BEIJING Militants apparently captured 29 Chinese workers after attacking a remote worksite in a volatile region of Sudan, and Sudanese forces were increasing security for Chinese projects and personnel there, China said Sunday.

China has close political and economic relations with Sudan, especially in the energy sector.

The Foreign Ministry in Beijing said the militants attacked Saturday and Sudanese forces launched a rescue mission Sunday in coordination with the Chinese embassy in Khartoum.

The Ministry’s head of consular affairs met with the Sudanese ambassador in Beijing and “urged him to actively conduct rescue missions under the prerequisite of ensuring the safety of the Chinese personnel,” the statement said.

In Khartoum, a Chinese embassy spokesman said the northern branch of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement announced that 29 Chinese workers had been captured in the attack. The spokesman, who asked not be identified, gave no other details and it wasn’t clear if the militants had demanded conditions for their return.

Other details weren’t given. The official Xinhua News Agency cited the state governor as saying the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement attacked a road-building site in South Kordofan and seized the workers.

The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement are a guerrilla force that has fought against Sudan’s regime. Its members hail from a minority ethnic group now in control of much of South Sudan, which became the world’s newest country only six months ago in a breakaway from Sudan.

Sudan has accused South Sudan of arming pro-South Sudan groups in South Kordofan. The government of South Sudan has called such accusations a smoke screen intended to justify a future invasion of the South.

China has sent large numbers of workers to potentially unstable regions such as Sudan and last year was forced to send ships and planes to help with the emergency evacuation of 30,000 of its citizens from the fighting in Libya.

China has consistently used its clout in diplomatic forums such as the United Nations to defend Sudan and its longtime leader Omar al-Bashir. In recent years, it has also sought to build good relations with leaders from the south,wholesale True Religion T-shirts, where most of Sudan’s oil is located.

Chinese companies have also invested heavily in Sudanese oil production, along with companies India and elsewhere.

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Associated Press writer Mohamed Saeed contributed to this report from Khartoum.

Liu pledged to strictly control risks from lending to local governments and from non-bank lending a crucial but now strained source of financing for private industry.

SHANGHAI China’s top banking regulator says the country’s lenders have risks under control, despite concerns that massive local debts and ripple effects from failed informal lending schemes threaten the country’s financial stability.

In some cases, the companies are going unpaid by customers embroiled in debt problems of their own, and sometimes they have used the money borrowed to invest not in manufacturing but in speculative investments of their own.

“It is undeniable that local government financing platforms have not been prudently managed. A lack of monitoring mechanisms and other problems have created a number of risks,” he said.

China’s commercial banks have an average capital adequacy ratio of more than 12 percent and ample provisions to cover any loans gone sour, Liu said in outlining the sector’s relative strengths.

UBS economist Tao Wang puts informal lending at between 2 trillion and 4 trillion yuan ($314 billion-$628 billion), or up to 10 percent of China’s GDP.

At the same time, Liu acknowledged concern over the estimated 10.7 trillion yuan ($1.7 trillion) in debts or about 27 percent of GDP owed by local governments that have borrowed heavily to help support stimulus-related construction projects.

But an unknown amount of bank loans have gone into private lending, where pyramids of high-interest loans are collapsing as mostly smaller and medium-size private companies defaulted on debts.

China’s mostly state-run banks have curbed lending as regulators have tightened monetary policy while requiring them to keep record levels of reserves to help cool inflation.

“Risk exposure has been effectively curbed,” he said.

Liu said that real estate-related lending accounts for 10.4 trillion yuan ($1.6 trillion) of total loans, well below levels in other countries, and that stress tests had found that the banks were in “general control of real estate risks.”

Some analysts have expressed concern over what they say is a significant amount of “off-balance sheet” lending, however, that may eventually pose a greater threat in the longer term.

The government has intervened, ordering banks to relax repayment terms and loosen credit for small and medium-size enterprises,

He also noted that China’s total public sector debt remains at 50 percent, below the conventional warning level of 60 percent and well below levels in the U.S. and Europe.

He promised strict control of local government borrowing and use of loan guarantees and an improvement to transparency in government budgets.

In remarks to a conference Wednesday in Beijing, Liu accused analysts and rating agencies for “bad-mouthing” China’s banks and economy, saying they were underestimating China’s capacity for reform and management.

She says China’s massive state-run banks would face little impact from some of those loans turning bad. A bigger risk is Wenzhou’s credit squeeze spreading to other parts of the world’s No. 2 economy.

But he added that the government and banking regulators had the foresight to take effective action, saying that “overall risks are controllable.”

Ultimately, the government is responsible for such loans, Liu said. But he noted that local governments also have significant assets that can be used to help repay debts.

“We are generally concerned about local government financing loans, real estate loans, shadow banking and other areas of potential risk,” Liu Mingkang, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, said in remarks released Thursday on the CBRC’s website.

Toyota President Akio Toyoda said earlier this week that the strong yen was reaching levels “far beyond what is tolerable,” threatening to make it necessary to move production out of Japan.

Toyota had shown tremendous ability to bounce back after the March disaster, reaching pre-tsunami levels of global production in September, faster than its initial expectation of recovering by the end of this year.

He asked that the government do more to prop up the dollar, stressing that manufacturing in Japan would be “destroyed,” not just hollowed out, which is the common term to describe production moving out of Japan.

But then the floods in Thailand struck and are expected to cost Toyota tens of thousands of vehicles in lost production.

TOKYO Toyota said its quarterly profit slid 18.5 percent to 80.4 billion yen ($1 billion) on plunging sales caused by parts shortages from the tsunami disaster in northeastern Japan and warned it faces a new challenge from flooding in Thailand.

Global sales for the six months totaled 3.03 million vehicles, down 18.5 percent from a year earlier as vehicle sales shrank in Japan, North America and Europe, according to Toyota.

Toyota, which was the world’s biggest automaker in annual vehicle sales last year, sank to No. 3 in the first half of this year, trailing U.S. rival General Motors Co. and Volkswagen AG of Germany.

Toyota said the unfavorable exchange rate erased 80 billion yen ($1 billion) from its latest quarterly net income.

“It looked as though they were about to get back on track and then got hit by this latest derailment,” he said.

Talati said Toyota needs to keep bringing exciting models to attract new buyers. He believes Toyota has put the large recalls of 2009 and 2010 behind it, but still faces powerful competition not only from the U.S. automakers but also South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Co., which have lured away Toyota fans.

Toyota shares lost 1.7 percent to 2,503 yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, shortly before earnings were announced.

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Toyota Motor Corp. declined Tuesday to give a forecast for the full financial year ending March 2012, citing uncertainties stemming from the Thai floods which have disrupted supplies of parts and prompted it to cut some car production.

The Thai floods, which began in July and now threaten central Bangkok, are compounding the production damage. The country is the Southeast Asian base for several automakers. Toyota said production cuts in Japan, which began last month, will continue through Nov. 18.

Toyota, which makes the Prius hybrid, Camry sedan and Lexus luxury models, counted on the dollar costing 86 yen last year, but is now seeing it slip to 78 yen.

Toyota, Japan’s top automaker, said that vehicle sales plunged in the key markets of Japan and North America, but it was making up for some of the losses by strong sales in Asia, such as India and Indonesia.

Toyota’s quarterly sales fell nearly 5 percent from a year earlier to 4.57 trillion yen ($58.7 billion).

Also battering Toyota is the surging yen.

All the Japanese automakers are suffering after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan damaged key parts suppliers. That meant they made and sold fewer cars than normal.

“Toyota’s biggest issue right now is production. They’ve had some bad luck this year with the tsunami and now the flooding in Thailand,” said Chintan Talati, analyst at auto information site TrueCar.com.

For the first half spanning April 1 through Sept. 30, Toyota’s profit nose-dived nearly 72 percent to 81.6 billion yen ($1 billion). It had eked out a tiny profit in the April-June first quarter. First-half sales fell 17 percent to 8.01 trillion yen ($103 billion).

NEW YORK Skinny French chicks and roly-poly straight men. Lesbian chic and the chaotic state of style. Nothing and nobody escapes the gaydar of the fabulously floral Simon Doonan in his new book, “Gay Men Don’t Get Fat.”

The ex-creator of edgy window displays for Barneys details his coming out moment as a boy of 10, reading a reporter’s account of gay men hooking up in a North London park after dark (”Sign me up!”).

He recounts his giddy deep dive into Christmas ornaments stashed in a White House storeroom by former first ladies as he worked with Michelle Obama on her first-year holiday decor, only to be upstaged by “those idiot Salahis” of red sari, gate-crashing infamy.

The diminutive Doonan was creative director at Barneys for 25 years. After a shake-up at the luxury retailer, he’s now creative ambassador-at-large. But he’s oh so much more: cheeky memoirist, provocative columnist and always hilarious chronicler of his very gay, very fun New York City life with husband Jonathan Adler, the potter and interior design expert, and their Norwich terrier Liberace.

When it comes to style, Doonan said, gays are the chosen people. From fashion to food, he sees gay men as the real culture keepers over all those hungry females in Mireille Guiliano’s “French Women Don’t Get Fat.”

“We gays have an unconventional world view,” he said. “We have the piercing objectivity and bold originality of the outsider. French women cannot compete with us. We are not bourgeois. We possess the indiscreet charm of the anti-bourgeoisie.”

Here’s more from Simon Doonan:

AP: You’re “one funny gay nugget,” as Chelsea Handler summed up your book in a back-jacket blurb. Yet you say the intended audience is straight women. Do we straight women need educating?

DOONAN: I want to liberate the women of the world and teach them to live with the stylish bravado of we gays and wee gays like me. Being a woman has become so complicated and pressurized. I want to make it easier, or maybe just more creative. Fashion and style should be about personal expression.

AP: Do you really fly coach?

DOONAN: I’m not part of the 1 percent. I’m a hardworking gay who is proud to fly coach, but only on short flights. I also ride the subway, and not in a Marie Antoinette kind of way. It really is the easiest way to get around.

AP: You used to do the windows at Barneys. Do you miss that?

DOONAN: I dressed windows for almost 40 years. When I finally put down the glue gun last year it was something of a relief. Ditto the staple gun. However, I would highly recommend a career in window display to any budding fashionista. It’s been great for me.

AP: You’re 59. Do you feel at peace with the aging process?

DOONAN: I loathe the idea of growing old gracefully. I fully intend to grow old eccentrically and dramatically. Brace yourselves! I have no issue with wrinkles or lines. I think people worry too much about that stuff. The most important thing is to stay fit. My fave exercises are tap dancing and runway modeling.

AP: How would you define your approach to clothes and to life?

DOONAN: I’m a charismatic deviant with a freaky world view. I’m determined to extract all the nuggets and nuances from my fabulous gay life and hurl them at the general population with tremendous force and gusto.

AP: You’re the fashion guru and your husband, Jonathan Adler, is the decorating guru. How do you reconcile your styles at home? Or is that why people have multiple dwellings?

DOONAN: When it comes to decorating our homes, my Jonny wears the pants. I wear an embroidered Hungarian gypsy dirndl skirt, metaphorically, of course. Seriously, I think doing things by committee is a disaster. Even a committee of two, or three if you count the dog.

AIRING CONCERNS: China urged the European Union to heed objections to EU plans to charge airlines for carbon emissions. Airlines flying to or from Europe must obtain certificates for the carbon dioxide they emit. They will get free credits to cover most flights this year but must buy or trade for credits to cover the rest.

FLYING ON FUMES: The charges,Wholesale Juicy Couture jackets, which took effect Sunday, aim to curb emissions of greenhouse gases. Airlines call them an improper tax. Ratings agency Fitch has warned that the conflict could spiral into a global trade dispute.

CHINA’S BIG STICK: Beijing could have unusually strong leverage in a possible dispute because its state-owned airlines carry large numbers of Chinese and other Asian tourists to Europe. Any disruption would hurt Europe’s travel industry when the continent is struggling with a debt crisis and high unemployment.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. Country legend Loretta Lynn has rescheduled her first two shows of the year to give her knee more time to heal.

The 76-year-old singer underwent total knee replacement surgery in the fall and suffered from pneumonia.

Daughter Patsy Lynn Russell tells The Associated Press that Lynn’s doctor thought she needed a couple more weeks of physical therapy to return to top form. Russell says her mother has been busy rehearsing with her band and preparing for her 2012 tour.

According to Russell, Lynn said she is feeling so good, she “might even put her dancing jig back in the show.”

Lynn was scheduled to perform in Ashland, Ky,Replica Bulzeye, and Durham, N.C., this weekend. Those shows will now take place in February and April, respectively. Lynn’s next gig is Jan. 21 in Miami, Okla.

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Online: http://www.lorettalynn.com

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LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) Garry Shandling, Kevin Pollak, Margaret Cho and other comedians are onboard for a festival at which they will curate classic films, provide commentary about them — and perform their own comedic material to boot.

The first Wayne Federman International Film Festival will be held January 12 to 14 at the Cinefamily in Los Angeles.

Federman appeared in an episode of “The Larry Sanders Show,” which starred Shandling,Wholesale Juicy Couture jackets, and has also had small roles in “40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Legally Blonde” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

Federman has recruited six comedians for the festival, and each of them will curate one film. They will introduce the movie and participate in a Q&A afterward.

On the first day of the festival, Shandling will present a screening of Martin Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy,” followed by Cho’s presentation of John Schlesinger’s “Darling.”

The second day will see Paul F. Tompkins presenting Mike Leigh’s “Topsy-Turvy,” after which Doug Benson will present “Cocktail” as part of his ongoing series “Doug Benson’s Movie Interruption.”

Kevin Pollak will help close the festival with his presentation of “The In-Laws,” which starred Peter Falk and Alan Arkin. That will be followed by Andy Kindler’s presentation of Albert Brooks’ “Modern Romance.”

Admission to each presentation is $10, except for the “Cocktail” screening, which will cost $12.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) “Bridesmaids,Wholesale Ed hardy,” “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and “The Help” were among the film nominees chosen on Thursday for annual Writers Guild Awards, but the screenwriters behind “War Horse” failed to make the cut in Hollywood’s race toward Oscars.

In a list of surprises, “The Descendants” and Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” also earned screenplay nominations from the Writers Guild of America (WGA), which represents film and television writers.

But likely Oscar contender “The Artist” — a French-made silent movie in black and white — was ineligible under WGA rules, as were other high-profile films including “My Week with Marilyn” and the Margaret Thatcher movie “The Iron Lady.”

Writers Guild nominations are restricted those movies made under the trade association’s rules on pay and working conditions, or pacts struck with affiliated foreign groups.

The Steven Spielberg-directed “War Horse” and September 11 drama “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” were eligible for inclusion but not nominated. The same fate befell political drama “The Ides of March”.

Instead cancer comedy “50/50″ and “Young Adult” picked up nominations for best original screenplay, along with the little-seen independent drama “Win Win” starring Paul Giamatti as a high school wrestling coach.

The Martin Scorsese 3D film “Hugo” and Brad Pitt vehicle “Moneyball” rounded out the 10 nominations for adapted and original screenplays.

The Writers Guild also announced nominations for documentary screenplay on Thursday, giving nods to “Senna”, about the life of late Brazilian race car driver Ayrton Senna, the Pina Bausch dance homage “Pina,” and Chilean film “Nostalgia for the Light.”

“Position Among the Stars,” which is set in the slums of Jakarta, and “If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front” also also nominated.

The Writers Guild Awards will be handed out at ceremonies in New York and Los Angeles on February 19.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant, editing by Christine Kearney and Bob Tourtellotte)

MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK, Wash. An armed Iraq War veteran suspected of killing a Mount Rainier National Park ranger managed to evade snowshoe-wearing SWAT teams and dogs on his trail for nearly a day. He couldn’t,Cheap Ralph Lauren Kids, however, escape the cold.

A plane searching the remote wilderness for Benjamin Colton Barnes, 24, on Monday discovered his body lying partially submerged in an icy, snowy mountain creek with snow banks standing several feet high on either side.

“He was wearing T-shirt, a pair of jeans and one tennis shoe. That was it,” Pierce County Sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said.

Barnes did not have any external wounds and appears to have died due to the elements, he said. A medical examiner was at the scene to determine the cause of death. Troyer said two weapons were recovered, but he declined to say where they were located.

According to police and court documents, Barnes had a troubled transition to civilian life, with accusations in a child custody dispute that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder following his Iraq deployments and was suicidal.

The mother of his toddler daughter sought a temporary restraining order against him, according to court documents.

She alleged that he got easily irritated, angry and depressed and kept an arsenal of weapons in his home. She wrote that she feared for the child’s safety. Undated photos provided by police showed a shirtless, tattooed Barnes brandishing two large weapons.

The woman told authorities Barnes was suicidal and possibly suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after deploying to Iraq in 2007-2008, and had once sent her a text message saying “I want to die.”

In November 2011, a guardian ad litem recommended parenting and communication classes for both parents as well as a visitation schedule for Barnes until he completed evaluations for domestic violence and mental health and complied with treatment recommendations.

Maj. Chris Ophardt, an Army spokesman, told The News Tribune that Barnes had been stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma, and was released from the Army in November 2009 after two years and seven months on active duty after charges of driving under the influence and improperly transporting privately owned weapons.

Steven Dean, FBI special agent, said Barnes worked in communications.

Barnes is believed to have fled to the remote park on Sunday to hide after an earlier shooting at a New Year’s house party near Seattle that wounded four, two critically. Authorities suspect he then fatally shot ranger Margaret Anderson.

Immediately after the park shooting, police cleared out Mount Rainier of visitors and mounted a manhunt.

Fear that tourists could be caught in the crossfire in a shootout with Barnes prompted officials to hold more than a 100 people at the visitors’ center before evacuating them in the middle of the night.

Late Sunday, police said Barnes was a suspect in another shooting incident.

On New Year’s, there was an argument at a house party in Skyway, south of Seattle, and gunfire erupted, police said. Barnes was connected to the shooting, said Sgt. Cindi West, King County Sheriff’s spokeswoman.

Police believe Barnes headed to the remote park wilderness to “hide out” following the Skyway shooting.

“The speculation is that he may have come up here, specifically for that reason, to get away,” parks spokesman Kevin Bacher told reporters early Monday. “The speculation is he threw some stuff in the car and headed up here to hide out.”

Anderson had set up a roadblock Sunday morning to stop a man who had blown through a checkpoint rangers use to check if vehicles have tire chains for winter conditions. A gunman opened fire on her before she was able to exit her vehicle, authorities say.

Before fleeing, the gunman fired shots at both Anderson and the ranger that trailed him, but only Anderson was hit.

Anderson would have been armed, as she was one of the rangers tasked with law enforcement, Bacher said. Troyer said she was shot before she had even got out of the vehicle.

Park superintendent Randy King said Anderson, a 34-year-old mother of two young girls who was married to another Rainier ranger, had served as a park ranger for about four years.

King said Anderson’s husband also was working as a ranger elsewhere in the park at the time of the shooting.

The shooting renewed debate about a federal law that made it legal for people to take loaded weapons into national parks. The 2010 law made possession of firearms subject to state gun laws.

Bill Wade, the outgoing chair of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, said Congress should be regretting its decision.

“The many congressmen and senators that voted for the legislation that allowed loaded weapons to be brought into the parks ought to be feeling pretty bad right now,” Wade said.

Wade called Sunday’s fatal shooting a tragedy that could have been prevented. He hopes Congress will reconsider the law that took effect in early 2010, but doubts that will happen in today’s political climate.

Calls and emails to the National Rifle Association requesting comment were not immediately returned on Monday.

The NRA said media fears of gun violence in parks were unlikely to be realized, the NRA wrote in a statement about the law after it went into effect. “The new law affects firearms possession, not use,” it said.

The group pushed for the law saying people have a right to defend themselves against park animals and other people.

King said the park would remain closed Tuesday as the investigation continued and the rangers grieve the loss of their colleague.

“We have been through a horrific experience,” King said. “We’re going to need a little time to regroup.”

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Associated Press writer Donna Gordon Blankinship contributed from Seattle.