Now that Secretary of State John Kerry has become the highest-ranking American official to visit Hiroshima, the door has been opened for U.S. President Barack Obama to make a far more momentous decision to visit the site of the American atomic bombing during his visit to Japan next month. The president came close to such a visit in his …

The new Ukrainian cabinet, confirmed by the parliament on Thursday, is more interesting for the people it doesn’t include than for those it does. Ukraine’s experiment with bringing foreign reformers and private sector professionals into the government is now officially over, and it has failed. President Petro Poroshenko tapped his long-time protege and ally, former parliament speaker Volodymyr Hroisman to …

BLOOMBERG Saudi Arabian stocks led declines across most Gulf Arab equity markets as investors await the outcome of a gathering of major oil producing nations in Doha. The Tadawul All Share Index dropped 1.5 percent, the most in two weeks. Dubai’s DFM General Index lost 0.7 percent as the Bloomberg GCC 200 Index, which tracks the largest and most liquid …

  ABU DHABI / EMIRATES BUSINESS The Emirates Securities Market Index has increased by 0.12% to close at 4636.94 points. Accordingly the Market Capitalization has gained AED 0.92 billion attaining AED 752.17 billion. A total of 486.95 Million Shares were traded with a total value of AED 0.58 billion during the trading session of 17-04-2016 through 6161 transactions. The number of companies …

  Reuters Al Rajhi Bank, Saudi Arabia’s second-largest lender by assets, reported a 32.8 percent rise in first-quarter net profit on Sunday, beating analyst forecasts as it cut wage costs and fee income increased. The bank made a profit of 2.02 billion riyals ($538.7 million) in the three months to March 31, up from 1.52 billion riyals in the same …

  Budapest / Reuters The scope for further cuts in the National Bank of Hungary’s record-low 1.2 percent base rate is increasingly limited, central bank Managing Director Barnabas Virag was quoted as saying on Saturday. “The room to further reduce the central bank’s base rate is increasingly limited,” Virag, who is not a rate-setter but is in charge of monetary …

  Bloomberg Indonesia’s central bank said it will use the seven-day reverse repo rate as its benchmark policy instrument to help spur lending and support growth in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy. The new benchmark — which is the interest the central bank pays to borrow from commercial lenders, currently at 5.5 percent — will replace the 12-month reference rate of …

  Reuters National Bank of Kuwait , the Gulf Arab state’s largest commercial lender, reported a 18.2 percent fall in first-quarter net profit, it said in a statement on Sunday, as it failed to repeat a one-off gain from an asset sale. The bank made a net profit of 78.9 million dinars ($261.6 million) in the three months to March …

  Bloomberg The European Central Bank (ECB) may have the freedom to pursue the most extreme forms of monetary financing should the economic situation warrant, Deutsche Bank AG said. “The ECB at face value faces the strictest legal obstacle to monetary financing, not least due to the historical inflation traumas experienced by member states,” analysts including London-based George Saravelos said …

  Bloomberg The Swiss National Bank (SNB) has room to cut interest rates further below zero and is willing to increase the size of its balance sheet through currency intervention to prevent an already “significantly overvalued” franc from strengthening, President Thomas Jordan said. “There’s a willingness to intervene if necessary, and we can use our balance sheet if it makes …