The UK economy contracted 1% between September and November, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) has estimated.

This fall followed after a 0.8% drop in the three months to the end of October, said the think tank.

Indicating that the rate of output decline is "accelerating", the NIESR now expects a fall of more than 1% in the last three months of the year.
Official data showed that the economy shrank 0.5% from July to September.
But it will not be until January that the Office for National Statistics reports on the final quarter's GDP.
If it reports a decline for the three months to December, then the UK will be in officially in recession under the generally accepted definition of two consecutive quarters of decline.
The NIESR says it has a good track record in forecasting GDP growth in advance of the official figures.
'Real risk'
The latest data from NIESR is just the latest indication that the UK economy is most probably falling into a recession.
The main problem the government needs to address very urgently is the availability of bank credit,
NIESR
Martin Weale, the director of NIESR, said that the government would need to put more equity into the banking system so that it was better capitalised.
And he warned that things would not get better soon.
"I would not be terribly surprised if output continued to fall until 2010," he told BBC News.
The government has predicted a short, sharp recession, with recovery in mid-2009.
NIESR said the recession was likely to be deeper than first thought.
"The Government faces the real risk that, despite the [stimulus] measures it took in last month's Budget, output will fall more sharply than it expected to the end of next year," it said.
"The main problem that it needs to address very urgently is the availability of bank credit, and further interest reductions are unlikely to have much effect."
In addition to the recent cuts in interest rates, the Bank of England and the government have given the UK's banking sector billions of pounds in loans to try to restore lending levels to normal.
In response, banks such as Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB and HBOS have all announced measures to increase lending to small firms.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) also warned last week that the UK faces a "severe" economic downturn in 2009.
The Paris-based body predicted that economic output in the UK will fall by 1.1% next year, more than any other major G7 country.
It added that unemployment in the UK will likely rise significantly to over 8% by end of 2009 from 5.5% in 2008.

Charlotte Street in New York City's South Bronx was once the epicenter of urban blight. No longer. Now single-family homes line the strip and boats si

Charlotte Street in New York City's South Bronx was once the epicenter of urban blight. No longer. Now single-family homes line the strip and boats sit in driveways.

apocalyptic nightmare version of urban life.
Weed-choked, junk-filled lots flanked the three-block stretch. Burned out tenement buildings punctuated the sky, and abandoned cars littered the landscape.
The street, like much of the rest of New York City's South Bronx, had fallen to epic lows by the late 1970s. The area had disgorged nearly two-thirds of its population as living conditions declined and arson fires raged. Some landlords, unable to find tenants, torched their properties for insurance money. Other blazes were set by junkies, while still more were set by residents of public housing trying to get moved into nicer apartments.
See photos of the devastation
"Charlotte Street was burning," says Genevieve Brooks, a former resident. "Every day, I'd see the fires and smell the smoke. I slept with my shoes by my bed at night because you never knew if your building was next."
Just three miles away, at Yankee Stadium, is where Howard Cosell uttered his famous line: "There it is, ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning."
No longer.
0:00 /3:26From bombed out slum to suburbia
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In the three decades since Cosell introduced the world to the plight of the Bronx during the 1977 World Series, Charlotte Street has morphed into a haven of single-family ranch houses accented by backyards flourishing with fruit trees and flowers. Boats sit in driveways and above-ground swimming pools are common. It's a slice of suburbia in one the country's most urban -- and poor -- counties.
What happened to the Charlotte Street that President Carter called "the worst slum in America?" Or the Charlotte Street that President Reagan visited during a 1980 campaign swing? The one he compared -- unfavorably -- with London after the Blitz.
One of the greatest real estate turnarounds ever.
"Charlotte Street is thought of as quite a success story, particularly considering its context: It rose, phoenix-like, out of the ashes," says Nicolas Retsinas, director of Harvard's Joint Center for Urban Studies.
Baby steps
One of the primary catalysts was Brooks, who had moved to Charlotte Street from South Carolina in the 1960s, when the neighborhood was racially mixed and thriving. But as the 1970s dawned, she watched the deterioration take hold.
When she asked her landlord about maintaining her building, he dismissed her. "He told me I should move to Queens, or Park Avenue," she remembers. "I could have left. But I was single at the time, no children, so I didn't have as much to lose."
Instead, she knocked on neighbors' doors and asked if they noticed the change. When they said "yes," she formed a tenants association. Then she helped form a block association to lobby the city to pick up trash and abandoned cars, and to crack down on crime.
"We went down to the cellars and bagged tons of garbage, brought it upstairs and got Sanitation to pick it up," she remembered. "The kids were excited about sweeping the streets. I would give them money for snacks. They would ask, 'Miss Brooks can we sweep the street today?'"
Bigger strides
By 1974, tired of the small scale efforts, a host of neighborhood volunteers formed a group they called the Mid-Bronx Desperadoes to lobby for improvements throughout the community.
"There was a tremendous amount of community action," says former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer. "That was the secret ingredient. The community refused to give up. They needed allies. They needed people who took the decline of the South Bronx as personally as they did."
One of those people was urban planner Ed Logue, who was hired in 1978 to run a city agency called the South Bronx Development Office. The city was trying to erase the shame of its worst slums, and to do that Logue knew he would need the assistance of local organizations. The Desperadoes, headed by Brooks, were ready to step into the breach.
Brook's and Logue's vision was to go to the rotted core -- Charlotte Street -- and work outward. But most everyone advised them to rebuild starting from the healthy fringes. They wanted single-family homes; critics wanted density and multi-family dwellings, saying it would promote a lively, safe neighborhood and attract merchants.
"The conventional wisdom was that no one would invest their life savings in such a devastated area," says Julie Sandorf, who worked with the MBD and is now president of the Charles H. Revson Foundation, a New York City-based charity.
Brooks, though, knew most of the families in the area were African Americans from the South, Caribbean blacks and Puerto Ricans, and she was convinced that the long home-owning traditions of these groups would help make a community of single-family homes work.
So she and Logue focused on convincing the Local Initiatives Support Corp., a newly launched nonprofit that had a $10 million grant from the Ford Foundation to assist burgeoning neighborhood revivals.
"There was so much devastation in the Charlotte Street area, it needed a big infusion of dollars," Brooks remembers. "We were in the financial disaster stage."
Convincing skeptics
LISC was indeed interested in assisting in the South Bronx, but the foundation had its doubts about the plan. "People at LISC were skeptical about the notion of doing single-family homes in the South Bronx," says CEO Michael Rubinger. "It was thought to be a crazy idea."
But Logue and Brooks dazzled then-director Anita Miller with a vision of white picket fences. She agreed take a gamble and put up the $125,000 the groups needed to purchase two model homes.
Those first three-bedroom, two-bath ranch homes were manufactured in Pennsylvania and trucked over the George Washington Bridge one night in 1983. Sandorf and her husband were on site waiting for the trucks. The first people they saw was a rough looking street gang -- whom Logue had hired to secure the grounds.
Still, Sandorf says, her husband was a little spooked. "He kept asking, 'Where are all the lights?' I had to tell him all those buildings are abandoned. There are no lights."
The homes were priced at about $50,000, and they sold like hot cakes. "We got more than 600 applications from potential buyers in the first three weeks," says Sandorf.
Within three years, 92 homes would be built on the street and the area re-christened Charlotte Gardens. About 90% of the buyers were from the Bronx, according to Sandorf; many were low-income.
Homeownership was made possible by discounting the houses: Each property sold for between $50,000 and $59,000 even thought it cost an average of $110,000 to build. The difference was funded through federal dollars, but the City of New York and various foundations also helped subsidize buyers.
"The houses in Charlotte Gardens were very deeply subsidized," says former borough president Ferrer. "But it wasn't just city money: That provided a stimulus for financial institutions who were reluctant to lend. We told the banks they had to get involved, they had to get up here and lend. Some admitted they had to eat crow: They never expected the complex to succeed."
Shining example
But succeed it did. Original buyers invested and stayed; fewer than a dozen homes out of the 92 have ever been sold. Plus, while the rest of the country is being wracked by foreclosures, Charlotte Gardens has lost just one home to the plague.
"The selling of Charlotte Gardens is the extreme opposite story of what happened in the recent real estate debacle," Sandorf says. "It is a shining example of how to do it right. House buyers were carefully selected and vetted. They were subjected to strict credit checks and homeownership counseling."
Property values, too, have soared. Homes that originally went for $50,000 now sell for ten times that -- when one is available. Currently, there is only one for-sale sign on all of Charlotte Street. The owners, who are original, have retired and are moving to Florida. They listed the property for $459,000 -- which is still inexpensive by New York standards. Just across the river, in Manhattan, buyers pay that for a studio apartment.
"Sales are so rare that finding comparables to make an accurate appraisal is very hard," says Tina Gordon, the Century 21 real estate agent for the property.
Genevieve Brooks and her husband were one of the few to sell their home. Several years ago, they retired and returned South Carolina, where they have family. But they still come back often to visit friends in Charlotte Gardens.
"We didn't know what we were doing when we started, but we did know we had to do this ourselves," she says.

GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT: THIRD QUARTER 2009 (ADVANCE ESTIMATE)

GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT: THIRD QUARTER 2009 (ADVANCE ESTIMATE)

Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and propertylocated in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the third quarter of 2009,(that is, from the second quarter to the third quarter), according to the "advance" estimate released by theBureau of Economic Analysis. In the second quarter, real GDP decreased 0.7 percent. The Bureau emphasized that the third-quarter advance estimate released today is based on sourcedata that are incomplete or subject to further revision by the source agency (see the box on page 5). The"second" estimate for the third quarter, based on more complete data, will be released on November 24,2009. The increase in real GDP in the third quarter primarily reflected positive contributions frompersonal consumption expenditures (PCE), exports, private inventory investment, federal governmentspending, and residential fixed investment. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP,increased. The upturn in real GDP in the third quarter primarily reflected upturns in PCE, in privateinventory investment, in exports, and in residential fixed investment and a smaller decrease innonresidential fixed investment that were partly offset by an upturn in imports, a downturn in state andlocal government spending, and a deceleration in federal government spending. Motor vehicle output added 1.66 percentage points to the third-quarter change in real GDP afteradding 0.19 percentage point to the second-quarter change. Final sales of computers subtracted 0.11percentage point from the third-quarter change in real GDP after subtracting 0.04 percentage point fromthe second-quarter change.______________________FOOTNOTE.--Quarterly estimates are expressed atseasonally adjusted annual rates, unless otherwise specified.Quarter-to-quarter dollar changes are differences between these publishedestimates. Percent changes are calculated from unrounded data and areannualized. “Real” estimates are in chained (2005) dollars. Price indexesare chain-type measures. This news release is available on BEA’s Web site along with the Technical Note and Highlightsrelated to this release.______________________ The price index for gross domestic purchases, which measures prices paid by U.S. residents,increased 1.6 percent in the third quarter, compared with an increase of 0.5 percent in the second.Excluding food and energy prices, the price index for gross domestic purchases increased 0.5 percent inthe third quarter, compared with an increase of 0.8 percent in the second. Real personal consumption expenditures increased 3.4 percent in the third quarter, in contrast toa decrease of 0.9 percent in the second. Durable goods increased 22.3 percent, in contrast to a decreaseof 5.6 percent. The third-quarter increase largely reflected motor vehicle purchases under the ConsumerAssistance to Recycle and Save Act of 2009 (popularly called, “Cash for Clunkers” Program).Nondurable goods increased 2.0 percent in the third quarter, in contrast to a decrease of 1.9 percent inthe second. Services increased 1.2 percent, compared with an increase of 0.2 percent. Real nonresidential fixed investment decreased 2.5 percent in the third quarter, compared with adecrease of 9.6 percent in the second. Nonresidential structures decreased 9.0 percent, compared with adecrease of 17.3 percent. Equipment and software increased 1.1 percent, in contrast to a decrease of 4.9percent. Real residential fixed investment increased 23.4 percent, in contrast to a decrease of 23.3percent. Real exports of goods and services increased 14.7 percent in the third quarter, in contrast to adecrease of 4.1 percent in the second. Real imports of goods and services increased 16.4 percent, incontrast to a decrease of 14.7 percent. Real federal government consumption expenditures and gross investment increased 7.9 percentin the third quarter, compared with an increase of 11.4 percent in the second. National defense increased8.4 percent, compared with an increase of 14.0 percent. Nondefense increased 6.8 percent, comparedwith an increase of 6.1 percent. Real state and local government consumption expenditures and grossinvestment decreased 1.1 percent, in contrast to an increase of 3.9 percent. The change in real private inventories added 0.94 percentage point to the third-quarter change inreal GDP after subtracting 1.42 percentage points from the second-quarter change. Private businessesdecreased inventories $130.8 billion in the third quarter, following decreases of $160.2 billion in thesecond quarter and $113.9 billion in the first. Real final sales of domestic product -- GDP less change in private inventories -- increased 2.5percent in the third quarter, compared with an increase of 0.7 percent in the second.Gross domestic purchases Real gross domestic purchases -- purchases by U.S. residents of goods and services whereverproduced -- increased 4.0 percent in the third quarter, in contrast to a decrease of 2.3 percent in thesecond.Disposition of personal income Current-dollar personal income decreased $15.5 billion (0.5 percent) in the third quarter, incontrast to an increase of $19.1 billion (0.6 percent) in the second. Personal current taxes increased $4.8 billion in the third quarter, in contrast to a decrease of$119.1 billion in the second. The quarterly pattern of taxes reflected a much smaller decrease in federalwithheld income taxes in the third quarter, based on the quarterly pattern of wages and salaries and aleveling off of the effects on withholding rates from the Making Work Pay Credit provision of theAmerican Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. (For more information, see the Technical Note.) Disposable personal income decreased $20.4 billion (0.7 percent) in the third quarter, in contrastto an increase of $138.2 billion (5.2 percent) in the second. Real disposable personal income decreased3.4 percent, in contrast to an increase of 3.8 percent. Personal outlays increased $148.2 billion (5.8 percent) in the third quarter, compared with anincrease of $8.2 billion (0.3 percent) in the second. Personal saving -- disposable personal income lesspersonal outlays -- was $364.6 billion in the third quarter, compared with $533.1 billion in the second.The personal saving rate -- saving as a percentage of disposable personal income -- was 3.3 percent inthe third quarter, compared with 4.9 percent in the second. For a comparison of personal saving inBEA’s national income and product accounts with personal saving in the Federal Reserve Board’s flowof funds accounts and data on changes in net worth, go to http://www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/Nipa-Frb.asp.Current-dollar GDP Current-dollar GDP -- the market value of the nation's output of goods and services -- increased4.3 percent, or $150.3 billion, in the third quarter to a level of $14,301.5 billion. In the second quarter,current-dollar GDP decreased 0.8 percent, or $26.8 billion.

CONSUMER PRICE INDEX, NEW YORK-NORTHERN NEW JERSEY: JUNE 2009

CONSUMER PRICE INDEX, NEW YORK-NORTHERN NEW JERSEY: JUNE 2009Area prices rose 0.5 percent in June; down 0.6 percent over the year- largest drop since 1955

Retail prices in the greater New York area, including NorthernNew Jersey and Southwestern Connecticut, as measured by the ConsumerPrice Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), increased 0.5 percent inJune, after edging up 0.2 percent in each of the prior three months.Michael L. Dolfman, Regional Commissioner of the U. S. Department ofLabor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, said that the June rise waslargely due to higher energy prices. The increase was partly offsetby price declines in apparel and shelter. For the 12 months ended inJune 2009, the CPI-U decreased 0.6 percent, the largest over-the-yeardrop since 1955. The index for all items less food and energy rose1.9 percent. With the New York-Northern New Jersey CPI-U at 237.172 in June(1982-84=100), $23.72 was required to purchase what $10 could in the1982-84 base period. The purchasing power of the dollar was 42.2cents in 1982-84 dollars and 14.6 cents in 1967 dollars. In June,the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers(CPI-W) was 231.916, up 0.7 percent. The CPI-W fell 0.8 percent overthe year. On a 1967 base, the June CPI-W was 660.322. Data in this report are not seasonally adjusted. Accordingly,month-to-month changes may reflect the impact of seasonal influences.The New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, N.Y.-N.J.-Conn.-Pa.consolidated area comprises the five boroughs of New York City,Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Dutchess, and OrangeCounties in New York State; Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Hunterdon, Mercer,Monmouth, Middlesex, Morris, Ocean, Passaic, Somerset, Sussex, Unionand Warren Counties in New Jersey; Fairfield County and parts ofLitchfield, New Haven and Middlesex Counties in Connecticut; and PikeCounty in Pennsylvania.

NEW DELHI: India will miss the power capacity addition target for the 11th Five Year Plan, Union power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde made this
admission while addressing media persons at the annual economic editors conference on Wednesday. “We have performed much better in terms of new capacity addition in the 11th Plan as generation capacity worth 18,235 MW has already been commissioned till early October 2009. However, due to various project-related delays, the entire planned target for the plan period may not materialise,” Mr Shinde said. The 11th Plan (2007-12) has set a 78,700 MW capacity addition target. The government is now hopeful that 11th Plan may end with a capacity addition of just 62,374 MW, about 20% below the original target for the plan. “We are still hopeful that with best efforts another 12,000 MW of capacity could be added by 2012,” the minister said. Deputy chairman of planning commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia, too, said that capacity addition would be short of target by around 8,000 MW. In the previous five years plans also, the power capacity addition have fallen short of targets by as much as 50%. On distribution sector reforms, Mr Shinde said that the restructured Accelerated Power Development and Reform Programme should make a difference. He also announced setting up of a new company, Energy Efficiency Services (EESL), for implementing energy efficiency projects all across the country. The company will be set up with an initial equity capital of Rs 190 crore to be provided by four power sector PSUs — NTPC, Power Finance Corporation, Rural Electrification Corporation and Power Grid — in equal amount. It would leverage its equity to raise another Rs 700-800 crore for implementing energy efficiency projects and providing constancy services. The overall size of the market for energy efficiency projects and services in India is estimated at Rs 74,000 crore and till now, only 5% of the market has been tapped. An improvement of 20% energy efficiency can result in avoided capacity addition of around 30,000 MW that amounts to an avoided investment of Rs 1,20,000 crore.

were lower in Asia on Thursday as traders took stock of weak fundamentals in the market, analysts said

New York's main contract, light sweet crude for December delivery, shed 34 cents to 80.06 dollars a barrel. Brent North Sea crude for December delivery slipped 53 cents to 78.36 dollars. Prices eased after breaking through the 80-dollar mark in New York on Wednesday, reflecting concerns over weak demand, analysts said. "The fundamentals of the markets are still weak... and there are no signs of steadily growing demand," said Jason Feer, Asia-Pacific vice-president of energy market analysts Argus Media in Singapore. He added that data released by the US Department of Energy (DoE) on Wednesday showing an unexpected dip in US crude reserves was "overall not that much" in the larger scheme of prices. The DoE announced that crude reserves in the world's largest energy consumer sank by four million barrels in the week ending October 30, surprising analysts, who were expecting a rise.Oil prices have climbed as commodities gained a boost from gold futures, which have struck a series of record highs. The price of gold surged to a peak in the wake of the International Monetary Fund's massive sale of the precious metal to India. Gold and other commodity prices have climbed in recent months amid a move away from the dollar, which has been slumping. The move accelerated last month on a report that Gulf states may stop using the greenback for oil trading.

According to a new study by Bentley Coffey and Patrick McLaughlin, women in the legal profession with more masculine-sounding names, like Cameron or Kelly, have better odds of becoming judges than women with feminine names. The study focused on women in South Carolina, but as an ABA Journal article reports, it may support the general theory that women with masculine names have more successful law careers. One of the study's authors was so convinced by the results that he named his daughter Collins.
Many parents, affected by such research have started wondering about consequences of baby naming. The name you choose for your children can affect his "Google-ability". A new survey of 2,000 elementary school teachers in Germany finds that your children's names may also affect how teachers perceive them. An overwhelming majority of the teachers surveyed associate "traditional" names with positive character traits and non-traditional names with weak performance and bad behavior.
Astrid Kaiser, who conducted the study, said, "The names with positive connotations are all traditional German ones. The Wall Street Journal also reports that new parents may be choosing more "unique" names for their children in the interest of making them more prominent in Google searches. While a name like "Jason Smith" is easily swallowed up in the search-engine depths, a first name like "Kohler" or "Stella" is more likely to land your kid on the front search page.
For people prone to vanity searching -- punching their own names into search engines -- absence from the first pages of search results can bring disappointment. That's because people increasingly rely on search engines to find things they want to read, music they want to hear, people and companies they want to do business with. U.S. Internet users conduct hundreds of millions of search queries daily. About 7% of all searches are for a person's name, estimates search engine Ask.com. More than 80% of executive recruiters said they routinely use search engines to learn more about candidates, according to a recent survey by executive networking firm ExecuNet.
It's true that "Google-ability" can be valuable in everything from dating to job hunting to marketing your brand or product. If so, then we're going to see a revolution in the power of Google to influence a life. In the age of Google, being special increasingly requires standing out from the crowd online. Many people aspire for themselves -- or their offspring -- to command prominent placement in the top few links on search engines or social networking sites' member lookup functions.
Some people have taken measures to boost their visibility online, including creating listings in professional directories and paying companies to help them appear more prominently in search results. Parents-to-be routinely plug baby names into search engines to scout out the online competition.
Some people in similar straits have used services that can help generate more prominent placement for them in search results. Krishna De, a personal branding and marketing consultant in Dublin, signed up with Ziggs Inc. in 2005 after she left a corporate career and set out on her own. At the time, results for the Hindu deity Krishna crowded out links to her site.
Ziggs tries to get profile pages individuals create with it to appear high in search results, and for a $4.95 monthly fee buys ads that appear along search results on sites such as Google's to link to a client's profile. "If you're not found in search results, people start to wonder why," says Ziggs CEO Tim DeMello. So name consultant may be the next career and what about finding 'Wilson Gandhi", or 'Osama Rajeev" as names of CEOs?
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