Bloomberg As an opposition lawmaker in Canada’s parliament seven years ago, Justin Trudeau criticized former Prime Minister Stephen Harper for making government “totally absent from the defining issues of our time.†In his first budget as prime minister released on Tuesday, Trudeau put the federal government back at the center of the nation’s economy with almost C$120 billion ($92 billion) ...
Read More »Fed to meet 2% inflation goal
Bloomberg The Treasury market is signaling inflation expectations are rising, and one metric shows traders anticipate cost increases will reach Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen’s 2 percent target. The difference between yields on one-year U.S. government securities and same-maturity Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, a gauge of trader expectations for consumer prices over the life of the debt, climbed to 2.11 ...
Read More »EU’s 10-fold boost to Argentine sunseed imports
Bloomberg The European Union is buying more sunflower seeds from Argentina, the world’s fourth-largest producer, as a cut in export taxes and a weaker peso make imports cheaper. Shipments into the EU may be up to 10 times bigger in the 2015-16 season ending in July compared to a year earlier, said Veysel Kaya, founder of brokerage and consultancy Sunseedman ...
Read More »Brazil’s mid-March inflation slows more than all forecasts
Bloomberg Brazil’s inflation slowed more than all analysts forecast in the month through mid-March as joblessness rises and the economy heads toward its second straight year of contraction. Inflation as measured by the IPCA-15 index decelerated to 0.43 percent from 1.42 percent a month earlier, the national statistics agency said on Wednesday. That compares with the median estimate from 37 ...
Read More »Obama visit a boost to Argentina as it returns to global markets
Bloomberg Barack Obama will be the first U.S. president to visit Argentina in more than a decade as his counterpart Mauricio Macri seeks a rapprochement with the international community following a decade of financial and diplomatic isolation. Obama, arriving from an historic state visit to Cuba, will meet with Macri and is scheduled to attend a business forum in Buenos ...
Read More »â€˜No foreign powers should have say in Syria peace talks’
Geneva / AFP No foreign power should be permitted to interfere in the ongoing Syrian peace talks in Geneva, the lead government negotiator said, denying that high-level US-Russian meetings in Moscow will impact the process. “When we say that the dialogue must be between Syrians, without outside intervention, this also applies to the Russians and Americans,” Bashar Al Jaafari said. ...
Read More »US strike on Yemen camp killed 40 Qaeda militants
Aden / AFP A US air strike on an Al Qaeda training camp in southeastern Yemen killed at least 40 militants, a provincial official and a tribal source said on Wednesday. Another 25 militants were wounded in the Tuesday strike on the camp in Hajr, west of the Hadramawt provincial capital Mukalla, the provincial official said. The Pentagon had spoken ...
Read More »IS trio held in Turkey planned to attack German interests
Beirut / AFP Three suspected IS members arrested in Turkey were planning attacks on Germany’s diplomatic missions or schools in the country, which were closed last week over a terror threat, Turkish media reported on Wednesday. The three men—a Turk, an Iraqi and a Syrian—were arrested in Istanbul on Tuesday by police acting on information from both Turkey’s and Germany’s ...
Read More »Taiwan holds tour of ‘disputed island’ in bid to boost claim
Naypyidaw / AFP Taiwan on Wednesday gave its first ever international press tour of a disputed island in the South China Sea to boost its claim, less than two months after a visit by its leader sparked protests from rival claimants. Taiping is the largest island in the Spratlys chain and is administered by Taiwan, which sees it as part ...
Read More »S Korea, USA allies face miserable end: N Korea
Seoul / AFP North Korea threatened a “miserable end” for South Korea’s president and her American allies on Wednesday, in its latest colourfully worded attack. Pyongyang declared it would wage a “retaliatory battle of justice” against Park Geun-hye, with its artillery units standing ready to turn her office into a “sea of flames and ashes”. “What the DPRK warns is ...
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