Initial claims for unemployment aid rise to 465K (AP)

WASHINGTON â€" The tally of newly laid-off workers requesting unemployment benefits rose last week for the first time in five weeks as the job market remains sluggish.

Initial claims for jobless aid rose by 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 465,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. Many economists had expected a flat reading or small drop.

The rise suggests that jobs remain scarce and some companies are still cutting workers amid sluggish economic growth. Initial claims have fallen from a recent spike above a half-million last month. But they have been stuck above 450,000 for most of the year.

Claims typically fall below 400,000 when hiring is robust and the economy is growing.

The four-week average of claims, a less volatile measure, declined by 3,250 to 463,250. That's the lowest level since the end of July, but down by only 4,000 since January.

Initial claims, while volatile, are considered a real-time snapshot of the job market. The weekly claims figures are considered a measure of the pace of layoffs and an indication of companies' willingness to hire.

New requests for jobless benefits have fallen sharply since June 2009, the month the recession ended. They topped 600,000 at the end of that month. But most of the decline took place last year.

Economic growth has slowed considerably since the beginning of the year, and many employers are reluctant to add new employees. The economy grew at a 1.6 percent annual rate in the second quarter, an anemic pace that isn't fast enough to reduce the jobless rate, now at 9.6 percent. Growth in the current July-September quarter isn't expected to be much faster.

The number of people continuing to receive jobless benefits fell by 48,000 to 4.49 million, the department said. But that doesn't include several million people who are receiving unemployment aid under extended programs approved by Congress during the recession.

The extended benefit rolls rose by about 200,000 to nearly 5.2 million in the week ending Sept. 4, the latest data available.

Some companies are still cutting jobs. Cessna Aircraft said Tuesday that it will lay off 700 workers because the economy hasn't recovered as strongly as the company had hoped earlier this year. The latest reductions are on top of 8,000 jobs the company has shed since late 2008, reducing its work force by half.

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FACTBOX - Commonwealth Games pullouts (Reuters)

REUTERS â€" The Delhi Commonwealth Games have been hit by a series of pullouts by high-profile athletes, taking much of the shine off next month's multi-sport gathering which is already besieged by a raft of other problems.

(For a slideshow: Countdown to Commonwealth, click http://in.reuters.com/news/pictures/slideshow?articleId=INRTR2HWG7)

Following is a list of the biggest-name athletes who will miss the Oct. 3-14 Games for reasons ranging from injury to security.

USAIN BOLT:

The Jamaican triple Olympic champion sprinter pulled out because the event is taking place too late in the year.

SHELLY-ANN FRASER:

Like Bolt, the Olympic 100 metres champion also had problems with the timing of the Delhi Games. She subsequently tested positive for a prohibited substance that earned her a provisional ban.

DAVID RUDISHA:

The Kenyan 800 metres world record holder said he was tired and felt competing in Delhi would affects his performance in next year's world championships in South Korea.

SAMANTHA STOSUR:

The Australian tennis player is skipping the Commonwealth Games because it coincides with tour events.

ASBEL KIPROP:

Kenya's Olympic 1,500 metres champion has suffered an Achilles injury, Kenyan officials said.

DANI SAMUELS:

Australia's discus world champion has pulled out due to security and health concerns.

CHRISTINE OHURUOGU:

The Olympic 400 metres gold medallist from England suffered cramps and said she did not want to aggravate the injury.

PHILLIPS IDOWU:

England's world triple jump champion has security concerns.

CHRIS HOY:

The quadruple Olympic gold medallist cyclist pulled out because the Games clash with the European championships, which carry qualification points for the 2012 London Olympics.

STEPHANIE RICE:

The Australian triple Olympic gold medallist swimmer is skipping the Commonwealth Games to undergo shoulder surgery.

(Compiled by Amlan Chakraborty; Editing by Sonia Oxley; To comment on this story: sportsfeedback@thomsonreuters.com)

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CarMax 2Q profit rises on used car sales (AP)

RICHMOND, Va. â€" The used car dealership chain CarMax Inc. reported a 4.8 percent profit increase for its fiscal second quarter on Wednesday as a shaky economy continued to push consumers toward previously owned cars and trucks.

Its overall revenue climbed 13 percent while revenue at its outlets open at least a year rose 4 percent even though last year's sales were boosted by the government's Cash for Clunkers rebate program.

The Richmond, Va.-based company said its net income rose to $107.9 million, or 48 cents per share, in the three months ended Aug. 31. That's up from $103 million, or 46 cents per share, a year ago.

Its revenue rose to $2.34 billion from $2.08 billion a year ago.

The results beat Wall Street estimates. Thomson Reuters says analysts it surveyed expected earnings of 40 cents per share on revenue of $2.27 billion.

CEO Tom Folliard said in a statement that CarMax dealerships had about the same amount of customer traffic as last year's second quarter despite Cash for Clunkers, but the sales force was able to convince more of those people to buy.

"We are especially pleased with the strength of our comparable store used unit sales where, despite our toughest comparison in recent quarters, we still delivered positive comps," Folliard said.

CarMax was able to boost gross profit per used vehicle by $85 to $2,205 as used car prices continued to remain strong. The company said the improvement came because it obtained more of its vehicles directly from consumers, more efficient reconditioning operations and wholesale used car prices that were above last year's numbers.

CarMax runs more than 100 stores that mainly sell used cars and trucks.

Its shares rose 18 cents to $24.30 in pre-market trading.

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Bridge collapse adds to Commonwealth Games woes (Reuters)

NEW DELHI (Reuters) â€" A footbridge being built for the Commonwealth Games in India collapsed on Tuesday, injuring 23 people and highlighting the raft of problems that have so far blighted the event, meant to showcase the emerging global power.

Preparations for next month's Commonwealth Games, intended to be the coming out party for India the Olympics were for China, are down to the wire and the event risks descending into farce.

The shooting of two foreign visitors by suspected militants in Delhi on Sunday has combined with a dengue fever epidemic, heavy monsoon rains, delayed construction, graft scandals and traffic chaos to give the Games that sinking feeling.

Police said the collapsed bridge was just outside the main stadium, putting India's sometimes lax construction standards again in the spotlight.

Commonwealth Games Federation president Michael Fennell said on Tuesday the two-week event, starting Oct. 3, was seriously compromised by conditions at the Games village that have "shocked the majority."

But officials remained upbeat about the event.

"I am not worried at all. I am as confident and as cool as ever about our organizing of the Commonwealth Games in a very successful, comfortable way. These are all minor hiccups," Urban Development Minister S. Jaipal Reddy told reporters.

(For a slideshow: Countdown to Commonwealth, click http://in.reuters.com/news/pictures/slideshow?articleId=INRTR2HWG7)

(For a slideshow: Mishap near Games venue, click http://in.reuters.com/news/pictures/slideshow?articleId=INRTXSH8Y)

Dismal preparations have, for many, underscored the out-of-touch, slow-paced leadership of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Congress government, raising questions how a graft-ridden, inefficient state can hope to compete with China.

The government's pro-poor voter image may suffer from tales of billions of wasted dollars. A perception of India's entrepreneurial prowess threatening Western jobs may slip if roofs leak and journalists wonder where the Wi-Fi is.

"Fingers crossed, India may pull off a miracle," said Boria Majumdar, a sports historian who has written the book 'Sellotape Legacy: Delhi and the Commonwealth Games'.

"But it will have to be a miracle. No doubt about that".

The Games village and security -- construction delays mean venues have been locked down by police only two weeks before the Games -- are the two major weakness of the Games, Majumdar said.

Some four or five accommodation towers at the Games village are still unfinished, lacking facilities such as wireless Internet, fitted toilets and plumbing. Rubble, unused masonry and discarded bricks litter the unfinished gardens.

On a recent visit to the village, the lack of preparation was stark. A Reuters reporter witnessed dirty apartments with empty boxes strewn about, as labourers worked on paths and pavements.

A crude cement slope appeared to be an unplanned fix for disabled athletes requiring access to one apartment block.

The athletes' training centre was still to be fitted out. The water in the training and recreational swimming pools was dirty, with insect larvae breeding on the surface.

"There have had some delegations staying there and they have been reporting constantly about the filth in the village," Fennell told CNN-IBN TV.

Organisers say there is no question the Games will be put off, but the nightmare is that one delegation exits and that leads to an avalanche. And the problems are not receding.

Of the nearly 100,000 accreditations for officials and media, only around a quarter have been issued.

With the $6 billion Games way behind schedule, there have been worries stagnant puddles in construction sites have proved breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Hundreds of Delhi residents are hospitalised in one of the worst dengue epidemics in years.

NOT ALL BAD?

With costs running 17 times more than original estimates, the government's anti-corruption watchdog identified 16 projects with suspect financing.

The insistence to hold the Games in October has led to some athletes pulling out due to conflicts with Olympic qualifiers. October also means the opening ceremony may be ruined by rains.

Triple Olympic sprint champion Usain Bolt of Jamaica is the most high profile of a bunch of top athletes who have decided to skip the event.

But many venues, including the main Jawaharlal Nehru stadium have been praised as world class. The hope for organisers is that TV coverage of the Games will focus on events, not arrangements.

Other events like the 2004 Athens Olympics were dogged by problems but turned out fine. Beijing was hit by worries over the torch relay and Tibet protests but ended in media glory.

Some officials say foreigners do not understand how India works. Sport Minister Manohar Singh Gill said it is like an Indian wedding where chaos ends in a well-planned ceremony.

But scandals have sent shivers down the government that since the summer has effectively replaced many organisers with top civil servants, giving the Games access to more funds.

However, the Congress government was late getting involved, highlighting its slow pace in dealing with issues ranging from economic reforms to separatist violence in Kashmir.

General elections later this year also may have put on hold many preparations, with politicians not knowing if they would be able to take the credit for any effort.

While high inflation is the biggest issue for a government that has eyes on millions of poor rural voters rather than Delhi residents, graft stories will worsen the Congress party's image.

"It's just one of so many goof-ups," said Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, a political economist. "This will not do the government any good. When you have a big bash and benefits are minimal it sharpens and widens the inequalities in India. People notice."

(Additional reporting by Amlan Chakraborty and Henry Foy)

(Editing by Paul de Bendern and Miral Fahmy. To query or comment on this story email sportsfeedback@thomsonreuters.com)

(For more news, visit Reuters India)

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China snubs Japan PM over boat row, rules out meeting (Reuters)

TOKYO/BEIJING (Reuters) â€" China snubbed Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan on Tuesday, saying a territorial dispute ruled out any meeting with Premier Wen Jiabao in New York this week and adding to the ire dividing Asia's top two economies.

China's confirmation that Wen will not meet Kan when they both attend a U.N. meeting marked another swipe at Tokyo after a Japanese court extended the detention of a Chinese skipper whose boat collided with two Japanese coastguard ships earlier this month near islands in the East China Sea claimed by both sides.

China has repeatedly demanded the captain's release.

The Foreign Ministry stepped up the warnings and added the public snub of Japanese Prime Minister Kan, a step suggesting that it will take a while for diplomatic goodwill to return between the two neighbors, even after the boat case has passed.

"This issue has already seriously damaged China-Japan relations. The key to avoiding a further deterioration in the situation lies in Japan immediately and unconditionally releasing the man," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a regular news briefing in Beijing.

It would not be right, Jiang said, for Wen Jiabao to meet Kan in New York during a United Nations development summit.

"Given the current atmosphere, arranging a meeting clearly would be inappropriate," she said.

The case of the boat captain has become a distillation of the distrust that threads through Sino-Japan relations, drawing in territorial disputes, Chinese bitterness over wartime occupation, Tokyo's anxieties about Chinese regional sway, and Japanese unease as China rises in global GDP rankings.

Many experts say neither country wants to risk their increasing trade flows through outright confrontation. But some said the boat case has re-opened nettlesome disputes put on hold as the two governments sought to end years of quarrels.

"This dispute is about problems between China and Japan that persisted even though both sides avoided or underplayed them for a while," said Sun Cheng, an expert on Japan at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing.

"How bad relations get now partly depends on how long the boat captain is detained," he said. "If he's released soon, we'll return to the status quo of before, but both sides have seen how even this small case became a major problem."

TRADE, TERRITORIAL DISPUTES, TOURISTS

Trade ties remain robust.

China has been Japan's biggest trading partner since 2009 and bilateral trade reached 12.6 trillion yen ($147 billion) in the January-June period, a jump of 34.5 percent over the same time last year, according to Japanese statistics.

But worries about a possible dip in the number of big-spending Chinese tourists to Japan in the wake of the dispute weighed on the share prices of department store operators such as Takashimaya.

A top Japanese government spokesman called for both sides to refrain from inflaming nationalism in the row over the islands, which China calls the Diaoyu and Japan calls Senkaku.

"What is most important is that government officials in Japan, China and other countries try not to fuel narrow-minded, extreme nationalism," Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku told a news conference.

Japan's Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda also called for a solution that would leave business ties unaffected.

Japan's National Tourism Organization, however, said it had made no change to its projection for the number of visitors from China to reach a record 1.5 million this year.

Japanese authorities have accused the Chinese captain of ramming a patrol ship and obstructing officers near the disputed, uninhabited islets in the East China Sea.

The two countries are also at odds over China's exploration for natural gas in the East China Sea, and Beijing is also involved in territorial disputes with Southeast Asian nations in the South China Sea.

Japanese prosecutors have until September 29 to decide whether to bring charges against the captain.

($1=85.69 yen)

(Additional reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto, Yoko Kubota, Elaine Lies and James Topham in Tokyo, and Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by Miral Fahmy and Sanjeev Miglani)

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India drop Yuvraj from tests against Australia (Reuters)

MUMBAI (Reuters) â€" Middle-order batsman Yuvraj Singh was dropped on Monday from India's test squad against Australia while Zaheer Khan and Shantakumaran Sreesanth have returned from injuries to bolster the pace department.

Yuvraj has been replaced by Cheteshwar Pujara, a prolific 22-year-old from Saurashtra, in the 15-man squad selected in Chennai for next month's Border-Gavaskar series.

Zaheer (shoulder) and Sreesanth (knee) were out of action during India's three-test tour of Sri Lanka.

The squad, led by Mahendra Singh Dhoni, contains nine batsmen, three medium-pacers and as many spinners.

"Pujara is a very good player, he has done really well in the India A series. You will have to give credit to domestic performance and A series and everything else," India selection committee chief Krish Srikkanth told reporters.

"Overall, we have selected the best team and I don't think there is any surprise inclusion or surprise exclusion. It was the sheer weight of performance, talent and of course fitness that was taken into account."

The Australia team, who arrived in India on Monday, start their tour with a three-day match in Chandigarh on Saturday.

Mohali hosts the first test from Oct. 1-5, while the second will be held in Bangalore from Oct. 9-13.

Australia will also play three one-day internationals.

India - MS Dhoni (captain), Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, M.Vijay, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, Suresh Raina, Cheteshwar Pujara, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Ishant Sharma, Pragyan Ojha, S.Sreesanth, Amit Mishra.

(Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly in Mumbai; editing by John Mehaffey; to query or comment on this story, email sportsfeedback@thomsonreuters.com)

(For more news visit Reuters India)

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Greece delays stress tests ahead of NBG rights deal (Reuters)

ATHENS (Reuters) â€" Greece will delay stress testing of its banks until October to allow its largest lender to complete a big rights issue, part of efforts to begin financing its economy again on international markets.

The central bank tests aim to check that banks, struggling with rising bad loans, deposit outflows and a lack of access to the wholesale funding market, are well-enough capitalized to weather Greece's debt crisis and an austerity-induced recession.

Greece has agreed to stress test its banks quarterly to strengthen the system's supervision as part of an emergency 110 billion euro funding package clinched with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and its euro zone peers in May.

Greece's big banks took part in a broader stress test by the Committee of European Banking Supervisors (CEBS) in July with only one, ATEbank, failing to make the grade under the simulation's most adverse scenario.

"The delay is not significant. The CEBS stress test in a way dislocated the pre-arranged Bank of Greece-IMF tests. Doing another test in September after the CEBS one in July would bring the simulations too close," said UBS analyst Alexander Kyrtsis.

The overborrowed country's international lenders -- the IMF and its euro zone peers -- want to ensure banks can cope as austerity policies to slash deficits deepen the recession.

"The stress tests will not be done in September," said a central bank official who did not want to be named. "They will take place later in the autumn, very likely in October."

Although there was no set date for the Bank of Greece tests the official said there had been discussion internally on conducting them in September.

TIME FOR NATIONAL BANK

The main measure of investors' faith in Greece -- the government's cost of borrowing compared to German government bonds -- has fallen slightly but remains more than twice that of the next most risky bet in the euro zone, Ireland.

The government last week kicked off new monthly auctions of short-term debt, comfortably selling more than a billion euros ($1.5 billion) of six-month bills but still paying a high yield despite progress in cutting its deficit.

Analysts said the delay in the stress tests would allow for developments in Greek banking to settle, mainly a 2.8 billion euro capital increase by National Bank but also a report by privatization advisers and nine-month results.

"The central bank wants stress tests to encompass a series of upcoming developments," said Natasa Roumantzi, head analyst at Piraeus Securities. "Firstly, it's been a short time since the July stress tests and secondly it wants to see the completion of National Bank's capital boost."

NBG is set to boost its capital via a rights issue, a convertible bond and the sale of a stake in Turkish unit Finansbank to give it a bigger cushion to cope with the economic slump at home and a liquidity quagmire that has forced Greek banks to rely on the European Central Bank for funding.

Funding from the lender of last resort reached 19 percent of the system's assets in August.

NBG's move also addresses the new capital rules drawn up by global banking regulators known as Basel III. The rights issue will run from September 27 to October 11.

Analysts said that with the rights issue window being small, about 10 days, there would be a limited ability for the market to fully digest stress test information.

In the pan-European tests in July, ATEbank's Tier 1 ratio fell to 4.36 percent under the simulation's most adverse scenario, below a 6.0 percent safety threshold.

The CEBS test was tough for Greek lenders, showing on average banks were strong enough to cope with a rise in non-performing loans to 17 percent by the end of 2011 without needing significant amounts of capital.

A senior banker at a large Greek bank said the Bank of Greece stress tests would likely be more tailor-made compared to the CEBS test which was based on across the board assumptions.

"If the IMF-Bank of Greece stress test is similar to the CEBS one there is no reason to run it. It will either be more punitive on loan-losses or on sovereign exposure in some way," Kyrtsis said.

Greek bank shares were trading 1.79 percent lower mid-day, slightly underperforming the general index, which was losing 1.18 percent.

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