MEXICO CITY – Red Cross ambulances in the Mexican city of Salamanca will get armed escorts for the most risky calls, after the organization briefly closed over the weekend because of violence.
The government of the north-central state of Guanajuato said Sunday that state or local police will accompany Red Cross ambulances "on the high risk or high-impact calls." That would presumably be calls related to gunshot victims.
In a statement, the Mexican Red Cross said it "is an impartial and neutral institution before all conflicts and its purpose is to relieve human suffering," adding the "#We are not part of the conflict" hashtag.
On Saturday, a man wounded by gunfire was abducted by gunmen from a Red Cross ambulance in Salamanca, which has been plagued by violence between fuel theft gangs due to its gasoline refinery. The Guanajuato state chapter of the first-aid group shuttered operations in the city of 270,000 but later resumed ambulance service.
Earlier this month, a woman with gunshot wounds was executed inside an ambulance in Mexico's Pacific state of Guerrero, and paramedics were reportedly beaten by the perpetrators. In northern Mexico several years ago, private hospitals and ambulances sometimes refused to treat or transport gunshot victims.
Violence in Mexico has worsened in the last year, with homicides running at their highest rate on record.
Last week, in the central state of Puebla, a 78-year-old priest was apparently tortured during a robbery attempt.
The archdiocese of Puebla said in a statement that Rev. Ambrosío Arellano Espinoza had been found with severe burns on his hands and feet. It said the priest was at a hospital in stable but serious condition.
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ST. PAUL, Minn. – Minnesota's legislative auditor said Wednesday that an investigation found no proof that money defrauded from a state child care program found its way to terrorist organizations overseas.
Lawmakers asked Legislative Auditor James Nobles to look into the issue after KMSP-TV reported last year that the Minnesota Child Care Assistance Program was defrauded out of as much as $100 million per year. The station, partly citing unnamed sources, also reported that state and federal agents had determined that some of the ill-gotten money had gone overseas and that they believed at least some of it was likely ending up with terrorists.
The station's reports, which also cited Scott Stillman, a former computer forensics expert for the state Department of Human Services, which administers the program, suggested that fraudulently obtained money had gone to the Somali-based terrorist group al-Shabab.
In his report, Nobles said investigators couldn't substantiate that such money ended up with terrorists. He also said that while fraud in the child care program is a problem, investigators couldn't establish a reliable estimate of how much money has been defrauded from the program, though they believe it's more than the $5 million to $6 million that prosecutors have been able to prove was stolen.
A separate review into whether the department's oversight of the program is adequate to safeguard its financial resources will be released early next month.
The Minneapolis area is home to the country's largest Somali-American community, and Nobles noted in his report that it's common for Somali-Americans to send money back to the East African country to help family and friends. He said it's possible that some money defrauded from the program made its way overseas, but that there is no proof.
"It is possible that the individuals who sent the money sent it intending to provide support to a terrorist organization," the report states. "It is also possible that individuals in Minnesota sent money to Somalia and other countries to help their families and friends pay for food, medicine, or shelter, but terrorists obtained the money through theft or extortion. All of these are possibilities, but for none of them did we find evidence to substantiate a connection between CCAP fraud money and support for a terrorist organization."
The Child Care Assistance Program provides federal money to low-income families to help them pay for child care while the parents work or attend school. Some daycare center operators allegedly overbilled the state for children who weren't really there. State and federal prosecutors have charged at least a dozen Minnesota residents, including several with Somali connections, and child care centers with defrauding the program in the past five years.
After the allegations surfaced, Republican lawmakers demanded stronger oversight to root out fraud in social service programs, while Somali community leaders and some Democratic lawmakers objected to the rush to judgment.
Nobles said his office interviewed Department of Human Services officials, program investigators, law enforcement officials and prosecutors. His office subpoenaed Stillman and interviewed him under oath in December. Investigators also reviewed court records from about two dozen terrorism-related cases in Minnesota. To obtain some information from prosecutors, investigators and law enforcement, they agreed not to disclose certain details and to protect the identities of individuals who provided the information, his report states.
"We are confident that given the history and expertise of investigating and prosecuting terror-related cases in Minnesota, if there were any allegations of CCAP fraud money going to terrorist organizations, investigators would certainly follow up and prosecutors would prosecute them for providing material support to terrorist organizations," the report states.
Human Services Commissioner Tony Lourey said in a response accompanying the report that his department is committed to fixing the problem of fraud in the child care program, and that it has asked the Legislature for money to beef up its oversight efforts.
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FILE PHOTO: Logo of global biopharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb is pictured on the blouse of an employee in Le Passage, near Agen, France March 29, 2018. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo
February 20, 2019
BOSTON (Reuters) – Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. said on Wednesday that activist hedge fund Starboard Value LP wants to add five directors to its board and bought one million shares after the pharmaceutical company said it plans to buy biotech company Celgene Corp.
“Starboard Value sent Bristol-Myers Squibb a notice of nomination in connection with Bristol-Myers Squibb’s 2019 Annual Meeting of Stockholders,” the company said in a regulatory filing on Wednesday, adding that the hedge fund proposed five directors, including the firm’s co-founder, Jeffrey Smith. The company did not say when Starboard sent its notice.
(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss and Greg Roumeliotis)
A woman who calls herself ‘The Fat Sex Therapist’ gave a speech to St. Olaf College in Minnesota during which she claimed that diet culture was a form of “assault” and that weight loss science was “white supremacy”.
“I truly believe that a child cannot consent to being on a diet the same way a child cannot consent to having sex,” Sonalee Rashatwar told the audience during a two hour speech on the topic of “radical fat liberation”.
“I experience diet culture as a form of assault because it impacts the way that I experience my body,” she added.
Rashatwar went on to assert that science was a tool of “white supremacy”.
“We should be critical of the use of science and the production of knowledge to continue promoting this idea that certain bodies are fit, able, and desirable…is it my fatness that causes my high blood pressure, or is it my experience of weight stigma?” Rashatwar asked, going on to claim that “fatphobia” was a form of Nazism.
Rashatwar went on to argue that people shouldn’t be burdened with personal responsibility for weight loss and that “social supports” should be in place to help fat people “subsidize” their food costs.
She also said that the Christchurch shooter being a fitness instructor was proof that “Nazis really love this idea of an idealized body”.
Maybe everything Rashatwar said is true – science doesn’t exist and is actually just veiled racism, obesity doesn’t cause high blood pressure, and that dieting and fitness are just tools of white supremacy and structural oppression.
Or maybe she’s just inventing pseudo-intellectual excuses for being fat and lazy.
FILE PHOTO: A general view of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) building, with the partial quote "taxes are what we pay," in Washington May 27, 2015. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
April 23, 2019
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A deadline for the U.S. Internal Revenue Service to turn President Donald Trump’s tax returns over to a congressional tax oversight committee expired on Tuesday without lawmakers receiving the documents, a committee aide said.
The outcome, which was widely expected, could prompt Democrats who control the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee to subpoena the documents, as an opening salvo in what many expect to be a lengthy court battle that might have to be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court.
(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Peter Cooney)
FILE PHOTO: The HSBC bank logo at the bank's offices in the Canary Wharf financial district in London, Britain, March 3, 2016. REUTERS/Reinhard Krause/File Photo
February 19, 2019
HONG KONG/LONDON (Reuters) – HSBC Holdings Plc posted on Tuesday a 15.9 percent rise in 2018 profit, supported by business growth in its core markets of Asia and Britain, but market weakness in the fourth quarter resulted in the bank missing street estimates.
An economic slowdown in China, the world’s second-largest economy, poses a challenge to the bank’s strategy of pouring more resources into Asia where it already makes over three quarters of its profits.
HSBC reported a profit before tax of $19.9 billion for 2018 compared with $17.2 billion the year before. The profit for the year, however, was below an average estimate of $22 billion, according to Refinitiv data based on forecasts from 17 analysts.
Europe’s biggest bank by market capitalization said it would pay a full-year dividend of $0.51 per share, roughly in line with analysts’ expectations. The bank was confident of maintaining the dividend at this level, it said.
“Despite more challenging market conditions at the end of the year and a weaker global economic outlook, we are committed to the targets we announced in June,” HSBC CEO John Flint said in the statement.
In the first public outlining of his strategy at the helm of HSBC, Flint had said in June that HSBC would invest $15-$17 billion in the next three years in areas including technology and China, while keeping profitability and dividend targets little changed.
“We will be proactive in managing costs and investment to meet the risks to revenue growth where necessary, but we will not take short-term decisions that harm the long-term interests of the business.”
China’s economic growth slowed to 6.6 percent in 2018, the weakest in 28 years, weighed down by rising borrowing costs and a clampdown on riskier lending that starved smaller, private companies of capital and stifled investment.
Flint, who completed his first year in charge of the lender, said that the bank remained alert to the downside risks of the current economic environment, global trade tensions and the future path of interest rates.
The lender’s core capital ratio, a key measure of financial strength, fell to 14 percent at end-December from 14.5 percent at the end of 2017, mainly due to adverse foreign exchange movements, it said in the statement.
(Reporting By Sumeet Chatterjee and Lawrence White; additional reporting by Alun John in Hong Kong; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Muralikumar Anantharaman)
FILE PHOTO: An aerial photo looking north shows shipping containers at the Port of Seattle and the Elliott Bay waterfront in Seattle, Washington, U.S. March 21, 2019. REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson/File Photo
April 26, 2019
NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. economic growth is running at a 1.1% pace in the second quarter as the gains in exports and inventories recorded in the first quarter are expected to reverse, Morgan Stanley economists said on Friday.
“Our preliminary expectations for growth in the second quarter sees large drags from net exports and inventories after their contributions in 1Q,” they wrote in a research note.
Gross domestic product increased at a 3.2% annualized rate in the first three months of the year, driven by a smaller trade deficit and the largest accumulation of unsold merchandise since 2015, the Commerce Department said earlier Friday.
FILE PHOTO: The Deutsche Bank headquarters are pictured in Frankfurt, Germany, April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo
April 26, 2019
By Tom Sims
FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Within hours of the collapse of merger talks with Commerzbank, Christian Sewing scrambled to convince investors and employees that Deutsche Bank can stand on its own two feet.
The Deutsche Bank chief executive told staff, many of whom opposed a merger because of significant job losses, that while he had not been “skeptical” about the Commerzbank talks, he was cautious about the chances of success from the start.
And another top Deutsche Bank executive said on Friday that it had been Commerzbank that initiated the talks, suggesting there was no desperation on their part for a deal.
Commerzbank denied that version of events, ending the apparent truce between the normally highly competitive cross-town Frankfurt rivals over the past six weeks.
German hopes of creating a national banking champion able to challenge global competitors were finally dashed on Thursday when Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank ended their talks due to the risks of doing a deal, restructuring costs and capital demands.
For Sewing, the failure to clinch a deal has left the 49-year-old chief executive of Germany’s largest bank, who took over just over a year ago, with his back to the wall.
Credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s, which downgraded Deutsche Bank last year, said on Friday that Deutsche Bank “will remain under strain”, adding that it “seems to have acknowledged the need to adjust its strategy”.
Under Sewing, a new leadership has tried to revive Deutsche Bank’s fortunes, but it has faced money laundering allegations and failed stress tests, as well as ratings downgrades.
At the heart of the debate over its future is whether it should focus its business on Germany and draw a line under its costly global ambitions to take on Wall Street’s big guns.
“MARKET PLAY”
Without a deal, Deutsche Bank now finds itself back at the mercy of equity and debt markets, with UBS analysts warning that in a “stress scenario” it could again “be forced into a ‘debt-driven capital increase’ even with solid capital ratios”.
“Deutsche remains a levered market play vulnerable to external events,” the UBS analysts said in a note.
Sewing, along with many analysts, believes Deutsche Bank can go it alone in the short-term, but will be counting on a turnaround in market conditions to do so in the long-run given its dependence on volatile investment bank earnings.
“To reach our return objective, we also need to see a revenue recovery in our more market-sensitive business,” Sewing said on Friday after reporting results.
“These revenues are available to us in better market conditions given our leading positions in many of these businesses, but we need to capture them,” he added.
Revenue at Deutsche Bank’s bond trading division fell 19 percent in the first quarter, it said on Friday, underscoring weakness at its investment bank.
If those earnings do not improve, Berlin’s desire to keep its biggest bank out of foreign hands may start to wane.
“Germany’s globally active companies need competitive financial institutions that can support them around the world,” German finance minister Olaf Scholz said on Thursday.
(Writing by Alexander Smith; Editing by Keith Weir)
Panama’s former president Ricardo Martinelli reacts to the media while arriving to the Electoral Court in Panama City, Panama April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Erick Marciscano
April 26, 2019
PANAMA CITY (Reuters) – Panama’s electoral tribunal has ruled that former President Ricardo Martinelli, who is awaiting trial on wiretapping charges, cannot take part in elections on May 5 in which he was running for mayor of Panama City and a seat in Congress, a spokesman for Martinelli said on Friday.
“The ruling of the electoral tribunal has disqualified him as candidate,” said the spokesman, Eduardo Camacho, calling the court’s ruling a “political decision.”
Officials at the tribunal did not immediately confirm the ruling, which also was reported in local media in Panama.
Martinelli, a supermarket tycoon who ran the Central American country from 2009 to 2014, was extradited to Panama last June from the United States and charged with spying on 150 people, including politicians, union leaders and journalists.
A judge had previously cleared Martinelli to run for mayor of the capital. His critics vowed to appeal that decision.
(Reporting by Elida Moreno and Stefanie Eschenbacher; Editing by Bill Trott)
FILE PHOTO: Amazon boxes are seen stacked for delivery in the Manhattan borough of New York City, January 29, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo
April 26, 2019
(Reuters) – Shares of Walmart, Target and other U.S. retailers fell on Friday as Amazon.com Inc unveiled a one-day delivery plan for its Prime members in a move to further disrupt the fiercely competitive retail landscape.
The e-commerce giant’s announcement on Thursday could cause other brands, manufacturers, retailers, and logistics companies to have to invest more aggressively to compete with Amazon and its delivery, analysts said.
Retailers in recent years have poured billions into ecommerce and faster shipping options and are trying to close the gap with Amazon.
“This is about making it more expensive to catch up and affirms our world view that only the largest and smartest will survive,” Bernstein analyst Brandon Fletcher said.
The move is expected to heighten consumer expectations on e-commerce delivery just like Amazon did with its two-day shipping option for members of its loyalty club Prime, noted analysts.
“The faster you ship, the more people buy,” RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney said.
The challenge for non-Amazon players was that very few of the existing logistics and parcel delivery players now have the ability to do nationwide one-day delivery, Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak said.
“And even fewer can do it at the vast scale and reasonable cost that AMZN would need for Prime delivery,” Nowak said in a note.
Walmart Inc’s shares fell about 3 percent, while Target Corp dropped about 5 percent in morning trade.
Shares of Kohl’s Corp, Macy’s Inc and Nordstrom Inc fell about 1 percent. Grocer Kroger Co was nearly 3 percent lower, while consumer electronics retailer Best Buy Inc dropped 2.1 percent.
(Reporting by Soundarya J and Akanksha Rana in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)
A Chinese woman adjusts a Chinese national flag next to U.S. national flags before a Strategic Dialogue expanded meeting, part of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) held at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, July 10, 2014. REUTERS/Ng Han Guan/Pool (CHINA – Tags: POLITICS BUSINESS)
April 26, 2019
By April Joyner
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Even as the lift from optimism over prospects for U.S.-China trade detente shows signs of wearing off for the wider U.S. stock market, upbeat sentiment around China’s economy could bolster shares of materials companies.
Shares of S&P 500 industrial and technology companies, which were buffeted by last year’s tit-for-tat tariffs as well as slowing global demand, have been very responsive to progress in U.S.-China trade relations and a strengthening Chinese economy. This year, those sectors have outpaced the ascent in the S&P 500, which reached a record closing high on Tuesday.
Materials stocks have not been as sensitive, however, even though they also stand to benefit as a stronger Chinese economy lifts global consumption and industrial output. As China has taken measures to stimulate its economy, its economic data have turned more upbeat. That in turn could aid global growth, which has flagged as a result of China’s cooldown.
“What we’re seeing is China spending more on stimulus: fiscal stimulus and monetary stimulus,” said Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist at Invesco in New York. “That’s likely to be a positive for materials.”
The People’s Bank of China has cut banks’ reserve requirement ratio five times over the past year and is widely expected to ease policy further to spur lending and reduce borrowing costs. The stimulus appears to have boosted Chinese economic data, with factory activity growing in March for the first time in four months.
Yet so far in 2019, the S&P 500 materials index has underperformed the S&P 500 at large, rising just 11.9% compared with 16.7% for the benchmark index. Moreover, it is among the biggest decliners in the period since the S&P’s previous record closing level on Sept. 20. The materials index has fallen 7% over those seven months, versus a 5.2% gain for technology and a 3% loss for industrials. Only the energy index has dropped more over that period.
A trade agreement could serve as a catalyst for a bump in materials shares as a drag on China’s economy is lifted, some market strategists say. Some commodity prices, including those for copper and oil, have ascended this year as the prospects for the global economy have somewhat brightened.
“It all goes back to the global growth outlook,” said Andrea DiCenso, portfolio manager for alpha strategies at Loomis Sayles in Boston. “With the front run in hard data, we’re beginning to see a pretty significant rally.”
Additionally, a trade agreement is expected to include commitments from China to purchase higher quantities of U.S. products such as soybeans, which could benefit companies that make agricultural chemicals, including DowDuPont Inc and CF Industries Holdings Inc.
CF Industries is scheduled to report quarterly results after the bell on Wednesday, and DowDuPont is scheduled to report before the market open on Thursday.
To be sure, even with a trade agreement, some materials companies could face price pressures. Shares of Freeport-McMoRan Inc fell 10.1% on Thursday after the copper mining company posted a lower-than-expected profit as its production slipped and its costs rose.
A rollback of tariffs on Chinese imports, particularly aluminum and steel, would likely prompt a fall in some commodity prices, which could hurt prospects for certain materials companies, said Gene Goldman, chief investment officer at Cetera Investment Management in El Segundo, California.
Even so, those drawbacks may be outweighed by the support for global demand fostered by a U.S.-China trade agreement.
“You could see a number of companies with lowered expectations bring them back up as they talk favorably about the impact that a trade deal would have on them,” said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment strategist at Inverness Counsel in New York.
(Reporting by April Joyner; additional reporting by Sinéad Carew; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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