year’s graduates had found jobs so far. Read more >>

Scientists fear Chinese researchers may cause global pandemic killing millions

Senior scientists have criticised the “appalling irresponsibility” of researchers in China who have deliberately created new strains of influenza virus in a veterinary laboratory.

They warned there is a danger that the new viral strains created by mixing bird-flu virus with human influenza could escape from the laboratory to cause a global pandemic killing millions of people.

Lord May of Oxford, a former government chief scientist and past president of the Royal Society, denounced the study published today in the journal Science as doing nothing to further the understanding and prevention of flu pandemics.

“They claim they are doing this to help develop vaccines and such like. In fact the real reason is that they are driven by blind ambition with no common sense whatsoever,” Lord May told The Independent.

“The record of containment in labs like this is not reassuring. They are taking it upon themselves to create human-to-human transmission of very dangerous viruses. It’s appallingly irresponsible,” he said. Read more >>

Milk Smugglers Top Heroin Courier Arrests in Hong Kong

For border officials in Hong Kong, baby formula trumps heroin. Since the former British colony on March 1 restricted outbound travelers to two 2-pound cans each, a syndicate has been cracked and more people have been arrested for smuggling milk powder than were detained all of last year for carrying heroin.

The reason? Mainland Chinese demand, fueled by distrust of locally made food after product-safety scandals that included the deaths of at least six babies due to tainted milk. The U.K. and New Zealand are among countries with limits on milk sales as bulk purchases of brands such as Danone (BN)’s Aptamil and Mead Johnson Nutrition Co. (MJN)’s Enfamil caused local shortages.

“Most of them only have one child, and the child is the most important thing in their life,” James Roy, a Shanghai- based analyst China Market Research Group, said of Chinese parents, most of whom are subject to the government’s one-child policy. “They want to be extra careful.”

The crackdown on milk buyers gives Danone, Nestle SA (NESN), and Mead Johnson an opportunity increase their market share in China at the expense of domestic rivals such as China Mengniu Dairy Co. and Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group Co. Read more >>

China's Bird Flu Jumps The Border As First Case Confirmed In Taiwan

While precious little space has been dedicated in the US media to what remains an uncontained epidemic of the H7N9 bird flu in China, cases continue to spread even as the number of deaths mount, taking at least 22 reported lives at last check. Things just got from bad to worse, as the bird flu is now following in the footsteps of the 2003 SARS breakout, with the first reported case outside of China hitting newswires overnight.

The SCMP reports that "Taiwan on Wednesday reported the first case of the H7N9 bird flu outside of mainland China. The case involves a 53-year-old man, who had been working in the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou. He showed flu symptoms three days after returning to Taiwan via Shanghai, the Centres for Disease Control said, adding that he had been hospitalised since April 16 and was in a critical condition." Considering the lack of transparency of the Chinese government one can only guess, literally, at what the true morbidity and mortality statistics of the flu epidemic are, which is perhaps the main reason this ongoing story for the past two months has so far evaded major coverage. Read more >>

WHO says new bird strain is "one of most lethal" flu viruses

A new bird flu strain that has killed 22 people in China is "one of the most lethal" of its kind and transmits more easily to humans than another strain that has killed hundreds since 2003, a World Health Organization (WHO) expert said on Wednesday. The H7N9 flu has infected 108 people in China since it was first detected in March, according to the Geneva-based WHO.

Although it is not clear exactly how people are being infected, experts say they see no evidence so far of the most worrisome scenario - sustained transmission between people. An international team of scientists led by the WHO and the Chinese government conducted a five-day investigation in China, but said they were no closer to determining whether the virus might become transmissible between people.

"The situation remains complex and difficult and evolving," said Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's assistant director-general for health security. "When we look at influenza viruses, this is an unusually dangerous virus for humans," he said at a briefing.

Another bird flu strain - H5N1 - has killed 30 of the 45 people it infected in China between 2003 and 2013, and although the H7N9 strain in the current outbreak has a lower fatality rate to date, Fukuda said: "This is definitely one of the most lethal influenza viruses that we've seen so far." Read more >>

410 Pigs and 122 Dogs found dead in Central China

Hundreds more pigs have been found dead in China - this time together with dozens of dogs. A total of 410 pigs and 122 dogs were discovered in homes and at farms earlier this week in a village that comes under Yanshi city's jurisdiction in central Henan province, authorities said Wednesday.

The city's propaganda office said that the deaths were being investigated but that they suspected they had to do with nearby chemical factories. The factories have been ordered to suspend production and help police with a criminal investigation into the incident, according to a report on a Henan provincial news website.

No poisonous gases have been found in tests on the air around the village and its drinking water has met quality standards, said the report, which the propaganda office confirmed. Local authorities said the deaths have nothing to do with any epidemic or the H7N9 bird flu virus that has recently spread to humans. Read more >>

Bird Flu Fears Mount in China as Herbal Remedies Run Out

A popular herb called ban lan gen, or blue root, has been flying off pharmacy shelves across China as local governments encourage people to consider traditional remedies to ward off the latest bird flu virus.

With scientists so far unable to pinpoint the H7N9 influenza virus’ animal host, locals are preparing for a possible pandemic by stocking up on popular plant remedies as well as face masks and hand sanitizers and other over-the- counter medicines.

“Chinese people associate ban lan gen with anti-virus,” said Shen Jiangang, assistant director for research at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s School of Chinese Medicine. “So when they hear about bird flu, they immediately think it might be effective to protect themselves although there is no experimental evidence.”

Ayurvedic and Chinese medicines have used the remedy for centuries. Scientists have proved it can relieve bacterial conjunctivitis in eye drops and found it has an antiviral effect in test tubes. There is no test to show it works against influenza. Read more >>

US Households On Foodstamps Hit Record High

Record Dow, record S&P, record debt, record plunge in gold, and now: record US households on foodstamps. What's not to like. While today's gold selloff may be confusing to everyone, one can scratch off some 23,087,886 US households, or the number that according to the USDA were on foodstamps in January and just happen to be a fresh all time high, as the likely sellers, especially when one considers that the average monthly benefit to each household dropped to a record low of $274.04. This number probably ignores, for good reason, the once every four years fringe benefits of Obamaphones and other such made in China trinkets. Read more >>

Deaths from new bird flu underscore grim fears, reports show

A new report on three of the first patients in China to contract a novel strain of bird flu has U.S. officials worried about a grim scenario that includes severe illness with pneumonia, septic shock, brain damage and multi-organ failure.

All three of the patients died, according to a Thursday report by a group of Chinese scientists in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“It is possible that these severely ill patients represent the tip of the iceberg,” wrote Dr. Timothy Uyeki and Dr. Nancy Cox, both of the influenza division at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a perspective piece accompanying the article.

The reports chronicle the early days of an outbreak of a new influenza A virus, H7N9, which has never before been seen in humans. So far, it has infected 38 people in several Chinese provinces and killed 10 in the past two months, Chinese authorities said. Read more >>

China reports another human bird flu death totaling three

An SVG map of China with Zhejiang province highlighted Legend: Image:China map legend.png (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A man in the Chinese province of Zhejiang has died of the H7N9 strain of bird flu, state media said Wednesday, bringing the total deaths attributed to the virus to three since the first human cases.

He was one of two H7N9 avian influenza infections reported in Zhejiang in eastern China, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing local authorities, bringing the country’s total number of cases to nine.

Chinese authorities are trying to determine how exactly the new variety of bird flu infected people, but say there is no evidence yet of human-to-human transmission. The latest fatality was a 38-year-old man who worked as a chef, media website Zhejiang Online said. The province’s other case was a 67-year-old retiree who was being treated in hospital.

Two other deaths have been reported, both in China’s commercial hub of Shanghai. Other cases have occurred in the eastern provinces of Jiangsu and Anhui, the government has said. Read more >>