RIM shares fall at the open after earnings

TORONTO (Reuters) - Research In Motion Ltd fell in early trading on Friday following the BlackBerry maker's Thursday earnings announcement, when the company outlined plans to change the way it charges for services.RIM, pushing to revive its fortunes with the launch of its new BlackBerry 10 devices next month, surprised investors when it said it plans to alter its service revenue model, a move that...

Read More..

Walgreen fiscal 1Q profit sinks nearly 26 pct

Walgreen's fiscal first-quarter earnings sank nearly 26 percent as costs tied to a couple big deals and Superstorm Sandy helped put a bigger-than-expected dent in the drugstore chain's performance.CEO Greg Wasson told analysts he saw the quarter as a "turning point" for the Deerfield, Ill., company, which has been working to recapture customers it lost during a contract dispute with Express Scripts...

Read More..

Nigeria's Dangote Cement expects 38 pct rise in Q1 profit

LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigeria's biggest listed company, Dangote Cement, expects pretax profit to rise 38.9 percent year-on-year to 42.09 billion naira in the first three months of next year, it said in a filing with the Nigerian Stock Exchange.Dangote Cement, Nigeria's biggest cement producer, said it expected turnover of around 81.6 billion naira in the first quarter, compared with 64.1 billion naira...

Read More..

Falklands again? Why Argentina's Kirchner keeps pushing the issue with Britain.

Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner relaunched her offensive over the Falkland Islands today, a move that coincides with the 180th anniversary of Britain’s allegedly illegal usurpation of the South Atlantic archipelago.President Kirchner published an open letter to British Prime Minister David Cameron in British newspapers imploring him to respect a United Nations resolution that calls...

Read More..

Libyan cop in Benghazi kidnapped

Abdelsalam al-Mahdawi, the head of Benghazi's criminal investigation department, was kidnapped on his way to work today by gunmen at an intersection in Libya's second largest city.Benghazi was the heart of the uprising against Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, and since then it has failed to bring the militias that fought on the side of the revolution – some Islamist, some not – under any kind of government...

Read More..

Amid bloodshed and chaos, Syrian wages a war for neutral reporting

While Syria's state-run news outlets run a steady stream of reports about "terrorists" and international conspiracies against President Bashar al-Assad, opposition activists roll out their own endless barrage of footage highlighting atrocities and destruction by regime forces, with little in the way of context.With media access difficult or impossible in most of the country and no tradition of balanced...

Read More..

Good Taliban, Bad Taliban? Pakistani commander's killing exposes blurry lines

The US drone killing of Pakistani Taliban commander Maulvi Nazir threatens to unleash new anti-government violence against the country’s weak government or civilian targets, and expose fractures in the country’s military and security forces, analysts say.Mr. Nazir was traveling in a car in troubled South Waziristan, bordering Afghanistan, Thursday, when his vehicle was hit by a missile, according...

Read More..

Could gang-rape protests mark beginning of an age of activism for India?

The large-scale protests triggered by the gang rape of a 23-year-old student in New Delhi has renewed debate over the rise of a new urban middle-class activism in India. The strength and longevity of those protests, sustained as they were over several weeks and undeterred by police water cannons and teargas, took many by surprise. Student activism has generally been on the...

Read More..

Fed split on stimulus plans nudges stocks lower

NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are fading into the close of trading on Wall Street after the Federal Reserve revealed a split among its policymakers over how long to continue an economic stimulus program.The market started on a weak note Thursday following mixed holiday sales reports from retailers and the prospect of another fiscal fight looming in Congress over the nation's borrowing limit.The Dow Jones...

Read More..

Fed becoming worried about stimulus side effects

Federal Reserve officials are increasingly concerned about the potential risks of the U.S. central bank's asset purchases on financial markets, even if they look set to continue an open-ended stimulus program for now.In a surprise to Wall Street, minutes from the Fed's December policy meeting, published on Thursday, showed a growing reticence about further increases in the central bank's $2.9 trillion...

Read More..

Stocks fade after Fed discloses split on stimulus

A two-day rally in the stock market came to an end Thursday afternoon when an account of the Federal Reserve's last meeting revealed a split between bank officials over how long the Fed should keep buying bonds to support the economy.The Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard & Poor's 500 index treaded water for much of the day, then slid into the red around 2 p.m. Eastern, after the Fed...

Read More..

How the Dow Jones industrial average fared

A two-day rally in the stock market came to an end Thursday afternoon when an account of the Federal Reserve's last meeting revealed a split between bank officials over how long the Fed should keep buying bonds to support the economy.The Dow Jones industrial average lost 21.19, or 0.2 percent, to 13,391.36.The Standard & Poor's 500 index lost 3.05, or 0.2 percent, to 1,459.37.The Nasdaq composite...

Read More..

Data-feed glitch leaves some traders in dark on Nasdaq prices

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A technical glitch caused an outage of around 15 minutes on real-time prices for Nasdaq listed stocks, including Apple Inc and Google Inc , for many investors on Thursday, traders and multiple industry sources said.Nasdaq said at 1:42 p.m. in an alert to traders that it was investigating an issue involving the Universal Trading Platform's (UTP) centralized securities information...

Read More..

On cusp of new year, Chavez's health keeps Venezuleans fixated on future

Dec. 31 is typically a time to recap the biggest events of the year. But in Venezuela this year, news that President Hugo Chavez has suffered “new complications” after surgery on Dec. 11 has kept Venezuelans anxiously fixated on what’s to come in 2013.In downtown Caracas, an annual free concert in Plaza Bolivar to welcome the New Year has been canceled, government officials said. They instead called...

Read More..

Egypt's opposition still hopeful, despite many defeats

When a controversial constitutional draft went to a vote earlier this month, the Egyptian opposition was, as usual, in disarray.It waffled for weeks between boycotting the referendum and calling for a no vote. When it finally chose the latter only days before the first round of voting on Dec. 15, it was too late to overcome the Muslim Brotherhood and their salafist allies’ strong campaign for a "yes."But...

Read More..

Happy new year, Cairo?

I'm back in Cairo after well over a year away, and my first thought was that little has changed.Getting out of Cairo airport is still a chaotic mess of taxi and hotel touts, though easy to navigate if you know the drill. Traffic was worse than I'd have expected for midday on Saturday, but Cairo zahma hardly has a predictable rhythm anyway. Parts of the city are always one flat tire away from being...

Read More..

Any end in sight? Syrian conflict enters third calendar year

• A daily summary of global reports on security issues.The Syrian civil war entered its third calendar year with rebel forces displaying increased military prowess but still lacking adequate weapons and organization to gain a decisive edge over government forces.At the outset of 2012, many observers predicted it would be President Bashar al-Assad's last year, but now in 2013 the conflict appears locked...

Read More..

Indian court may suspend lawmakers facing crimes

Indian lawmakers facing sexual assault charges against women could be suspended from office if the country's top court rules in favor of a petition submitted following a gang-rape and murder that shocked the country.Six state lawmakers are facing rape prosecutions and two national parliamentarians are facing charges of crimes against women that fall short of rape, said Jagdeep S. Chhokar, an official...

Read More..

Wall Street ends 2012 riding high on "cliff" deal optimism

 U.S. stocks closed out 2012 with their strongest day in more than a month, putting the S&P 500 up 13.4 percent for the year, as lawmakers in Washington closed in on a resolution to the "fiscal cliff" negotiations.The S&P 500's gain for the year marks its best performance since 2009, as stocks navigated through debt crises in Europe and the United States that dominated the headlines....

Read More..