News Archive - 1 December 2016

Mahmoud Sadeghi was entering his apartment in central Amirabad district of Tehran late Sunday night, when officials from the judiciary approached him with an arrest warrant. The 54-year-old MP from Tehran refused to go with them. Instead, he opened his way into his flat, logged into his Twitter account,...

On November 15, the US House of Representatives passed Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce’s bipartisan bill – H.R. 6297 – to provide a ten-year extension of the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA). In his supporting speech, Royce called on the Senate to “quickly take up this bill and...

>WASHINGTON U.S. employers likely boosted hiring in November amid growing confidence in the economy, making it almost certain that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates later this month.Nonfarm payrolls probably increased by 175,000 jobs last month after rising by 161,000 in October, according to a Reuters survey...

>WASHINGTON British fighter planes visiting Japan will fly over the South China Sea and Britain will sail aircraft carriers in the Pacific once they are operational in 2020, given concerns about freedom of navigation there, Britain's ambassador to the United States said on Thursday.The envoy, Kim Darroch, told a...

>Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) appointed Keith Coleman, founder of startup Yes Inc, as head of its product team, the third executive to lead the division in less than a year. The micro-blogging service said it has acquired Yes, the maker of apps such as Frenzy and WYD-What you doing, which...

>SINGAPORE Oil prices slipped on Friday as some investors opted to cash out after Brent touched 16-month a high on Thursday, with optimism over this week's OPEC-Russia accord on cutting output giving way to questions on the "sticking point" of implementing the deal.International Brent crude oil futures LCOc1 were...

>NEW YORK From a whimsical enchanted winter forest-scape to candy-laden backdrops for festive fashion, New York department stores have spent a year conjuring up eye-catching holiday window displays. "Right when they start coming down, we start thinking about what's going to be the vision for next year?" said Roe...

>SINGAPORE Asian shares lost some of their recent gains on Friday, after lackluster sessions on Wall Street and Europe, while 10-year U.S. Treasury yields and crude futures pulled back from multi-month highs hit overnight. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS dropped 0.6 percent, but remained...

>Reuters reported on Wednesday that Cohn was being considered to head the White House budget office or another post in the Trump administration. (Writing by Eric Beech in Washington; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)...

> (Reporting by Peter Henderson; Editing by Sandra Maler)...

>CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. An unmanned Russian cargo ship loaded with more than 2-1/2 tons of food and supplies for the International Space Station broke apart about six minutes after liftoff on Thursday, Russia's space agency Roscosmos said in a statement.A Soyuz rocket carrying the Progress capsule blasted off from...

>PARIS President Francois Hollande shocked France on Thursday by announcing he would not seek a second term next year, acknowledging his deep unpopularity and making way for another leftist candidate to take on conservative Francois Fillon and far-right leader Marine Le Pen.The surprise announcement - effectively an admission that...

>A federal jury in Dallas on Thursday ordered Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) and its DePuy Orthopaedics unit to pay more than $1 billion to six plaintiffs who said they were injured by Pinnacle hip implants.The jurors found that the metal-on-metal Pinnacle hip implants were defectively designed and that...

>The Washington Post said Trump had chosen Mattis and that an announcement was likely to be made early next week. CNN also reported that Trump had settled on Mattis. Reuters could not immediately confirm the planned nomination.Trump spokesman Jason Miller said on Twitter that "no decision has been made...

>Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O) on Thursday said Howard Schultz will step down as chief executive to focus on its high-end coffee shops as Chief Operating Officer Kevin Johnson takes over as CEO.Starbucks signaled the change in July, saying that Schultz was moving away from day-to-day operations to focus on...

>HOUSTON President-elect Donald Trump is considering Democratic U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota for either the interior or energy secretary positions in his Cabinet, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday.Reuters previously reported that Trump planned to meet with Heitkamp on Friday, according to...

>Temer, speaking at a seminar sponsored by JPMorgan Chase & Co in São Paulo, vowed to send to lawmakers a plan to overhaul the country's costly pension system as early as next week. (Reporting by Guillermo Parra-Bernal; Editing by Daniel Flynn)...

>WASHINGTON U.S. President Barack Obama, keen to preserve his legacy on domestic health care and the Iran nuclear deal, is not expected to make major moves on Israeli-Palestinian peace before leaving office, U.S. officials said on Thursday.One official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the last...

>SACRAMENTO, Calif. California Governor Jerry Brown on Thursday nominated U.S. Congressman Xavier Becerra, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and a longtime representative from Los Angeles, to be the state's next attorney general.In choosing Becerra, 58, Brown is tapping a pragmatic and reliably progressive Democrat with a deep...

>WASHINGTON The U.S.-led coalition killed 54 civilians between March 31 and Oct. 22 while carrying out air strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria, the U.S. military said in a statement on Thursday.Up to 24 civilians were killed in one strike in mid-July near...

>WASHINGTON Change at the Federal Reserve could come quickly with President-elect Donald Trump's team pledging to promptly fill high-level central bank jobs and roll out a tax and fiscal plan that could rewrite policymakers' core economic assumptions. Fed officials already say their plan to gradually increase interest rates may need...

>WASHINGTON A chief proponent of Republican tax reform in Congress urged the business community on Thursday to avoid a battle over coveted tax breaks next year if companies hope to achieve reforms that lower tax rates to boost economic growth and productivity."There's incredible pressure in Washington not to change...

>GENEVA The Iraqi government's assault to retake the city of Mosul could take months, prompting more and more civilians to try to flee to avoid being trapped between frontlines, a senior official of the International Committee of the Red Cross told Reuters.A growing number of wounded, more than 100...

>The latest fourth-quarter GDP estimate was higher than the 2.4 growth rate calculated on Wednesday, the Atlanta Fed said on its website. (Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)...

>ELKHART, Ind./WASHINGTON President-elect Donald Trump goes to Indianapolis on Thursday to celebrate a deal that will keep 1,000 factory jobs there, but employers elsewhere in Indiana are laying off five times that many workers because of foreign competition.The decision by United Technologies Corp's (UTX.N) Carrier unit to...

>MENLO PARK, Calif. Facebook Inc (FB.O) is working on automatically flagging offensive material in live video streams, building on a growing effort to use artificial intelligence to monitor content, said Joaquin Candela, the company’s director of applied machine learning.The social media company has been embroiled in a number...

>KARUKWAT, Democratic Republic of Congo Charity Mandulu said the executions began soon after government soldiers - around 100 of them mostly from South Sudan President Salva Kiir's Dinka ethnic group - arrived in her home town of Tore Payam."They started to demand things. If you didn't give to them,...

>Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) is again facing questions about who would succeed longtime Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein when he eventually steps down. The Wall Street investment bank's president and chief operating officer, Gary Cohn, was widely considered Blankfein's heir apparent but is now a candidate to lead...

>BERLIN/FRANKFURT The ECB will extend its bond purchases beyond March and consider sending a formal signal after its policy meeting next Thursday that the program will eventually end, senior sources with direct knowledge of discussions said.Even some skeptics of more stimulus on the bank's Governing Council have accepted that...

>VIENNA Russian President Vladimir Putin played a crucial role in helping OPEC rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia set aside differences to forge the cartel's first deal with non-OPEC Russia in 15 years.Interventions ahead of Wednesday's OPEC meeting came at key moments from Putin, Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin...

>The deal is likely to be signed before Christmas, the source said.Reuters had reported in October that U.S. buyout firms Carlyle and Bain Capital LLC had been the front runners among the bidders for the fast-food giant's China assets.McDonald's in March said it was reorganizing operations in...

>UNITED NATIONS The U.N. Security Council imposed new sanctions on North Korea on Wednesday aimed at cutting its annual export revenue by a quarter, after Pyongyang carried out its fifth and largest nuclear test so far in September. The 15-member council unanimously adopted a resolution to slash North Korea's...

>DETROIT Hefty discounts during a robust Black Friday weekend helped boost November U.S. auto sales between 4 percent and 5 percent, the first automakers to report said on Thursday, which could catapult results this year above a record high in 2015. “All economic indicators show significantly improved optimism about...

>WASHINGTON U.S. factory activity accelerated to a five-month high in November amid a pickup in new orders and production, offering more evidence that the economy gained further momentum early in the fourth quarter.While other data on Thursday showed the number of Americans claiming unemployment benefits hitting a five-month...

>Parker-Hannifin's offer of $83 per share represents a premium of about 17.8 percent to Clarcor's closing price on Wednesday. Clarcor shares were up about 15 percent at $81 in premarket trading on Thursday.Parker-Hannifin, whose motion and control systems are used in air conditioners, refrigerators and the transportation industry,...

>HELSINKI Music streaming service Spotify, one of Europe's most valuable tech start-ups, could start to become profitable as early as next year, said a board member who was also one of the company's first investors.Spotify, the global leader of the music streaming industry even in the face of mounting...

>"We are pretty much done building the house of industry digitalization," the source said on Thursday.Siemens has bought a dozen software companies over the past 10 years, mostly in the United States, spending close to 9 billion euros ($9.6 billion) to keep pace with changes to manufacturing technology.

>The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI was up 54.17 points, or 0.28 percent, at 19,177.75, the S&P 500 .SPX was up 2.92 points, or 0.13 percent, at 2,201.73 and the Nasdaq composite .IXIC was up 1.43 points, or 0.03 percent, at 5,325.

>BAGHDAD In early June, two Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias under the nominal control of the Iraqi government stormed into an Iraqi military airbase north of Baghdad. Driving armored vehicles and wielding rocket launchers, they took over a building on the base.The Iraqi commander at the base, near the town of...

>Seattle-based Westland, which has a portfolio of single malts in a price range of between $70 and $125, will complement Remy's portfolio of small, niche upmarket single-malt whisky brands such as Bruichaddich on the Scottish Isle of Islay and Domaine Des Hautes Glaces in France.The United States counts for...

>China has stepped up efforts to remove non-sanctioned online content in the past year and increase surveillance measures, garnering support from top Chinese tech firms including Alibaba Holdings Ltd and Tencent Holdings Ltd, which owns WeChat."Tencent respects and complies to local laws and regulations in countries we operate in,"...

>FRANKFURT/HELSINKI Nokia-branded mobile phones are about to make a comeback via a new venture that will reunite the Nokia brand with veteran Nokia executives who aim to move into smartphones capitalizing on an existing operation that sells low-cost basic phones.HMD Global, a new Finnish company set up to revive...

>The Syrian government assault backed by allied militia has driven the rebels from more than a third of the territory they held in eastern Aleppo, threatening to crush the rebellion in its most important urban stronghold. Rivalry among rebel groups has been seen as one of their major flaws throughout...

>Borrowing by small U.S. firms slipped in October to the lowest since January, and the percentage of firms late on repaying existing loans rose to its highest in nearly four years, data released on Thursday showed.The Thomson Reuters/PayNet Small Business Lending Index fell to 121.3 from a...

>And even without increased supplies from elsewhere, if the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russia do reduce production by 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) as pledged, the cuts would not be deep enough to shrink a glut that began to build in mid-2014, traders said.

>NEW YORK It has proven one of Donald Trump's greatest strengths in building a worldwide luxury brand: An obsessive attention to detail, down to the curtains hanging in hotel rooms and the marble lining the lobby floor.As president, it may prove one of his major liabilities, presidential historians warn.

>The business daily cited sources close to the supervisory board as saying that Reitzle preferred a tie-up over going it alone and was also concerned that Praxair might turn hostile.Praxair's recent concessions to Linde include giving the German group's Munich headquarters a bigger role than initially planned and as...

>Citing an internal Economy Ministry paper it had seen, Handelsblatt said ministry experts saw Trump's stimulus plans giving the U.S. economy a boost before restrictive trade and migration policies weigh on the economy from 2019 at the latest.Handelsblatt cited the ministry report as saying the initial stimulus would...

>That will please policymakers at the European Central Bank, who are expected to announce an extension to their asset purchase program when they meet next week, a Reuters poll found last month [ECILT/EU].IHS Markit's final manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index for the euro zone chalked up its highest reading since...

>KIEV/MOSCOW Ukraine's military said its two-day missile drill starting on Thursday would avoid the airspace over Crimea, sidestepping a possible confrontation with Russia which annexed the peninsula in 2014.News of the tests had angered the Kremlin, prompting it to put its air defense forces on high alert and maneuver...

>SANTA CLARA, Havana One of history's best known double acts was temporarily reunited on Wednesday, when Fidel Castro's ashes arrived at a mausoleum housing the bones of his fellow revolutionary, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, part of a three-day cortege for the Cuban leader.Castro was cremated after he died on Friday...