Besides daily sports, the one hour weekly special programme will highlight various aspects of the Cricket World Cup.
The programme will be aired on every Saturday between 7 to 8 pm.
APP
Radio Pakistan to launch Special Sports Programme for World Cup
Besides daily sports, the one hour weekly special programme will highlight various aspects of the Cricket World Cup.
The programme will be aired on every Saturday between 7 to 8 pm.
APP
Ward-Prowse extends Saints stay
Born in Portsmouth, the home of Southampton’s bitter south coast rivals, the 20-year-old has been on Saints’ books since the age of eight and has made 77 first-team appearances in all competitions for the club since his senior debut in October 2011.
Now the England-Under 21 international is set to stay at Southampton, currently an impressive third in English football’s top flight, until 2020 at least.
“The club is in a fantastic position and ever since I joined the club at a young age I knew it was the right place to be,” Ward-Prowse told Southampton’s YouTube channel.
“I fell in love with the place straight away,” he added.
“I’ve been on a fantastic journey, the club has too, and it’s great to extend my stay.
I’m really excited for the next few years.”
Ward-Prowse has made 17 appearances for Southampton so far this season, despite being sidelined for a large part of the campaign with a broken foot.
However, he has featured in all 11 matches since returning last month and Saints manager Ronald Koeman was delighted by Ward-Prowse’s decision to extend his contract.
“He’s one of the young players who is developing himself in a very good way.
He will be a great player,” Koeman said.
“It’s always good news, I’m happy that he would like to stay with us.
It’s a good signal to the rest of the players,” the former Netherlands defender added.
“He’s one of the examples for the academy, to the confidence of the young players.
“‘Prowsey’ developed in the academy and now he’s one of the young players who plays for the first team.
“He’s a good professional, always serious in his training, in his discipline, he’s a big example for all young players.”
AIP, AFP, ATimes
Petroleum ministry contradicts Imran Khan’s statement
In a statement, he said that in fact the present government has substantially decreased the price of petrol already up to 30 rupees, which is based on actual import price in the past five months.
The prevalent per litre petrol price of Rs 78.28 in Pakistan is far cheaper compared to other countries in the region as per litre prices in India, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka are rupees 105, 92 and 97 respectively.
Petroleum prices are expected to be decreased further in February 2015, he added.
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Death toll in Shikarpur blast rises to 49
This was informed by Deputy Commissioner Shikarpur (DC) Haadi Bux Zardari.According to SSP Shikarpur, Saqib Ismail Memon the explosion took place inside an imambargah in Lakhi Dar area during Friday prayers.
Heavy contingent of Rangers reached the scene.
Locals residents shifted the injured to nearby hospitals.
Injured people were rushed to civil hospitals in Sukkur, Larkana and Khairpur where ermergency has been declared.
The CM Sindh has directed the medical authorities for provision of best medical facilities to the injured.
The Opposition leader in NA, Syed Khursheed Ahmed Shah strongly condemned the incident.
He expressed condolences with the bereaved families.
APP
Minibar Offers On-Demand Booze Delivery In 13 Cities
“Christie and Caleb want to go out,” Amanda says unenthusiastically, without looking at Joshua. “You care?”
“Tell them to come here,” Josh says, staring into his smartphone screen.
“To do what? We have nothing to eat. Nothing to drink. Are we supposed to sit around listening to music and drinking coffee at 10:30 on a Friday night?”
Joshua opens up his phone and flashes an annoyingly overconfident smile at Amanda.
“I’ve got it covered,” he says, as he flips open the MiniBar app on his iPhone. He shops for Amanda’s favorite Gin, gets his favorite Rye, and finds a nice hoppy beer for Christie and Caleb, using the filters in the app, and simply checks out.
As Josh and Amanda wait for their friends to arrive out of the dark snowy night, an order is sent to one of MiniBar’s vendor partners, where inventory is confirmed, and the order is put through the vendor’s payment system. The vendor checks out the user, packages up the product, and sends out a delivery man.
Answering a knock at the door, Josh stands before a man bundled in black and dusted with snow. He wears a yellow reflective vest. His bike is probably downstairs. He asks for Josh’s drivers license, checks it out, and hands over a bag full of booze.
And it is finished.
The story of Josh and Amanda and whatever the others’ names were is true for users across thirteen cities. Minibar is available across the web and on mobile in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Jersey City, The Hamptons, Ithaca, Dallas, Hoboken, Westchester, Silicon Valley, Palm Beach and Miami. Vendors on the platform can list their products, name their prices, and set up shop on the internet to get new, more educated customers.
Even with heavy competition in the space, Minibar cofounders Lara Crystal and Lindsey Andrews say that Minibar is currently the biggest player in the space in terms of revenues. Minibar makes money by taking a transactions-based technology fee from vendor partners at the end of the month.
To check out Minibar, which has raised a total of $1.8 million in seed funding, head over to the website here.
Blinq Enhances Your Favorite Messaging Applications With Extra Information
Instead of delivering a full mobile app experience you launch by tapping an icon, Blinq is designed to augment the apps you already use. Your normal behavior doesn’t have to change.
Once installed, Blinq appears as a small white dot that pops up inside mobile messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Hangouts, Skype, and SMS, for example, alerting you to new information about the person you’re communicating with. This additional information is pulled from a variety of other networks, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and more.
Blinq shows you status updates, photos and other recent activities, but its algorithms focus on highlighting the more important content. That is, if your friend recently posted two updates, one about what they had for lunch that day and another, more heavily liked update about a major life event, Blinq would only alert you to the latter.
The idea for the app, explains Ghinsberg, stems from his longtime interest in the concept of digital identities. He found that information about people was scattered around the web, and it was hard to access it when you needed it.
“We’re looking at the integrated, whole person instead of the fragmentation that’s caused because of the different platforms, the different channels and the different networks,” he says.
After teaming up with a technical co-founder Gal Bracha in 2013, the two first experimented with a larger solution, but realized soon that what they had built was too complicated and required that people change their habits. That didn’t work.
Right as they were accepted into the 500 Startups accelerator program, the team pivoted to build Blinq instead.
“We took the big idea, and reduced it,” says Ghinsberg. “Blinq is just a small white dot.”
While the app itself is consumer-facing, the concept could also work in business use cases where it could serve as something like a lightweight CRM tool. In that case, it wouldn’t be all that different from something like Rapportive or FullContact’s solution for Gmail. Those add-ons also aggregate content from a variety of networks in order to include personal and business information alongside social updates in Gmail’s sidebar.
Blinq just does this for mobile messaging apps.
The app that’s live today on Google Play is more of an MVP, meant more to test the how the market responds to the idea, the founder notes. That means the app may be buggy, and Blinq’s servers might be slow at times. But if successful, Ghinsberg says that the concept could be ported to other services beyond messaging.
Since its debut a couple of days ago, the company’s servers have imported over 250,000 contacts, and overnight, added half a million more followed by another million just last night. The team hasn’t publicized the app yet, but it has a few thousand downloads already.
The plan is to port the Blinq experience to iOS in the future, but there, the app will likely have to make some changes. Today on Android, the app works at the notification level, and is more deeply integrated. iOS, by its nature, will require more of a standalone experience, though Ghinsberg says he has some ideas about how to work around that.
Blinq has raised just under half a million in an advisory round from angel investors and 500 Startups, but will be looking to raise a million more starting next month.
Canon 5DS Leaked Specs Reveal A High Megapixel DSLR Geared For Color Accuracy
The Canon 5DS will also reportedly have a 61-point AF system, which is likely similar to or the same as the one currently available on the 5D Mark III and the 1D X. It’ll offer 5FPS continuous shooting, a special “fine detail” picture style mode, 1.3x and 1.6x crop shooting modes, time-lapse movie capture, anti-flicker, and interval timer and a bulb timer. It’ll also have a magnesium alloy body designed to be sealed against both dust and rain.
As mentioned, an “R” variant will do away with the low pass filter, which is also called an anti-aliasing filter and which is used in digital cameras to prevent moiré, which is the appearance of weird patterns on materials that contain repeated details, like tweed or gingham clothing, for instance.
That’s going to be much better for photographers who do wide landscape shots, however, since low pass filters work by blurring fine details before they reach the image sensor in order to prevent that moiré effect from appearing.
Canon is also putting a very strong color filter array on these cameras, which limits noise-free low-light shooting, but which also should produce much more accurate color capture vs. Canon’s existing camera offerings. The 5DS (and 5DS R) are aimed at a specialist audience, so this makes sense, while a Canon EOS 5D Mark IV will offer even higher sensitivity and better low-light performance, and should arrive some time later this year.
Uber Sued In California For Fraud, Negligence Following New Delhi Rape
The charges raised in the complaint include negligence and fraud, and the victim (who is going by Jane Doe to protect her identity) says that it’s Uber’s hollow marketing tactics and disregard for customer safety that led to the events that unfolded on that December 5 night.
One of the focal points of the complaint is Uber’s background check policies with regards to its riders.
Had Uber not sacrificed customer safety for the sake of profit and expansion, and actually cared about who it was employing to drives its cars rather than being preoccupied with claiming its share of the India taxi market, Plaintiff Doe would not have been viciously raped. In fact, a basic background check would have revealed that Yadav had a known propensity for violent and deviant conduct, including numerous arrests for rape and assault, which should have disqualified him from working as an Uber driver.
Uber structures its business in a way that doesn’t shoulder much responsibility for the behavior of its contracted drivers. Uber promises background checks on hired drivers, but it’s up to the user to choose the safest and best driver on the app (even though it automatically matches you and fines you for canceling). What goes on between the time that the driver picks up the passenger and drops them off is the responsibility of the driver alone.
For this reason, similar cases in the past haven’t made much of a dent in Uber’s legal armor.
Following this particular New Delhi case, Uber’s service was banned in the city. India represents one of Uber’s largest markets outside of the United States.
However, one week ago the service returned to the city under new legal restrictions, working on a no-profit model pending radio taxi license approval.
The company, embattled from the start, has grown from fledging startup to one of the most successful companies of the last decade. Uber is valued north of $40 billion and operates all over the world.
Update: An Uber spokesperson got back to TechCrunch with the following statement:
Our deepest sympathies remain with the victim of this horrific crime. We are cooperating fully with the authorities to ensure the perpetrator is brought to justice.
If you want to look at the full details of the complaint, we’ve embedded them below.
[via Re/Code] Featured Image: Visual Idiot/Shutterstock
U.K. Telco BT Sets Out ‘500Mbps’ Broadband Plan By 2025
BT has today announced plans for what it’s dubbing its “ultrafast broadband vision” — aka how it plans to upgrade its existing fibre network to increase broadband speeds over the next five to ten years, with deployment due to start in the financial year 2016/17 — subject to successful pilots of the new tech. It’s not announcing any new money to fund the upgrade at this point, with a BT spokesman confirming the plans would fall “within the current capex envelope” for fibre broadband.
Under the telco’s plans, faster U.K. broadband speeds would be achieved for a majority of the population by squeezing more megabits out of a fibre-copper mix, allowing BT to focus on upgrading its fibre-to-the-cabinet infrastructure, via a third-way tech — called “G.fast” — rather than spending the much larger sums involved in expanding full fibre-to-the-premises (i.e. where the fibre line is dug in all the way to a customer’s door).
BT has previously shown this G.fast fibre-copper mix working from distribution points between the cabinet and the customer’s premises, but is now saying it can achieve faster speeds right from the cabinet — although it still has to conduct large-scale customer trials to prove the deployment in the wild.
“We know the technology is capable, so it’s just looking at how we deliver that on a larger scale,” the spokesman noted. He added that the tech also allows for “flexibility” in deployment — so BT could run fibre far closer to customers in some areas than in others, depending on the various costs/ROI involved.
BT is talking in terms of expecting G.fast to offer “initial speeds of a few hundred megabits per second to millions of homes and businesses by 2020″. And increasing thereafter to “up to 500Mbps” for “a majority” of the U.K. population “within a decade”. So not exactly a startup-paced revolution. But that would likely require the government to funnel (more) taxpayer money into the mix.
Would more public money help accelerate the U.K. getting faster broadband? BT’s spokesman vacillated on this question but finally said the upgrade timeframe would likely remain as is, given how the incumbent structures its fibre deployments, but did suggest that taxpayer cash might be a way to widen the scope of the deployments — to enable more of the population to gain access to the higher speeds (should they wish to subscribe).
“[Government money] probably wouldn’t mean it would be faster [to deploy G.fast upgrades] as we’re still rolling our fibre program and as that winds down G.fast will deployment will wind up hence we believe it will stay in broadly the same capex envelope. It might mean the scope of any program could be larger, however but it is a significant engineering task,” he said.
Taxpayer money has been used to that end — and funneled into BT’s coffers — with current-gen U.K. broadband. The company is perhaps envisaging a repeat of that process, although the spokesman added: “The extent to which public funding might come in to play is not something that we have a view on in the current time.”
Whatever the pace of G.fast deployment, BT’s “vision”/business plan looks set to cap the U.K.’s broadband speeds at well below 1Gbps for a majority of users for the next decade and beyond, while leaving more remote/less economically attractive areas lagging further still in the speed stakes, as is the case now. Bottom line: the U.K. will have a mixed-estate of customer fixed-line connectivity which digital businesses will have to grapple with for the foreseeable future. (Unless 5G speeds into the frame to save all that fibre-line trench digging.)
Others are clearly thinking bigger than BT on fixed-line broadband. Making a series of digital policy recommendations last year, an advisory group to the U.K. Labour party, called Labour Digital, suggested a target of “nationwide access to 1Gbps broadband in homes, businesses and public buildings, with 10Gbps services for tech clusters, as early as possible in the next parliament”. It remains to be seen whether such a target makes it into the Labour Party manifesto.
Across the U.K. the current average broadband speed is just 23Mbps, according to telco regulator Ofcom. While BT’s top-line speed for its current gen fibre to the cabinet broadband product is 80Mbps, and the few full fibre to the premises deployments it has rolled out (such as in Milton Keynes) can offer up to 330Mbps. The U.K.’s other fibre broadband network, Virgin Media, covers just over half of U.K. properties — and has a current headline speed of up to 152Mbps.
Up to 1Gbps…
The spectre of ‘up to 1Gbps’ broadband is also invoked in BT’s “ultrafast” manifesto — a possible future product that’s likely to be focused on the SME market, according to the spokesman. But this “premium” offering comes without any concrete commitments, pricing or deployment timeframes at this point:
[BT] is also planning to develop a premium fibre broadband service for those residential and business customers who want even faster broadband, of up to 1Gbps.
“We’re exploring options for a premium 1Gbps service,” the spokesman added. “There are various things we can look at. We’re looking at deploying fibre all the way to the customer’s premises, as we currently do with fibre on demand, but we’re also quite keen to see what speeds G.fast can deliver as it evolves. So we’re keeping our options open there.”
All BT’s upgrade plans remain dependent on the success of pilots of the G.fast tech — which it will be kicking off this summer, in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, and Gosforth, Newcastle, where BT will be asking around 4,000 homes and businesses to participate in trials. The G.fast broadband standard itself was approved by the ITU just last month.
“We are looking to re-use or co-locate with our existing fibre infrastructure where possible, to reduce the need for new kit,” said the BT spokesman, discussing the pilots. “We’re also working to reduce the size of any additional cabinets that might be needed.”
“During the trials we will be testing new ‘micro cabinets’ that are about the size of a biscuit tin and can be attached to telegraph poles, walls of buildings or placed in footway boxes. Max range 400m, possibly further. Pilots will give us more accurate performance assessments,” he added.
Yes: the U.K.’s next broadband ‘revolution’ could be accelerating to your router from out of a biscuit-tin-sized node…
Commenting on the upgrade plans in a statement, BT CEO Gavin Patterson added: “We believe G.fast is the key to unlocking ultrafast speeds and we are prepared to upgrade large parts of our network should the pilots prove successful. That upgrade will depend however on there continuing to be a stable regulatory environment that supports investment.”
Google Settles With UK’s Information Commissioner And Will Change Its Privacy Policy
The changes, the biggest of which will be completed by June 2015 , will put Google in line with the UK’s Data Protection Act, and will also see the company taking steps over the next two years for further improvements. It will also carry out user testing in the process. We’re embedding the full document below.
In a statement, Steve Eckersley, head of enforcement at the ICO, pointed out that Google had not been found to cause “substantial damage and distress to consumers” but that the changes were necessary anyway:
“This undertaking marks a significant step forward following a long investigation and extensive dialogue. Google’s commitment today to make these necessary changes will improve the information UK consumers receive when using their online services and products.
“Whilst our investigation concluded that this case hasn’t resulted in substantial damage and distress to consumers, it is still important for organisations to properly understand the impact of their actions and the requirement to comply with data protection law. Ensuring that personal data is processed fairly and transparently is a key requirement of the Act.
“This investigation has identified some important learning points not only for Google, but also for all organisations operating online, particularly when they seek to combine and use data across services. It is vital that there is clear and effective information available to enable users to understand the implications of their data being combined. The detailed agreement Google has signed setting out its commitments will ensure that.”
The settlement document, co-signed by Google’s general counsel/SVP Kent Walker and UK information commissioner Christopher Graham, is not quick reading. The majority of it is a rundown of what has happened in the last three years, from the introduction of Google’s policy, explaining what it does, and how the ICO started to investigate it. Probably the most important part of it for now is the list of seven commitments that Google has made for what it will do in the future:
- Carry out the steps set out in Annex 1 with regards to the accessibility and content of the Privacy Policy and associated web content by 30 June 2015 [ie make it more accessible to ordinary consumers to see and understand];
- Ensure that there is continued evaluation of the privacy impact of future changes to processing which might not be within the reasonable expectations of service users so that users are provided with prompt and adequate notice of such processing;
- Keep the content of the Privacy Policy and associated web content under review and take appropriate actions so that service users are informed as to the ways in which their personal data may be processed;
- Keep the overlay examples for the Privacy Policy under review to ensure that informative and relevant examples are always in use;
- Continue to ensure that any significant future changes to the Privacy Policy are reviewed by user experience specialists and with representative user groups before the policy and associated tools are launched as appropriate;
- Continue to pro-actively cooperate with the Commissioner and provide appropriate advance notice of any significant changes, and respond promptly to enquiries relating to the ways in which Google processes user data and its proposals for consequential changes to the Privacy Policy and supporting web content;
- Provide a report to the Commissioner by August 2015 setting out the steps which the data controller has taken in response to the commitments set out in this undertaking.
Google has been in the spotlight in Europe over regulatory issues for years. The biggest of these have been in the arena of antitrust, and specifically the company’s dominance in areas like search and online advertising. These investigations are still ongoing, after the previous antitrust commissioner’s provisional settlement with Google was so roundly criticised for being too weak that it was sent back for further scrutiny. Now, with a new commissioner at the helm, we are effectively back at or near square one.
Separately, Google has been under a lot of scrutiny over how it handles personal data. People are still debating whether the RTBF rules — which effectively mean that Google and other search companies have to remove links in its search results for private individuals if those individuals request them to be taken down — violate freedom of information, or are the fairest way of ensuring individual control over our privacy. (Companies like Wikipedia are interestingly in opposition to RTBF.)
In the meantime, Google is still fighting how it can carry out the privacy policy introduced in 2012. It has faced trouble in Europe before: in 2013, the data protection authority in Holland also ruled that Google had violated its policies and forced the company to change how it discloses information to consumers in the country.
Document below. More to come.
Singtel, Sony And Warner’s New Video Streaming Service Beats Netflix To Asia
The companies said that HOOQ — which is described as a “joint venture startup” — will offer Hollywood movies and U.S. TV shows alongside domestic content from India, China, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Korea and Japan. In total, HOOQ will begin with an initial catalog of over 10,000 shows and movies.
There’s no specific launch date, but Singtel said the service will go online in the first quarter of 2015, initially in Indonesia, Philippines, India and Thailand. From there, the telecom giant is promising a ‘progressive rollout’ to other countries where it has business — other Singtel markets include Singapore, and Australia.
Also lacking from the initial announcement is an indication of price, but — interestingly — it looks like customers won’t be limited to paying via credit cards, as is the case with Netflix. Singtel said it will use its “billing capabilities” in countries where credit card ownership remains low, so that may mean customers can pay as part of their post-pay contract, and perhaps even using prepaid credit.
The timing of the launch is interesting because Netflix has not arrived in Asia Pacific yet. The U.S. company is preparing to launch in Australia and New Zealand sometime this year, after which it is likely to foray into Asian markets, so HOOQ will almost certainly be first in many parts of the region. You could see that as a first mover advantage, or a move that is good for the industry in general because it raises awareness of OTT video services in nascent markets.
Nonetheless, Peter Bithos, the CEO of HOOQ, believes that there is an immediate demand for Netflix-like video streaming services in Asia.
“We are starting this venture to change the way people across Asia view entertainment. Today, across developing markets, there is limited access to quality entertainment, streamed directly to the screen of one’s choice. It’s either illegal, high cost or difficult to get. We aim to fix that,” he said in a statement.
Piracy and lack of awareness are often cited as major barriers for licensed streaming services in Asia but, with two content companies and one telco on board, HOOQ is no bootstrapped startup. It could use Singtel’s network of operators — which reach a total subscriber base of over 500 million customers — and vast resources to gain traction from the get-go.
No doubt we’ll be hearing more updates from HOOQ very soon.
Featured Image: Marc Bruxelle/Shutterstock
India’s Mad Street Den Raises $1.5M To Bring The Benefits Of AI To Apps And Services
Reservoir Investments’ Exfinity Fund and GrowX Ventures provided the capital, which Mad Street Den will use for making new hires and working with partners to license and use its AI tech in apps and services.
The startup was founded by husband and wife duo Anand Chandrasekaran, a neuroscientist who graduated from Stanford, and Ashwani Asokan, who was previously with Intel Labs. The couple spent a cumulative 25 years working in the U.S., but returned to their country of birth last year to start the company.
“Relocating was a very deliberate decision,” Mad Street Den CEO Asokan told TechCrunch in an interview. “People in India and Asia are leaping frogging generations of technology, and we thought ‘where better to experiment with this stuff?'”
Location aside, Mad Street Den is different to other AI companies because it is focused on a platform of vertical services that partners can license to use in their products. It offers five different applications of AI, but Asokan explained e-commerce and analytics are proving to be the most popular with its handpicked list of partners.
E-Commerce And Analytics
The e-commerce product is centered around fashion, and offers a range of advanced services such as visual search. That could allow a shopper to take a photo of a bag or top, for example, then select their favorite color and find the nearest match on an e-commerce site.
Mad Street Den timed its arrival perfectly, since India’s e-commerce segment took off last year. Flipkart raised close to $2 billion in funding from VCs in 2014, Jeff Bezos cut Amazon India a $2 billion check for growth, and SoftBank backed Snapdeal with hundreds of millions of dollars too.
Asokan said Mad Street Den is in talks with “several” undisclosed e-commerce companies with a view to introducing its technology in their services in India before the summer. After that, she added, it will look to the wider Asia region.
Asokan said that its facial recognition technology could, for example, be used to detect a person’s general happiness for a week, their favorite colors, and more just from their Instagram photos. (Sidenote: be careful what you share on social media, kids.)
Right now, Mad Street Den is making money via API calls but in the future it will model its pricing based on the specifics of each vertical. For example, e-commerce partners could pay via affiliate commission or revenue-sharing, while other industries could be billed via licensing fees.
Offering Its Own Services Too
Beyond the platform play, the startup is also looking to release its own services and applications based on its technology. Asokan said that a range of ‘proofs of concept’ have been created — including a “short of staring competition game,” which I think sounds fascinating — but Mad Street Den is waiting until the right time before it launches them.
The startup has six full-time staff at this point and has bootstrapped itself so far. Asohan revealed that the company wasn’t looking for money but it sees this as an opportunity to accelerate its development.
“We weren’t planning to raise but word spread like crazy… and the VCs descended. People are already knocking on the door about our Series A… by the summer, when we should start seeing our services in the market, then we’ll be ready,” she said.
Until then, Mad Street Den plans to use most of the capital to hire “very senior people in the Valley” who its founders are connected with. Asohan expects the startup to at least double its headcount this year, but there are no plans for a U.S. office yet.
Featured Image: vitma/Shutterstock
UPDATE 2-Brazil's swelling budget gap compounds dire 2015 for Rousseff
- * Worst fiscal result in more than a decade
- * Overall budget gap doubles to 6.7 percent in 2014
- * Minister says numbers are "honest" (Adds comment by cabinet minister)
By Silvio Cascione and Luciana Otoni
BRASILIA, Jan 30 (AsiaTimes.ga) - Brazil fell far short of its main fiscal target in 2014, underscoring the uphill battle that President Dilma Rousseff faces to shore up public accounts to prevent a credit downgrade as recession risks loom.
Brazil posted a primary budget deficit of 32.536 billion reais ($13.76 billion) for last year, equal to 0.63 percent of gross domestic product, the central bank said on Friday. That was the first annual gap since the current data series started in 2001 and a far cry from the 91.3 billion reais surplus of 2013.
The country's overall budget gap, which takes into account debt servicing costs, doubled in 2014 to 6.7 percent of GDP, one of the highest among major economies according to the International Monetary Fund.
The results, much worse than the already grim estimates of investors and ratings agencies, mean that newly appointed Finance Minister Joaquim Levy will have to slash spending or continue jacking up taxes to meet the government's goal of saving 1.2 percent of GDP in 2015.
Budget constraints are just one headache for Rousseff, who struggled to win re-election in October. State-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA is engulfed in a massive corruption probe, and some of the country's biggest cities risk rationing water.
Brazil needs to run solid budget surpluses to service its sizable debt, on which it pays double-digit interest rates. Gross debt will probably keep rising this year, to 65.2 percent of GDP, according to central bank estimates.
Brazil's currency, the real, dropped nearly 3 percent on Friday, while interest rate futures <0#2DIJ:> spiked.
On condition of anonymity, a cabinet minister acknowledged the figures were "very bad," but said they reflected the true state of Brazil's finances.
The December results are the last under former Finance Minister Guido Mantega and Treasury Secretary Arno Augustin. Both left office at the end of the year after investors accused them of using "creative accounting" to bolster budget results.
"We can have a true start from 2015 onwards," the minister told Reuters. "The plan was that there should be no skeletons in the closet for Levy."
The Rousseff administration originally aimed for a primary surplus equivalent to 1.9 percent of GDP in 2014. It later abandoned that target as tax revenues dwindled and public spending surged ahead of the October election. (GA, Reuters, ATimes)(Additional reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Todd Benson, Chizu Nomiyama and Lisa Von Ahn)
IFR-Big three bond raters still hold sway over mortgage market
NEW YORK, Jan 30 (IFR) - Call it old-school thinking but despite all the regulatory scrutiny and public slamming of the top three global rating agencies for their roles during the last real estate bust, their rating calls on the riskiest tranches of conduit commercial mortgage bond deals are still influential enough to impact pricing outcomes on transactions.
Just last week when two competing deals priced their D classes with a 20bp differential, issuers, investors and analysts said the difference was simply because one had a Triple B minus rating from the one of the main credit rating agencies, while the other did not.
"It's certainly the easiest thing for market players to hang their hat on," one issuer of the two trades said of the pricing disparities. "It shows us the preferences of investors, and we are in this market a lot."
Simply put, the costs of doing business in the primary and repo markets for conduit commercial mortgage bond deals will be higher without a stamp of approval from one of the big three rating agencies - Moody's Investors Service, Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings.
The problem has being magnified on the riskiest bonds broadly being offered - namely the D class - where the act of securing an investment grade from the old guard rating agencies has become harder to come by.
When Morgan Stanley and Bank of America sold their US$1bn plus conduit a week ago, called MSBAM 2015-C20, the issuers did so with marks of Triple B minus and Triple B (low) from Morningstar and DBRS at the D class level.
Moody's was also hired to rate the trade, but like most of the deals it rated in recent months, supplied letter grades only on the deal's most bullet-proof Triple A and Aa2 securities.
So when Morgan Stanley's US$50.2m D class priced at swaps plus 380bp, versus S+360bp for a similar US$70.65m bond from Deutsche Bank and Ladder Capital that had a Triple B minus rating from Fitch Ratings, market players reacted by saying that having a top-three firm on a deal still mattered.
That partly stems from decades-old investment criteria that required at least one major rating agency on a deal before certain investors were allowed to buy into a deal.
But because little has changed in the criteria even after the crash, newcomers to the rating agency arena like Kroll Bond Rating Agency or Morningstar are still absent from the ranks of approved firms.
"Documentation and technology tend to move relatively slow on that front," one analyst said.
And in practical terms, that not only means some money managers will be barred from buying Triple B minus paper without the sign off from a major rating agency, but also that fast money accounts looking for leverage in the repo market will often be paying more.
Fast-money accounts are big buyers of Triple B minus paper from the conduits, and are known for levering up bonds on a 5.5% yielding D tranche to reach mid-teen returns.
"I don't know what the delta is (on repo) terms for a Triple B minus with or without Fitch (or) Moody's but I am sure it is something," a portfolio manager said.
Credit Suisse, for one, does not differentiate between ratings from one of the big three or from a DBRS, Kroll Bond Rating Agency or Morningstar, a person familiar with the matter said.
But many of the large US investment banks do, he said, noting that most are known to charge more for deals without Triple B minus marks from Moody's or Fitch.
WILLING AND ABLE
Fitch Ratings has stood alone for months as the only firm of the big three agencies willing, or able, to supply Triple B minus ratings.
Standard & Poor's has been largely out of the picture since the crash, and just this month agreed to a one-year ban from rating any new US conduit deals as part of a settlement with regulators, who claimed the agency misled investors in six post-crash deals.
And while Moody's has picked up the bulk of the slack, until this week, its views on anything just below the Triple A level have been absent on new-issues.
But any lingering doubts of Moody's stance of credit quality deterioration has been cleared up in a searing report issued by the agency on Thursday, which stated that bonds rated Triple B minus by others are more akin to B1, or junk status, by Moody's own metrics. [ID: nL1N0V827K]
"None of us really respect what rating agencies have had to say (since the crash)," a portfolio manager at a large money manager said in an interview following the report's release.
"But this had people paying attention for the first time in years."
He was not the only one keeping a close eye on what this all could mean for investors.
Darrell Wheeler, an analyst at Amherst Pierpont Securities, has been warning about the vulnerability of new-issue Triple B minus paper to downgrades and losses.
"If we go into a near-term recession, there is a real risk of losses at the Triple B minus level, and certainly there is concern from a downgrade perspective," he said in an interview.
But even in a downgrade scenario, Wheeler says there are sharp consequences for holders of Triple B minus paper, as deals that initially printed at S+335bp on average in 2014 will quickly widen to S+550bp.
"That's quite a kick in the pants." (Reporting by Joy Wiltermuth; editing by Shankar Ramakrishnan and Jack Doran)
Just last week when two competing deals priced their D classes with a 20bp differential, issuers, investors and analysts said the difference was simply because one had a Triple B minus rating from the one of the main credit rating agencies, while the other did not.
"It's certainly the easiest thing for market players to hang their hat on," one issuer of the two trades said of the pricing disparities. "It shows us the preferences of investors, and we are in this market a lot."
Simply put, the costs of doing business in the primary and repo markets for conduit commercial mortgage bond deals will be higher without a stamp of approval from one of the big three rating agencies - Moody's Investors Service, Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings.
The problem has being magnified on the riskiest bonds broadly being offered - namely the D class - where the act of securing an investment grade from the old guard rating agencies has become harder to come by.
When Morgan Stanley and Bank of America sold their US$1bn plus conduit a week ago, called MSBAM 2015-C20, the issuers did so with marks of Triple B minus and Triple B (low) from Morningstar and DBRS at the D class level.
Moody's was also hired to rate the trade, but like most of the deals it rated in recent months, supplied letter grades only on the deal's most bullet-proof Triple A and Aa2 securities.
So when Morgan Stanley's US$50.2m D class priced at swaps plus 380bp, versus S+360bp for a similar US$70.65m bond from Deutsche Bank and Ladder Capital that had a Triple B minus rating from Fitch Ratings, market players reacted by saying that having a top-three firm on a deal still mattered.
That partly stems from decades-old investment criteria that required at least one major rating agency on a deal before certain investors were allowed to buy into a deal.
But because little has changed in the criteria even after the crash, newcomers to the rating agency arena like Kroll Bond Rating Agency or Morningstar are still absent from the ranks of approved firms.
"Documentation and technology tend to move relatively slow on that front," one analyst said.
And in practical terms, that not only means some money managers will be barred from buying Triple B minus paper without the sign off from a major rating agency, but also that fast money accounts looking for leverage in the repo market will often be paying more.
Fast-money accounts are big buyers of Triple B minus paper from the conduits, and are known for levering up bonds on a 5.5% yielding D tranche to reach mid-teen returns.
"I don't know what the delta is (on repo) terms for a Triple B minus with or without Fitch (or) Moody's but I am sure it is something," a portfolio manager said.
Credit Suisse, for one, does not differentiate between ratings from one of the big three or from a DBRS, Kroll Bond Rating Agency or Morningstar, a person familiar with the matter said.
But many of the large US investment banks do, he said, noting that most are known to charge more for deals without Triple B minus marks from Moody's or Fitch.
WILLING AND ABLE
Fitch Ratings has stood alone for months as the only firm of the big three agencies willing, or able, to supply Triple B minus ratings.
Standard & Poor's has been largely out of the picture since the crash, and just this month agreed to a one-year ban from rating any new US conduit deals as part of a settlement with regulators, who claimed the agency misled investors in six post-crash deals.
And while Moody's has picked up the bulk of the slack, until this week, its views on anything just below the Triple A level have been absent on new-issues.
But any lingering doubts of Moody's stance of credit quality deterioration has been cleared up in a searing report issued by the agency on Thursday, which stated that bonds rated Triple B minus by others are more akin to B1, or junk status, by Moody's own metrics. [ID: nL1N0V827K]
"None of us really respect what rating agencies have had to say (since the crash)," a portfolio manager at a large money manager said in an interview following the report's release.
"But this had people paying attention for the first time in years."
He was not the only one keeping a close eye on what this all could mean for investors.
Darrell Wheeler, an analyst at Amherst Pierpont Securities, has been warning about the vulnerability of new-issue Triple B minus paper to downgrades and losses.
"If we go into a near-term recession, there is a real risk of losses at the Triple B minus level, and certainly there is concern from a downgrade perspective," he said in an interview.
But even in a downgrade scenario, Wheeler says there are sharp consequences for holders of Triple B minus paper, as deals that initially printed at S+335bp on average in 2014 will quickly widen to S+550bp.
"That's quite a kick in the pants." (Reporting by Joy Wiltermuth; editing by Shankar Ramakrishnan and Jack Doran)
IMF sees growth momentum for Canada despite lower oil
Jan 30 (AsiaTimes.ga) - Canada's economy will retain its momentum this year, despite a sharp drop in oil prices, thanks to exports to a recovering United States that will offset declines in domestic consumption and investment, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Friday.
While the make-up of the Canadian economy has not yet shifted to a broad-based recovery, it is expected to become more balanced this year as the housing market cools, the IMF said.
Still, the recent drop in oil prices will be a drag on growth due to weaker energy sector investment, with the economy expected to see 2.3 percent growth this year, slightly lower than 2014's estimated 2.4 percent rate.
"Downside risks to the outlook have risen in light of further oil price declines, adding to the risks of weaker global growth and still-unfolding effects from the unusually large fall in oil prices," the IMF said in its report.
The IMF completed its consultations with Canadian officials on the state of the economy in late January. (GA,Reuters, Atimes) (Reporting by Leah Schnurr; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
While the make-up of the Canadian economy has not yet shifted to a broad-based recovery, it is expected to become more balanced this year as the housing market cools, the IMF said.
Still, the recent drop in oil prices will be a drag on growth due to weaker energy sector investment, with the economy expected to see 2.3 percent growth this year, slightly lower than 2014's estimated 2.4 percent rate.
"Downside risks to the outlook have risen in light of further oil price declines, adding to the risks of weaker global growth and still-unfolding effects from the unusually large fall in oil prices," the IMF said in its report.
The IMF completed its consultations with Canadian officials on the state of the economy in late January. (GA,Reuters, Atimes) (Reporting by Leah Schnurr; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
Egypt's Sisi cuts short Ethiopia visit after 32 killed in Sinai
The four separate attacks on security forces in North Sinai on Thursday night were among the bloodiest in years and the first significant assault in the region since the most active Sinai militant group swore allegiance to IS in November.
Militant attacks in Sinai, while far from Cairo and tourist attractions, has crimped government efforts to project an image of stability to woo back foreign investors and tourists driven away by frequent political violence since a popular uprising four years ago that overthrew veteran autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
Sisi left Addis Ababa after meeting with the Ethiopian premier following the AU summit's opening session, an Egyptian official there told Reuters.
Most of Thursday's casualties occurred in the bombing of a military hotel and base in al-Arish, the heavily guarded Sinai provincial capital.
Security sources in Sinai said three military planes left al-Arish for Cairo on Friday morning carrying 30 body bags, some of them containing corpses left in pieces by the bomb blasts. They said at least five men were in critical condition and the death toll was likely to rise.
Two children, one of them 6 months old, died on Friday from wounds suffered on Thursday night as soldiers fought militants in a village near Sheikh Zuweid, close to the Gaza Strip and Israel's border, local medical sources said.
An army statement on Friday did not give a final death toll. It said the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces had met and was determined to continuing supporting the state's efforts to complete a "roadmap for achieving security and stability."
A major investment conference is set for March, where the government hopes to attract billions for huge infrastructure projects, and Egypt will also launch long-awaited parliamentary elections the same month.
SUSTAINED MILITANT VIOLENCE
But attempts to reinstate stability in the Arab world's largest country have been impeded in part by the Sinai-based Islamist insurgency that has intensified since the army ousted elected president Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in mid-2013 after mass unrest over his rule.
Hundreds of security force members have been killed since.
The Brotherhood denies links to the insurgents but the government makes no distinction between the two groups.
"All of us are in sorrow over what happened yesterday in Sinai but Egypt is paying the price of confronting terrorism and extremism," Sisi said in a statement carried by the state news agency MENA.
The most active group, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, changed its name to Sinai Province last year when it swore allegiance to Islamic State, the ultra-radical Sunni militant group that has seized swathes of Iraq and Syria, drawing U.S.-led air strikes.
A daily news broadcast released via Islamic State Twitter feeds said Thursday's attacks had been led by "men of the Islamic State".
Egyptian soldiers and police are often targeted at outposts outside the widely desolate, rugged Sinai's main towns. But the assault on military facilities in al-Arish could signal an escalation in their capabilities, according to Zack Gold of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
This week had already been a bloody one in Egypt. More than 25 people were killed at the weekend when security forces fired at protesters angered by what many perceive as a police state re-established by Sisi since Mursi's fall.
After two attacks in October in which 33 security personnel were killed, Egypt declared a state of emergency in the area where Sinai borders Gaza and accelerated plans to create a buffer strip.
Sisi, who as army chief toppled Mursi, says Egypt is fighting a war on terrorism and enjoys the support of Western and Gulf Arab allies.
(GA, Reuters, ATimes)(Additional reporting by Omar Fahmy and Mahmoud Mourad in Cairom, Edmund Blair in Addis Ababa; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Islamic State attacks Kurdish outposts across Iraq
Islamic State has frequently battled Iraqi security forces and Shi'ite militias further south and west, but attacks in and around Kurdish-controlled Kirkuk have been less frequent.
Oil rose above $49 a barrel on Friday because of the violence in the oil-rich region.
Police in Kirkuk province said the militants launched mortars and attacked positions of Kurdish fighters in four districts.
Militants later detonated a car bomb at a hotel in Kirkuk city center and clashed with peshmerga forces.
A peshmerga officer told Reuters his forces had recaptured the district of Mariam Bek but said clashes were ongoing in Tal al-Ward, Maktab Khalid and Mullah Abdullah.
Kurdish military sources said the peshmerga had repelled dawn attacks by Islamic State at different points along a more than 1,000 km frontline, including Khazer, west of Arbil, and Makhmur, further south.
"Maybe they are afraid the fight for Mosul has started so they are trying to show they can operate close to Arbil or Kirkuk," Roj Nuri Shaways, Iraq's deputy prime minister and a peshmerga commander, told Reuters.
Senior Kurdish official Hemin Hawrami said on Twitter 45 militants and seven Kurdish "martyrs" were killed around Kirkuk. Medical sources said senior commander Brigadier Sherko Fatih was among the dead.
At least seven other Kurdish fighters were killed by a suicide bomb at a checkpoint near the eastern town of Jalawla, 160 km (100 miles) southeast of Kirkuk, peshmerga and medical sources said.
More than 800 peshmerga have been killed in combat since Islamic State overran their defenses in northern Iraq last summer, prompting U.S.-led air strikes.
The Kurds have now regained most of the ground they lost, but commanders complain they remain ill-equipped compared with Islamic State militants, who plundered Iraqi arms depots when they overran Mosul in June.
Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani told Reuters in an interview on Thursday that the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State was inadequate and said U.S. policy would at best contain the resilient and carefully structured group.
Security sources said at least 18 people were killed by two bombs in Baghdad's Bab al-Sharqi shopping district on Friday.
Three civilians were later killed and at least 10 wounded in northwestern Baghdad when mortars landed in residential neighborhoods, police and medics said.
Further north in the holy city of Samarra, suicide bombers targeted a security checkpoint in the city center, police said, killing three members of the police and Shi'ite militias.
Police and militias later clashed on Samarra's western outskirts following another explosion there.
Samarra is symbolic for Iraqis. In February 2006 Sunni militants blew up a shrine, triggering revenge attacks by Shi'ites which tipped Iraq into years of sectarian violence.
(GA, Reuters, ATimes)(Additional reporting by Saif Hameed and Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad, Isabel Coles and Ned Parker in Arbil; Editing by Alison Williams)
Qatar Airways takes $1.7 billion stake in British Airways: owner IAG
The Gulf airline, which disclosed a 9.99 percent holding on Friday, already partners International Consolidated Airlines Group (IAG) (ICAG.L) in the oneworld alliance and has limited code-sharing deals and a freight partnership with BA.
Buying the stake could deepen the relationship, giving Qatar greater access to destinations served by IAG's London and Madrid hubs, particularly transatlantic, with North America well served by British Airways and South and Central America by Iberia.
On IAG's part, the tie-up will create opportunities in southeast Asia, India and the Middle East, where Qatar has an extensive network, while also giving it a wealthy long-term backer whose support could be useful in funding future growth.
Neither party said whether IAG had been aware Qatar was building the stake and did not say who the shares had been bought from, or when. But IAG Chief Executive Willie Walsh said he was "delighted" to have the airline as a supportive shareholder.
Qatar's national airline, which has more than 130 aircraft and 340 on order, said it may consider increasing its stake over time, although it was not currently intending to increase it from 9.99 percent.
Non-European shareholders of IAG are subject to a cap because of a requirement for EU airlines to be majority controlled by EU shareholders.
Owned by the country's sovereign wealth fund, Qatar Airways has become a major global carrier alongside regional rivals Emirates and Etihad Airways.
All three have used huge capacity at Middle East hubs to challenge European airlines in the long-haul market. Qatar's visibility in Europe has been strengthened by a sponsorship deal with Spanish soccer club Barcelona.
Owing to their geographic position, however, the carriers have struggled to make a mark on routes to North America.
GREATER ACCESS
Jonathan Wober, an analyst at CAPA-Centre for Aviation, said Qatar would gain greater access to destinations west of Qatar, particularly across the Atlantic. "For IAG, if the relationship works, then it could give them an advantage over Air-France-KLM (AIRF.PA) and Lufthansa LHAF.DE."
Mark Irvine-Fortescue, an analyst at brokerage Jefferies, said: "This strategy ... should in time improve IAG's structural and competitive positioning."
Shares in IAG, which have risen 44 percent in the last three months, jumped to 590 pence in early trade, their highest since the group was formed four years ago, before giving up those gains to trade down 1.2 percent at 1408 GMT (9:08 a.m ET).
"Qatar has been building up this stake gradually, so it would not be the sort of move to give the stock much further impetus on the back of the massive run-up IAG has had as the oil price has fallen through the floor," said Dafydd Davies, a partner at Charles Hanover Investments.
Before buying the stake, Qatar Airways' growth strategy had centered on building up its fleet and joining oneworld in 2013, becoming the first Gulf carrier to enter a global alliance, which allows airlines to team up via code-sharing agreements to boost the number of flights they offer.
Etihad Airways has bought minority stakes in airlines including Air Berlin, Aer Lingus and Virgin Australia and is buying 49 percent of Alitalia.
Qatar Airways' parent sovereign wealth fund has invested in a range of European assets, including winning a deal to buy the Canary Wharf business district on Friday. It also has a 20 percent holding in Heathrow Airport, BA's London hub.
Heathrow is full to capacity and IAG is trying to buy Ireland's Aer Lingus (AERL.I) for $1.5 billion, a deal that will increase its take-off and landing slots at the airport.
(GA, Reuters, ATimes)(Additional reporting by David French and Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Kate Holton and David Holmes)
Woman fires machinegun at Istanbul police post, no casualties: TV
(AsiaTimes.ga) - A woman opened fire with a machinegun on a police post in Istanbul's central Taksim Square on Friday, Turkey's NTV television reported.
Initial reports suggested there were no casualties, as television footage showed armed police cordoning off a corner of the square. Pedestrians and traffic continued to use surrounding streets as normal.
NTV said some police vehicles had been damaged in the attack, and that the woman had escaped on foot, leaving her weapon behind. A photograph posted on social media by a local journalist showed what appeared to be a crudely modified machine gun.
Police could not immediately be reached for comment.
Just over three weeks ago, a suicide bomber blew herself up at a police station in Istanbul's historic Sultanahmet district, killing one officer and wounding another.
The hard-left Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) initially claimed responsibility for that attack but later retracted its statement. Some Turkish newspapers have suggested the attack was orchestrated by Islamist militants.
Kurdish separatists, Islamist radicals and far-left groups have all staged deadly attacks in the past in Istanbul, Turkey's biggest city and a major tourist destination.
Taksim Square is a transport hub surrounded by hotels that lies at the end of one of Istanbul's main shopping streets.
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Kevin Liffey)(GA, Reuters, ATimes)
Initial reports suggested there were no casualties, as television footage showed armed police cordoning off a corner of the square. Pedestrians and traffic continued to use surrounding streets as normal.
NTV said some police vehicles had been damaged in the attack, and that the woman had escaped on foot, leaving her weapon behind. A photograph posted on social media by a local journalist showed what appeared to be a crudely modified machine gun.
Police could not immediately be reached for comment.
Just over three weeks ago, a suicide bomber blew herself up at a police station in Istanbul's historic Sultanahmet district, killing one officer and wounding another.
The hard-left Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) initially claimed responsibility for that attack but later retracted its statement. Some Turkish newspapers have suggested the attack was orchestrated by Islamist militants.
Kurdish separatists, Islamist radicals and far-left groups have all staged deadly attacks in the past in Istanbul, Turkey's biggest city and a major tourist destination.
Taksim Square is a transport hub surrounded by hotels that lies at the end of one of Istanbul's main shopping streets.
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Kevin Liffey)(GA, Reuters, ATimes)
OPEC oil output rises in January as key members stand firm: survey
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries at a November meeting decided to focus on market share rather than cutting output, despite concerns from members such as Iran and Venezuela about falling oil revenue.
Supply from OPEC has averaged 30.37 million barrels per day (bpd) in January, up from a revised 30.24 million bpd in December, according to the survey based on shipping data and information from sources at oil companies, OPEC and consultants.
At the Nov. 27 meeting, OPEC retained its output target of 30 million bpd, sending oil prices to a four-year low close to $71 a barrel. Crude since fell to a near six-year low of $45.19 on Jan. 13 and was trading above $49 on Friday.
OPEC Secretary General Abdulla al-Badri, speaking in London on Monday, defended the no-cut strategy and said prices may have reached a floor, despite oversupply. Other OPEC delegates have since echoed this message.
"Prices are stabilizing," said a delegate from a Gulf producer. "But the world economy is not very strong and stocks are too high."
The largest boost this month has come from Angola, which pumped 1.80 million bpd and exported about 57 cargoes, up 160,000 bpd from December. Output would have been higher without some cargo delays, including of new crude Sangos.
OPEC's other West African producer, Nigeria, also managed to boost exports, the survey showed, although the increase was restrained by outages of the Forcados and Nembe Creek pipelines.
Smaller increases have come from Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Output in top OPEC exporter Saudi Arabia has been flat to slightly higher, sources said. Saudi Aramco Chief Executive Khalid al-Falih said on Tuesday production was currently at 9.8 million bpd, although it was unclear if that was the daily rate or the January average.
"Steady is what I'm seeing," said an industry source who tracks Saudi supply. "Exports are a bit lower and this is most likely offset by slightly higher refinery runs."
The largest reduction this month has come from Iraq, where southern oil exports slipped from December's record high and flows from northern Iraq also declined, according to loading data and an industry source.
Exports are likely to hit new records in coming months, technical problems and weather delays permitting. A loading program schedules record southern exports in February.
OPEC's other country with a notable decline in output this month is Libya, where ports and oilfields have been shut due to fighting and supply fell further in January to 350,000 bpd.
For a table on OPEC oil output, click on
(Reporting by Alex Lawler, editing by David Evans)(GA, Reuters, ATimes)
