International aid is starting to arrive in Sumatra following an appeal by the Indonesian government in the aftermath of Wednesday’s powerful earthquake.

More than 1,000 people are known to have died and up to 3,000 more are believed trapped beneath collapsed buildings in the city of Padang.

Widespread destruction has also been reported in surrounding areas.

Australia, Russia, the UK and the EU are among those sending emergency supplies, medics and rescue teams.

Witnesses in Padang report a stench of decomposing bodies hanging over collapsed buildings as rescuers battle to reach survivors.

Food shortages are being reported in areas where the earthquake has damaged roads, while people who lost their homes are said to be sleeping in the streets.

The BBC’s Karishma Vaswani, in Padang, said that the Red Cross planned to hold a meeting in the city on Saturday to co-ordinate relief efforts.

Its priority was to ensure injured survivors received the medical attention they needed, she adds.

Disaster zone

Despite a lack of heavy lifting equipment, rescuers are still pulling survivors from the rubble.

Ratna Kurnia Sari, 19, was rescued badly injured but alive from the rubble of her college in Padang 40 hours after the earthquake struck.

“Her dead friends were beneath and above her,” said Dr Dubel Mereyenes, who was treating her.

Another survivor trapped beneath a ruined hotel in Padang sent a text message to a relative asking for help, rescuers revealed.

“We think there are eight people alive in there,” Reuters news agency quoted army officer Arkamelvi Karmani as saying.

He said the text message implored rescuers: “Be careful that the excavator doesn’t cause the building to collapse on us.”

Those trapped are believed to be on what was the 6th floor and rescue teams are building a tunnel through the rubble to reach them.

But the BBC’s Alastair Leithead, who is in Padang, says that as the hours pass, the rescue operation is turning into the recovery of bodies.

Two Australian planes carrying medical personnel and rescue experts have arrived in Padang, and dozens of British firefighters are due there late on Saturday.

A Swiss sniffer-dog team is already on the ground, and Russian, Estonian and Japanese personnel have all been sent. Countries around the world have pledged relief funds.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has also called for $10m (£6.2m) in government aid to be distributed quickly.

“The… fund has to flow quickly, no more bureaucracy for this,” he said. “This is an emergency, so speed is crucial.”

The Red Cross in Geneva said aerial photos suggested the disaster zone was wider than previously thought, stretching across western Sumatra.

“The feedback is that Padang city and environs are bad, but once you go into the surrounding rural areas, the situation is very grave,” said spokesman Christine South.

“There was talk of complete devastation of some villages - 100% devastation - and 50% in others.”

Wednesday’s 7.6 magnitude quake struck off the coast of Padang and caused devastation. A second quake of 6.8 struck nearby on Thursday causing panic but no reports of damage or casualties.

he U.S. downturn will be the longest in three decades, and the drought in consumer spending may be the worst ever, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

The implosion of credit markets last month will cause the economy to shrink at a 3 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter and decline at a 1.5 percent pace in the first three months of 2009, according to the median estimate of 59 economists surveyed Nov. 3 to Nov. 11. Following last quarter’s 0.3 percent drop, the slump would be the longest since 1974-75.

“The economy fell off a cliff in October,” said Richard Berner, co-head of global economics at Morgan Stanley in New York. “We had a huge financial shock that intensified the credit crunch and triggered a sharp downturn.”

Declines in household spending will extend into next year as the worst financial crisis in seven decades forces employers to keep cutting payrolls on top of the 1.2 million jobs already lost this year. President-elect Barack Obama has said the U.S. needs a second economic stimulus package “sooner rather than later.”

The pace of contraction this quarter would be the worst since 1990. Berner is among economists projecting the current slump will also be the most serious in a quarter century as the lack of credit causes a reinforcing, vicious circle of declines in confidence, spending and hiring. “All of these adverse feedback loops are working to reinforce the downturn,” he said. “At the moment, it looks like the deepest U.S. recession since ‘81.”

Pessimistic outlook
Some members of the group that officially determines when U.S. contractions begin and end are even more pessimistic. “We’re in for a pretty serious recession,” Jeffrey Frankel, a member of the business-cycle dating committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, said in a Nov. 10 interview. “There’s a chance it’ll be the worst postwar recession.”

In addition to gross domestic product, the group tracks changes in payrolls, production, income and sales to make their call. The NBER usually declares a recession 12 to 18 months after it starts. The odds of an official contraction occurring within the next 12 months rose to 100 percent, according to this month’s survey, up from 90 percent in October.

After dropping at a 3.1 percent pace in the third quarter, consumer spending will fall 2.9 percent this quarter and 1.3 percent in the first three months of 2009, according to the survey median. Spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of the economy, has never fallen for three consecutive quarters in the postwar era.

Falling demand will cause an even bigger increase in unemployment than projected last month. Economists surveyed forecast the jobless rate will rise to 7 percent in the first quarter of 2009, up from last month’s forecast of 6.6 percent. The rate will climb to 7.7 percent by the end of 2009, the highest level since 1992, the survey showed.

The jobless rate rose to 6.5 percent in October, the highest since 1994, the government said last week. Employers cut 240,000 jobs last month and the total number of unemployed Americans jumped to 10.1 million, the highest level in a quarter century.

“The combination of the credit crunch and the rapid decline in consumer spending were the two drivers” behind the weakening employment outlook, said John Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia.

The economic slump is contributing to a plunge in commodity prices that spells good news for inflation. Consumer prices will rise 1.8 percent next year, the smallest gain since the last official recession in 2001, after increasing 3 percent this year, the survey showed.

The diminishing threat of inflation will give the Federal Reserve leeway to lower interest rates again, the survey showed. The benchmark rate, now at 1 percent, is likely to fall to 0.5 percent by March, its lowest level ever.

Obama, in his first post-election press conference, last week said he would follow up on any fiscal stimulus passed by Congress in the last weeks of the Bush administration with further measures after his Jan. 20 inauguration. Already, the government has approved a $700 billion financial rescue package, on top of wide-ranging measures from the Fed to boost liquidity. U.S. automakers have been among the hardest hit by the slump in spending. Vehicle sales plunged in October for a 12th straight month, the longest streak in 17 years, overwhelming efforts by General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler to cut costs by trimming payrolls and shutting factories.

Kidman held up a tender picture of her and the four-month-old - who she has previously taken extraordinary lengths to shield from the public eye - while spruiking Baz Luhrmann’s upcoming epic Australia in an episode screened in the US overnight.

Bucking Hollywood trends, Kidman has not released or sold any images of her first child with crooner Keith Urban.

But the 41-year-old opened up in the revealing interview, also admitting how Sunday Rose got her name.

irst she talked about getting pregnant with Urban after a miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy when married to Tom Cruise.

Winfrey ended up getting an assistant to bring out Kidman’s purse to see the picture. As for the name Sunday, it’s Kidman and Urban’s favourite day of the week.

Winfrey also gave the controversial flick Australia - which also stars Hugh Jackman - her stamp of approval.

“Congratulations on your imagination, your vision, your creativity, your direction. Our hearts are all swelling because, my God, it’s just the film we needed to see,” Winfrey told Luhrmann on a show specially devoted to the film.

“I have not been this excited about a movie since I don’t know when.”

Winfrey, Kidman and Jackman appeared on a specially constructed replica 1930s outback cattle station, where Australia is set.

Kidman admitted the Luhrmann lustre made her agree to do the film without even seeing a script.

“He just called me up and said, ‘I’m thinking about this film’. And I’m like, ‘I’m in. I’m yours’, because I feel also that there are directors that bring out something in you that nobody else brings out,” she told Winfrey.

Jackman said his good mate Kidman convinced him to do the same.

“I said, ‘Tell me what the script’s like because Baz wouldn’t really tell me much about it’. And she said, ‘I haven’t read the script. You just sign on’. And I said, ‘You haven’t read the script?’ She goes, ‘No, this is Baz Luhrmann. Just do it’,” Jackman said.

Luhrmann spoke to Winfrey from Sydney, where he is putting the finishing touches to the film - due to premiere here next Tuesday.

“At the end of the day all you’ve got is your story, so try to make it a good one,” Baz said, quoting a line from Australia.

“Hugh and Nicole and I, we’ve been on an incredible story and a journey, and if it can put a little bit of good spirit and hope and joy out in the world at this time, then it’s been worthwhile.”

Jackman also managed to win Winfrey and the audience over with packets of Tim Tams.

“You think it’s hard getting through customs with nail scissors? Try getting through with over 300 packages of Tim Tams,” he joked.

Garcia closer to Tiger The 28-year-old sank a seven-foot birdie putt from the fringe of the 18th green on the second play-off hole to win his second European Tour title in three weeks and the 19th professional tournament of his career.

“I feel great…. I’m just so proud to win and reach number two in the world,” Garcia said.

“I’ve never been this close to number one. It’s exciting,” Garcia said, adding his next goal was to win a Major and possibly surpass Woods.

For Wilson, the play-off loss meant he was consigned to his eighth runner-up finish on the European Tour without ever having won a tournament. “It’s just getting to a stage where second is just not good enough anymore… It’s about time I took my chance,” Wilson said.

However, his second place means he will rise inside the world’s top 50.

“He’s going to win soon. He’s playing too good not to win. He’ll be fine,” Garcia said.

Fund calls for policies to ease crunch

“Demand is falling around the world, and the IMF is revising down further its growth forecast. Additional monetary and fiscal policy response needs to be on the agenda,” IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn told G20 leaders in a Nov. 6 letter. “There is scope for fiscal expansion in many advanced and some emerging economies; and with inflation declining, some central banks have scope for further monetary easing.”

He also said that all countries needed to resist protectionism as a reaction into the downturn. His remarks came as financial ministers from the 19 largest economies delivered a message that governments need to act faster and be ready to cut interest rates or increase spending in order to fortify ailing world markets.

The G20 finance ministers’ Sao Paolo meeting was a preparatory session for the weekend’s Washington summit. The G20’s members are G7 countries, the world’s top advanced economies; major developing nations including China, Russia, India and Turkey; and the EU.

The IMF and the World Bank also take part in the G20 meetings.

U.S. President George W. Bush last month called for the G20 leaders gathering here to boost global coordination and cooperation against the financial crisis.

The IMF said last week that the top advanced economies collectively were expected to shrink 0.3 percent next year, with the United States’ negative growth reaching 0.7 percent.

Strauss-Kahn said that the G20 leaders summit was facing the task of dealing with the fallout of the financial crisis and dealing with the longer-term global architecture - fixing an inadequate regulatory system and developing a reliable early warning and response system.

“Emerging markets are under stress as the capital flows that have sustained growth dry up across the board. The international community must take action,” he said. “For this reason, the fund has moved rapidly to assist several countries with substantial financing and policy advice, and also put in place a new Short-Term Liquidity Facility to provide rapid financing for countries with strong fundamentals.”

He was referring to a recent IMF move to form a special fund worth more than $200 billion for urgent credit line assets for emerging markets.

A new Bretton Woods
Strauss-Kahn said that in the light of the crisis, the design of financial regulation required a rethink. “The crisis has underlined the importance of having its ultimate implementation by national authorities subject to surveillance by a body or network of institutions alert to systemic implications across financial instruments, markets, and countries,” he said.

For the longer term, he said he endorsed calls for “a new Bretton Woods agreement,” a reference to the Bretton Woods conference, a gathering of 44 nations in July 1944 to regulate the international monetary and financial order after the conclusion of World War II.

But Strauss-Kahn also implied that the weekend’s G20 summit was unlikely to produce radical change in the way global economy is governed, because more time, work and shared understanding were needed in advance.

“One important lesson of the original Bretton Woods agreement was that its foundations were carefully laid through serious and vigorous discussion of the underlying issues,” he said.

The global crisis and ensuing international efforts to fight it come at a time when Turkey is still undecided over a new precautionary stand-by arrangement with the IMF.

With Barack Obama’s victory in the U.S. presidential race, investors were hopeful he could focus renewed energy on tackling deteriorating conditions in the world’s largest economy — a vital export market — that have dragged on growth around the world, analysts said.

“We are definitely upbeat now about the market direction. I think investors and funds will be coming in and buying aggressively until the end of year,” said Alex Tang, head of research at Core Pacific-Yamaichi in Hong Kong.

“Investors also are hoping that Obama can make a number of changes to help the economy,” he said.

Some of the gains were driven by relief that the political uncertainty was lifted with Obama’s win. There was also a growing believe that, as the credit crunch eased, world equity markets could rally the rest of the year after last month’s historic sell-off.

“It’s an excuse for the market to rally, there’s less political uncertainty and that gives investors more confidence in the short term,” said Frank Gong, a Hong Kong-based managing director for JP Morgan Securities. “But technically it’s more about the credit crisis settling down and the market’s fear coming down.”

Across Asia markets rose. Japan’s Nikkei 225 stock average advanced 2.7 percent to 9,341.41, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index surged 5.7 percent to 15,196.87.

Australia’s index rose 2.8 percent, and Singapore’s key stock measure rising 4.1 percent.

The upswing followed Wall Street, where many investors looked past more signs of a slumping U.S. economy and piled into stocks in anticipation of a year-end rally.

The Dow Jones index staged its biggest Election Day rally ever, rising 305.45 points, or 3.3 percent, to close at 9,625.28. The broader indices also rose, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 index up 39.45, or 4.1 percent, to 1,005.75, its first close over the 1,000 mark since Oct. 13.

Wall Street futures also were down a touch, suggesting U.S. markets would climb higher Wednesday. Dow futures were down 3 points at 9,584.

In Japan, a weaker yen boosted shares of major exporters including automakers and consumer electronics firms. Toyota Motor Corp. rose 8.1 percent, Canon Inc. jumped 11.7 percent and Sony Corp. advanced 6.3 percent.

The dollar was trading at 99.46 yen, up from the 98-yen zone the previous day in Asia.

Sanyo Electric Co. surged 18 percent after being untraded Tuesday due to a rush of buy orders triggered by weekend reports that the company may be bought by rival Panasonic Corp.

A Sanyo-Panasonic entity would create Japan’s biggest electronics maker, surpassing Hitachi Ltd., and would also be among the biggest in the world. Officials from both companies denied Tuesday that any deal has been reached.

Oil prices retreated after surging above $70 a barrel overnight. Light, sweet crude for December delivery was exchanging hands at $68.88, down $1.65 cents, in Asian trade on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Tuesday in Europe, Britain’s FTSE 100 index rose 196.22 points, or 4.4 percent, to 4,639.50, while Germany’s DAX gained 251.20 points, or 5.0 percent, at 5,278.04. France’s CAC-40 jumped 163.12 points, or 4.6 percent, at 3,691.09.

___

AP reporter Tomoko A. Hosaka contributed to this report from Tokyo.

Historic U.S. Elections

The U.S. media projected Democrat candidate Barack Obama has won the historic elections early on Wednesday, becoming the first African-American president. Sen. John McCain congratulated Obama for his victory.

CNN, ABC and FOX projected at 11 p.m. Eastern time (GMT 0400) that Obama had won the election.

Obama won Ohio, a key battleground state with 20 electoral votes. No Republican has won the White House without winning Ohio. Going into the election, polls showed Obama with a 3-point lead there.

Obama has held off assaults by McCain in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, the top two states that Democrats won in 2004 and that McCain had fought to take back.

Obama won victories across the northeast, sweeping every state in New England as well as New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and his home state of Illinois.

McCain won a number of southern states, including West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana.

Obama is projected to win California, Washington, Oregon and Hawaii.

He also is projected to win Virginia, a state that hasn’t voted for a Democratic president since 1964.

CNN earlier projected that Obama will win Ohio,

Obama and McCain are running a tight race in Indiana as results are tallied in the battleground state.

With about 85 percent of precincts reporting, McCain held a slim lead in the state.

In addition to the presidential contest, voters were making choices in a number of key House and Senate races that could determine whether the Democrats strengthen their hold on Congress.

Democrats seem to gain the majority in House and Senate as well.

Much packaging is designed to make products look good on the shelf or to discourage shoplifting. Neither is relevant to online retailing, so Amazon is moving towards “frustration-free packaging”.

free hit counters
How many times have you cut your hand while opening sealed plastic clamshell package surrounding a smaller product such as a memory card for your camera?

Or maybe you’re used to shaking your head in dismay at the pile of rubbish that’s left when your child unpacks a new toy?

“I think we’ve all experienced the frustration that sometimes occurs when you try to get a new toy or electronics product out of its package,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com.

While Amazon officials say the company’s frustration-free packaging initiative is designed to make it easier for customers to open products and to be more environmentally friendly by reducing the amount of packaging used, it’s probably fair to say that cost reduction is another important consideration.

The redesigned packaging is simpler and significantly reduces the number of packaging components. Furthermore, the recyclable cardboard boxes do not require an additional shipping carton.

The first products to be shipped in the new packaging are a small selection of toys from Fisher-Price and Mattel, SD memory cards from Transcend, and the Microsoft Wireless Notebook Optical Mouse 3000.

For example, the new packaging for the Fisher-Price Imaginext Adventures Pirate Ship is said to eliminate 36 inches (91 centimetres) of plastic-coated wire ties, 1,576.5 square inches (just over 1 square metre) of printed corrugated package inserts, 36.1 square inches (over 230 square centimetres) of printed folding carton materials, 175.25 square inches (1130 square centimetres) of PVC blisters, 3.5 square inches (23 square centimetres) of ABS molded styrene and two moulded plastic fasteners.

Similarly, the Transcend memory cards are shipped in recyclable cardboard envelopes instead of a plastic clamshell and outer carton.

These changes should reduce weight and volume, both of which affect shipping costs. Since Amazon provides free shipping on many orders totalling at least $US25 - including all the frustration-free items we checked - such savings are clearly to the company’s benefit.

“It will take many years, but our vision is to offer our entire catalog of products in frustration-free packaging,” added Bezos.

Well-known BitTorrent sites such as The Pirate Bay and Mininova were at the time of publication Friday hosting multiple downloads of the newly aired operating system–both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

On The Pirate Bay, one copy of the 32-bit build had more than one thousand people uploading it, and almost 7,000 people on the way to downloading it. The 64-bit version was less popular, with the earliest copy available on the site having only around 100 people hosting a copy and around a thousand still downloading it.

There were complaints that the version offered wasn’t the latest build, but instead the stable one given the delegates and therefore didn’t have the revised taskbar. Complaints also abounded about how slow the download was considering the lack of people seeding the file.

The most popular link for the 32-bit version of Windows 7 on Mininova had a similar number of people downloading and uploading the file as that on The Pirate Bay, although the 64-bit version on this site was a rare breed with only one copy boasting 30 seeds and around 150 leechers.

Some people weren’t excited. “There is nothing (sic) new in it,” wrote one commenter. “I wouldn’t recommend this to download. Waste of time. Happy with Vista.”

Others called for a reality check. “Seriously people. This was just a PRE-beta release that was given out at a trade show so writers would write about the new version. This SHOULD NOT be downloaded with the intent of using it as an everyday system. It is just so writers could get a feel for what was to come.”

Businesses might wonder what the new operating system will mean for their business. “I was in Redmond three weeks ago and had a sneak peek,” said Peter Menadue, who holds the role of global director of solutions and technology, Microsoft solutions business within systems integrator Dimension Data.

“I think they’ve done a stellar job. Sinofsky’s a genius,” he added, referring to Microsoft’s Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president of the Windows and Windows Live engineering group.

He said that what didn’t come out in the press coverage about Windows 7 were all the bits of the operating system that would be interesting to enterprise, with aspects like application security, data security, and application deployment getting a facelift.

The support for virtualization was something Menadue flagged as being of interest to business, as well as Microsoft’s pledge to maintain application and driver compatibility with Vista.

Dimension Data will get the M3 code for Windows 7 before the end of the year, which will allow it to start an early deployment program internally.

Menadue said there had been a lot of interest in the operating system because there had been much less information than there was on previous releases, with Microsoft carefully controlling what reached the press, but added that with the current climate, companies were focused “on the here and now.”

These comments were echoed by Jo Sweeney, adviser at analyst firm Intelligent Business Research Services. “What tends to happen (in times like these) is that IT professionals get much more focused on proving and not improving,” he said. “People will (move to) Windows 7 because if they can put greater management features into it, it will solve some of the problems of desktop computing.”

More than 80 percent of IT costs go into the day-to-day running of IT, Sweeney said–keeping all the PCs running, making sure everyone has the right patches–and Microsoft’s dynamic IT strategy, in which Windows 7 is a part, will make that easier by allowing the separation of applications and user profiles from the operating system. This will allow anyone anywhere on the network to access their profile.

People doing best-practice desktop management will already have realized those improvements, Sweeney said, with Microsoft’s direction being a reaction to the market, although he admitted it was a good one. “How do they execute?” he asked. “Question mark.”

Suzanne Tindal reported for ZDNet Australia.

In a Netflix blog posting Monday, the company announced that it would discontinue sales previously viewed DVDs on November 30:

As you know, our core business is delivering great movie rentals to you on DVD by mail and instantly to the computer and TV, so we’ve decided it makes sense for us to focus exclusively on that. This means we will stop selling previously viewed DVDs through the Web site. We’re sorry for any inconvenience for those of you who regularly purchase DVDs at Netflix, but we’re excited about being able to spend the extra time focusing on continually improving our core rental business for you.

Netflix announced on Friday that it had completed its first phase of beta testing of its new “Watch Instantly” movie-streaming player and was expanding access to include Macintosh-owning subscribers.

The move followed the company’s announcement on October 28 that it would be using Microsoft’s Silverlight software to deliver streaming movies not only to PCs, but also to Intel-based Macs. The new Netflix player takes advantage of Play Ready DRM, which is built into Silverlight, for the playback of protected content on both Windows-based PCs and Macs. According to Netflix, this had not been possible with previous technologies.

Netflix isn’t going to end its DVD rental program on November 30, so it’s likely the company will sell its inventory of DVDs rented after that date to a third-party DVD dealer. While the move appears largely symbolic, it’s a small step toward expanding the corporate–and public–focus from DVD rentals to movie streaming.

However, subscribers who offered feedback on the blog were overwhelming opposed to the move.

“I’m very disappointed,” wrote one subscriber. “I use this service all the time and it’s one of the main reasons I use Netflix. I’d hate to go back to Blockbuster…”