News Archive - 2 January 2017

Monday, 13th of Dey – January 2nd, 2017 HEADLINES OF IRAN’S MORNING PAPERS   KAYHAN   -Ansarullah: We will draw the fight deep inside Saudi Arabia The Speaker of Yemen’s Ansarullah movement has stated that if the al-Saud regime’s aggression against Yemen continues, the army and popular forces of...

(Picture: Hashemi Rafsanjani with the late King Abdullah during a visit to Saudi Arabia. Rafsanjani has been frequently criticized by hardliner media for his friendly relations with the Saudi household.)   Last Friday, the London-based Arabic newspaper al-Hayat quoted Saudi Pilgrimage Minister Mohammed Bentin that Riyadh had invited...

>WASHINGTON Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives agreed on Monday to weaken a nonpartisan ethics watchdog on the grounds it had grown too intrusive, prompting Democrats to charge they were scaling back independent oversight ahead of a new legislative session.As they returned to Washington following a holiday...

>SYDNEY The U.S. dollar held firm on Tuesday as the prospect of rising U.S. interest rates this year kept sentiment bullish, while a surprisingly upbeat reading on Chinese manufacturing gave the Aussie dollar a lift.A holiday in Japan made for quiet early trade, leaving the dollar steady...

>A boom in consumer drone sales has spawned a counter-industry of start-ups aiming to stop drones flying where they shouldn't, by disabling them or knocking them out of the sky.Dozens of start-up firms are developing techniques - from deploying birds of prey to firing gas through a bazooka -...

>SINGAPORE Global markets marched confidently into 2017 on Tuesday, with Asian stocks extending gains after European shares surged to their highest in a year, while the dollar resumed its climb after last week's stumble.Markets were buoyed by signs of solid factory growth in China and Europe, giving the global...

>SEOUL Oil prices rose in the first trading hours of 2017, buoyed by hopes that a deal between OPEC and non-OPEC members to cut production, which kicked in on Sunday, will be effective in draining the global supply glut.International Brent crude oil prices LCOc1 were trading up 31 cents,...

>"The sale reflects our strategy to simplify our business and improve capital efficiency," ANZ Deputy Chief Executive Graham Hodges said in a statement.China COSCO Shipping Corp and Shanghai Sino-Poland Enterprise Management Development Corp were named as the purchasers in the deal, representing a price-to-book ratio of about 1.1...

>"Now that the Twitter APAC team is working directly with Chinese advertisers, this is the right time for me to leave the company," she wrote. Twitter grew its Greater China advertiser base nearly 400 percent over the past two years, she wrote, making it one of the company's fastest growing...

>In a statement, the rebel groups also said that any territorial advances by the army and Iran-backed militias that are fighting alongside it would end the fragile ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey, which back opposing sides, that came into effect on Friday."The regime and its allies have continued...

>WASHINGTON A new, Republican-controlled U.S. Congress convenes on Tuesday eager to repeal major portions of President Barack Obama's healthcare law and roll back environmental and financial industry regulations, but could quickly become embroiled in fights over President-elect Donald Trump's Cabinet choices.Despite his promise to unite a deeply divided...

>The vast majority, $84.13 billion, were assets held abroad, the AFIP tax agency said in a report. Argentines had until the end of 2016 to declare assets and pay a 10 percent fine to protect themselves from prosecution for tax evasion.They can still declare until March 31, though...

>SAO PAULO The owner of Brazilian juice maker Natural One SA has sold a minority stake to Brazilian investment firm Gávea Investimentos Ltda for an undisclosed price, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter.Ricardo Ermirio de Moraes, who founded Natural One a decade ago in the southeastern...

>MILAN The sale of three small Italian banks, rescued in 2015, to bigger rival UBI (UBI.MI) has been delayed by at least a week at the request of the European Commission, three sources close to the matter said. The sale of Banca Etruria, Banca Marche and CariChieti to UBI,...

>"There is zero evidence that they influenced the election," Sean Spicer told Fox News.Due to become White House press secretary when Trump enters the White House on Jan. 20, Spicer told CNN the president-elect would see the intelligence report once it was completed later this week. On Saturday, Trump...

>The sources said clashes were ongoing at both police stations. (Reporting by Ghazwan Hassan; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)...

>CARACAS Venezuela has issued $5 billion in bonds maturing in 2036 to a state-owned bank, a source familiar with the situation said on Monday, in an unorthodox operation that does not immediately bring in new funds for the cash-strapped OPEC nation.State-run Banco de Venezuela bought the dollar-denominated notes in...

>Mexicans abroad sent home nearly $2.4 billion in transfers in November, 24.7 percent higher than a year earlier, marking their fastest pace of expansion since March 2006, according to Mexican central bank data on Monday.President-elect Trump ran a campaign steeped in anti-Mexican rhetoric and threatened to halt...

>Perdue, a Democrat-turned-Republican who founded a grain and fertilizer business, served on Trump's agricultural advisory committee during his presidential campaign.The official gave no other details about Trump's choice for agriculture secretary, one of the few remaining posts Trump has to fill as he assumes the White House on Jan.

>BRASILIA Around 60 people were killed in a bloody prison riot in the Amazon jungle city of Manaus sparked by a war between rival drug gangs, officials said on Monday, in the worst violence in over two decades in Brazil's overcrowded penitentiary system. The head of security for Amazonas state,...

>SAO PAULO Brazil's renewable power generation company Renova Energia SA is in talks to sell its wind farm Alto Sertao II to the Brazilian unit of AES Corp, known as AES Brasil, for 600 million reais to 700 million reais ($214 million), a source with direct knowledge of the matter...

>SEOUL North Korea has been working through 2016 on developing components for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), making the isolated nation's claim that it was close to a test-launch plausible, international weapons experts said on Monday.North Korea has been testing rocket engines and heat-shields for an ICBM while developing...

>China has made reform of its lumbering and uncompetitive state-owned enterprises - many in heavy industries - a priority as excess capacity and idle workers bleed what precious resources such "zombie" companies have.Policymakers are counting on growth in the services sector to help counter the ill effects of the...

>HONOLULU U.S. President Barack Obama will deliver a farewell address on Jan. 10 to reflect on his time in office and say thank you to his supporters, he said in an email statement released on Monday.Obama, noting that the first president of the United States, George Washington, had...

>LONDON Digital currency bitcoin kicked off the new year by jumping above $1,000 for the first time in three years late on Sunday, having outperformed all central-bank-issued currencies with a 125 percent climb in 2016.Bitcoin - a web-based "cryptocurrency" that has no central authority, relying instead on thousands of...

>LONDON The dollar recovered from a two-week low against a basket of six major currencies on Monday, though trade was thin with many markets closed for the New Year holiday. The greenback had soared to 14-year highs in December, boosted by market expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve will...

>BAGHDAD/TIKRIT, Iraq An Islamic State car bomb killed 24 people in a busy square in Baghdad's sprawling Sadr City district on Monday, and the militants cut a key road north from the capital to Mosul, their last major stronghold in the country.An online statement distributed by Amaq news agency,...

>LONDON Euro zone stocks climbed to their highest in over a year on Monday - the first trading day of 2017 for those markets that were open - after data showed manufacturers in the currency bloc ramped up activity at the fastest pace in over five years.With all of...

>In a round-up of its military operations over the past 24 hours in support of rebels in northern Syria, the army said the Russian aircraft destroyed Islamic State targets in the area of Dayr Kak, 8 km (5 miles) southwest of al-Bab.The Turkish military operation, dubbed 'Euphrates Shield', was...

>The jihadist group made the claim in a statement on one of its Telegram channels, a method it has used to claim attacks in the past. There was no immediate comment from Turkish officials."In continuation of the blessed operations that Islamic State is conducting against the protector of the...

>IHS Markit's final 2016 manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index for the euro zone registered 54.9 in December, in line with an earlier flash estimate and its highest since April 2011.That was above both the 50 mark which separates growth from contraction and November's 53.7. An index measuring output,...

>MUMBAI Smartphone component maker Wistron Corp, which counts Apple Inc among its customers, has applied for permission to expand its plant in the Indian city of Bengaluru, a high-ranking regional government official said on Monday.The Taiwanese contract manufacturer has also requested that its application be fast-tracked, the official at...

>LONDON Last year turned out to be a disappointing one for new drug approvals with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration clearing just 22 new medicines for sale, the lowest number since 2010 and sharply down on 2015's tally of 45.Across the Atlantic, the European Medicines Agency recommended...