News Archive - 9 August 2016

>SINGAPORE Oil prices were stable early on Wednesday, with a global supply overhang weighing on markets while talk of a potential producer meeting to discuss propping up prices lent crude some support despite being met with scepticism by analysts.U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil futures CLc1 were...

>SAN FRANCISCO Electric vehicle charging companies are calling for independent oversight of the $2 billion Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) is required to invest in clean car infrastructure, saying VW should not have the power to shape the nascent electric car charging space. The German automaker agreed to invest the money,...

>TOKYO The dollar sagged against its peers early on Wednesday after downbeat data sapped some of the momentum it had gained from last week's robust U.S. jobs report. The greenback, however, was on the front foot against the pound, which hovered near a 1-month low struck overnight, after a...

>TOKYO Asian shares held near one-year highs on Wednesday as investors pared expectations slightly for a Federal Reserve interest rate increase following weak U.S. productivity data, which drove the dollar and Treasury yields lower.MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares excluding Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS rose 0.1 percent, staying near...

>HONG KONG A week after China's two largest taxi-hailing firms announced plans for a $35 billion merger, lawyers say China's merger control watchdog is cracking down on companies that don't seek approval for deals, and it wants greater powers to punish them.Last Tuesday the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) antimonopoly...

>HONG KONG Vietnam has discreetly fortified several of its islands in the disputed South China Sea with new mobile rocket launchers capable of striking China's runways and military installations across the vital trade route, according to Western officials.Diplomats and military officers told Reuters that intelligence shows Hanoi has shipped...

>BOSTON Six weeks before Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc revealed plans to reorganize and pay down debt, similar ideas to improve the drugmaker's fortunes were discussed at a private shareholder dinner attended by top investor and board member William Ackman, according to a source who participated.Bank of America hosted the...

>NEW YORK Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's lead over Republican rival Donald Trump increased to more than 7 percentage points in a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday, from less than 3 points on Thursday.The shift came as Trump struggled to reset his campaign following a stretch of controversies.About...

>WILMINGTON, North Carolina Republican Donald Trump suggested in a speech on Tuesday that gun rights activists could stop his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton from nominating liberal justices to the Supreme Court, stirring another round of backlash during a week his U.S. presidential campaign had hoped to steer clear of...

>UNITED NATIONS The United Nations Security Council has been unable to condemn the launch of a missile by North Korea that landed near Japan because China wanted the statement to oppose the planned deployment of a U.S. anti-missile defense system in South Korea.North Korea launched a ballistic missile...

>NEW YORK Puerto Rico's governor said on Tuesday he expected to present an updated fiscal plan for the debt-laden U.S. territory shortly after the White House appoints members of a federal oversight board with authority to renegotiate its $70 billion of debt."I expect this new fiscal plan will...

>Disney also said it was acquiring a 33 percent stake in BAMTech, a video-streaming company formed by Major League Baseball (MLB), for $1 billion. The company has the option to acquire a majority ownership in the coming years.Revenue in Disney's cable networks business rose 1.4 percent to $4.

>NEW YORK Several U.S. states studied by S&P Global Ratings are ill-equipped to deal with an economic recession, hampered by the slow rebound in U.S. economic growth after the damage wrought by the Great Recession.Fiscal imbalances, slower state tax revenue growth and increased spending on social services...

>For Randstad, which has struggled to grow in the United States, the deal would fit into a series of acquisitions to expand into online recruiting.Randstad is bidding $3.40 in cash per Monster share, a 23 percent premium to Monster's closing price Monday. The stock was up 3.5...

>Archie Bunker, a fictional conservative blue-collar worker from the New York City borough of Queens, was the main character in the 1970s television comedy "All in the Family."Icahn praised Trump's economic plan a day after the New York real estate developer unveiled it in a speech in Detroit. Trump...

>NEW YORK Verizon Communications Inc's (VZ.N) recent purchases of two vehicle tracking firms could spark more deals as the No. 1 wireless provider and rival AT&T (T.N) see fleet management as a source of growth, analysts said.Faced with a saturated wireless market, several telecom companies are looking...

>LONDON The Bank of England fell 52 million pounds ($68 million) short of its target to buy more than a billion pounds of long-dated government debt on Tuesday, an early slip-up for one of its latest measures to stimulate Britain's economy.For the first time since it started buying government...

>TORONTO Ontario Steel Investment Ltd, a group that includes shareholders of Essar Global, said on Tuesday it has submitted an offer to purchase U.S. Steel Canada, which has been in creditor protection since 2014.The offer includes the assumption of C$954 million ($725 million) in liabilities under U.S.

>The approval for land force equipment comes at a time when Saudi Arabia is leading a military coalition in support of Yemeni forces loyal to the exiled government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi who are trying to oust Iran-allied Houthi forces from the capital, Sanaa. The coalition's air strikes have...

>ST PETERSBURG/MOSCOW Russia and Turkey took a big step toward normalizing ties on Tuesday when Russian President Vladimir Putin met his visiting Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan, at a time when both countries have strained relations with the West.An official in Erdogan's office said there was a clear consensus about...

>EQT will pay $40.50 in cash per share, a slim premium to Press Ganey's Monday close of $40.33. The stock was up 1 percent at $40.75 in early trading on Tuesday.South Bend, Indiana-based Press Ganey, which helps administer surveys for hospitals and other healthcare providers to...

>BEIJING A senior U.S. trade official on Tuesday complained that China's rising export subsidies were damaging American businesses and criticised the U.S. political system for failing to adapt to competition from China.U.S. Export-Import Bank (EXIM) Chairman Fred Hochberg told reporters in Beijing that China gave its...

>The Commerce Department said on Tuesday that wholesale inventories increased 0.3 percent after having been initially estimated as unchanged. Inventories for May were revised up to show a 0.2 percent rise instead of the previously reported 0.1 percent gain.Economists had forecast wholesale inventories as unchanged in...

>WASHINGTON U.S. nonfarm productivity unexpectedly fell in the second quarter, pointing to sustained weakness that could raise concerns about corporate profits and companies' ability to maintain their recent robust pace of hiring. The Labor Department said on Tuesday that productivity, which measures hourly output per worker, dropped at a...

>Apple reacted a day after Russia's Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) said it had opened a case into the allegations after a consumer had pointed out that identical prices had been set for iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus models, which appeared in Russia in October 2015, at 16 major resellers.

>BANGKOK Thailand will make places such as the Royal Palace grounds, Buddhist temples and hospitals off limits to players of Nintendo Co Ltd's wildly popular augmented reality game Pokemon Go, the Thai telecoms regulator said on Tuesday.The measures come after the National Broadcasting and Telecommunication Commission (NBTC) met with...

>LOS ANGELES Yum Brands Inc (YUM.N) investors on Tuesday filed a shareholder proposal requesting that it quickly phase out harmful antibiotic use in its meat supply, taking aim at the practices of the company's KFC fried chicken chain.The proposal from shareholder activists As You Sow, of Oakland, California,...

>"We were able to bring our systems back on line and resume flights within a few hours yesterday but we are still operating in recovery mode," Delta, the No.2 U.S. airline by passenger traffic, said in a statement on Tuesday. (bit.ly/2aIrQjS)The outage forced Delta to ground planes,...

>U.S. stock index futures were little changed on Tuesday as investors looked for market-moving catalysts, a day after the S&P 500 index touched a record intraday high. On Monday, Wall Street closed down in one of its lowest volume trading day this year, after the S&P slipped from its...

>MILWAUKEE U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan faces a primary for his congressional seat on Tuesday in a race overshadowed by presidential candidate Donald Trump's brief refusal last week to endorse his fellow Republican.Ryan, who ran unsuccessfully for vice president in 2012, is predicted to easily beat...

>When Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman announced last week that she wouldn't vote for her party's presidential nominee, Donald Trump, she pledged to raise money for the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, and to urge like-minded Republicans to follow suit.She won’t have to talk her fellow tech industry conservatives...

>Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, said in a statement on Tuesday it aims to assist technology firms overcoming business obstacles in China. It said it's offering foreign firms joint ventures and partnerships through its cloud computing programs. The company said its AliLaunch program has signed up...

>ISLAMABAD/QUETTA, Pakistan Pakistani lawyers staged a nationwide strike on Tuesday after dozens of colleagues were slain in a suicide bombing that killed at least 70 people at a hospital in the southwestern city of Quetta.Medical staff said up to 60 of those slain in the bombing at a government...

>Another 7,668 people were under investigation but were not currently detained, he said in an interview with state-run Anadolu Agency, broadcast live on Turkish television channels.Turkey has detained, removed or suspended tens of thousands of people in the judiciary, military, police, public service and elsewhere over alleged links with...

>SAN FRANCISCO Top video game companies, caught off-guard by the runaway success of Pokemon Go, are wrestling with how to play catch-up to the augmented reality app that has become a worldwide phenomenon.Nearly a dozen executives at companies from Sony Corp (6758.T) to Angry Birds-creator Rovio said Pokemon...

>The two faculty members, one Australian and one American, were abducted at gunpoint from a road near the university in Kabul on Sunday evening, Afghan officials said.Since then, the campus has been closed while senior management reviewed the security situation, the university said in a statement online on Tuesday.

>The widely anticipated decision confirms proposals made by the European Commission in July to waive the sanctions, despite both countries having last year breached the EU deficit limit of 3 percent of gross domestic product.The EU Council said in a statement that Spain would have two more years, until...