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LONDON Britain has contacted the president of General Motors (GM.N) to express concerns after the American firm opened talks to sell its European operations, including the Vauxhall plants in England, to France’s PSA Group (PEUP.PA). Britain’s Department for Business said the government remained in close contact with GM and was monitoring the situation after the two companies said on Tuesday that they were in talks over a […]

Submitted by Don Quijones via WolfStreet.com, Spain’s three biggest banks, Banco Santander, BBVA and Caixa Bank, have got off to a flying start this year having issued €8.6 billion in new debt, seven times the amount they sold during the same period of last year. The last time they rolled out so much debt so quickly was in 2007, the year that Spain’s spectacular real estate bubble […]

TOKYO Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) said on Wednesday it was recalling all of the roughly 2,800 zero-emission Mirai cars on the road due to problems with the output voltage generated by their fuel cell system. Toyota said that under unique driving conditions, such as if the accelerator pedal is depressed to the wide open throttle position after driving on a long descent while using cruise control, there […]

As central bankers seek to wean markets off quantitative easing and exit the dangerous experiment of negative rates, they increasingly fret about the resilience of credit markets. How worried should they be? The US Treasury’s Office for Financial Research, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England have all issued warnings in their financial stability reports voicing concern over whether we might see fire sales that […]

By Colin Packham and Aaron Bunch | SYDNEY SYDNEY Officials at an Australian immigration centre in Papua New Guinea are increasing pressure on asylum seekers to return to their home countries voluntarily, including offering large sums of money, amid fears a deal for the United States to take refugees has fallen through. About a dozen Bangladeshi and Nepalese asylum seekers on Manus Island told Reuters they are […]

Polls open in heated vote for Indonesian capital’s governor Niniek Karmini and Stephen Wright, Associated Press February 14, 2017 Updated: February 14, 2017 6:26pm Photo: Achmad Ibrahim, AP An Indonesian Muslim woman holds a voting paper at a polling station during an election for Jakarta governor in Jakarta, Indonesia, Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2017. Voting began in the election for governor of the Indonesian capital after a months-long […]

When Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen testifies before a Senate committee on the state of the economy on Tuesday, there will be plenty tuning in who believe the epitaph for the three-decade rally in the bond market has been rightly written. US president Donald Trump’s plan to ramp up government spending and axe corporate taxes threatens to accelerate inflation, push up interest rates and widen the deficit […]

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By Manolo Serapio Jr | SANTA CRUZ, Philippines SANTA CRUZ, Philippines His brother kept telling him that the mine would reopen and he would be hired again: but when Winston Ordonez didn’t get a call from a mining firm, he took a laptop charger cable, tied it around his neck and hanged himself in his kitchen. Ordonez worked at the nickel mine operated by Eramen Minerals Inc […]

BRUSSELS A Belgian minister arrived by bike to a news conference to promote cycling on Tuesday, only to find it had been stolen when he left half an hour later. Ben Weyts, minister of mobility for the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders, unveiled a plan to invest 300 million euros ($320 million) in cycle lanes until 2019, as part of a wider program to promote alternative modes of […]

The US economy and fiscal policy face an uncertain path under the administration of Donald Trump, Janet Yellen warned on Tuesday as she declared “monetary policy is not on a preset course” but said it would be “unwise” to raise rates too slowly. Testifying before Congress on Tuesday, the Federal Reserve chair painted a picture of an economy with accelerating growth, higher inflation and a robust labour […]

Credit: Michigan Technological University Interested in making an investment that promises a 100 percent return on your money, and then some? Buy a low-cost, open-source 3-D printer, plug it in and print household items. In a recent study published in Technologies, Michigan Technological University Associate Professor Joshua Pearce set out to determine how practical and cost effective at-home 3-D printing is for the average consumer. He […]

By Pamela Barbaglia and Edward Taylor | LONDON/FRANKFURT LONDON/FRANKFURT PSA Group (PEUP.PA) is holding talks with General Motors (GM.N) about buying its European Opel division, the French carmaker said on Tuesday, a deal which would increase competition for market leader Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE). The maker of Peugeot, Citroen and DS cars is “exploring a number of strategic initiatives with GM with the aim of increasing its profitability and […]

Kim Jong Nam, the older half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, has been assassinated at Kuala Lumpur airport, Korean-language media reported late on Tuesday. He was reportedly killed by two women using poisoned needles who fled the scene by taxi, the reports said. The older Mr Kim was once considered to be an heir to the late Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s former leader, but […]

A few days before the retreat, I met up with the man who, perhaps more than any other figure in the conservative movement, had maneuvered the party toward complete and unbending opposition to Obamacare: Michael Needham of the Heritage Foundation. Needham, 35, is the chief executive of Heritage Action for America, a feral cur of a lobbying organization established by the venerable conservative think tank in 2010 […]

A striking feature of global financial markets since the crises of 2007 and 2008 has been the high propensity of many wealthy private investors to sit out all the turmoil, holding cash in bank accounts rather than in riskier assets. Might that be about to change? The word among bankers in conservative Switzerland — the world’s largest centre for cross-border private wealth management — is that it […]

SEOUL/KUALA LUMPUR The half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has been killed in Malaysia, the Yonhap News Agency and other South Korean media outlets reported on Tuesday, citing unidentified sources. Yonhap, citing a South Korean government source, said Kim Jong Nam was killed on Monday morning in Malaysia. It gave no more details. TV Chosun, a cable television network, said separately that Kim was poisoned at […]

By Jutarat Skulpichetrat | CHONBURI, Thailand CHONBURI, Thailand The most senior U.S. officer to visit Thailand since a 2014 coup emphasised the importance of restoring democracy on Tuesday as he launched the annual Cobra Gold military exercise. The United States scaled down its presence at Asia’s largest annual multinational military exercise as one of the former U.S. administration’s steps to pressure the junta. With ties improving even […]

SYDNEY Asian shares inched to 19-month highs on Tuesday as the potential for economic stimulus in the United States underpinned the dollar, bond yields and Wall Street stocks. Yet caution bled into markets ahead of testimony by the head of the Federal Reserve, which could highlight the likelihood of two or more U.S. interest rate hikes this year. Japanese shares also ran into trouble after Toshiba Corp […]

Last year, Google Chrome was the speediest Windows 10 web browser by a mile. This year, it’s a different story. Picking out the best Windows 10 web browser isn’t easy at all. The worse, however, by a country mile, is Internet Explorer 11. sjvn To put today’s browsers to the test I ran them on the latest shipping edition of Windows 10 Home: Version 10240.17236. I ran […]

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty recently sent an email to her employees detailing her involvement with, and counseling of, the Trump administration. In it, Rometty claimed that her meetings with the Trump administration as part of the president’s business advisory are purely an opportunity to promote IBM’s values and technological expertise. “IBM does not espouse a partisan or political point of view,” the letter states. “Alone […]

By Noel Randewich | SAN FRANCISCO SAN FRANCISCO Shares of Apple (AAPL.O) rose to a record high close on Monday, buoyed by Wall Street’s expectations that the release of a 10th-anniversary iPhone and pent-up customer demand will shore up lackluster sales. The largest component of the S&P 500 and a core holding on Wall Street, Apple’s stock climbed 0.9 percent to end at $133.29, breaking above its […]

DuPont and Chemours Co have agreed to pay $671 million in cash to settle thousands of lawsuits involving a leak of a toxic chemical used to make Teflon, the companies said on Monday. Shares of Chemours jumped 13 percent. The company said it would pay half of the settlement, although liability for litigation connected with the chemical was passed onto it when DuPont spun it off in […]

February 13, 2017 by: Anjli Raval, Oil and Gas Correspondent Steep Opec production cuts could ease an oil market surplus quicker than expected in 2017, the oil cartel signalled in its first output assessment since a deal to curb supplies and bolster prices came into effect. After more than two years of allowing market forces to balance supply and demand, Opec in November agreed to again influence […]

February 13, 2017 by: Anjli Raval, Oil and Gas Correspondent Steep Opec production cuts could ease an oil market surplus quicker than expected in 2017, the oil cartel signalled in its first output assessment since a deal to curb supplies and bolster prices came into effect. After more than two years of allowing market forces to balance supply and demand, Opec in November agreed to again influence […]

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