US stocks lower on jobless claims

US stocks have opened lower following weak reports on US jobs and European business activity.

Five minutes into trade on Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 23.80 points, or 0.17 per cent, at 13,903.74.

The broad-based S&P 500 slipped 6.51 points, or 0.43 per cent, to 1,505.44.

The tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index fell 14.04 points, or 0.44 per cent, to 3,150.37.

The Labor Department said initial jobless claims rose to 362,000 in the week ending February 16, more than the analyst estimate of 358,000.

Analysts also were eying a Markit report that showed the eurozone's purchasing managers index slipping to 47.3 in February from 48.6 the previous month.

"A disappointing report on eurozone business activity is dampening sentiment," said Charles Schwab & Co in a market comment.

US stocks extended Wednesday's sharp losses following Federal Reserve meeting minutes that highlighted debate over the Fed's bond-purchasing program.

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Walmart hikes dividend as earnings rise

GLOBAL retailing giant Walmart has announced a higher dividend for 2014 as fourth-quarter earnings showed strong growth helped by a lower tax rate.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc raised its fiscal 2014 dividend by 18 per cent to $US1.88 a share, compared to $US1.59 for the full year 2013, ended January 31.

Net earnings for the fiscal fourth quarter were up 8.6 per cent over a year earlier to $US5.61 billion ($A5.50 billion), on the strength of a 3.9 per cent rise in revenues to $US127.1 billion.

Earnings per share were $US1.67, compared to $US1.50 a year earlier.

For the full year, net earnings hit $US17.0 billion, up from $US15.8 billion in fiscal 2012. Global revenue topped $US466 billion.

The company said it benefited in the fourth quarter from a lower than expected effective tax rate, which fell to 27.7 per cent from 30.9 per cent a year earlier.

The company forecast more growth for 2014, with earnings per share in the $US5.20-5.40 range compared to $US5.02 last year.

"Walmart is operating in markets that offer continued opportunity for growth, both in our stores and online," said chief executive Mike Duke.

"With our core Walmart US business operating so well, our investments in e-commerce and our international markets focused on growth and improving returns, we are truly the best positioned global retailer," Duke said.

"Fiscal year 2013 was the first year of our five-year plan to reduce operating expenses as a percentage of sales by at least 100 basis points," said chief financial officer Charles Holley.

"We made progress toward our five-year goal, reducing expenses for the year by 14 basis points. Walmart US led this effort."

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Walmart hikes dividend as earnings rise

GLOBAL retailing giant Walmart has announced a higher dividend for 2014 as fourth-quarter earnings showed strong growth helped by a lower tax rate.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc raised its fiscal 2014 dividend by 18 per cent to $US1.88 a share, compared to $US1.59 for the full year 2013, ended January 31.

Net earnings for the fiscal fourth quarter were up 8.6 per cent over a year earlier to $US5.61 billion ($A5.50 billion), on the strength of a 3.9 per cent rise in revenues to $US127.1 billion.

Earnings per share were $US1.67, compared to $US1.50 a year earlier.

For the full year, net earnings hit $US17.0 billion, up from $US15.8 billion in fiscal 2012. Global revenue topped $US466 billion.

The company said it benefited in the fourth quarter from a lower than expected effective tax rate, which fell to 27.7 per cent from 30.9 per cent a year earlier.

The company forecast more growth for 2014, with earnings per share in the $US5.20-5.40 range compared to $US5.02 last year.

"Walmart is operating in markets that offer continued opportunity for growth, both in our stores and online," said chief executive Mike Duke.

"With our core Walmart US business operating so well, our investments in e-commerce and our international markets focused on growth and improving returns, we are truly the best positioned global retailer," Duke said.

"Fiscal year 2013 was the first year of our five-year plan to reduce operating expenses as a percentage of sales by at least 100 basis points," said chief financial officer Charles Holley.

"We made progress toward our five-year goal, reducing expenses for the year by 14 basis points. Walmart US led this effort."

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Deadly bombing rocks central Damascus

A POWERFUL car bomb has exploded close to ruling party offices in Damascus, killing more than 50 people and causing widespread destruction in the Syrian capital's deadliest attack for more than nine months.

The bombing, which rocked the city centre and sent thick smoke scudding across the skyline, was followed soon after by a mortar attack on a nearby military headquarters.

The attacks came as the opposition umbrella group, the National Coalition, was meeting in Cairo to discuss proposals to hold conditional talks with President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Images of charred bodies lying next to mangled vehicles were broadcast by Al-Ekhbariya state television, which said children were among those wounded as the blast occurred near a school in the central district of Mazraa.

Sirens rang out, and machine gun fire was also heard, as firemen rushed to the scene to douse the flames.

A police official told AFP the car bomb exploded at the 16 November Square near the Al-Iman mosque, where the ruling Baath party's head offices are located.

State television said the blast, which left a large crater in a road, killed 53 people and wounded dozens, making it the bloodiest in the capital since twin suicide bombings left 55 people dead on May 10, 2012.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the toll at 42 dead, including nine troops, and dozens wounded.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the official SANA news agency blamed the attack on "terrorists" - the regime's term for rebels who have been fighting to oust Assad for nearly two years.

"It is terrorism ... Is that what you call Islam?" one of the wounded told Syrian television.

"Is that the freedom you want? Is that the (rebel) Free Syrian Army?" said another man, speaking at the site of the attack.

The opposition denounced as "terrorists" those behind the bombing.

"Any acts targeting civilians with murder or human rights violations are criminal acts that must be condemned, regardless of the perpetrator or the justification," the National Coalition said on Facebook.

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12 dead, 52 hurt in bomb blasts in India

AT least 18 people have been killed and 52 wounded when bombs ripped through crowded areas of the Indian city of Hyderabad in what the prime minister has called a "dastardly act".

The bombs targeted a mainly Hindu district in a suburb of the city, a hub of India's information technology industry, which has a large Muslim population, and came with the nation on alert after the recent hanging of a Kashmiri separatist.

"We have 18 people dead," a police officer who declined to be named told AFP.

Another senior police officer at the scene of one of the explosions, Amit Garg, put the number of wounded at 52.

Police said many of the injured were in critical condition in hospital.

"This is a dastardly act and the guilty will not go unpunished," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said of the attacks, the deadliest to hit India since 13 people died in a 2011 bombing outside the High Court in the capital New Delhi.

But Singh also appealed for "calm" in the aftermath of the Hyderabad blasts.

City police said there had been three explosions, but Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said he could only confirm two.

"The two bombs were placed on two different bicycles and the distance between them was about 100 to 150 metres," Shinde told reporters in New Delhi.

He said Indian authorities had received "intelligence inputs in the (recent) days about the possibility of attacks and this information was shared with other states".

Police said the blasts went off in quick succession.

Huge crowds gathered near the site of the explosions in the Hyderabad suburb of Dilsukh Nagar as police struggled to collect evidence.

Meanwhile at the Osmania General Hospital, bloodied victims lay on stretchers as sobbing relatives pleaded for information about their loved ones.

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US weekly jobless claims rise

NEW claims for US unemployment benefits rose last week after two straight weeks of decline.

Initial jobless claims rose to 362,000 in the week ending February 16, from the prior week's revised reading of 342,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday.

Last week's increase in claims was bigger than the average analyst estimate of 358,000, but did not totally erase the declines of the previous two weeks.

Weekly claims, a sign of the pace of layoffs, have trended between 330,000 and 375,000 since early December as the job market slowly improves amid a sluggish economy.

The four-week moving average of new jobless claims, which helps to smooth week-over-week volatility, climbed for the second consecutive week, rising 2.3 per cent to 360,750, its highest level in more than a month.

According to the latest official data, the US unemployment rate was 7.9 per cent in January.

The Federal Reserve, in the minutes of its January monetary policy meeting released on Wednesday, was debating whether it should pull the plug on its open-ended $US85 billion ($A83 billion) asset purchases program even before the labour market has "substantially" improved.

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Pyramid of pharaoh's adviser discovered

A PYRAMID that dates back more than 3000 years and built for an adviser to King Ramses II has been discovered in Luxor, Egypt's state minister for antiquities says.

The remains of the large mudbrick pyramid - whose original height was 15 metres - were unearthed during excavations on the hill of Sheikh Abdel Qurna by a Belgian mission of the Universite libre de Bruxelles and Universite de Liege, Mohammed Ibrahim said.

"Stamp impressions on the bricks indicate that the pyramid belongs to a vizier of Upper and Lower Egypt named Khay, who held this charge for 15 years during the reign of pharaoh Ramses II (1279-1213 BC) in the 19th dynasty," the mission said in a statement.

"The monument was largely dismantled in the 7th and 8th century AD, when the tomb was transformed into a Coptic hermitage," it said.

The discovery is of major importance "since the vizier Khay was known to Egyptologists by a large number of documents but the location of his tomb remained undiscovered", the mission said.

Luxor, ancient Thebes, is a treasure trove of ancient Egyptian architecture and artefacts.

The city, a major tourist spot, has been badly affected by insecurity gripping the country since the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.

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Swan to urge G20 to close tax loopholes

FEDERAL Treasurer Wayne Swan is urging the Group of 20 major economies to close tax loopholes that allow profitable multinational companies to exploit differences in taxation regimes to avoid tax.

The Australian government this week introduced amendments to crack down on tax avoidance by global businesses that use complex arrangements and contrived corporate structures to avoid paying their fair share of tax.

Mr Swan, who left Australia on Thursday to attend the G20 finance ministers meeting in Moscow this weekend, said he would be looking for increased co-operation among nations to close those tax loopholes.

"In doing so, these companies leave all the heavy lifting to the businesses and individuals who do the right thing," he said a statement.

"This is not only unfair, but gives those unscrupulous companies a pricing advantage in the market place."

It's a global problem that requires global co-operation, and the G20 - which is responsible for 85 per cent of the world economy - is well placed to take action.

Otherwise, Mr Swan said while there would be some cause for cautious optimism at the meeting, the global recovery was not yet self-sustaining and stronger growth was needed to address the unacceptably high unemployment in many countries.

"Despite our economic strengths, global economic forces continue to impact our economy, with revenues far from recovering from the worst bout of economic turmoil since the Great Depression," he said.

Mr Swan will speak about the issue at a meeting of finance ministers and Russian president Vladimir Putin.

He intends to have separate meetings with Indonesian finance minister Agus Martowardojo and Japanese deputy prime minister and finance minister Taro Aso.

Australia is playing an enhanced role in guiding the G20's work in the lead-up to its G20 presidency in 2014.

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Newspaper sales fall in December quarter

DIGITAL sales of Australia's three big broadsheets have grown by double digit percentages, in a further sign of the shift away from printed newspapers.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) said in its latest report that Monday-to-Saturday sales of national, metropolitan and regional newspapers fell 6.9 per cent in the three months to December 3, compared with the prior corresponding period.

The December quarter result was a little worse than the 5.9 per cent decline in the three months to September 30.

However, figures from Australia's two major publishers - Fairfax Media and News Ltd - showed average daily sales of Monday to Friday digital editions of The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age rose by 13.4 per cent, compared with the previous quarter.

Moreover, sales of Saturday digital editions for the three mastheads were up 19 per cent.

It was the second consecutive quarter the two publishers have reported digital sales.

The Newspaper Works chief executive Tony Hale said the data showed consumers were willing to pay for quality journalism across publishing platforms.

"The growth of digital subscriptions is now starting to offset the decline in print circulations, as illustrated by the one per cent increase in total sales of the mastheads which are reporting their digital figures," he said in a statement.

"Given that the newspaper industry has only just begun reporting digital sales, these latest ABC numbers are very encouraging."

The Newspaper Works, a non-profit body set up to promote the industry, said reporting of print and digital sales would be compulsory for all publishers from the July to September audit period in 2013.

In a separate statement, Fairfax said there have been more than one million downloads of its SMH and Age tablet apps since they were launched 19 months ago.

The two apps had more 150,000 daily unique browsers, Fairfax said.

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16-year-old 'stole car, hit cop'

AN unlicensed teenager is accused of stealing a sedan before hitting a police officer on the NSW central coast.

Police say the 16-year-old reversed a stolen red Hyundai into an officer after he and a passenger were stopped for questioning on Cape Street, West Gosford before midnight on Tuesday.

The open driver door struck the officer and scraped along the side of his patrol car.

The Hyundai, which was allegedly stolen from Ourimbah earlier in the night, was later found abandoned on a fire trail off Donnison Street at Gosford.

The policeman was unhurt.

Police arrested a 16-year-old boy over the incident on Thursday evening.

The boy has been charged with take and drive conveyance, drive manner dangerous and never licensed driver.

He is due to appear in Woy Woy Children's Court on April 5.

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