介绍:
China's service sector activity retreats in September
China's service sector activity slowed down last month from a peak in August, as new business cooled.
The services purchasing managers' index or PMI released by HSBC pulled back to 53.5 last month from 54.1 in August, which is a record high for the last 17 months.
A reading above 50 in PMI surveys indicates an expansion in activity.
The data shows new business fell slightly last month from August but employment and outstanding business both inched up.
An official survey released last week showed that last month's service sector grew at its slowest pace in eight months after new orders shrank.
The official data of the non-manufacturing sectors PMI came in at 54 percent last month, down 0.4 percent from August.
IMF lowers world growth forecasts for 2014, 2015
The International Monetary Fund has lowered its global economic growth forecasts for this year and the next.
In its updated economic outlook, the IMF says it expects the global economy to grow 3.3 percent this year and 3.8 percent next year.
This is a slight reduction of 0.1 percentage point from the July forecast for this year, and down 0.2 percentage points for next year.
The IMF says the cut is due to weaker than expected global economic activity in the first half of this year.
The International Monetary Fund's forecast for Chinese growth has remained unchanged at 7.4 percent for this year and 7.1 percent next year.
While richer countries like Britain and the United States are seeing stronger expansion, the IMF has downgraded its forecast for the three biggest economies in the euro zone - Germany, France and Italy.
The IMF's chief economist Olivier Blanchard says the European Central Bank's purchases of asset-backed securities could help address part of the problem in the region.
"We think that one of the difficulties in Europe today is credit to small and medium size enterprises. We think that an ABS, asset-backed securities, market, a good healthy ABS market would be useful. This is a market in which the spreads are still sometimes quite large, so we think the ECB can indeed help by developing that program."
The IMF has also lowered growth projections for Japan and Brazil.
For more on this, CRI's Zhao Yang spoke earlier with Einar Tangen, former chair of the State of Wisconsin's International Trade Council.
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Einar Tangen, former chair of the State of Wisconsin's International Trade Council.
China sees growth in retail sales and tourism in Golden Week
China's retail sales have seen double-digit growth over the week-long "Golden Week" holiday, but at a slower pace than one year ago.
Retailers and catering firms chalked up sales of nearly 160 billion U.S. dollars during the seven days, up 12 percent year-on-year. That's 1 percentage point lower than the growth rate achieved last year.
Tourism also remained exuberant during the Golden Week holiday with more visitors but less ticket revenue.
During the seven days of the holiday, a total of more than 30 million people visited tourist sites monitored by the Chinese tourism authority, up some 4-percent year on year.
But these sites saw fewer income from tickets, down some 2.5 percent on last year.
Oversea tours continued their popularity this year, with South Korea, Thailand and Japan topping the chart.
The National Day holiday from October 1 to 7 has become an annual tourism event for Chinese people who are well-off and willing to spend more on leisure and entertainment.
China's Bright Food buys majority stake in Italian olive oil group
China's second largest food group Bright Food has agreed to buy a majority stake in the Italian olive oil group Salov, which owns the Sagra and Filippo Berio brands.
The group did not provide details of the deal in its statement.
The statement says the investment in Italy is part of Bright Food's plan to direct Chinese people's habits toward a healthy nutritional lifestyle.
Salov generates annual sales worth some 420 million U.S. dollars and produces olive oil, seed oil and other products in over 60 countries.
It is a market leader in Britain and the U.S..
Twitter sues U.S. Justice Department over surveillance
Twitter has sued the U.S. Department of Justice in a bid to learn more about the specifics of the extent of U.S. government surveillance.
Under current regulations, Twitter cannot reveal certain information about government requests for users' data relating to national security.
Twitter argues that this violates the right to free speech.
The lawsuit follows an agreement between Internet companies like Google and Microsoft with the government about court orders they receive related to surveillance.
Twitter submitted a draft transparency report to the FBI in April.
But the FBI has since denied Twitter's request to publish the draft.
Air France puts cost of pilots strike at $632 million
Air France has put the total cost of last month's two-week pilots strike at 630 million U.S. dollars.
That is roughly equivalent to a fifth of the group's estimated full-year core profit.
The airline says its total passenger traffic fell 16 percent last month compared with last year, adding that bookings for the fourth quarter were also down.
Europe's second largest carrier was in dispute with pilots over plans to expand its budget subsidiary Transavia.
The airline has put the expansion of the budget carrier on hold after the two sides agreed to talks.
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