World important news by Paulette

McDonald’s Corp will roll out a high-definition television channel to nearly 800 restaurants in southern and central California by March. The world’s biggest hamburger chain is doing this as part of a test, and one day hopes to take it across the United States.Businesses from gas stations and grocery stores to coffee maker Starbucks Corp are beaming more entertainment directly to customers, trying to address a captive audience in a world crawling with entertainment options.McDonald’s Channel content partners include Walt Disney Co’s ABC, BBC America and reality television producer Mark Burnett, who is known for such hits as “Survivor” and “The Apprentice.”Test markets have include Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas, Manhattan, Seattle and some communities in Oklahoma.As it evolves, the McDonald’s Channel will add more local programing such as high school sports news.”We think that’s a major part of the community that the channel can really bring to life,” said Leland Edmondson, founder of ChannelPort Communications, which is overseeing the project. “We’re talking to a number of sports properties.”The programing will include exclusive content and be made up of short spots ranging in length from 90 seconds to 20 minutes. Diners who want to see longer versions of some spots will have the option access them via mobile devices or home computers.”There’s no remote on the table, but there is Wi-Fi in the restaurant,” Edmondson said.Programs include “The McDonald’s Achievers,” profiles of local high school and college athletes; “Mighty Moms,” about local mothers balancing families and careers in sports; and “Vimby” (Video In My Backyard), which has partnered with Burnett to cover local lifestyle news including fashion, art, music, action sports and nightlife.The channel will show less than eight minutes of advertising per hour. McDonald’s will take a fraction of that time, which will be shared with other brands, he said.Eventually, every McDonald’s in southern California will carry the channel, which will be seen by about 18 million McDonald’s customers in the area each month, Edmondson said.

McDonald’s Corp will roll out a high-definition television channel to nearly 800 restaurants in southern and central California by March. The world’s biggest hamburger chain is doing this as part of a test, and one day hopes to take it across the United States.Businesses from gas stations and grocery stores to coffee maker Starbucks Corp are beaming more entertainment directly to customers, trying to address a captive audience in a world crawling with entertainment options.McDonald’s Channel content partners include Walt Disney Co’s ABC, BBC America and reality television producer Mark Burnett, who is known for such hits as “Survivor” and “The Apprentice.”Test markets have include Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas, Manhattan, Seattle and some communities in Oklahoma.As it evolves, the McDonald’s Channel will add more local programing such as high school sports news.”We think that’s a major part of the community that the channel can really bring to life,” said Leland Edmondson, founder of ChannelPort Communications, which is overseeing the project. “We’re talking to a number of sports properties.”The programing will include exclusive content and be made up of short spots ranging in length from 90 seconds to 20 minutes. Diners who want to see longer versions of some spots will have the option access them via mobile devices or home computers.”There’s no remote on the table, but there is Wi-Fi in the restaurant,” Edmondson said.Programs include “The McDonald’s Achievers,” profiles of local high school and college athletes; “Mighty Moms,” about local mothers balancing families and careers in sports; and “Vimby” (Video In My Backyard), which has partnered with Burnett to cover local lifestyle news including fashion, art, music, action sports and nightlife.The channel will show less than eight minutes of advertising per hour. McDonald’s will take a fraction of that time, which will be shared with other brands, he said.Eventually, every McDonald’s in southern California will carry the channel, which will be seen by about 18 million McDonald’s customers in the area each month, Edmondson said.

The bill was blocked by Senate Republicans last Tuesday but President Barack Obama wants Congress to begin voting next week piece by piece on the proposals.Geithner told a news conference that U.S. growth was “somewhat stronger” in the second half than earlier in the year when he said a hard political fight over raising the debt limit had sapped business and consumer confidence.He added that Europe’s debt crisis — which G20 members are still struggling to get under control — had also hurt U.S. growth and was slowing a recovery.”For these reasons, we have proposed in the United States a very substantial package of actions to strengthen growth and job creation, tied to reforms that would reduce our fiscal deficits to a sustainable position over the medium term,” Geithner said.In Washington on Saturday, Obama used a weekly radio address to paint Republicans as obstructionists impeding his drive to revive a slow-growing economy and lower high unemployment.Geithner repeated that China could help restore faster global growth by letting its yuan currency rise faster but said he had not seen comments made by China’s Premier Wen Jiabao earlier who said China’s exchange rate would remain steady to protect its exporters.He suggested it would be in China’s own interest to allow more rapid appreciation, which would tamp down inflation while helping the global economy to reach more balanced growth.”It’s in the interests of the global economy for China to let the exchange rate appreciate more rapidly and more broadly in response to the upward pressure on the currency you are seeing now,” Geithner said.

In September, the Nasdaq stock market parent company had said it would set a plan to return capital to shareholders as it looks to take advantage of a relatively low share valuation and move on from its failed takeover bid earlier this year for rival NYSE Euronext (NYX.N).Nasdaq also said it intends to prepay $109 million in debt in the fourth quarter, taking its total debt payments in quarter to $120 million.The exchange operator has about $1.8 billion in debt outstanding, according to Thomson Reuters data.Shares of the company closed at $25.07 on Tuesday on Nasdaq.

Only 10 of Japan’s 54 commercial reactors remain operating seven months after the March disaster triggered a crisis at Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, as safety fears have left local authorities wary of restarting reactors once they go offline for routine maintenance.But Tokaimura Mayor Tatsuya Murakami was the first local official to call for scrapping a reactor altogether, warning that, if the wave that struck his village on March 11 had been slightly higher, the Tokai Daini reactor could have posed far graver danger than the Fukushima plant, as 1 million people live within a 30-km radius and it is much closer to Tokyo.A Tokaimura official said Wednesday that Murakami made his plea at a meeting the day before with nuclear disaster minister Goshi Hosono.”Shouldn’t the plant be decommissioned?” he was quoted as telling the meeting.The 33-year old reactor still has seven years before its operating license expires and Tokyo Electric Power Co had been counting on the 1,100-megawatt facility to help it make up for the 4,700 megawatts of lost power from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant.Prime Minister Noda has said that offline reactors under maintenance should restart once local authorities confirm they are safe, taking a softer line than his predecessor Naoto Kan, who concluded in March that nuclear power was no longer worth the risk after the world’s worst nuclear accident in 25 years.Japan’s nuclear plant operators are preparing to report the results of reactor stress tests to the country’s nuclear watchdog, the first step in a lengthy process that would ultimately require local authorities’ approval for restarts.Since the onset of the Fukushima crisis, Murakami has called on Japan to better care for residents who were forced to leave Fukushima prefecture because of the crisis and to stop operating old reactors given lax safety rules and a lack of contingency plans.Murakami was Tokaimura’s mayor in 1999 when a criticality accident at a Tokaimura uranium reprocessing facility resulted in two deaths, the worst nuclear accident in Japan until the Fukushima crisis.Japan Atomic Power, in which Fukushima plant operator Tokyo Electric Power is a major shareholder, brought its sole reactor at the Tokai Daini plant in Ibaraki prefecture to a state of cold shutdown on March 15.

* Ukraine politics worries investorsBy Carolyn CohnLONDON, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Emerging stocks hit three-week highs for a second successive day on Wednesday and sovereign debt spreads tightened, helped by a jump in Chinese stocks and a more positive outlook on the euro zone debt crisis.Markets have been in thrall to each step in the euro zone’s attempts to resolve its debt woes, and recent optimism has taken riskier emerging assets higher.Slovakia’s parliament brought down the government on Tuesday by rejecting a plan to expand the euro zone’s rescue fund, but the outgoing government said it hoped to pass the measure by the end of the week with opposition support.The next focus is the release of the European Union’s bank recapitalisation plan, due later on Wednesday.Chinese shares got a large boost, taking the emerging equity index higher, on talk of sovereign wealth fund support for the banking sector.The positive mood is also feeding into emerging European currencies.”The market had positioned itself for much more emerging market FX weakness on anticipation that real money accounts would begin to unwind long currency bondholdings on the fear factor,” said Roderick Ngotho, CEEMEA FX strategist at RBS.”Our expectation is that some of these hedges will come off. That’s a technical correction which has potential to have some legs. All the currencies seem to be getting some upside.”The MSCI emerging equities index rose more than 1 percent to a three-week high and has staged a comeback of over 11 percent since Oct 4.Chinese stocks jumped 3 percent from 2-1/2 year lows, helped after Central Huijin, the domestic investment arm of the country’s sovereign wealth fund, upped its stakes in the “Big Four” Chinese banks on Monday.The Thomson Reuters emerging Europe index gained 1.5 percent and emerging sovereign debt spreads tightened by 12 basis points to 371 bps over U.S. Treasuries, their narrowest since Sept 21.Hungarian stocks rose almost 2 percent to their highest in over a month, Russian stocks gained more than 3 percent to 12-day highs and Turkish stocks hit eight-day highs.Most emerging European currencies were also firmer, with the rouble rising more than 1 percent to three-week highs against the dollar as Brent crude futures hurdled $111 a barrel, above the $108 level factored into Russia’s 2008 budget. The rand also gained more than 1 percent to two-week highs.In a reminder of the stark mood of the previous three months, however, an HSBC index showed emerging economies grew at their slowest pace in more than two years in the July-September quarter, as manufacturing output turned negative after expanding for nine straight quarters.The Kenyan shilling snapped a two-day slide to record lows as tea exporters sold large quantities of dollars. The central bank also said it was in the repo market to mop up 10 billion shillings ($94.21 million).African frontier currencies have been sliding on domestic demand for dollars amid global risk aversion and rising food and fuel prices, but the Nigerian naira was also being supported on Wednesday by a 275 bp interest rate hike this week.UKRAINE POLITICSThe cost of insuring Ukraine’s debt in the five-year credit default swap market was at elevated levels of 970 bps, close to Feb 2010 highs, according to Markit.The United States, Russia and the EU reacted sharply to the Ukrainian court sentencing on Tuesday of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko to seven years in prison for abuse of office in relation to a 2009 gas deal with Russia that she brokered.”We do not expect this to disbalance power in Ukraine by a large margin,” BNP Paribas analysts wrote in a client note.”Nonetheless, the increased tensions do not bode well for Ukraine in the short term in light of its existing shortfalls with regards to the IMF programme.”Ukraine was due to receive about $6 billion from the IMF this year to boost central bank reserves, but the Fund halted disbursements after the government delayed unpopular reforms such as raising household gas prices.An IMF mission is due to visit Kiev later this month.