If cycling is the new golf, Sky scored an eagle on the 15th hole

• By Matthew Beaudin
• Published 5 hours ago

Froome rounds the final turn and heads for an overwhelming victory. Photo: Casey B. Gibson | www.cbgphoto.com

MONT VENTOUX, France (VN) ? After he?d lost a little more than a minute in the crosswinds Friday to Alberto Contador, Chris Froome said more time would be lost or gained on the road up Mont Ventoux than was gone with the wind, and he didn?t seem worried.

Now we know why.

Froome wrecked the hopes of the other general classification riders on Sunday up Ventoux, with a dazzling attack from a whittled-down group, thanks to his Sky teammates. When he attacked Contador, seated, his rpms and power were overwhelming ? and not many can recall the Spaniard ever being shredded in such fashion.

Hours prior and minutes after the peloton departed Givors for Mont Ventoux on Bastille Day, Dave Brailsford, Sky?s principal, said flatly that Froome would win up the Ventoux, one of the Tour de France?s famous climbs.

Of course, Froome proved him right. It was a stage that finished about an hour ahead of schedule, and one that couldn?t have gone more perfectly for a banged-up Sky team that Contador?s Saxo-Tinkoff squad strung out in the crosswinds days prior.

That is but a dream now for Contador, after Froome savagely attacked and rode the Spaniard into oblivion. But before he flew away, his Sky team, down to just seven riders, flayed themselves, first on the rollers and then up Ventoux. By the time Peter Kennaugh hit the wind, Sky?s command of the peloton was apparent. By the time Richie Porte had pulled through with absolute force, only he, Froome, and Contador were left from the main group. Nairo Quintana (Movistar) was up ahead, though he?d be taken care of later.

?It?s incredible to be able to put it all together,? Kennaugh said at the summit, sweat rolling from his salt-stained face. ?Such a hard stage from the word go, with those short climbs early on and half the peloton wanted to get in the break. And just to be part of a team who can ride like that together and stay strong with only seven of us is an amazing feeling.?

He said the team?s performance on the Ventoux served as a retort to those who questioned its strength just days prior when it lost time to Contador.

?And that?s bike racing. Pffft. All the journalists say, well, ?Team Sky haven?t got it.? What do you want out of us? We?re not machines. We?re not robots. We?re only human. And today we?ve had a good day. Let?s just celebrate that.?

Froome was celebrating. He took his second stage win at this Tour, and has all but turned out the lights on the yellow-jersey contest. He leads now by more than four minutes over the field, with Bauke Mollema (Belkin) in second and Contador in third, 4:25 out.

?It?s a mythic climb. It?s the biggest win of my career,? Froome said. ?It wasn?t really about trying to send [Contador] a message, but obviously I?m going to try and take as much time as possible ahead of the final week. There?s still some hard racing to come so I?m really happy to have this advantage now.?

Everything went according to plan for the famously meticulous Sky.

?Yeah, it was perfect,? Brailsford said. ?Our plan was always the same, we were going to Froomey, Richie, and Pete, into the ideal situation at the foot of the climb, as fresh as possible. That was the job of everybody else, and they did that perfectly, to be honest.?

And while heaping praise upon everyone else, Brailsford did not fail to drape an metaphorical arm around Froome?s thin shoulders.

?He deserves the credit, we?re just the guys who try and help,? he said. ?He knows what he?s doing and I think he showed today he?s the best climber in the world.

?I think he kind of put as much time as possible into his adversaries. He was thinking about the GC and thinking about the time gap. We?ve got the rest day tomorrow so this has always been earmarked for us as a day when we could gain time.

?It?s like golf, isn?t it? I might have missed an easy putt the other day but I think we got an eagle today.?

?

FILED UNDER: News / Road / Tour de France TAGS: stage15 / Team Sky / Tour de France

Source: http://velonews.competitor.com/2013/07/news/if-cycling-is-the-new-golf-sky-scored-an-eagle-on-the-15th-hole_295176

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I don't lose sleep over AirAsia: IndiGo Airlines president

Days after low-cost carrier AirAsia announced it would launch its India operations by the end of the year, IndiGo Airlines President Aditya Ghosh, 38, tells Sudipto Dey in an interaction why his airline is not one that should be worried.

He also shares his views on why adding new aircraft capacity, competition, and unbundling of fares will only help keep passenger fares low in India.

Edited excerpts:

In 2006, being one of the promising new airlines, you were seen as a challenger. Seven years on, you are a leader (with 29.5 per cent share of the market in May 2013).And, a new aggressive challenger is standing at the gate. Should we expect IndiGo to adopt a defensive strategy from here?

We will continue to play like we have played before. We did not change our plans with giant airlines in our own backyard.

Even now, we are not going to change our plans.

We will continue to do two things: Chase growth, which is there; and compete against what we were yesterday.

I hope we are like Roger Federer -- boringly consistent.

So, you are not losing sleep over AirAsia entering the market?

I am embarrassed to say this but I really am not.

Sorry for not giving you a dramatic response; I sleep fairly well.

That?s because we are building a strong business, because we have a great team and because we are building a long-term sustainable business.

If you focus on someone else, you lose focus on what you are trying to do.

We are focused on bringing 18 planes over the next 18 months and keep growing from there.

We are flying a fleet of 66 aircraft now and should have 84 by the end of 2014 -- that is, addition of an aircraft every month for the next 18 month.

Our average fleet age is 2.2 years.

So, we are the youngest fleet in the sky. Passengers always get to fly a brand-new plane.

From the airline?s point of view, we burn less fuel.

The issue of AirAsia poaching IndiGo pilots caught a lot of attention. Was keeping your flock together part of a defensive play -- a bit of a mind game?

I never strategised that. That?s the disadvantage of not going to a business school.

We have not got even one resignation yet.

But such challenges will always remain.

In fact, pilots do not need a new challenger in India -- they can fly IndiGo today; Emirates tomorrow, if they wish; or Philippines Airlines the next day; or even Singapore Airlines.

The focus for us is that people working with IndiGo should be happy working with IndiGo.

I interview each person who joins IndiGo (the headcount at present is around 7,000). One question I ask everyone is, what?s your personal dream?

Each day you spend working with IndiGo should bring you a step closer to that dream.

We aim to be better today than we were yesterday.

How do you see AirAsia?s entry changing the Indian market?

The new player has a sharp bunch of people.

They run a good airline.

They will run a sharp business and not do anything silly.

They run a successful business everywhere else in the world, keeping the costs low. Those that have kept prices high need to worry.

Many of your peers have taken potshots at your claims of being a 'profitable' airline, even as the industry was bleeding. How has 2012-13 been in terms of financial performance?

We will disclose the numbers for last financial year in another 60-odd days.

We have come out of a strong year -- both in terms of growth and profitability.

The dollar will impact us more this year but the objective is to remain profitable this year, too.

We broke even for the first time in March 2009.

We have been profitable in each year since then.

So, was there margin pressure in FY13... did profitability go down?

Not really. (Passenger) Capacity went down; demand was more than supply.

So, profitability margins did not come down.

The players with stable and lower costs should bring in more supply.

So, what I?m saying has a two-fold import.

First, a motherhood statement, the business has to be run in a way that costs are less than revenue.

This makes business sustainable.

And, second, from the passengers? point of view, sustainable business has to bring in more supply, so that fares come down.

That is exactly what we are trying to do at IndiGo -- build a strong sustainable profitable business and bring in more planes so that we can offer lower fares.

We are entering a phase where we will see unbundling of fares. How does that change the economics of the business?

That is bound to happen, if airlines have to meet costs.

So far, Indian passengers were used to paying for buffet lunch.

Now, buffet lunches are becoming ? la carte menus.

If the entire global industry is moving in a direction, India cannot be unique in that respect. Every mature market has gone that way.

Do you expect a major ramp-up in ancillary revenues?

We hope so.

Indian airlines? ancillary revenues are not even a third of what airlines like Ryanair, EasyJet and Spirit Airlines make from ancillary services.

How do you allay passengers? concerns that they might have to shell out more?

There is nervousness among passengers due to the transition and the flux.

Airlines, too, will take a few months to get it right.

But passengers would get used to it easily. Indian customers are used to paying differential parking fees, paying more for food and balcony seats inside movie halls, etc.

Airlines are no different. People are willing to pay for extra convenience if they see value.

Even today, IndiGo offers something called ?Fast Forward? for corporate customers. There?s an extra dedicated line at check-in, where you can zip through after paying a fee for about Rs 200.

Customers wanted convenience of paying for excess baggage in advance, so we brought a pre-pay facility.

However, we will never charge for a glass of water, or for using the toilet.

We should not lose sight of the fact that ancillary revenues will only help bring airfares down.

It has happened everywhere in the world; it will happen in India, too.

Source: http://www.rediff.com/money/interview/i-dont-lose-sleep-over-airasia-indigo-airlines-president/20130708.htm

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4chan Launches Self-Serve Ads To Stay Lean And Let Users Pay To Troll Each Other

4chan, one of the wildest corners of the web, is growing up without losing its edge. The image board just opened a self-serve ads tool for scrappy businesses and trolls willing to pay for lulz. Founder Moot tells me "We're already seeing users using it to troll one another, advertise specific threads or their favorite boards, etc. I think there's a lot of potential for people to use the self-serve ads in a creative manner."

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/lDcV8AwuznY/

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Shooting Challenge: Fireworks

Say what you will about Americans, but we are really, really good at blowing things up. And for this week's Shooting Challenge?and the 4th of July!?we're going to celebrate that in our traditional fashion.

The Challenge

Photograph fireworks. They can be big, small, extreme, or perfectly quaint.

The Method

As I've said before, if you have a point and shoot, it most likely has a fireworks mode. There's no shame in using it. But in past years (2011, 2012) these were the tried and true tips that have worked:

? DPhoto Journal recommends three different aperture/ISO combinations that work for many circumstances.
? Digital Photography School instructs us that using "bulb mode" exposure will allow you to tweak the shutter speed perfectly.
? Photodoto really nails the practicality, instructing how to compensate your settings depending on the types of wonky shots you're capturing.

The Example

Our lead shot is by Ryan Moynihan from last year's challenge. That shot was taken on a Samsung Galaxy SII.

The Rules - READ THESE

0. No watermarks. They're so ugly.
1. Submissions need to be your own.
2. Photos must be taken since this contest was announced.
3. Explain, briefly, the equipment, settings, technique and story behind shot.
4. Email submissions to contests@gizmodo.com, not me.
5. Include 970px wide image (200KB or less) AND a native resolution sized shot in email.
6. One submission per person.
7. Use the proper SUBJECT line in your email (more info on that below)
8. You agree to the Standard Contest Rules - though we DO accept non-US resident submissions.
9. If the image contains any material or elements that are not owned by you and/or which are subject to the rights of third parties, and/or if any persons appear in the image, you are responsible for obtaining, prior to submission of the photograph, any and all releases and consents necessary to permit the exhibition and use of the image in the manner set forth in these rules without additional compensation. If any person appearing in any image is under the age of majority in their state/province/territory of residence the signature of a parent or legal guardian is required on each release.

Oh, and BE SAFE.

Send your best photo by Monday, July 8th at 10AM Eastern to contests@gizmodo.com with "Fireworks" in the subject line. Save your files as JPGs, and use a FirstnameLastnameFireworks.jpg (970px wide) and FirstnameLastnameFireworksWallpaper.jpg (2560px wide) naming conventions. Include your shooting summary (camera, lens, ISO, etc) in the body of the email along with a story of the shot in a few sentences. And don't skip this story part because it's often the most enjoyable part for us all beyond the shot itself!

Source: http://gizmodo.com/shooting-challenge-fireworks-657222800

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Egypt bracing for massive protests

Egypt's Tahrir Square continues to be the center of violent protests more than two years after the Arab Spring ousted long-time ruler Hosni Mubarak. Now, supporters and opponents of President Mohammed Morsi are clashing, with efforts afoot to remove the democratically elected leader, NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports.

By Daniel Arkin, Staff Writer, NBC News

Tens of thousands of opponents and supporters of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi flooded the streets of Cairo as competing protests turned lethal on Sunday.

Violent clashes left three dead, the country's minister of health said.

Suspected pro-Morsi Islamists on a motorbike opened fire on anti-government demonstrators in the southern city of Assiut, killing one and wounding seven, security officials told The Associated Press.

Protesters infuriated by that killing then marched to the office of the Freedom and Justice party, the political wing of Morsi?s Muslim Brotherhood, where they were met with a hail of bullets, leaving two people dead, according to the AP. An anti-Morsi protester was murdered earlier in the town of Beni Suef, the AP reported.

Mohamed Abd El Ghany / Reuters

Protesters opposing Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi shout slogans against him and brotherhood members during a protest at Tahrir square in Cairo June 30, 2013.

Hours after the prearranged protests began, swarms of anti-government demonstrators were still massed in Tahrir Square, crucible of the 2011 so-called ?Arab Spring? uprisings that overthrew autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak.

?The people want the fall of the regime!? they chanted. Many waved national flags ? only this time not in defiance of an aging dictator but as a form of dissent against their first-ever elected leader, who only assumed office a year ago to the day.

Meanwhile, legions of Morsi?s allies remained outside the Rabia al-Adawiya Mosque near the Ittihadiya presidential palace. Some wore military-style regalia and carried shields and clubs, purportedly as a defense against potential attacks from the opposition, according to the AP.

Not including the casualties from Sunday, at least seven people, including an American college student in Maryland, had already been killed in clashes between opposition protesters and Morsi-allied groups in the last week.

Sunday?s protests represent the peak of a year of turbulence and turmoil in which Egypt has been rocked by scores of political crises, dozens of bloody clashes and a declining economy that has set off a spate of power outages, fuel shortages, skyrocketing prices and routine lawlessness and crime.

The opposing sides of the conflict are representative of the bitter political, social, and religious divisions in contemporary Egypt.

The Muslim Brotherhood and other hard-line groups form the backbone of the pro-Morsi camp. Many of Morsi's proponents have characterized the protests as a conspiracy by Mubarak's political allies to return the former leader to power.

The anti-government movement brings together secular and liberal Egyptians, moderate Muslims and Christians, and wide swaths of the general public the opposition says has rejected the Islamists and their regime.

Liberal leaders say nearly half all Egyptian voters ? some 22 million people ? have signed a petition calling for new elections.

"We all feel we're walking on a dead-end road and that the country will collapse," said Mohamed El-Baradei, a former U.N. nuclear watchdog chief, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and now liberal party leader in his homeland.

Despite mounting pressure, Morsi did not buckle in advance of the preplanned protests, dismissing the widespread dissent as an undemocratic assault on his electoral legitimacy, Reuters reported.

Mohamed Abd El Ghany / Reuters

Protesters opposing Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi shout slogans against him and members of the Muslim Brotherhood during a demonstration in Tahrir square in Cairo June 30, 2013.

But he also proposed to make changes to the new, Islamist-inflected constitution, saying he was not personally responsible for controversial clauses on religious authority, which stirred up liberal animosity and triggered the popular revolt, according to Reuters.

For many Egyptians, though, all the turmoil that has followed the Arab Spring has just made life harder. Standing by his lonely barrow at an eerily quiet downtown Cairo street market, 23-year-old Zeeka was afraid more violence was coming.

"We're not for one side or the other," he told Reuters. "What's happening now in Egypt is shameful. There is no work, thugs are everywhere ... I won't go out to any protest.

"It's nothing to do with me. I'm a tomato guy."

Visiting sub-Saharan Africa, President Barack Obama has cautioned that rancor in the largest Arab country could rattle the region.

"Every party has to denounce violence," Obama said in Pretoria, South Africa, on Saturday. "We'd like to see the opposition and President Morsi engage in a more constructive conversation about how they move their country forward because nobody is benefiting from the current stalemate."

?Washington has evacuated non-essential personnel and redoubled security at its diplomatic missions in Egypt.

Reuters and The Associated Press?contributed to this report.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/663309/s/2dffb664/l/0Lworldnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A60C30A0C1921750A80Eegypt0Ebracing0Efor0Emassive0Eprotests0Dlite/story01.htm

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'Unimaginable that this even happened'

By Tim Gaynor

PRESCOTT, Arizona (Reuters) - Fire investigators in central Arizona launched a probe on Monday into how wind-driven flames closed in on and killed 19 specially trained firemen in a tragedy that marked the greatest loss of life among firefighters in a U.S. wildland blaze in 80 years.

The precise circumstances surrounding Sunday's deaths of all but one of a 20-member elite "hotshots" firefighting team remained unclear a day after they perished while battling a blaze that has destroyed scores of homes and forced the evacuation of two towns.

But fire officials said the young men fell victim to a volatile mix of erratic winds gusting to gale-force intensity, low humidity, a sweltering heat wave, and thick, drought-parched brush that had not burned in some 40 years.

The doomed firefighters had managed to deploy their personal fire shelters, tent-like safety devices designed to deflect heat and trap breathable air, in a last-ditch effort to survive that ultimately proved futile, officials said.

Peter Andersen, a former local Fire District chief who assisted in the early firefighting efforts, told Reuters some of the men on the ground made it into their shelters and some did not, according to an account relayed by a ranger helicopter crew flying over the area.

"There was nothing they (helicopter crew) could do to get to them," he said.

Still, conditions faced by the "hotshots," a ground crew that fights flames at close range with hand tools and serves as the shock troops in a firefighting force, were typical for the wildfires they are trained to battle, fire officials said.

Standard safety protocols followed by such crews appeared to be in place, and investigators are trying to determine exactly what went wrong in this instance, they said.

"It had to be a perfect storm in order for this to happen. Their situational awareness and their training was at such a high level that it's unimaginable that this has even happened," Prescott Fire Department spokesman Wade Ward told ABC's "Today" program.

STARTED BY LIGHTNING

The blaze was ignited on Friday by lightning near the town of Yarnell, about 80 miles (128 km) northwest of Phoenix, and by Monday was still raging unchecked after scorching some 8,400 acres (3,400 hectares) of tinder-dry chaparral and grasslands.

Authorities ordered the evacuation of Yarnell and the adjoining town of Peeples Valley. The two towns are southwest of Prescott and home to roughly 1,000 people.

A Yavapai County Sheriff's Office spokesman said on Sunday at least 200 structures had been destroyed, most of them in Yarnell, a community consisting largely of retirees. And fire officials said most of the building lost were homes.

Authorities on Monday said that figure was a rough estimate and that a more accurate assessment of property losses was expected later.

The so-called Yarnell Hills blaze was one of dozens of wildfires in several western U.S. states in recent weeks. Experts have said the current fire season could be one of the worst on record.

Sunday's disaster in Arizona marks the highest death toll among firefighters from a U.S. wildland blaze since 29 men died battling the Griffith Park fire of 1933 in Los Angeles, according to the National Fire Protection Association.

The association lists seven incidents in the United States during the past century that killed as many or more firefighters than on Sunday in Arizona. The costliest saw the deaths of 340 firefighters in the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center in New York.

Arizona Forestry Commission spokesman Mike Reichling said one member of the 20-man crew had been driving in a separate location and survived unhurt. Eighteen of the dead were members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots team, assigned to the Prescott Fire Department, and the 19th victim belonged to another crew who was working with the fallen team, Reichling said.

WARNING FROM A BOW HUNTER

Evacuee Rick McKenzie, 53, a bow hunter and ranch caretaker, said the fire had "exploded" on Sunday, with flames 30 to 40 feet high (9 to 13 meters) racing across an area of oak and brush and that he had warned the Hotshots about the dense oak woods where they would be working.

"I said, 'If this fire sweeps down the mountain to the lower hills where all this thick brush is, it's going to blow up, guys, you need to watch it,'" said McKenzie, who had taken refuge at a Red Cross shelter at Yavapai College.

The Hotshots were highly trained firefighters with rigorous fitness standards. All were required to take an 80-hour critical training course and refresher yearly, according to the group's website.

"Our common bond is our love of hard work and arduous adventure," the website said.

Scorching heat is expected to last for the first part of the week, meteorologists said.

The deaths brought an outpouring of tributes on Sunday from political leaders, including from President Obama, who is on an official trip to Africa.

In a statement, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer called the deaths "one of our state's darkest, most devastating days."

She ordered state flags flown at half staff from Monday through Wednesday.

Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, said in a statement: "This devastating loss is a reminder of the grave risks our firefighters take every day on our behalf in Arizona and in communities across this nation. Their sacrifice will never be forgotten."

(Writing by Steve Gorman; Additional reporting by David Schwartz; Editing by Dina Kyriakidou and Sofina Mirza-Reid)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/investigators-launch-probe-death-19-arizona-firefighters-182939400.html

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El Nino unusually active in the late 20th century: Is it because of global warming?

June 30, 2013 ? Spawning droughts, floods, and other weather disturbances world-wide, the El Ni?o -- Southern Oscillation (ENSO) impacts the daily life of millions of people. During El Ni?o, Atlantic hurricane activity wanes and rainfall in Hawaii decreases while Pacific winter storms shift southward, elevating the risk of floods in California.

The ability to forecast how ENSO will respond to global warming thus matters greatly to society. Providing accurate predictions, though, is challenging because ENSO varies naturally over decades and centuries. Instrumental records are too short to determine whether any changes seen recently are simply natural or attributable to human-made greenhouse gases. Reconstructions of ENSO behavior are usually missing adequate records for the tropics where ENSO develops.

Help is now underway in the form of a tree-ring record reflecting ENSO activity over the past seven centuries. Tree-rings have been shown to be very good proxies for temperature and rainfall measurements. An international team of scientists spearheaded by Jinbao Li and Shang-Ping Xie, while working at the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa, has compiled 2,222 tree-ring chronologies of the past seven centuries from both the tropics and mid-latitudes in both hemispheres. Their work is published in the June 30, 2013 online issue of Nature Climate Change.

The inclusion of tropical tree-ring records enabled the team to generate an archive of ENSO activity of unprecedented accuracy, as attested by the close correspondence with records from equatorial Pacific corals and with an independent Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstruction that captures well-known teleconnection climate patterns.

These proxy records all indicate that ENSO was unusually active in the late 20th century compared to the past seven centuries, implying that this climate phenomenon is responding to ongoing global warming.

"In the year after a large tropical volcanic eruption, our record shows that the east-central tropical Pacific is unusually cool, followed by unusual warming one year later. Like greenhouse gases, volcanic aerosols perturb the Earth's radiation balance. This supports the idea that the unusually high ENSO activity in the late 20th century is a footprint of global warming," explains lead author Jinbao Li.

"Many climate models do not reflect the strong ENSO response to global warming that we found," says co-author Shang-Ping Xie, meteorology professor at the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa and Roger Revelle Professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego. "This suggests that many models underestimate the sensitivity to radiative perturbations in greenhouse gases. Our results now provide a guide to improve the accuracy of climate models and their projections of future ENSO activity. If this trend of increasing ENSO activity continues, we expect to see more weather extremes such as floods and droughts."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/li4efH1FPxs/130630145025.htm

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Stocks soggy as Fed tapering worries linger, China eyed

By Ian Chua

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Asian stocks got off to an uninspired start on Monday, while the U.S. dollar held firm at one-month highs after an influential Federal Reserve official suggested September could be the beginning of the end of easy money from the central bank.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> fell 0.3 percent, having last week posted a 2.8 percent rally, its biggest weekly gain since September 2012. The index, though, ended the first half of the year down 7.3 percent.

Tokyo's Nikkei <.n225> also slipped 0.1 percent, having climbed 3.5 percent last week to end the first half up a handsome 31.5 percent.

"We had a big rebound in the Nikkei last Friday, so we may see some profit-taking. I think there was some window dressing last Friday as it was month-end and quarter-end," said Takashi Hiroki, chief strategist at Monex Inc.

Optimism that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's aggressive stimulus push will lift the economy has helped light a fire under the Nikkei.

Data on Monday suggested Abe's plans are on track with a survey showing the mood of Japanese manufacturers turning positive for the first time in nearly two years.

Monday's market moves followed a subdued finish on Wall Street after Fed Governor Jeremy Stein suggested that September could be an opportune time for the central bank to consider scaling back its massive asset-purchase program.

Stein's remarks, aechoed by President of the Richmond Fed, Jeffrey Lacker, undid some of the calm that spread through markets last week after several other officials sought to play down market fears of the Fed's plan to taper stimulus.

Critical for markets this week is the U.S. jobs data due on Friday, given it is a key measures the Fed will consider before deciding to start withdrawing stimulus.

In the meantime, markets will take their cue from a report on China's vast manufacturing sector due around 9 p.m ET.

Any disappointment will no doubt renew worries about the world's second biggest economy just as markets are getting over the impact of a recent credit crunch.

In currency markets, investors reacted to Stein's comments by bidding up the U.S. dollar, which hit a one-month high against a basket of major currencies. It remained near the peak early on Monday.

The euro traded at $1.3016, having slipped 0.2 percent on Friday, while the greenback reached fresh one-month highs of 94.55 yen.

Among the biggest losers was the Australian dollar, which hit a fresh 33-month low of $0.9110, following Friday's 1.5 percent drop.

Partly weighing on the Aussie was a recent dramatic selloff in gold, a major export earner for Australia. While bullion jumped more than 2 percent on Friday, it still suffered its biggest quarterly drop in 45 years.

Spot gold was up around 0.5 percent at $1,239 per ounce in early trade, still not far off a near three-year trough of $1.180.71 plumbed on Friday. Worries about the end of the Fed's stimulus had contributed to the panic selling of the precious metal.

Other commodities got off to a sleepy start with U.S. crude down 0.4 percent at $96.22 a barrel, while copper edged up 0.2 percent to $6,766 a tonne.

(Additional reporting by Dominic Lau in Tokyo; Editing by Eric Meijer)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/stocks-soggy-fed-tapering-worries-linger-china-eyed-004415170.html

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