News Archive - 2 May 2016

>Oaktree Capital Group LLC (OAK.N), the second largest shareholder in Tribune Publishing Co (TPUB.N), wants the U.S. newspaper company to explore a sale, people familiar with the matter said on Monday.Oaktree's support for a sale of Tribune, the owner of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times...

>NEW YORK As a debate raged across the internet Monday over whether the mysterious founder of the bitcoin digital currency had finally been identified, executives at a major bitcoin conference in New York had a simple message: we've moved on.That's because bitcoin, the digital currency, has largely been supplanted...

>LOS ANGELES Yahoo Inc's (YHOO.O) management team and directors have given a warm welcome to Starboard Value LP Chief Executive Jeffrey Smith since he joined the company's board after a contentious battle, he said on Monday."Yahoo has been great," said Smith, who was speaking on a panel at...

>The Baltic states - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - which joined NATO in 2004, have requested greater presence of the alliance, fearing a threat from Russia after it annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.Carter acknowledged NATO deliberations included the deployment of the four battalions to the Baltic...

>SINGAPORE The dollar set a fresh 18-month low versus the yen on Tuesday, as the yen rose in a holiday-thinned market, while the Australian dollar held firm ahead of an interest rate decision from Australia's central bank.The dollar last traded at 106.21 yen JPY=, down 0.2 percent...

>LOS ANGELES Media mogul Sumner Redstone can be deposed at his home in a short videotaped session ahead of a trial to resolve his ex-girlfriend's lawsuit over his mental competence, a California judge ruled on Monday. The recording of Redstone, the controlling shareholder of media companies Viacom Inc (VIAB.O)...

>HONG KONG Asian stocks snapped a four-day losing streak on Tuesday as an overnight bounce in U.S. shares boosted risk appetite while gold briefly popped to a one-year high on growing expectations of more policy stimulus.Market attention will be focused on the Australian central bank's interest rate decision...

>Valeant's stock price tumbled some 80 percent since Ackman invested in 2015, but the fund manager said the company is now on a better path with a new chief executive. Future growth will be fueled by more sales instead of sharp price increases. And it "will have an investment grade...

>Oil-and-gas producers Midstates Petroleum Co Inc (MPOY.PK) and Ultra Petroleum Corp (UPL.N) have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, joining several companies that have been unable to meet debt obligations after a steep decline in energy prices.Oklahoma-based Midstates and Houston-based Ultra have a combined $5.8 billion...

>Baker Hughes Inc (BHI.N) sought to reassure investors on Monday by announcing a $2.5 billion plan to buy back stock and pay down debt, using the breakup fee it will receive following the collapse of its long-stalled takeover by fellow oilfield services provider Halliburton Inc (HAL.N). Now...

>ISLAMABAD Pakistan angrily criticized Donald Trump, frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, for saying he would force the country to free a jailed Pakistani doctor believed to have helped the CIA hunt down al Qaada leader Osama bin Laden.Trump, a 69-year-old billionaire real estate developer, told Fox News on...

>INDIANAPOLIS Donald Trump's success in the race for the White House may well depend on the support of Republican evangelicals suspicious of the front-runner's more liberal side as he discloses his social views.A New York businessman who has never held public office, Trump has had some success with evangelicals...

>WASHINGTON U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton talked to steel workers in the Appalachian region about their economic struggles on Monday, as she tried to win over blue-collar voters in a part of the country where support for Republican Donald Trump is strong.Turning her attention beyond the Democratic Party...

>SYDNEY/LONDON Australian tech entrepreneur Craig Wright identified himself as the creator of controversial digital currency bitcoin on Monday but experts were divided over whether he really was the elusive person who has gone by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto until now.Uncovering Nakamoto's real identity would solve a riddle dating...

>U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California also gave Twitter the opportunity to re-file its lawsuit to include more details about government decision-making, in order to try to move its claims forward. (Reporting by Dan Levine; Editing by Bill Rigby)...

>Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) is investing between $250,000 and $500,000 in Bluetooth technology company TrackR to extend the reach of its Alexa virtual assistant, according to a source familiar with the matterAlexa is the cloud-based system that controls the Amazon Echo, a speaker system launched by Amazon in 2014...

>Food and medicine shortages, triple-digit inflation, rampant violent crime and increasingly frequent water and power cuts have stoked anger against Maduro.The Democratic Unity coalition (MUD) gathered far more than the required 1 percent of voters' signatures, or nearly 200,000, needed to trigger the next phase of a recall referendum.

>HAVANA Hundreds of tourists and a handful of emotional Cuban-Americans arrived on the first U.S. cruise ship to sail to Havana in decades on Monday, spilling onto the cobbled streets of the old city where they were warmly greeted by residents.It was another first for the two countries...

>AMMAN/GENEVA Washington and Moscow said on Monday they were working hard to extend a truce in Syria to Aleppo, the divided northern city where a sharp escalation of violence in recent weeks has left a ceasefire in tatters and torpedoed peace talks.U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was...

>SAN JUAN/NEW YORK Puerto Rico’s Government Development Bank said it reached a tentative debt restructuring framework with some of its major creditors, just hours after declaring it will skip making a $422 million bond payment due on Monday.The framework is "a vital first step" that needs both restructuring legislation...

>Commerce Department data showing a 0.3 percent increase in construction spending to an 8-1/2 year high in March raised the Atlanta Fed's GDPNow forecast model's projections on second-quarter residential investment growth and nonresidential structures investment growth, the Atlanta Fed said. But an unexpectedly bigger drop in the Institute for...

>WASHINGTON U.S. factory activity expanded at a more moderate pace in April due in part to a slowdown in new orders, but a rise in export orders to a near 1-1/2-year high and signs an inventory overhang drag was fading offered hope for the manufacturing sector.Another report on...

>NEW YORK Oil prices fell about 3 percent on Monday as production from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries neared all-time peaks and record speculative buying in global benchmark Brent sparked profit-taking on last month's outsized rally.OPEC's crude production climbed in April to 32.64 million barrels per...

>U.S. stocks rose on Monday, rebounding from losses last week, with gains in Berkshire Hathaway (BRKa.N) boosting the financial sector.Gains in consumer discretionary and staples shares also lifted stocks, which on Friday posted their largest weekly drop in more than two months."What we're seeing now is...