Summary: News Corp revenue miss, Sotheby's upside surprise, Shire buys VirPharma for $4.2bln; activist Icahn's Transocean win; Possible banks chatroom change. Bobbi Rebell reports.
The industry's most influential bipartisan backers are leaving, but others will take their place — at least among the GOP.
Swiss food giant Nestle reported slimmer sales than expected in the first quarter on Thursday, weighed down by weak demand for frozen pizza and snacks in North America."Weakness in the US centered around frozen pizza and snacks, where we saw a combination of soft consumer demand, intense price competition and a reduction in retailer inventories in the quarter," Manz said.
Japan’s space agency announced Friday a plan to launch a major upgrade to its satellite imaging system, as a new flagship rocket is put to the test for a third time. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency that an H3 rocket will be launched from the Tanegashima Space Center, on a southwestern Japanese island, early afternoon on June 30, with a launch window that runs through the end of July. The rocket will be carrying an Advanced Land Observation Satellite, ALOS-4, tasked primarily with Earth observation and data collection for disaster response and mapmaking, as well as with monitoring military activity, such as missile launches, with an infrared sensor developed by the Defense Ministry.
The Bank of Japan kept its ultra-low interest rates unchanged Friday and stopped short of signalling another hike, pushing the yen to a fresh 34-year low against the dollar.- Global outlier - The BoJ has been a global outlier in sticking to an ultra-loose policy while other central banks pushed rates up as they fought against surging inflation -- causing a wide differential that saw investors push into other currencies.
Kenya Airways on Friday accused the authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo of harassment over the continued detention of two of the airline's staff for alleged customs violations despite a court ordering their release. Officers from Congo's military intelligence detained the pair on April 19 for allegedly failing to complete customs documentation related to valuable cargo that was meant to be transported a week earlier, the airline said in a statement. The airline workers have been granted only one short visit by Kenya's embassy staff, Kenya's national carrier said.
China's foreign minister warned Antony Blinken on Friday that US pressure could trigger a "downward spiral", as the visiting secretary of state raised concerns on issues including support for Russia.Blinken raised concern with Wang about China's support for Russia, which has rapidly rebuilt its military base two years into its invasion of Ukraine, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
Markets were mixed on Friday after forecast-topping earnings from Microsoft and Alphabet helped soothe worries that a tech-fuelled rally may have been overdone, while the yen hit a fresh 34-year low after the Bank of Japan stood pat on interest rates.The rally has been helped by blockbuster reports from heavyweights Microsoft and Alphabet, which topped estimates, while the latter also announced its first dividend.
When is Arbor Day? President Richard Nixon established the day on the last Friday in April but that was nearly 100 years after the movement began.
It's taken Huawei just four years to become a force in smart car technology, navigating the devastation of trade sanctions on its smartphones business while simultaneously developing a driver assistance system that is the darling of the Beijing auto show. Huawei Technologies has two huge booths at this week's event, and there are at least seven Chinese automakers touting its Qiankun installed in their cars as the most sophisticated advanced driving assistance system (ADAS) to date. Even Germany's Volkswagen will equip its China-made, China-bound Audi Q6L e-tron with Qiankun upon the car's 2025 launch, in Huawei's first deal with a foreign automaker, two people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
BHP's multi-billion-dollar bid to buy rival Anglo American promises to be the largest mining merger deal in decades, and one driven by the race for cleaner energy and green metals.Analysts say the rationale behind BHP's near US$40 billion bid can be summed up in one word: copper.
Egypt is sending a high-level delegation to Israel in the hope of reaching a cease-fire agreement with Hamas in Gaza, while warning a possible new Israeli offensive focused on the southern city of Rafah on the border with Egypt could have catastrophic consequences for regional stability, two officials said Friday. While in Israel, Kamel plans to make clear that Egypt “will not tolerate” Israel’s deployments of troops along Gaza’s borders with Egypt, an Egyptian official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to freely discuss the mission.
On Monday, divers with gloved hands gently nestled the self-bred corals from the World Coral Conservatory project among their cousins in Europe’s largest coral reef at the Burgers’ Zoo in the Netherlands. It’s among several projects worldwide seeking to address the decline of coral reef populations, which are suffering from bleaching caused by rising sea temperatures. Corals are central to marine ecosystems, and while these projects won’t stem the tide of damage from human-caused climate change, they are seen as part of broader solutions.
Global shares mostly rose Friday despite worries about the economic outlook and inflation in the U.S. and the rest of the world. The Bank of Japan ended a policy meeting with no major changes, keeping its benchmark interest rate in a range of 0 to 0.1%. In March, it raised the key rate from minus 0.1%, citing signs that inflation had reached the central bank’s target of about 2%.
Electric vehicle executives at a top car show in China were bullish on prospects for growth, despite a gruelling price war and mounting Western pressure on the industry.And even as firms face down a cut-throat price war at home and mounting regulatory pressure overseas, executives and attendees were upbeat.
Seoul, the capital, boasts top-level hospitals, but smaller cities are starved of doctors in a trend experts say will only get worse as the population ages at one of the world's fastest rates, while birthrates are the lowest in the world. "Our artificial kidney room was closed for almost two years because we didn't have a doctor and we couldn't find one … but this is a national phenomenon," said Cho Seung-yeon, director of the Incheon Medical Center in the port city. The shortage is at the heart of government plans to add thousands of medical school students from next year that face stiff opposition from trainee doctors and some medical groups who doubt it will improve poor working conditions.
British mining giant Anglo American on Friday rejected a blockbuster $38.8-billion takeover bid from Australian rival BHP, slamming it as "highly unattractive" and "opportunistic"."The proposed structure is also highly unattractive, creating substantial uncertainty and execution risk borne almost entirely by Anglo American, its shareholders and its other stakeholders."
Muslim groups in Australia on Friday criticized the disparity in the police response to two stabbing attacks in Sydney this month, saying it had created a perception of a double standard and further alienated the country's minority Muslim community. The Australian National Imams Council said an attack at a Bondi Junction shopping center was “quickly deemed a mental health issue” while the stabbing of a Christian bishop at a Sydney church two days later was “classified as a terrorist act almost immediately.”
China and the US face a choice between stability and a “downward spiral,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told counterpart Antony Blinken on Friday in Beijing, as the American diplomat kicked off a day of meetings with top Chinese officials.
Almost five years after Elijah McClain died following a police stop in which he was put in a neck hold and injected with the powerful sedative ketamine, three of the five Denver-area responders prosecuted in the Black man's death have been convicted. Experts say the convictions would have been unheard of before 2020, when George Floyd's murder sparked a nationwide reckoning over racist policing and deaths in police custody. Previously, she has said the two acquitted Aurora police officers, as well as other firefighters and police on the scene, were complicit in her 23-year-old son’s murder and that they escaped justice.
A centuries-old settlement submerged by the construction of a dam in the northern Philippines in the 1970s has reappeared as water levels drop due to a drought affecting swathes of the country.Hundreds of residents of the submerged villages and farms where the dam is located were moved by the government to higher ground.
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