By Robin Emmott and Alissa de Carbonnel | BRUSSELS BRUSSELS Hours before Wednesday’s attack in London, the head of the European Union police agency Europol warned that a large group of radicalised individuals posed a constant threat to Britain and Europe. “Some of these are likely to succeed in the future,” Rob Wainwright, who is British, wrote in a blog to commemorate the attacks in Brussels that […]
BlackRock and Pimco are refusing to take part in the first bond sale by a Portuguese bank in more than a year, because of a legal battle with the country’s central bank over losses sustained in 2015. Caixa Geral de Depósitos, the state-owned Portuguese bank, is this week courting investors in London and Paris, as it seeks to sell a €500m subordinated bond, in what would be […]
Imagine that The New York Times, The Washington Post and PBS launched a joint fact-checking project. That is, roughly speaking, what happened in Norway earlier this week. VG and Dagbladet, Norway’s two largest online news sources by readership, joined forces with NRK, the public broadcaster, to launch Faktisk. The initiative, a team of at least five journalists led by investigative reporter Kristoffer Egeberg, will start publishing by June […]
Photo A poster in Istanbul of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, in advance of a referendum seeking to grant him more power. Credit Yasin Akgul/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images KASTAMONU, Turkey — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey warned Europeans on Wednesday that they would no longer be able to walk safely in the street if Western politicians continued with perceived provocations against Turkish leaders. Mr. […]
The euro came close to its highest level against the dollar in almost four months on Wednesday, as investors waited nervously ahead of Donald Trump’s first key legislative test over the repeal of Obamacare. This week the euro has gained 0.8 per cent against the US currency, taking its rise this month to 2.6 per cent and leaving it worth $1.0825 late on Wednesday. Euro strength is, […]
LONDON “I heard a thud, turned round and there was a man lying about 10 yards away from me,” Reuters photographer Toby Melville recalls, describing the moment a man fell from London’s Westminster Bridge to the pavement below during Wednesday’s attack. It had been a quiet afternoon in central London and Melville was taking pictures around parliament for stories about Britain’s exit from the European Union. Melville […]
By Chine Labbé and Adrian Croft | PARIS PARIS Militants are increasingly turning to vehicle-ramming attacks, like the one staged near Britain’s parliament on Wednesday, because they are cheap, easy to organise and hard to prevent. Experts say the tactic of mowing people down avoids the need to obtain any explosives or weapons and can be carried out by a “lone-wolf” attacker without using a network of […]
By Ece Toksabay and Tuvan Gumrukcu | ANKARA ANKARA President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that Europeans would not be able to walk safely on the streets if they kept up their current attitude towards Turkey, his latest salvo in a row over campaigning by Turkish politicians in Europe. Turkey has been embroiled in a dispute with Germany and the Netherlands over campaign appearances by Turkish officials […]
Press reports are circulating that the terrorist responsible for the attack on Westminster Bridge in London, has been named as Abu Izzadeen, born Trevor Brooks from Clapton in Hackney, an infamous UK-born hate-preacher amd Islamic extremist who had been convicted for raising funds for terrorism. Suspected attacker Abu Izzadeen, here heckling John Reid at an event in Leyton. https://t.co/g1vLdbLT8F — Tom Peck (@tompeck) March 22, 2017 Suspected […]
LISBON Portugal’s Prime Minister demanded the resignation of eurogroup chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem on Wednesday over remarks he called “racist, xenophobic and sexist” and said Europe would only be credible once he left. Dijsselbloem suggested in an interview at the weekend with German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that southern European countries that received EU financial aid were spending their money “on booze and women”. “Europe will only be […]
Stock markets suffered their worst falls since the election of Donald Trump as Wall Street worries about the prospects for the US president’s pro-business agenda triggered a rush for financial havens. US markets led the declines, with the benchmark S&P 500 index tumbling 1.2 per cent and breaking a run of 109 trading days without a drop of 1 per cent or more. The Dow Jones Industrial […]
LONDON Britain’s Princess Anne may have sparked some royal sibling rivalry after saying genetically modified crops had real benefits to offer, putting her at odds with her older brother Charles who says they would be an environmental disaster. In an interview with BBC radio, Anne said she would grow GMO crops on her farming estates, adding she doubted that the technology had many downsides. That view contrasts […]
Authored by Robert Parry via The Strategic Culture Foundation, The Kagan family, America’s neoconservative aristocracy, has reemerged having recovered from the letdown over not gaining its expected influence from the election of Hillary Clinton and from its loss of official power at the start of the Trump presidency. Former Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the Ukraine coup and helped pick […]
ABU DHABI // An aviation expert has said the ban on large electronic devices in the cabin could be a move of caution in response to a real-time event or threat. Saj Ahmad, chief analyst for StrategicAero Research in London, said it seems to contradict a US Federal Aviation Administration directive that banned lithium batteries in airplane cargo holds. That had been put in place after the […]
SKOPJE Macedonia needs to rise above political feuding and form a government as soon as possible to unblock the Balkan country’s path to European Union membership, the EU said on Tuesday. An EU summit earlier this month placed the Balkans high on its agenda to show that despite lingering ethnic tensions and the scars from wars fought in the 1990s, the region is a priority for the […]
ABU DHABI // A new government programme is making local organic produce not only more readily available in supermarkets around the country but also more affordable in comparison with its more expensive, imported counterpart. The Ministry of Climate Change and Environment has made a concerted push in recent years to subsidise farming equipment, provide expertise and connect local farmers with supermarkets to help market their products. On […]
ROME Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said on Tuesday that he wants to send a strong message in favour of free trade when he welcomes U.S. President Donald Trump and other world leaders in Italy in May. Italy hosts the annual meeting of seven of the world’s biggest industrialised economies (G7) in the town of Taormina in Sicily on May 26-27. It will be Trump’s first scheduled […]
BERLIN Germany has rejected an unusually high number of requests for arms exports to Turkey in recent months due to mounting concerns about deteriorating human rights in the NATO country, the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported on Tuesday. The report cited an economy ministry written response to a question by leftist lawmaker Jan van Aken, in which the ministry said it had rejected 11 requests for arms […]
Top executives from two of the world’s biggest investment banks have warned about the perils of Brexit, saying they have begun to firm up plans to uproot jobs from London ahead of Britain’s departure from the EU. Banks had been among the most vocal opponents of Brexit in the run-up to June’s referendum, donating millions of pounds to the Remain campaign and speaking openly about the thousands […]
By Elisabeth O’Leary | EDINBURGH EDINBURGH While the economic case for Scottish independence once centred on oil, people like company director Niall McLean now argue that trade is the way to ensure their country’s future prosperity – and avoid the damage of the United Kingdom leaving the EU. Turning Scotland, which sells two thirds of its exports to the rest of Britain, into a heavyweight international trader […]
By Robin Emmott | BRUSSELS BRUSSELS U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s decision to miss his first meeting with NATO foreign ministers has unsettled European allies who fear the no-show reopens questions about President Donald Trump’s commitment to the alliance. Reuters exclusively reported on Monday that Tillerson would stay at home to attend Trump’s expected April 6-7 talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Florida, skipping the […]
BRUSSELS The European Union’s 27 leaders will meet at the end of April to agree their negotiating lines for Brexit talks, after London sends in a formal notification that it wants to leave the EU on March 29th, three sources in Brussels said on Tuesday. The meeting is a necessary step before the negotiations between Britain and the 27 remaining EU states can start formally. (Reporting by […]
PARIS A junior French minister backed Emmanuel Macron’s presidential campaign on Tuesday, the first member of the government to do so, just hours after he consolidated his status as favourite in the first of a series of TV debates. The backing of ecology party lawmaker and biodiversity minister Barbara Pompili is expected to be followed by more defections from the government of Socialist President Francois Hollande, in […]
TOKYO Asian shares hit 21-month highs on Tuesday while the dollar and U.S. bond yields were on the backfoot on the prospect of a less hawkish than previously expected Federal Reserve policy trajectory. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS rose 0.3 percent in its eighth consecutive day of gains with tech-heavy Seoul and Taipei shares .KS11 .TWII hitting two-year highs while Hong Kong’s Hang […]
