IMF downgrades world growth outlook

THE International Monetary Fund (IMF) has slashed its 2014 growth forecast for China, Australia's number one trading partner.

Updating its April World Economic Outlook on Tuesday, the IMF downgraded its world growth forecast for this year and next, driven to a large extent by "appreciably weaker" domestic demand and slower growth in several key emerging market economies.

The euro area is also expected to suffer a more protracted recession than earlier predicted.

The IMF urged policymakers everywhere to increase efforts to ensure robust growth.

"Weaker growth prospects and new risks raise new challenges to global growth and employment, and global rebalancing," the IMF warned.

It cut its world growth forecast for 2013 to 3.1 per cent and to 3.8 per cent for 2014, both 0.2 percentage points lower than it predicted in April.

For China, it now sees 2013 growth at 7.8 per cent, down 0.3 percentage points from previous, and 2014 growth at 7.7 per cent, an even larger 0.6 percentage point downgrade.

Forecasts for advanced economies that includes the G7 countries - US, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, UK and Canada - were also trimmed.

While the Washington-based institution did not provide a separate new forecast for Australia, "other advanced economies" were cut by 0.1 percentage point for both 2013 and 2014 to 2.3 per cent and 3.3 per cent respectively.

"Downside risks to global growth prospects still dominate," the IMF warned.

"While old risks remain, new risks have emerged, including the possibility of a longer growth slowdown in emerging market economies, especially given risks of lower potential growth, slowing credit, and possibly tighter financial conditions."

The latter could result from an anticipated unwinding of monetary policy stimulus in the US.

Federal Treasurer Chris Bowen said the Australian economy was still expected to grow faster than advanced economies as a whole, both this year and next.

In the May budget, the government forecast growth of 2.75 per cent in the 2013/14 financial and three per cent in 2014/15.

Mr Bowen said while the IMF has revised down world growth forecasts, China and India are still forecast to grow at a solid rate in 2013.

India, another key Australian trading partner, was downgraded 0.2 percentage points to 5.6 per cent for 2013 and by 0.1 percentage point to 6.3 per cent for 2014.

"Australia is not immune from global economic and financial uncertainty," Mr Bowen said in a statement.

"This underlines the need for responsible settings and policies to help manage the transition underway in our economy, and to support productivity, jobs and growth in the face of ongoing global economic weakness."

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'United Stasi of America' on US embassy

A GERMAN artist has projected the message "United Stasi of America" onto the US embassy in Berlin, likening reported sweeping Internet surveillance by Washington to spying by the former East German secret police.

A US embassy spokesperson told AFP: "Very funny. But anyone making such a comparison knows neither the Stasi nor the United States."

The reference to the former communist Staatssicherheit or Stasi police was beamed at night onto the US mission by German artist Oliver Bienkowski, in collaboration with Internet tycoon and online activist Kim Dotcom.

"I defaced the U.S. embassy in Berlin with a truth-projection last night. 0wned!" tweeted New Zealand-based Dotcom.

Dotcom, a German national, is the founder of file-sharing website Megaupload that was shut down by US authorities who seek to extradite him on charges of racketeering, fraud, money laundering and copyright theft.

Dotcom, born Kim Schmitz, denies any wrongdoing and is free on bail in New Zealand ahead of his extradition hearing.

US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, in limbo at a Moscow airport, is also seeking to evade US justice after leaking explosive details about a vast US electronic surveillance programme and bugging of European missions.

Germany has reacted with particular alarm to the revelations about the US and British spy programmes, given its history of state surveillance under the Nazis and the communist East German regime.

A video that shows the protest message and a picture of Kim Dotcom beamed onto the US embassy on the night of Sunday to Monday has been posted online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v A2Yb3gWmm2I&feature youtu.be.

It has already garnered more than 42,000 hits on YouTube.

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Snowden agrees to asylum in Venezuela

US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, who has been holed up in a Moscow airport for more than two weeks, has agreed to an offer of political asylum from Venezuela, a top pro-Kremlin MP says.

"As was expected, Snowden agreed to (Venezuelan President Nicolas) Maduro's offer of political asylum," Alexei Pushkov, head of the Russian lower house of parliament's international affairs committee, said on Twitter.

"Apparently this option looked like the most reliable one to Snowden."

Minutes after the announcement the statement was removed from his Twitter feed.

Pushkov's announcement came after the leftist governments of Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua had over the past few days offered the 30-year-old former National Security Agency contractor asylum.

A day earlier, Maduro called on Snowden to decide if he wanted to fly to Caracas.

"We have received the asylum request letter," Maduro told reporters from the presidential palace in Caracas.

"He will have to decide when he flies, if he finally wants to fly here." He called the offers from the three Latin American nations "collective humanitarian political asylum."

But it remains unclear how the world's most famous refugee would be able to leave the transit zone of Sheremetyevo, where he has been marooned without valid documents since he arrived from Hong Kong on June 23.

There are no direct flights between Moscow and Caracas. The quickest way to get to Venezuela would be to fly via Havana.

A spokeswoman for Russian national carrier Aeroflot, Irina Danenberg, said she was not aware if Snowden had been on the flight to Havana that left Moscow earlier on Tuesday. "I have no clue," she said.

There are no direct flights to Havana from Moscow on Wednesday.

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US stocks rise on earnings optimism

US stocks have opened higher on optimism about corporate earnings, even as the International Monetary Fund slashed its global economic growth forecast.

Five minutes into trade, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 69.40 (0.46 per cent) to 15,294.09.

The broad-based S&P 500 added 8.91 (0.54 per cent) to 1,649.37, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index put on 11.16 (0.32 per cent) to 3,495.99.

Markets were cheered by an earnings report from aluminum producer Alcoa that said profits came in 1 cent per share above expectations at 7 cents per share. Alcoa also reaffirmed its projection that global aluminum demand would grow by 7 per cent in 2013.

The gains came despite the latest economic forecast from the IMF, which trimmed world economic growth expectations for 2013 to 3.1 per cent from the April forecast of 3.3 per cent.

China and other emerging economic powers now face new risks, the IMF warned, "including the possibility of a longer growth slowdown."

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Carr talks tough on boat arrivals

BOAT arrivals with a genuine fear of persecution shouldn't be burning their passports and reciting identical stories, Foreign Minister Bob Carr says.

Senator Carr said asylum seeker numbers had spiked and 20 per cent of Australia's immigrants now arrive courtesy of people smugglers.

He said officials were saying recent boat arrivals, particularly those from Iran, were seeking economic advantage and were unable to make a claim for persecution.

Senator Carr said those who burned their passports and repeated a well-rehearsed story ought to be put on the defensive.

"If you have got an argument about persecution, there is no case for burning your passport," he told ABC television.

"And there is no case for being rehearsed in a story of persecution so that everyone on a vessel tells the same story word for word, leaving the impression that the people smuggler in charge of the process has put them through this."

Senator Carr has pushed for toughening of the assessment process, pointing to the recent wave of Iranian arrivals as economic refugees who were not fleeing political persecution.

He said the assessment system allowed 97 per cent of those reaching Australian waters to stay, through a process that seemed weighted in favour of the claimant.

Senator Carr said people smugglers were bribing officials in other countries and charging $10,000 per head for wretched people on unseaworthy vessels.

"All our officials are telling us that the recent spike has come from Iran and in their impression.....it is overwhelmingly to gain economic advantage," he said.

"That is what you have a regular migration program for. This is a corruption by people smugglers."

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UK Labour leader to reform trade unions

BRITISH opposition leader Ed Miliband has proposed to overhaul his Labour party's historic relationship with the trade unions, risking millions of pounds in political donations.

The unions helped found Labour in 1900 but Miliband vowed to end the process by which union members are automatically affiliated to the centre-left party unless they opt out.

The changes follow a row over efforts by Britain's biggest union, Unite, to get its favoured candidate chosen to contest an upcoming parliamentary by-election in Falkirk in Scotland.

"In the 21st century it just doesn't make sense for anyone to be affiliated to a political party unless they have chosen to do so," Miliband said in a speech to party activists in London.

Labour currently nets a reported STG8 million ($A13 million) a year from almost three million union workers - the majority of the party's funds.

Miliband is particularly sensitive to criticism about union influence after their support helped him beat his older brother, ex-foreign minister David Miliband, to the Labour leadership in 2010.

He admitted the proposed change had "massive financial implications" for a party which has struggled to attract private donations since losing the last election that same year.

But Miliband said he wanted to create "a modern relationship with individual working people" and said he hoped it would encourage a more involved, grassroots activism.

Miliband acknowledged the reform could face opposition from the unions but said he hoped to push it through by the next election in 2015.

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, who has been embroiled in a war of words with the Labour leadership in recent weeks, initially appeared to criticise the plans but later took a more conciliatory tone.

"As far as Unite is concerned, we are more than happy to engage in the discussion with him," he told the BBC.

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French diet guru Dukan sanctioned for drug

FRANCE'S medical order has sanctioned nutritionist Pierre Dukan, whose high-protein diet has seen him sell millions of books and win over a slew of famous followers, for having prescribed a slimming drug linked to hundreds of deaths.

Dukan, whose diet was reportedly used by the Middleton family ahead of Kate's 2011 wedding to Britain's Prince William, was sanctioned for having prescribed the anti-diabetes drug Mediator to a female patient in 1971, his lawyer Edouard de Lamaze said.

The Paris region branch of the French Order of Doctors suspended Dukan's medical license for eight days for the "breach of ethical duties" and ordered him to pay 6,000 euros ($A8,383) to the patient, who subsequently developed heart problems.

Dukan was also sanctioned for having made "grossly misleading assertions" that he had only prescribed the drug once, when medical records showed he had actually done so five times.

Lamaze said the eight-day license suspension was purely symbolic because 72-year Dukan was no longer a practising doctor.

The lawyer said he was appealing the decision and accused the medical order of carrying out a vendetta against his client.

Dukan is facing further disciplinary action after medical orders accused him last year of breaking professional rules by proposing that high school students be awarded extra marks if they manage to maintain an acceptable body weight.

Mediator, which reduces hunger pangs, was widely used as a slimming aid in France until it was pulled from the market in 2009 after evidence emerged of hundreds of deaths caused by damage to heart valves.

A study last year said the drug had probably caused at least 1,300 deaths before being withdrawn.

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