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China’s central bank has set a lower target for loan growth rate of 12 percent for 2008 in efforts to curb lending growth and cool the economy, state media reported Thursday.

Lending growth would be strictly controlled and branches required to report new loans monthly, the Shanghai Securities News reported, citing a source with a major state-owned bank.

The lending growth target for this year was 15 percent.

But that has already been overshot with new yuan loans totalling 3.58 trillion yuan from January to November, up nearly 21 percent from the same period a year earlier.

China is attempting to curb lending growth and investment spending as part of broader efforts to cool an economy that is likely to expand by about 11.5 percent in 2007, marking the fifth consecutive year of double-digit growth.

The newspaper said 2008 new loan quotas for Bank of China would be cut to 260 billion yuan from the 280 billion it notched-up in 2007.

It said ICBC, China Construction Bank and the Agricultural Bank of China were told to keep new loans in 2008 within targets set for 2007, which were 365 billion yuan, 350 billion and 310 billion respectively.

In the absence of Winter Olympic champion Han Xiaopeng, Li Ke emerged as the most impressive men’s aerials jumper at the 11th Chinese National Winter Games here in Yabuli.

Having led Changchun to the victory in the men’s team event on Friday, Li became a double gold medal winner on Monday after grabbing the individual free event title with a remarkable advantage of 9.911 points over the silver medallist Jia Zhongyang of Fushun.

Nevertheless, the 24-year-old Li appeared to be pretty cool facing the biggest victories in his career.

“Of course I am happy for the victories, but I am not so satisfied with my performance,” Li told reporters. “I made a little mistake in my first jump, I should have done better.”

Li was to leave Yabuli Monday afternoon to take part in World Cup events to be held in Canada, the United States and Japan.

“I had my best ever World Cup finish, a sixth, at Changchun last month, I will try my best in the following events,” Li added.

Born in Jiangsu province, also the hometown of Han Xiaopeng, Li began to have freestyle aerials training in 1998. Five years later, he was called up by the national team.

“Han is an Olympic champion, every other jumper in the national team is trying to catch up with him,” Li said. “Our goal is to win the gold medal at the Vancouver Games, all the jumpers including me will strive toward that.”

According to Li, he has to improve both on degree of difficulty and consistency of landing in order to have better results at international competitions.

“The degrees of difficulty of the jumps I performed at this Games were the same with what Han did at the Turino Winter Games, but I did not finish very well,” Li said.

Li also admitted he should be stronger mentally.

“I had a big chance to win on Saturday, but I was worn down by the pressure,” he said, referring to the men’s compulsory event, where Li fell on both jumps for a disappointing seventh finish. “Han’s absence brought me pressure as well as opportunity.”

Ren Hongguo, vice president of the Chinese Ski Association, was confident in Li’s future.

“Li is a very talented jumper with the Chinese national team,” Ren said. “With his help, the Chinese team will have a bigger chance to win the gold medal at the next Winter Olympic Games.”

The recent injury of China’s NBA star Yao Ming has raised the concerns of officials from all the other Chinese national teams, especially for Liu Xiang, one of China’s biggest hopes for the Beijing Olympic Games.

Senior athletics officials said yesterday that efficient measures have been taken to secure the safety of the star hurdler.

“All competitive sports have the risk of injury and the Chinese athletics team has always paid much attention to that and taken a series of measurements to reduce the possibilities of injures,” said Feng Shuyong, head coach of China’s national athletics team.

“At present, there are more than 30 doctors working for the whole team, especially those key athletes like Liu, who has two doctors.”

Those doctors and coaches, Feng said, supervise the entire process of athletes’ warm-ups and cool downs before and after training sessions, which, when ignored, can result in injury.

“Yao’s injury was caused by long-time fatigue. The same problems can occur in track and field due to over-training or improper arrangement of the practices,” Feng said. “We will try to give a proper workload to the athletes and do the best we can to avoid any injury.”

With those safeguards in place, Liu is now under intensive winter training in Beijing. According to his coach Sun Haiping, the world 110m champion and Olympic gold medalist has enjoyed his “best ever” winter training regime and is eager for competitions.

“Everything is going smoothly and as scheduled,” Sun said. “Since the winter training, we put 60 percent attention on the preparation for outdoor competitions, mainly the Olympic Games, and 40 percent on the upcoming world indoor championships.

“We did not fully concentrate on the indoor session until last week, but Liu is in very good form right now.”

The 24-year-old world record holder, whose personal best indoor time is 7.42 seconds, will return to competition at the World Indoor Championships in Valencia, Spain, next week, where he will meet Dayron Robles of Cuba, his strongest opponent at the moment.

“Robles did very well in this indoor season and he also said that he would break the world record, so he is Liu’s strongest opponent at this time,” Sun said. “We hope Liu will improve his personal best in the indoor worlds, which is possible.”

After returning from Spain, Liu will search for a training base with similar weather to Beijing and a track like the one at the “Bird’s Nest” National Stadium, the athletics venue for the Beijing Games.

“We do not have a home advantage in being able to train in the Bird’s Nest ahead of others,” Sun said. “The only chance for us will be the athletics test event in May this year. Based on Liu’s training condition right now, I’m fully confident with his outdoor performance this year.”

Including Liu, an 11-member Chinese team will be in Spain on March 1 to compete in eight events at the indoor Worlds.

“We will use the opportunity to let those athletes compete with world’s best to practice their competing capability and psychology,” Feng said.

China’s new 3G phones debuted in Shanghai Tuesday with flashy functions that attracted crowds of shoppers, even though sales were only moderate.

A limited variety of models and the public’s unfamiliarity with the 3G technology affected the first day of the commercial trial, industry sources said.

People can purchase the TD-SCDMA (time division-synchronous code division multiple access) phones and subscribe to 3G services, with a number starting with 157, from China Mobile.

From early Tuesday, people crowded into Shanghai Mobile’s Renmin Road shop, one of the carrier’s two main TD-SCDMA outlets. The available phones were made by six firms, including ZTE, Samsung, Lenovo and LG, and they cost from 1,800 to 3,800 yuan (US$256 to US$535).

By 4 p.m., Samsung and Lenovo phones were sold out in the Renmin Road outlet. By evening, about 50 3G services had been sold in the other outlet on Zhangwu Road near Tongji University.

Customers were most impressed with eyeball-catching functions such as mobile stock quotes, video calling and TV on the handsets. During a video-calling demonstration, callers could clearly see each other but image quality was lost if they were moving.

The TD-SCDAM signal offers coverage within the city’s Outer Ring Road, at the airports, around the Formula One circuit and hotels, and along Metro lines.

China Mobile has launched the 3G service in eight cities including Guangzhou and Beijing. In Shanghai, the carrier will sell the phones in 164 outlets, with the first batch expected to be about 10,000 units.

The 3G network is not available in other cities but users can switch to 2G networks there, outlet officials said.

“I’m interested in China’s 3G services for high-speed data services and my most-needed functions are Internet access and a faster e-mail service,” said Dimitri Kaczmarek, who works for a finance firm in Shanghai.

Kaczmarek wanted to buy the Samsung L288 (2,800 yuan) but it was sold out , so he bought a ZTE U980 (3,800 yuan) dual-model phone and a ZTE MU318 data card (700 yuan), which can be plugged into a laptop for Internet access.

An IT engineer named Wang said: “It’s cool to have a 3G phone and it’s the right time for me to replace phone.” Wang admitted he would mainly use voice services on his LG KD876 (2,500 yuan).

Credit cards were not accepted yesterday, which meant some people were unable to buy 3G phones.

Users can choose packages costing from 28 yuan for 150 minutes to 88 yuan for 600 minutes. During the trial, users can enjoy a 50-percent fee discount, which makes 3G costs close to 2G services, according to China Mobile.

Chinese stood in silence and grief on Monday afternoon to mourn the tens of thousands of victims of the worst earthquake in decades, but their sorrows didn’t shake their confidence in China’s economy, said analysts.

The stock market opened sharply lower after the 8.0-magnitude quake on May 12, but the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index was down merely 0.6 percent in the following five trading days, closing at 3,604.76 points on Monday.

Securities analyst Ying Jianzhong attributed the unexpectedly stable performance of Chinese shares to the anticipation that the quake would not alter China’s overall economic direction.

“The negative effect on the stock market is diminishing,” said Ying.

He noted that as relief and recovery work started, demand for daily necessities, medicine, steel and cement had driven up companies in those sectors.

The quake would not shake overall confidence in the economy; therefore, the government would maintain its goals of preventing overheating and curbing inflation, economist Wang Xiaoguang told Xinhua in an interview on Monday.

“Unlike the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, the catastrophe has not aroused fears about the national economy, as it was a natural disaster caused by force majeure and limited to a small area,” said Wang.

The People’s Bank of China, the central bank, announced last Wednesday a move to provide 55 billion yuan (about 7.85 billion U.S. dollars) in refinancing for commercial banks and rural cooperatives in quake regions of Sichuan and Gansu, in order to increase their liquidity and ability to support disaster relief and reconstruction.

It also allowed banks in six cities that were hardest hit by the quake to temporarily keep their deposit reserve ratio at the prevailing level, while lenders in other regions must raise the ratio on Tuesday to curb excess liquidity.

“Those measures were just temporary support policies for disaster-hit regions and did not point to any changes in the government’s tight monetary policy,” said Wang.

China has controlled money supply to rein in rising prices and curbed loans to cool sizzling fixed-asset investment that drove the country’s double-digit growth in gross domestic product (GDP).

Global investment banks have predicted a much smaller economic impact from the quake than from the snow storms in January and February.

The biggest loss caused by the quake was that of life and property, but it was not included in the calculation of GDP growth, said Wang.

The 8.0-magnitude quake that struck southwest China’s Sichuan Province on May 12 had killed 34,073 and injured 245,108 others as of noon on Monday.

Losses were estimated at 67 billion yuan in the province, said Vice Minister of Industry and Information Xi Guohua at a press conference on Monday.

Meanwhile, Wang said post-disaster reconstruction could stimulate investment and boost GDP growth in the longer term.

The quake could cut annual national GDP growth by 0.2 percentage point due to slackened industrial output and consumption in the quake zone, CITIC Securities chief macro-economic analyst Zhu Jianfang estimated.

“Economic growth and company profits might suffer from the quake in the second quarter but resume normal performance in the third and fourth quarters, or even rebound sharply in some sectors,” said Zhu.

Firefighters on Sunday in Central California used cooler, damper air to their advantage in the ongoing battle against a wall of flame ravaging Santa Barbara County as they tried to gain a foothold before the return of hotter, drier conditions.

Moist air currents from the ocean cooled temperatures to the high 70s Sunday, helping fire crews keep the four-day-old blaze from spreading. The fire, which has been burning since Tuesday, was less than a third contained Sunday afternoon.

“We’ve got a window here with the humid weather that’s really helping us. But we know we’re in this for the long haul,” said Dixie Dies, spokeswoman for the state Incident Management Team.

Temperatures are forecast to start climbing Monday and to reach the 90s by Thursday. The moist air currents are expected to dissipate, causing drier conditions, Dies said.

Lightning strikes were also possible as a new weather system moves in, forecasters said.

The fire, 28 percent contained Sunday night, has consumed about 13 square miles near the south border of Los Padres National Forest.

Nearly 2,700 homes were in jeopardy earlier in the weekend, but by Sunday night many of the evacuation orders were lifted or downgraded to warnings.

Sunday’s cooler weather also helped firefighters advance on a two-week-old blaze that has destroyed 22 homes in Big Sur, at the northern end of the Los Padres forest.

Mosses once grew and insects crawled in what are now barren valleys in Antarctica, according to scientists who have recovered remains of life from that frozen continent. Fourteen million years ago the now lifeless valleys were tundra, similar to parts of Alaska, Canada and Siberia — cold but able to support life, researchers report.

Geoscientist Adam Lewis of North Dakota State University was studying the ice cover of the continent when he and co-workers came across the remains of moss on a valley floor.

“We knew we shouldn’t expect to see something like that,” Lewis said in a telephone interview.

The moss was essentially freeze dried, he said. Unlike fossils, where minerals replace soft materials, the moss tissues were still there, he said.

“The really cool thing is that all the details are still there,” even though the plant has been dead for 14 million years. “These are actually the plant tissues themselves.”

Lewis’ findings are reported in Tuesday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

While some mosses have been found near the coast of Antarctica, as well as insects living on sea birds, this site is well inland.

Further study uncovered remains of tiny crustaceans known as ostracodes, small midges and beetles, and pollen from southern beech trees and pink plants.

“The existence of wet-based glaciers, proglacial lakes, tundra vegetation and insect remains all indicate that the climate of the western Olympus range … was warmer and wetter that that of today” about 14 million years ago, the researchers report.

It’s important to know that because it adds to the understanding of the Earth’s climate system, Lewis explained.

For 50 million years the Earth has been cooling, he said. “As it cools it crosses thresholds. This is one, when Antarctica became permanently frozen and locked up.”

“You have to understand where these thresholds are,” he added, “Because, if human beings are unfortunate enough to push climate over one of these thresholds, it could be a total catastrophe.”

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation.

Clear skies, golden sunshine and the cool autumn weather. The Paralympic Games could not have got a better welcome.

International Paralympic Committee (IPC) President Sir Philip Craven agrees. “Isn’t the weather fantastic?” he said Tuesday.

“We had incredible weather in Torino and brilliant weather in Athens, where the temperature was around 25-26 C. We are just moving into (excellent) weather in Beijing,” the 58-year-old Briton said.

The 2006 Winter Paralympics was held in Torino, Italy, and the 2004 summer version, in Athens. This time, the Paralympics is being held by the Beijing Olympics organizing committee (BOCOG) to present “Two Games with Equal Splendor”.

Craven has been involved in the preparations of the Beijing Olympics as well as the Paralympics since 2002.

The IPC chief, who uses a wheelchair, has worked to make venues in Beijing and the two co-host cities of Qingdao and Hong Kong as accessible as possible for Paralympians and spectators both.

But making the Great Wall and the Forbidden City accessible to the physically challenged was a more urgent task for him.

“It’s symbolic China is serious about the Paralympics and about all people,” he said.

“It’s a great feeling to be there on the Great Wall, just as the saying goes, ‘you are not a hero unless you climb the Great Wall’.”

Craven praised the facilities in Beijing but hoped that more would be done for the physically challenged after the Paralympics. “The level of accessibility (in Beijing) is absolutely fantastic and it’s a first class job.”

Six years is not enough to change everything, he said, still a “lot of work has been done”.

More, however, needs to be done to educate the public and the media to change their perception about the physically challenged, he said. After all, in a developing country like China most of the people have never heard of the Paralympics or seen the disabled play much sport, he said.

People have to enjoy the Paralympics just like they enjoy the Olympics, he said. The IPC has been trying to help “Paralympians achieve excellence and inspire and excite the world”, and make the Paralympics as competitive and exciting as any other sporting event.

About 4,000 athletes from 148 countries and regions will compete in 20 events at the Beijing Paralympics.

The very high competitive level of the Paralympians is surprising, Craven said. “For example, the fastest male runner takes about 2 hours, 5 minutes to complete the marathon, while a wheelchair runner takes less than 1 hour, 30 min - which means he is 40 percent faster.”

“Once you watch the competition you will be amazed and inspired and excited.”

To his delight, there will be over 1.6 million spectators at the Beijing Paralympics. The attendance in Sydney was 1.2 million and in Athens, 850,000.

The world economy will slow sharply this year and next, with the United States likely sliding into recession reflecting mounting damage from the most dangerous financial jolt in more than a half-century.

The International Monetary Fund, in a World Economic Outlook released Wednesday, slashed growth projections for the global economy and predicted the United States - the epicenter of the financial meltdown - will continue to lose traction.

“The world economy is now entering a major downturn in the face of the most dangerous shock in mature financial markets since the 1930s,” the IMF said in its report.

The IMF now projects that the global economy, which grew by a hardy 5 percent last year, will lose considerable speed, slowing to 3.9 percent this year. It is forecast to weaken even more - to just 3 percent - next year, marking the worst showing since 2002. In the past, the IMF has called global growth of 3 percent or less the equivalent to a global recession.

The IMF’s projection was made before the Federal Reserve and six other major central banks from around the world slashed interest rates Wednesday in an attempt to prevent a financial crisis from becoming a global economic meltdown.

The Fed reduced its key rate from 2 percent to 1.5 percent. In Europe, which also has been hard hit by the financial crisis, the Bank of England cut its rate by half a point to 4.5 percent, while the European Central Bank sliced its rate to 3.75 percent.

Also taking part were the central banks of China, Canada, Sweden, and Switzerland. The Bank of Japan said it strongly supported the actions.

The financial crisis, which erupted in the United States in August 2007 and has quickly spread around the globe, entered a tumultuous new phase last month, badly shaking confidence in global financial institutions and markets, the IMF said. It has triggered a cascading series of bankruptcies, forced mergers and radical government interventions - such as the United States’ unprecedented $700 billion financial bailout - to stem the fallout.

The new projections come before a gathering of the world’s top economic powers on Friday and the weekend meetings of the IMF and the World Bank. The jarring financial crisis is likely to figure prominently in those discussions.

In the United States, the economy, which grew by 2 percent last year, is projected to slow to 1.6 percent this year. Growth would screech to a virtual halt in 2009, barely budging at just 0.1 percent. That would mark the worst showing since 1991, when the country was pulling out of a recession.

“With a recession now looking increasingly likely, the key questions are, how deep will the downturn be, when will a recovery get under way and how strong will it be?” the IMF asked. Much will hinge on how effective the United States’ steps to stabilize financial markets and get credit flowing more freely again turn out to be. Another important factor is whether these and other actions turn around US consumers, whose retrenchment is hurting the economy.

The IMF - and many private economists - believe the US economy will probably contract in the final three months of this year and the first three months of next year, meeting a classic definition of a recession. The economy’s last recession was in 2001.

The government’s bailout package is aimed at thawing lending by buying bad mortgage-related debt from troubled financial institutions. The idea is that the banks’ books would then be cleaner, putting them in a better position to lend and get the economy moving.

The IMF said this effort should help to stabilize markets but even so “the process of balance-sheet repair will be long and arduous.” Credit availability is likely to remain constrained throughout 2009, the IMF said.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke warned in a speech Tuesday that the economy’s outlook for this year has darkened and the pain could last for some time. His remarks were seen as heralding the rate cut Tuesday.

Looking at other countries, Germany’s growth will slow to 1.8 percent this year, down from 2.5 percent last year. France’s growth will weaken to just 0.8 percent, compared with 2.2 percent in 2007. Britain’s economy will see growth taper to 1 percent, down from 3 percent last year. Canada’s growth will tail off to 0.7 percent this year, from 2.7 percent last year.

In Japan, growth will cool to just 0.7 percent, from 2.1 percent last year.

China and India will see growth clock in this year at a robust 9.7 percent and 7.9 percent, respectively. Even if those projections prove correct, they would still mark downgrades from their blistering performances last year. Russia’s economy should grow by a brisk 7 percent this year, down from 8.1 percent last year.

Inflation around the world remains high, driven up by surging energy and food prices through much of this year.

It will be tricky for Bernanke and his counterparts in other countries to navigate weak growth and inflation pressures, the IMF said.

“The immediate policy challenge is to stabilize financial conditions, while nursing economies through a period of slow activity and keeping inflation under control,” it said.

India demanded Pakistan hand over 20 of its most wanted fugitives as a sign of good faith, while both sides Tuesday tried to cool tensions over the Mumbai attacks before a visit by Washington’s top diplomat.

India’s foreign minister said military action was not being considered and his Pakistani counterpart offered a joint probe to find the militants responsible for a three-day rampage that killed 183 in India’s financial capital.

Indian accusations that Pakistan had again let militants stage attacks from its soil have stirred longstanding tensions and threatened to reverse improving ties between the nuclear-armed rivals.

Yesterday, India renewed its years-old demand for fugitives it believes are hiding in Pakistan, via a protest note given to Pakistan’s High Commissioner Shahid Malik in New Delhi on Monday, Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee told reporters.

“We have in our demarche (diplomatic protest) asked for the arrest and handover of those persons who are settled in Pakistan and who are fugitive of Indian law,” he said yesterday, adding about 20 people were on the list.

Officials said the list included Dawood Ibrahim, a Mumbai underworld leader, and Maulana Masood Azhar, a Pakistani Muslim cleric freed from jail in India in exchange for passengers on a hijacked plane.

New Delhi’s foreign ministry said on Monday that Malik had been told that “Pakistan’s actions needed to match the sentiments expressed by its leadership that it wishes to have a qualitatively new relationship with India”.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is due in India today to try to lower tensions in the region following the attacks in Mumbai.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, speaking in a televized address, said Pakistan wanted good relations with India and that now was not the time for a “blame game, taunts (and) finger-pointing”.

“The government of Pakistan has offered a joint investigating mechanism and a joint commission to India. We are ready to jointly go into the depth of this issue and we are ready to compose a team that could help you,” Qureshi said.

Qureshi made no mention of the fugitive list, but Information Minister Sherry Rehman told reporters: “We have to look at it formally once we get it and we will frame a response.”

Ibrahim, India’s most wanted man, is reported to be living in Pakistan. Security experts say the underworld boss has militant ties, and India wants him for bomb attacks in Mumbai in 1993 that killed at least 250 people.

Newspaper reports have said his henchmen in the city may also have provided support in the latest strike.

(Source: China Daily/Agencies)

NEW DELHI, Dec. 2 (Xinhua) — India External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee Tuesday denied that India is considering military action against Pakistan at this stage, reported Indo Asian News Service.

But Mukherjee confirmed that India was waiting for Islamabad to act strongly against armed militants based in its territory responsible for terror attacks in the country. Full story

ISLAMABAD, Dec. 2 (Xinhua) — Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Tuesday that his country had offered full cooperation to India on the Mumbai attacks probe and proposed a joint anti-terrorism mechanism.

The entire world is engulfed by the menace of terrorism and Pakistan and India are also its victims, said Qureshi in a statement issued after his meeting with 36 foreign diplomats and gave a detailed briefing about Pakistan’s stance in the wake of Mumbai terror attacks. Full story

MUMBAI, Nov. 29 (Xinhua) — India’s longest terror nightmare that lasted for almost 59 hours ended Saturday as commandos from the National Security Guard (NSG), the Indian Army and the Indian Navy eliminated three militants who had taken over the iconic Taj Mahal hotel.

“Finally, we have been able to win the battle and do the job (assigned to us),” NSG head J.K. Dutt told reporters. Full story

ISLAMABAD, Nov. 29 (Xinhua) — Pakistan will stand by India in the difficult times after the Mumbai terrorist attacks and would like to offer India full cooperation in the probe of the incident, the foreign office said in a statement on Saturday.

Addressing a news conference here, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said that the Pakistani government was unanimous in condemnation of the barbaric acts of terrorism and offered condolences to the government of India and the bereaved families.