China tightening controls on Internet

BEIJING (AP) — China‘s new communist leaders are increasing already tight controls on Internet use and electronic publishing following a spate of embarrassing online reports about official abuses.

The measures suggest China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, and others who took power in November share their predecessors’ anxiety about the Internet’s potential to spread opposition to one-party rule and their insistence on controlling information despite promises of more economic reforms.

“They are still very paranoid about the potentially destabilizing effect of the Internet,” said Willy Lam, a politics specialist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “They are on the point of losing a monopoly on information, but they still are very eager to control the dissemination of views.”

This week, China’s legislature took up a measure to require Internet users to register their real names, a move that would curtail the Web’s status as a freewheeling forum to complain, often anonymously, about corruption and official abuses. The legislature scheduled a news conference Friday to discuss the measure, suggesting it was expected to be approved.

That comes amid reports Beijing might be disrupting use of software that allows Web surfers to see sites abroad that are blocked by its extensive Internet filters. At the same time, regulators have proposed rules that would bar foreign companies from distributing books, news, music and other material online in China.

Beijing promotes Internet use for business and education but bans material deemed subversive or obscene and blocks access to foreign websites run by human rights and Tibet activists and some news outlets. Controls were tightened after social media played a role in protests that brought down governments in Egypt and Tunisia.

In a reminder of the Web’s role as a political forum, a group of 70 prominent Chinese scholars and lawyers circulated an online petition this week appealing for free speech, independent courts and for the ruling party to encourage private enterprise.

Xi and others on the party’s ruling seven-member Standing Committee have tried to promote an image of themselves as men of the people who care about China’s poor majority. They have promised to press ahead with market-oriented reforms and to support entrepreneurs but have given no sign of support for political reform.

Communist leaders who see the Internet as a source of economic growth and better-paid jobs were slow to enforce the same level of control they impose on movies, books and other media, apparently for fear of hurting fledgling entertainment, shopping and other online businesses.

Until recently, Web surfers could post comments online or on microblog services without leaving their names.

That gave ordinary Chinese a unique opportunity to express themselves to a public audience in a society where newspapers, television and other media are state-controlled. The most popular microblog services say they have more than 300 million users and some users have millions of followers reading their comments.

The Internet also has given the public an unusual opportunity to publicize accusations of official misconduct.

A local party official in China’s southwest was fired in November after scenes from a videotape of him having sex with a young woman spread quickly on the Internet. Screenshots were uploaded by a former journalist in Beijing, Zhu Ruifeng, to his Hong Kong website, an online clearing house for corruption allegations.

Some industry analysts suggest allowing Web surfers in a controlled setting to vent helps communist leaders stay abreast of public sentiment in their fast-changing society. Still, microblog services and online bulletin boards are required to employ censors to enforce content restrictions. Researchers say they delete millions of postings a day.

The government says the latest Internet regulation before the National People’s Congress is aimed at protecting Web surfers’ personal information and cracking down on abuses such as junk e-mail. It would require users to report their real names to Internet service and telecom providers.

The main ruling party newspaper, People’s Daily, has called in recent weeks for tighter Internet controls, saying rumors spread online have harmed the public. In one case, it said stories about a chemical plant explosion resulted in the deaths of four people in a car accident as they fled the area.

Proposed rules released this month by the General Administration of Press and Publications would bar Chinese-foreign joint ventures from publishing books, music, movies and other material online in China. Publishers would be required to locate their servers in China and have a Chinese citizen as their local legal representative.

That is in line with rules that already bar most foreign access to China’s media market, but the decision to group the restrictions together and publicize them might indicate official attitudes are hardening.

That comes after the party was rattled by foreign news reports about official wealth and misconduct.

In June, Bloomberg News reported that Xi’s extended family has amassed assets totaling $ 376 million, though it said none was traced to Xi. The government has blocked access to Bloomberg’s website since then.

In October, The New York Times reported that Premier Wen Jiabao’s relatives had amassed $ 2.7 billion since he rose to national office in 2002. Access to the Times’ Chinese-language site has been blocked since then.

Previous efforts to tighten controls have struggled with technical challenges in a country with more than 500 million Internet users.

Microblog operators such as Sina Corp. and Tencent Ltd. were ordered in late 2011 to confirm users’ names but have yet to finish the daunting task.

Web surfers can circumvent government filters by using virtual private networks — software that encrypts Web traffic and is used by companies to transfer financial data and other sensitive information. But VPN users say disruptions that began in 2011 are increasing, suggesting Chinese regulators are trying to block encrypted traffic.

Curbs on access to foreign sites have prompted complaints by companies and Chinese scientists and other researchers.

In July, the American Chamber of Commerce in China said 74 percent of companies that responded to a survey said unstable Internet access “impedes their ability to do business.”

Chinese leaders “realize there are detrimental impacts on business, especially foreign business, but they have counted the cost and think it is still worthwhile,” said Lam. “There is no compromise about the political imperative of controlling the Internet.”

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iOS apps see Christmas sales spike shrink in 2012

Distimo just released its statistics on Christmas Day app downloads and revenue growth… and the download spike is far smaller than it was last year. Back in 2011, Christmas Day iOS app download volume spiked 230% above the December average. This year, the increase was just 87% — far below industry expectations. The revenue spike came in at 70%.

[More from BGR: Google names 12 best Android apps of 2012]

Interestingly, iPad downloads increased by 140% this Christmas, implying that the iPhone download bounce was really modest.

[More from BGR: New purported BlackBerry Z10 specs emerge: 1.5GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 8MP camera]

A few weeks ago, AppAnnie released statistics showing that iOS app revenue growth had stalled over the summer of 2012, whereas Android app revenue growth was relatively strong at 48% over a five month period. Both Distimo and Appannie are respected companies and their analytics are closely followed by app industry professionals. Could it be that the pace of iPhone app revenue growth has slowed down sharply from 2011 levels, even if Distimo and AppAnnie numbers aren’t entirely accurate?

This article was originally published by BGR

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“Rescue Me” singer Fontella Bass dies aged 72

(Reuters) – American soul singer Fontella Bass, who topped the R&B chart in 1965 with the song “Rescue Me,” died in St. Louis. She was 72.

Bass died in hospice care on Wednesday night from complications of a heart attack she suffered three weeks ago, her daughter, Neuka Mitchell, told Reuters. Bass had also suffered from strokes in recent years.

“She’s going to be missed,” Mitchell said. “Her big personality. Her love for family. Her big, giving heart and her cooking.”

She was known as the “queen of soul food” to her family, Mitchell said.

Bass was born into a singing family in St. Louis. Her mother, Martha Bass, was a singer in the Clara Ward Singers gospel group. Her brother, the late R&B singer David Peaston, scored a handful of hits in the 1980s and 1990s.

Bass first achieved success dueting with Bobby McClure in 1965 on songs such as “Don’t Mess Up A Good Thing” and “You’ll Miss Me (When I’m Gone),” both of which were hits on the pop and R&B charts.

Bass’ biggest hit came with “Rescue Me,” which shot up the Billboard pop charts in the fall of 1965, becoming one of the most popular soul hits of all time.

“It held a special place in her heart,” Mitchell said of the song. “She sang it every time she performed.”

The song has been covered and sampled numerous times over the years, including by pop stars Linda Ronstadt and Cher, and more recently in 2000 by UK group Nu Generation, who remixed the song into a dance track.

Nu Generation’s remix, “In Your Arms (Rescue Me)” hit the top 10 of the UK singles chart.

Bass had moderate success in later years with a gospel album in the 1990s, but was unable to emulate the popularity set by “Rescue Me.”

She was married to jazz trumpeter and composer Lester Bowie. The two spent time living in Europe in the late 1960s and early 1970s before moving back to the United States.

Funeral arrangements for Bass have not been finalized. The singer is survived by her four children.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey and Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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House sets Sunday session as “fiscal cliff” deadline nears

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The House of Representatives will return to Washington on Sunday night, just over a day before income tax rates are set to spike higher, in a last-ditch chance to avert the year-end “fiscal cliff.”

Senior Republican aides confirmed that House Speaker John Boehner on Thursday told members to be back in Washington in time for a 6:30 p.m. EST (2330 GMT) legislative session on Sunday.

The House may then stay in session until January 2, the final day of the current Congress, according to a Twitter message from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

That is the day that another component of the “fiscal cliff” – $ 109 billion in automatic spending cuts to military and domestic programs – is set to start.

The House went on recess a week ago amid a deadlock over how to resolve ways to avoid the $ 600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts that could throw the U.S. economy back into recession.

Some media outlets reported that Obama would meet with congressional leaders on Friday, but several congressional aides said no such meeting had yet been arranged.

If a meeting occurs, Obama is not expected to offer a new “fiscal cliff” solution and he is instead likely to stick to the outline he set out a week ago for a stop-gap fix, according to a senior Democratic aide.

That would include legislation to shield most Americans from any income tax increase starting on January 1, except for those households with net incomes above $ 250,000 a year. Obama also wants an extension of expiring benefits for the long-term unemployed.

So far, the Republicans who control the House have refused to go along with any measure that would raise income taxes on anyone.

Meanwhile, House Republican leaders held an approximately 35-minute telephone conference call with rank-and-file members on Thursday, according to one Republican aide.

“There were a lot of different members who spoke on the call. All had questions. All had comments,” the aide said, refusing to elaborate.

(Reporting By Richard Cowan and David Lawder; Editing by Will Dunham)

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Factbox: “Fiscal cliff” tax, budget provisions in detail

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The “fiscal cliff” is only days away and efforts to avert it are making little progress, with some U.S. lawmakers predicting the tax increases and federal spending cuts involved will start taking hold in January, unless a deal comes together very quickly.

If these jolts to the economy are allowed to occur, a recession could follow, economists have forecast.

Consumer spending power suddenly would be reduced if the nation tumbles over the “cliff.” The U.S. government’s annual tax take would rise by $ 500 billion, significantly lowering the federal budget deficit, but at a high economic price.

On average, each U.S. household’s tax bill would rise by $ 3,500; for middle-income households, by almost $ 2,000, according to the Tax Policy Center, a non-partisan think tank.

Here are the key tax increases, spending cuts and other issues that have come to be known as the “fiscal cliff”:

TAX MEASURES

* Income tax rates. On December 31, low ordinary income tax rates enacted on a “temporary” basis in 2001 under former Republican President George W. Bush are set to expire.

President Barack Obama, his fellow Democrats and Republicans in Congress agreed at the end of 2010 to extend these rates for two years, but only a few days remain on that timetable.

If Congress and Obama do nothing by December 31, taxes will rise for most Americans. Rates will go up to 15, 28, 31, 36 and 39.6 percent from the present 10, 15, 25, 28, 33 and 35 percent.

Obama and the Democrats want to prevent this by extending the Bush tax rates again, but only for income below $ 200,000 per individual, or $ 250,000 per family. For income above that level, they seek a return to the higher, pre-Bush tax rates.

Republicans are divided. Some who oppose tax increases of any kind want the Bush tax rates to be extended at all income levels. Others, including House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, have supported letting rates rise, but only on incomes above $ 1 million – a much higher level than Democrats support.

Obama proposed a compromise level of $ 400,000, but this was spurned by Republicans. Boehner spent several days last week trying to pass a measure in the House, which he leads, with the $ 1-million threshold. But he lacked the votes and gave up.

Afterward, Boehner said Obama and the Democratic-controlled Senate must work out a compromise. The Senate has returned from its holiday break. The Republican-controlled House has not but is expected to return late on Sunday.

* Investment income tax rates. Bush and Congress in 2003 cut taxes on capital gains and dividends, most of which go to high-income taxpayers. These cuts are set to expire at year-end too.

If no action is taken, the long-term capital gains tax rate will rise to 20 percent from 15 percent for the top four tax brackets. At the bottom, they will rise to 10 percent from zero.

Obama wants to let the capital gains rate rise to 20 percent from 15 percent for income above the $ 200,000/$ 250,000 level. Taxes on gains below that would still top out at 15 percent.

Without action from Congress, the dividend tax rate will rise to the ordinary income tax rates for each tax bracket. That would be as high as 39.6 percent for top earners, up from 15 percent now for dividends on qualified, long-term investments.

Obama wants to keep the 15 percent qualified dividend rate cap for most people, but let it rise on income above the $ 200,000/$ 250,000 threshold, to 36 percent or 39.6 percent.

* Personal exemption phase-out and itemized deduction limit. These caps on personal exemptions and itemized deductions will return in 2013 if Congress does not intervene. Both apply to upper-income taxpayers and would limit their ability to lower their tax bills. The caps were eliminated in stages by Bush. But the expiration of his tax cuts means the caps would come back.

* Obama healthcare tax. Regardless of what happens with the fiscal cliff, investment income above $ 200,000/$ 250,000 will be subject to a new 3.8 percent tax under Obama’s healthcare law.

* Alternative minimum tax. The AMT – which prevents upper income taxpayers from slashing their tax bills too much through tax breaks – expired at the end of 2011. That has not had an impact yet because 2012 tax returns have not been filed. The tax is not indexed for inflation. So it is routinely “patched” to prevent tens of millions of upper-middle-class taxpayers from having to start paying it. Both Republicans and Democrats support doing another patch, but have not approved one. The Internal Revenue Service has warned that as many as 100 million taxpayers could face refund delays without an AMT fix.

* Tax breaks. Dozens of individual and business tax breaks expired at the end of 2011, including the research and development credit. There is wide support for extending them again, but businesses will be watching for any faltering.

* Payroll tax. A cut in the payroll tax was extended earlier this year, in an effort to boost the economy. The current 4.2 percent rate paid by about 160 million workers, down from the previous 6.2 percent rate, expires on December 31. Some Democrats, including Obama, back extending the tax cut. The powerful AARP seniors’ lobby opposes renewing the cut, fearing the Social Security system that it helps fund will be undermined.

* Estate tax. The estate tax, which applies to assets passed onto heirs, currently stands at 35 percent, after an exemption level of $ 5 million. With no action, the tax will rise to 55 percent, after excluding the first $ 1 million of value. Obama wants to raise the tax to 45 percent, with a $ 3.5 million exemption, but some high-profile Democrats have come out in support of keeping the current tax and exemption levels. Many Republicans want a repeal of what they call the “death tax.”

BUDGET MEASURES

* Automatic spending cuts. In a deal last year to raise the U.S. debt ceiling, Obama and Congress agreed to $ 1.2 trillion in across-the-board spending cuts if lawmakers failed to reach a deficit-cutting deal by January 2. They failed. Now lawmakers fear the cuts, known as a “sequester,” could harm the economy. Obama has proposed delaying the cuts for a year.

* Unemployment benefits. Millions of people have been exhausting their government jobless benefits during the economic downturn. Congress has extended the benefits several times. Another deadline comes at year-end. Many Republicans want the extensions to stop, saying they discourage job-hunting. Obama has proposed extending the benefits.

* “Doc fix.” Because of an outdated formula in the law, government payments to doctors who treat patients on Medicare, the U.S. health program for the elderly and disabled, are routinely underestimated. If Congress doesn’t fix the situation by the end of the year, the doctors face a double-digit cut to their payments, which could lead them to drop Medicare patients.

DEBT CEILING

The Treasury Department on December 26 announced the first in a series of measures to delay by two months or so the day when the government will exceed its legal borrowing authority. Without action, Treasury said the $ 16.4 trillion debt ceiling would be reached on December 31. Obama wants it raised under a deal to avoid the cliff and he wants new power to raise it himself.

(Additional reporting by Richard Cowan, David Lawder, Tom Ferraro, Rachelle Younglai; Editing by Howard Goller and Cynthia Osterman)

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iPad is a Christmas graveyard for ‘Grand Theft Auto’ and ‘Modern Combat’

At the beginning of December, the traditional video game industry attempted another iPad invasion. New versions of “Grand Theft Auto,” “Modern Combat” and “Baldur’s Gate” hit the iOS app market priced between $ 5 and $ 10. Over the past years, we have seen repeated attempts by major console and PC industry franchises to tailor their blockbuster games for iPhone and iPad platforms. None have succeeded. As the iOS app market increasingly favors free games with in-app purchases, the old-timers have started failing spectacularly.

[More from BGR: Microsoft Surface trampled at the bottom of the tablet pile this Christmas]

December is the most important month of the year for the iOS app market and the days around Christmas are the hottest period. As consumers upgrade their iPhones or receive their very first iOS devices, they tend to go on mobile app buying binges. That is why mega franchises like GTA and “Modern Combat” launched their latest iOS products at the beginning of the month. The games were supposed to stay alive for at least three weeks. They did not.

[More from BGR: Mark Cuban: Nokia Lumia 920 ‘crushes’ the iPhone 5]

The lavishly marketed “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” peaked on iPhone app chart at No.2 on December 8th and plunged to No.36 by December 22nd. It rebounded to No.25 on December 25th. On the iPad, the game plummeted to a shocking No.52 by the all-important Christmas Day, when new iPad owners go berserk on iTunes.

Here is the kicker: on the revenue chart for U.S. iPad apps, the new GTA game had tanked to No.75 by December 25th. This is even worse than the No.52 position on the download chart. I find that genuinely fascinating, because it means that a game with a very stiff download price of $ 5 is showing weaker revenue performance than on raw download volume.

The GTA title is priced at $ 5 at a time when 80% of the top-grossing iPad games are free downloads. The top free apps have compelling in-game purchase strategies — “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” does not. As a result, it is getting beaten by titles such as “Fairway Solitaire” and “My Little Pony” in revenue generation. Having massive name recognition and hundreds of millions of units in console game sales helps very little in the brutally competitive iOS game market.

“Modern Combat 4″ has also plunged out of top-50 on the iPad revenue chart just three weeks after its high-profile debut. The $ 10 update of “Baldur’s Gate” is out of top-200, brought low by its ridiculously high sticker price.

The proud console and PC game champions keep repeating the same gambit in the iOS market: price ‘em high and ignore the in-app purchase angle. They keep failing. When are we going to see a major console game franchise finally adapt to the Apple (AAPL) ecosystem and create an iOS game that is free to download but lures users into an in-app purchase trap effectively?

This article was originally published by BGR

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Natalie Portman, Kristen Stewart most bankable Hollywood stars

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Actresses Natalie Portman and Kristen Stewart are Hollywood’s most bankable stars and provide studios with the highest average returns for their films, according to Forbes.com.

Academy award winner Portman topped the list of best actors for the buck, providing about $ 42.70 for every dollar she earns.

“Black Swan,” for which she won her best actress Oscar, was produced for an estimated $ 13 million and earned $ 329 million in global box office sales.

“We estimate that for every dollar Portman is paid by the studios, she returns $ 42.70. Compare that to Eddie Murphy, our most overpaid star, who returns $ 2.30 for every dollar he gets paid,” Forbes.com said.

“Twilight” star Stewart was not far behind, bringing in $ 40.60. She also topped the Forbes list of highest-earning actresses with an estimated $ 34.5 million in salary in 2012.

“Stewart was able to earn a ton over the last three years and offer a healthy return thanks to ‘Twilight,’” according to Forbes.com. “Even though she was paid $ 25 million to star in the last two films, she was clearly worth the money.”

Forbes.com analyzed salaries, estimated box office grosses from the actor’s last three films over the previous three years to calculate the studio’s return on investment. The most bankable stars tended to be featured in the most profitable films.

Stewart’s two co-stars in the “Twilight” films were also good investments for the studio. Robert Pattinson came in fourth with a return of $ 31.70 and Taylor Lautner was No. 6, making $ 29.50 for the studio for every dollar he was paid.

(This story was refiled to correct spelling of Kristen)

(Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

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Web-based info may not increase cancer screening

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Offering women information on colon cancer screening via the web does not get them to take up screening any more effectively than printed materials, according to a new study.

“It’s disappointing that the web didn’t have more effect,” said Dr. David Weinberg of Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, the report’s lead author.

Although the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends that adults between ages 50 and 75 get screened regularly for colorectal cancer, about 40 percent of people don’t follow those guidelines.

To raise awareness of the recommendations and encourage people to go get screened, researchers have developed a variety of approaches, Weinberg said, including videos and printed materials. But none of these “have been tremendously successful,” he added.

Dr. Hamant Roy, director of gastroenterology research at NorthShore University HealthSystem in Evanston, Illinois, said one method that has been shown to be effective is simply having doctors spend time with their patients to talk about the cancer tests.

“But one of the issues is they have to see more and more people with less and less time, so it gets really hard to have these discussions with patients,” said Roy, who was not involved in the new study.

To see whether the web might provide an easily accessible and inexpensive alternative for getting people to comply with screening recommendations, Weinberg and his colleagues asked 865 women who were coming in for routine gynecology appointments to participate in the study.

Of those, 171 saw their doctor as normal, 349 also received printed materials about colon cancer screening at the time of their visit and 345 were offered access to a web site that contained the same information as the printed matter.

Included in the materials was information about the benefits of screening and harms of going unscreened, as well as background on the various types of colon cancer screen available: a stool test once a year, a sigmoidoscopy every five years or a colonoscopy every 10 years.

All the women were eligible to get screened for colon cancer based on their age and health status.

Four months after the doctor visit, however, roughly 12 percent of the women – regardless of whether they received the extra information or not – had gotten a colon cancer screen.

Roy called the numbers “dismal.”

“At the end of the day, something is better than nothing,” he said, but compared to screening rates for breast cancer, the uptake for colorectal cancer screening was quite low.

Among the women in the study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, 73 percent had received a mammogram in the past year.

On the other hand, Weinberg said, “you might argue their participation in the study did manage to raise their interest level enough” to get screened.

Not enough, however, to get most of the women to even access the website Weinberg’s group had developed.

Only 24 percent had logged on, according to the researchers’ records, and just 16 percent of the women remembered going to the website.

Weinberg still thinks there might be ways that the web could be helpful.

“I think that the web has great promise…the question is, how do you get people to look at it in the first place?” he said.

Perhaps following up with people to ask them about their experience on the website might improve their participation, he suggested.

Roy agreed that it would be premature to toss out the web as a potential tool for increasing screening rates.

“It seems like the energy to get people over the hump to get colorectal screening is higher than simply passively going to a website. I think the website is maybe helpful, but there needs to be more help to get them over the edge,” he said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/VizaRR Archives of Internal Medicine, online December 17, 2012.

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Starbucks’s $40,000 Bid for Bipartisanship

Starbucks’s (SBUX) campaign for a fiscal-cliff deal, in which employees of D.C.-area shops are encouraged to write “Come Together” on customers’ cups, has drawn a lot of attention – and some mockery. The Daily Beast called it “doppio,” and the move was ridiculed as as a sign of desperation on Twitter.

It is no empty gesture. Starbucks expects to sell up to 200,000 cups of coffee in the D.C. metro area on Thursday and Friday. While the coffee giant does not offer ad space on its cups, Gregory Browne, a sales associate at PromoMedia Concepts (which produces about 40 million cups for third-party advertisers each year in the U.S.), estimates the company could get $ 0.20 per cup from advertisers. At that rate, the two-day cup campaign in D.C. is worth up to $ 40,000—enough to buy a full-page ad in most newspapers. (Starbucks also bought ads in the Washington Post and the New York Times for the campaign.)

Twenty cents per cup seems high? The average rate to advertise on cups at independent coffee shops is about half that, says Browne, but Starbucks could command more thanks to its vast distribution. The company sells 4 billion cups each year globally.

Not that you’ll see ads there any time soon. “The cup is not for sale,” says Starbucks spokesperson Jim Olson. “It’s a very cherished, personal connection we have with our customers, not a marketing billboard.” Still, it does put the company’s anxieties about the political climate at center stage.

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Toronto reaches skyward, but how dark the clouds?

TORONTO (Reuters) – Barry Fenton walked to the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows in his 30th-floor uptown Toronto penthouse suite and declared, “This is the best view of the city.”

To the south, a mass of steel-and-glass skyscrapers glinted in the bright autumn sun. Several cranes were in motion on unfinished buildings, a common sight in a city in the midst of a residential building boom.

“If you look around the core, every building you look at has a different look to it, a different ambience,” said the energetic co-founder of Lanterra Developments, one of the city’s most active builders. “That’s important.”

Fenton, 56, says he is confident the city’s condominium market will remain strong — despite warnings that it is all moving too far, too fast — and has an ambitious lineup for future development. And he is not alone in his optimism.

Toronto‘s seams are bursting with new condo and hotel towers designed by star architects like Frank Gehry and built by famed developers like Donald Trump.

But Fenton and others who see Toronto emerging from its “pokey” past — as a columnist in the Globe and Mail recently described it — face some formidable obstacles: an infrastructure buckling under soaring density rates, the laws of supply and demand and preservationists who say too many new towers are destroying the city’s character.

Canada’s central bank drew a bead on the city of 2.6 million this month in its weighty “Financial System Review,” warning of “potential future supply imbalances” in the condo market.

The Bank of Canada noted that the number of unsold condominiums in pre-construction has doubled, to 14,000, over the past year.

Greater Toronto home sales have slowed after years of steady increases. Sales fell 16 percent in November from the same month a year ago, according to the Toronto Real East Board. So far, however, prices are flattening, not falling, as some analysts have predicted.

In defiance of warnings by the central bank and economists, two mega-projects were unveiled within days of each other in October — a three-tower condo complex to be designed by Gehry and a multi-tower office project that includes a massive casino.

RACE TO THE TOP

More skyscrapers — 147 of them — are being built in Toronto than anywhere in North America, according to Emporis, the German data provider. That is twice as many as in New York, a city with about three times the population.

Toronto is getting taller fast. Fifteen buildings that will be more than 150 meters (492 feet) high are under construction, more than anywhere in the western hemisphere.

The recently completed Trump International Hotel topped out at 277 meters, just shy of Toronto’s tallest skyscraper, the 72-story First Canadian Place, which is 298 meters. That height could be exceeded by a couple of major projects on the drawing boards, including the Mirvish project.

(The city’s tallest freestanding structure, however, is the CN Tower, which soars over Toronto at 553 meters.)

“Toronto is creating a very sustainable future by building condos downtown,” said Daniel Libeskind, the American architect, who was in Toronto in October for a ceremony for one of his latest projects, the 57-story L Tower, with its sweeping, curvaceous, design that rises above the city’s modernist Sony Center for Performing Arts.

“It fights urban sprawl and brings people into the heart of the city.”

While building in big American cities and in Western Europe cratered following the financial crisis four years ago, Toronto never stopped booming. Demand for residential space has been strong, and while the office market has also been healthy, most of the new developments have been for condo projects.

Lanterra’s Fenton said his company has built some 9,000 condominium units in Toronto over the past 10 years and now has “in the hopper” up to 6 million square feet of property in downtown Toronto that is being rezoned for new projects.

Lanterra gained prominence over the past five years for the development of Maple Leaf Square, which included two condo towers, a hotel and office space, near the city’s hockey shrine, Air Canada Center, on land that had sat vacant for years.

Now it is “one of the hottest places to be,” said Fenton.

“ONE TOWER LEADS TO ANOTHER”

Some worry that Toronto can’t handle much more development.

“We have accumulated a serious infrastructure deficit,” wrote Ken Greenberg, a Toronto architect, in the Globe and Mail in October. “We have failed to make the investments in public transit that are urgently needed. Our narrow sidewalks and poorly designed streets are already jammed.”

He criticized the city officials and developers for a lack of coordinated planning. “One tower leads to another,” he said.

Despite decades of debate about transportation policy, Toronto has just two subway lines, a fleet of charming but lumbering streetcar lines and crumbling roadways.

Commuters in Toronto spend at least 80 minutes in traffic a day, on average — worse than what commuters face in London or Los Angeles — according to the Toronto Board of Trade.

Toronto’s City Planning Department did not respond to numerous requests for comment.

There is also concern about soaring neighborhood density rates. The city’s waterfront area has seen the most growth. Its population has soared 134 percent in a decade and is up 66 percent in the past five years, to 43,295, according to city data.

Toronto’s aging energy grid is strained. In July, downtown Toronto endured an eight-hour blackout after a transformer blew due to high demand. There was a similar outage last January.

THE MEGA-PROJECTS

Now two of the most ambitious projects the city has ever seen are being floated.

First out of the gate was theater impresario David Mirvish, who with his father, the late Ed Mirvish, helped create Toronto’s vibrant arts and theater scene.

In early October, Mirvish unveiled a plan for three condominium towers, with up to 85 floors each, that would be the city’s tallest buildings.

A podium at the buildings’ base would house two museums, including one for the Mirvish family’s contemporary art collection.

The Mirvish buildings would be designed by Gehry, the celebrated Canadian-born architect whose 76-story 8 Spruce Street residential tower was just completed in New York.

“These towers can become a symbol of what Toronto can be,” the 83-year-old Gehry said at project’s unveiling. “I am not building condominiums, I am building three sculptures for people to live in.”

Two weeks later, Oxford Properties Group, a Canadian developer with a $ 20 billion global real estate portfolio, announced a $ 3 billion makeover of the downtown convention center, just south of the Mirvish and Gehry project. It envisions a casino, two hotel towers and two office towers that would be among the tallest in the city.

Adam Vaughan, a city councilor whose district would encompass both projects, said a lot more planning is needed. He had kinder words for the Mirvish proposal — “it’s a transformative and astonishing proposal” — than for Oxford’s project, which he called “all out of proportion.”

“It’s time to have a really smart conversation about how we are building this neighborhood because there is a hell of lot of density arriving not just with this project but with all the projects that have been approved,” he said in an interview.

AT THE KIT KAT

Al Carbone, owner for the past three decades of the Kit Kat restaurant, doesn’t think people like Vaughan are listening to him, as the councilor and other politicians are not heeding the growing concerns about the rapid pace of development.

He said buildings are springing up too close to lot lines, creating jammed sidewalks and alleyways. And the sun does not shine on the streets like it once did.

He supports the Mirvish project, which would preserve his street, known as Restaurant Row. But he is battling a separate 47-story building that would go up steps away from his restaurant.

The plan, which still must be approved, would retain the historic facades of buildings on the street, which Carbone believes will destroy the character of the row.

“It’s a tough battle,” said Carbone, who launched the website SaveRestaurantrow.com to drum up support in opposition to the project. “You can’t have a condo on every corner.”

WHERE IS TORONTO HEADED?

Some believe Toronto is at a crossroads as developers, politicians and citizens debate the rapid changes the city’s urban landscape.

The Globe and Mail’s Marcus Gee dismissed the idea that the development was somehow bad for the city in a column in October, saying the condo boom “has transformed our once-pokey downtown into a vibrant, around-the-clock urban community.”

David Lieberman, an architect who also teaches at the University of Toronto’s architectural school, agrees the new developments have been good for the city, but he is not sure the city’s citizens are ready for it.

“We have such an excellent opportunity to get things right, but there is the Canadian conservatism,” Lieberman said, sipping coffee in his studio in an old downtown Toronto house. “Canadians in their city building are not risk takers.”

(Reporting By Russ Blinch. Editing by Janet Guttsman and Douglas Royalty)

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