WASHINGTON (Reuters) A senior International Monetary Fund official said on Monday that China was taking steps to reduce property bubble risks and said it has room to add fiscal stimulus if conditions worsen.

“China can move away from its reliance on external demand and needs to build up domestic demand,wholesale Ed hardy hats,” said Anoop Singh, the IMF director for Asia and the Pacific at a news conference. He said Beijing was working on measures to stimulate demand.

“We don’t see (a) hard-landing risk as likely,” Singh added, noting property prices were moderating and sales volumes declining.

“Our sense is that these risks are being addressed and our prediction is clear: that growth will remain above 8 percent at the baseline and that if there were to be greater risks externally China has sufficient fiscal space to respond.”

(Reporting By Glenn Somerville; Editing by Bob Burgdorfer)

NEW YORK A bitter contract dispute has led to a lockout of musicians at the New York City Opera, a possible “death knell” for a company that’s nurtured such singers as Renee Fleming, Placido Domingo and Beverly Sills.

On Sunday, hours after talks broke down, the cash-strapped company canceled Monday rehearsals for a Feb. 12 opening production of Verdi’s “La Traviata” in Brooklyn.

“This is a very sad day for what once was a spectacular cultural icon and for the people who performed its music,” said Alan Gordon, national executive director of the American Guild of Musical Artists representing the chorus, stage directors and principal singers.

Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians represents the orchestra. Both unions have been without a contract since the spring.

Gail Kruvand, chairwoman of the orchestra union’s negotiating committee and its assistant principal bass player, said union members “made a good-faith effort to say that, yes, we are willing to sacrifice for the sake of ensuring that the grand tradition of the City Opera lives on.”

But she said the company’s rejection of union proposals could be “the death knell for one of New York’s cultural treasures.”

City Opera is now operating on a shoestring, offering orchestra and chorus members minimum fees for an already abbreviated season. City Opera moved out of its longtime home at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts last year,wholesale Ed hardy underwear, citing financial troubles, and cut back its usual schedule of 12 to 16 operas per season, with a peak of about 130 performances.

In a statement, the company said it had “no choice but to lock out” union members because they rejected the company’s economic offer and had threatened to strike when performances began, according to a statement released Sunday. Both labor unions have passed strike-authorization votes.

City Opera General Manager George Steel said his company couldn’t enter rehearsals with a musician strike looming for performances scheduled in February at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, one of the various venues around New York booked for 16 shows of four productions.

However, “we have no intention of hiring replacement workers,” company spokeswoman Risa Heller said. She didn’t know whether that meant the season wouldn’t open next month.

The opera and the unions have been in talks with Allison Beck, deputy director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, since mid-December. Those negotiations broke down Saturday night.

The musicians rejected the company’s offer, saying the financially diminished company doesn’t guarantee work or pay. Steel said the company, facing “economic constraints,” can only afford to pay people “for the work that they do.”f

Under a contract management proposed in early December, the musicians’ average annual income would drop from about $40,000 to as little as $5,000 for two productions. For decades, musicians were guaranteed at least 22 weeks’ work.

City Opera’s troubles started about a decade ago with multimillion-dollar deficits, followed by the appointment of Belgian director Gerard Mortier as general manager and artistic director, effective as of the 2009-2010 season. Accustomed to staging expensive, cutting-edge extravaganzas in Europe, he insisted that City Opera’s theater be renovated, forcing the company to go dark for the 2008-2009 season, with only six unstaged performances elsewhere.

The economy’s free-fall was a last straw for the 69-year-old company that former New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia dubbed “the people’s opera.”

Income from ticket sales during the dark season plunged to about $186,000, down from $12 million. And the company raided its endowment to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.

Mortier resigned from his position about six months before he was officially to start, on grounds that the operating budget had dwindled.

“We’re heartbroken, but we cannot save the company,” said Kruvand, the bass player.

She said City Opera has been “unable to sell tickets or attract donors” mostly because Steel abandoned the company’s longtime practice of staging surefire operas along with pioneering new works. Recently, the company has presented mostly 20th-century operas that are a box office challenge.

Kruvand noted that the current general manager still makes more than $300,000 after a 10 percent pay cut, while the musicians face about a 90 percent cut in earnings.

“We don’t feel George Steel is capable of running an opera company,” said Kruvand, adding that when the star soprano Sills became general manager in the 1980s, she led a company “that was a platform for nurturing careers.”

Speaking for Steel, Heller said that the unions “have repeatedly vilified George.”

But the negotiating process is “not about any one person,” she said. “This is about whether the unions will finally recognize that the City Opera needs to make fundamental changes in the way it operates so that it only pays people for work they perform.”

Gordon, the union leader, called the latest labor impasse “City Opera’s death.”

WASHINGTON An Education Department official on Wednesday admonished Hawaii for its “unsatisfactory” performance under a $75 million federal grant the state won last year in a high profile competition and said it was placing it under “high risk” status. That means the state is in danger of losing the money if it doesn’t make improvements.

This is the first time the department has placed under such a status a state that won dollars distributed in the competition known as “Race to the Top.” The contest is a signature education initiative under the Obama administration, which has used it to encourage states to enact changes it supports.

Hawaii was one of 11 states and the District of Columbia to win more than $4 billion in Race to the Top grants last year. The Hawaii Department of Education is the nation’s 10th largest school system and the only statewide district in the country.

The education community has been watching closely to see how aggressively the department will enforce the terms of the competition.

Hawaii still has about $72 million of its four-year, $75 million grant left to spend. The state has been well over a year behind in implementing many aspects of its plan to improve low-performing schools, and has struggled to roll out a teacher evaluation system tied to teacher performance that it promised.

“The department is concerned about the state’s ability to fulfill its commitments within the grant period,” Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie was told in a letter dated Wednesday and signed by Education Department official Ann Whalen.

Because the state is now a high-risk grantee, it will be required to get pre-approval before funds are spent and will be subjected to a thorough on-site review, the letter said.

“Please note that failure to comply with the high-risk conditions may constitute a material failure to comply with the requirements of the grant,” the letter said.

Abercrombie said he found the implications of the letter “disturbing.”

“I am willing to do everything that’s necessary to proceed with Race to the Top and am calling on the responsible parties to immediately address the areas that need resolution,” he said in an emailed statement late Wednesday.

“It’s really apparent from the letter that everyone involved in education in Hawaii is going to have to step up,wholesale Ed hardy shoes,” Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi said in a separate statement. “We acknowledge there’s work to be done.”

Stephen Schatz, Hawaii’s assistant superintendent for strategic reform who is overseeing the Race to the Top effort, last week told The Associated Press that the state was making progress on reforms it promised, although he said there have been roadblocks.

Schatz said the state’s ability to move forward has been slowed down by complications with the Hawaii State Teachers Association, the union representing public school teachers across the islands.

The two sides had reached a conceptual agreement before Hawaii was announced as a winner to tie half of a teacher’s evaluation to education gains made by students. But the union currently is embroiled in a prohibited practice complaint it lodged with the state labor relations board against the state. The union claims the state violated members’ rights by implementing its “last, best and final” contract offer over the summer.

“We’re still wholeheartedly committed to the reforms in the race. Whatever impediments that we may face we intend to get through them,” Schatz said. “We’re making progress on every project in our scope of work.”

Abercrombie said he would ask the labor relations board to expedite its process. He also plans to appeal to the Legislature for support and ask the superintendent, Board of Education and those working on Race to the Top to address the changes noted by the Education Department.

“It is clear on what actions need to take place and it is time to get this done now,” he said.

Union President Wil Okabe said Wednesday he’s not surprised Hawaii has been placed on high risk status, but that state officials should have recognized the risk to the grant when imposing the contract offer on teachers.

“Once they implemented this thing, it had ramifications on everything,” he said, adding that it’s unfair to blame the union for the position the state is in.

The letter to Abercrombie comes as President Barack Obama attempts to leave for Hawaii for his family’s annual Christmas vacation. The president’s wife and daughters are already in Hawaii, but his travel plans are up in the air because Congress has been unable to reach agreement over extending payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits due to expire at the end of the year.

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Kimberly Hefling can be followed at http://twitter.com/khefling

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Kelleher reported from Honolulu.

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Online:

Education Department: http://www.ed.gov/

Hawaii Public Schools: http://doe.k12.hi.us/