Being online boosts chances of being in love

People who have Internet access at home are more likely to be in a relationship, with the Web gaining in importance as a meeting place for those seeking love, according to US research.
Researchers from Stanford University said the Internet is especially important for bringing together same-sex couples.
The Internet may also soon replace friends as the main way in which Americans meet their partners.
"Although prior research on the social impacts of Internet use has been rather ambiguous about the social cost of time spent online, our research suggests that Internet access has an important role to play in helping Americans find mates," said Michael Rosenfeld, an associate professor of sociology.
The study, which was presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Atlanta on Monday, showed that 82 percent of people in the study who had Internet access at home also had a spouse or romantic partner, compared to 62 percent for those who did not have Internet access.
The study used data from a winter 2009 survey of 4,002 adults across the United States. Slightly more than 3,000 had a spouse or romantic partner.
Rosenfeld and Reuben Thomas, of the City University of New York, found the Internet is the one social arena that is unambiguously gaining importance as a place where couples meet.
"It is possible that in the next several years the Internet could eclipse friends as the most influential way Americans meet their romantic partners, displacing friends out of the top position for the first time since the early 1940s," Rosenfeld said in a statement.
The researchers said they found that the Internet was especially important for finding potential partners in groups where the supply is small or difficult to identify such as in the gay, lesbian, and middle-aged heterosexual communities.
Rosenfeld said that among the couples who met within two years of the survey, 61 percent of same-sex couples and 21 percent of heterosexual couples met online.

One in five babies are now born to women over 35

One in five babies are now born to women over 35 as would-be parents feel pressure of high mortgages and debt.
One in five mothers is approaching middle age by the time she has a child, figures have revealed.
The boom in motherhood among older women means more than 140,000 babies were born to women of 35 or older last year - 20 per cent of all births in England and Wales.
The proportion of babies with mothers in their late 30s and older has gone up by a third in ten years as more women delay having families.
Fathers are also increasingly likely to be close to middle age when they are faced with bringing up young children. The latest count showed that two thirds of new fathers are over 30.
The breakdown from the Office for National Statistics raised new questions over the trend for parents to be older and its impact on the health and upbringing of children.
Medical authorities say there are greater risks for mothers and babies when mothers are over 35, and older parents face a greater chance of ill-health or disability while their children are still young.
Numbers of older mothers have been shooting up in recent years, partly because more women are choosing education and careers over early marriage and family, and partly because many reach their 30s burdened with high mortgages, debt, and living costs that encourages them to postpone having children.
The trend to co-habitation rather than marriage also means many women are unwilling to have children while they are uncertain about the degree of commitment of their partner.
The new figures showed that 141,246 babies were born to mothers over the age of 35 last year, a fifth of the 706,248 births in England and Wales.
Of these, nearly 27,000 were born to mothers over 40; nearly 1,500 to mothers over 45, and 89 to women over the age of 50. In 1999, only 15 per cent of newborn babies had mothers over 35.
There have been a series of warning to older mothers about the risks of having children later in life.
Earlier this year Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists President Professor Sir Sabaratnam Arulkumaran said: 'Later pregnancy is associated with more complications and specialised obstetric help is required to care for this growing group of women.'

China Evacuates 150,000 People as Typhoon Nears

Chinese authorities have evacuated more than 150,000 people from the country's southeastern coast as one of the strongest typhoons in years approaches the region. Typhoon Megi was centered over the northern part of the South China Sea late Thursday and was moving north slowly toward the eastern part of China's Guangdong province. Weather models predict the storm will make landfall Saturday near Shantou city, east of Hong Kong.

The Hong Kong Observatory said Megi had maximum sustained winds of 175 kilometers an hour and could intensify before hitting land. China has issued a red alert for the typhoon, the highest of its four-step warning system. It warned of huge storm surges that could devastate coastal villages and cities. In Hong Kong, a strong wind warning was in effect.Chinese authorities said they were moving residents of Guangdong to higher ground and already had evacuated 150,000 people in Fujian province to the north.

Delicate white hexagons of shape-retaining cloth drape the interior

Shang Xia means 'Up-Down' in Mandarin, a phrase that is meant to convey a concept of yin-yang harmony. The brand is backed by French luxury giant Hermès International SCA and run by French-trained Shanghai designer Jiang Qiong'er. It is positioned as a Chinese brand, and its products incorporate traditional Chinese craftsmanship, while its owners play down its foreign provenance.

Hermès would not specify how much it has invested in the brand, though according to Ms. Jiang its stake exceeds 75%. The French company's involvement will buy Shang Xia time to succeed, she says. 'If you can take enough time to design [something], and can give the craftspeople time to make it, it is a luxury and clients appreciate it.'

Two years after the Shang Xia project was launched, the brand finally made its debut on Sep. 16. with a small press conference and presentation at an upmarket Shanghai venue, followed by a low-key in-store opening party and a VIP dinner cruise. It was a subdued event by Shanghai fashion standards─there were few of the usual contingent of international celebrities on hand ─ in line with Shang Xia's plans to eschew any immediate expansion or large-scale marketing campaign. The 125-square-meter store is tucked away at the back of the first floor of Hong Kong Plaza, a new luxury mall that has few shoppers as yet. Its initial line of about 200 designs of furniture, tea ─ and dishware, apparel, jewelry and accessories ranges from 180 yuan to 500,000 yuan, or about $19 to about $54,000. Hermès range is priced a little higher and runs to over 1 million Chinese yuan for the brand's best watches. A Shang Xia spokesperson said sales of its products were going well so far, with tea sets, cashmere and jewelry among the top movers.

'We are not trying to be fashionable,' says Ms. Jiang. 'We aim for an aesthetic standard that is timeless. Like the Ming Dynasty chair, we want to be like that and still in 50 or 100 years seem modern. Now we are just starting, and hope to find our own style.'

Hermès Chief Executive Patrick Thomas avoids discussing how Shang Xia may impact his company's mainland China strategy. Hermès has 20 stores in China, including two that opened earlier this year. Across Asia (excluding Japan), the brand's sales were up 45% in the first half of 2010 compared to the same period last year. It's an upward trend that is not unique to Hermès. 'The growth of many brands here is the same,' says Mr. Thomas. 'You have people with taste, and the desire for long-lasting, beautiful objects.'

Hermès' support is a mixed blessing for Shang Xia, complicating its identity as a mainland Chinese brand. It is a familiar conundrum for those seeking the prize of being China's first homegrown luxury brand, such as Taiwan's Shiatzy Chen, or the Richemont-owned Hong Kong brand Shanghai Tang: foreign involvement grants global cache, but dilutes the claims of 'Chineseness' that can be aggressively questioned in the mainland. On the popular internet portal Sina, commentators dismissed Shang Xia by comparing it to the 'Chinese' food sold at Kentucky Fried Chicken's outlets in China. Commentators also pilloried the name Shang Xia as awkward and stilted.

Matthew Crabbe, co-founder of consultancy Access Asia, takes a more optimistic view.

'It is all local materials and based on local crafts, and its marketing is crafts as family tradition. That will have an appeal to Chinese consumers,' Mr. Crabbe says. 'Chinese [consumers] are increasingly exploring their roots and crafts and bringing them up to date. [Middle and upper class Chinese] have a romantic view of the rural past and rural culture, and crafts. There is a growing interest. For example, top-notch luxury tea. This fits in with that trend.'

Shang Xia claims that all its products are made in collaboration with Chinese artisans or in-house craftspeople, combining traditional techniques with modern designs, and Ms. Jiang says she hopes the brand will contribute to the preservation and renewal of China's endangered heritage crafts.

According to a 2009 report by the China Arts and Crafts Association, of more than half of 1,800 officially recognized traditional crafts are struggling or in danger of dying out. 'The constant rise of the current Chinese economy and the rapid development of technology have changed the cultural spirit of Chinese [people,]' says Zhao Zhishuo, president of the China National Arts and Crafts Society. 'Traditional crafts face the challenge of preserving the exquisite traditional skills of thousands of years

Ms. Jiang views the problem as generational, recalling how the embroidery lessons that were standard in her schooldays have been eliminated. 'Now there are fewer and fewer young people who are willing to learn, because craftsmanship is a work that they need time to be trained: a minimum of five years of training. That's why they prefer to work in restaurants, in hotels, or sell mobile phones, where they need to be trained for only one day, one week and they can start.'

Ethnic Fighting Rocks Kosovo Town

Troops of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and European police have increased patrols in and around Kosovo's volatile northern town of Mitrovica, after at least six people were injured in clashes between Serbs and ethnic Albanians late Friday. Police officials say explosions also destroyed cars and properties.
A tense calm returned to Kosovo's second largest and most ethnically divided town of Mitrovica, where since late Friday about half a dozen people, including fire fighters, were wounded in clashes between Serbs and ethnic Albanians.
There were violent protests followed by two huge explosions that rocked Mitrovica, destroying cars and damaging properties. Police and fire fighters rushed to the scene as the first blast destroyed at least seven cars near a bar in the town's Serb district. Security officials said Serbs then set two Albanian shops alight.
But as a fire brigade arrived to put out these blazes, a second explosive device apparently detonated, hampering efforts to secure the area.
Troops of the Western military alliance NATO and European Union police stepped up their presence around Mitrovica, and armoured vehicles were seen patrolling the streets.
The latest clashes came after a Serb teenager was reportedly hurt by two knife-wielding Albanians on Tuesday, who were later detained. That incident prompted hundreds of Serbs to burn down several Albanian shops and to damage cars with Kosovo license plates.
Observers say the latest violence also reflects deep rooted divisions between the Serb minority of 120,000 people, and the two-million strong ethnic Albanian community of Kosovo.
Serbs are angry that Kosovo's government declared the territory independent from neighboring Serbia, last year. Kosovo's secession in February occurred nearly a decade after NATO bombings ended a Serbian military crackdown on independence seeking ethnic Albanians.
Friday's fighting underscored Western concern that Mitrovica will become once again a major flashpoint of ethnic fighting, and attacks against Western peacekeepers. The town was already the scene of deadly clashes in March between Serbs and international forces.

Iran Ready for 'Fair' Nuclear Talks

Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki says his country is ready to resume talks on its nuclear program if those talks are "fair."
Mottaki told China's foreign minister (Yang Jiechi) that Tehran is prepared to renew dialogue with the Vienna Group, as well as the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany, a group known as the P5+1. However, Mottaki said the talks will be successful only if they are "fair" and recognize Iran's right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. The Iranian and Chinese foreign ministers met this week on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, but Mottaki's comments were not made public until Thursday.

Earlier Wednesday, the P5+1 announced it had renewed efforts to seek an "early negotiated solution" with Iran. The group said it wanted to re-establish dialogue with Tehran on a nuclear swap proposal that was introduced last year.

Financial chiefs of the world's leading economies have wrapped up a gathering in South Korea

At a similar gathering last year, members of the so-called G20 set of advanced economies agreed on emergency spending to stem a global crisis brought on by the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers in late 2008.
The consensus at this year's meeting, here at the South Korean seaside city of Busan, is that those measures have worked. Central bankers and finance ministers gathered here from around the world say the economy is growing again.
Now, many leaders agree it is time for them to start backing off from stimulus spending, and get their debts and deficits under control. The ongoing debt crisis in Greece and other southern European countries served as a reminder at this meeting of the danger of overspending - but also of the possibility that trimming spending too sharply could plunge the world economy back into recession.
South Korean Finance Minister Yoon Jeung-hyun, the host, says leaders have agreed to strike a balance.
Summarizing a final group communiqué Saturday, he says recent events highlight the importance of sustainable public finances. He says member countries need to put in place credible policies that encourage growth and are sustainable, in a way that is tailored to each country's individual circumstances.
G20 members also want new regulations, to help avoid the kind of risky behavior by financial institutions that brought on the U.S. banking crisis. U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says reforming international finance has Washington's support.
"The United States is moving aggressively to fix the things we got wrong, and to strengthen our economic fundamentals," said Geithner. "And we will give our full support to the G20 agenda of economic reform."
One step that was widely discussed coming into the meeting was a tax on certain bank transactions, commonly called a "bank levy." Funds raised by such a levy would have been set aside for future bank bailouts if necessary. That idea was dropped amid disagreements, but members say they still want to agree on some kind of "safety net" for international banking.
The communiqué produced at the Busan meeting will be put before heads of government when they gather in Seoul for a G20 summit in Seoul this November.