Trio of China banks ranked in global top 10: study (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) – Three Chinese banks are now in the world's top 10, underlining the dramatic growth of the country's financial industry in recent years, according to a new study released on Thursday.

Bank of America (BAC.N) ranks as the world's top bank for the second successive year, followed by JP Morgan (JPM.N), Britain's HSBC (HSBA.L) and Citigroup (C.N), according to The Banker magazine's latest Top 1,000 list.

The magazine uses Tier 1 capital as a measure of a bank's ability to lend on a large scale and endure shocks.

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) (601398.SS) ranks in sixth place (up from 7th last year), China Construction Bank (601939.SS) is in eighth (from 15th), Bank of China (601988.SS) ranks in ninth (from 14th) and Agricultural Bank of China (601288.SS) has risen to 14th (from 28th).

China's banks are also the most profitable, with ICBC's earnings of $32.5 billion last year eclipsing all other banks. CCB was second with profits of $26.4 billion, followed by JPMorgan with $24.9 billion.

Chinese banks' profits have soared by 95 percent over the past three years and now account for over a fifth of global banking profits, The Banker estimated.

Other major emerging economies have also advanced up the rankings. Brazil's banks, for example, have some of the highest returns on average capital at 32 percent, while India's banks have more than doubled profits since 2007, the magazine said.

The biggest losses were recorded by Irish banks for the second successive year. Anglo Irish lost $23.5 billion, and Allied Irish Banks lost $15.8 billion.

The Tier 1 capital of Bank of America, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, was $164 billion at the end of 2010, just up from a year earlier and $22 billion above JPMorgan.

Bank of America also topped The Banker's first Top 1,000 list 41 years ago, when it was based on assets rather than capital.

(Reporting by Steve Slater; Editing by Will Waterman)

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U.S. aid to Afghanistan needs sharper focus: study (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The benefits of U.S. foreign aid for Afghanistan could melt away with a planned U.S. troop withdrawal, according to a congressional study that recommends the Obama administration focus on long-term, sustainable development.

The two-year study by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Democratic majority, which is to be released on Wednesday, urged the administration to make more effective use of the roughly $320 million a month in foreign aid it spends in Afghanistan, with a focus on sustainability.

The administration's fiscal year 2012 request for Afghanistan includes roughly $3.2 billion in foreign aid.

The report comes as President Barack Obama prepares to announce a decision on when to start bringing a sizable number of the 100,000 U.S. troops home from Afghanistan, a step toward decisively ending the long, costly war.

On Tuesday, Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a member of Obama's Democratic Party, said the president should withdraw a minimum of 15,000 troops by the end of this year.

The congressional report said roughly 80 percent of U.S. Agency for International Development funds allocated in Afghanistan's south and east -- the traditional heartland of the Taliban and other insurgents -- were being used for short-term stabilization programs instead of long-term development projects.

"The evidence that stabilization programs promote stability in Afghanistan is limited. Some research suggest the opposite," the report said.

The document also warned that misspent foreign aid could fuel corruption, distort labor and goods markets and contribute to insecurity in Afghanistan. It noted an estimated 97 percent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product was derived from international aid.

"Afghanistan could suffer a sever economic depression when foreign troops leave in 2014 unless the proper planning begins now," the report said.

The report also raised concern about the U.S. government's heavy reliance on contractors in Afghanistan and a lack of oversight. It said an over-reliance on international technical advisors to build the capacity of Afghan institutions may undermine the efforts.

"Our aid projects need to focus more on sustainability so that Afghans can absorb our programs when donor funds recede."

(Reporting by JoAnne Allen; Editing by Paul Simao)

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Study: Web users worry about snooping businesses (AP)

By BARBARA ORTUTAY, AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay, Ap Technology Writer – Fri Jun 3, 12:04 am ET

NEW YORK – It's not Big Brother, but "big business" that Internet users are more worried about.

A new survey found that nearly half of Internet-connected Americans age 16 and older worry about businesses checking what they do online. By comparison, 38 percent worry about the government doing so.

Not that those concerns are stopping people from using the Internet for shopping, social networking and a smattering of other activities.

The latest study from the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California found that 82 percent of Americans use the Internet, the same as in 2009.

On average, they spend more than 18 hours a week online — for browsing the Web (79 percent), for banking (47 percent) and for social networking and video-sharing (46 percent).

In the decade that the Digital Future researchers have been tracking Americans' Internet use, social networks were born, and many of them all but died (anyone remember Friendster?). People have gotten used to migrating more of their activities online and accessing the Internet from more devices than ever.

"When we started our work 11 years ago, the Internet was almost completely PC-based. We used to compare it with TV," said Jeffrey Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future.

People would use the Internet — dial-up service, back then — the way they watched TV: sitting down in front of the screen for 30, 60 minutes at a time.

Not any more.

"We think PCs are slowly going away" except for the heaviest users, such as those using it for computer-assisted design, editing or heavy writing, Cole said. "Wireless, mobile Internet is becoming the Internet for most people."

Among other findings in the survey, conducted from April 27 to Aug. 30, 2010:

• Of the 18 percent of Americans who are not using the Internet, 7 percent cited cost as a reason. A quarter said they don't go online because they don't find it useful or have no interest. And 37 percent said they didn't have a computer or Internet connection.

• 21 percent of non-users said they were excluded from communications among their friends and disadvantaged in obtaining information for work, studies or hobbies as a result of not going online. Still, 66 percent of them said they are not likely to go online within the next year.

• 68 percent of adult Internet users go shopping online. Books and gifts are the most popular categories, followed by clothes and travel.

• People are still worried about privacy when shopping online, though fewer respondents said they were very concerned or extremely concerned than the year before: 48 percent compared with 54 percent in 2009.

• Email is still nearly universal. Even the texting generation uses this somewhat antiquated method of communication: 98 percent of Internet users under 17 said they email, compared with 95 percent of those aged 18 to 24. The lowest level of email usage, 94 percent, was among 45 to 54-year-olds.

The latest survey of 1,926 people aged 12 and older has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.

A separate survey, from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, found recently that 13 percent of adult Internet users have used Twitter, up from 8 percent in November 2010. A higher percentage of African Americans and Latinos use Twitter than white people — 25 percent, 19 percent and 9 percent, respectively.

The Pew survey was conducted April 26 to May 22 among 2,277 adults and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.

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ATT official: phone health risk needs more study (AFP)

RANCHO PALO VERDES, California (AFP) – An AT&T official on Thursday called the health risk of cellphones a serious issue meriting more research but downplayed new studies warning of a link to a type of brain cancer.

Two days after World Health Organization cancer experts warned that electromagnetic fields generated by cellphones are "possibly carcinogenic to humans," the US telecoms giant's Ralph de la Vega said the data was not especially new.

"This is a serious issue," said De la Vega, chief executive of AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets.

But "the WHO didn't do any new study," he added, saying their study was one year old.

"The industry should not have too much to worry about; nevertheless, we should continue to study" the issue, he said at the All Things Digital D9 conference in California.

Experts of the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer presented their evidence at a conference in Lyon, France on Tuesday that suggested mobile phone users may be at increased risk of glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer.

Although they cautioned that the scientific evidence showed only a possible link, not a proven one, they recommended the most intense phone users make use of texting and hands-free devices to reduce exposure to the dangerous fields.

"There is some evidence of increased risk of glioma" and another form of non-malignant tumor called acoustic neuroma, said IARC scientist Kurt Straif.

The global wireless industry group CTIA-The Wireless Association disputed the significance of the report, citing possible "bias" and "data flaws" in the studies.

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Study: Mexico failing sex slaves

Seven people suspected of running a forced-prostitution ring were recently arrested.Mexico City's human rights commission calls it a "new form of slavery"The report is released days after authorities rescue 62 victims of a forced-prostitution ringVictims' rights "remain unprotected," the study saysResearcher: "The authorities are not investigating, nor are they asking witnesses"

Mexico City (CNN) -- While an estimated 10,000 women are victims of human trafficking in Mexico's capital, there were only 40 investigations of the crime and three convictions in the city last year, according to a report issued this week.

The discrepancy is an "alarming figure" that shows a need to improve laws and policies, according to a study on human trafficking and sexual exploitation from Mexico City's human rights commission, which calls the phenomenon a "new form of slavery."

"The authorities are not investigating, nor are they asking witnesses," said Eva Reyes, investigation coordinator at the Antonio de Montesinos Center for Social and Cultural Studies, one of the partners of the study.

Cultural norms and social stigma prevent people from realizing that many prostitutes lingering in dark alleys of Mexico City are victims, officials said as they presented the report Wednesday.

"They are seen as people who are doing it freely. That is the first obstacle to justice," Reyes said.

More on modern-day slavery: The CNN Freedom Project

Authorities in Mexico City announced Monday that they had rescued 62 victims of a forced-prostitution ring -- including a 13-year-old girl.

Five men and two women who police say ran the ring were arrested after an investigation that started when a minor involved reported the suspects to authorities.

One victim told investigators that she was forced into prostitution in Mexico City after meeting two men in Oaxaca, a city more than 460 kilometers (288 miles) away.

"After chatting with her, the victim told him that she was a domestic worker and the accused offered her a more comfortable life with well-paid work, and in a second encounter he convinced her to come live with him," the statement said.

Such approaches are a common tactic for those involved in human trafficking, who frequently target women and girls in smaller cities outside the capital, Reyes said.

In the southern border state of Chiapas, Central American women are frequently a target, Reyes said.

But regardless of where victims are recruited, she said, they often pass through -- or end up -- in Mexico City, a sprawling metropolis of more than 21 million people.

"In one case, 107 trafficking victims, both Mexican and foreign citizens, were freed from a factory disguised as a drug rehabilitation center in Mexico City; many of them had been kidnapped, and all were subjected to forced labor," according to 2010 report on human trafficking from the U.S. State Department.

The State Department report noted that authorities had conducted raids on brothels suspected in human trafficking and a special prosecutor for trafficking in Mexico City sentenced one offender to 10 years in prison last year, "the first sentence under Mexico's federal anti-trafficking law and Mexico City's local anti-trafficking law."

But more needs to be done, this week's human rights commission report said.

"The high number of women who are victims of human trafficking are not achieving access to judicial resources and because of this, the large majority of these incidents remain in impunity. ... Their rights remain unprotected," it said.

CNN's Catherine E. Shoichet contributed to this report.

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Study ties new al Qaeda chief to murder of journalist Pearl (Reuters)

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian militant recently appointed interim leader of al Qaeda operations, has been linked to the killing of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in 2002, U.S. investigators said in a report.

A Wall Street Journal reporter, Pearl was kidnapped in Pakistan's biggest city of Karachi in January 2002 while researching a story on Islamist militants, and was later beheaded.

The findings by investigators of the Pearl Project revealed al-Adel had discussed Pearl's abduction with Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, also known as KSM, the accused mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

"KSM told the FBI that he was pulled into the kidnapping by a high-level leader in al Qaeda circles, an Egyptian named Saif al-Adel, who told him to make the kidnapping an al Qaeda operation," said the investigators in their report which was published in January.

Journalism academics and students set up the Pearl Project at Georgetown University in the United States to investigate Pearl's kidnapping and murder.

The linkage of al-Adel to Pearl's murder shows the long-standing ties between al Qaeda and Pakistan militancy, which flourishes not only in the lawless northwest along the Afghan border but in Karachi and other urban centers.

Pearl fell into al Qaeda's hands after Pakistani militants, the subject of Pearl's research, kidnapped him.

Al-Adel learned of Pearl and approached Mohammad to take him off the Pakistani militants' hands.

"He (al-Adel) thought this was an opportunity," Mohammad told FBI agents, according to the report's authors.

"We can take advantage of it. He said he wanted to make sure it's an al Qaeda thing."

Mohammad, who was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and taken to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, later admitted he beheaded Pearl.

Mohammad told investigators he initially had no idea about the kidnapping and he also said al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was reportedly angry over Pearl's brutal killing, the report said.

A former chief prosecutor for Guantanamo Bay military commissions told the researchers: "One of the high value detainees told interrogators that Osama bin Laden was angry that KSM had slaughtered Pearl so publicly and brutally, arguing that the murder brought unnecessary attention on the network."

A British-born Islamist militant, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani court in 2002 for his role in Pearl's killing. He has appealed his conviction. Three other co-accused who face life sentences, have also appealed.

Al-Adel, the latest militant named in connection with Pearl's murder, was appointed al Qaeda's temporary leader following the killing of bin Laden by U.S. special forces in a Pakistani town on May 2.

U.S. prosecutors say al-Adel is one of al Qaeda's top military commanders and helped plan 1998 bomb attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. They also say he set up al Qaeda training camps in Sudan and Afghanistan in the 1990s.

(Editing by Chris Allbritton and Robert Birsel)

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Home ownership costs rise: RBC study (Reuters)

TORONTO (Reuters) – The cost of owning a home rose in the first quarter as home prices were up in most markets, reversing two quarters of easier conditions, a report by Royal Bank of Canada said on Friday.

The bank's quarterly Housing Trends and Affordability Index found that the cost of housing rose nationally across all the housing types it tracks.

The affordability index measures the proportion of pretax household income needed to service the cost of owning a home. The higher the measure, the more costly it is.

"Despite the latest erosion in affordability, provincial levels generally continue to stand near their long-term averages, suggesting that owning a home remains affordable or, at worst, slightly unaffordable across Canada -- with Vancouver being a notable exception," said the report's author, senior bank economist Robert Hogue.

For a detached bungalow, the national measure rose 0.7 of a percentage point to 40.5 percent of pretax income. The costs of owning a standard condominium and a standard two-storey home both edged up 0.2 of a percentage point, to 27.7 percent and 46.2 percent, respectively.

Canada's largest cities all faced higher costs, particularly Vancouver, British Columbia, where the costs of home ownership neared record highs. Increases in British Columbia were the most significant of any province.

"The lack of affordability (in British Columbia) will continue to weigh on local demand and could potentially cause painful market disruptions in the period ahead," Hogue said.

Rising interest rates will hurt affordability across the country in the months ahead, he said, but growth in household incomes will likely soften the blow.

In the previous two quarters, declining mortgage rates had helped make housing easier to afford. But mortgage rates had a neutral impact in the first quarter, the report said.

Several major Canadian banks cut their five-year residential fixed mortgage rates earlier this week by 0.10 percent to 5.59 percent.

(Reporting by Ka Yan Ng; editing by Peter Galloway)

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New Pentagon study finds psychological toll from years of fighting

U.S. Marines patrol the outskirts of a village near a forward operating base near Kajaki, Afghanistan, in October.Stress is higher and morale is lower in the military, report saysSoldiers on their third/fourth deployment report significantly more psychological problemsThe report also has positive findings, including increased "resilience"

Washington (CNN) -- A new report paints a stark picture of the toll on the U.S. military of almost a decade of war: higher stress and lower morale.

The report, released Thursday at the Pentagon, relied on questions to soldiers and Marines in Afghanistan in July and August of last year and compared responses with similar surveys in 2005 and 2009.

The report noted "significant decline in reports of individual morale" as well as "acute stress rates significantly higher" than in earlier years.

"Psychologically, it is hard to imagine that these elevated levels of combat are not taking a toll on soldiers. Reports of acute stress symptoms among soldiers surveyed in 2010 have significantly increased and reports of individual morale have significantly decreased relative to 2009," said the report, formally known as the Joint Mental Health Advisory Team 7.

Senior military officers regularly warn that there is a cumulative cost of multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Soldiers on their third/fourth deployment report significantly more psychological problems and use of mental health medications than soldiers on their first or second deployment," the report said in the summary of findings for the Army.

But there also are multiple positive findings, including increased "resilience" and "low levels of psychological problems under conditions of high combat and significantly higher unit cohesion and readiness."

Also, military personnel reported greater access to mental health services, as the military increased the numbers of caregivers and lowered the stigma associated with seeking help.

For Marines, the report said the rate of reporting psychological problems such as acute stress, depression or anxiety is significantly higher in 2010, with a "dramatic increase" in combat exposure.

Another theme of the report is how common it is for soldiers and Marines to be exposed to explosions, for instance from roadside bombs.

"Over 50% of the soldiers reported being dismounted and within 50 meters of a blast at least once," the report said. "This number is almost certainly an underestimate of the percent of soldiers that will experience exposure to blast in a full 12-month tour."

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Taxes to Balance the Budget? Not Unless Rates Go Up 150 Percent, Study Says

Public Notice

A table by Public Notice shows how much more taxpayers would have to pay of their income in order to match current spending.

It's Tax Day, and the Washington chatter is all about whether America's top earners should be taxed more.

But, as the dim outlook from a key ratings agency showed Monday, Uncle Sam's deficit problem is deep. And if the federal government really wanted to use the tax code to close the deficit, it turns out everybody would feel the burn.

A new Tax Day study showed that if Washington wanted to balance the budget using tax increases alone, rates would have to more than double across the board -- including on the middle class -- to keep up with federal spending.

As Republicans often argue, the top tier already pays a greater percentage in taxes than all the rest. The government could extract hundreds of billions more by upping their rates, but without significant spending cuts would have to turn next to the middle brackets.

"Everyone would be looking at a tax hike if that's the answer here," Public Notice director Gretchen Hamel said.

IRS data showed that in 2008, the top 5 percent of earners -- households earning more than $160,000 -- accounted for about 59 percent of all federal income tax paid. The next 45 percent -- solidly middle-class taxpayers earning between $33,000 and $160,000 -- accounted for about 39 percent of all personal income tax paid.

The bottom 50 percent accounted for the remaining sliver of tax revenue. In fact, a Tax Policy Center study showed that 45 percent of households in the United States will pay no federal income tax for 2010.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Monday that those households do pay taxes. 

"There are many taxes besides income taxes," he said. "Those who are paying payroll taxes, are working Americans, they very much have a stake in the system and they very much have a stake in the economic future of this country."

President Obama has said emphatically that he will not allow the tax rate on families earning more than $250,000 to remain at 35 percent after 2012, a source of contention among Republicans who say the top earners are already carrying the brunt of the "shared sacrifice." 

Meanwhile, critics warn that tax hikes will, in all likelihood, have a limited impact on the deficit -- unless they are raised beyond recognition.

The estimate from the nonpartisan Public Notice demonstrated this point. It showed that if Washington wanted to hoist tax rates to actually cover spending, the top tier rate would go from 35 to 88 percent; the middle tier from 25 to 63 percent and the lowest from 10 to 25 percent.

"You'd have to more than double taxes and you still wouldn't solve this problem," Hamel said. "And the problem is spending."

Obama is targeting his proposed increase on the top 2 percent of wage earners, casting it as a hike on millionaires and billionaires. He argues they can afford to pay a little more to help the country balance its books.

But as one might expect, virtually nobody thinks they’re taxed too little -- though the burden varies drastically across the income scale.

A new Gallup poll released Monday showed that while 57 percent of Americans describe their income tax as "fair," most think their taxes are still too high. The more an individual made, the stronger they felt on that question, the poll showed.

The Obama administration emphasizes that its deficit reduction plan leans more on spending cuts than tax increases. The administration is looking at $1 in revenue increases for every $3 in spending cuts. That's about the ratio being eyed by the "gang of six" senators working on a bipartisan compromise.

But Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., a member of that group, said in an interview Sunday that the revenue increases don't have to come from tax rate hikes. Rather, he stressed that lawmakers could instead cut back on deductions and other loopholes that are costing the U.S. Treasury.

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Stroke risks fade when women stop taking estrogen, study finds

By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY

Many menopausal women take estrogen pills; many also fear its effects.

EnlargeCloseBy H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY

Many menopausal women take estrogen pills; many also fear its effects.

The latest study bolsters previous evidence that concerns about breast cancer and heart attacks are largely unfounded for those who take the hormone for a short period of time to relieve hot flashes and other menopause symptoms.

Estrogen-only pills are recommended just for women who have had a hysterectomy, and the study focused only on that group. About 25% of women in menopause have had hysterectomies. Other women are prescribed a combination pill of estrogen and progestin because for them, estrogen alone can raise the risk for cancer of the uterus.

The study results don't really change the advice doctors have been giving for several years now: Take hormones to relieve menopause symptoms in the lowest possible dose for the shortest possible time.

The women in the study took estrogen for about six years and were evaluated for about four years after stopping. Slightly increased risks for strokes and blood clots that were found while they took the pills disappeared during the follow-up. Unfortunately, the bone-strengthening benefit of estrogen disappeared, too. Once women ended it, they had just as many hip fractures during the follow-up as women who'd taken dummy pills.

The research also found that women who started taking estrogen-only pills in their 50s fared better after stopping than women who'd started in their 70s

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Michelle Obama's Former Congressional District Ranks Last for Healthy Behavior, Study Finds

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Michelle Obama's campaign to get Americans to eat healthier apparently hasn't reached the congressional district she and President Obama used to call home.

The 1st Congressional District of Illinois ranks dead last in the nation for "healthy behavior," according to a new study released by the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index.

The index measured 436 districts, including the 435 U.S. congressional districts and the District of Columbia. The Obamas' former district ranked 436th in 2010, down from 408 in 2009, the first year the Obamas were in the White House.

The top 10 congressional districts for "healthy behavior" were in California. The state's 46th district, which Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher represents, ranked No. 1 and its 14th district, represented by Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo came in second.

The second worst congressional district for "healthy behavior" was Kentucky's 5th district, represented by Republican Rep. Hal Rogers, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. CNSNews.com, which was first to report the survey, suggested that is no surprise since as chairman, Rogers oversees congressional pork -- federal spending on lawmakers' pet projects in their home districts.

The Well-Being Index is the product of a partnership created in 2008 between the polling company Gallup and the health-care company Healthways to develop a system for methodically measuring the well-being of Americans.

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Report: Study of gay, transgender health needed

and when they do, there's little research to guide doctors in their treatment.

Thursday's report says changing that starts with a seemingly simple step: Researchers should ask people about their sexual orientation and gender identity, just as they routinely ask about race and ethnicity, in all government-funded health studies.

The report was welcomed by the gay-rights community as a long-needed step in addressing health disparities.

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