S Korea’s Park quits Blue House, expresses defiance

  SEOUL / AP Ousted South Korean President Park Geun-hye expressed defiance towards the corruption allegations against her as she vacated the presidential palace and returned to her home on Sunday, two days after the Constitutional Court removed her from office. In her first public comments since the court’s ruling, Park said in statement, “Although it will take time, I ...

Read More »

Dutch PM seeks to defuse tensions with Turkey

  ROTTERDAM / AP After an unprecedented diplomatic fight between the Netherlands and Turkey, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Sunday he would seek to control the damage caused by the weekend incidents when he prevented two Turkish ministers from campaigning in the Netherlands. Rutte’s actions, which came two days after several German municipalities canceled rallies that Turkish Cabinet ...

Read More »

Philippines, communist rebels agree to resume talks, truce

  MANILA / AP The Philippine government and communist rebels have agreed to resume peace talks and restore separate cease-fires after an escalation of deadly clashes, officials said on Sunday. Government and rebel negotiators will resume talks early next month and discuss the terms of a broader cease-fire, presidential adviser Jesus Dureza said. Norway, which has been brokering the negotiations, ...

Read More »

Malaysia says only 315 North Koreans left in the country

  KUALA LUMPUR / AP Malaysia’s deputy prime minister said on Sunday that 315 North Koreans are in the country and barred from leaving amid a diplomatic dispute over the killing of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s estranged half brother. The figure is lower than an estimate previously given by a government official, who had told The Associated Press ...

Read More »

The electric car rush started too early

  By BMW AG’s high standards, 2016 wasn’t great. While it was a record year in terms of sales, the profit margin of its car business was the lowest since 2010 at 8.9 percent. The company missed analysts’ estimates, and the share price dropped. So CEO Harald Krueger’s decision to reaffirm the firm’s “Automated, Connected, Electrified and Shared” strategy raised ...

Read More »

Mario Draghi tiptoes towards the QE exit

  European Central Bank President Mario Draghi knows he’ll eventually have to end the central bank’s bond-buying program and raise interest rates. But he’s rightly determined, no matter how much pressure Germany brings to bear, to keep that day as far in the future as possible — which makes the rest of this year a non-event for euro zone policy ...

Read More »

Relax about Trump’s China trademarks

  In the past two weeks, the Chinese government granted President Donald Trump 38 valuable trademarks. They come as tensions between China and the US have cooled somewhat, leading to suggestions that the award is a poorly concealed quid pro quo designed to reward a president with considerable personal business interests. On Tuesday, Senator Ben Cardin went so far as ...

Read More »

Oil price slide hits Saudi share market

  DUBAI / Reuters Major Gulf stock market indexes mostly closed lower on Sunday after oil prices plunged at the end of last week to a three-month low, but shares in Dubai’s Shuaa Capital and Saudi Arabia’s Bank Aljazira surged in response to company-specific news. Saudi Arabia’s index dropped 1.2 percent as the share prices of all 14 listed petrochemical ...

Read More »

Vitol sees ‘a lot more’ growth in US oil exports

  Bloomberg Vitol Group BV, the trader that shipped the first cargo of US crude after export restrictions ended in late 2015, predicts the country’s oil exports will grow “a lot more” because of rising production in Texas. US crude shipments briefly surged to a record 1.21 million barrels a day in mid-February, up from 32,000 in 2010, when most ...

Read More »

Papua New Guinea grasps at its own gas as LNG exports surge

  Bloomberg Less than three years after it began sending one of its most precious resources overseas, Papua New Guinea’s future may be determined by how much of it stays at home. The Pacific island nation wants some of the world’s top explorers to allow a portion of its natural gas to stay in the country, said Nixon Duban, the ...

Read More »
Send this to a friend