News Archive - 3 October 2015

>SYDNEY The Australian government's focus on national security and the war on terror to tackle Islamic extremism, rather than social cohesion and inclusion, has helped create an environment for radicalized Muslim youth to emerge in disproportionate numbers, experts say.Authorities in Australia are grappling with a rise in violence perpetrated...

>SYDNEY Australian businesses are turning their backs on bitcoin, as signs grow that the cryptocurrency's mainstream appeal is fading.     Concerns about bitcoin's potential crime links mean many businesses have stopped accepting it, a trend accelerated by Australian banks' move last month to close the accounts of 13 of the country's...

>Cameron was quoted as saying that British military attacks in Syria "may well become possible." Previously, Cameron has said he sees a strong case for extending British air strikes to Syria from Iraq.Cameron lost a parliamentary vote on the use of force in Syria in 2013. Consequently, British...

>KABUL An air strike, probably carried out by U.S.-led coalition forces, killed 19 staff and patients on Saturday, including three children, in a hospital run by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz, the aid group said. The U.S. military said it conducted...

>ATHENS Greece must implement its bailout program fast to achieve its main aim of regaining access to market financing and escaping international supervision, re-elected leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said on Saturday.Speaking to lawmakers of his Syriza party on the day a new parliament was sworn in, the premier...

>U.S. Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, who has been vying with challenger Bernie Sanders for the support of organized labor, scored a win on Saturday with an endorsement from the National Education Association, a huge teachers union.The NEA, the largest U.S. labor union with 3 million members,...

>ATLANTA Japan called on the United States to find a way to break a deadlock over protections for next-generation medicines on Saturday as talks on a sweeping trade pact were extended for another 24 hours. Negotiators have been up all night trying to broker a deal on the 12-nation Trans-Pacific...

>New York Fed President William Dudley, an influential Wall Street supervisor speaking at a conference in Boston, warned against hastily putting in place so-called macroprudential tools, which would go beyond regulating specific banks and firms and focus on the broader financial sector. "While the use of macroprudential tools holds promise,...

>WASHINGTON President Barack Obama on Friday urged the U.S. Congress to take steps soon to fund the federal government in 2016 and raise its nearly exhausted borrowing authority, but acknowledged that Republican political turmoil in Congress will complicate that."I will not sign another shortsighted spending bill," Obama told...

>VATICAN CITY The Vatican on Saturday dismissed a gay priest from his Holy See job on the eve of a major Church meeting for a highly public coming out that challenged the Roman Catholic teaching that homosexual acts are a sin.Monsignor Krzysztof Charamsa, a Polish theologian, had worked at...

>The mission chief for Ukraine, Nikolay Gueorguiev, said due to a larger-than-expected economic decline in the first half of the year, the mission revised growth projections for 2015 to negative 11 percent. Growth is expected to reach 2 percent next year, Gueorguiev said in a statement. (Writing by Bill Trott;...

>MOSCOW/AMMAN Russian jets hit Islamic State targets and other rebel groups in Syria on Saturday, on a fourth day of air strikes by Moscow in support of President Bashar al-Assad which have dramatically escalated foreign intervention in Syria.Russia's air campaign in Syria, where a U.S.-led air coalition...

>At an internal company meeting this week at the VW headquarters in Wolfsburg, Poetsch described the situation as an "existence-threatening crisis for the company", Germany's Welt am Sonntag reported in a release ahead of Sunday's publication.Poetsch also said that he believed VW could overcome the crisis, the newspaper said.

>NEW YORK The global market volatility of the past month that sent U.S. stocks to their worst quarter in four years shows no signs of letting up just because the calendar turned to October. Investors say they are bracing for another leg down in the S&P 500 stock index...

>MOSCOW/AMMAN Russia said on Saturday it will step up air strikes in Syria, escalating a military intervention which Moscow says is weakening Islamic State militants but which Western powers say aims to support President Bashar al-Assad.A senior Russian military officer said Russian jets based in western Syria had carried...