This is an article you will not be able to read in the New York Times. Chinese officials are meeting with government reps to negotiate on funding to build a second Mexican telecom networks costing ~$750 mn. It will compete with the America Movil monopoly and cover rural areas currently not served by the company controlled by multi-billionaire Carlos Slim Helu. China will offer export credits to Mexico from China Development Bank, their Ex-Im, at competitive interest rates. In return, it will require that equipment be bought from Huawei Tech of Shenzhen, according to people familiar with the talks cited by Bloomberg. Other Chinese banks could also join the lending pool.

Such a sale would help China gain influence in Latin America where Huawei already supplies telephony equipment to America Movil and Telefonica (of Spain). After international observers pointed out that the dominance by America Movil means Mexican phone interconnect charges are excessive and hold back the economy, the Enrique Peña Neto government has been moving to increase competition in the sector. Howevr, Mr Slim Helu is a shareholder in the Times and sits on its board.

My note about the perils of old age to investors was picked up by a 40-something reader who thinks older Americans are being cosseted at the expense of his generation and that of his kids.

He accused me of assuming we can get "substantive entitlement reform" while others in my generation won't tolerate discussing this. I wrote that we need to raise the age of retirement more quickly; cleaning up the loophole-laden Medicare payments system which is being gamed by a handful of politically-connected eye-doctors and oncologists running factory practices to deliver cancer and macular degeneration drugs in their offices; and removing the Medicare salary cap which excludes high earners from contributing to social security on their entire paycheck. He writes: "If you could get the rest of your generation and baby-boomers to sign on we would be all set!"

For Medicare, we all want opthamologists to be reimbursed only for Lucentis drugs they actually used, even if they injected 4 patients with every vial. We want oncologists to only be reimbursed for the actual chemotherapy products they infuse into patients. Currently rules allow billing for one vial per patient even if they shared it. The loophole must be closed. It may be legal but it is hardly medically ethical.

The same holds for blockage engineered by the Swiss makers of Lucentis, Rocheand Novartis, accused in Britain and France of mobilizing macular degeneration patients to stop use of a cheaper alternative drug, Avastin. Now that Kathleen Sebelius has resigned, there is a chance her successor will deal with some of these matters. More on this for paid subscribers below.

Market selloffs are contagious, as yesterday proved. More about wide cross-border moves follows for paid subscribers from Ireland, Britain, Canada, Japan, Jordan, Israel, Brazil, The Netherlands, Australia, Mexico, and China including a quarterly report

*Getting into baseball will cost my hockey-mad grandson part of his gains withBauer Performance Sports, BRRPF in the USA (BAU in Toronto). Buying Eastonbaseball/softball lines next month will require as much as C$100 mn in a new issue of BRRPF shares, according to CIBC, a brokerage, with a possible 15% green shoe option on top. The world of hockey is not very stable, as the only Canadian club now in the finals is the Canadiens. The Vancouver Canucks just fired their manager. Maybe I can persuade the kid to take up another sport? I just sent both Cleveland grandchildren tennis rackets so they can keep up with their Boston cousins, whose maternal maternal great-grandfather was a collegiate and national doubles tennis ace, Julius Seligson.

Hockey bookings in its Q3 actually rose 18% to C$200.2 mn in constant loonies or 12% to C$190.1 mn at constant exchange rates. Revenues overall rose 13% to C$62.2 mn or 16% on a constant currency basis. Hockey equipment revenues rose 13% and lacrosse revenues 11%. Apparel revenues jumped 31% or 35% in constant loonies. The hockey rise occurred despite a Canadian tariff cut which should have favored imports. BRRPF reported a loss of C$4.2 mn or 11 cents/sh.

The new capital increase is needed because working capital is only $179.9 mn, not enough to buy Easton, and Bauer already has total debt of C$130.8 mn, not giving it leeway to raise more as it is still 2.51x leveraged. It was a private equity spinoff, and they usually pile on the debt.

Being in winter sports by tradition, Bauer reported on close-Feb. numbers for Q3 after it earlier issued a profits warning. It will close its FY 2013-4 at end May.

*Covidien after internal product testing revealed a problem, is voluntarily recalling endovascular products: 32 pipeline aneurysm embolization devices used in brain and neuro-surgery and 621 "alligator" retrieval devices used to remove foreign bodies from veins. The polytetrafluoro-ethylene coating on both types of device can become de-laminated and detach. This can cause brain occlusion and result in stroke or death with the pipeline aneurysm device and can stop the alligators from doing their job in veins. The products will be replaced with others that use a different coating.

Separately, COV is funding a 5-day course for surgical nurses in billing and management after operations to handle the close scrutiny of paperwork now required for payments, being given by the AORN Foundation.

*COV's spinoff Mallinckrodt was raised to buy from sell by UBS yesterday, a big jump. Both are Irish.

*Hikma Pharma was cut to neutral from buy by UBS yesterday. HKMPY is Jordanian and listed in Dubai and London. UBS, from the land of Roche and Novartis, is considered a good analyst of drug firms.

*Teva fell back below $50 today; Tel Aviv is closed on Friday.

*Japan's decision to reopen nuclear power stations boosted our uranium mining stock from Canada, Cameco, CCJ. They were shut in after the Fukushima disaster, leading to expensive energy imports which held back Japanese GNP. The political price of reinstating nuclear power is that safety will be enhanced and enforced. Not all power plants will be reopened, notably ones on seismic faults and with defective cooling systems or needing other costly upgrades.

*One way to deal with this is hiring Chicago Bridge & Iron to decommission, dismantle, and dispose of a reactor. CBI, which is Dutch, just landed at $35 mn contract from the US Army Corps of Engineers to do just that for the MH-1A reactor on the Sturgis barge near Baltimore MD.

*Export Development Canada, their Ex-Im, with banking partners including Bank of Nova Scotia will lend US$775 mn to Vale via an unsecured non-revolving loan whose terms were not disclosed. Such funding must normally be used for purchases from companies in the country where the Ex-Im clone operates, in the same way as the Chinese or US Ex-Im work.

*Supply constraints will boost the US price of Chinese-made solar modules by 20% in the course of 2014, according to GTM Research, a Boston green energy consultancy. Imported Chinese modules will cost 80 to 85 cents in H2, vs 70 cents at the start of this year. The prices will also become dearer because of higher tariff duty on Chinese and Taiwanese solar cells, and stricter enforcement. Moreover more production will be outsourced to more expensive producers in countries like India or South Korea, GTM wrote. After Canada Solar dropped yesterday when the report came out (after we went to bed with our issue) it partly made up the loss in today's trading. There is no US or Canadian maker of photovoltaic modules at 85 cents so CSIQ still has a clear run.

*Hard hit by the tech selloff here, Tencent Holdings (700:HK) fell 6.8% in Hong Kong trading today. We no longer own the HK variant on TCTZF but there will be impact on the ADR.

*Our GlaxoSmithKline is down 2.5% today in UK trading on heavy volume both because of concern over its latest scandal, in Iraq, and because it paid its dividend yesterday (people who get stock rather than cash tend to sell the odd shares they receive.) GSK is a yield play for us, paying 4.75% at current price levels.

Fund notes follow:

*Fibra Uno reported that a crane hit the roof of its Torre Mayor tower in Mexico City but that no one was injured. The work will resume as soon as the damage has been repaired and it will be covered by insurance. FBASF is a Mexican REIT.

*Eaton Vance Tax Managed Dividend Equity Income Fund, EXG, is off today as it will announce its dividend after the close. Its NAV after yesterday's close was $10.76; its price is ~$10 and its discount is ~6.5%, according to Morningstartoday. It uses covered calls to generate steady returns and lately has stopped distributing return of capital which deceives investors into viewing as yield what is really their own money back. I do not expect a dividend cut or ROC payouts.

*Aberdeen Global Income Fund, FCO, will pay a distribution of $0.5 per share this month, of which 13% (0.663 cents) is return of capital and not taxed. The Aberdeen fund managers use a steady payout ratio to keep investors on board; many do not realize that their supposed dividends are not made up of earnings or capital gains, but of their own money.

*The situation is similar at Aberdeen Asia Pacific Income Fund, FAX, only worse. There the return of capital accounts for 39% of the distribution. I am putting up with this mainly because I am bullish on the A$ which accounts for ~40% of the FAX net asset value and which should eventually enable the Scotland-based managers of this fund group to pay more of the distribution from earnings and capital gains.

*A surprise on the upside: E-trade has belatedly corrected my purchase price for Camkids in Britain to £0.58 per share from what they originally reported in early Feb., so we are not down as much as it appeared. CAMK is one of my doting Chinese grandparent stock picks.

*I sold BP Castrol (JP:5015) yesterday at ¥538/sh as Chris Loew suggested.

*I bought Kubota, KUBTY on Weds. at $65.01/sh for the same reason.

*Saneamento Basico de São Paulo was denied the right to raise its water rates by the Brazilian regulator Aresp because an election is pending. Whether this will remain after the poll is unclear. Without money, SBS cannot invest in new supplies of drinking water for São Paulo's 20 million residents. It may have to impose rationing on Paulistas as the Cantareira reservoirs falls to a 40-yr low levels. It is also being sued for removing water from two other reservoirs, Guarapiranga and Billings, which belong to Empresa Metropolitana de Aguas e Energia, EMAE, a sub of US-listed AES . The two parties are trying to find a resolution before going to trial, using the good offices of the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce. We sold last month wary of the reservoir drop but now we are sure we did the right thing despite my taste for water companies.