By Claire Milhench | LONDON LONDON Global investors’ equity holdings rose to six-month highs in December on bets that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s promised fiscal splurge would spur higher growth and inflation, a Reuters monthly poll showed on Thursday. Trump’s plans to cut taxes and boost spending have sent Wall Street .DJI .IXIC to record highs in December as investors pile into everything from banks, to energy […]
A Harvard-led study has found that elderly patients treated by female doctors while hospitalized were less likely to succumb to death within 30 days of their admission, or be readmitted 30 days after being discharged compared with those who were cared for by male doctors. Publishing their findings in JAMA Internal Medicine, Yusuke Tsugawa and colleagues estimated that if male doctors achieved the same results as their […]
Google and Apple are the most valuable companies in the world, and undoubted winners from the smartphone boom. In their wake lies Nokia’s handset business, which was sold to Microsoft and later wound down. But, when it comes to defending themselves against the arsenal of patents Nokia built up in its years at the top, the US tech giants want the world to view them as victims […]
After five grinding years of losses, commodities are set to end higher in 2016 and investors are staking out increasingly bold calls for the coming year. This reflects signs that the prolonged decline in markets such as oil and metals is finally having an effect. Cuts in capital spending by producers have begun to choke off supplies as global demand creeps higher. It might not be a […]
By Michelle Martin and Michael Nienaber | BERLIN BERLIN Investigators found fingerprints of a Tunisian suspect in the Berlin Christmas market attack on the door of the truck that ploughed through the crowds, killing 12, German media said on Thursday, as a nationwide manhunt for the migrant was underway. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack in which a truck smashed through wooden huts selling gifts, […]
Gulf stock markets barely moved in quiet, early trade on Thursday before the announcement of Saudi Arabia’s 2017 state budget, expected in the afternoon. The Saudi stock index edged up 0.1 percent in the first 40 minutes. Much activity focused on second-tier stocks such as Saudi Printing and Packaging, up 4.9 percent, although Saudi Electricity rose 0.9 percent. Saudi Electricity’s profits rose in the wake of the […]
LONDON “My tax return was on my yacht … which caught fire” – just one of the dozens of unusual excuses the British government’s tax collector said it receives each year from customers who fail to complete their returns on time. “A wasp in my car caused me to have an accident and my tax return, which was inside, was destroyed,” was another, while several blamed children, […]
GENEVA More than 4,000 fighters were evacuated overnight from east Aleppo to opposition-held areas, under an agreement between the warring sides overseen by the International Committee of the Red Cross and Syrian Arab Red Crescent, the ICRC said on Thursday. “Overnight between Wednesday and Thursday, in one of the last stages of the evacuation, more than 4,000 fighters were evacuated in private cars, vans, and pick-ups from […]
A study by RMIT University has found that around 2 million Australians are often risking data breaches by logging into internet banking and conducting other financial transactions on unsecured public Wi-Fi networks. In compiling its report [PDF] Practicing safe public Wi-Fi: Assessing and managing data-security risks, RMIT surveyed 1,200 adult Australians, asking explicitly what they do on public Wi-Fi networks, as well as what they know about […]
BEIJING China on Thursday dismissed accusations from Taiwan that it engaged in “dollar diplomacy” to get Sao Tome and Principe to ditch ties with the self-ruled island, saying a petty Taiwan was besmirching China’s good name. The tiny West African state’s decision this week has angered Taiwan, which says the move will not help already strained relations with China. Taiwan says China took advantage of Sao Tome’s […]
AMMAN Thousands of rebels and fighters were still waiting on Thursday to be evacuated from the last rebel bastion in Aleppo city but difficulties including harsh weather were complicating the final phase of the operation, a rebel spokesman said. Ahmed Kara Ali, the spokesman for the rebel group Ahrar al Sham, which is involved in the negotiations, told Reuters “large numbers” were left but that it was […]
Trump officials — as well as Beach and Hicks — initially stayed silent, ignoring repeated requests for comment. But on Tuesday, the Trump transition team issued a statement. It read: “The Opening Day event and details that have been reported are merely initial concepts that have not been approved or pursued by the Trump family. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump are avid outdoorsmen and supporters of […]
Nokia was the world’s leading mobile phone maker from 1998 until 2011 when it bet on Microsoft’s Windows mobile platform, which proved to be a flop Nokia announced Wednesday it is suing Apple in German and US courts for patent infringement, claiming the US tech giant was using Nokia technology in “many” products without paying for it. Finnish Nokia, once the world’s top mobile phone maker, said […]
2016 was fact-checking’s finest year [1]. No it wasn’t, it was the year of “post-truth” [2] — some preferred “post-fact” [3] — and fact-checking is a fool’s errand. The discussion about facts in journalism worldwide has rarely been as fractured and animated as it has been in 2016, so we collected 366 links, one for each day of the year, to try and make sense of what […]
By Lawrence Delevingne and Olivia Oran | NEW YORK NEW YORK Wall Street holiday parties this year took place in luxury venues like the Waldorf Astoria, featured women dressed as glowing angels, and had fine wine, scotch and bourbon on hand. But organizers of the soirées, conscious of tighter budgets and public scrutiny, are not eager to discuss the merriment. Big financial firms started curtailing year-end bashes […]
The man being sought in connection with Monday’s attack on a Berlin Christmas market had been under police surveillance for months on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack, but later fell off the authorities’ radar screen. A manhunt was under way across Europe on Thursday after German authorities issued an appeal for information about the suspect, a 24-year-old Tunisian man, Anis Amri. Germany’s federal prosecutor put out a Europe-wide […]
The series of scattershot remarks has further unsettled a turbulent period in American foreign policy. It underscores Mr. Trump’s challenge in fashioning a coherent approach to the problems he will inherit in Asia, Europe and the Middle East, especially working with a team that consists of retired generals and an oil executive, few of whom have experience in the daily cascade of crises that confront every White […]
Thursday 08:10 GMT Overview European stock indices are slipping back, following Wall Street’s lacklustre lead as the Dow Jones Industrial Average moved further away from the 20,000-point milestone while the US dollar weakened, also cooling from its strong run. Hot topic European banking stocks are under scrutiny. It comes after news that Monte dei Paschi di Siena is to be rescued by the Italian state using a […]
This week in 1968, Apollo 8, the first crewed Saturn V launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Dec. 21, 1968. Here, the S-IC stage is being erected for final assembly of the Saturn V launch vehicle in Kennedy’s Vehicle Assembly Building. Source link
Oman Air is revising its check-in luggage regulations from January 1, allowing only one 30 kilogram suitcase per person, it was announced on Wednesday. Passengers will no longer be permitted to split the 30kg into two or three pieces, an airline official told Times of Oman. The airline will, however, reduce the excess baggage charges. Under the new rules, passengers turning up for flights with excess baggage […]
MANILA Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced on Thursday he would halt all online gambling in his country. Duterte made the comment while announcing a 2017 budget that focused heavily on populist measures. He gave no timeframe for such a ban or details on its scope. The firebrand former mayor has been a worry for the country’s booming online gambling industry and in August scrapped one firm’s 13-year […]
Self-driving cars are rolling out much faster than expected, from Uber testing autonomous taxis in San Francisco to Google spinning off its self-driving car division into Waymo and partnering with Fiat-Chrysler. To Fiat, this likely looked like the fastest and best way to get up to speed, considering that rivals like Ford, Honda, and Toyota have a head start. It wasn’t always like […]
US drone delivery service Flirtey announced that it has started delivering convenience store items to customers’ homes on December 20, 2016 US drone delivery service Flirtey on Monday announced that its self-piloting flying machines have whisked flu medicine, hot food and more from 7-Eleven convenience stores to customers’ homes. The Nevada-based company boasted of being the first drone service to complete regular commercial deliveries to residences in […]
Iceland Of all the world leaders shamed over hidden wealth stashed offshore, none was more unfortunate than Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson. The hapless prime minister of Iceland was caught on camera desperately trying to work out how to explain the presence of his signature on the documents of Wintris Inc, a company in the British Virgin Islands that held shares in one of the country’s failed banks. As […]
