Espresso consumption in the United States has grown tremendously in the last decade or two. In Seattle, Washington, you can't walk more than a couple of blocks without seeing a cafe or espresso cart -- they're in bookstores, grocery stores, laundromats, gas stations and movie theaters. There are drive-through espresso shops in parking lots. Sometimes an espresso cart will just park on the sidewalk, like the hot-dog vendors in New York City.
People have been buying espresso machines for their homes, too. These machines are smaller than the commercial machines found in cafes, but they work on the same principles. In this article, we'll learn how these household espresso machines work. But first, let's see what espresso is.
China's State Council, or cabinet, said on Thursday that the central government would allocate 10 billion yuan ($1.46 billion) in subsidies for agricultural machinery purchases next year to help farmers and returning migrants.
At an executive meeting presided over by Premier Wen Jiabao, the council said that "to provide such subsidy could raise the country's agricultural mechanization level and boost the development of the farm machinery industry and economic development".
The amount of the subsidy was 6 billion yuan more than in 2008, and it will be available to farmers and farm workers across the country.
This plan was another important way to boost domestic demand apart from providing subsidized household appliances for farmers, said the meeting.
The government promised to grant a 13-percent subsidy for farmers' purchase of household appliances including color TV sets, refrigerators, mobile phones, washing machines and freezers starting in December 2007.
"China should take more active measures to create jobs and lay special importance on the employment of migrant workers, as some domestic enterprises ran into production and operation difficulties amid the adverse impact of the global financial turmoil," said the meeting.
"China should take more active measures to create jobs and lay special importance on the employment of migrant workers, as some domestic enterprises ran into production and operation difficulties amid the adverse impact of the global financial turmoil," said the meeting.
Local governments should streamline the procedures involving land use, taxation, business registration and other functions as well as providing better financial services to help migrant workers who return home to start businesses, said the meeting.
Local authorities should also ensure migrant workers are promptly paid by employers, provide them with good social security services and protect their land contract rights as they return to their rural homes, according to the meeting.
China has about 210 million migrant workers who have left their rural hometowns to work in cities and towns.
Japanese machinery orders fell in October as the deepening global recession choked off demand for the country’s cars and electronics.
Orders an indicator of capital spending in the next three to six months, slid 4.4 percent from September, when they rose 5.5 percent, the Cabinet Office said today in Tokyo. Bookings received from abroad, which are excluded from the headline figures, tumbled 37 percent, the biggest drop in five years.
Falling profit for Japan’s exporters has driven the Topix stock index down 44 percent this year and forced the country’s biggest companies to slash production, fire workers and cut spending. Sony Corp. said yesterday it will eliminate 16,000 jobs and reduce capital investment in its electronics business by 30 percent over the next two years.
“It’s inevitable that business investment will keep falling because the drop in overseas demand is so huge,” said Yasuhide Yajima, a senior economist at NLI Research Institute in Tokyo. “The reduction in investment and jobs will make Japan’s recession very deep and prolonged.”
The Topix index of machinery makers lost 0.3 percent as of 10:41 a.m. in Tokyo, compared with a 0.3 percent increase in the benchmark stock gauge. Komatsu Ltd. and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. led the declines.
The yen traded at 92.50 per dollar from 92.24 before the report. Japan’s currency has climbed 15 percent since September, compounding exporters’ woes by eroding the value of their earnings made abroad.
Shrinking Economy
The world’s second-largest economy shrank at an annual 1.8 percent pace last quarter, a report showed yesterday, as businesses cut spending and inventories. The recession has since deepened: in October, exports fell at the fastest pace in seven years, production slumped, job prospects fell to a four-year low and household spending tumbled for an eighth month.
Morgan Stanley today cut its outlook for Japan, saying gross domestic product will shrink 2 percent next year, matching the country’s “postwar nadir” of 1998. The impact of the global financial crisis on the economy “is worse than we envisaged,” said Takehiro Sato, chief Japan economist at Morgan in Tokyo.
The Bank of Japan’s quarterly Tankan survey next week will show sentiment among large manufacturers fell the most in 34 years, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg.
“Japan’s economy is in far worse shape than feared,” said Glenn Maguire, chief Asia-Pacific economist at Societe Generale SA in Hong Kong. “The contraction in capital spending is therefore likely to be particularly severe in the fourth quarter.”
Tool Orders Plunge
The monthly drop in orders was in line with economists’ estimates for a 3.9 percent decrease. Year on year, orders tumbled 15.5 percent, the steepest decline since June 2007.
November bookings for machine tools slid the most in at least 21 years, plunging 62 percent from a year earlier, the Machine Tool Builders Association said yesterday.
Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Corp. will cut equipment investment 27 percent to 430 billion yen ($4.6 billion) by March 2011, the Tokyo-based company said yesterday.
The Bank of Japan forecasts business investment will stay sluggish for the next several quarters. The central bank cut its benchmark interest rate to 0.3 percent in October, the first reduction in seven years, and some economists predict a return to zero rates in coming months.
“Monetary policy will take on more of the character of fiscal policy, under pressure from the markets,” said Morgan Stanley’s Sato. “We envisage two further rate cuts to get us back to the zero interest-rate policy” by March, he said.
A team of investigators from Valencia has developed a machine that separates automatically the seeds from the rind and pith of the pomegranate. The mechanism uses a computer vision system to distinguish and sort the different parts of this fruit, according to a study published on-line by the Journal of Food Engineering.
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