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LONDON (Alliance News) - The following is a summary of top news stories Tuesday.
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COMPANIES
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Persimmon said its pretax profit surged in the first half as it boosted margins, sold more homes and did so at higher prices, all while saying that its performance thus far in the traditionally slower summer selling season still looks robust. The group said its pretax profit for the six months to the end of June was GBP272.8 million, up from GBP208.9 million a year earlier, as the group's total revenue rose to GBP1.33 billion from GBP1.20 billion and its underlying operating margin rose to 20.5%, a 280 basis point rise year-on-year from 17.7%. The group said its return on capital employed on a rolling 12-month basis at the end of the half was 27.5%, up from 21.7% a year earlier.
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The US government gave Royal Dutch Shell the green light to begin exploratory oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean off Alaska. The Department of Interior earlier this year granted preliminary approval of Shell's plans, but drilling hadn't begun because a key piece of emergency equipment was not on hand. Shell plans to drill up to six offshore wells in relatively shallow water in the Chukchi Sea 112 kilometres north-west of the village of Wainwright, Alaska. The required piece of equipment arrived in the area earlier this month, clearing the path for Shell to drill.
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Meanwhile, Shell also has entered into a framework agreement with China's Guanghui Energy Co to jointly buy and distributed liquefied natural gas, a rare cooperation deal between the FTSE 100-listed major and a local private company in China, Reuters reports. Shell has signed a non-binding framework deal with Guanghui, which is building a gas-receiving terminal in the Qidong of Jiangsu province. The terminal is designed to handle an annual capacity of around 600,000 tonnes in its first phase.
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A number of global banks are facing billions of pounds worth of civil claims in London and Asia over the rigging of currency markets, following the USD2 billion settlement reached in in the US on Friday, the Financial Times reports. Barclays, HSBC Holdings and The Royal Bank of Scotland Group were among nine banks which on Friday reached a USD2 billion settlement with thousands of investors impacted by the rate-rigging who brought a civil case against the banks in New York. Lawyers have warned the US settlement could open the floodgates for an even higher number of claims in London, the world's largest foreign exchange trading hub. Banks potentially will be hit as early as the autumn, with claims already entered with London's High Court from corporate, fund manager and local authority claimants.
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John Wood Group reported a fall in profit in the first half of 2015 as expected but the company reaffirmed its commitment to grow the dividend and reiterated its full year outlook remains unchanged. The company reported a expected fall in profit before tax and exceptional items to USD156.3 million in the first half of 2015, compared to a USD182.4 million profit a year earlier as revenue fell to USD3.06 billion from USD3.80 billion. Despite the fall in earnings, the company upped its interim dividend to 9.8 cents per share from 8.9 cents per share a year earlier. That is in line with its policy, it said, and it reaffirmed its commitment to increase the dividend per share by a double digit percentage from 2015 onwards.
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John Wood also said it has won a five-year "multi million dollar" contract with Shell to provide services to four onshore oil fields in Gabon. That will be carried out by Wood Group PSN and the deal represents the subsidiary's first major contract in Gabon.
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Engineering services company Amec Foster Wheeler said it has won an extension on its project management consultancy contract for the UZ750 project in the Upper Zakum field in Abu Dhabi. No financial details on the contract were disclosed.
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Cairn Energy said its pretax loss significantly widened in the first half of 2015 as it prepares to spend big in the second half on developing its assets in Senegal and the North Sea. The FTSE 250-listed oil producer reported a pretax loss of USD234.7 million in the first half of 2015, widening from a USD62.1 million loss a year earlier, after the company booked an USD177.1 million impairment against its remaining investment in Cairn India Ltd. The company does not generate any revenue.
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MARKETS
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London stock prices are trading lower mid-morning weighed down by resources stocks.
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FTSE 100: down 0.5% at 6,516.51
FTSE 250: down 0.1% at 17,592.16
AIM ALL-SHARE: flat at 750.79
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The pound shot up to a one-and-a-half month high against the dollar after UK consumer prices rose unexpectedly in July and core inflation reached a five-month high, data from the Office for National Statistics showed.
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GBP: up at USD1.5700
EUR: down at USD1.1069

GOLD: up at USD1120.60 per ounce
OIL (Brent): down at USD48.41 a barrel

(changes since end of previous GMT day)
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ECONOMICS AND GENERAL
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UK consumer prices rose unexpectedly in July and core inflation reached a five-month high, data from the Office for National Statistics revealed. Consumer prices advanced 0.1% in July from last year, while it was expected to remain flat as seen in June. Meanwhile, consumer prices dropped 0.2% month-on-month after showing no change in June. This was the first fall in six months. Another data from ONS showed continuing fall in factory gate prices in July. Output prices dropped 1.6% each in July, June and May. It was expected fall by 1.5% in July.
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House price inflation in the UK accelerated marginally in June, after remaining stable in the previous month, figures from the Office for National Statistics showed. Average house prices rose 5.7% year-over-year in June, following a 5.6% increase in May, revised down from the 5.7% hike estimated earlier. In April, prices had risen the same 5.7%, which was also revised from a 5.5% climb. House price inflation in England alone was 6.1% in June, up from 5.8% in the preceding month. This increase was driven by an annual rise in the East by 9.2% and the South East by 7.7%.
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Home prices in majority of the Chinese cities increased in July, figures from the National Bureau of Statistics showed. On a monthly basis, home prices rose 31 out of 70 cities surveyed by the government. Prices dropped in 29 cities but remained flat in 10 cities. Compared to the same month of the prior year, house prices climbed in 67 out of the 70 cities during July.
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The head of China's top work safety watchdog, Yang Dongliang, is under investigation following the huge explosions last week in an industrial area of Tianjin, Chinese state media reports. Yang, the director of the State Administration of Work Safety, is suspected of "severe violation of discipline and law" by a Communist Paty disciplinary committee, official news agency Xinhua reports.
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Firefighters, police, soldiers and officials stood in silence with bowed heads across the port city of Tianjin in a traditional observance of the Chinese date for mourning the dead. Cargo ships sounded horns at the world's 10th-busiest container port as state media broadcast images of rescuers paying their respects to the 114 who died in massive twin explosions at a chemical warehouse last week ago. Seventy people are still missing, including 64 firefighters and five policemen, the Xinhua news agency reported. Specialists had cleared about 150 tons of dangerous chemicals scattered within a radius of 3 kilometres around the blast site as of Monday night, Tianjin deputy mayor He Shushan said.
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The US and the EU led a chorus of international voices offering their sympathies to Thailand after a deadly bombing in Bangkok on Monday night. The US government condemned the violence, while noting that it remained unclear who was behind the blast. Investigations were under way into the bombing, which killed at least 22 and injured 123 people, many of them tourists.
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The foreign ministers of Russia and Iran owarned against outside attempts at ousting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it is "unacceptable" for foreign governments to want to agree that Assad would leave his post by the end of a transitional period that would allow Syria's opposition to gain power.
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By Arvind Bhunjun; arvindbhunjun@alliancenews.com; @ArvindBhunjun

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