Jefferies results beat estimates on higher fixed-income revenue

(Reuters) - Jefferies Group Inc reported a higher-than-expected adjusted quarterly profit as the investment bank benefited from higher earnings from its fixed-income unit, and said its business expansion in Asia has started delivering.The midsized investment bank has been expanding in China and India and recently poached bankers from the Royal Bank of Scotland to expand its business in China.Jefferies...

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Oracle 2Q earnings rise 18 pct as tech spending up

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Oracle says its latest quarterly earnings rose 18 percent as companies splurged on more software and other technology toward the end of the year.The results announced Tuesday are an improvement from Oracle's previous quarter, when the company's revenue dipped slightly from a year earlier.The latest quarter spanned September through November. That makes Oracle the first technology...

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Oracle sees third-quarter profit of 64 to 68 cents per share

BOSTON (Reuters) - Oracle Corp, the world's No. 3 software maker, said it expects to report non-GAAP earnings per share of 64 cents to 68 cents in its fiscal third quarter.Oracle forecast that third-quarter new software sales and cloud subscriptions sales will rise 3 percent to 13 percent from a year earlier.The company said its sees third-quarter hardware products sales flat to down 10 percent from...

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Syrian forces bombard rebel areas near capital

 Syrian government warplanes and artillery pounded restive suburbs of Damascus on Friday and anti-regime activists said a car bomb targeted an intelligence building north of the capital.Fighting in Syria's civil war has flared in areas around Damascus as rebels seeking to topple President Bashar Assad try to push into the city itself. The rebel advances in the suburbs threaten the government's...

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Leaders of Sudan, South Sudan start talks to defuse tension

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - The leaders of Sudan and South Sudan met late on Friday to try to defuse hostility that has simmered since the south broke away in 2011 and restart cross-border oil flows to rescue their crumbling economies.No details emerged as Sudan's Omar Hassan al-Bashir and South Sudan's Salva Kiir met in the presence of Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn who is trying to mediate...

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Italy's Monti unveils alliance, rules out minister role

ROME (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti on Friday unveiled the alliance he will lead into February's parliamentary election and said he was unlikely to agree to serve as a minister in another premier's cabinet after the vote.The 69-year-old former European commissioner, who replaced Silvio Berlusconi as prime minister in November 2011 when Italy was scrambling to avert a financial crisis,...

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Chile: Couple dies defending home amid protests

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — An elderly couple whose family's vast landholdings have long been targeted by Mapuche Indians in southern Chile were killed in an arson attack early Friday while trying to defend their home. The president quickly flew to the scene and announced new security measures, including the application of Chile's tough anti-terrorism law and the creation of a special police anti-terror...

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Syria blames "terrorists" for deadly petrol station blast

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria said on Friday a car bomb at a crowded petrol station in Damascus was set off by "terrorists", a term it uses for rebels seeking to topple President Bashar al-Assad.The blast on Thursday night killed 11 people and wounded 40 at a station packed with Syrians queuing for fuel, which has become scarce in the 21-month insurgency against Assad, in the second petrol station attack...

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RIM shares jump in Toronto, rebound from sharp decline

 Shares of Research In Motion Ltd jumped nearly 10 percent on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Thursday, following similar gains in New York on Wednesday, in a rebound from last week's sharp decline.Last Friday, the volatile stock plunged more than 20 percent after the company said on an earnings conference call that it was rolling out a new fee structure for its services segment, which some investors...

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A surprisingly good vintage as market logs gains

NEW YORK (AP) — If you'd told investors what was going to happen in 2012 — U.S. economic growth at stall speed, an intensifying European debt crisis, a slowdown in China, fiscal deadlock in Washington, decelerating corporate earnings growth — and asked how the stock market would perform, few would have predicted a good year.But that's just what they got.The Dow Jones industrial average, the Standard...

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Stocks surge after last-minute budget deal reached

Stocks are opening sharply higher on Wall Street after lawmakers averted sweeping cuts in government spending and with a last-minute budget deal.The Dow Jones industrial average jumped 232 points to 13,336 shortly after the opening bell Tuesday, the first trading day of 2013. That's a gain of 1.8 percent.The Standard & Poor's 500 index shot up 29 points, or 2 percent, to 1,455. The Nasdaq composite...

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'Fiscal cliff' deal sends markets shooting higher

 The "fiscal cliff" compromise, for all its chaos and controversy, was enough to send the stock market shooting higher Wednesday, the first trading day of the new year.All the major U.S. stock indexes swelled by at least 2 percent. For the Dow Jones industrial average, up 263 points soon after the market opened, it was the biggest surge in six months.Stocks around the world also leapt higher....

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Nigerian stocks continue gains, up 1.5 pct on banks

LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigerian stocks rose 1.5 percent on Wednesday in thin trade, led by heavy weight banks, adding to optimism that a surge in share prices last year will continue into 2013.The index of Nigeria's top-10 banks on Wednesday gained 3.5 percent to help lift the all-share index up 424 points to 28,502 points by 1404 GMT.Sub-Saharan Africa's second biggest index crossed a 28,000 point psychological...

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UN says more than 60,000 dead in Syrian civil war

The United Nations gave a grim new count Wednesday of the human cost of Syria's civil war, saying the death toll has exceeded 60,000 in 21 months — far higher than recent estimates by anti-regime activists.The day's events illustrated the escalating violence that has made recent months the deadliest of the conflict: As rebels pressed a strategy of attacking airports and pushing the fight closer to...

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Nominee to be Libyan foreign minister turns down the job

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - The man proposed as Libya's foreign minister has rejected the post despite being cleared by an Integrity Commission which was asked to examine his ties to deposed leader Muammar Gaddafi.Ali Aujali, Libya's former ambassador to the United States was among eight of the 27 ministers nominated by Prime Minister Ali Zeidan who were referred to the commission, which studies the backgrounds...

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Egypt panel implicates Mubarak, military in deaths

CAIRO (AP) — An Egyptian fact-finding mission determined that Hosni Mubarak watched the uprising against him unfold through a live TV feed at his palace, despite his later denial that he knew the extent of the protests and crackdown against them, a member of the mission said Wednesday.The mission's findings increase pressure for a retrial of the 84-year old ousted president, who is already serving...

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Venezuela opposition: Chavez secrecy feeds rumors

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela's opposition demanded that the government reveal specifics of President Hugo Chavez's condition Wednesday, criticizing secrecy surrounding the ailing leader's health more than three weeks after his cancer surgery in Cuba.Opposition coalition leader Ramon Guillermo Aveledo said at a news conference that the information provided by government officials "continues...

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U.N. lifts Syria death toll to "truly shocking" 60,000

AMMAN/GENEVA (Reuters) - More than 60,000 people have died in Syria's uprising and civil war, the United Nations said on Wednesday, dramatically raising the death toll in a struggle that shows no sign of ending.In the latest violence, dozens were killed in a rebellious Damascus suburb when a government air strike turned a petrol station into an inferno, incinerating drivers who had rushed there for...

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Oil down slightly as fiscal-cliff talks continue

The price of oil fell slightly Friday, as the stock market drifted lower and efforts continued in Washington to strike a budget deal before the year-end deadline.U.S. benchmark crude fell 7 cents to finish at $90.80 a barrel.Hopes that a budget compromise might be reached were still alive as congressional leaders met with President Barack Obama at the White House. The Republican-dominated House is...

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Stocks drop as hope for a budget deal slips away

 Stocks are dropping again on Wall Street as investors lose hope that Washington will meet a self-imposed deadline for reaching a budget deal by year-end.The five-day losing streak for the Dow Jones industrial average was the longest since July.The Dow lost 158 points to close at 12,938 Friday.The Standard & Poor 500 index fell 15 points to 1,402 and the Nasdaq dropped 25 points to 2,960.The...

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Wall Street ends sour week with 5th straight decline

- Stocks fell for a fifth straight day on Friday, dropping 1 percent and marking the S&P 500's longest losing streak in three months as the federal government edged closer to the "fiscal cliff" with no solution in sight.President Barack Obama and top congressional leaders met at the White House to work on a solution for the draconian debt-reduction measures set to take effect beginning next week....

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Wall St Week Ahead - Cliff may be a fear, but debt ceiling much scarier

 Investors fearing a stock market plunge - if the United States tumbles off the "fiscal cliff" next week - may want to relax.But they should be scared if a few weeks later, Washington fails to reach a deal to increase the nation's debt ceiling because that raises the threat of a default, another credit downgrade and a panic in the financial markets.Market strategists say that while falling off...

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Stocks open lower as US budget deadline nears

 Stocks are falling again on Wall Street as Washington leaders blame each other for an impasse over the budget that seems less and less likely to be resolved before a year-end deadline.That's when a series of across-the-board government spending cuts and tax increases kick in, an event that has become known as the "fiscal cliff."The market is on track for its fifth consecutive decline as the...

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