March, 2016

• 30 March

  Brazil real drops as top bank weakens currency

  Bloomberg Brazil’s real led losses among its most-traded peers as the central bank stepped in to weaken the currency, extending a program announced this month after three years of trying to support the real. The real fell 0.3 percent to 3.6388 per dollar on Tuesday in Sao Paulo, the only drop among 16 major currencies, after earlier falling as much ...

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• 30 March

  Mexico’s first power auction awards 1,720 MW of wind, solar contracts

  

  Bloomberg Renewable energy developers won contracts to produce 1,720 megawatts of power in Mexico during the country’s first-ever private auction, after the government ended a decades-long state electricity monopoly in 2013. Seven wind and solar companies including Enel Green Power, SunPower Systems Mexico and Recurrent Energy won 15-year contracts to rights to provide the state-owned Comision Federal de Electricidad with ...

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• 30 March

  Despite corn and soybeans’ pile-up, US farmers plant more

  

  Bloomberg Illinois farmer David Erickson admits that what he and many U.S. farmers are about to do doesn’t seem to make much sense. With bulging stockpiles of corn and soybeans left over from last year’s harvest, they’re planting more in 2016 — even though the crops probably won’t be profitable. “It’s hard to get your head around the idea of ...

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• 30 March

  Rousseff’s power gets jolt as ally abandons Brazil government

  

  Bloomberg A move by Brazil’s largest party to depart from the ruling coalition further weakened the government and raised the odds that President Dilma Rousseff will lose the impeachment vote. The latest blow capped a month in which the least popular president in decades faced a wave of massive protests, fought accusations that she tried to obstruct a corruption probe, ...

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• 30 March

  Russia running ‘shadow government’ for east Ukraine

  Berlin / AFP Russia is running a “shadow government” in rebel-held territories of eastern Ukraine under the control of the FSB intelligence service, German daily Bild reported on Wednesday, citing minutes from an official commission. The report said that basic administrative functions of the cities of Donetsk and Lugansk are being run by six working groups at five Russian ministries. ...

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• 30 March

  Policeman killed in Dagestan bombing claimed by IS

  Moscow / AFP Russia launched an investigation on Wednesday after a police officer was killed and two were injured in a bomb attack in the volatile Dagestan region that was claimed by the IS group. Two explosive devices were detonated on a main road near the city of Kaspiysk late Tuesday as two police vehicles passed, Russian authorities said. The ...

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• 30 March

  Brussels airport delays reopening

  

  Brussels / AFP Brussels airport said it would not reopen on Wednesday despite drills to test resuming partial services after the suicide bombings that struck its departure hall and a metro train, as Belgium lowered the death toll to 32. Zaventem airport has been closed since twin bombings wrecked the departure hall on March 22, in coordinated suicide attacks that ...

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• 30 March

  Police evacuate migrant camp near Paris subway station

  PARIS / AP Police evacuated nearly 1,000 migrants on Wednesday from a makeshift camp near a Paris subway station, and hundreds of people sought to cross from Turkey to Greece despite European efforts to slow down the arrivals. The Paris operation was peaceful and authorities offered the migrants temporary lodging and help applying for asylum, the Interior Ministry said in ...

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• 30 March

  Trump, Cruz and Kasich leave Republican loyalty oath in tatters

  

  Bloomberg All three of the remaining Republican presidential candidates said at a CNN Town Hall in Milwaukee that they no longer feel beholden to the “loyalty pledge” they signed in September not to run as a third party candidate and to support the party’s presidential nominee. When asked point blank if he would pledge his support to the nominee, Trump ...

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• 30 March

  Libya mars Clinton’s foreign policy record

  

  Republican peculiarities in this political season are so numerous and lurid that insufficient attention is being paid to this: The probable Democratic nominee’s principal credential, her service as secretary of state, is undermined by a debacle of remarkable dishonesty. Hillary Clinton’s supposedly supreme presidential qualification is not her public prominence, which is derivative from her marriage, or her unremarkable tenure ...

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