BRUSSELS (Dow Jones)--Ongoing stress tests on European banks have been expanded to include 70 to 120 banks to give an idea of national as well as regional resilience, a source familiar with the matter said Tuesday.
The tests, conducted by the Committee of European Banking Supervisors in ...
China's state media on Tuesday slammed US President Barack Obama for suggesting Beijing had turned a blind eye to North Korea's actions, calling his remarks "irresponsible and flippant".
At the Group of 20 summit in Canada at the weekend, Obama said China must not show "willful blindness" over Pyongyang's "belligerent behaviour", noting he had spoken bluntly to Chinese President Hu Jintao on the matter.
The English-language Global Times hit back at the US leader, saying he should have taken Beijing's concerns into consideration before "making irresponsible and flippant remarks about China's role in the region".
The newspaper, noting Beijing's role as host of the on-off six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear disarmament, said: "It is thus not China that is turning a blind eye to what North Korea has done and has not done."
"Instead, it is the leaders of countries such as the US that are turning a blind eye on purpose to China's efforts," said the commentary in the paper, which is run by the Communist Party's mouthpiece, the People's Daily.
The United States and Seoul have led a push for a UN censure of Pyongyang for the sinking of a South Korean warship in March that killed 46 sailors, but the Security Council has yet to issue a formal condemnation.
China, a close ally of the impoverished North, has been reluctant to endorse a UN condemnation over the sinking until it has assessed the evidence in the incident for itself.
The Global Times acknowledged that China's efforts to convince North Korea to give up its nuclear programme had not all been effective, but said maintaining contact with Pyongyang was vital.
"The US cannot ignore the fact that China remains the most important channel of effective communication in this situation," the paper said.
"Closing the channel would leave the situation deadlocked. That is by no means what the world wants."
ATHENS, Greece — Dozens of masked youths clashed with police at a union protest Tuesday in Athens during the country's fifth general strike this year against the cash-strapped government's planned pension and labor reforms.
Riot police fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse troublemakers who threw chunks of marble smashed off metro station entrances and set rubbish bins on fire. Running clashes continued along a major avenue — lined with shuttered shops and banks — as rioters armed with wooden clubs made repeated sallies against police.
Seven policemen were injured in the clashes, and 13 demonstrators were detained, six of whom were arrested, police said. Riot police chased demonstrators into a main subway station, and an AP photographer saw police detain one young man in a subway car, spraying him with pepper spray.
Demonstrators smashed bus stops and phone booths, and broke windows at three shops and two bank branches. The demonstration ended after a few hours, and rioters melted away toward the central Exarcheia district — a traditional anarchist hangout.
However, Tuesday's clashes were far more muted than the riots that erupted during a previous general strike on May 5, when three people died after becoming trapped in a bank torched by rioters.
Businesses shut down, tourists exasperated
In response to the Tuesday protests, local media were shut, hospitals operated with emergency staff and public offices were mostly closed.
Businesses in central Athens rolled down their metal shutters but many elsewhere were open as usual.
"We have again taken to the streets. we are striking we are resisting the slaughtering of our rights," said Ilias Vrettakos, a vice president of the main public sector union.
Some tourists, a sector accounting for almost a fifth of Greece's GDP, were exasperated by the cancellation of some ferries to islands. About 60 domestic flights were also cancelled but international flights were unaffected.
Issues behind the Greece protests
The socialist government, which has 157 seats of 300 in parliament, was to begin preliminary consideration of an overhaul of pensions later on Tuesday. It will raise women's retirement age from 60 to match men on 65 and demand more years at work to qualify for a pension.
The government says the reforms of the creaking system are essential to stave off bankruptcy for Greece, where debt has reached 133 percent of GDP in 2010.
Participation in protests has waned, however, partly as Athenians escape to the islands for summer holidays. Unions representing about 2.5 million workers, half the workforce, back the strike.
On the big May 5 protest, three people were killed in the fire-bombing of an Athens bank. About 25,000 people turned out for the last similar strike on May 20.
The repeated strikes, protests that have sometimes turned violent and a rise in small bomb attacks since riots in 2008 have hurt tourism, which accounts for nearly a fifth of Greece's 240 billion euro ($297 billion) economy. A senior official was killed last week by a booby-trapped bomb.
But economists said the strike was far from shutting down the economy and that it was hard to estimate the drain on GDP.
"My sense is that there is so much waste in the public sector, and it's essentially public employees on strike, that I don't see much effect," said Gikas Hardouvelis, chief economist at Eurobank EFG Group.
Concurrent strikes in Spain
Meantime, Spanish workers shut down the Madrid metro system in anger at a 5 percent public sector pay cut.
The strikes in both Spain and Greece on Tuesday highlight widespread resistance to Europe-wide austerity measures as the euro and shares tumbled ahead of a deadline for banks to repay a giant European Central Bank cash injection.
Spanish Economy Minister Elena Salgado said she hoped the European Central Bank was aware of the situation of her country's stressed banks, some of which have been shut out of inter-bank lending due to worries over bad debts and public finances.
"The ECB says it doesn't like governments to tell it what to do. I simply say I hope that in this occasion, as in others, the ECB will be aware of the needs of the Spanish financial system," Salgado told Spanish radio.
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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Stocks tumbled Tuesday, with the Dow falling as much as 326 points and the S&P hitting an 8-month low after a big drop in consumer confidence and signs of a bigger slowdown in the global economy.
Investors plowed into the safety of government debt, sending the 10-year note yield below 3% for the first time in 14 months.
Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) dropped 268 points, or 2.7%, after having earlier lost as much as 326 points. The Nasdaq (COMP) composite fell 85 points, or 3.9%.
The S&P 500 (SPX) slid 33 points, or 3.1%, falling to a fresh 2010 low of 1035.18 before recovering a little to close at 1041.24. It was the lowest close since November and could bring in more selling in the next few days, according to technical market pros.
Stocks slipped at the open on global concerns but the selling picked up steam after the release of the Consumer Confidence index for June. Confidence slumped to 52.9 from 62.7 in May, the Conference Board reported, with the decline reflecting worries about the labor market and economic outlook. Confidence was expected to fall to 62, according to economists surveyed by Briefing.com.
Concerns about the job market and economy have dragged on stocks on and off for the last two months, with the major gauges falling into a correction after hitting rally highs in late April. A correction is a plunge of at least 10% off the highs. As of Tuesday's close, the S&P is off 14.6% from the highs of late April.
Tuesday's woes were sparked by a weak reading on Japanese export demand and household spending and a revised reading on Chinese leading economic indicators. In Europe, a fresh round of protests by Greek citizens opposed to government austerity measures kept worries about Europe's ability to cut its debt front and center.
The euro, something of a proxy for European debt worries, fell.
"Between euro worries, some notes of a slowdown out of Asia and a bad consumer sentiment number, there are very few reasons for stocks to rise, and plenty for them to fall or flatten out," said Karl Mills, president and chief investment officer at Jurika Mills & Keifer.
"The largest concern on a broad level remains the issue of debt, both in Europe and the U.S.," he said.
Stocks ended a choppy session lower Monday after leaders of the G-20 nations agreed to both continue to promote economic recovery and to cut deficits in half by 2013. The group of 19 countries and the European Union met at a summit last weekend in Toronto.
On the move: Declines were broad based, with all 30 Dow issues falling, led by Boeing (BA, Fortune 500), Caterpillar (CAT, Fortune 500), Chevron (CVX, Fortune 500), IBM (IBM, Fortune 500) and United Technologies (UTX, Fortune 500).
A variety of financial stocks slumped, with the KBW Bank (BKX) sector index off by 3.5%. Components JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) and Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500) all lost 4%, while Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) fell 6%.
World markets: European markets stumbled across the board, with Britain's FTSE 100 losing 3.1%, Germany's DAX giving back 3.3% and France's CAC 40 falling 4%.
Asian markets slumped. Japan's Nikkei fell 1.3%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng slid 2.3% and China's Shanghai Composite slumped 4.3%.
Housing market: Home prices rose 3.8% in April versus a year ago, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index of 20 major housing markets. That was a bigger jump than expected, with economists looking for a climb of 3.4% after a boost of 2.3% in March. Home prices also rose 0.8% in April from March levels.
However, prices remain off over 30% from the peak.
Companies: Electric car maker Tesla Motors debuted on the Nasdaq under the ticker TSLA, rising 12% from its IPO price late Monday.
Tesla priced its shares at $17 each, above the $14 to $16 target range, allowing it to raise over $226 million in the IPO.
Currency: The euro slumped 0.7% versus the dollar but remained above the four-year low of $1.188 hit earlier in the month. The dollar was down 1.1% versus the yen.
Commodities: U.S. light crude oil for August delivery fell $2.83 to settle at $75.94 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
COMEX gold for August delivery gained $3.60 to $1,242 an ounce.
Bonds: Treasury prices rallied, lowering the yield on the 10-year note to 2.97% from 3.03% late Monday. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.
Market breadth: Market breadth was negative and volume was moderate. On the New York Stock Exchange, losers beat winners 11 to one on volume of 1.6 billion shares. On the Nasdaq, decliners topped advancers eight to one on volume of 2.58 billion shares.
Full body scanners at airports could increase your risk of skin cancer, experts warn.
The X-ray machines have been brought in at Manchester, Gatwick and Heathrow.
But scientists say radiation from the scanners has been underestimated and could be particularly risky for children.
They say that the low level beam does deliver a small dose of radiation to the body but because the beam concentrates on the skin - one of the most radiation-sensitive organs of the human body - that dose may be up to 20 times higher than first estimated.
An airport staff member demonstrates a full body scan at Manchester Airport. Now a U.S expert has said the X-Ray may deliver a higher radiation dose to the skin than first thought
Dr David Brenner, head of Columbia University's centre for radiological research, said although the danger posed to the individual passenger is 'very low', he is urging researchers to carry out more tests on the device to look at the way it affects specific groups who could be more sensitive to radiation.
He says children and passengers with gene mutations - around one in 20 of the population - are more at risk as they are less able to repair X-ray damage to their DNA.
Dr Brenner, who is originally from Liverpool but now works at the New York university, said: 'The individual risks associated with X-ray backscatter scanners are probably extremely small.
'If all 800 million people who use airports every year were screened with X-rays then the very small individual risk multiplied by the large number of screened people might imply a potential public health or societal risk. The population risk has the potential to be significant.'
Following trials, the airport scanners were officially introduced at Manchester Airport in January, at Heathrow Terminal 4 in February and at Gatwick in May this year.
The most likely risk from the airport scanners is a common type of skin cancer called basal cell carcinoma, according to the academic.
The cancer is usually curable and often occurs in the head and neck of people aged between 50 and 70. He points out it would be difficult to hide a weapon on the head or neck so proposes missing out that part of the body from the scanning process.
'If there are increases in cancers as a result of irradiation of children, they would most likely appear some decades in the future. It would be prudent not to scan the head and neck,' he added.
He recently aired his concerns to the Congressional Biomedical Caucus in the US - members of Congress who meet to exchange ideas on medical research.
Dr Brenner urged them to look at his concerns but said it was important to balance any health issues against passengers' safety when flying.
He said: 'There really is no other technology around where we're planning to X-ray such an enormous number of individuals. It's really unprecedented in the radiation world.'
The Civil Aviation Authority said the radiation received from the scanning process is the equivalent to two minutes radiation received on a Transatlantic flight
The Civil Aviation Authority, Department for Transport and Health Protection Agency insist that the technology is safe and say their tests show it would take 5,000 trips through the scanner to equal the dose of a single chest X-ray.
They said in the climate of high security, it is essential that security staff use 'all means possible' to minimise risks to airline security.
The CAA said: 'The device has been approved for use within the UK by the Department for Transport and has been subjected to risk assessments from the Health Protection Agency.
'To put the issue in perspective, the radiation received from the scanning process is the equivalent to two minutes radiation received on a Transatlantic flight.
'Recent press publications have been a little alarmist and may have heightened concern in frequent travellers who may worry about their repeated exposure.
'Under current regulations, up to 5,000 scans per person per year can be conducted safely.'
