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Reuters
5 days ago
- Business
- Reuters
TSX futures muted with trade updates, corporate news in focus
July 17 (Reuters) - Futures for Canada's benchmark index were subdued on Thursday with investors looking for trade updates and assessing corporate news. Futures on the S&P/TSX index .SXFcv1 were unchanged at 1,615.80 points by 06:15 a.m. ET (1015 GMT). Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Wednesday that steel tariff quotas will be introduced for countries with which Canada has free trade agreements, excluding the U.S., in a bid to protect the domestic steel industry. The move follows U.S. President Donald Trump increasing import duties on steel and aluminum to 50% from 25% earlier this month. But existing arrangements with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement will be upheld. Investors are monitoring tariff updates with the August 1 deadline quickly approaching. Japan held talks with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Thursday and Europe Union's trade chief headed to Washington on Wednesday. In corporate news, Circle K-operator Alimentation Couche-Tard ( opens new tab pulled its $46 billion bid to buy 7-Eleven's parent company Seven & i Holdings (3382.T), opens new tab, saying the Japanese retailer did not engage constructively on the deal that would have created a global convenience store giant. Gold prices edged down on a firmer U.S. dollar while copper prices slid with tariffs in focus. Oil prices , inched up. TSX ended higher on Wednesday, boosted by technology and financial shares with investors shrugging off increased uncertainty about the Federal Reserve's leadership. U.S. economic data expected later in the day, including weekly jobless figures and June retail sales, will be scrutinized for insight on how the economy is holding up under a shifting tariff and trade policy. FOR CANADIAN MARKETS NEWS, CLICK ON CODES: TSX market report Canadian dollar and bonds report CA/ Reuters global stocks poll for Canada , Canadian markets directory
05-07-2025
- Business
UK foreign secretary visits Syria after easing sanctions
DAMASCUS, Syria -- British Foreign Secretary David Lammy met in Damascus on Saturday with Syria's interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa to discuss boosting cooperation, after the U.K. began lifting sanctions against Syria. Syria has been improving relations with Western countries following the fall of President Bashar Assad in December in an offensive led by al-Sharaa's Hayat Tahrir al-Sham Islamist group. Al-Sharaa's office said Lammy and the president discussed mutual relations and ways of boosting cooperation and the latest regional and international developments. Lammy later met his Syrian counterpart, Asaad al-Shibani, state media reported. In April, the British government lifted sanctions against a dozen Syrian entities, including government departments and media outlets, to help the country rebuild after Assad's ouster. Weeks earlier the U.K. had dropped sanctions against two dozen Syrian businesses, mostly banks and oil companies. Earlier this week, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order ending many American economic sanctions on Syria, following through on a promise he made to al-Sharaa. Syria's new leaders have been struggling to rebuild the country's decimated economy and infrastructure after nearly 14 years of civil war that has killed half a million people. In recent months, al-Sharaa visited oil-rich regional countries and France in May in his first visit to the Europe Union.
San Francisco Chronicle
05-07-2025
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
UK foreign secretary visits Syria after easing sanctions
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — British Foreign Secretary David Lammy met in Damascus on Saturday with Syria's interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa to discuss boosting cooperation, after the U.K. began lifting sanctions against Syria. Syria has been improving relations with Western countries following the fall of President Bashar Assad in December in an offensive led by al-Sharaa's Hayat Tahrir al-Sham Islamist group. Al-Sharaa's office said Lammy and the president discussed mutual relations and ways of boosting cooperation and the latest regional and international developments. Lammy later met his Syrian counterpart, Asaad al-Shibani, state media reported. In April, the British government lifted sanctions against a dozen Syrian entities, including government departments and media outlets, to help the country rebuild after Assad's ouster. Weeks earlier the U.K. had dropped sanctions against two dozen Syrian businesses, mostly banks and oil companies. Earlier this week, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order ending many American economic sanctions on Syria, following through on a promise he made to al-Sharaa. Syria's new leaders have been struggling to rebuild the country's decimated economy and infrastructure after nearly 14 years of civil war that has killed half a million people. In recent months, al-Sharaa visited oil-rich regional countries and France in May in his first visit to the Europe Union.
Winnipeg Free Press
05-07-2025
- Business
- Winnipeg Free Press
UK foreign secretary visits Syria after easing sanctions
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — British Foreign Secretary David Lammy met in Damascus on Saturday with Syria's interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa to discuss boosting cooperation, after the U.K. began lifting sanctions against Syria. Syria has been improving relations with Western countries following the fall of President Bashar Assad in December in an offensive led by al-Sharaa's Hayat Tahrir al-Sham Islamist group. Al-Sharaa's office said Lammy and the president discussed mutual relations and ways of boosting cooperation and the latest regional and international developments. Lammy later met his Syrian counterpart, Asaad al-Shibani, state media reported. In April, the British government lifted sanctions against a dozen Syrian entities, including government departments and media outlets, to help the country rebuild after Assad's ouster. Weeks earlier the U.K. had dropped sanctions against two dozen Syrian businesses, mostly banks and oil companies. Monday Mornings The latest local business news and a lookahead to the coming week. Earlier this week, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order ending many American economic sanctions on Syria, following through on a promise he made to al-Sharaa. Syria's new leaders have been struggling to rebuild the country's decimated economy and infrastructure after nearly 14 years of civil war that has killed half a million people. In recent months, al-Sharaa visited oil-rich regional countries and France in May in his first visit to the Europe Union.
New Straits Times
03-06-2025
- Science
- New Straits Times
Oceans feel the heat from human climate pollution
OCEANS have absorbed the vast majority of the warming caused by burning fossil fuels and shielded societies from the full impact of greenhouse gas emissions. But this crucial ally has developed alarming symptoms of stress – heatwaves, loss of marine life, rising sea levels, falling oxygen levels and acidification caused by the uptake of excess carbon dioxide. These effects risk not just the health of the ocean but the entire planet. By absorbing more than 90 per cent of the excess heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases, "oceans are warming faster and faster", said Angelique Melet, an oceanographer at the European Mercator Ocean monitor. The UN's IPCC climate expert panel has said the rate of ocean warming – and therefore its heat uptake – has more than doubled since 1993. Average sea surface temperatures reached new records in 2023 and 2024. Despite a respite at the start of 2025, temperatures remain at historic highs, according to data from the Europe Union's Copernicus climate monitor. The Mediterranean has set a new temperature record in each of the past three years and is one of the basins most affected, along with the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans, said Thibault Guinaldo, of France's CEMS research centre. Marine heatwaves have doubled in frequency, become longer lasting and more intense, and affect a wider area, the IPCC said in its special oceans report. Warmer seas can make storms more violent, feeding them with heat and evaporated water. The heating water can also be devastating for species, especially corals and seagrass beds, which are unable to migrate. For corals, between 70 per cent and 90 per cent are expected to be lost this century if the world reaches 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming compared to pre-industrial levels. Scientists expect that threshold – the more ambitious goal of the Paris climate deal – to be breached in the early 2030s or even before. When a liquid or gas warms up, it expands and takes up more space. In the case of the oceans, this thermal expansion combines with the slow but irreversible melting of the world's ice caps and mountain glaciers to lift the world's seas. The pace at which global oceans are rising has doubled in three decades and if current trends continue it will double again by 2100 to about one centimetre per year, according to recent research. Around 230 million people worldwide live less than a metre above sea level, vulnerable to increasing threats from floods and storms. "Ocean warming, like sea-level rise, has become an inescapable process on the scale of our lives, but also over several centuries," said Melet. "But if we reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we will reduce the rate and magnitude of the damage, and gain time for adaptation." The ocean not only stores heat, it has also taken up 20 to 30 per cent of all humans' carbon dioxide emissions since the 1980s, according to the IPCC, causing the waters to become more acidic. Acidification weakens corals and makes it harder for shellfish and the skeletons of crustaceans and certain plankton to calcify. "Another key indicator is oxygen concentration, which is obviously important for marine life," said Melet. Oxygen loss is due to a complex set of causes including those linked to warming waters. Combined Arctic and Antarctic sea ice cover – frozen ocean water that floats on the surface – plunged to a record low in mid-February, more than a million square miles below the pre-2010 average. This becomes a vicious circle, with less sea ice allowing more solar energy to reach and warm the water, leading to more ice melting. This feeds the phenomenon of "polar amplification" that makes global warming faster and more intense at the poles, said Guinaldo.
