Walmart hikes dividend as earnings rise

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Deadly bombing rocks central Damascus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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US weekly jobless claims rise

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Pyramid of pharaoh's adviser discovered

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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18 killed in India bomb blasts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Police said the blasts went off in quick succession.

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

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

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Three killed in Las Vegas shootout

AT least three people have died and three others are injured after a "rolling shootout" and multiple car crash on the Las Vegas strip, police say.

Two speeding cars, including a Maserati, were involved in a shootout in the neon-lit casino and hotel zone around Las Vegas Boulevard near Flamingo Road, Metro Las Vegas Police Sergeant John Sheahan told local broadcast news on Thursday.

"Before 4.30am this morning there was apparently a rolling gun battle on the strip," Sheahan told the local ABC and CBS TV news affiliates.

The Maserati driver, who was struck by gunfire, lost control of the vehicle and struck several cars, including a taxi that burst into flames.

The Maserati driver and two people in the taxi were killed.

The other vehicle fled the scene and police will investigate surveillance footage to identify it, Sheahan said.

Local television news citing police sources said officers were hunting for a black Range Rover.

The passenger in the Maserati and at least two other people were injured and take to hospital.

Three other vehicles were struck and at least two more people were at the hospital being treated for other injuries, Sheahan said.

Police do not yet know the identity nor motive of the shooters. "This is still very, very early in this investigation," Sheahan said.

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Top detective assigned to Pistorius case

SOUTH African police have named a top detective to take over the bungled Oscar Pistorius investigation after it emerged the officer assigned to the case faces attempted murder charges.

"We recognise the significance, the importance and the severity of the matter," commissioner of the South African Police Service (SAPS) Mangwashi 'Riah' Phiyega said on Thursday.

She assigned the case to top-ranking detective Lieutenant General Vineshkumar Moonoo.

"He is the most senior detective in the SAPS environment. This matter will receive attention at the national level."

The Pistorius prosecution has been severely undermined by revelations that Hilton Botha, the original case officer, has to answer seven attempted murder charges for shooting at a minibus taxi in 2011.

The revelation overshadowed Pistorius's bail hearing on Thursday, undermining the man who had been the key to the prosecution's allegation of premeditated murder.

"We were only informed yesterday that attempted murder charges against Hilton Botha have been reinstated," police spokesman Neville Malila told AFP.

It was the final straw for Botha, whose testimony was repeatedly challenged by defence lawyers on Wednesday.

Pistorius's lawyers had torn into Botha's police work during a court hearing, undermining his witnesses and forcing him to agree that the Olympian's version of events fitted the crime scene.

"It sounds consistent," Botha told the court.

Botha conceded he did not wear protective clothing when Pistorius's forensic team visited the athlete's luxury Pretoria home where the killing took place, which may have contaminated the scene.

He was further forced to admit that police had not seen a bullet that hit the toilet basin and which was only discovered four days later by the defence forensic team.

On Thursday, defence lawyer Barry Roux again pilloried Botha and what he called "disastrous shortcomings in the state's case".

As the controversy over the police investigation swirled, Botha admitted on the witness stand: "I'm sure it could have been handled better."

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