Philippine police stop anti-drug crackdown amid scandal

  MANILA / AP The Philippine police chief stopped the use of the national police force in anti-drug operations on Monday and disbanded all police anti-narcotics units after the president’s brutal crackdown was used as a cover by rogue officers to kidnap and kill a South Korean man for money. Police Director-General Ronald Dela Rosa told police officers he would ...

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Saudi, Kuwait, Egypt retreat; Aramex supports Dubai

  DUBAI / Reuters Middle Eastern equity markets diverged on Monday, with last week’s top gainers pulling back on profit taking while strong quarterly earnings from courier firm Aramex bolstered Dubai. The Saudi Arabian index fell 0.7 percent, snapping seven consecutive sessions of gains. Twelve of the 14 listed petrochemical producers pulled back as Brent oil futures fell near $55 ...

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US stocks fall, bonds rise as Trump in focus

  Bloomberg US stocks fell the most since the presidential election, while Treasuries advanced with gold as Donald Trump’s order on immigration raised concern that he may follow through with isolationist policies touted on the campaign trail, overshadowing a pro-growth agenda. The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled more than 200 points, retreating below 20,000 after closing at records last week. ...

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UniCredit drops on ECB concerns over bank’s credit quality

  Bloomberg UniCredit SpA dropped in Milan trading after it said the European Central Bank had demanded an improved plan for dealing with bad loans by the end of February. The bank’s strategy for shoring up its finances may not adequately address the ECB’s concerns about credit quality, according to a filing on Monday detailing UniCredit’s plans for a 13 ...

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Citigroup plans to exit mortgage servicing

  Bloomberg Citigroup Inc. plans to exit the mortgage-servicing business by the end of 2018 to focus on making new loans. The bank reached an agreement to sell the servicing rights on Fannie Mae- and Freddie Mac-backed loans with $97 billion of outstanding balances to New Residential Mortgage LLC, New York-based Citigroup said Monday in a statement. The bank also ...

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Big data experiment tests central banking assumptions in Norway

  Bloomberg Central bankers may do well to pay less attention to the bond market and their own forecasts than they do to newspaper articles. That’s the somewhat heretical finding of a new algorithm-based index being tested at Norway’s central bank in Oslo. Researchers fed 26 years of news (or 459,745 news articles) from local business daily Dagens Naringsliv into ...

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Bank of Montreal’s Downe says female bank CEOs inevitable

  Bloomberg The head of Bank of Montreal says Canada’s biggest financial institutions are actively grooming women to become chief executive officers, ending centuries of male rule at the country’s top lenders. “There are five large Canadian banks,” CEO Bill Downe said in an interview. “I think it’s inevitable.” Canada’s biggest banks have never had a female CEO, reflecting the ...

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Pak dismisses China debt trap concern as GDP rises

  Bloomberg Pakistan is confident of managing its rising debt obligations to China as the world’s second-largest economy boosts investment in the South Asia nation by about 20 percent. Pakistan will be able to handle repayments of Chinese soft loans to the government and businesses, which are part of a more than $50 billion of projects under the so-called China-Pakistan ...

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Sony Corp to write down $1bn on movie business

  Bloomberg Sony Corp. said it will take a 112 billion yen ($1 billion) writedown in its movie business after reviewing the future profitability of its operations. The company said it would book the charge in the fiscal third quarter and is examining how that will affect its forecasts. To offset part of the loss, the company also said it ...

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Japan sees 1st trade surplus on cheaper oil

  Bloomberg Japan posted its first trade surplus in six years in 2016 thanks to a rebound in exports late in the year and persisting low oil prices, though uncertainties over US policy and global growth are overshadowing the recovery. The 4.1 trillion yen ($35.8 billion) surplus in 2016 compared with a 2.8 trillion yen deficit in 2015, the government ...

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