tv World Business Today CNN January 18, 2012 1:00am-2:00am PST
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and i was like, i liked it. it was a moment where we sort of looked at each other. i was about 8 years old. i don't know, it's one of the sweetest memories i have of her. >> think he would have been proud of you. the way you have developed in adulthood without her. i think she would be bursting. >> i wish she could have met my children. that's the biggest regret of my life. >> it's been to my massive surprise, a real pleasure. wish met my children. that's the biggest regret of my life. >> rosie, to my massive surprise, it's been a real pleasure. >> i know. when i didn't try to crawl across the desk. hetero now. do that again. >> never too late. tomorrow i'll sit down for an extraordinary anniversary week hour with former president jimmy carter and his wife ross lynn. that's tomorrow, k 00 eastern. i'm zain verjee at cnn in
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london. here are the headlines. this just coming in. operations at the shipwrecked costa concordia is been temporarily halted because the ship is shifting. the captain is under house arrest as he awaits possible charges of manslaughter and abandoning ship. meanwhile, divers are working to remove a second data recorder from the abandoned ship. they recovered more bodies, bringing the death toll to 11. the arab league is set to end its mission this week, but anti-government protests show no sign of epding any time soon in syria. the government has rejected suggestions that arab league peacekeepers should be deployed to syria. in myanmar, some signs of political change. pro democracy leader aung san suu kyi is registered in parliament. she's running in a country that's still largely controlled by its military. those are the headlines from
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cnn, the world's news leader. i'm zain verjee, and world business today starts now beginning with the coverage of a blackout to protest anti-piracy legislation. hello and welcome to wbt. i'm nina del santos in london. >> the stories this january the 18th. the battle lines withdrawn. proposed site, including wikipedia shut down in protest. jerry yang, a one time visionary, quits as yahoo tries to chart a new course. and driven to destruction by the data deluge. how working away from your desk is affecting your work rate when you get back to it.
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imagine a world without free knowledge. those are the words on the home page of wikipedia, which has taken down its website as part of a coordinateded political protest supported by websites, including google, mindcraft, and boing boing. they're proposing legislation in the u.s. that would block access to sites containing copyrighted material. media organization supporting the bills says piracy costs them billions of dollars. but wikipedia's co-founder says free speech is at risk. >> at issue is this law is very badly written, very broad, overreaching, and would -- at least the senate version, it includes an emf blocking regime similar to the one used by china. >> those bills have created something of a storm of debate
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online about what impact they would have on the future of the internet. maggie lake takes a look at who's weighing into the row now. >> reporter: it's a black and ominous morning that reads like a movie trailer. on wednesday, january 18th, the site wikipedia, along with boing boing, and the cheezburger network of comedy sites all plan to go dark. dual bills known as sopa and pipa, known as stop online privacy act and protect ip act, stop sites which allows users to share downloads of movies and other digital content. since it's hard for u.s. companies to actually shut down foreign sites, the new law is aimed to cut off access by requiring u.s. search engines, advertising networks, and other providers to withhold their services. the technology industry agrees piracy is a problem, but says these measures go too far.
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>> you don't want these companies to be absolutely liable for everything somebody may post on their site. if you think of facebook, if you think of twitter, if you think of google and ebay, et cetera, people put things, users put things onto company sites. companies can't control that. well, they could by censorship, and that's what we want to avoid. >> reporter: media companies, including cnn's parent time warner, support the legislation. and the motion picture association of america says, "neither of these bills implicate free expression but focus solely on illegal conduct, which is not free speech." news corp. chairman rupert murdoch has been even more cutting in his criticism. he says "piracy leader is google who streams movies free, sells advertisements around them. no wonder pouring millions into lobbying." the solidarity the tech industry is showing for this legislation is a change, and industry watchers say it has helped them
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galvanize public opinion. >> tech companies did a good job of trying to boil it down to one sentence, saying it's going to break the internet. this is going to ruin the internet as we know it. they're really, really strong statements. that's a great way to make it a lightning rod, the same way that occupy became a way that people will spread comments over the news sites, writing on their blogs, on twitter, on facebook. and sopa is becoming similar in that it's a really lightning rod word, and people are taking it and running with it. >> reporter: the debate has been slowed in washington. a house hearing scheduled for wednesday has been postponed, but both sides vow to fight on for what they see as essential aspects of their business. maggie lake, cnn, new york. >> already doubt has been cast on the future of these bills after the white house itself said it wouldn't support legislation that allows censorship. in response, rupert murdoch has been tweeting "big bipartisan
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majorities, both houses sold out by the potus -- that's the president of the united states for people like us -- "for search engines. and how about 2.2 million workers in the entertainment industry? piracy rules." >> certainly going to be an interesting debate. see how that one develops. we're going to stay on the internet for a moment because yahoo's co-founder jerry yang has resigned from the board of the faltering tech giant. yang, known as chief yahoo founded the company in 1995. the past several years, he's been criticized for holding up major investment deals, leading to a fall in the stock price. remy, you've been looking at the story of yang and yahoo. certainly he's been a controversial figure with the company in recent history. >> he definitely has. most analysts and investors are seeing his exit as heralding a happier and hopefully more
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profitable future for the company that include yahoo selling off its stakes right here in asia, such as tech giant ali ba alibaba or yahoo japan. yahoo's stock has fallen 54% since 2007. it hasn't bounced back. they saw a big merger with microsoft go up in smoke in 2008. microsoft made a hostile takeover bid of $47 billion. it did rocket the share price, and yang rejected it. investors weren't happy. he was replaced by carol barts. she would come back to haunt the company. carol bartz was fired as ceo. she failed to turn the company around. investors glad to see the back of her. yahoo shares jumped 12% in the
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two days after that. on october 1st, just about a month later, this happened. basically yahoo shares surged 17% in two days after jack ma, the founder of e-commerce giant alibaba said he wanted to buy yahoo lock, stock, and barrel. this is how they closed yesterday, but it did pop 3% on news of yang's departure as he's been seen as a block to change. many think that change was due. >> i just want to go back to something you said there. one of the deals that didn't succeed under the yang leadership was that merger. jack maher wanting to buy yahoo back for his company alibaba. >> it's been a question in the past which fish is bigger, alibaba or yahoo. i spoke to richard lye, editor
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in chief of in gadget china, and he says that alibaba is the bigger of those firms. >> in many ways, it's more successful and has grown much, much quicker than yahoo over the last several years. if yahoo does the right thing and continues to take a bigger chunk out of alibaba, it's obviously good for yahoo. then jack maher has been quoted as saying alibaba wants to buy the entire yahoo. you can see these two companies loobing like they want to take a bigger bite out of each other. >> if yahoo unloaded all of its shares of alibaba, the company would be worth $17 billion. with yang's departure, analysts say a share sale is more likely to happen. it's what yahoo's current ceo scott thompson wants to do. as for yang, he's leading to pursue other interests.
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andrew? >> ramy, thanks very much for that. at least on a brighter note, for some investors, shares of apple have reached a record high. four years after steve jobs rejoined the company and a year after it bought out the first ipod, apple shares are worth just over $11. this is what's happened since. ten years and hups of millions of iphones later, the stock is worth this much. $424.70. if you bought shares of apple in 2002, your investment would be worth 40 times what you paid for it back then. hindsight is a wonderful thing, nina. >> certainly is. it's also a dangerous thing as many an investor will tell you, andrew. historical performance is no guarantee of future returns, is it? that's certainly the kind of thing we're seeing on the european stock markets today. after two straight days of gains for these markets, they finally turned. as you can see, all of them down to the tune of one-third of 1% to .1 of 1% on the dax.
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this is the growth prospects coming out of the influential world bank. it is concerned about a shortlived recession for the eurozone and the world's developing countries that have been exhibiting a high rate of growth will not be safe if the eurozone has troubles and does have a recession. what they're doing is they cut their growth estimates to 2.5% from a previous estimate of 3.6% for this coming year, 2012, and also they brought down their growth estimate for the year after. that's one of the reasons these are down. >> okay. we've got a bit more on that as well a bit later on in the show. meanwhile, here in asia, most markets finishing with gains after a choppy morning session. as you can see there, the nikkei in tokyo had the best day, down by 1%, led by banking stocks. exporters remain mixed. the yen remains strong against
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particularly the euro at the moment. that's causing concerns. companies like toyota down .5% on the same front. sony up by nearly 1%. sydney had mining and metals companies higher. if you look at shanghai, big gains yesterday. well over 4% up on the back of the gdp number. shanghai taking profit taking, down by 1.4%. coming up next on "world business today," dramatic new audio recordings of the moments after the captain of the costa concordia abandoned his stricken ship. we'll tell you why he was ordered back on board and the latest on the ongoing rescue operation. i'm good about washing my face. but sometimes i wonder... what's left behind? [ female announcer ] purifying facial cleanser from neutrogena® naturals. developed with dermatologists... it's clinically proven to remove 99% of dirt and toxins and purify pores. and with natural willowbark it contains no dyes, parabens or harsh sulfates. dirt and toxins do a vanishing act and my skin feels pure and healthy.
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happened just lately. on board the concordia, the rescue operation had to be halted because the ship is shifting on an undersea ledge. however, a dutch salvage company is preparing to pump 2,300 tons of fuel out of the cruise ship's tanks to assert an environmental disaster. this would also be the first step to possibly refloating the liner. and a second black box or data recorder has been loektded by the italian coast guard. divers are currently working to bring that to the surface. back on land, the release of dramatic audio recordings the moment the ship ran aground araising fresh questions about the ship's captain francesco schettino.
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>> the port authority captain you're hearing there has become something of a hero in italy with that line "get on board dammit," talking to the captain of the costa concordia. on the website, the cruise company costa cruises describes the concordia as a temple of floating fun. >> reporter: the costa concordia is owned by carnival, the world's largest passenger ship company. taking a cruise can be an affordable way to visit multiple
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countries, but attorney james walker, who has been involved in litigation against the cruise line industry, says there have been an increasing number of accidents and mishaps. >> if you go back over the past -- just over the past two or three years, you'll see about 15 major groundings, collisions, and fires. there have been a number of cruise ship fires in the fleet. perhaps the most spectacular was the fire on the star princess. >> reporter: the star princess in 2006 operated by carnival and carrying 2,600 passengers caught fire. one passenger died and more than ten others injured. the blaze left a blackened hole on the side of the ship. these pictures show another ship, the carnival ecstasy engulfed in flames in 1998. it began in the laundry room. more recently, the carnival ship
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splendor lost power after a fire. passengers left stranded and forced to dine on spam luncheon meat until the u.s. navy air dropped food. carnival said, "safety is our number one priority, and we have an excellent record of safe operation throughout our company's history. all officers and crew undergo comprehensive training which meets or exceeds all regulatory requirements. every ship undergoes periodic inspections as mandated by the u.s. coast guard." but cruise ships have gone from mere boats to virtually floating cities, able to accommodate upwards of 3,000 to 4,000 passengers each trip. and more ships being added to the fleet each year. jim staples, the maritime consultant, says maybe it's adding to the problems. >> when you start putting 3,300 people, that's a lot of people to be responsible for. maybe you want to look at making these ships not so big and having so many people on board.
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>> reporter: carnival's stock is down 14% on concerns of the costs involved with the crash and worries that people in the short term will stop booking cruises. lisa sylvester, cnn, washington. >> let's hone in on carnival corporation, which is the parent company of costa concordia's own company in italy. carnival corporation shares tumbled in wall street session on tuesday, losing almost 14% of their total value, and that's still not quite as much as the company's london listed stock, which fell on the first day of trading after the disaster, that was on monday, and that particular stock fell about 23% on that trading session early on in the week. what we saw yesterday in the u.s. trading was the first chance the united states market had to react to news of the concordia's grounding following, of course, that three-day holiday weekend and martin luther king day on monday. andrew? >> we're going to take a short
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industry has tried and failed to fix for better than a decade. on friday cnn is airing a documentary as part of our freedom project campaign. this includes hard evidence that the problem of forced child labor is still a blight on west africa's cocoa farms. "chocolate's child slaves" premieres friday at 8:00 p.m. gmt. >> tracing the chocolate supply chain is a slow process. companies don't know where most of their cocoa comes from. nestle admits it can only trace a fifth of its supply chains. but sophie says traceability is a difficult process. >> we work with farmers who only buy from their members. the cocoa goes from beans into sacks, and the sacks are marked with that village those farmers live in coop cocoa. the sacks go on ships which come into europe and get processed
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into cocoa butter and cocoa liquor, and then that marked cocoa butter gets sent to a chocolate factory and gets used as chocolate in divine. so we work with the farmers in coop cocoa. because they're part of the fair trade system, fair trade comes and audits them. fair trade checks the money they say they're going to get but also check they're running an orderly system. >> the issue of forced labor in the cocoa industry must seem like a world away for the people on trading floors and also in rich companies buying chocolate. from january last year, though, fair trade cocoa changed hands for a minimum price of $200,000 a ton plus a $200 premium on top of that traded price. access to the exchanges in london and new york where cocoa is traded is practically impossible for small growers on their own. so the fair trade cooperative
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helps small growers stand up for themselves. cnn spent the day with a cocoa trader who shows exactly why this is such a volatile commodity. >> hello. my name is nick gintilly. i'm a senior adviser based in jersey city, new jersey. this is home base. our office is across the street. my heart will always be in lower manhattan. even though i'm upstairs in an office and i can trade any commodity i want in the world, somehow i always come back to the boutique market of cocoa. it's in my blood. as you can see, cocoa is the first market that i have on my quote board. my co-worker steve lampe based out of london. we're on skype. >> the grains are getting hit. >> this is the cocoa market live right now. i'll do a live trade for you right now. here we go.
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okay. we're filled. we're speculating on the price. we think the price is going lower. so we want to capture a move and generate revenue for our clients. the feeling in the cocoa market right now, we're oversupplied. demand is running at a steady pace right now, but demand is not increasing. that will drive the price of cocoa lower. and we also have to take into consideration what's going on in the world, in europe with the sovereign debt crisis. when there is a macro event, all the markets feel it. the market's live right now. i am out $1,560 on the trade i initiated two minutes ago. it takes a certain personality, in my opinion, to trade these markets because of the volatility. it's sort of like an adrenaline rush to me. 2011 was a roller coaster year in cocoa. a slow jump out of a plane with a parachute, and then we jumped on the rocket ship and the
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market exploded. this is when we were seeing upheaval, fighting in the ivory coast. as the fighting was going on, the market gradually worked its way higher. after that, the market has slowly but surely declined. if i could forecast where we were going to close at the end of the year, i wouldn't be sitting in this chair right now. today we had had a very nice day. we made money today. we're winding down our day. it's come to an end, and i could actually shut off my trading platform and say it's time to go home. i will give you a call later. >> okay. >> when my day ends, come to the store across the street, and today got to buy a snickers bar. got to keep consumption of chocolate up. we had a good week this week. we all deserve a treat.
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welcome back to "world business today." the global economic outlook is bleak, and europe has a lot to answer for. if its latest forecast, the world bank is predicting global growth of 2.5% for 2012. now that's down from 3.6% that it estimated in june. so let's break down those numbers a little further now. those three colors represent developing economies here in the world, developed here in green, and these in blue are the eurozone. back in june when the world bank did their first 2012 forecast,
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growth coming in at 6.2% in developing. that's been revised down to 5.4%. that's quite a significant decline for the developing economies. developed world, 2.7% in june, contracting now, only going to be 1.4%. almost half that growth cut. but this is where the real action is taking place. in june, the world bank said 1.8% growth, anemic, for the eurozone. now this is what they're saying. a recession for the full year of 2012, nina, contracting growth of about .3%. sort of puts a comparison of the eurozone with the rest of the world. >> the world bank believes the eurozone's inability to capture its troubles will affect the long term growth. earlier i spoke with a manager of global economics about this, and i questioned him the extent and influence of the potential eurozone recession.
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>> we're calling for minus 0.3% growth for the euro area countries, so that is going to imply a recession in the area. nevertheless, we do expect that to come to an end in 2013. >> so a recession that will be brief, let's say. how can developing world countries protect themselves from feeling the knock-on effects of a kind of recession in the eurozone in that's a pretty big export market for a number of these developing world countries. >> our baseline scenario, that is there to a significant degree. what we see is developing countries continue to expand their export markets in that scenario. but as a lesser pace. the real concern here is what if something goes wrong? >> such as what? >> well, in the report we take a look at a number of scenarios. and we look at those scenarios not because they're something we expect to happen but rather as
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an effort of trying to get a sense of what the level would be in those countries. if there were to be a deterioration of the situation in europe, then we'd see developing countries get hit pretty hard, maybe as much as 4.2% of their gdp. >> pretty stark warning coming from andrew burns of the world bank. if we thought that today's global predictions for growth were bad, they could be much worse to come given what he's saying there. let's have a look at how the world bank situation is playing on the markets. these downgrading of economic predictions are being felt. one of the reasons the markets are moving downward today is news of that world bank report released today. we've also got greek creditor talks. the investors m greek sovereign debt are going to be resuming their talks today with the greek government. that will be on the cards today after the talks broke down largely on the back of how much of a haircut investors would have to take on friday, andrew. >> a bit of a volatile session
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here in asia today. the markets ending mostly on the right side of the flat line. if you look at the numbers there, see green arrows. three of the key markets. shanghai, the odd one out. there was a big one yesterday, up 4.5% really. a bit of profit taking going on in shanghai. interesting development here in asia. a turn-up for the books in the age of falling credit ratings. indonesia's debt has actually been upgraded by moody's today. the country's rating was posted to baa-3 as opposed to ba-1. this means it's investment grade, not junk anymore. the gentlemjakarta composite up 3.1% today. this is the first time they've had investment grade debt in indonesia since the asian financial crisis, and that
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really hit indonesia in 1998. so it gives you an idea of just how long it's taken to get the backing once again of the credit rating agencies for indonesia. >> that really puts it into context, doesn't it, andrew? let's hone in on japan because last year 2011 was a tough year for this country. it was just last march that japan was rocked, of course, by that devastating earthquake and tsunami. while many things are slowly returning to normal there, the government says there's one major staple that isn't returning to normal at the moment, and it is tourism. japan's immigration bureau says the number of foreign visitors to the country fell by nearly 24.5% last year from 2010. that's about 2.3 million fewer visitors and tourists flocking to japan. it's the steepest decline on recent records. the government cited the tsunami devastation and the nuclear crisis fears as well as the strong yen for the reasons the tourist traffic to this country
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has slowed down so much of late. >> those worries about contamination are quite persistent. tokyo has been proactive in its efforts to ease people's fears. it recently unveiled a new detection center where people can monitor their exposure levels for a small fee. kim na takes a look. >> reporter: since the fukushima nuclear disaster, there's been a lot of concern in japan about exactly how much radiation has been in the air. how much radiation is in the ground in foods like produce as well as beef. up until very recently, there's been no quick way for the general population to check how much internal exposure to radiation they have received. but now there is some technology which this company at least is hoping will become available to the general population. so in just a few minutes you can check to see how much radiation is inside of you. this one checks your thyroid.
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so for five minutes i have to sit here, and an electric beam will measure whether or not there's any high level of radioactivity in my thyroid. and this machine over here will test your entire body for radiation. the idea with these machines is to make them portable, to get them to the community that lives closest to the nuclear plant to give them some sort of peace of mind. >> what we didn't do in the chernobyl and three mile island accidents was accumulate radiation detection data. so we can't prove the evidence of radiation exposure in children's diseases that occurred in the aftermath. by accumulating external and internal radiation exposure data, this can be critical for studies in radiation exposure, and japan can play the leading role in radiological medicine. >> my levels of radiation are normal, but i don't live near the nuclear facility. right now this isn't a free
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venture. you have to pay $200 in the tokyo area to get tested. they will cut that about in half if you can say you live in the fukushima region. if you're wondering where all of this technology comes from, it was originally developed in belarus, which is affected by the chernobyl nuclear disaster. kyung lah, cnn, tokyo. for most of us, the days of working 9:00 to 5:00 are truly over, aren't they? more and more, the line between day and evening, week and weekend is blurring. but does taking our work home make us any more productive? in what passes for common sense. used to be we socked money away and expected it to grow. then the world changed... and the common sense of retirement planning became anything but common. fortunately, td ameritrade's investment consultants can help you build a plan that fits your life. take control by opening a new account or rolling over an old 401(k) today, and we'll throw in up to $600. how's that for common sense?
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[pig oinking] [hissing] [oink] [oinking] [ding] announcer: cook foods to the right temperature using a food thermometer. 3,000 americans will die from food poisoning this year. keep your family safer. check your steps at foodsafety.gov. [oinking] i'm sure you know how it is. you're all set for a quiet night in or a big night out, and that little red light on your blackberry starts flashing. it's difficult to ignore, isn't it? in the age of 9:00 to 5:00, there was a clear boundary between work and allies away from the office. but technology and the rise of
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the global village have blurred that line for pretty much all of us, nina. >> here's a question for you, andrew. if you do check your work smartphone outside of office hours and subsequently respond to a request, should this constitute as overtime? a new law in brazil dictates it should. that has, as you can imagine, opened up a new can of worms for company bosses. it could herald a return to stricter office hours for some. while it's arguably inconvenient in modern times, it's a new move that's welcomed by some who think an attachment to work away from our desks is affected productivity at them. one such person is the financial times associate editor lucy calloway. she argues that efforts to make our working lives more efficient on the other hand seem to have the opposite effect. she joins us in the london studio to discuss the topic. it's something that everyone has an opinion on. lucy, first up, i know myself. i'm a notorious blackberry
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addict. i'm answering e-mails at midnight s that a bad thing or a good thing? >> i'm an addict too, and because i answer e-mails at midnight, i know it's a bad thing. it's not just the rest of our lives suffer. it's that we're not as good as answering those e-mails. there used to be this golden age where we work 9:00 to 5:00. we now work the whole time and at weekends. but there's absolutely no sign we get more done as a result. >> some people perhaps would argue, if you don't respond to an e-mail then, perhaps there's pressure to respond in the immediate time, and the quality of your response perhaps isn't going to be as good if it's at midnight. >> most of the e-mails we respond to, we don't need to respond to anyway. if you go away for a couple of weeks and have the mental discipline not to look at it and you come back, most of the problems have gone away anyway. >> but legislating this, as in brazil, is incredibly difficult because if you do make it official overtime, competitive
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industry becomes less competitive, doesn't it? >> i think legislating is the only way to do it, company level, making rules. these things are addictive. unless a company flips a master switch and says, right, you can't use e-mail now after such and such a time, then nothing happens. >> do you think we will see, especially in europe, this kind of legislation coming in? for instance, examples of companies already taking these policies into their own hands like volkswagen deciding to shut down their blackberry e-mail service over the christmas holidays. do you think it will be self-policing, or we will see proper legislation across europe? >> it will be different in different countries. i don't think there will be country level legislation in europe. but i do think what will happen is companies and individuals will start to change a little bit because the current situation suits nobody. >> so if we go back to, let's say, stricter 9:00 to 5:00 working day, is this to a
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certain extent akin to the kind of situation we had back in 2000, the tech bubble, when everybody was told to come to work casual and their work became casual as a result? >> yes. i think that's what happened during this period was that work and non-work have slid into each other. there's no difference in how we dress. there's no difference in what we do. the movement has come the other way. we see people in their office eating cereal at their desks and the dry cleaning strewn all over the building. the two have bled into each other, and there's been a great loss of efficiency as a result. >> what about other people saying perhaps employers are babeying their staff. you've written an interesting article saying that is the only way to get anything done >> yes, because i think we're like babies. we don't manage our time well. so we do allow ourselves to be vaguely e-mailing at midnight when we're sort of maybe watching the telly or reading or talking to members of our family.
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that isn't how to use our time well. so sometimes it's helpful for someone else to come along and say, no, do it better. >> certainly food for thought. lucy kellaway from the "london financial times," thanks for being in our studio. it's going to take more to surgically remove me from the blackberry, but then again, we bridge many time zones at world business today. i'm not sure what the answer is. but lucy made a pretty convincing argument. >> i thought she made a really good argument. i was nodding my head on every point she made. i also think, nina, if you're constantly on it, you never recharge from work. so your whole performance gets down to sort of an endurance rather than a sprint. you don't have all of your faculties popping at the right time. i'm not an addict. i feel really guilty if i haven't looked at it for an hour. there you go. i don't think it's going to change. here's something that happens every time this year, and it's always a subject of
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lots of comment, lots of interest. in asia, it is almost the year of the dragon, as many of you know. that is, of course, we're talking about the chinese lunar calendar. so what will the year of the dragon mean for business? what will it mean for you. we'll take a look at what the horoscope holds next. with your mortgage, worried about foreclosure. we can help you keep your house. all we ask for in return is that you submit to our plans for galactic domination. [laughing] [laughing hesitantly]
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don't mess with the locals. the crowds here in hong kong are chanting "apologize" during a protest over the weekend, and that is exactly what dolce and gabbana have done. the designer chain said it's truly sorry for forbidding them for taking photos of the flagship store. the chinese lunar new year is just around the corner, and people across the region are curious to know what the year of the dragon has in store. the hong kong brokerage firm clsa has reduced its annual feng shui index. it's a light hearted look at market predictions, but people read it. they said you can expect a sluggish beginning of the year with significant improvement around autumn. if you are thinking of
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investing, these are the sectors you want to look at, cement, gaming, property, tourism, and transport. >> the dragon symbolizes a transition of power, a watershed between the new and old. something like a turning point, a game changer. so looking back at the previous year of the dragons every 12 years apart, you will see be it the market up cycle or down cycle, for the year of the dragon, you see a sharp inflection point. after that inflection point, the index goes ballistic or goes into freefall. >> so fat times ahead. as you do say, they live in interesting times here in china. that inflection point, it will be interesting to see what happens in europe, whether it goes down or finally takes off. nina, i've got the actual index here, the feng shui index as you can see here.
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it's got personal horoscopes for the year. do you know your chinese zodiac sign? >> i do indeed. i checked it out this morning. apparently, i'm the year of the horse. if i read the attributes here, according to the internet, i haven't gotten to the bad ones yet. horses are intelligent, sign of strength, energy, and an outgoing nature. here's the key one. they thrive when they're the center of attention. so perhaps we're doing the right job here being in television. >> i know a few horses, and i wouldn't disagree with that last line. you've got a fair year ahead, according to clsa report. it says there's rough riding ahead and tough terrain too. go with what you know and relish the run. they break it down to health, wealth, and career. that's your health. forty winks, three square meals, and once around the oval. that seems to be sensible advice for anyone, not just the horses.
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your career is looking okay, nina. with wealth, it's not great. it's not bad, but it's not great. if you want to improve your wealth potential, stick a music box in the west of your home or indeed in the office. you got that? >> great. the television is out the window, and the music box is going in the corner. it's not often you get a chance to have your personal horoscope read on air. andrew, thanks for that. >> listen, i'd better give you mine just in fairness. they call it a cow. i like to think of myself more as the ox than the cow. i'll tell you what, my year makes your year look like yours is going to be fabulous. basically, i'm going to end up at the end of this year of the dragon, i'm going to end up broke but probably jobless. the only good thing is health. that's the cow, the wealth side of it. "wealth and self may be strangers much of the year. summer looks decidedly icy."
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sort of gets worse from there. my career, "no fear, you'll bring up the rear in your career sphere this year. and watch your back." nina, what does that mean? >> we'll have to wait and see. that's it from both of us at "world business today" and our horoscopes. if you're the year of the horse or the year of the cow like andrew, hopefully, you've been enlightened. i'm nina del santos in london. >> i'm andrew stevens at cnn hong kong.
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