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Pakistan’s prime minister has named the members of a commission tasked with investigating the circumstances surrounding the May 2 U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Pakistan was embarrassed by the al-Qaida chief’s discovery in a northwest garrison city. The military was especially humiliated by the Americans’ ability to carry out the operation and leave without detection.

Parliament demanded an independent commission instead of a military probe. The five-member panel’s mandate includes establishing the “full facts” regarding bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan, a statement Tuesday said personal loan for poor credit.

Its creation suggests the weak civilian government is seeking some leverage over the powerful security establishment.

The commission will be led by a judge and includes a retired general.

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The British Chambers of Commerce pushed back its forecast for when the Bank of England will raise the key interest rate after cutting its growth outlook.

The central bank will raise the rate to 0.75 percent in August from 0.5 percent, BCC Chief Economist David Kern said in an e-mailed statement. The London-based lobby group said in March that the bank would increase the benchmark in May. A separate report showed U.K. house prices fell this month.

The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee is holding off raising interest rates to support the economic recovery, even after inflation accelerated to the more than double its 2 percent target. The BCC sees gross domestic product rising 1.3 percent this year and 2.2 percent in 2012. It previously forecast growth of 1.4 percent and 2.3 percent respectively.

“Although we would prefer to see interest rates held until the fourth quarter, we believe British businesses will be able to absorb small increases,” Kern said in the statement. “But the MPC must act with great caution and must not be too aggressive in its tightening.”

The group sees the Bank of England increasing its key rate to 1 percent this year and 2.75 percent by the end of 2012.

Growth will be slower this year after GDP rose less than forecast in the first quarter, while a higher inflation rate and a faster pace of rate increases will curtail expansion in 2012, the BCC said. It sees growth of 0.3 percent in the current and third quarters and forecasts an acceleration to 0.6 percent at the end of the year.

House Prices

A report from Hometrack Ltd. today showed U.K. house prices fell 0.1 percent in May after demand dropped for the first time in three months. Demand as measured by prospective buyers registering with realtors declined 0.5 percent as “weaker” consumer confidence and two consecutive four-day weekends at the end of last month curtailed activity.

“With concern over household finances and the wider economic outlook, demand for housing is likely to continue to post further modest declines,” Richard Donnell, research director at London-based Hometrack, said in an e-mailed report. “This will result in small single-digit price falls over the coming months and is consistent with our forecast that house prices will end the year down by around 1 percent.”

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Looking west at the intersection of Queen and Bay, you see the grand Shea’s Hippodrome theatre. Various storefronts line the street. A newsboy waves the morning edition.

But remove your iPad from sight and the cold truth of modern-day reality returns. Those buildings no longer exist, demolished during the 1950s to make way for the construction of Nathan Philips Square and New City Hall.

ZeitagTO, a free app available for the iPhone and iPad, aims to pull local history out of climate-controlled government archives and into the hands of those who are curious to see the Toronto that was by showcasing various images based on your location within the city.

Three years ago, while vacationing in New York City, Gary Blakeley and his family visited the site of the former World Trade Center.

“At that point it was just a big construction site,” says Blakeley, a graphic designer who emigrated to Canada from England in 1987. “There was no sign of what had stood there and no sign of what happened on September 11.”

There was a museum, he says, but the long lineup was less than encouraging. “I thought, wouldn’t it be great if you were standing on the spot and you could actually pull up archival photos?”

But the technology wasn’t yet available. With the arrival of the iPhone, Blakeley revisited the concept, hired a developer, and slowly populated the app with more than 500 images from the City of Toronto Archives, which was supportive of the project.

Gary Miedema, chief historian at Heritage Toronto, a city agency that organizes walking tours of the city, says ZeitagTO and similar apps are a “brilliant next step” in terms of making the city’s history more accessible.

“Using historic photos in this manner is a great way of putting it in the hands of residents and tourists, giving it much more immediate access.”

Still in its infancy — Blakeley seeks the help of historians and heritage aficionados to help bring context to the content — the app functions well for self-led tours.

Its possibilities include highlighting lesser-known or purposely forgotten aspects of local history fast cash advance loan.

Last summer, while working on a prototype of the app in Berlin, Blakeley later learned the site he and his wife had chosen for an afternoon picnic was a spot where Adolf Hitler had given a rally in 1938.

“That was really blood-curdling,” says Blakeley, “because you always think these things happened somewhere else. And no, they won’t put up a plaque or a marker for that.”

The stories and images become virtual plaques, travelling along with the user. Physical markers have their place in the cityscape, highlighting specific events — at Dupont Station there are three plaques tracing the history of the ill-fated Spadina Expressway — but even Miedema, who produced 25 plaques for Heritage Toronto last year, contends the city shouldn’t be overrun with them.

“We don’t want the city covered in bronze — there are various platforms to bring information to the public. This way, you can tell as many stories as you want.”

As Blakeley has his sights set on other archival collections, the stories cross city boundaries.

“We’ve just begun working with the City of Mississauga. Down in Long Branch, during World War II there was a small arms factory. Heritage Mississauga has the original photo album for the factory, but they never did anything with it. So we’ve started matching some of those images to the Long Branch map.” Only one of the two buildings housing the former munitions factory remains.

Above all, Blakeley hopes the app, which he has paid for himself, will help keep the city’s rich visual legacy on everybody’s minds.

“There’s a lot of good material out there but it’s hard to get to right now,” he says, referring to the million images held at the City Archives, of which only 50,000 have been scanned. “It’s an issue of funding and timing, which is something we’re also facing, but eventually I want it to be part of the way we just do things.”

ZeitagTO is available in the iTunes store, with an Android version available soon.

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China ranks first among 22 emerging Asian economies as the country most likely to maintain steady and rapid growth over the next five years, according to the Bloomberg Economic Momentum Index for Developing Asia.

China scored 76.2 percent in a ranking of 16 areas including economic competition, education level, urban migration, high-technology exports and inflation that measure a country’s ability to continue delivering high growth. India was second with a score of 64.1 percent followed by Vietnam at 61.9 percent. Timor-Leste was last at 25.3 percent.

The index suggests China and India’s economic surge is durable and will likely continue to drive global growth as the U.S., Europe and Japan lag behind. China eclipsed Japan last year as the world’s second-largest economy.

“I am not surprised that China comes out on top on this metric, and China probably should be placed on top among emerging Asian economies,” said Victor Shih, a professor who studies China’s financial system at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

In the past 30 years, China’s economy has expanded on average by 10 percent a year as it overhauled state-owned companies and allowed more foreign investment. Among economies with annual gross domestic product above $1 trillion, India posted the second-highest growth rate after China last year, expanding by 8.2 percent in the last quarter of 2010.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development forecasts U.S. economic growth of 2.6 percent this year, 2 percent for the eurozone and a 0.9 percent contraction for Japan.

China Shocks

Shih said the measure may overstate China’s rank relative to India’s and other countries, in part because Chinese official figures understate debt levels payday loans guaranteed no fax.

China could face economic and political shocks that would impact on its growth. Fitch Ratings said in March that China faced a 60 percent chance of a banking crisis by mid-2013 in the aftermath of record lending and surging property prices. Strikes, riots and protests are also on the rise, doubling in five years to 180,000 incidents last year, according to Sun Liping, a sociology professor at Beijing’s Tsinghua University.

The index put some countries with among the world’s highest growth rates in the past several decades, including Malaysia and Thailand, behind such countries as Vietnam, which ranked third, and Bangladesh, which ranked fifth.

Equity Markets

The index gives weightings of 10 percent each to four categories: the competitiveness of market structure, which rewards countries for having fewer big companies that dominate equity markets; the quality of the labor force, including education levels, the age of the work force, and the growth rate of scientific journal publications; gross national savings as a percentage of GDP; and the growth of high-technology exports.

A further 12 areas have 5 percent weightings, including growth in GDP per capita adjusted for the cost of living, growth in world share of GDP, stability of inflation rates, diversity of top trading partners, external and public debt burdens, lending costs, net foreign direct investment and deforestation. Four “cohesiveness factors” include ethnic and religious homogeneity, income equality, rates of urbanization and poverty reduction, and variation in the jobless rate.

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A cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland that has caused headaches for air travelers spread to Germany on Wednesday, forcing the closure of Berlin’s airports and disrupting hundreds of flights, but experts said the eruption appeared be winding down.

European air traffic controllers said they expect about 700 flights to be canceled on Wednesday, but Eurocontrol added the ash cloud from Iceland’s Grimsvotn volcano appeared to be dissipating and traffic in European airspace could return to normal Thursday.

The cloud forced the cancellation of hundreds of flights over Britain on Tuesday as winds blew the ash over Scotland, but British airspace was largely clear on Wednesday.

In Iceland, a volcano expert said that observers at the crater were reporting only steam, an indication that the eruption could be nearing its end.

“It’s not over,” said Pall Einarsson, from the University of Iceland. “But it’s declining rapidly.”

German air traffic control ordered all flights to and from Berlin’s Tegel and Schoenefeld airports, stopped at 11:00 a.m. (0900GMT). Airports in Bremen, Hamburg and Luebeck, have already been closed for hours, causing hundreds of flights to be struck. The flight ban is expected to remain in place for much of Wednesday, Eurocontrol said. Sweden saw some 20 flights canceled.

While experts say particles in the ash could stall jet engines and sandblast planes’ windows, many argue the flight bans are a massive overreaction by badly prepared safety regulators.

A British Airways test flight passing through the affected area was unaffected, said Willie Walsh, the chief executive of International Airlines Group _ formed from the merger of BA and Iberia.

“We flew in the red zone for about 45 minutes at different altitudes over Scotland” and the north of England, Walsh told BBC radio cheap pay day loans. “All the filters were removed and will be sent to a laboratory for testing. The simple answer is that we found nothing.”

Irish budget airline Ryanair has also challenged the results, saying Tuesday it had sent its own airplane into Scottish airspace and found no ash in the atmosphere.

But, German transport minister Peter Ramsauer insisted the precautions were justified, and said that authorities were better prepared after the Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption last year forced the closure of European air space for five days, stranding millions.

“We have developed a very refined regulation since the big ash cloud last April,” Ramsauer told ARD public broadcaster. “We are much better prepared to handle such a situation.”

Last year, European aviation authorities closed vast swaths of European airspace as soon as they detected the presence of even a small amount of volcanic ash in the atmosphere. This year, they are trying a more sophisticated approach.

Aviation authorities will give airlines information detailed information about the location and density of ash clouds. Any airline that wants to fly through the ash cloud can do so, if it can convince its own national aviation regulators it is safe.

The Grimsvotn volcano began erupting on Saturday, sending clouds of ash high into the air.

The main international body representing carriers, the International Air Transport Association, complained to the British government Tuesday about the way it had handled the issue, saying it should have had Cessna planes ready to carry out tests, instead of relying on the weather service.

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Spanish financial markets slumped Monday after voters angry about austerity measures dealt the governing Socialist party a painful loss in local and regional elections, raising doubts over the country’s ability to enforce debt cuts.

Investors worried that the government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero had lost support in its drive to heal public finances and faced a period of political uncertainty. Daily protests against both the Socialists and the opposition conservatives, meanwhile, were spreading to cities across the country and expected to last for days.

The Ibex 35 index on the Madrid stock market closed down 1.4 percent and the yield on Spanish 10-year bonds on the secondary market was up to 5.5 percent. That indicates investors are more cautious about the country’s ability to repay its debts.

The spread, or difference in yield between that bond and the equivalent benchmark German one, stood at about 250 basis points in the afternoon, up from 240 on Friday. A basis point is one-one hundredth of a percent.

The governor of the Bank of Spain said the country cannot sustain spreads of more than 200 basis points for a long period because this will raise government borrowing costs and leave less money available for providing financing for companies and getting stagnant credit flowing again.

Miguel Angel Fernandez Ordonez also said in a speech that the government needs to press ahead quickly with labor market reforms to create jobs and reassure investors. He called for more flexibility in how collective bargaining agreements are negotiated. Economists say the current system is too rigid because in a given sector it treats money losing and profitable companies with the same terms when it comes to giving workers raises.

Investor appetite for Spanish bonds will be tested Tuesday with a treasury auction of 3- and 6-month bills.

Alejandro Varela of brokerage Renta 4 in Madrid said that besides debt worries spilling over from other troubled countries such as Greece, investors feared that conservatives taking over town halls and regional governments might discover bigger debt piles than had been previously disclosed.

That’s what happened late last year when the wealthy and powerful Catalonia region held similar elections. The center-right Catalan nationalists took over from a Socialist-led coalition and recently announced the region’s deficit was much bigger than previously known. Catalonia did not vote on Sunday.

In 13 other regions that were up for grabs Sunday, the conservative opposition Popular Party won virtually all of them from the Socialists, causing new debt concerns to sprout, Varela said.

“There had been speculation to this effect for a week and now that melon will be sliced open,” Varela said.

The Popular Party also cleaned up at municipal elections by winning 2 million more votes than the Socialists with a margin of victory of about 10 percentage points. The party said those numbers show Spain is hungry for change.

Varela said he expects Zapatero to call early elections and that it would be good for the country, although the prime minister said Sunday night as he acknowledged defeat by his party that he would not and plans to serve out his term. General elections must be held by next March. Zapatero has said he will not seek a third term.

Varela said, “Spain is in a very weakened situation and this transitory period is particularly dangerous.”

The Popular Party favors early elections but on Monday refrained from calling for them outright.

“Spain can’t wait another year,” said party Secretary General Maria Delores de Cospedal. “No more time should be lost.”

She ruled out, however, trying to push a no-confidence vote through Parliament where the Socialists still have enough allies to reject it.

The elections were local and regional, but many Spaniards said they had the national picture in mind as they voted. The country is saddled with a eurozone-high jobless rate of 21.3 percent and is struggling to recover from nearly two years of recession triggered by the collapse of a real estate bubble and the end of an overzealous period of free-flowing credit.

For the past week, central Madrid’s Puerta del Sol plaza has been home to a makeshift protest camp to mainly young Spaniards angry over their bleak economic prospects _ the youth jobless rate exceeds 40 percent. The protesters dismiss both Socialist and conservative politicians as inept, corrupt and distant from the plight of everyday people and said the elections result made little difference to them.

“It’s not that important because this protest never had an electoral goal,” said Javier Perez, one of the Madrid camp’s spokespersons. “In the end, the results are another example of Spain’s two-party system and how it fails to resolve the anger, the indignation and our problems.”

United behind the slogan “Real Democracy Now”, the Madrid protest has drawn tens of thousands of people of all ages and spread to dozens of other cities. On Monday, the activists debated how to proceed with their campaign after voting Sunday to stay on for at least another week. They discussed gradually dismantling the camps and taking the protests to city neighborhoods to get more people involved.

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Pakistan extended a six-month pause in interest-rate increases as inflation eased and the central bank awaits the budget for signs the government will tighten fiscal policy and help contain prices pressures.

The State Bank of Pakistan left the discount rate unchanged at 14 percent, among the highest in the world, according to a central bank statement in Karachi today. The decision was predicted by all 10 economists and researchers surveyed by Bloomberg News.

The central bank raised rates in three consecutive meetings from July to November, blaming excess state spending for pushing inflation to more than 15 percent late last year. The government may be forced to cut spending in its budget after the discovery and killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan led some U.S. lawmakers to call for a reduction in aid.

“The budget will determine the future outlook for inflation and rates,” Sayem Ali, a Karachi-based economist at Standard Chartered Plc, said before the decision. “The fiscal conditions will be tricky especially after a possible slowdown in external financing with the Osama episode here, and not-so- encouraging developments with International Monetary Fund support.”

The budget may be announced in the first week of June, Dawn newspaper reported today. The finance ministry had said earlier it would be released May 28.

Pakistan’s government needs external aid to support an economic growth target of 4.2 percent for the next fiscal year, as it seeks to reduce the budget deficit to 4.5 percent of gross domestic product. The shortfall is expected to reach 5.5 percent this year, compared with the official target of 4 percent, the Finance Ministry said April 27.

Fiscal Pressures

“The government is mindful of fiscal pressures and has expressed resolve to address these issues in the budget,” the central bank said in its monetary policy statement today.

The International Monetary Fund told Pakistani economic officials in a weeklong review of the economy that ended May 17 that the government needs to keep cutting the deficit to take pressure off monetary policy and allow more credit to companies.

The Washington-based fund stopped disbursing money to Pakistan in May last year after the country failed to meet conditions attached to an $11.3 billion loan first issued in 2008. In December, the IMF approved a nine-month extension of the loan to give Pakistani authorities time to comply with some elements of the agreement, including implementing an overhauled sales tax.

Falling Rupee

The Pakistan rupee has fallen 0.5 percent to 86.18 against the dollar since the current financial year started July 1. The Karachi Stock Exchange 100 Index has advanced 23 percent this financial year after advancing 36 percent in the previous year ended June 30.

The South Asian nation has received $14.6 billion in economic and military aid from the U.S. since 2005 to help revive growth and fight Taliban militants along the border with Afghanistan.

Whether Pakistani government and intelligence officials shielded bin Laden has become an issue on Capitol Hill, where some senators have called for postponing any more U.S. financial aid until Pakistan’s commitment to fighting terrorism can be re- evaluated.

Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who leads the Foreign Relations Committee and was an architect of a 2009 bill committing $1.5 billion annually to Pakistan, said this month many members of the U.S. Congress are questioning that aid after bin Laden was found sheltering in the country. They say President Asif Ali Zardari’s administration must crack down on insurgent groups that target American forces in Afghanistan.

Terrorism, Floods

Pakistan’s $162 billion economy, sapped by terrorism and floods in 2010, is lagging behind emerging markets including neighbors India and China, which helped lead the global economic rebound from the deepest postwar recession.

President Zardari announced in March a 15 percent surcharge on income tax to counter losses from the nation’s worst monsoon flooding last year, and an increase in import duties to 2.5 percent from 1 percent. The government will also withdraw sales tax exemptions on fertilizer, pesticides and tractors.

The government raised domestic fuel prices as much as 12 percent on May 1, after increasing them 13 percent on April 1, to bring charges in line with international oil prices, according to the Islamabad-based Oil & Gas Regulatory Authority.

“The fuel-subsidy reduction and the tax measure indicate the budget will bring tight fiscal policy,” Saad Khan, an economist at Arif Habib Ltd. in Karachi, said before the decision. “Another reason not to raise rates is the easing in inflation last month.”

Pakistan’s consumer prices rose 13.04 percent in April from a year earlier, after a 13.16 percent gain in March, a Federal Bureau of Statistics report showed on May 3.

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Royal Dutch Shell PLC will construct the biggest floating man-made object ever, a natural gas processing plant longer than four football fields and more massive than any aircraft carrier.

The “Prelude FLNG” facility, to be anchored off the Australian coast, will be made of 260,000 tons of steel _ five times more than Sydney’s famed Harbour Bridge, Shell said Friday.

It is designed to take in the equivalent of 110,000 barrels per day in gas from undersea fields 200 kilometers (125 miles) off Australia’s Northwest coast and cool it into liquefied natural gas, known as LNG.

Shell claimed the plant will be able to withstand category 5 cyclones, the worst type of storms, and is planned to remain moored above the Prelude gas field for 25 years after completion.

Shell said the facility will be built in a South Korean shipyard but did not say how much it would cost.

A company spokeswoman declined to set a date for the platform’s completion date, but noted the Prelude gas field is scheduled to start production around 2017.

“We don’t give specific guidance on project level spend, but we are making a substantial investment in Australia LNG,” said spokeswoman Kirsten Smart in an email.

Shell plans $30 billion in various investments in Australia over the coming five years, the company has said.

“This project is certainly competitive with more traditional Australian LNG developments on a cost and economics basis,” Smart wrote.

Financial newswire Dow Jones cited Australia’s Resources Minister Martin Ferguson as saying the project will benefit the country’s economy by creating around 1,000 jobs and contributing A$12 billion ($12.8 billion) in tax revenues over 25 years.

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The price is right for foreign shoppers in the U.S. as the sagging dollar boosts their purchasing power on everything from jewelry to vitamins.

“When I come to New York, it feels like I am getting great deals,” said Molly Lewis, a 40-year-old nurse from Manchester, England, who spent an afternoon last week hunting down bargains on Louis Vuitton handbags in Manhattan. “Things are much cheaper here than back home.”

The British pound had climbed 13 percent against the U.S. dollar in the past year, along with gains in the euro and Canadian and Australian dollars. That’s given travelers a zest for spending, which may help U.S. retailers make up sales as budget-wary U.S. consumers stick to the sidelines. Travelers from abroad spent $8.9 billion on food, lodging, gifts and entertainment in the U.S. in February, up 7 percent from last year, according to the Department of Commerce.

The Mall of America, the biggest shopping center in the U.S. with 520 stores, is reporting a surge in international visitors, hitting retailers from Columbia Sportswear Co. (COLM) to Coach Inc. in search of American goods.

Upscale retailers also have followed suit. Macy’s Inc.’s Bloomingdale’s chain offers a 10 percent discount for foreign shoppers with photo identification, spokeswoman Marissa Vitagliano said. Chains like Bloomingdale’s and Saks Inc. (SKS) helped make New York a top shopping destination last year, followed by Los Angeles and Las Vegas, said Rosemary McCormick, president of Shop America Alliance, a travel trade organization.

Many remain focused on deals. Young Choi scoured San Francisco for goods from Nike Inc. (NKE), J. Crew Group Inc. and Coach on a family visit last week. The 63-year-old retired teacher expected her load to be a little heavier on the way back to Seoul.

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Much of central China is enduring its worst energy crisis in years, with factories and residents facing power cuts as supply runs short of demand _ a problem worsening as drought dries rivers, reducing hydroelectric capacity.

Authorities are warning that manufacturers in booming industrial regions west of Shanghai may face even tighter power rationing when demand surges in the peak summer months while electricity generators curb output due to rising costs for coal and oil.

Though summer rains may eventually relieve the drought, with even the powerful Yangtze river running too low for shipping in some stretches, China appears to be hitting limits to its growth in a resource scarce-environment. The power crunch comes at time when worries over inflation make rising energy costs and crop failures less welcome than ever.

Hydroelectricity provides about one-fifth of China’s power and with river beds running dry it has fallen by about 20 percent, according to a report by UBS analyst Tom Price.

The industry group China Electricity Council has estimated a power shortfall of 30 million kilowatts in the summer. That is only 3 percent of China’s generating capacity, but the shortages are concentrated in key manufacturing regions such as Zhejiang and Jiangsu, near Shanghai.

Last week, the government ordered a suspension of diesel exports to help prevent shortages as factories hit by outages step up use of fuel-powered generators.

According to industry reports, petrochemical and plastics manufacturers and smaller factories are among those most affected. But Shanghai-based Baosteel Group, one of the country’s biggest steel makers, is also among companies ordered to prepare for cutbacks, state media reported Tuesday.

Fast-growing China has long experienced periodic power shortages, especially in winter and summer when weather extremes boost demand for heating and cooling. But the problems this year stem mainly from a failure of government-controlled electricity rates to keep pace with the costs paid by utilities for the coal that fuels about three-quarters of the country’s electricity generation cash advance to savings account.

Power companies are reluctant to invest in new projects, while many older, heavily polluting thermal plants are being closed down to help meet environmental targets.

The amount of new installed capacity is due to fall by 10 million kilowatts next year, compared to this year, while demand continues to climb at double-digit rates, Hu Zhaoguang, vice president of State Grid Energy Research Institute, said in comments posted on the Energy Research Observation Net.

The regional power distributor East China Grid Co. estimates that power shortages may reach 19 million kilowatts this summer in Shanghai and four other nearby provinces, the newspaper China Daily reported Tuesday.

The worst will be a shortfall of more than 11 million kilowatts, or 16 percent of total demand, in Jiangsu, upriver from Shanghai along the Yangtze, where drought has sapped water levels to their lowest ever at some points, stalling shipping.

The drought has left nearly 1,400 lakes in Hubei, in central China, so low they are unusable or virtually “dead,” the provincial Water Resources Department said.

It said some 315,000 people and 97,300 head of livestock were short of drinking water.

The Yangtze Power Co., which runs the world’s largest hydroelectric facility at the Three Gorges Dam, has been releasing extra amounts of water to help raise the water level downstream, but so far there was no real improvement, said Zhan Jianying, director of the Waterway Management department at the Yangtze Waterway Bureau in Hubei’s capital, Wuhan.

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