News Headlines - 23 September 2012

▽BBC News - China cancels diplomatic event with Japan over islands

A ceremony to mark 40 years of ties with Japan has been put off by China as the two countries' row over an island chain continues.

▽George Osborne's deficit reduction plan: a blunt axe, blindly wielded | The Guardian

Chancellor George Osborne's vision for the economy is in trouble with a record August deficit of ￡14bn

▽Olive oil prices to soar after Spanish drought devastates crop | The Observer

A fresh oil crisis is brewing. However, this time it won't be hitting the garage forecourts but the nation's kitchens. The wholesale price of extra virgin olive oil has jumped 62% in three months after a severe drought in Spain, the world's largest producer, wiped out an estimated 600,000 tonnes of production.

▽Data Centers Waste Vast Amounts of Energy, Belying Industry Image - NYTimes.com

Most data centers, by design, consume vast amounts of energy in an incongruously wasteful manner, interviews and documents show. Online companies typically run their facilities at maximum capacity around the clock, whatever the demand. As a result, data centers can waste 90 percent or more of the electricity they pull off the grid, The Times found.

▽Toyota returns from ‘brink of irrelevance’ - FT.com

Next month, it will be three years since Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota Motor, told a group of journalists his company might be ready for the scrap heap. Toyota was the world’s most valuable automaker by market capitalisation and number one for vehicle sales, but it had been hopelessly unprepared for the deep recession and currency swings that followed the global financial crisis. In the words of Mr Toyoda – grandson of the Japanese group’s founder – Toyota was “grasping for salvation” and stood “on the brink of irrelevance or even death”.