News Archive - 4 September 2016

By: Massoud Rezaei   The rapid pace of political shifts in the Middle East of these years is striking. Friendships and hostilities have become surprisingly mercurial, expiring not in decades or years, but months. Alliances and splits are shakier than ever. The Middle East has now stepped into a...

Iran’s official calendar has named the first week of Shahrivar (last week of August) after the publicly elected administration. This fourth and last one for the Rouhani administration’s first term has been put to good use. The week started with the cabinet visiting Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

(Tehran's Friday prayers' leader Arash Mirsepasi. Source: Arash Mirsepasi/YJC)   As we approach the first anniversary of Mina stampede, death of over 2000 pilgrims during the annual hajj pilgrimage in Mecca and Medina, the tone of Friday prayers' leaders across the country against Saudi Arabia became bitter than ever.

>SEOUL North Korea fired three ballistic missiles into the sea off its east coast on Monday, South Korea's military said, as the leaders of the Group of 20 major economies held a summit in China, the North's main diplomatic ally.The missiles were fired from a region south of the...

>More signs of stability in China's economy support the growing consensus that China's central bank will hold off on further monetary easing such as interest rate cuts through at least the end of the year. Stronger activity in the services sector, along with a stagnating manufacturing industry, also paint a...

>HONG KONG Hong Kong residents voted on Sunday in record numbers for a bitterly contested legislative election, with a push for independence among a disaffected younger generation of candidates and voters stoking tension with China's government.Hong Kong's pro-democracy opposition is hoping to maintain a one-third veto bloc in the...

>TOKYO The U.S. dollar held firm in early Asian trade on Monday after disappointing U.S. jobs growth figures for August did little to change investors' perception that the Federal Reserve is likely to raise interest rates in coming months.Nonfarm payrolls rose by 151,000 jobs last month, the...

>TOKYO Asian shares rose on Monday, getting a tailwind from gains on Wall Street after a weaker-than-expected U.S. jobs report prompted markets to trim expectations that the Federal Reserve would hike interest rates as early as this month.MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was 0.5...

>MANILA The body of 22-year-old pedicab driver Eric Sison lies in a coffin in a Manila slum with a chick pacing across his casket, placed there in keeping with a local tradition to symbolically peck at the conscience of his killers.Cellphone video footage circulating on social media purports to...

> The Wall Street Journal, in a report dated Sunday, said Hanjin filed for protection under chapter 15 on Friday to a court in New Jersey. Hanjin filed for court receivership on Wednesday after its creditor banks decided to end financial support for South Korea's top container shipper. Hanjin's shares...

>London Brent crude for November delivery LCOc1 was down 18 cents at $46.65 a barrel by 2245 GMT (6.45 p.m. ET) on Sunday.The global benchmark settled up $1.38 on Friday after a weak U.S. jobs report hurt the dollar. It was also helped by...

>BERLIN German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats were beaten into third place by the anti-immigrant and anti-Islam Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in a north-eastern state election on Sunday, TV exit polls showed.In a stinging defeat for Merkel in her home district that could weaken her chances of a...

>The online edition of the German business daily quoted the diplomats as saying that Athens had only implemented two of 15 political reforms that are conditions for the bailout money. Above all, they said, Greece had been slow to privatize state assets.Under a deal signed last year with euro...

>MONZA, Italy A takeover of Formula One by Liberty Media, rumored to be imminent, could be good news for the sport but Bernie Ecclestone is likely to remain at the helm for some time yet, paddock insiders said on Sunday.German magazine auto motor und sport reported at the Italian...

>Speaking on CTV's "Question Period" politics talk show, Mulroney, who in the 1980s signed a Canada-U.S. free trade deal, said scrapping NAFTA will hurt the United States."Millions and millions of jobs in the United States depend directly upon their trade with Canada and Mexico," Mulroney said. "You tear...

>WASHINGTON Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine on Sunday defended Hillary Clinton against criticism over her handling of classified information as secretary of state, saying she was unaware of the sensitivity of some information she exchanged over email because it had been "improperly labeled."In July, the Federal Bureau of...

>After the two met in Mexico last Wednesday, Trump told reporters they did not discuss his demand that Mexico pay the cost for construction of a wall on the border between the two countries.Hours later, however, Pena Nieto said on Twitter he did raise the issue of the cost...

>CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla./JERUSALEM Israel's Space Communication Ltd said on Sunday it could seek $50 million or a free flight from Elon Musk's SpaceX after a Spacecom communications satellite was destroyed last week by an explosion at SpaceX's Florida launch site.Officials of the Israeli company said in a conference...

>The meeting will follow the conclusion of the two-day G20 summit that started on Sunday in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou. Tension flared up last month after more than a dozen Chinese coastguard and other government ships sailed near a group of East China Sea islets controlled by Tokyo...

> A spokesman for Bayer, which is due to hold an investor conference in Cologne on Sept. 20, declined to comment on the report. Sources told had told Reuters last month that U.S. seed company Monsanto had given its German suitor limited access to its books after turning down...

>In a 15-page report published on the eve of a summit of the Group of 20 big economies in China, a Japanese government task force formed to respond to "Brexit" also warned of a possible outflow of drug research and development investment from Britain, though it said it expected the...

>HANGZHOU, China British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Sunday she wanted her security advisers to help review a delayed nuclear power investment from China - a source of diplomatic tension - as she arrived for a G20 summit.May upset Chinese officials in July by delaying a $24 billion...

>"Our economy has stabilized .... We plan to reduce the budget deficit further, and to continue to work on cutting the budget's revenues dependency on the exports of hydrocarbons," Putin said. Russia's economy contracted by 3.7 percent in 2015 due to weaker oil prices, the country's chief commodity export, and...

>VIENTIANE The Philippines expressed "grave concern" on Sunday and demanded an explanation from China's ambassador over what it said was an increasing number of Chinese boats near the disputed Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea.A Philippines air force plane flew over the rocky outcrop on Saturday and spotted...

>A joint "fact sheet", issued a day after U.S. President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping held talks, also said the two countries had committed "not to unnecessarily limit or prevent commercial sales opportunities for foreign suppliers of ICT (information and communications technology) products or services".While...

>HANGZHOU, China President Barack Obama said the United States and Russia were working on Sunday to try to finalize a ceasefire in Syria that would allow more deliveries of humanitarian aid in the war-torn country.A deal could be announced as early as Sunday, a senior U.S. State Department...

>"It's something we would consider amongst a number of different things," David Lametti, parliamentary secretary to International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland, said on CTV's "Question Period." Canada's former Conservative government clamped down on takeover bids for energy companies by foreign state-owned enterprises. The restriction came after China's CNOOC Ltd...