Turkish banks restrict credit access amid pre-runoff uncertainty

By Nevzat Devranoglu and Ebru Tuncay ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish banks have restricted access to some individual loans and postponed decisions on extending corporate loans following new regulations introduced since Sunday’s inconclusive presidential vote and ahead of a May 28 runoff, bankers said. Some banks have raised monthly mortgage loan rates above 3% and car…

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Turkey’s net FX reserves hit 21-year low of $2.3 billion before vote

ANKARA (Reuters) – The Turkish central bank’s net international reserves dropped some $4.45 billion to a 21-year low of $2.33 billion in the week to May 12, as forex demand surged ahead of elections, official data showed on Thursday. The bank’s total gross reserves plunged $9 billion in the same week to $105.13 billion, the…

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BOJ’s Ueda vows to maintain easy policy, rules out chance of early exit

By Leika Kihara TOKYO (Reuters) -Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Kazuo Ueda said the central bank is unwavering in its stance of patiently maintaining ultra-loose monetary policy, reassuring markets Japan will be a dovish outlier as its global peers combat stubbornly high inflation. The recent rise in Japanese inflation above the BOJ’s 2% target is…

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Explainer-How Montana could enforce a TikTok ban

(Reuters) – Montana took the unusual step on Wednesday of banning Chinese-owned short video app TikTok, with lawmakers of the sparsely populated western U.S. state saying they aimed to protect residents from alleged intelligence gathering by China. TikTok, which is wildly popular with American teens and owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance, is already banned…

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‘Where is the state?’: Mass looting engulfs Sudanese capital

By Khalid Abdelaziz DUBAI (Reuters) – Mass looting by armed men and civilians is making life an even greater misery for Khartoum residents trapped by fierce fighting between Sudan’s army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), witnesses said. While the RSF dominates the capital on the ground and the army conducts frequent airstrikes, the witnesses…

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AstraZeneca’s China boss says drugmaker will seek to “love the Communist Party”

By Joe Cash and Brenda Goh BEIJING (Reuters) – Global drugmaker AstraZeneca will seek to be a patriotic company in China that “loves the Communist Party”, its China president said at an event on Friday. Wang Lei, who is also the company’s global executive vice president, made the comments at an event in the eastern…

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More than 1 million people displaced by Sudan crisis – UN refugee agency

GENEVA (Reuters) – More than a million people have been displaced by fighting in Sudan so far, including a quarter of a million refugees, a U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) spokesperson said on Friday. The army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have been locked in weeks of conflict that has killed hundreds of people and turned…

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