Tencent and Baidu Join Wanda for $814m Chinese Clicks and Bricks Venture

Wang Jianlin, chairman of Dalian Wanda Group, is the richest person in China.Reuters

China-based commercial property major Dalian Wanda will provide the physical shop fronts in a joint e-commerce venture with Asian and internet giants Tencent and Baidu.

The new 5bn yuan ($814m, £491m, €617m) company will be registered in Hong Kong. It will be 70% owned by Wanda, while Tencent and Baidu will share the remaining 30% equally, the companies said in separate press releases.

Wanda is a conglomerate dealing primarily with commercial property and luxury hotels. It is controlled by Wang Jianlin, China's wealthiest man with a net worth of $16bn, according to Forbes. The company operates 83 department stores in major cities throughout China.

Shenzhen-based Tencent, known for its social networking apps and video games, is China's biggest listed internet firm with a market capitalisation of $156bn. Beijing-based Baidu is China's dominant internet search provider.

The joint venture will combine the internet giants' online technology with Wanda's bricks-and-mortar retail space. It will be the biggest online-to-offline e-commerce platform in the world, according to Dong Ce, the CEO of the new venture.

Online-to-offline retailing involves supplying goods and services to people from their nearest physical stores based on online orders made primarily from smartphones.

The deal has been structured over three years, and the three companies will make an initial investment of 1bn yuan in the venture, according to Tencent.

Over the next five years, the companies plan a total investment of about 20bn yuan by bringing in new investors to the venture.

As per the plan, Wanda will set up e-commerce services in its 107 commercial real estate properties throughout China in 2014, and will expand the services to all of its shopping malls, hotels and holiday resorts by 2015.

Meanwhile, Tencent and Baidu will provide internet finance and payment products, big data services and customer account and membership systems to the joint venture.

"The three partners will further deepen collaboration on initiatives such as traffic sharing, media and advertising resources sharing, membership benefits, payment and internet finance, big data, etc.," Tencent said.

The joint venture will compete with No 1 player Alibaba Group in the world's biggest e-commerce market.

Alibaba, which handles more transactions than Amazon.com and eBay combined, is preparing for its initial public offering in the US, which is expected to provide a mammoth valuation for the company.

Argentina Debt Fallout: New Rules Proposed to Prevent Similar Defaults

Pro-government demonstrators beat drums in front of an image of late President Nestor Kirchner placed over the Economy Ministry in Buenos Aires' financial district.Reuters

A group of banks and investors is proposing a new framework to govern the relationship between critically indebted countries and their creditors after Argentina's case with holdout creditors led to serious debate.

The International Capital Market Association (ICMA), representing more than 400 of the world's largest banks, investors and debt issuers, is releasing a revised collective action clause to deal with defaults on sovereign debt.

According to current rules, a minority of creditors may delay a restructuring of sovereign debt that the majority agrees on.

The minority group's ability to block restructuring could discourage other investors from joining a comprehensive restructuring plan.

The reforms proposed by ICMA would limit the so-called holdout creditors' ability to litigate and undermine debt restructurings, in part by using contract clauses to bind all bond-holders to debt restructurings that 75% of all holders agree on.

In addition, the proposal would argue that the "pari passu" or parity clause in existing bond contracts should always mean that holdout funds should receive the same restructured bonds that the majority of investors agree on.

"This is a step in the right direction and we really applaud the US government's leadership on this," said Eric LeCompte, executive director of the religious debt relief organisation Jubilee USA.

"I am concerned that this won't do enough to prevent litigation against poor countries in the next decade. We still need a statutory approach."

The reforms are aimed at preventing repeats of the Argentina/NML Capital debt dispute.

The country has been engaged in a long legal battle with hedge funds led by Elliott Management and Aurelius, which refused to take part in the country's debt restructuring. About 92% of the country's creditors agreed to swap debts and accept less money.

The holdout funds later sued the government for full payment.

US District Judge Thomas Griesa had earlier ruled in favour of the so-called vulture funds, barring Argentina from paying the holders of its restructured debt unless it pays the hedge funds. He has also blocked Argentina's coupon payment to restructured bondholders through the Bank of New York Mellon.

The country's settlement talks with the holdout creditors failed and it ended up defaulting on its debt at the end of July.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of the world's poorest countries, and the Caribbean nation of Grenada are facing an identical legal argument used against Argentina.

Malaysia: Six Men Jailed in Nude Sports Game Video

Malaysian police officers show portraits of people allegedly involved in a nudist sports festival.(STR/AFP/Getty Images)

A Malaysian court handed jail sentences to six men after a video of them taking part in nude events at a beach went viral online.

The six nudists - five Malaysian and one Singaporean - pleaded guilty to charges of public obscenity and were sentenced to one month in jail and fined 5,000 ringgit (£950) each.

They were arrested earlier this month, after police in the predominantly Muslim country opened an investigation into an online video depicting 18 people participating in an event called the Nude Sports Games 2014 at a beach on Penang Island, north-western Malaysia.

The 18 men and women were seen engaging in a series of activities, including nude swimming and relay races and body painting.

Recorded at the end of May, the video emerged online in August, causing outrage amid conservative Muslims.

Another four participants who were also arrested are contesting charges against them and have been released on bail pending the start of their trial in the town of Balik Pulau, Penang, in October.

"We are still hunting for five more individuals, one each from Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia and two Myanmar nationals," Mohamad Jalaluddin, the investigating police officer in the case told AFP.

Ebola Wreaks Havoc With West African Economies

An immigration officer wears a face mask at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja, Nigeria(Reuters)

The Ebola outbreak has caused huge damage to economies across West Africa as international businesses leave the region, the African Development Bank said.

Some airlines have suspended flights to countries where the disease has spread and experts have warned that the epidemic could shatter economic progress in the region.

Donald Kaberuka, head of the African Development Bank, told Reuters news agency that on a recent trip to Sierra Leone, he had seen estimates that the Ebola outbreak could reduce gross domestic product by as much as 4% this year. The country's economy had previously been forecast to grow at 14% in 2014.

"Revenues are down, foreign exchange levels are down, markets are not functioning, airlines are not coming in, projects are being cancelled, business people have left – that is very, very damaging," he said, as quoted by Reuters.

The bank chief said the decision to restrict travel and trade access to countries affected by the Ebola outbreak would only increase the size of the economic challenges those counties already faced.

"I understand the countries which are posing restrictions ... but let us only do so based on medical evidence and not on political imperatives," Kaberuka told Reuters.

The United Nations has stressed that bans on airlines and shipping lines could lead to a shortage in food and medical supplies.

The UN's chief spokesman Stephane Dujarric said banning flights would do little to halt the spread of the virus.

"It is not an optimal measure for controlling the import of Ebola virus disease," he said. "The measure does not reflect what is known about the way in which the virus passes between people," he added.

More than 1,400 people have died from the deadly virus in West Africa since it was first recorded in Guinea last December, before spreading to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.

Ebola has taken its strongest hold on in the first three countries, whose combined domestic product amounts to around $13bn.

Nigeria, where the outbreak has led to a much smaller number of deaths, is the continent's largest economy. Its gross domestic product for 2013 reached $522bn.

While the Nigerian outbreak has been contained so far, the government has shuttered public schools until mid-October, while the country's health minister said Nigeria had not escaped the growing catastrophe.

"Nigeria is still at risk of Ebola because we still have one case and from this one case the risk of spread is there," Onyebuchi Chukwu said.

Liberia has resigned itself to lowering its growth forecast for the year, while Sierra Leone's government said it expects to miss its export target of $200m worth of diamonds.

International companies have pulled out expatriate staff from the natural resource rich country in recent weeks, a trend that would likely worsen if the disease is not contained.

Frontline Isis: Ordinary Syrians Loathe IS - but are Powerless to Stop Them

A recent video of IS on parade.

At the beginning of the Syrian revolution the people came out against the regime with specific demands based on toppling the Assad regime, fostering the principles of freedom and dignity and building a democratic state based on these core tenets.

The emergence of a raft of poisonous extremist groups, of which Isis is the most notorious, has allowed President Bashar al-Assad to claim the revolution is a terrorist coup rather than a popular uprising. But the Arab and the Western world knows Assad's dirty game and knew that the simple people want democracy, and aren't represented by Isis or any other extremist group.

However the general civil involvement in the revolution has gradually begun to decline in recent months, largely due to the atrocities committed by Isis and other groups. They have entered areas which have been liberated by rebel fighters, fought the opposing factions and massacred them, without any justification. They have begun to arrest activists of the revolution and we have seen cases of abduction, forced displacement, and even the execution of those who oppose the 'Islamic Caliphate' project.

When Raqqa was liberated by the Free Syrian Army, we experienced three months of genuine freedom. But after the entry of the militants, things became awful; IS assumed the role previously performed by the regime, but this time in the name of religion, or what they see as religion.Isis swiftly began to arrest the majority of those who participated in the revolution, either members of the FSA or ordinary civilians, as well as members of the media. In all they have notched up more than 1,200 arrests.

It's well known that the majority of Syrian people are Muslim, yet they categorically reject the actions of IS because it has no relevance to Islam. The videos broadcast by IS on YouTube have sparked horror and revulsion among ordinary Syrians, yet they can't do anything.

US journalist Steven Sotloff is shown in an IS video. IS has threatened to kill Sotloff like his fellow reporter James Foley.

Two sides of the same coin

I recently spoke to a 26-year-old living in Raqqa, Hazam Hassan, who told me that IS and Assad are two sides of the same terrorist coin, and there is no difference between what they do. While IS claim to be acting in the name of Islam, our religion is about tolerance and good deeds; they don't represent us. IS try to distort Islam by cutting off heads and executing people arbitrarily – people don't want them here.

The IS militants have committed crimes against humanity, most recently in the village of Alsaitat In Deir al-Zour, northeastern Syri, where the organisation executed more than 800 sons of the city in cold blood simply for resisting them. People simply do not accept them do not accept the horrific crimes they are committing.

People in Syria debate where IS came from. I personally believe they are spawned by two very different factors: firstly the religion of Islam, which is interpreted by different people in so many different ways, and secondly the culture of Syria – the cultural components that live inside us.

Yet, amidst all the questions and theory, there is one simply reality: that Isis has terrorized the civilians of this country and, just like the Assad regime, has no place in the hearts of our people.

Zaid al-Fares is a photojournalist who was recently forced to leave Raqqa following the arrival of Isis.

Ebola Outbreak: 20,000 Could be Infected, Warns WHO

Nurses wearing a protective suit escort a man infected with Ebola to a hospital in Monrovia, Liberia.(Zoom Doddo/AFP/ Getty Images)

More than 20,000 people could be infected by Ebola in West Africa, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned.

In a new roadmap to stop the outbreak, the UN health agency said that in some hard-hit areas, the real numbers of people infected by the deadly virus could be two to four times higher than current numbers.

"The outbreak continues to accelerate," the WHO said, adding that more than 40% of the total cases have been reported in the last three weeks.

The agency said that the virus has killed 1,552 of the 3,069 people it infected in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria since the beginning of the year.

Infected Nigerian doctor dead

Meanwhile, Nigeria has confirmed that a doctor in the south-eastern oil hub city of Port Harcourt has died from the virus.

The doctor's death was the first related to Ebola outside the country's commercial capital, Lagos.

The doctor's wife remains in quarantine, while a further 70 people are being monitored in the city.

Ebola is one of the deadliest diseases in the world and does not have a cure.

The symptoms of the virus include fever, sore throat, diarrhoea, internal and external bleeding. It has a fatality rate approaching 90% (53% in the current epidemic).

The current outbreak has been described by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as the worst that has occurred since the virus was first encountered in 1976.

Gaza Strip: Israel Claims Victory as Hamas Celebrates in the Rubble

Both Israel and Hamas have declared victory, but the third Gaza War in six years appears to have ended in a stalemate, with major losses on both sides.

In a sense, Israel got what it wanted: Hamas has stopped firing rockets in exchange for mostly vague promises and future talks. But the cost to Israel was huge: Beyond the 70 people killed — all but six of them soldiers — the economy has been set back, the tourism season destroyed, its people rattled for 50 days and its global standing battered by images of devastation in Gaza.

Hamas is celebrating after surviving Israel's far superior firepower. The Islamic militant group's rocket fire emptied a string of Israeli border communities and disrupted Tel Aviv's international airport. It may take a lead role in Palestinian politics, and the plight of Gazans is again at the forefront of the world's concerns.

But Gaza paid dearly: 2,143 Palestinians were killed, including nearly 500 children, and hundreds of suspected militants. The UN estimates the war destroyed or severely damaged 17,200 homes and left 100,000 Palestinians homeless, with considerable swathes of Gaza in rubble. The cost of rebuilding Gaza is estimated to be $6bn (£3.6bn, €4.6bn).

Palestinians sit in the remains of their house, which witnesses said was destroyed in an Israeli offensive, in the east of Gaza City(Reuters)

Hundreds of empty mortar shell containers collected by the Israeli army are seen after they left a position near the border with the Gaza Strip.(Reuters)

A militant holds a baby boy as Hamas celebrates 'a victory' over Israel, in Gaza City.(Reuters)

A Palestinian family walks past the collapsed remains of a building that was destroyed in fighting between Hamas militants and Israel during 50 days of fighting in Shejaiya.(AFP)

Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas leader, and disputed prime minister of Gaza, holds a gun during a rally in Gaza City as he appears for the first time since the start of the seven-week conflict.(Reuters)

Palestinians stand in the rubble of a building that was destroyed during fighting between Hamas militants and Israel, as they watch a parade by Hamas militants in Shejaiya.(AFP)

A Hamas militant displays a mortar shell as he celebrates what the militants say was a victory over Israel, in front of a destroyed house in Gaza City.(Reuters)

A Palestinian man kisses a Hamas sniper during a parade by militants in Shejaiya.(AFP)

Palestinians release fireworks as they celebrate what they said was a victory over Israel.(Reuters)

A Palestinian man walks past a fire in a street lined with shattered homes in Shejaiya in Gaza City.(AFP)

A Palestinian boy lies on his family's belongings as they return to their home in Gaza City.(Reuters)

A man walks inside the shattered remains of his home in Gaza City's Shejaiya neighbourhood.(AFP)

A Palestinian man and three children sit on the rooftop of a partially destroyed home surrounded by bombed buildings in the Shejaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City. Shejaiya was one of the hardest hit areas in the fighting between Hamas militants and Israel.(AFP)

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Nigeria Doctor Dies from Ebola in Oil Hub Port Harcourt

An immigration officer wears a face mask at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja, Nigeria(Reuters)

A doctor in Nigeria's south-eastern oil hub city of Port Harcourt has died from Ebola, Nigeria's Health Ministry said.

The doctor became infected by a man linked to the first case in Nigeria, Patrick Sawyer, who brought the fever to Lagos.

It is the first Ebola-related death outside of the country's commercial capital Lagos.

"Following the report of this death by the doctor's widow the next day, the case has been thoroughly investigated and laboratory analysis showed that this doctor died from EVD (Ebola Virus Disease,) Nigeria's Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu told reporters in the capital Abuja.

The doctor's wife remains in quarantine while a further 70 people are being monitored in the city.

Port Harcourt is a popular base for a number of international oil companies that work in Nigeria.

China Supplier for Samsung and Lenovo Denies Child Worker Accusations

Samsung said its investigation into Chinese supplier found no child workers(Reuters)

A China-based supplier for both Samsung and Lenovo has denied hiring underage labourers after a New York-based human rights organisation accused them of employing children.

Samsung said its investigation into the Samsung production line at the Huizhou factory of its supplier HEG Technology found no children or students were being employed.

A spokesman for Lenovo confirmed that the company would investigate the report.

China Labor Watch had reported that it found more than 10 children working at the HEG factory in an investigation over July and August. In addition, the NGO said its probe revealed more than 100 student workers who were not paid for overtime work or a night shift subsidy.

The human rights watchdog said it had shared the evidence of its investigation with Samsung in August and the company had insisted that the supplier pay some students working at the factory.

Reuters news agency reported that an employee at HEG Technology said the company had never hired children and that its facial recognition technology helped to ensure that its staff were not minors.

It said the minimum age of staff working on Samsung products was 18, while the youngest workers employed on the Lenovo production line were 16.

Samsung said in a statement that it had proposed a joint investigation with China Labor Watch to obtain "more precise verification" of the watchdog's allegations, adding that it had handed over the results of its investigation to the organisation.

"We find it regrettable that CLW issued the allegations today without any mention of our statement," Samsung said in a statement.

China Labor Watch had previously accused Samsung's suppliers in China of using child workers, leading the company to temporarily stop working with the supplier.

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Samsung Gear S is First Smartwatch That Can Make Calls Independently

The Samsung Gear S smartwatch is the first of its kind to allow users make phone calls independently of a smartphone.Samsung

Samsung has launched its fourth smartwatch of 2014, with the Gear S the first with 3G compatibility.

Samsung has led the way among the major tech companies when it comes to the smartwatch market, with the South Korean giant launching two smartwatches in the second half of 2013 along with another three already in 2014.

Today however the tech giant has launched the Gear S, a smartwatch running the company's own Tizen software - rather than Google's Android Wear - as well as having the ability to make phone calls independently of a smartphone.

This is thanks to a 3G modem inside the device, which means you will be able to make or take phone calls or receive messages even when you are not in range of your smartphone.

Typically smartwatches on the market today can only make or take phone calls when connected via Bluetooth with a mobile phone.

The Gear S features a larger 2in curved display and a 300mAh battery which Samsung says will last for up to two days.

The Gear S smartwatch, which will go on sale this October, will also feature a heart-rate sensor, Wi-Fi connectivity, pedestrian navigation and a built-in GPS. It will be waterproof, come with 4GB of built-in storage and 512MB of RAM.

Samsung has not revealed pricing for its latest smartwatch or which markets the device will go on sale in initially.

Ahead of the IFA trade show next week where many manufacturers are expected to launch new smartwatches, LG has also revealed the details of its second smartwatch, the G Watch R which features a circular face similar to the Moto 360 from Motorola.

Shanghai FTZ to Launch Eight International Commodity Trading Platforms

A man walks at the entrance of the new Shanghai Free Trade Zone in Pudong district, ShanghaiReuters

China's Shanghai Free Trade Zone (FTZ) is planning to set up eight international platforms to trade various commodities by 2015, as the country looks to further liberalise trading rules.

The official Xinhua news agency, citing a work plan issued by the Shanghai municipal government, reported that the FTZ will set up international platforms, focusing on transactions in oil, gas, iron ore, cotton, liquid chemicals, silver, bulk commodities and nonferrous metals.

China opened the Shanghai free trade zone in September 2013, as the world's second largest economy is looking to test major economic reforms after having started liberalising its market in the 1980s.

In the area, 18 industries have been liberalised for foreign players. The industries that were previously restricted to Chinese companies or joint ventures include travel, theatre, banking, brokerage, telecommunications, health insurance and video game gadgets.

The Shanghai Securities News, quoting an FTZ official, earlier said an international gold exchange centre will start operations at the pilot free trade zone on 26 September.

That was in addition to the Shanghai government's plan to start a "parallel importing" programme for automobiles in the FTZ.

The plan, which was submitted to the ministry of commerce for approval, would allow importers other than chief dealers to import foreign brand automobiles from their countries of origin.

If the programme proceeds as intended, it will reduce prices of imported cars by at least 15%.

Earlier, China relaxed rules to allow more cross-border capital flows into the FTZ, helping banks and other firms in the zone with greater freedom in foreign exchange.