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Thai king's condition unstable after hemodialysis treatment: palace



Thailand's 88-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world's longest reigning monarch, is in an unstable condition after receiving hemodialysis treatment, the palace said in a statement late on Sunday.
News about the king's health is closely monitored in Thailand, where King Bhumibol is widely revered, and the wording of palace statements on his health is intensely scrutinized.
Strict laws protecting the royal family stifles any public discussion of the king's health.
It is unusual for the palace to state that the king's health is not stable. Statements on his health are usually issued after the monarch's condition shows improvement or when he is recovering from an illness.
Thailand's main stock index .SETI tumbled as much as 3.6 percent on Monday and the bahtTHB=TH fell to more than two-month lows, following the news.
The king has been treated for various ailments over the past year at Bangkok's Siriraj Hospital - his home for much of the past year - and was last seen in public on Jan. 11, when he spent several hours visiting his palace in the Thai capital.
Anxiety over the king's health and an eventual succession has formed the backdrop to more than a decade of bitter political divide in Thailand that has included two military coups and often-violent street demonstrations.
Sunday's statement was the second health bulletin this month after the palace said on Oct. 1 that the king was recovering after a respiratory infection.
On Saturday, the king was given hemodialysis - a way of cleansing the blood of toxins, extra salts and fluids - which made his blood pressure drop occasionally, the palace said.
Doctors gave him some medicine and put him on a ventilator to bring his blood pressure back to normal, it said.
They continue to monitor his condition closely, the statement said.

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"His condition has yet to stabilize," the palace said.
In 2011, Princess Chulabhorn, the king's youngest daughter, said in a rare televised statement that the king had suffered a health scare and fell unconscious after suffering from internal bleeding likely induced by stress as a result of a flood crisis at the time.
Laws protecting the royals from insult make it a crime to defame, insult or threaten the king, queen, heir to the throne or regent.

(Reporting by Amy Sawitta Lefevre and Khettiya Jittapong; Editing by Amy Sawitta Lefevre, Robert Birsel)
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Saudi Arabia's Falih says OPEC should not crimp supply too tightly

Saudi Arabia's Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said on Monday that OPEC should not crimp oil supply too tightly and said he was optimistic a global production deal to limit supplies could be reached by November.
Speaking at the World Energy Congress in Istanbul, Falih said OPEC, which agreed a deal to cut production in Algiers last month, needed to behave in a balanced and responsible manner and that he continued to believe in its important role.
"OPEC needs to make sure we don't crimp too tightly and create a shock to the market. We are going to be very responsible," Falih said.
"Prices have dropped too low and that has impacted investment. Many companies and countries are hurting... we don't want to give the market the wrong signal and shock the market's prices," he said.
Falih said he would meet Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak in Istanbul in the coming days to discuss Russia's reaction to the Algiers agreement, and that a technical committee meeting between OPEC members and non-OPEC countries would take place in two weeks.
OPEC officials are embarking on a flurry of meetings to nail down details of the deal in Algiers, where modest oil output cuts were agreed in the first such deal since 2008.
The chain of meetings, which are starting in Istanbul, signal that unlike in the first half of 2016, the exporting group is more serious now about managing the global supply glut and propping up prices.
"It is time to do something different than we faced in 2014. It is a very gentle hand on the wheel, we are not doing anything dramatic," Falih said. "The difference is that the market forces have shifted significantly between 2014 and now."
He said there was still not total clarity on supply and demand in some areas such as China and North America at the moment and that he hoped the situation would be clearer by the time of OPEC's November meeting.
Citing Novak, Russia's energy ministry said on Friday it expected an output freeze deal could be reached before the OPEC meeting on Nov. 30..
No decision is expected in Istanbul, OPEC sources have said. But the meeting will be a chance for officials to discuss the next step after the Algiers deal, which was agreed after intensive shuttle diplomacy.

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Falih said Saudi would be prepared to deal with whatever price may emerge.
"We have economic and fiscal plans to deal with very low (price) scenarios and moderate price scenarios," he said.

(Reporting by Rania El Gamal and Ron Bousso; Writing by Nick Tattersall)
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Russia says to create permanent naval base in Syria's Tartus

Russia intends to establish a permanent naval base on the site of an existing facility it leases at the Syrian port of Tartus, Russian Deputy Defence Minister Nikolai Pankov said on Monday, Russian news agencies reported.
Pankov's statement is the latest sign that Moscow wants to expand its military footprint in Syria where it has been helping President Bashar al-Assad fight rebels since 2015. Moscow last week deployed S-300 surface-to air missiles to Tartus.
"We will have a permanent naval base at Tartus," Pankov told Russian senators. "The necessary documents are already prepared and are in the process of being approved by different agencies. We hope we can ask you to ratify these documents soon."
Senator Igor Morozov told the RIA news agency that the decision would allow Russia to operate more ships in the Mediterranean as they would have an enhanced facility at which they could refuel and resupply.
"By doing this Russia is not only increasing its military potential in Syria but in the entire Middle East and in the Mediterranean region as a whole," said Morozov.
Russia already has a permanent air base at Hmeymim in Syria's Latakia province from which it launches air strikes against anti-Assad rebels.
Moscow inherited a Soviet-era naval facility at Tartus when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Russian navy's sole foothold in the Mediterranean. Despite some modernization, it is currently fairly modest and unable to accommodate larger warships.

(Reporting by Andrew Osborn/Alexander Winning; Editing by Christian Lowe)
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Kuroda reiterates BOJ may push back inflation goal timetable: report

Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda reiterated that the central bank may push back the forecast date for which it plans to achieve its 2 percent inflation target, Bloomberg reported on Monday.
Kuroda said "it may take slightly more months to reach the 2 percent rate," in an interview with Bloomberg. The BOJ currently forecasts that the 2 percent inflation goal will be reached in the coming fiscal year, which will run through March 2018.
The BOJ governor has repeatedly said there was strong uncertainty on whether the target could be met within such a timeframe, signaling it could be pushed back again when the central bank reviews its growth and inflation forecasts in October.

(Reporting by Shinichi Saoshiro; Editing by Richard Borsuk)
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U.S. Navy ship targeted in failed missile attack from Yemen: U.S.

By Phil Stewart | WASHINGTON
A U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer was targeted on Sunday in a failed missile attack from territory in Yemen controlled by Iran-aligned Houthi rebels, a U.S. military spokesman told Reuters, saying neither of the two missiles hit the ship.
The attempted strike on the USS Mason, which was first reported by Reuters, came just a week after a United Arab Emirates vessel came under attack from Houthis and suggests growing risks to the U.S. military from Yemen's conflict.
The U.S. government, which has become increasingly vocal about civilian casualties in the war, this weekend announced a review of its support to a Saudi Arabia-led coalition battling the Houthis after a strike on mourners in the capital Sanaa that killed up to 140 people.
The failed missile attack on the USS Mason began around 7 p.m. local time, when the ship detected two inbound missiles over a 60-minute period in the Red Sea off Yemen's coast, the U.S. military said.
"Both missiles impacted the water before reaching the ship," Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said. "There were no injuries to our sailors and no damage to the ship."
Saudi Arabia and the United States blame Shi'ite Iran for supplying weapons to the Houthis. Tehran views the Houthis, who are from a Shi'ite sect, as the legitimate authority in Yemen but denies it supplies them with weapons.
A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the first missile triggered counter-measures from the USS Mason. It was not immediately clear whether those defenses may have helped prevent a direct hit on the ship.
The USS Mason did not return fire, the official said, adding that the incident took place just north of the Bab al-Mandab strait off Yemen's southern coast.
Last week's attack on the UAE vessel also took place around the Bab al-Mandab strait, in what the UAE branded an "act of terrorism."
In 2013, more than 3.4 million barrels of oil passed through the 20 km (12 mile)-wide Bab al-Mandab each day, the U.S. Energy Information Administration says.
It was unclear what actions the U.S. military might take, but Davis stressed a commitment to defend freedom of navigation and protect U.S. forces.

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"We will continue to take all necessary steps to ensure the safety of our ships and our servicemembers," he said.
The attack also came the same day that Yemen's powerful former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, a key Houthi ally, called for an escalation of attacks against Saudi Arabia, demanding "battle readiness at the fronts on the (Saudi) border".
An estimated 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen's war. The United Nations blames Saudi-led coalition strikes for 60 percent of some 3,800 civilian deaths since they began in March 2015.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Paul Tait)
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Taiwan president calls on China to engage in talks

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on Monday urged China to engage in talks, pledging to maintain peace with the island's giant neighbor, amid a near five-month impasse after Beijing halted official communications with the self-ruled island.
However, Tsai, in her first National Day speech, stopped short of conceding a crucial principle that Beijing has said is needed for talks to resume, that Taiwan is a part of China, also referred to between the two sides as the "1992 consensus".
Tsai's proponents have said she has been holding out olive branches to China, but also choosing her words carefully so as not to lose her key anti-China support base at home.
"The two sides of the Strait should sit down and talk as soon as possible," Tsai said in her address, referring to the Taiwan Strait that separates the island from the mainland.
The National Day address is used by presidents to lay out their position and outlook on relations with China.
"Anything can be included for discussion, as long as it is conducive to the development of cross-Strait peace and the welfare of people on both sides," Tsai told foreign and domestic dignitaries in a speech broadcast live on television.
But China's Taiwan Affairs Office said the "1992 consensus" remained the touchstone by which it would engage with Taiwan and judge Tsai.
"Denying the '1992 consensus', inciting confrontation across the Taiwan Strait and severing socioeconomic and cultural ties is an impassable, evil path," it said.
Tsai and her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) took power in late May after a landslide election win over the incumbent Nationalist party.
Beijing distrusts the DPP because it traditionally advocates independence for Taiwan, which China deems a wayward province to be taken back by force if necessary.
Tsai said she would maintain a consistent, predictable and sustainable relationship with China.
She reiterated that the relationship should be based on the "accumulated outcomes enabled by over 20 years of cross-Strait interactions and negotiations since 1992."

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"Our pledges will not change, and our goodwill will not change. But we will not bow to pressure, and we will of course not revert to the old path of confrontation," she said.
The so-called "1992 consensus", which was agreed with a China-friendly Nationalist government, acknowledges Taiwan and China are part of a single China, but allows both sides to interpret who is the ruler.
Last week, Tsai appointed a pro-China politician to be her envoy for a meeting of Asia-Pacific leaders next month.

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by Robert Birsel and Clarence Fernandez
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Car bomb kills at least 10 police in besieged Afghan city


A suspected car bomb on Monday killed at least 10 police amid increased Taliban attacks on the besieged capital of the southwestern Afghan province of Helmand, with the toll expected to rise, a security official said.
The blast, in the city of Lashkar Gah, killed 10 police officers, with at least 14 police and civilians wounded, said the official, who asked not to be named as he was not authorized to speak publicly.
A hospital run by the Italian charity Emergency said it had received 30 casualties from the blast, including civilians and security forces.
Hospital officials expressed concern over worsening conditions in Lashkar Gah, with reports of increased Taliban attacks on the outskirts, and rockets landing inside the city.
Taliban militants, who have been fighting a 15-year insurgency to topple the Western-backed government and reimpose a radical Islamist regime, control or contest most of Helmand, the scene of some of the bloodiest fighting during the international military mission in Afghanistan.
On Saturday a high-level delegation of Afghan and international military officials visited Lashkar Gah, promising to do everything possible to prevent its collapse.
Afghan elders who met with the delegation, however, criticized government strategy in the province, as well as the performance of Afghan security forces, some of whom are accused of abandoning their posts.

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The NATO-led coalition has stepped up the number of military advisers working with the Afghan forces in Helmand, while American troops have been given freer rein to use more air strikes in a bid to prevent a total collapse of Afghan defenses.

(Reporting by the Afghanistan bureau; Writing by Josh Smith; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
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Germany captures Syrian refugee suspected of planning bomb attack

A Syrian man who came to Germany during a migrant influx into the country last year was arrested on Monday after a weekend manhunt on suspicion of planning an Islamist bomb attack, Saxony state police said.
Police had been looking for 22-year-old Jaber Albakr since he evaded them during a raid on Saturday on an apartment in the eastern German city of Chemnitz, where they found several hundred grams of explosive.
"Tired but overjoyed: we captured the terror suspect last night in Leipzig," Saxony state police said on Twitter, adding that they seized Albakr after acting on a tip-off that other Syrians were holding him at an apartment in Leipzig.
"Leipzig police immediately went to the identified place and took Albakr," they said. A nationwide and international search for the Syrian was then called off.
Der Spiegel magazine's website, without citing a source, said Albakr had approached another Syrian at the railway station in the eastern city of Leipzig and asked if he could sleep at his home. The man agreed and later called police, who arrested Albakr at the home at 12:42 a.m. on Monday (6.42 a.m. ET Sunday).
Albakr had arrived in Germany last year and won recognition as a refugee from his homeland's civil war, police said.
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A view of a residential bulding in Leipzig, Germany October 10, 2016 where German police had captured a man suspected of planning a bomb attack. REUTERS/Oliver Ellrodt
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A spokesman for the Federal Prosecutor's Office told broadcaster SWR on Sunday: "The overall picture of the investigation, in particular the amount of explosive found, suggests that the person was planning to carry out an Islamist-motivated attack."
That will prove unwelcome news for Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose conservatives have lost support to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party over her open-door policy toward refugees and migrants.
Stephan Mayer, a senior lawmaker with Merkel's Bavarian allies, the Christian Social Union (CSU), said Germany's security agencies needed to be consulted more intensively in the authorities' handling of refugees.
"Germany is in the crosshairs of Islamist terror, just like France, Belgium or Britain," Mayer told television station n-tv. "The threat is still high, though there are no concrete indications of planned attacks. We must be very careful."
Merkel said last month she wished she could "turn back the time by many, many years" to have better prepared for last year's influx of almost 1 million migrants.
She has yet to say whether she will seek a fourth term as chancellor in elections next year.

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In July, the Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for two attacks in the western German state of Bavaria - one a train near Wuerzburg and the other at a music festival in Ansbach that wounded 20 people.
Western Europe has suffered several major Islamist attacks since early last year, prompting a tightening of public security measures across the continent.
Islamic State gunmen killed 147 people in Paris in January and November last year, a gunman drove a truck into Bastille Day revelers in the French Riviera city of Nice in July, killing 86, and suicide bombers killed 32 people in Brussels in March.

(Editing by Caroline Copley and Mark Heinrich)
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Two economists win Nobel for insights on setting pay and rewards

By Daniel Dickson and Niklas Pollard | STOCKHOLM
British-born Oliver Hart and Finland's Bengt Holmstrom won the Nobel Economics Prize on Monday for work that addresses a host of questions from how best to reward executives to whether schools and prisons should be privately owned.
Their findings on contract theory have implications for corporate governance, bankruptcy legislation and political constitutions, among other fields, said the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which announced the 8 million Swedish crown ($928,000) prize.
"This theory has really been incredibly important, not just for economics, but also for other social sciences," said Per Stromberg, member of the prize committee and professor at the Stockholm School of Economics.
Contract theory considers, for example, whether managers should get paid bonuses or stock options, or whether teachers or healthcare workers should be paid fixed rates or by performance-based criteria.
Hart is economics professor at Harvard University while Holmstrom is professor of economics and management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In total, the nine academics who won Nobel prizes this year in medicine, physics, chemistry and economics included five born in Britain, a Frenchman, a Finn, a Dutchman and a Japanese.
While, none was American-born, six - including all five Britons - are based at U.S. universities.
EARLY-MORNING CALL
"I woke at about 4:40 and was wondering whether it was getting too late for it to be this year, but then fortunately the phone rang," Hart was quoted as saying on the official Twitter account of the Nobel Prize.
"My first action was to hug my wife, wake up my younger son."
Hart's work has focused in part on understanding which companies should merge and the right mix of financing, and when institutions such as schools, prisons and hospitals should be privately or publicly owned, the academy said in a statement.
He has argued that the incentives for cost reduction in privatized services, such as private prisons in the United States, are typically too strong.

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Holmstrom has studied the setting of contracts for workers from teachers to corporate bosses, concluding that: "In industries with high risk, payment should ... be relatively more biased towards a fixed salary, while in more stable environments it should be more biased towards a performance measure", the academy said.
He had argued that teachers' pay should not just be based on students' test scores, but set in a way that would also reward the teaching of harder-to-measure skills such as creativity and independent thinking.
"The results of this multi-tasking model changed how economists think about optimal compensation schemes and job design," the academy said.
($1 = 8.6231 Swedish crowns)

(Added reporting by Anna Ringstrom, Johan Ahlander and Bjorn Rundstrom; Editing by Alistair Scrutton and Mark Trevelyan
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