By Babak Dehghanpisheh | BEIRUT BEIRUT Iran’s president must do more to improve the economy, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday in a rare public criticism from the supreme leader three months before Hassan Rouhani runs for re-election. Unemployment, recession and inflation – issues that could win or lose an election – all remain major problems in the final month’s of Rouhani’s first four-year term, Khamenei said […]
By Philip Pullella | VATICAN CITY VATICAN CITY Pope Francis appeared on Wednesday to back Native Americans seeking to halt part of the Dakota Access Pipeline, saying indigenous cultures have a right to defend “their ancestral relationship to the earth”. The Latin American pope, who has often strongly defended indigenous rights since his election in 2013, made his comments on protection of native lands to representative of […]
For the first time since Q1 2013, mortgage delinquencies rose QoQ in Q4. The jump from 4.52% (of total loans) to 4.80% is the largest since Q1 2010 and hit as mortgage rates spiked following President Trump’s election and Fed Chair Yellen’s jawboning and rate-hike. Of course, levels remain ‘low’ relative to the extreme highs of the financial crisis. One word springs to mind – “contained” […]
Painting a relatively optimistic economic picture during Congressional testimony this week, Janet Yellen confirmed the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates gradually. It was clear in the sessions, though, that other factors would soon weigh on interest rates and markets. Fiscal policy could make the Fed more hawkish. Yet the political agenda of financial deregulation, coupled with President Donald Trump’s choices for several vacancies on the Fed’s […]
ROME The agenda of Syrian peace talks due to begin in Geneva next week will be line with a U.N. Security Council resolution aimed at ending the conflict and will not be changed, U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said on Wednesday. De Mistura, speaking in Rome, said the U.N. resolution 2254 was based on three main points: establishing governance, coming up with a new constitution, and […]
JAKARTA The incumbent governor of Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, was neck and neck with rival Anies Baswedan in the race to lead the Indonesian capital, early counting by private pollsters showed. Former education minister Baswedan had secured 40.54 percent of the votes, just ahead of Purnama in second place with 39.43 percent, based on a quick sample count of around 10 percent of the vote by a […]
The four-star flagship hotel caters to the market with affordable package deals for all International explorers 15 February 2017 Dubai, UAE – In direct response to the demand from travellers’, Somewhere Hotels, one of Dubai’s most stylish mid-market hotel brands, recently opened the doors to its new 301-room hotel at the renowned and convenient location ‘Barsha Heights’, previously known as Tecom. Making this the second hotel opening […]
By Luke Baker | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON President Donald Trump will host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Wednesday, their first meeting since the inauguration and one that promises to shape the contours of Middle East policy for the years ahead. On the agenda are some of the region’s most volatile issues: the war in Syria, the Iran nuclear file and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, […]
By Gayatri Suroyo and Fransiska Nangoy | JAKARTA JAKARTA Indonesians cast ballots on Wednesday in a bitterly fought election to govern the capital, Jakarta, that has inflamed religious tensions in the Muslim-majority nation and been tied to power struggles ahead of presidential elections in 2019. The job of governor can be a springboard to the presidency and weeks of campaigning have been overshadowed by mudslinging, political intrigue […]
Matt Kiser worked in news for many years, and now he works as a product manager at an algorithm startup in Seattle. But every day, Matt spends upwards of six hours working by hand on his single-subject blog, which launched in January. Starting a new project to track what the fuck just happened today. https://t.co/p64yr6BKJ3 — Matt Kiser (@Matt_Kiser) January 29, 2017 Single subject, distinct tone, clear […]
Polls open in heated vote for Indonesian capital’s governor Niniek Karmini and Stephen Wright, Associated Press February 14, 2017 Updated: February 14, 2017 6:26pm Photo: Achmad Ibrahim, AP An Indonesian Muslim woman holds a voting paper at a polling station during an election for Jakarta governor in Jakarta, Indonesia, Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2017. Voting began in the election for governor of the Indonesian capital after a months-long […]
When Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen testifies before a Senate committee on the state of the economy on Tuesday, there will be plenty tuning in who believe the epitaph for the three-decade rally in the bond market has been rightly written. US president Donald Trump’s plan to ramp up government spending and axe corporate taxes threatens to accelerate inflation, push up interest rates and widen the deficit […]
Goldman Sachs shares shattered a 10-year record to reach a fresh closing high on Tuesday, buoyed by hopes that the Trump administration will bring a profit-boosting mix of higher interest rates, lower taxes and lighter regulation. All banks have rallied hard since November 8, when Mr Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the race to the White House. But only a handful have done as well as Goldman, […]
The reaction to a strike at the world’s largest copper mine underlines the sharp reversal in fortune in one of the world’s key metals over the past four months. Copper has jumped 5 per cent in the past two days to a two-year high after a strike at the Escondida mine in Chile raised supply fears about a market that has been starved of investment. The dispute […]
By Steve Holland and Richard Cowan | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump knew for weeks that national security adviser Michael Flynn had misled the White House about his contacts with Russia but did not immediately force him out, an administration spokesman said on Tuesday. Trump was informed in late January that Flynn had not told Vice President Mike Pence the whole truth about conversations he had […]
Last year, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation had come under criticism for shutting down its Fact Check unit after the government halted funding. Before the shutdown, ABC Fact Check was one of the most notable TV fact-checking efforts worldwide. On Tuesday, ABC News announced the operation would relaunch, thanks to a new partnership with RMIT University. This relaunch could reinvigorate other efforts to bring fact checks on air. […]
Texas Republican Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said Tuesday that “creating backdoors into secure platforms would be a huge mistake.” “Instead, we need to find a way to keep our countries safe while also keeping our data safe and secure,” McCaul said at the RSA Conference in San Francisco. The remarks, geared for the presumably pro-encryption audience of cybersecurity professionals, indicate that the […]
By Andrew Osborn | MOSCOW MOSCOW Russia’s parliament applauded on learning that Donald Trump had won the U.S. election. But prospects for better relations with Washington have suffered setbacks since then and the resignation of Trump’s national security adviser is the biggest blow yet. The Kremlin still believes a rapprochement is feasible, even if it might take longer than initially thought. But the clock is ticking: Vladimir […]
When Israel declared independence in 1948, Jordan, along with five other Arab states, attacked Israel, occupied Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, and drove out Jewish residents. Again, in 1967, Jordan attempted to wipe out the Jewish State, but this time, Israel forced the Jordanian army back across the Jordan River. While the government of Israel was ambivalent about whether to retain the newly emancipated areas, the settler […]
Greece is planning to appoint Rothschild to advise on its debts as the country attempts to end a long-running creditor stand-off and avert default. Government officials hope to finalise the appointment before a gathering of eurozone finance ministers on February 20 that has been described as the last chance for Greece’s lenders to overcome their differences before European attention shifts to general elections in eurozone countries. Unless […]
Former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono believes the government is behind the onslaught launched by former chairman of Corruption Eradication Commission Antasari Azhar against his family’s image. Yudhoyono says he felt defamed by Antasari who claimed on Tuesday that his murder case was the result of a plot by the then president because Antasari did not comply with Yudhoyono’s instructions. Antasari has alleged Yudhoyono was behind the murder […]
A few days before the retreat, I met up with the man who, perhaps more than any other figure in the conservative movement, had maneuvered the party toward complete and unbending opposition to Obamacare: Michael Needham of the Heritage Foundation. Needham, 35, is the chief executive of Heritage Action for America, a feral cur of a lobbying organization established by the venerable conservative think tank in 2010 […]
A striking feature of global financial markets since the crises of 2007 and 2008 has been the high propensity of many wealthy private investors to sit out all the turmoil, holding cash in bank accounts rather than in riskier assets. Might that be about to change? The word among bankers in conservative Switzerland — the world’s largest centre for cross-border private wealth management — is that it […]
By Cindy Silviana and Eveline Danubrata | JAKARTA JAKARTA Supporters of the governor of Indonesia’s capital are hoping their checkered shirts in red, white and blue will help galvanize the vote in a city election on Wednesday and win a second term for their leader. Basuki Tjahaja Purnama is Jakarta’s first ethnic Chinese and Christian governor, and the election in the city of 10 million people has […]
