The 21-year-old, earmarked by many as a future top-10 player, will rise from 47th to around 32 in the world when the next set of rankings are released on Monday, eclipsing the 46th spot reached by Shuzo Matsuoka in 1992.Awaiting the high-flying Nishikori in the Shanghai Masters semi-finals will be world number four Andy Murray or Australian qualifier Matthew Ebden who conclude quarter-final action later in the Qi Zhong Stadium.The top half of the draw has an all-Spanish semi-final after David Ferrer beat American Andy Roddick 6-7 6-2 7-6 and Feliciano Lopez brushed aside top seed Rafa Nadal’s third-round conqueror Florian Mayer 6-2 6-4.Nishikori, who had already achieved his best Masters Series run by beating Colombia’s Santiago Giraldo on Thursday, withstood nine aces from the 12th seeded Dolgopolov and saved six of the seven break points against him.”It means a lot to play semis here. I’m really excited now. I started well today. I knew he’s going to hit a lot of slice shots and I had to be careful,” Nishikori, who is coached by Murray’s former coach Brad Gilbert, told reporters.”It’s been a great year for me. I will get to my highest ranking. To be the number one player in Japan means a lot to me. Now it’s the semis here, one of biggest tournaments for me.”Mayer came back down to earth from his victory over Nadal as the rangy Lopez took him apart in one hour and eight minutes to reach the semi-finals in Shanghai for a second time having also got to the last four in 2009.The relentless Ferrer came from a set behind against 10th seed Roddick, clinching his 50th victory of an impressive season in a deciding set tiebreak.”I thought the second and third sets he played at an extremely high level and served pretty well,” Roddick, who still has an outside chance of qualifying for the ATP World Tour Finals in London next month, said.”You know, you normally don’t count on him making a lot of first serves, hitting aces. I felt like today he did that and got himself out of trouble a couple of times.”World number five Ferrer clinched his place in the season-ending tournament in London on Thursday.

Asked if a possible forced recapitalisation was intended to force higher participation by banks, Juncker said: “Private banks must know that if the current voluntary creditor participation is not sufficient… then we must realize that we will need compulsory participation by creditors.”Problems related to banks and state indebtedness were both escalating and banks would need a tailored solution, he said.

He takes over as politicians call for a complete overhaul or even abolition of the PCC, a self-regulatory body, following claims it had done nothing to address the hacking allegations at the now defunct News of the World newspaper.When the scandal engulfed Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp media empire in July, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said the PCC was “busted” and needed to be replaced, while opposition Labour leader Ed Miliband has called it a “toothless poodle”.Former chairman Baroness Peta Buscombe announced her intention to resign during the outcry and Lord Hunt echoed her departing views that there should be independent, non-statutory self-regulation of the press.”I have no desire to live in a country where the legitimate, lawful investigative activities of the press are fettered at the whim of politicians,” he said in a statement.”There is a real appetite for change, however, and it is my intention to drive forward the creation of a reinvigorated and respected standards body, funded by the industry but operationally independent from both the industry and the state.”At an inquiry into press standards set up by Prime Minister David Cameron following growing outrage about phone-hacking, editors accused politicians of going too far in their response to the scandal.They said the government and Cameron, which had desperately sought in the past to win Murdoch’s approval, were now attempting to clamp down on the press to hide their own embarrassment.

Oct 12 (Reuters) - Wood products maker Universal Forest Products Inc posted lower-than-expected quarterly results hurt by weakness in its residential construction and retail building materials markets.The Grand Rapids, Michigan-based company posted third-quarter net income of $5.6 million, or 29 cents a share, compared with $2.6 million, or 13 cents a share last year.Net sales slid 2.4 percent to $468.9 million.Sales in the company’s residential construction segment slipped 17 percent, while those in its retail building materials division fell 5.4 percent.Analysts, on average, had expected earnings of 32 cents a share on revenue of $471.5 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.The company supplies lumber, plastic, and other building materials for the so-called do-it-yourself market, providing consumers with the tools needed for personal projects.Shares of the company closed at $25.94 on Wednesday on Nasdaq.

Property sales in the first nine months totalled HK$71.3 billion, an increase of 54.7 percent from a year earlier, according to a statement on the developer’s website.The company’s shares were up 0.96 percent at the midday trading break against a 0.63 percent gain in the benchmark Hang Seng Index .

Are the thousands who have taken to the streets in the “Occupy Wall Street” (OWS) protests a bunch of anarchistic slackers or do they have a point? If they’re protesting their personal financial situations or prospects for the American Dream, they have plenty to howl about, but the “99 percent” crowds could use some message management. When I recently visited the Chicago OWS spin-off  in front of the Federal Reserve Bank, they were decrying everything from predator drones to corporations in general.  There were fewer than 100 people there, although their theme was similar to the New York demonstrations. Instead of yelling at people ensconced behind financial district edifices, though, protesters could be making some more constructive demands. I’d like to humbly offer a few suggestions: Demand that big banks give ordinary citizens the same rates they receive from the Federal Reserve on loans. Borrowers can’t re-negotiate their college loans the way a big corporation or bank can, because they have access to interest rates that are nearly zero. Moreover, students can’t consolidate high-rate private loans with lower-rate federal borrowing, so the plums of high finance are out of their reach. Those who graduated from college may be staring down decades of paying off debt — an average of nearly $23,000 per student; those with professional degrees are wincing at six-figure burdens. Demand that Congress permit regular folks to discharge student debt in bankruptcy. It’s somewhat of a consolation that graduates can get lower payments based on sparse income or employment if they have federal loans, but they still have to repay those loans. If they file for bankruptcy, they can’t discharge those debts, which are like albatrosses. Not so with the megabanks, who not only received a multi-trillion-dollar bailout, but got the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve to buy their bad debt and toxic securities. There’s a solid reason why the delinquency rate for student loans is almost as high as credit cards. Demand that Congress pass a stimulus plan to create infrastructure, education, research and clean energy jobs instead of investing in two wars that three-quarters of the American electorate thinks are senseless. If the job market were robust, none of these protesters would have to worry. Like previous generations, they could work, pay off their debts and buy things like appliances, furniture and homes. They could afford to have children and provide them decent educations. That was the American Dream. The younger generation is not getting the job opportunities their parents or grandparents had. They are faced with average 15 percent unemployment. It’s much higher for minorities. Even if they can get a job, wages are depressed due to the recession and many are underemployed, working several jobs or are part-timers. Instead of targeting financial districts, focus on specific congressmen and senators blocking financial/bankruptcy reform and job creation. Unless more people get in the face of politicians, one thing is certain: it will be continue to be a raw deal for the middle class. Now is the time for the protesters to take their demonstrations out of financial districts and into the offices of their elected representatives. All of this reminds me of when Ralph Waldo Emerson visited Henry David Thoreau in jail, who was imprisoned for not paying a poll tax. Emerson asked his friend why he was there. “Why are you not here?” Thoreau replied. Maybe we’re not quite on the streets today in spirit, but most of us were there some time ago in personal financial solidarity — whether we choose to admit it or not.