News Archive - 2 September 2016

By: Davoud Fairahi   When speaking of Daesh/ISIS -as a takfiri group whose main focus is on its "immediate enemy"-and its differences with its precedents, there are some key questions which we must answer.   ·       Has the group undergone any shifts? ·       Has it become more/less anti-Shia? ·       How did...

>The standing committee of China's National People's Congress voted to adopt "the proposal to review and ratify the Paris Agreement" at the closing meeting of a week-long session, the news agency said.The announcement came as leaders from the world's 20 biggest economies, the Group of 20 (G20), began to...

>WASHINGTON Technology, media, pharmaceutical and other companies, along with major corporate lobbying groups, filed legal briefs on Friday in support of a Microsoft Corp lawsuit that aims to strike down a law preventing companies from telling customers the government is seeking their data.Friday was the deadline for filing of...

>Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has pulled into an effective tie with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, erasing a substantial deficit as he consolidated support among his party’s likely voters in recent weeks, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos national tracking poll released Friday.The poll showed 40 percent of likely voters...

>MEXICO CITY A Mexican senator is proposing legislation to empower the government to retaliate if a U.S. administration led by Donald Trump inflicts expropriations or economic losses on his country to make it pay for a border wall.Republican presidential nominee Trump has vowed to have Mexico fund the...

>WASHINGTON/YANGON The United States is considering further easing or lifting sanctions against Myanmar around the time of a White House visit this month by the country's new leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, U.S. officials told Reuters.    President Barack Obama is expected to decide on the extent of the...

>PHILADELPHIA Donald Trump sought to sell Americans on his tough approach to immigration on Friday, meeting in Philadelphia with the family of a woman who was killed in a 2007 shooting that involved people who came to the United States illegally.Trump this week unveiled a hardline immigration plan that...

>WASHINGTON The United States and Russia are nearing a deal that would set a 48-hour ceasefire in Aleppo, allow U.N. humanitarian access and limit Syrian government aircraft flights, diplomatic sources said on Friday.The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the deal is not set in stone,...

>Obama, who meets with President Xi Jinping at a G20 summit next week in China, told CNN the United States supports the peaceful rise of China but that Beijing had to recognize that "with increasing power comes increasing responsibilities," according to excerpts released on Friday."If you sign a treaty...

>TORONTO/WASHINGTON Canada's Potash Corp of Saskatchewan (POT.TO) and Agrium Inc (AGU.TO) are more likely to win approval for a potential merger in Canada than the United States, but U.S. rejection of the deal would scuttle it globally, competition lawyers said.Potash and Agrium confirmed merger talks on...

>BOSTON (Editor's note: This story contains language in the second paragraph that may offend readers)The president of Maine's state Senate on Friday said he would not pursue a special session to censure Governor Paul LePage for leaving a profanity-laden voicemail message for a lawmaker amid a dispute about the governor's...

>Alere filed suit last week in the Delaware Court of Chancery, arguing that Abbott is trying to stymie the deal by purposefully delaying key submissions to anti-trust regulators. Abbott denies the charges.Delaware Vice Chancellor Sam Glasscock did not say when a trial would be held and did not address...

>WASHINGTON The Clinton Foundation on multiple occasions during Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state asked senior U.S. government officials to vet her husband's contacts with potentially controversial international figures, according to emails released by the State Department.The emails, reviewed by Reuters, were part of a batch of...

>CARACAS Venezuela's socialist government said on Friday it thwarted a coup plot this week as opponents planned to build on their biggest protest in more than a decade with further street action demanding a referendum to remove the president.Buoyed by rallies in Caracas on Thursday that drew hundreds of...

>NEW YORK The dog days of summer have lived up to their sleepy reputation this year as far as U.S. stocks are concerned, but market gyrations could soon pick up as a traditionally more volatile time of year looms.The S&P 500 index's .SPX 1-month realized volatility, a measure...

>The plan for the debt-laden company would be filed following a board meeting to consider the proposal, also to take place on Monday, two sources said. A third source said the board meeting to consider the reorganization plan could happen as soon as this weekend.The sources spoke on condition...

>WASHINGTON Hillary Clinton told the FBI she did not recall all the briefings she received on handling sensitive information as she made the transition from her post as U.S. secretary of state, due to a concussion suffered in 2012, according to a report released Friday. The Federal Bureau of...

>RICHMOND, Va. The U.S. economy appears strong enough to warrant significantly higher interest rates, Richmond Federal Reserve Bank President Jeffrey Lacker said on Friday.Lacker, who is not a voting member of the U.S. central bank's rate-setting committee this year, said he still favors raising rates sooner than...

>NBC anchor Lester Holt will ask questions at the first debate on Sept. 26 in New York, while ABC global affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz and CNN anchor Anderson Cooper will co-moderate the Oct. 9 "town meeting" style debate in St. Louis, the Commission on Presidential Debates said. Fox News anchor...

>The device, a Samsung Galaxy Tab S2, includes a security card and encryption and certification software developed by BlackBerry's Secusmart, which locks down data stored on and transferred from the SecuTABLET, the Canadian company said in a statement. Knox, a Samsung security product, is also included.Canada's BlackBerry, a smartphone...

>In a statement, the board said August sales totaled 2,489, down from 3,362 in the same month last year. That decrease followed a 19 percent year-to-year decline for sales in July.British Columbia introduced a 15 percent tax on foreign real estate buyers in Vancouver in late July, a measure...

>Duterte was in Davao on Friday, but was safe and at a police station after the explosion, his son Paolo Duterte, who is vice mayor of the city, told Reuters.The incident took place at a street market outside the high-end Marco Polo hotel in Davao, in the southern Philippines,...

>The Commerce Department said on Friday that new orders for manufactured goods rebounded 1.9 percent after a downwardly revised 1.8 percent decrease in June. It was the biggest rise since October 2015 and followed two straight months of declines.Economists polled by Reuters had forecast factory orders rising...

>Speaking at the Ambrosetti conference, Chief Executive Stefano Mazzoncini said the business plan the group will present at the end of September will contain a study of which assets Ferrovie dello Stato was likely to list. "We are considering the listing of one or more units ... not the entire group,"...

>NEW YORK The U.S. dollar dropped on Friday after jobs growth in August came in below expectations, reducing the likelihood that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates when it meets later this month.Nonfarm payrolls rose by 151,000 jobs last month after an upwardly revised 275,000 increase in...

>In August, around 4,200 migrants crossed into Germany, down from around 4,550 in July and a tiny fraction of the 64,700 migrants registered in January, the spokeswoman said.The police data is based on checks in border areas. Figures for how many people registered in reception centers in August, which...

>The Commerce Department said on Friday the trade gap narrowed 11.6 percent to $39.5 billion, declining after three straight months of increases. June's trade deficit was revised slightly up to $44.7 billion. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the trade gap decreasing to $42.7 billion in...

>The deal will give Primavera and Ant Financial, which runs Alibaba's Alipay mobile payments platform, a combined stake of 4.3-5.9 percent stake in Yum China, depending on the share price.Yum Brands said last October it would spin off the China business, which accounts for about half its...

>VLADIVOSTOK, Russia Russia hopes to fetch more than $11 billion for a minority stake in the Kremlin's flagship oil producer Rosneft before the end of the year to plug budget holes caused by low crude prices, an industry source told Reuters on Friday.The sale will be complicated by sanctions...

>NEW YORK Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has run an unusually cheap campaign in part by not paying at least 10 top staffers, consultants and advisers, some of whom are no longer with the campaign, according to a review of federal campaign finance filings.Those who have so far not been paid, the filings show, include...

>WASHINGTON Hillary Clinton said on Friday that if elected to the White House, she would create an oversight panel to protect U.S. consumers from price hikes on life-saving drugs and import alternative treatments if necessary.Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, will seek to give the panel an "aggressive new...

>Economists for 13 out of 14 primary dealers who responded to a Reuters poll on Friday said they expect the Fed to lift the targeted range for its benchmark short-term interest rate by a quarter-percentage point to a median level of 0.63 percent by year end. The current mid-point...

>In his first published interview since the start of the civil war, Abdel-Malek al-Houthi also told the Houthis' quarterly magazine his group was open to a peaceful solution of the conflict, in which at least 10,000 people have died."The United States plays a major role in the aggression ... including...

>HONG KONG Private equity firms Carlyle Group (CG.O) and TPG Capital have teamed up with two separate Chinese state companies to bid for McDonald's (MCD.N) outlets in China and Hong Kong in a deal worth between $2 billion and $3 billion, four people familiar with the matter said.

> "The U.S. is in a situation with significantly higher growth, they are closer to their inflation target, they have a higher deficit but they also have a significantly lower unemployment rate," ECB Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny told reporters on the sidelines of an economic conference. "That means...

>Video footage showed a large plume of smoke rising above the depot. A huge explosion was followed by a massive shockwave. Women and children were heard screaming in the background. Footage of the blast site showed a massive crater almost five meters (15 foot) deep and 20 meters wide. Many...

>The Uzbek government did not immediately confirm the reports. Earlier on Friday it said the health of Karimov, who has been in hospital since last Saturday, had sharply deteriorated. "Yes, he has died," one of the diplomatic sources said when asked about Karimov's condition.Long criticized by the West and...

>SEOUL Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS) will replace all Galaxy Note 7 smartphones equipped with fire-prone batteries and halt sales of the flagship product in 10 markets, a devastating blow for what had been a revival in the firm's mobile business.Koh Dong-jin, head of the South Korean company's...

>Finance Minister Michael Noonan has insisted Dublin would fight any adverse ruling ever since the European Union began investigating the U.S. tech giant's Irish tax affairs in 2014. But at an earlier cabinet meeting on Wednesday he failed to persuade a group of independent lawmakers, whose support is vital...

>ANKARA Turkey renewed air strikes on Islamic State sites in Syria on Friday, extending operations along a 90-km (56-mile) corridor near the Turkish border which Ankara says it is clearing of jihadists and protecting from Kurdish militia expansion.Turkey's 10-day-old offensive, its first major incursion into Syria since the war...

>In deciding national security risks, governments often look to the potential for cyber espionage or sabotage by foreign governments, according to the report, issued ahead of the G20 summit of world leaders this weekend. Though such concerns are not unfounded, the policies, laws and regulations being considered create a competitive...

>ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE Barack Obama starts his last trip to Asia on Saturday as U.S. president, aiming to put a final stamp on his signature policy shift toward the Pacific but distracted by crises ranging from Brexit to the battle against Islamic State.With the clock ticking down...

>In an interview two days before a G20 meeting in China with U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders, Putin said it could be impossible to establish who engineered the release of sensitive Democratic Party emails but it was not done by the Russian government."Does it even...

>TOKYO Japan's economic growth is expected to be revised down slightly to flat over April-June due to a decline in capital expenditure, a Reuters poll found, underscoring the view that any recovery in the current quarter will be modest.A preliminary estimate last month saw economic growth grind to a...

>The investigation comes as China's anti-trust watchdog has hardened its stance on companies striking deals without seeking its clearance, with the body naming, shaming and fining almost a dozen firms over the past year for "gun-jumping".Comcast, owner of NBCUniversal, said in April it would pay $3.8 billion to...