Mt. Gox, once the world’s biggest bitcoin exchange, abruptly stopped trading on Tuesday and its chief executive said the business was at “a turning point” but gave no details. Several other digital currency exchanges, including Bitstamp and BTC-E, issued statements attempting to reassure investors of both bitcoin’s viability and their own security protocols. The website of Mt. Gox suddenly went dark on Tuesday with no explanation, and […]
Opposition leader Narendra Modi has widened his lead as candidate to become India’s prime minister and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party is likely to emerge as the single largest party in coming elections, according to a new opinion poll. The BJP also picked up support in Uttar Pradesh and is set to get half the seats in the heartland state which sends the largest number of […]
The U.S. House of Representatives narrowly approved a one-year extension of federal borrowing authority on Tuesday after Republicans caved into President Barack Obama’s demands to allow a debt limit increase without any conditions. The 221-201 vote, carried mainly by Democrats, marked a dramatic shift from the confrontational fiscal tactics House Republicans have used over the past three years, culminating in last October’s 16-day government shutdown. It came […]
Dubai’s bourse rose further on Tuesday after a choppy session as it tried to break free of the 4,000-point psychological resistance level, while other regional markets were narrowly mixed because of a lack of fresh catalysts. The Dubai index climbed 1.0 percent to a fresh five-year closing high of 4,065 points after rebounding from an intra-day loss of roughly 1 percent – a sign that buyers remain […]
Janet Yellen, fresh from taking the helm of the Federal Reserve, made it clear on Tuesday she would not make any abrupt changes to U.S. monetary policy, saying the central bank was on track to keep reducing its stimulus even though the labor market recovery was far from complete. In her first public comments since becoming Fed chief earlier this month, Yellen said the central bank must […]
The health of the U.S. economy and the extraordinary and controversial measures the Federal Reserve has taken to support it will top the agenda on Tuesday when Janet Yellen testifies to lawmakers for the first time as head of the Federal Reserve. Yellen, in just her second week on the job since succeeding Ben Bernanke earlier this month, will want to reinforce the central bank’s determination to […]
|By Pankaj Mishra| There is a great, virtual storm blowing through India today, and the most frantic people in the country seem to be those trimming their sails to it. I refer to the shrewdly concerted campaign to make Narendra Modi seem like India’s natural and inevitable leader — a veritable miracle worker who, emerging triumphant in elections due by May, will raise despondently low growth rates […]
Thousands protested in Hong Kong on Wednesday pressing China to allow full democracy in the city as a battle intensifies over Beijing’s attempts to control the outcome of a planned direct election for the city’s leader in 2017. Beijing had promised direct elections in the former British colony as the goal for 2017, but the devil is in the details of the rules governing who can run. […]
A bipartisan budget deal announced in the U.S. Congress on Tuesday, though modest in its spending cuts, would end three years of impasse and fiscal instability in Washington that culminated in October with a partial government shutdown. While praised by the Republican leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives, including Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the agreement faces a challenge from some House conservatives […]
U.S. lawmakers said they aimed to tighten sanctions on Iran to prevent Washington giving away too much in a deal on Tehran’s nuclear program that diplomats said was still possible despite the failure of high-level weekend talks. Their comments reflected widespread Congressional skepticism about a rapprochement between Iran and world powers and coincided with renewed lobbying from Israel against a proposal it sees as leaving open a […]
From Saudi Arabia to Israel, traditional U.S. allies in the Middle East are beginning to ask: Is America turning its back on us? President Barack Obama’s diplomatic overtures to old foe Iran and his last-minute refusal to attack Syria have officials in Israel, the Gulf countries and Turkey wondering if Washington is deliberately neglecting them to avoid being dragged into a Middle East facing deeper sectarian strife […]
President Barack Obama will declare the glitches in a new healthcare website “unacceptable” on Monday and outline ways for consumers to sign up for insurance while his team scrambles to fix problems that have tainted the rollout of his signature healthcare law. Fresh from two weeks of budget battles that have consumed Washington, Obama will hold an event at 11:25 a.m. (1525 GMT) in the White House […]
The United States held out the prospect of quick sanctions relief for Iran on Monday if Tehran moves swiftly to allay concerns about its nuclear program, although both countries said any deal would be complex and take time. Six world powers – the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany – are to hold talks with Iran on its nuclear program in Geneva on Tuesday and […]
Chemical warfare and car bombings are just a few of the hazards working in war-torn countries such as Iraq and Syria. For Supreme Group BV, it’s the cost of doing business. Dubai-based Supreme delivers fuel and food — 100,000 meals a day — to troops stationed in some of the most inhospitable parts of the world, including Liberia, Mali and Sudan. The perilous business, where contractors dodge […]
President Barack Obama met with Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress on Wednesday to try to break a deadlock that has shut down wide swaths of the federal government, but there was no breakthrough. After more than an hour of talks, House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner said Obama refused to negotiate, while House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid accused Republicans of […]
President Barack Obama on Wednesday scaled down a long-planned trip to Asia, as a U.S. government shutdown entered a second day with no end in sight to the funding row in Congress that triggered it. Obama is expected to leave on Saturday for summit meetings in Indonesia and Brunei. Malaysian media quoted Prime Minister Najib Razak as saying he would now skip a subsequent visit to Kuala […]
The dollar held near a 7-1/2 month low against a basket of currencies on Tuesday as much of the U.S. government began to shut down after Congress failed to agree a compromise bill to fund government operations. Competing spending measures flew back and forth between Republican-controlled House of Representatives and Democratic-led Senate late into Monday night in Washington but Congress deadlocked over efforts by some Republicans to […]
The House of Representatives early on Sunday brought the federal government closer to a shutdown as it voted to delay President Barack Obama’s landmark healthcare law for a year as part of an emergency spending bill. By a mostly partisan vote of 231-192, the Republican-controlled House approved the “Obamacare” amendment, despite a veto threat from the White House. It also voted 248-174 to repeal a medical device […]
Syria hailed a “historic American retreat” on Sunday, mockingly accusing President Barack Obama of hesitation and confusion after he delayed a military response to last month’s chemical weapons attack near Damascus until after a congressional vote. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said tests had shown sarin nerve gas was fired on rebel-held areas on August 21, and expressed confidence that U.S. lawmakers would do “what is […]
By Steen Jakobsen, Saxo Bank Commenting on Egypt is not something I take lightly, particularly when the death toll there continues to rise. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is a difficult region to comment on in general. You cannot apply the usual economic models when doing your research, but have to make a careful assessment of evidence on the ground and by observing the evolution […]
CAIRO — More violence is expected in Egypt after chaos swept through the country last week, leaving nearly 900 dead in four days of unrest and threatening to stall a political transition. Egypt “is on a course for an incurable cycle of violence,” said Michael Wahid Hanna, a senior fellow at the New York-based Century Foundation. “I don’t know if we’re very far off from seeing suicide […]
By David Kirkpatrick CAIRO — Gathering Thursday morning around a mosque used as a morgue for hundreds killed the day before, many Islamists waited confidently for a surge of sympathetic support from the broader public. But it failed to materialize. With their leaders jailed or silent, Islamists reeled in shock at the worst mass killing in Egypt’s modern history. By Thursday night, health officials had counted 638 […]
