News Archive - 27 March 2016

>HELSINKI If one fist bump could endanger Finland's increasingly stressed tradition of consensus politics, then Prime Minister Juha Sipila and a cabinet colleague may just have achieved this dubious distinction.In a nod to popular culture, a smiling Sipila and his finance minister Alexander Stubb punched each other's fist to...

>Dell Inc is set to announce an agreement on Monday to sell its non-core information technology consulting division to Japan's NTT Data Corp for $3.5 billion, people familiar with the matter said on Sunday. The move will allow U.S. computer maker Dell to trim some of the $43...

>U.S. crude's front-month contract CLc1 was up 37 cents at 39.83 a barrel at 0055 GMT.On Thursday, it settled down 33 cents at $39.46 a barrel, recovering from a session low of $38.33. For the week, it rose 2 cents, finishing up for a sixth...

>TOKYO The dollar remained firm and Asian stocks edged higher on Monday after fairly strong consumer spending led to an upward revision in U.S. economic growth in the fourth quarter, helping to underpin investor sentiment."As long as the U.S. economic recovery is continuing, I would think the...

>SHANGHAI/SINGAPORE China's mutual fund industry is pushing to develop investment products linked to local commodity futures, betting that plans to fight chronic oversupply in the country's mammoth resource sector will drive up prices for raw materials.The funds want to branch out beyond their traditional focus on stocks and fixed-income,...

>Facebook Inc apologized to users on the other side of the world from Sunday's suicide bombing in Pakistan who received computer-addressed notices asking if they were safe.Facebook users as far away as New York and Virginia showed notifications they received on social media site Twitter."Unfortunately, many people not...

>The quarterly survey of over 2,200 firms by China Beige Book International (CBB) also showed less hiring by companies, marking the second consecutive quarter of downward pressure on employment as executives scale back borrowing and spending.Only 33 percent of firms reported capital expenditure growth in the first quarter, the...

>BRUSSELS When Brussels police caught Salah Abdeslam, suspected sole survivor of November’s suicide assault on Paris, they knew they were in a race against time to stop a new Islamic State attack.It was Friday afternoon, March 18, and one of Prime Minister Charles Michel's cabinet ministers tweeted "We got...

>WASHINGTON Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his criticism of NATO, a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy for decades, and called for the alliance's overhaul days before world leaders convene in Washington.President Barack Obama will host the Nuclear Security Summit on Thursday and Friday...

>WASHINGTON Fresh from Democratic presidential primary wins over the weekend in three U.S. states, Bernie Sanders on Sunday claimed political momentum he said could help him win the backing of Democratic power brokers in his race against Hillary Clinton.Sanders easily won nominating contests in Alaska, Washington and Hawaii...

>Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reached a deal last year with Texas-based Noble Energy (NBL.N) and Israel's Delek Group (DLEKG.TA) that would leave them in control of the country's largest gas field, Leviathan, while forcing them to sell smaller, yet sizable, assets.The agreement also provided an outline for...

>LAHORE, Pakistan A suicide bomber killed at least 52 people, mostly women and children, at a public park in the Pakistani city of Lahore on Sunday, government officials and police said, striking at the heart of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's political base of Punjab.The blast occurred in the parking...

>MEXICO CITY Mexicans celebrating an Easter ritual late on Saturday burnt effigies of U.S. Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump, whose anti-immigrant views have sparked outrage south of the American border.In Mexico City's poor La Merced neighborhood, hundreds of cheering residents yelled "death" and various insults as they watched...

>Jia Jia, who writes a regular column for Tencent Online, went missing late on March 15, around the time he was scheduled to board a flight from Beijing to Hong Kong. His lawyer, Yan Xin, told Reuters earlier police had detained Jia at a Beijing airport.Jia had warned former...

>BEIRUT Syrian government forces recaptured Palmyra on Sunday, state media and a monitoring group said, inflicting a significant defeat on the Islamic State group which seized the city last year and dynamited its ancient temples.Syrian television quoted a military source saying the army and its militia allies took complete...