Author: Finance for Sight

BRUSSELS: European Union finance ministers will discuss on Monday how to pay for defence through new joint borrowing, existing EU funds and a greater role for the European Investment Bank, with a view to decisions in June, the Polish EU presidency said. In an invitation letter to the ministers, Andrzej Domanski, the finance minister of Poland, which chairs EU meetings, said the talks would follow up on decisions by EU leaders last Thursday to explore these sources of financing. European countries are hastening to boost defence spending and maintain support for Ukraine after US President Donald Trump froze US military…

The Pakistani rupee remained largely stable against the US dollar, appreciating 0.01% during the opening hours of trading on Monday. At 10am, the rupee was hovering at 279.93 a gain of Re0.04 against the greenback. During the previous week, the rupee maintained its gradual downturn as it lost Re0.30 or 0.11% in the inter-bank market. The local unit closed at 279.97, against 279.67 it had closed the week earlier against the greenback, according to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP). Internationally, the US dollar began Monday on a weak note after significant losses last week due to a potentially weakening…

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE: U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that his administration was in touch with four different groups about the sale of Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok, and that all options were good. TikTok’s fate has been up in the air since a law requiring its owner ByteDance to either sell it on national security grounds or face a ban took effect on January 19. Trump, after taking office on January 20, signed an executive order seeking to delay by 75 days the enforcement of the law. Asked if there was going to soon be a deal…

CHICAGO: Following are U.S. expectations for the resumption of grain and soy complex trading at the Chicago Board of Trade at 8:30 a.m. CST (1430 GMT) on Friday. Wheat – Down 6 to 8 cents per bushel Wheat futures edged down, losing steam after a short-lived rally fueled by U.S. tariff exemptions for major trading partners Mexico and Canada. Additional pressure also came from expectations of a bumper harvest in top consumer China. On Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump suspended the tariffs he imposed this week on most goods from Canada and Mexico, the largest buyer of U.S. wheat in…

JERUSALEM: Israel’s Energy Minister Eli Cohen said on Sunday he had given instructions to stop supplying electricity to Gaza, a week after Israel blocked all aid into the war-ravaged Palestinian territory. The move has echoes of the earliest days of the war when Israel announced a “siege” that included an electricity cutoff to Gaza. “I have just signed the order to stop supplying electricity immediately to the Gaza Strip,” Cohen said in a video statement, adding: “We will use all the tools at our disposal to bring back the hostages and ensure that Hamas is no longer in Gaza the…

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump declined in an interview aired Sunday to rule out the possibility that the United States might enter a recession this year. “I hate to predict things like that,” he told a Fox News interviewer when asked directly about a possible recession in 2025. “There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big – we’re bringing wealth back to America,” he said, adding, “It takes a little time.” Trump threatens new Russia sanctions after strikes on Ukraine But Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, was more definitive when asked Sunday about the possibility of…

Saudi Arabia’s stock market ended higher on Sunday, snapping a three-day losing streak, in response to Friday’s rise in oil prices . Oil prices – a catalyst for the Gulf’s financial markets – gained on Friday but retreated from session highs after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened sanctions on Russia if it fails to reach a cease-fire with Ukraine. Saudi Arabia’s benchmark index added 0.2%, helped by a 1.5% rebound in oil behemoth Saudi Aramco. Aramco has been falling since Tuesday when the firm reported a drop in annual profit and signalled it will slash its dividend payouts by nearly…

WASHINGTON: The U.S. Secret Service shot an armed man outside the White House early on Sunday after a confrontation, and the man is now in an area hospital, it said in a statement. President Donald Trump was not in the White House at the time, as he is spending the weekend at his Florida residence. Secret Service officials received a tip on Saturday from local authorities that a suicidal person may be traveling to Washington from Indiana and the person’s car was found a block from the White House, it said in the statement. The man brandished a firearm as…

Wall Street’s main indexes ticked up in choppy trading, boosted by a jump in energy stocks, while investors assessed a key jobs report and awaited comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for clues on the health of the U.S. economy. At 09:51 a.m. ET the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 124.23 points, or 0.29%, to 42,703.31, the S&P 500 gained 24.38 points, or 0.46%, to 5,764.57 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 120.10 points, or 0.66%, to 18,186.29. Energy led sectoral gains on the S&P 500 with a 1.8% rise, tracking a 2% increase in oil prices. Nasdaq component Broadcom…

BANGKOK: Five people were killed and more than a dozen wounded in two attacks in Thailand’s troubled south, police said on Sunday. A low-level conflict has simmered in Thailand’s southernmost provinces since 2004, killing more than 7,000 people, as rebels in the Muslim-majority region battle for greater autonomy. A group of more than 10 assailants opened fire outside the district office of Sungai Kolok, a town on the Malaysia-Thailand border, at around 7:00 pm Saturday (1200 GMT), provincial police said. They also threw explosives and detonated bombs in an attack that killed two defence volunteers guarding the office and wounded…