NowMyNews

Oil companies seeking new class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Arctic areas for exploration face a battle with environmentalists, fishermen and hotel owners over Norwegian islands where jagged snow-capped peaks rise sheer from the sea. With oil production falling to a 25-year low this year and the state depending on oil revenues, Norway's ruling Labour Party is warming to drilling in Lofoten's pristine waters, setting up the issue as the year's biggest political fight ahead of elections in September. "We've already got the winning lottery ticket by living in class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Norway . We shouldn't want to be even richer," said Erling Santi, a fisherman in Svolvaer, Lofoten's main town.   true       "Oil drilling could drive the fish away," said Santi who is also the managing director of Saga Fish, a cod packing plant. Norway is one of the world's most prosperous nations with per capital GDP in excess of $

class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Carnival Corp ( id="symbol_CCL.N_0"> CCL.N ) ( id="symbol_CCL.L CCL.L ) has launched a comprehensive review of its entire fleet after a fire crippled one of its ships last month, and will share its findings across the industry, Carnival class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Cruise Lines ' chief executive told a conference on Tuesday. _1"> The engine-room fire disabled the Bahamian-flagged Carnival Triumph in the Gulf of class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Mexico , leaving it adrift with more than 4,000 passengers and crew aboard. The accident made headlines around the world and comedians had a field day with the ensuing plumbing problems. "We've started a comprehensive review of our entire fleet," Carnival class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Cruise Lines President and Chief Executive Gerry Cahill told the annual Cruise Shipping Miami conference.   true       "It will take us a

London remains the top financing centre for the global transport industry, although it faces stiff competition from New York and capitals in Asia Pacific as companies seek to tap more funding sources, a survey showed on Friday. Some 37 per cent of respondents from the global aviation, rail and shipping sectors ranked London as the key financial centre for transport, followed by New York at 14 percent and Singapore at 7 percent, the survey by international law firm Norton Rose found. "London and New York remain key financial centres for the transport industry but are looking over their shoulders at Asia which is growing in importance," said Harry Theochari, global head of transport at Norton Rose.   true       Of those canvassed, 43 percent from the rail industry said London was most favoured as a financing hub, followed by 40 percent in the shipping sector and 31 percent in aviation. The annual survey by Norton Rose, now in its fourth year, is one of the transport secto

BlackBerry will offer technology to separate and make secure both work and personal data on mobile devices powered by class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Google Inc's Android platform and by Apple Inc's iOS operating system, the company said on Thursday. The new feature could help BlackBerry sell high-margin services to enterprise clients even if many, or all, of their workers are using smartphones made by BlackBerry's competitors. That may be crucial for the company as it has lost a vast amount of market share to the iPhone and to Android devices, such as Samsung class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Electronics Co's ( id="symbol_005930.KS_0"> 005930.KS ) Galaxy line. Jefferies analyst Peter Misek said he expects BlackBerry's device management class="mandelbrot_refrag"> software to gain traction this year, and boost revenue next year.   true       "Supporting devices with the best, most secure, and easiest-to-use mobi

Synonymous with film photography, lilacs and classical music, Rochester offers an unusual array of attractions for a mid-sized U.S. city that brought industrial prowess to a scenic river gorge on Lake Ontario's southern shore. From top-ranked golf courses and national-landmark house museums to a children's emporium of play and America's oldest municipal park-garden cemetery, the city in western New York is crammed with surprises for visitors of all interests. Its glacier-carved linchpin is a trio of waterfalls trumpeting the Genesee River's thunderous descent into Lake Ontario. Reuters correspondents with local knowledge help visitors get the most out of a short stay in Rochester (pop. 210,855), variously known over two centuries as the Flour City, the Flower City and, less so of late, the World's Image Center.   true       FRIDAY 5:30 p.m. - Dinner at Dinosaur Barbecue (www.dinosaurbarbque.com), a honky tonk rib joint tucked into a former railroad station ov

Spending a night between destinations in a stopover city and need a place to stay? Online boutique hotel experts Mr & Mrs Smith (www.mrandmrssmith.com) have come up with 10 class="mandelbrot_refrag"> hotels for a memorable stopover. Reuters has not endorsed this list. _0"> 1. Best for resort relaxation: Capella Singapore, Singapore Languishing on Sentosa Island, just a 15-minute taxi hop south of the city centre, Capella Singapore hotel in Singapore feels a relaxing world away. A tranquil resort, the 112-room heritage-modern hybrid has a graceful colonial building, art works dotted around the manicured grounds and a triple-tier pool with South class="mandelbrot_refrag"> China Sea views. 2. Best for gourmet dining: The Landmark Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong, class="mandelbrot_refrag"> China   true       A day-spa with 113 contemporary guest rooms, The Landmark Mandarin Oriental hotel in Hong Kong gives good stopover. This styli

For British student Carly Connor a trip to London for a city break would be impossible if she had to pay for a hotel so instead she rents a room in a Londoner's home. Connor, 26, is among a growing number of people taking advantage of a surge in the number of homeowners offering to rent out a room for a night or longer, with the cash a welcome addition to recession-squeezed budgets. This new wave of hospitality sweeping the travel industry was sparked by the success of "couch surfing", where people could go online to book a free bed in a home, and is being led by a blitz of new websites that let tourists bypass resorts and class="mandelbrot_refrag"> hotels .   true       "A lot of the time you find yourself with a host who is more than happy to point you in the direction of a few local hot spots that you otherwise would have missed entirely," Connor told Reuters. But the increasing popularity of peer-to-peer rentals has lawmakers on the alert

The law firms Squire Sanders and Patton Boggs said on Friday they had agreed to combine, striking a deal that is expected to save Patton Boggs from growing financial strain. In a news release, the two firms said they would begin operating under the name Squire Patton Boggs effective June 1. Partners at 1,300-lawyer Squire Sanders voted on Friday, after 300-lawyer Patton Boggs, known for its lobbying presence in Washington, D.C., had earlier approved the combination.   true       The combination was held up on Thursday because of concerns within Squire Sanders over the role Patton Boggs played in a legal battle between class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Chevron Corp ( id="symbol_CVX.N_0"> CVX.N ) and a group of Ecuadorean villagers, Patton Boggs managing partner Edward Newberry said. Starting in 2010, Patton Boggs had advised the villagers on a plan to enforce an $18 billion pollution judgment against Chevron that the oil giant said was obtained through fraud.

U.S. safety regulators said on Friday that it is likely that more than 13 people died in General Motors cars recalled earlier this year for defective ignition switches. The automaker told Reuters it had raised the number of crashes associated with faulty ignition switches but stood by its count for the number of fatalities. GM recalled 2.6 million older models, including Chevrolet Cobalt and Saturn Ion, to replace defective switches that can cause engines to shut off while driving, leading to a sudden loss of power steering, power brakes and the failure of air bags to deploy in a crash.   true       GM has linked the switch to 13 deaths in cars built and sold between model years 2003-2010. It has never fully explained how it arrived at the figure. Spokesman Jim Cain on Friday said that GM recently informed regulators that it had identified about a dozen more crashes connected with the ignition switch in addition to the previous 35 in had counted. In response to a query from Reut

class="mandelbrot_refrag"> EBay Inc initially believed that its customers' data was safe as forensic investigators reviewed a network security breach discovered in early May and made public this week, a senior executive told Reuters on Friday. class="mandelbrot_refrag"> EBay has come under fire over its handling of the cyberattack, in which hackers accessed personal data of all 145 million users, ranking it among the biggest such attacks launched on a corporation to date. "For a very long period of time we did not believe that there was any eBay customer data compromised," global marketplaces chief Devin Wenig said, in the first comments by a top eBay executive since the e-commerce company disclosed the breach on Wednesday.   true       EBay moved "swiftly to disclose" the breach after it realized customer data was involved, he said. Wenig would not say when the company first realized that the cyberattackers accessed customer

Sales of new U.S. single-family homes rose in April and the stock of houses on the market hit a 3-1/2 year high, but economists said the market was still not clearly gaining steam. Sales increased 6.4 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 433,000 units, the Commerce Department said on Friday. The rise ended two straight months of declines and beat Wall Street expectations, but sales remained in line with their sluggish first-quarter average.   true       "The data have yet to show a meaningful pickup in activity early on in the spring following the unusually harsh winter," said Daniel Silver, an economist at JPMorgan in New York. But investors welcomed the report and snapped up homebuilder shares, such as class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Lennar Corp ( id="symbol_LEN.N_0"> LEN.N ) and D.R. Horton Inc ( id="symbol_DHI.N_1"> DHI.N ). A run-up in mortgage rates and home prices over the last year has weighed on the market. Sales

Bank of class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said the central bank still has policy options left if it were to ease monetary policy further to fend off risks that may threaten the achievement of its price target. _0"> Kuroda repeated his view that the world's third-largest class="mandelbrot_refrag"> economy is making steady progress toward meeting the BOJ's 2 percent price target, with core consumer inflation having reached 1.3 percent for four straight months in March. "But we are ready to adjust policy, be it further monetary easing or something else, if changes in economic and financial developments derail the path toward meeting the price target," he said in an interview with the class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Nikkei class="mandelbrot_refrag"> business daily published on Saturday.   true       Kuroda said the BOJ will not ease incrementally in response to temporary fluctuatio

Whatever investors are worried about right now, those concerns are not showing up in Wall Street's fear gauge. That scares some. On the other hand, it more than likely means that class="mandelbrot_refrag"> stocks will keep taking things slow and steady. The class="mandelbrot_refrag"> CBOE Volatility Index .VIX, or VIX, closed on Friday at 11.36, its lowest level since March 2013. That means investors see less risk ahead, particularly with the class="mandelbrot_refrag"> S&P 500 .SPX ending at a record high again on Friday. With the typically slow summer months just ahead and little on the horizon to shake the market from its current course, investors could be looking at even lower VIX levels, some analysts said.   true       "It's not that there's no likelihood of a correction. It's that people don't perceive anything to derail the train at this point," said Andrew Wilkinson, chief market analyst at cl

Upscale department store operator class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Nordstrom Inc ( id="symbol_JWN.N_0"> JWN.N ) is reaching out to potential buyers for its store-branded credit cards, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing sources familiar with the matter. _0"> Nordstrom has approached class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Citigroup Inc ( id="symbol_C.N C.N ), class="mandelbrot_refrag"> JPMorgan Chase & Co ( id="symbol_JPM.N JPM.N ), class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Capital One Financial Corp ( id="symbol_COF.N COF.N ) and Toronto-Dominion Bank ( id="symbol_TD.TO TD.TO ), among other companies to test interest in its credit cards, the report said. _1"> The company, which has yet to set a date to solicit initial offers, is informally approaching buyers for the portfolio, Bloomberg said, citing one of the sources.   true       _2"> Nordstrom plans to reach out to other top issuers of cred

Wall Street class="mandelbrot_refrag"> banks , big metal merchants and the London Metal Exchange face a lawsuit alleging they have artificially inflated zinc prices, expanding a high-profile legal case that has until now centered on the larger class="mandelbrot_refrag"> aluminum market. In a filing on Friday, Duncan Galvanizing, one of the oldest galvanizers in the United States, accused class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Goldman Sachs Group Inc ( id="symbol_GS.N_0"> GS.N ), class="mandelbrot_refrag"> JPMorgan Chase & Co ( id="symbol_JPM.N_1"> JPM.N ), the LME and metal warehouse operators of conspiring since 2010 to manipulate the U.S. zinc price. The suit, registered in the Southern District of New York, is the first to include allegations over the impact of warehousing on the smaller, niche zinc market. Zinc is used to coat class="mandelbrot_refrag"> steel to protect against corrosion

class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Euro zone class="mandelbrot_refrag"> banks need to be strong enough to support a pick up in credit demand to keep the euro zone recovery going, European Central Bank Executive Board member Yves Mersch said on Saturday. _0"> Tougher regulatory standards and a stronger sense of risk-aversion in the wake of the financial crisis have led class="mandelbrot_refrag"> banks to scale back lending and raised interest rates on loans. That has made it more difficult for companies, especially smaller and medium-sized ones, to obtain credit to fund expansion or growth.   true       Mersch said the class="mandelbrot_refrag"> euro zone had started to recover and was reaching a point where companies could no longer rely on their own funds but were increasingly in need of external funding to keep growing. "We are seeing tentative signs from survey data that credit demand in the euro area is starting