On Tuesday evening, Donald Trump will head to Capitol Hill to deliver an address to both houses of Congress. Such speeches have provided the US president’s predecessors with the opportunity to convey three main messages: their assessment of the country’s overall situation, the domestic legislative programme they hope Congress will pass in coming months and the main areas of global focus — all this in the context […]
Monday 08:50 GMT Overview European stock markets are making gains, tracking another set of record highs for Wall Street’s main equities gauges. The rally reaches the region even after Asia missed out, with banking and commodity stocks leading a sell-off there. Hot topic US equity futures are pointing to further gains after a late rally on Friday pushed the S&P 500 up 0.2 per cent while the […]
Submitted by Alex Gorka via The Strategic Culture Foundation, The rifts within the EU continue to widen as Poland and Hungary join together in opposition to the EU bureaucracy. Soon after Poland’s ultra-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party came to power in October 2015, the Polish parliament passed a law allowing the government to appoint the judges of its choosing to the highest court and not recognize […]
The Nokia 6 will be available globally this year. Image: Nokia/HMD Global The MWC trade show in Barcelona is the event where the smartphone industry shows off its latest innovations. This year, however, one of the biggest stories from the show has a distinctly retro feel: the launch of a new range of Nokia smartphones. At MWC on Sunday, HMD Global announced the launch of three […]
By Stephanie Nebehay and John Irish | GENEVA GENEVA Syrian activists called on Sunday for the Assad government to engage in serious talks on political transition and for the United Nations to strengthen the fragile ceasefire as violence engulfed parts of the country. U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura said a militant attack in Homs on Saturday was a deliberate attempt to wreck the Geneva peace talks, while […]
In the previous episode of the currency wars, a few years ago, the Euro-Dollar exchange rate was in the spotlight. This has now completely disappeared to the background and whilst the countries of the Eurozone must be pretty happy with the weak currency (which boosts the export and increases the demand for domestically produced goods), the United States are less than happy as it weakens the position […]
Berkshire Hathaway’s eye-catching recent bets on Apple and US airline stocks are not likely to prove as enduring as the investments that it made on Coca-Cola or American Express more than two decades ago, according to readers of Warren Buffett’s annual letter to shareholders. Mr Buffett struck a new tone in his passages on Berkshire’s $122bn portfolio of public equities in this year’s letter, released over the […]
Here are the big questions for investors and markets this week. Will investors like what they hear from President Trump? Mr Trump will address a joint session of Congress on Tuesday (it’s not officially a State of the Union) and with US equities in record territory, investors are very much focused on tax reform and other fiscal measures. Here’s where the Trump trade — based on the […]
By Trevor Hunnicutt and Jonathan Stempel | NEW YORK NEW YORK Billionaire Warren Buffett, whose stock picks over several decades have enriched generations of Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKa.N) shareholders, delivered a black eye to the investment industry on Saturday, urging ordinary investors to buy plain-vanilla index funds. “When trillions of dollars are managed by Wall Streeters charging high fees, it will usually be the managers who reap […]
SYDNEY – Indonesian and Australian leaders on Sunday committed to free trade and closer naval cooperation as they urged countries in the Asia-Pacific region with competing territorial claims to obey international law. Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo arrived in Sydney on Saturday on his first visit to Australia as his nation’s leader. He and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said they had agreed to finalize a free […]
o Food consumption in the GCC to expand at a 4.2 per cent from 48.1 million MT in 2016 to 59.2 million MT in 2021 o Consumers spending Dh250 worth of Prestige cookware/kitchenware products is guaranteed of winning something back! 26 February 2017o Food import bill is expected to have crossed US29.17 billion in 2016 o UAE’s packaged food import bill reached US$4.3 billion in […]
BARCELONA, Spain Blackberry Ltd (BB.TO) may have exited the device business, but fans of the pioneering email machine need not despair as Chinese smartphone maker TCL Communication (TCCLF.PK) has introduced its first Blackberry-licensed phone with the physical keyboard that was long its key allure. The KEYone combines a touch display with a physical keyboard to give users more useable space for typing than a typical 5.5-inch all-touch […]
GENEVA A United Nations peace envoy said a militant attack in Syria on Saturday was a deliberate attempt to wreck peace talks in Geneva, while the warring sides traded blame and appeared no closer to actual negotiations. Suicide bombers stormed two Syrian security offices in Homs, killing dozens with gunfire and explosions including the head of military security, prompting airstrikes against the last rebel-held enclave in the […]
The chairman of Dubai Holding, the investment vehicle of the emirate’s ruler and a major force in developing the Dubai economy, has resigned to focus on his role in the national government, the conglomerate said on Saturday. As head of Dubai Holding, Mohammed Abdullah al-Gergawi oversaw a $35 billion portfolio of assets in more than 20 countries, in industries ranging from tourism and real estate to media, […]
French authorities have made yet another monumental error in judgment after arresting Marine Le Pen’s chief of staff and bodyguard for questioning over alleged misuse of public funds to pay parliamentary assistants – the equivalent of a jaywalking ticket in terms of public opinion. By making le mountain out of le molehill, this latest debacle by French authorities is the most recent in a long list of backfired attempts to […]
Suppliers to Tesla and other electric carmakers are scrambling to secure shipments of the key battery material cobalt after a group of hedge funds amassed a large stockpile of the scarce metal. In a bold wager on higher prices, half a dozen funds, including Swiss-based Pala Investments and China’s Shanghai Chaos, have purchased and stored an estimated 6,000 tonnes of cobalt, worth as much as $280m, according […]
North Korea is evading international sanctions with a sophisticated network of overseas companies, enabled partly by its continued access to the international banking system, says a forthcoming United Nations report seen by Reuters. North Korea is under heavy U.N. sanctions and a strict arms embargo designed to impede the development of its banned nuclear and missile programmes. The U.N. panel of experts, which produced the 100-page draft […]
By Alexandria Sage | SAN FRANCISCO SAN FRANCISCO Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Waymo self-driving car unit sued Uber Technologies [UBER.UL] and its autonomous trucking subsidiary Otto on Thursday over allegations of theft of its confidential and proprietary sensor technology. Waymo accused Uber and Otto, acquired by the ride services company in August, with stealing confidential information on Waymo’s Lidar sensor technology to help speed its own efforts in […]
DUBAI // “It’s New Year’s Eve all over again … but the real way we should have celebrated,” declared Mariah Carey, launching into Emotions at Dubai Jazz Festival — and tackling the elephant in the room head-on. Thursday’s concert was Carey’s first public gig since that over-reported, televised “meltdown” on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, in which she embarrassingly struggled through the same song, and was […]
SoFi, the biggest and the brashest of a new breed of online lenders in the US, has sealed a $500m funding round, giving it firepower to push into new products and markets including Canada and Australia. The private San Francisco-based company last received a big shot of funds — its fifth — in September 2015, when SoftBank of Japan led a $1bn round, the biggest in the […]
Sign up to receive Authers’ Note daily by email here Despite appearances to the contrary, the Trump trade may be moving into reverse as the president’s maiden State of the Union address approaches. The overall level of the stock market is, of course, at fresh records. But the pattern within it is shifting again. The end of the week saw sharp falls for almost all equity markets […]
LG Gram laptop LG has largely scaled back its global PC ambitions — its U.S. website shows a single Chromebase desktop for sale — except for its Gram family of ultra-light laptops. It rolled them out late in 2015 — 13-inch and 14-inch notebooks that each weighed a little over 2 pounds, then added a 15-inch version a couple of months later. The lineup has thrived enough […]
By Lewis Krauskopf | NEW YORK NEW YORK U.S. President Donald Trump’s planned economic agenda has fanned the flames for Wall Street’s record-setting run, but some investors worry that his first major address to Congress next week risks dousing it if his plans look slow to execute or are overly vague. The benchmark S&P 500 .SPX has surged 10 percent since Trump’s Nov. 8 election, with optimism […]
Eat the World DXB is in full swing this weekend, with 25 international street-food traders from the United Kingdom, the United States and Singapore serving up street food with vendors from the UAE (each street food trader is cleverly marked by its country’s flag). Held in Burj Park with a close-up view of the Burj Khalifa, the festival has plenty of food on offer, a host of […]
