Cold snap set to stay

People across south-east Australia are complaining about unusually chilly temperatures and experts say there will be no relief from the cold until Sunday at the earliest.

From Brisbane this morning, Miss7t7 wrote on Twitter "Still in bed, so dam cold.. What's going on Brisbane !!!!". While in Melbourne, lexandraKR tweeted "Waiting for frostbite to set in... Sooo cold in Melbourne! Too scared to get out of bed incase I get hypothermia".

Others are embracing the weather and urging those who are complaining to toughen up.

"I am in love with this cold weather. Melbourne reminds me of Paris at the moment. How can that be a bad thing?" wrote hannahjtoy. "Is it seriuosly newsworthy that sydney temps are in the low single digits? seriuosly? it not cold! suck it up!" FilthiAssistant tweeted.

But ABC weather specialist Graham Creed says people's complaints are justified.

"It's definitely quite unusual to see such widespread cold weather in June, it would be more typical in July and August," he said.

"So people are complaining about the cold for a good reason."

Mr Creed says most areas across the south-east are experiencing temperatures well below average.

"Last weekend a cool change moved through and that introduced some significantly colder air across most of south-east Australia," he said.

"Quickly in behind that we had a high pressure ridge move through, producing clear skies during both the day and the night, but it's also helping to trap that cold air in.

"The clear skies mean we are losing what little daytime heating there is and overnight temperatures are dropping into the minuses through many of those states, producing widespread frosts.

"On top of that we've got quite a breeze in certain areas and the air is very dry so that's producing very low wind chill, so not only is the sun not providing much warmth, you've also got the assistance of the wind making it feel colder than it actually is."

He says Queensland is in for a particularly rough few days, as widespread rainfall will see the conditions change from cold and sunny to cold, cloudy and wet.

Yesterday, an icy blast through Adelaide brought enough rain to supply the city for a month, with a hail storm capping off the exceptionally wintry day.

Yesterday was also the coldest day in Melbourne in nearly two years, with the city not reaching its maximum temperature of 10.8 degrees Celsius until 7:55pm (AEST).

If the temperature in Melbourne fails to hit its forecast maximum today, it will be the first time in 14 years the city has recorded three consecutive days of temperatures below 12 degrees.

Last night Brisbane was coldest at 9:00pm (AEST), when the mercury dropped to below 8 degrees, but experts say it will be even cooler tonight.

Sydney recorded its coldest June morning today since 1949, with temperatures diving to 4.3 degrees just before 6:00am (AEST).

With federal stimulus funds running out, economic worries grow

Much of the $787-billion stimulus has been spent, creating jobs and extending jobless benefits. But with lawmakers reluctant to approve more funding, concerns are rising about staving off another recession.

Bill Vaughn, owner of BCV Construction, says his biggest job this year was a stimulus-funded project at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System. Since that job ended in January, he hasn’t found work for his firm. “My company’s on the verge of closing,” says Vaughn, who lives with his in-laws. (Lawrence K. Ho, Los Angeles Times / June 22, 2010)

With home sales sliding, employers reluctant to hire and world stock markets gyrating wildly, the U.S. economy is in danger of stalling. Now one of its only reliable sources of fuel is running out: federal stimulus spending.

Funds flowing from the $787-billion legislation passed last year have helped create hundreds of thousands of jobs and propped up social programs such as unemployment benefits. But with much of that money spent and lawmakers reluctant to approve another big round of spending, concerns are rising about what will replace it in the short term to keep the economy moving.

Jitters about a global slowdown pounded world markets Tuesday after an index forecasting Chinese economic activity was revised downward and Greek workers walked off the job to protest government budget cuts. In the U.S., the Dow Jones industrial average plunged 268 points on news from the Conference Board that consumer confidence fell in June after three straight months of gains.

Economists worry that the weak labor market will spook U.S. consumers, whose spending fuels the economy. Dwindling federal stimulus funds are only heightening those fears.

California's $85-billion share of stimulus funding has repaired bridges and highways, built new barracks on military bases and renovated crumbling infrastructure. Disabled veteran Bill Vaughn says his biggest job this year was a stimulus project repairing a pipe at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System. Since that job ended in January, he hasn't found additional work for his firm, BCV Construction.

"My company's on the verge of closing," said Vaughn, who lives with his in-laws in Northridge.

In addition to infrastructure improvement, about $18 billion of California's share of stimulus funds has been spent on social programs such as Medicaid, unemployment insurance and food stamps. Billions more flowed to schools and job centers. But with those funds now gone, officials are preparing for another round of belt-tightening.

"It was unbelievable feast one year and famine the very next," said Blake Konczal, director of the Fresno Regional Workforce Investment Board, which used stimulus funds to help more than 2,000 unemployed people attend job retraining. The office's budget doubled thanks to $16.4 million in stimulus funds but will contract again in the new fiscal year, which begins July 1.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has been contentious since Congress approved it in February 2009 to aid an economy mired in a deep recession. Republicans have been particularly critical of the program and its price tag, and the final bill was billions of dollars smaller than the one President Obama had originally proposed.

But seventeen months later, those stimulus jobs, along with temporary government positions created for the 2010 census, are among the few bright spots in a dismal employment market. The nation's unemployment rate is 9.7% and companies have shown little willingness to hire. Private-sector employers added just 41,000 jobs in May, out of a total of 431,000 jobs created.

The government has few levers left to pull to produce quick growth. Interest rates are already at rock-bottom levels. Concerns about swelling U.S. deficits have many on Capitol Hill opposed to the idea of another stimulus. That has some economists worried.

"There's an uncomfortably high probability that we slip back into recession," said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics. "If we slip back, there's no policy response. We won't have the resources to respond."

To be sure, there are still thousands of ongoing stimulus projects and billions of dollars to be spent. The Obama administration is calling this "Recovery Summer" and will spotlight dozens of stimulus projects in the coming weeks. But many important programs are losing funding.

Among the most crucial is unemployment insurance. Benefits vary from state to state, but the federal government has helped pay for five extensions that have boosted the duration of payments in states including California to as much as 99 weeks from the standard 26 weeks. Stimulus funds have also helped subsidize health benefits through the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, or COBRA, which gives jobless workers an opportunity to continue their coverage at group rates for a limited time.

Efforts to extend those provisions are stalled in Congress. The National Employment Law Project estimates that 1.63 million workers will exhaust their benefits by the end of this week, and at least 140,000 workers will lose COBRA coverage.

In California, which has the nation's third-highest unemployment rate at 12.4%, the Employment Development Department estimates that 205,000 unemployed workers will not receive further benefits without congressional action. About 2 million Californians are unemployed; nearly half of them have been out of work for 27 weeks or more.

"There's nothing out there," said Jennifer Tilt, a 52-year-old resident of Bloomington, a town in San Bernardino County, whose unemployment benefits will expire soon. Tilt, who has a bachelor's degree, said she's applied for jobs at fast-food restaurants to no avail. She's dependent on her two grown children and her mother's Social Security check to pay the bills.

Other programs are in jeopardy as well. The federal government temporarily increased the amount it contributed to state Medi-Cal payments by 11.6%. Without further congressional action, those contributions will end Jan. 1, halfway through the state's fiscal year. The state will have to find the money for Medi-Cal elsewhere, probably through $1.8 billion in further cuts, according to the governor's office.

"The human impact of requiring us to find another $1.8 billion in spending cuts to replace federal funding that was designed to help states avoid deep cuts … is both cruel and counterproductive," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote to the state congressional delegation earlier this month.

Republicans say extending benefits and other provisions of the stimulus bill will add to the country's trillion-dollar deficit. "Here's another idea Democrats should consider, one that Americans have been proposing loudly and clearly: Stop spending money you don't have," Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said last week on the Senate floor.

But Democrats — and some economists — say that spending money now to create jobs and fund unemployment benefits is the only way to stave off another recession.

"What worries me the most is this idea that austerity is going to be helpful," said Michael Reich, a professor of economics at UC Berkeley, who said that ending unemployment benefits could drive more people to file for disability and hamper long-term growth. "When you make an economy shrink, it makes it harder to pay back debt in the future."

The nation's construction industry provides a window into the tough choices facing lawmakers. Federal tax credits have helped drive home sales while stimulus spending on infrastructure has put laborers back to work. Such subsidies are unsustainable in the long run. But when to pull the plug?

New-home sales dropped 33% in May as home-buyer tax credits ended. Construction employment declined in 25 states that same month, according to the Associated General Contractors of America.

"In the next few months, unless some other kind of work comes along, we're not feeling very optimistic," said Ken Simonson, chief economist for the contractors trade group.

That's not what unemployed construction worker Hector Cardozo, 38, wants to hear. His hair has grayed from the stress of looking for work, and he's thinking of going on disability.

"I can't find work, and the government doesn't have work for me," said the Corona resident. "What more can I do, put a gun to my head?"

alana.semuels@latimes.com

Times staff writer Alejandro Lazo contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

Light fantastic: Stunning pictures show Northern Lights over erupting Icelandic volcano

The Northern Lights are effortlessly one of Earth's most visually striking natural spectacles.

But when they shine over an eruption at the Icelandic volcano which caused ash cloud flight chaos across Europe, the results are stunning, as these pictures show.

Purple and blue lights in the sky contrast with bright yellow and red lava flowing from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, erupting from beneath its ice cap.

Natural beauty: Purple and blue lights in the sky contrast with the bright yellow and red lava flowing from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano. Photographer James Appleton, from Cambridge, risked his life trekking solo to the area and captured these incredible shots

Photographer James Appleton, 23, from Cambridge, risked his life trekking solo to the area and captured these incredible shots.

The Cambridge University graduate spent five days observing the first phase of the eruption from a shack in nearby Fimmvorouhals mountain pass.

He spent seven hours battling biting wind and freezing temperatures to get as close to the eruption as possible, against the advice of local guides.

Despite being trapped inside a shack there for 48 hours, Mr Appleton managed to trek within 100ft of the volcano.

He said he was 'impressed' with his shots of the vibrant lava flowing down the mountain.

Mr Appleton said: 'It was definitely the highlight of my photographic career so far and something I will never forget.

'To be stood right in the action and watching the volcano spew out lava and growling with the peaceful Northern Lights flickering was just incredible.

'I had little more than three hours of sleep every night because I was just so determined to capture as much as I could.

'I have never been physically trapped by weather conditions before but it was completely worth it for the dramatic results.'

Stunning: Mr Appleton spent seven hours battling biting wind and freezing temperatures to get as close to the eruption as possible, against the advice of local guides

The Eyjafjallajökull eruption grounded flights across the UK and Europe in April after a cloud of volcanic ash which could damage jet engines drifted across the area.

Scientists say the Northern Lights, a natural phenomenon called aurora borealis, is created by the sun's super hot atmosphere, which blasts particles into the protective magnetic field surrounding the Earth.

The magnetic field forces the particles toward the north and south poles.

About 60 to 200 miles overhead, the particles bump into the Earth's atmosphere and become electrically 'excited' - throwing off light of various colours.

Although the phenomenon occurs around the clock, the lights are only visible at night.

The best time of year to see them is during winter, when darkness in the upper latitudes stretches up to 24 hours.

Islamic finance moves into mainstream as investors seek ethical alternatives

Amjid Ali tells a story about when he was setting up the UK operations of HSBC Amanah, HSBC’s Islamic bank, in 2003. Mr Ali, now a senior manager at the global Amanah business, said: “I had a young, white, Christian man working with me. His surname was Bacon, which wasn’t ideal, but he embedded himself in the community so well that he became known as Mr Halal Bacon.”

His point was that although Islamic, or Sharia-compliant, finance was designed to enable Muslims to buy financial products that comply with the tenets of their religon, it is no longer a niche business. “There’s no need to be Muslim to work here or to buy the products,” Mr Ali said.

The global Islamic finance market is growing at 15 per cent a year and is expected to be worth $1,000 billion by 2010. In the UK it has grown to more than £500 million. A recent Mintel report said that 400,000 Muslims in Britain held Islamic products.

Moreover, although the official estimate of the Muslim population in the UK is two million, it is likely to be closer to three million, which means that there is a huge potential market.

Non Muslim Britons are getting a taste for Sharia-compliant products. Steven Amos, head of marketing at the Islamic Bank of Britain, said: “We’ve got nonMuslim customers, including some really famous names, because they like the ethical standpoint we take.”

The Islamic Bank opened in 2004 and is listed on AIM. Last year its customer base shot up by 38 per cent to 42,000, while deposits grew 61 per cent to £135 million and assets went up 51 per cent to £15.8 million. Muslim demographics in Britain offer the potential for even greater growth.

About 19 per cent of Muslims are self-employed, compared to 13 per cent of adults as a whole, which brings opportunities for the sale of commercial loans and mortgages. The Muslim population is also young, with 34 per cent aged under 16, which increases the potential for the sale of childrens’ bonds, student accounts and family protection products. Muslims in the UK have a combined spending power of £21 billion and save about £1 billion a year.

But there are barriers to developing the sector. Unemployment rates in the Muslim community are three times higher than the national average and a higher proportion of Muslims are in lower-paid occupations than for the population as a whole, Mintel said.

In addition, not all Islamic products appeal to all Muslims. HSBC Amanah, with Amaar, the Bank of Ireland’s commercial mortgage business, and Lloyds TSB’s Islamic offerings, are known as Islamic windows. Some orthodox individuals might shy away from buying from the windows because the banks cannot guarantee that their funding, which they receive from the bank group, is Sharia-compliant. The Islamic Bank is entirely compliant because it funds all its lending from its deposit base and does not borrow in the interbank market.

Mr Ali admits that this is an issue, but said that HSBC was chipping away at the market, aiming at more laissez faire Muslims first. He said that the banking sector had to work to win the trust of Muslims, who fear that they will be penalised with higher charges. “We’re still very much in the introductory phase,” he said. “There’s a much wider opportunity out there but it’s more difficult to penetrate. We recognise that we need to be more proactive in terms of ‘above the line’ marketing.”

There has been a boom in Islamic finance courses in Britain to cope with the demand for staff. The Securities and Investment Institute (SII) has established a qualification and the Cass Business School offers a degree in Islamic finance. Zaher Barakat, who teaches Islamic banking and finance at Cass, said that take up of the course was strong.

“Some students are Muslim, but as a financial innovation, the field is led at the moment mainly by nonMuslim people,” Mr Barakat said. “There is a difference between the offering of financial services and the actual consumption of them.”

Yes to trade, no to usury

— The Koran tells Muslims that “God has permitted trade and forbidden usury”. Making money from money is not allowed, which rules out interest charges. Gambling is also forbidden, which means that any activity in which one person gains at another person’s expense, such as insurance, forward forex trading and share options, are not permitted. Investments cannot be linked to any businesses seen as unethical, including alcohol and tobacco.

Source: Times online

Economist to bloggers: Shut up, fools

If you don't have a Ph.D. please don't bother us with your "sophomoric musings"

By Andrew Leonard

iStockphoto/Salon

Since Ph.D.-flaunting economists can reasonably be assumed to be smart, Karthik Athreya, a specialist in macroeconomics and consumer finance who toils away in the bowels of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, probably knew that he was going to cause a ruckus when he published a broadside declaring the entire blogospheric discussion of economics irrelevant, useless, and dumb.

I've been struggling to figure out the best metaphor to describe the impact that "Economics is Hard" has already had on the econoblogosphere. Poking an anthill doesn't quite convey the magnitude of the transgression. Perhaps Brunei declaring war on China? Or the Knights Who Say Ni challenging Genghis Khan's Mongol horde to a duel to his death? One thing is certain: Karthik Athreya, by dismissing legions of bloggers as worthless, has ensured that his own name will live in infamy for generations (or at least, a couple of days.)

Athreya's basic argument appears to be that only professional research economists should be allowed to discuss economics because, well, economics is really hard, and nobody else has a chance of understanding it or appreciating all the complexity of the discipline. "When a professional research economist thinks or talks about social insurance, unemployment, taxes, budget deficits, or sovereign debt, among other things, they almost always have a very precisely articulated model that has been vetted repeatedly for internal coherence," he writes. Everybody else, not so much.

Comparing, even momentarily, such careful work with its explicit, careful reasoning, its ever-mindful approach to the accounting for feedback effects, and its transparent reproducibility, with the sophomoric musings of auto-didact or non-didact bloggers or writers is instructive....

The real issue is that there is extremely low likelihood that the speculations of the untrained, on a topic almost pathologically riddled by dynamic considerations and feedback effects, will offer anything new. Moreover, there is a substantial likelihood that it will instead offer something incoherent or misleading.

(If you lean close to your computer monitor right now, you can hear a million bloggers sputtering at once. It is not a happy sound. Kind of like the sound you hear shortly after stepping on a nest of yellow jackets while hiking through the woods.)

Athreya observes, with some dismay, that in the field of Oncology there is no comparable onco-blogosphere boasting a mob of untrained idjits spouting off varying theories about what causes and how to treat cancer. (Which is not to say that there are no crackpot wannabe onco-pundits, just that they are insignificant in numbers compared to mighty throng of poseurs who dare to cite Keynes' name as if they actually understood what the man was going on about in "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.")

"Do we expect advances in cell-biology to be immediately accessible to anyone with even a college degree?" he asks plaintively.

But here is where Athreya makes a serious misstep. The science of cell biology is by no means monolithic, but there is a pretty good consensus about what constitutes scientific truth for the bulk of the field. There's plenty that is still unknown, and competing theories out at the advancing edges of research, but, even though I do not have a degree in cell biology, I'd venture that it is safe to say that most cell biologists agree on the fundamental stuff.

The same is demonstrably not true for economics. Nobel Prize winners disagree on the most basic points, such as: what's the proper role of fiscal and monetary policy during a recession? Does the minimum wage or illegal immigration hurt or help employment? Economists disagree. What impact does regulation have on the economy? Economists disagree. Yes, economics is hard -- so hard that even economists with fancy degrees don't appear, to the layman, to know what the heck is going on.

This wouldn't be such a big deal if weren't for the nagging little problem that economic policy is something we expect governments to do. We don't expect Congress to cure cancer, but we do expect our leaders to do their best to avoid inciting Depressions and bank panics and devastating trade wars. But not only do economists disagree, profoundly, on how their research translates into policy, but most of them are also horribly incapable of communicating their research into language comprehensible by politicians. Which is where the rest of us come in, all the untrained auto-didacts attempting to understand what the economists are saying and translate it into words that can influence policy in a practical manner.

The complexity involved is, without question, immense. But that does not mean we should shy away from it -- especially now that we have the Internet around to help us navigate our way through these dense thickets. The stupidest part of Athreya's essay is its title: "Economics is Hard," which automatically summons up the memory of Teen Talk Barbie's "Math class is tough" utterance. (Sadly, Wikipedia tells me that Barbie never actually said "math is hard," and call me a crazy mob-trusting fool, but I'm going to go with the group mind fact check on this one.) The reason why many women were upset with Teen Talk Barbie was obvious: It played into stereotypes that assumed women just couldn't do the math. So why even bother try?

I will be the first to acknowledge that I stumble flat on my face when I hit the math sections included in cutting-edge economic theory. But that doesn't mean I am discouraged from trying to learn more, an important part of which means learning who to trust in the cacophony of econoblogospheric debate. Whose articulations of the problem more closely resemble reality, and resonate with history? Who is best able to take the economic data of the day and slot it into a narrative that makes sense? Who is obviously a cynical, ideologically shuttered fool? I marvel every day at the power of the Internet to put me in the middle of conversations between trained economists and a vast universe of interpreters and filters. I once called the econoblogosphere an ongoing graduate-level seminar in economics, open to everyone, and see no reason to back off on that now. Sure, the democratization of information means that there is a lot of silliness out there -- Sturgeon's 90 percent of everything is crap law undoubtedly applies to Internet discussions of economics.

But pay enough attention, do your homework, and you will find yourself more able to educate your more thoroughly on topics relevant to the pressing matters of the moment than ever before.

The good stuff floats to the top. That, I fear, is not likely to be the fate of "Economics is Hard."

For more sputtering: Brad Delong; Matthew Yglesias; Tyler Cown; Scott Sumner; Zero Hedge; and Ryan Avent.

Vatican promotes controversial Quebec priest

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican has promoted Canada's highest-ranking Catholic priest despite recent controversy over his response to the church sex-abuse scandal.

Marc Cardinal Ouellet has been named chief of the Vatican's powerful Congregations for Bishops, which vets bishop appointments around the world.

Sixty-six year old Ouellet is the Archbishop of Quebec and the Roman Catholic Primate of Canada, the church's top official in the country.

Earlier this month, a victims' group said Ouellet had refused to apologize for crimes committed within the church.

The L'Association des Victimes de Pretres, a group that helps victims of sexually abusive priests in Quebec, had said Ouellet's then-rumoured promotion would be unmerited.

Ouellet succeeds 76-year-old Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, who has retired after nearly a decade in the post.

Ouellet's promotion is part of a shuffle of the Vatican's top positions in what is being seen as an acknowledgment that efforts to reinvigorate Christianity in Europe need a boost.

The announcement also says Monsignor Rino Fisichella has been tapped to head a new Vatican office to fight secularization and re-evangelize the West. Fisichella has been head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, the Vatican’s top bioethics official.

Ouellet was recently at the centre of controversy over comments he made about abortion being an unjustifiable moral crime, even in rape cases.

The remark was criticized by feminist groups and various politicians in Ottawa and Quebec.

- With files from The Associated Press.

The £84 per year green tax hidden on energy bills that most consumers do not know they are paying

Families are paying £84 a year in 'hidden' green taxes to subsidise a shift to wind power and other environmental measures, a study has revealed.

The taxes, which are driven by EU legislation, are expected to climb to as much as £176 a year over the next decade. Most consumers are unaware the taxes are included in their energy bills.

The Carbon Emissions Reduction Target is the biggest element, responsible for an average of £45 of the £84 figure. It creates a fund that is used to subsidise home insulation schemes.

The EU Emissions Trading Scheme is responsible for £24 of the figure. This is a penalty charge related to using coal, oil or gas.

The Renewables Obligation equates to £12 and subsidises the cost of building wind farms. The Community Energy Saving Programme generates an annual average fee of £3.

The figures were compiled by energy price comparison service uSwitch.com.

It said the annual stealth charge will rise to £156 over the next ten years and could even reach £176 because of Government plans to raise more money for green energy sources.