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LISBON (Reuters) - Portugal's international lenders will begin a visit to assess progress on the country's 78 billion euro bailout program next Tuesday, the government said, as fears of new contagion and a Greek exit from the euro zone grip Europe. The Diario Economico business newspaper said on Thursday, without citing sources, that the mission was also likely to prepare a contingency plan for Portugal in case Greece leaves the euro zone. But a European Commission source dismissed the report. "There is no intention to discuss any type of contingency plans for Portugal. ...
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - A Greek exit from the euro zone could expose the European Central Bank and the currency bloc it seeks to protect to hundreds of billions of euros in losses, landing Germany and its partners with a crippling bill. A Greek departure would take Europe into uncharted legal waters. The size of the burden other euro zone states could bear gives them a powerful incentive to keep Greece in the currency club. ...
Democrats controlling the Senate rejected for the second year in a row Wednesday a budget plan passed by House Republicans.
(Reuters) - Berkshire Hathaway Inc will buy all newspapers owned by Media General Inc, with the exception of Tampa group, for $142 million in cash, the companies said. Media General said it is in discussions with other prospective buyers for its Tampa print assets. Berkshire Hathaway will also provide Media General with a $400 million term loan and a $45 million revolving credit line. (Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Bangalore; Editing by Viraj Nair)
Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney and his party raised a combined $40.1 million in April.
Authorities in Louisiana say a man who starred in the reality television show "Swamp People" died from natural causes.
Spain paid sharply higher interest rates to raise €2.5 billion ($3.18 billion) in medium-term debt auction on Thursday, reflecting concerns the country will be caught up in the fallout of the Greek crisis, as a recently nationalized Spanish bank's shares plummeted after a newspaper said depositors were rushing to withdraw money.
MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron urged Europe's rulers on Thursday to do more to quell the euro zone debt crisis and raised the prospect of a Greek default to argue he must stick to his unpopular attempt to cut spending and reduce debt at home. Warning that the survival of the euro was now in question, Cameron showed growing alarm and frustration that the crisis was spinning out of control, threatening Britain's $2.5 trillion economy and his own electoral prospects in 2015. ...
People in Honduras' predominantly Indian Mosquito coast region burned down government offices and demanded that U.S. drug agents leave the area, reacting angrily to an anti-drug operation in which they say police gunfire killed four innocent people, including two pregnant women.
Human Genome Sciences says its board has adopted a "poison pill" shareholder rights plan to ward off unsolicited takeover bids for the biotech drugmaker.
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian National Council President Burhan Ghalioun said on Thursday he was ready to quit, after mounting criticism of his leadership. "I declare my resignation as soon as a replacement is found through elections or consensus," Ghalioun told Reuters.
AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on Wednesday that countries trying to "sow chaos" in Syria could be infected with it themselves, an apparent warning to Arab Gulf nations that back the insurgency aimed at forcing him from power. Assad's remarks, to a Russian TV channel, came after U.N. staff monitoring an increasingly shaky ceasefire were caught up in an attack that killed at least 21 people, and had to spend a night with rebel forces. ...
(Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc posted a better-than-expected quarterly profit on Thursday, including a 2.6 percent rise in sales at its Walmart U.S. division's stores open at least a year, as warm weather and an earlier Easter enticed shoppers to spend. The world's largest retailer, which was recently rocked by allegations of bribery in Mexico, earned $1.09 per share from continuing operations, compared with a profit of 98 cents a year earlier. Wal-Mart had forecast earnings per share of $1.01 to $1.06. Analysts, on average, expected it to earn $1. ...
People in Honduras' predominantly Indian Mosquito coast region burned down government offices and demanded that U.S. drug agents leave the area, reacting angrily to an anti-drug operation in which they say police gunfire killed four innocent people, including two pregnant women.
MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's Economy Secretary said on Thursday there had not been an exit of deposit funds from troubled bank Bankia. "It's not true that there is an exit of deposits at this moment from Bankia," said Economy Secretary Fernando Jimenez Latorre. El Mundo newspaper earlier reported that Bankia had lost over 1 billion euros ($1.27 billion) in deposits, around 1 percent of retail and corporate accounts, over the past week. ($1 = 0.7849 euros) (Reporting By Paul Day, Editing by Sonya Dowsett)
LONDON (Reuters) - Possible El Nino weather conditions later this year could exacerbate a potential global cocoa deficit in the coming 2012/13 season, causing prices to climb, the International Cocoa Organization (ICCO) said. "We know that when we have El Nino conditions it's likely that this will impact negatively on world cocoa production. We would have less production and this would have an impact on price," ICCO statistician Laurent Pipitone told Reuters. ...
South Korean handset maker LG Electronics Inc. has upgraded its flagship smartphone model with a faster chip and a longer battery life, hoping to regain ground lost to more nimble rivals.
Shares in Bankia, the recently nationalized Spanish bank, are plunging by more than 20 percent on a local report that customers have withdrawn more than €1 billion ($1.27 billion) since the state took it over last week.
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Even as Facebook fever grips investors ahead of the social networking giant's potential $100 billion-plus initial public offering, its breakneck growth in Asia may be slowing as it moves beyond desktop users to those who access the Internet largely or solely from a mobile phone. In March, Facebook revised its own SEC filings to scale back its scope for further growth in India - its third-biggest user base and the largest population it currently has access to - China remains off-limits to Facebook. ...
Fears that Greece might leave the euro currency union, with uncertain consequences for the rest of Europe, pushed the continent's markets down again on Thursday, though Asian stocks eked out gains thanks to good economic growth figures out of Japan.
General Motors' Vauxhall plant in northern England will build the company's top-selling Astra vehicles, the automaker said Thursday — a relief for U.K. politicians who had lobbied its American owner to keep the plant open.
MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's small and medium-sized exporters are struggling to compete with European rivals due to high borrowing costs, as fallout from the country's banking crisis hurts one of the few bright spots in a contracting economy. From ceramic tile makers to chemicals producers and conveyor belt manufacturers, they say credit is too expensive or simply unavailable, even though exporters appear at first sight to be healthy. Since the crisis year of 2008, Spanish exports have grown faster than those of any other euro zone country except Estonia, according to banking group BBVA. ...
MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's borrowing costs shot up at a bond auction on Thursday, after economic data confirmed the country is back in recession and reports that nationalized Bankia SA had suffered an outflow of deposits hammered its share price. The Spanish Treasury had to pay around 5 percent to attract buyers of three- and four-year bonds. The longer-dated paper sold with a yield of 5.106 percent, way above the 3.374 percent the last time it was auctioned. ...
SOHAG, Egypt (Reuters) - Democratic fervour is gripping Egypt's big cities ahead of a presidential election but in the provinces many are nostalgic for the autocratic past. In Sohag, a town 250 miles (400 km) up the Nile from Cairo, residents have been alarmed by civil unrest, labour strikes and lax policing since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak last year. "Egypt is a land of pharaohs. If it isn't ruled by an iron-fisted pharaoh, it won't work," said Metias Rezq, a 65-year-old farmer, who believes life was better under Mubarak. ...
Iran's parliament on Thursday signed off on a $462 billion budget bill for the current Iranian year that is about 9 percent less than the budget approved in the previous calendar year, a consequence attributed to the new exchange rate of the U.S dollar.
LONDON (Reuters) - Global trade growth will slow this year and volumes are unlikely to regain their pre-crisis trend for at least another four years, according to a survey released on Thursday. The International Chamber of Commerce said it expected trade, the life blood of the global economy, to expand by 5.2 percent this year and by 7.2 percent in 2013. Growth for all of 2011 was 6.6 percent, driven by emerging markets, but slowed down towards the end of the year. Euro zone export volumes fell 5.9 percent in 2011. ...
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. plans for a possible military strike on Iran are ready and the option is "fully available", the U.S. ambassador to Israel said, days before Tehran resumes talks with world powers which suspect it of seeking to develop nuclear arms. Like Israel, the United States has said it considers military force a last resort to prevent Iran using its uranium enrichment to make a bomb. Iran insists its nuclear program is for purely civilian purposes. ...
Sears Holdings Corp. returned to a first-quarter profit, benefiting from a gain on the sale of some stores.
SINGAPORE/HONG KONG (Reuters) - Royal Bank of Canada and Credit Suisse are among suitors who have put in initial bids to buy the non-U.S. wealth management business of Bank of America in a deal that could be worth about $2 billion, sources said. Swiss bank Julius Baer was also keen to bid for some of BofA's units in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia excluding Japan, the sources, who had knowledge of the matter, told Reuters. It was not clear whether Switzerland's third-biggest bank had submitted an initial bid. ...
LONDON (Reuters) - HSBC is considering selling parts of its U.S. real estate portfolio to accelerate the run-down of the business, and said it expects to sell a small part by the end of June. HSBC, Europe's biggest bank, is identifying parts of its real estate portfolio to sell, aimed at reducing risk or the burden of holding the assets, Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver told analysts during a strategy presentation. He said there were now signs investors were interested in buying some assets, and the first sale would test this. HSBC has been running down its U.S. consumer finance book since ...
