NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Australian dollar fell on Wednesday after the country’s central bank opened the door to a possible rate cut as it acknowledged growing economic risks, while the U.S. dollar held steady against a basket of major currencies. In a shift from the Reserve Bank of Australia’s long-standing tightening bias, Governor Philip […]
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp announced a $5.5 billion share buyback on Wednesday as it reported a 60 percent increase in quarterly operating profit buoyed by rising valuations for its technology investments. Funded by proceeds from the bumper IPO of its domestic telco, founder and Chief Executive Masayoshi Son said the buyback – […]
SINGAPORE – A Singapore-flagged oil tanker, which was reported to have been seized by private militiamen in Cameroon last week, has been released. In a statement on Wednesday (Feb 6), Singapore-based firm Eastern Pacific Shipping said it had confirmed the vessel, named Barents Sea, had departed the port of Limbe in Cameroon with all 26 […]
MANILA (DPA) – Hundreds of thousands of people in two Muslim-dominated provinces of the southern Philippines went to the poll on Wednesday (Feb 6) for the second part of a referendum on a new autonomous region despite violence the day before. Two explosions and a grenade blast took place in the provinces of Lanao del Norte […]
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Wednesday that he and other U.S. officials will travel to Beijing next week for trade talks, aiming to clinch a deal to avert a March 2 increase in U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods. Mnuchin said in an interview with CNBC that the talks he and […]
NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. mortgage applications fell for a third consecutive week even as some 30-year home borrowing costs declined to their lowest levels since April 2018 in line with lower bond yields, the Mortgage Bankers Association said on Wednesday. The Washington-based group’s seasonally adjusted index on mortgage activity decreased 2.5 percent to 378.9 […]
MEDAN, INDONESIA (AFP) – Almost 200 men identified by police as Bangladeshi have been found crammed into a shophouse in Indonesia, authorities said on Wednesday (Feb 6). Police in the city of Medan on Sumatra island were tipped off to the group by suspicious residents who lived nearby. When police raided the shophouse on Tuesday […]
BEIJING — At least eight people were killed and seven wounded when a man in a rural part of northwest China attacked fellow residents with a knife before being arrested, the police said Wednesday, as the country was celebrating the Lunar New Year. A brief police account of the attack on Tuesday in semirural Huining […]
SEOUL (AFP) – Donald Trump’s announcement of a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un later this month in Vietnam sets up another box-office summit between the two mercurial leaders who were once bitter verbal enemies. Trump said he would meet Kim on Feb 27 and 28 in Vietnam, although he did not specify […]
TOKYO (DPA) – Japanese authorities were battling to contain swine flu on Wednesday (Feb 6) after the virus was detected at multiple sites in central Japan. Japanese soldiers and local government officials began slaughtering around 6,600 pigs at a farm in Toyota City in Aichi prefecture following the confirmation of an outbreak of swine fever, […]