News Archive - 21 December 2016

Hardliner MP Javad Karimi Ghoddousi, from Mashhad constituency, stirred controversy this afternoon when he claimed Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has admitted being doped by Americans during the nuclear talks.   Karimi Ghoddousi, a staunch opponent of JCPOA, the nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, told IRGC-affiliated news...

Tuesday, 30th of Azar – December 20th, 2016 HEADLINES OF IRAN’S MORNING PAPERS   KAYHAN   -New Lebanese cabinet formed After 15 days, the new Lebanese cabinet has been formed and key posts are in the hands of Hezbollah. This has inflicted another defeat on Saudi Arabia.   -Myanmar...

>WASHINGTON A hacking group linked to the Russian government and high-profile cyber attacks against Democrats during the U.S. presidential election likely used a malware implant on Android devices to track and target Ukrainian artillery units from late 2014 through 2016, according to a new report released Thursday.The malware...

>China's home prices rose at the fastest pace on record in November. Prices are rising by more than 20 percent annually in many major cities, making housing increasingly unaffordable for the middle class."The country should accurately understand the residential feature of housing and form a housing mechanism that serves...

>RALEIGH, N.C. North Carolina's Republican-controlled legislature on Wednesday rejected a bid to repeal a state law restricting bathroom access for transgender people, which has drawn months of protests and boycotts by opponents decrying the measure as discriminatory.A one-day special legislative session ended abruptly after the state Senate voted...

>President Xi Jinping spoke with Trump soon after he won last month's election, but Beijing has been unsettled by Trump's subsequent call with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, suggestions Trump may change U.S. policy towards self-ruled Taiwan, and Trump's threats to impose tariffs on Chinese imports.In an interview with...

>SAN FRANCISCO Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL] has removed its self-driving cars from San Francisco streets, halting the autonomous program one week after its launch as the company faced a regulatory crackdown.The California Department of Motor Vehicles said on Wednesday it revoked the registration of 16 Uber self-driving cars...

>HONG KONG China's insurance regulator is making it much tougher for insurers to get new licenses as it seeks to reduce risks resulting from the aggressive business and investment practices of some players, said three people with knowledge of the matter.Concerns about the kinds of asset purchases and trading...

>TOKYO The dollar lost some steam on Thursday, slipping from its 14-year-high against a basket of currencies as investors took profits before a batch of U.S. economic data due later in the day is published. The dollar index .DXY, which measures the greenback against six major rivals, dipped 0.

>SINGAPORE Oil prices nudged higher in tepid Asian trading on Thursday, supported by a weaker dollar and optimism crude producers would abide by an agreement to curb output to prop up markets.But gains were capped by an unexpected rise in U.S. crude inventories last week and as Libya...

>TOKYO Japan's cabinet approved on Thursday a record $830 billion spending budget for fiscal 2017 that counts on low interest rates and a weak yen to limit borrowing, underscoring the challenge Tokyo faces in curbing the industrial world's heaviest debt burden.The 97.5 trillion yen ($830 billion) general-account budget...

>MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS was slightly higher in early trade, while Japan's Nikkei stock index .N225 slumped 0.6 percent. U.S. stocks, which have been on a tear since the Nov. 8 election on bets that the incoming Trump Administration will embark on growth-stimulating,...

>Offshore oil exploration company Stone Energy Corp (SGY.N), which filed for bankruptcy last week, has agreed to increase the potential recovery for shareholders in its Chapter 11 plan, according to court papers filed on Wednesday.On Dec 14, the Lafayette, Louisiana-based company joined a long list of oil producers...

>Billionaire Carl Icahn will advise Donald Trump on rescinding what the activist investor called "excessive regulation" on U.S. businesses, the president-elect's transition team announced on Wednesday.Icahn will serve as a special adviser, not a federal employee, and he will not have specific duties, Trump's team said in a...

>SAN FRANCISCO Honda Motor Co said on Wednesday it had entered into formal talks with Alphabet Inc's new self-driving division Waymo to add self-driving technology to its vehicles, marking the second potential customer for the automation software. The move comes just one week after Google spun off its self-driving unit...

>Anadarko, which bought Gulf of Mexico assets from Freeport McMoRan Inc (FCX.N) for $2 billion in September, said Wednesday's sale excluded assets of its master limited partnership, Western Gas Partners LP (WES.N). The Marcellus shale divestiture includes about 195,000 net acres, the company said on Wednesday.Sales volumes...

>VANCOUVER A small Canadian miner is confident Donald Trump's U.S. presidential win will let it proceed with an application for a copper and gold mine in Alaska that has been stalled almost three years by environmental regulators aiming to protect the world's biggest sockeye salmon fishery.Ronald Thiessen, chief...

>A Google Inc (GOOGL.O) product manager has sued the company, accusing it of unlawfully prohibiting employees from sharing concerns with coworkers, shareholders or the press, and maintaining a "spying program" to prevent leaks.In the class action lawsuit filed on Tuesday in California state court in San Francisco, the...

>BRUSSELS The EU handed an unprecedented public reprimand to a former commissioner on Wednesday for taking allowances she was not entitled to but stopped short of legal action after recouping the money.A lawyer for Neelie Kroes, who was the Dutch commissioner for 10 years until late 2014, said she...

>PALM BEACH, Fla. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump met on Wednesday with the chief executives of two major defense companies he has singled out for criticism over project costs, part of his push to save taxpayer money on high-profile contracts.The Republican met with Dennis Muilenburg of Boeing Co and...

>"The formation of the National Trade Council further demonstrates the President-elect's determination to make American manufacturing great again and to provide every American the opportunity to work in a decent job at a decent wage," the statement said. Trump made trade a centerpiece of his presidential campaign and railed against...

>Government requests for account data globally rose to 59,229 from 46,710 and more than half contained a non-disclosure order that prohibited the social networking website from notifying users.Requests for content restriction, the number of items restricted for violating local laws, decreased by 83 percent from the second half of...

>Yahoo Inc's secret scanning of customer emails at the behest of a U.S. spy agency is part of a growing push by officials to loosen constitutional protections Americans have against arbitrary governmental searches, according to legal documents and people briefed on closed court hearings.The order on Yahoo from...

>The lawsuits, filed in courts in Dusseldorf, Mannheim and Munich, Germany and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, cover patents for displays, user interfaces, software, antennas, chipsets and video coding."Since agreeing a license covering some patents from the Nokia Technologies portfolio in 2011, Apple...

>ISTANBUL Turkish prosecutors are investigating why the off-duty policeman who shot dead Russia's ambassador to Turkey was not captured alive, state media said on Wednesday, as the number of people arrested over the killing rose to 11.Ambassador Andrei Karlov was gunned down from behind while delivering a speech in...

>Lenders said last week they were suspending a deal clinched earlier this month to offer Greece short-term debt relief after leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said he would grant low-income pensioners a pre-Christmas payout."We are working constructively together with the institutions and the Greek authorities towards finding a solution...

>SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK Longtime Viacom Inc (VIAB.O) executive Doug Herzog, who oversees the networks Comedy Central and MTV, is expected to leave the company next month, according to two sources familiar with the matter.Herzog, known for helping develop such MTV hits as "The Real World" and Comedy Central's...

>Hotels in Las Vegas and Washington owned by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said on Wednesday they have entered into collective bargaining agreements with more than 500 workers, who will drop claims that the hotels violated federal labor law.The four-year contracts effective Jan. 1 will provide food and beverage...

>ZURICH/FRANKFURT Swiss biotech company Actelion (ATLN.S) has turned back to prospective bidder Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) for exclusive talks about a "strategic transaction", in an about-turn that appears to sideline rival suitor Sanofi (SASY.PA).Actelion said in a brief statement on Wednesday it was in exclusive negotiations...

>LONDON Up to 10 percent of jobs in London's financial district may be lost if Britain fails to secure adequate access to European Union markets after Brexit, a City of London official said on Wednesday.Bankers first called for full access after June's vote to leave the European Union but...

>Such an arrangement would provide individuals with an alternative to selling off assets or placing wealth in blind trusts, which president-elects traditionally do. Trump aides have discussed the idea of discretionary trusts with the Office of Government Ethics (OGE), but it was unclear whether the set-up would be for Trump,...

>Several mocking tweets were sent from the Netflix US Twitter account (@netflix). bit.ly/2if9tBe"World security is shit. We are here to prove this :)," said one tweet. Some of the tweets were deleted in less than 10 minutes.Netflix could not be immediately reached for comment. However, the company's verified...

>“Almost every level of dialogue with the United States is frozen. We don’t communicate with one another, or (if we do) we do so minimally,” Peskov saidRIA, citing an interview it said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov gave to the Mir TV station, quoted Peskov as saying he did not know...

>The Washington-based industry group said its measure for requests for mortgages rose in the week ended Dec. 16 to 407.3, up 2.5 percent from the prior week's 397.5, its lowest since 328.6 in the week ended Jan. 1.The average rate on 30-year conforming loans with...

>LONDON Traditional measures of volatility at historic lows and Wall Street stocks at new record highs went hand-in-hand in 2016 with traders fretting about bouts of wild stock-price swings and currency flash-crashes.The past year has been nothing if not paradoxical for financial markets - a landscape that will probably...

>WASHINGTON U.S. home resales unexpectedly rose in November, reaching their highest level in nearly 10 years, likely as buyers rushed into the market to lock in low interest rates in anticipation of further increases in borrowing costs.The third straight monthly increase in existing home sales, reported by the...

>Spacecom said it was buying a satellite from Boeing Satellite Systems International for $161 million. The new satellite, Amos-17, is aimed at expanding and strengthening Spacecom's coverage of growing satellite service markets in Africa, the Middle East and Europe, it said.Amos-17 is designed to operate for more than 15...

>Resentment on the southern island has simmered for years among residents opposed to the U.S. Marines' Futenma air base there. They want the base moved off the island but the central government aims to relocate it to a less-populated part of Okinawa.Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the U.

>U.S. stocks opened little changed on Wednesday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average still flirting with the elusive 20,000 mark, a day after both it and the Nasdaq Composite hit record highs. The Dow, first calculated in 1896, was less than 15 points away from the historic level. The...

>Reuters reported late on Tuesday that discussions between the Swiss and French companies are progressing, despite investors' fears that the Swiss biotech firm's chief executive and founder might not want to sell.Analysts at Basler Kantonalbank and Thurguaer Kantonalbank cited the Reuters report as the reason for Actelion's share price...

>The families of three men killed at Orlando's Pulse gay nightclub have sued Twitter Inc, Alphabet Inc's Google and Facebook Inc in federal court, accusing the companies of providing "material support" to the self-radicalized gunman. The gunman, 29-year-old Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people and wounded 53 in the deadliest...

>Verdi said in a statement it was calling on workers at three of the nine Amazon warehouses in Germany to join the strike, which will run until Dec. 24. Workers at Amazon's warehouse in Koblenz already launched a strike on Monday.Germany is Amazon's second-biggest market after the United States,...

>TOKYO Nintendo Co Ltd's (7974.T) first Mario smartphone title has set a download record but gamers baulked at the one-time cost of unlocking content, prompting investors to push the Japanese game makers' stock to a one-month low.Super Mario Run hit 25 million downloads just four days after its...

>"We regret that Washington is continuing on this destructive path," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call. "We believe this damages bilateral relations ... Russia will take commensurate measures." The United States on Tuesday widened sanctions against Russian businessmen and companies adopted after Russia's annexation of Crimea...

>TULTEPEC, Mexico Teams of forensic investigators pored over the charred remains of fireworks market outside Mexico City on Wednesday after a series of blasts a day earlier killed at least 31 people and injured dozens more in a disaster marked by disbelief and tears.Videos of the blasts at the...

>MADRID Spanish banks face having to repay customers more than 4 billion euros ($4.2 billion) after the European Court of Justice unexpectedly overturned a Spanish court ruling capping liabilities relating to a disputed mortgage clause.Banks will now have to compensate customers for what they lost on the mortgages...

>The world's largest beer maker and Coca Cola said in a joint statement on Wednesday that they had agreed the transfer of AB InBev's 54.5 percent stake in Coca-Cola Beverages (CCBA).CCBA has operations in South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Ghana, Mayotte and Comoros.The companies...

>In a statement on Wednesday, TDK said it will pay $13 per share to buy all of InvenSense, representing a 19.9 percent premium to the U.S. company's closing price on Tuesday.Earlier this month, Reuters reported TDK was in talks to buy InvenSense. The deal would allow TDK,...

>The measure had directed banks to question any individual depositing more than 5000 rupees ($74) in old discontinued notes in the days leading up to the deadline. Customers had to give the banks a satisfactory reason on why they had not deposited the funds earlier. In a one-line notification, the...

>JAKARTA Indonesian anti-terrorism police killed three suspects after a gunfight on the outskirts of the capital, Jakarta, on Wednesday and foiled a suicide bomb plot, a police spokesman said.The raid is the latest in a series over recent weeks that police say have disrupted bomb plots, raising concerns that...

>Novak said Russia's output of hard-to-recover oil would increase by 20 percent this year compared to 2015. (Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Writing by Peter Hobson; Editing by Andrew Osborn)...