London Olympics to give Thai food exports a boost - Nation - Thailand
Thailand is confident of exporting more than US$1.2 billion (Bt38 billion) worth of foods to the United Kingdom this year, as the Summer Olympic Games in London boost demand and economic growth despite the financial problems in Europe.
"Although the financial crunch in the European Union has had an impact on Thailand's exports, demand for Thai products in the UK market, particularly foods, has not been affected, as Britons have good consumer sentiment [based on] the upcoming Olympic Games," said Chulit Stavorn, executive director of the Thai Trade Centre in London.
The United Kingdom is the largest market for Thai exports in the EU. Although last year shipments to the Netherlands exceeded those to the UK, it was because of higher fuel exports from Thailand.
Chulit said export of Thai foods to the UK had increased gradually each year from $675 million in 2007 to $938 million in 2010.
Last year, exports of Thai food products to the UK was worth $1.1 billion. Major export products were processed chicken, worth $555 million, followed by canned seafoods, frozen shrimp, rice, noodles and processed foods, and fresh and canned fruits.
Chulit said the EU's cancellation of its import ban on fresh chicken from Thailand in July would also boost the Kingdom's poultry exports to the UK and EU markets. He expects that Thai chicken exports to the UK should increase by $400 million this year.
In addition, Chulit expects that the plan of CP Foods, Thailand's leading food producer, to take over Birds Eye, a giant British fish-finger producer, will increase trading opportunity for Thai products in the UK market if the bid is successful.
The deal is not yet finalised, as more than three firms are interested in taking over Birds Eye. However, it was reported in British newspapers that CPF had offered a bid of
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London 2012 Olympics: Kelly Sotherton forced to retire following surgery on back injury - Daily Telegraph
Sotherton, 35, who also won bronze at the 2007 World Championships in Osaka, had been hoping to qualify for London but pulled up with a back injury in the 200 metres during a heptathlon competition in Desenzano, Italy, last month.
London hotels prices drop for Olympics - Sydney Morning Herald
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Travel
Hotel prices are notorious for increasing ahead of international sporting events, but in London the average price has actually decreased by almost $20 a night.
A London hotel room during the Olympic Games in July and August costs on average $325, an increase of 93 per cent to the previous year.
Accommodation website www.hotels.com has found hotel prices have decreased by $20 since March this year.
The online hotel reservation system believes the price cut is due to the number of rooms and deals still available just 60 days before the Olympics.
Further price drops on top of the $20 decrease are not expected ahead of the European summer, which is traditionally a busy time of year.
Rates also vary depending on how close people stay to Olympic venues.
The most popular night for hotels is the opening ceremony on July 27 and the first day of the athletics on August 3.
However, a four-star hotel in central London away from the opening ceremony could cost as little as $233, according to www.hotels.com.
During the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, hotel prices in Cape Town reportedly rose by 71 per cent compared with the previous year.
AAP
London will continue to maintain status as global financial centre: Wootton - Nation - Thailand
London has been the world's largest financial centre for decades and it will remain so despite chaos in the euro zone, says Lord Mayor of London David Wootton.
Wootton, a lawyer by training with expertise in mergers and acquisitions, did not hide the pride that London feels for demonstrating over the centuries great ability to adapt itself to stay ahead of others, aside from openness and transparency that draws law and financial firms as well as numerous transactions to the city.
"It's open. Services are welcome to operate in the UK and a level-playing field is provided, with a single standard across the market," he said in a group interview.
The UK has been hit by the euro-zone crisis as Europe is its biggest export market. However, through the past few years, London has demonstrated its flexibility to maintain its status as a global financial centre amid two big threats - exposure of UK banks to other European banks following the euro crisis; and amendments to Europe's regulatory structure.
Despite the bleak backdrop, growth opportunities in London remain. Ahead of Olympics 2012, real estate investment is booming. In the past few years, London was also firm in basing bank executives' pay on real performance and tightening regulations to ensure the city's resilience. It is also the world's first centre outside China for yuan trading, besides being the biggest centre of Islamic finance in the Western Hemisphere.
London is ready to share its experiences with Thailand, which has long dreamed of becoming a regional financial centre.
"Britain is looking East as never before. In time, we'll be united by the forces," he said.
Wootton was in Bangkok last week, leading a delegation of British business leaders to meet Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Kittiratt Na-Ranong and Bank of Thailand Governor Prasarn Trairatvorakul as well as Thai business leaders. The mission is to present companies in London and across the United Kingdom as partners of choice to Thailand, boost bilateral trade and set the course for British companies' role in Thailand, particularly in services and construction, and Britain's part in the Public Private Partnership.
By the same token, he welcomed Thai banks, securities firms and funds to the UK as well as those in the manufacturing sector.
In the context of British investment in Thailand, he expressed concern over Thailand's foreign ownership limit, which should be lowered to allow foreign companies to become majority shareholders.
"If they are to be minorities, who's gonna put money? Over time, Thailand will see how this will be good for the country," he noted.
When the Asean Economic Community begins in 2015, he considers that the integration would make it easier to advance openness with a single set of rules, no matter where investment is poured. In this regard, Thailand has a competitive edge as it is one of the more active centres for finance. What the region first needs is central regulators. Then, they must acknowledge that rules require business openness and transparency in terms of information, security and disclosure, he said.
Despite chaos in the euro zone following its monetary integration, he did not see that as a cause of fear for Asean countries. He does not write off Europe, which "will remain the best part of the world". Moreover, he foresees more similar groupings in other parts of the world. There would be more groups of countries than indi-|viduals in the next 50 years, like what happened in the past 20 years.
"I suspect more permanent influence to groupings like those in the EU, Asean, Africa and Latin America. They are not necessarily unified, but they could be cooperating in specific partnership," he concluded.
"The EU is a lesson to be learnt. The crisis is not a structural fault. It hasn't happened because of the grouping. You have to learn from Europe's mistakes and identify what went wrong," he said, adding that much of the crisis is born out of the Hamburger crisis in 2008, which forced European countries to pump in liquidity and incur huge fiscal costs.
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GM's Vauxhall announces new Astra at UK plant - Yahoo Finance
LONDON (AP) -- General Motors' Vauxhall plant in northern England will build the company's top-selling Astra vehicles, the automaker said Thursday — a relief for U.K. politicians who had lobbied its American owner to keep the plant open.
The announcement comes after workers at the Ellesmere Port plant, near Liverpool, overwhelmingly backed a job deal which turned the factory into a 24-hour-a-day operation, a key cost-cutting measure pursued by parent company GM Europe.
GM Europe lost $700 million in 2011 and has been struggling to turn around its Opel and Vauxhall brands. It had been feared the company would close the Ellesmere Port facility in favor of consolidating production elsewhere — such as its headquarters in Ruesselsheim in Germany or Gliwice in Poland.
In a separate announcement, Opel said that the Ruesselsheim plant would switch to producing other models.
GM's announcement — which comes with a 125 million pound (nearly $200 million) investment and 700 extra jobs — is a break for leaders such as British Business Secretary Vince Cable, who fought to keep the British plant open.
Prime Minister David Cameron, speaking from the northern city of Manchester, called the decision "a fantastic vote of confidence."
"The U.K. government gave this its full backing. The unions supported the necessary changes. The workforce has responded magnificently. It is a British success story," he said.
Cable, who at one point traveled to the U.S. to plead the plant's case, told BBC television that no financial inducements were offered to General Motors Corp. to keep the U.K. facility open, saying the move underlined that Britain is "a good business environment for the motor industry."
Production of the new car is due to begin in 2015, with at least 160,000 vehicles scheduled to be produced every year.
London 2012: Jessica Ennis storms to personal best and victory in Götzis - The Guardian
Sixty-one days out from the Games, there were intimations of Olympic immortality in Jessica Ennis's performance in Austria. She was so dominant that by the time it came to the 800m the only question left to ask was just how much she wanted to turn the screw on everyone else.
Before competing in Götzis, Ennis had spoken about the small psychological edge that a victory would provide. Never mind her modesty, by winning in such style she was not so much serving notice to her rivals as she was taking names and collecting dues; she is an athlete in the form of her life. Her tally of 6,906 broke Denise Lewis's British heptathlon record by 75 points, was the 17th best in history, and perhaps most importantly, surpassed the personal best of the 2011 world champion Tatyana Chernova by 26 points.
Ennis's overnight lead over Chernova was 229 points, but that margin was deceptive. One of the reasons why rivalry between the two athletes is so compelling is that the differences between them are so pronounced. Chernova is nearly 10 inches taller and 13lb heavier. Ennis has better personal bests in all four events on day one, Chernova is superior in all three on day two. If both had reproduced their average scores for the second day they would have tied on 6,770. When Chernova won the world championship in Daegu, she made up 280 points on Ennis on day two.
The defining moment of this competition came in the first discipline on the second day. Chernova's personal best in the long jump is 6.82m, 28cm beyond anything Ennis has ever managed. Ennis is an erratic long-jumper – 6.19m cost her the world indoor pentathlon title in March – and will always be under pressure in the event, forced to fret about just how many points Chernova's leap will take out of her lead. Ennis's first jump was 6.23m. Chernova surpassed that with an opener of 6.32m. Ennis, pushing herself hard, fouled her second jump, overstepping by 5cm. Chernova then improved to 6.41m. Ennis, with one jump left, was going to lose 57 points from her lead.
Under intense pressure, with Chernova prowling on the runway behind her, Ennis nailed the perfect jump with her final attempt. Her toe was hard up against the take-off board, and she flew out to 6.51m. That equalled her outdoor best. "Oh my, why do I coach?" said Ennis's coach, Toni Minichiello. He described the moment as "heart-pounding". All of a sudden the barometer switched right round. All the pressure was on Chernova. She could only manage 6.44m. Ennis ended up picking up 22 points in an event where she had expected to lose many more.
Ennis's score at that point was the best she has ever recorded after five events. And her afternoon was about to get better still. After lunch she came out for the javelin, another event where she lags a long way behind Chernova. In Daegu, it was the javelin that cost Ennis gold. In Götzis she carried the momentum from the long jump pit into the next event. In the first round she threw a new personal best of 47.11 metres. It was the first time in her career she had thrown more than 47m, and beat her previous best by 40cm.
In Daegu, Minichiello had been furious that she was forced to compete in the B javelin group along with the lesser competitors, while Chernova threw in the A group. Here Ennis was in the A group, and she thrived. In the 200m she had been running on the inside of the talented Dutch teenager Dafne Schippers, the fastest woman in the field, and had been pulled around by her.
In the javelin, being bracketed with the strongest throwers brought the best out of Ennis. Her second and third efforts were both over 44m. There was a consistency that spoke volumes about the hard work she has done over the winter.
The 251-point lead she took into the event gave her a 12.5m buffer over Chernova. In the end the Russian beat her by a little under 6m, with her first round throw of 53.21m. Ennis had a 133-point lead at the start of the 800m.
Chernova would have needed to been 9.77sec quicker over two laps to have beaten Ennis, which is tantamount to having no chance at all. Still, Chernova overtook Ennis in the final few metres of the race, just to make the point "I'm still here". Chernova won in 2min 8.94sec, six hundreths of a second ahead of Ennis, but still 132 points behind her.
The next time Ennis and Chernova go head-to-head it will be in very different circumstances, and with much more at stake. Götzis is a low-key meet, and the contrast with the Olympic stadium could hardly be stronger. Here the crowd was only 2,000 or so strong, and the small stadium is surrounded by grass banks dotted with würst vendors and schnitzel sellers. Ennis gave her post-competition press conferences while standing in a wheelie bin full of iced water.
In a little over two months from now Ennis will need to reprise her on-track feats on the biggest stage she will ever perform. If she does, her life will never be the same again.
London 2012: Haile Gebrselassie Olympic 10,000m hopes ended - BBC News
Ethiopian two-time Olympic 10,000m champion Haile Gebrselassie has failed to qualify for this summer's Games in London after finishing seventh at the Fanny Blankers-Koen Games in Hengelo.
With the race being an official Ethiopian Olympic trial, Gebrselassie needed a top-two finish to qualify.
But the 39-year-old ran a time of 27 minutes 20.39 seconds, nearly nine seconds behind winner Tariku Bekele.
Haile Gebrselassie's medal haul
1993 World Championships: Gold (10,000m), Silver (5,000m)
1995 World Championships: Gold (10,000m)
1996 Olympic Games: Gold (10,000m)
1997 World Championships: Gold (10,000m)
1999 World Championships: Gold (10,000m)
2000 Olympic Games: Gold (10,000m)
2001 World Championships: Bronze (10,000m)
2003 World Championships: Silver (10,000m)
Elsewhere, Britain's Phillips Idowu was victorious in the triple jump.
The 33-year-old 2009 world champion won with a leap of 17.31m.
Idowu's fellow Briton Hannah England came home first in the women's 1500m in 4mins 4.05secs.
Former world-record holder Gebrselassie, who has already failed to earn a spot in the marathon for London this summer, was hoping to compete in his fifth Olympics and was in confident mood after winning the Great Manchester Run last weekend.
However, his chances of appearing are now over following a race won by Bekele in 27mins 11.70secs, just ahead of Leleisa Desisa Benti who will join him in London.
The third spot in the Ethiopian team is being held open for world-record holder Kenenisa Bekele, Tariku's brother, who has been suffering from injury problems.
"The Games in London is over for me," said Gebrselassie. "I ran a good race until the last lap. I felt good but I manifestly didn't have the speed to compete against my rivals. That's life. I am not disappointed."
Also in the Netherlands, in the 400m, Santos Luguelin of the Dominican Republic posted the second-fastest time of the year, 44.45secs, to edge out Britain's Martyn Rooney.
"Blade Runner" Oscar Pistorius finished fifth in 46.35secs.
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