Thursday 14:30 GMT Overview The euro is firmer and Bund yields are trundling higher with Treasuries after the European Central Bank stood pat on interest rates and indicated it was not looking to ease policy further. Oil prices tried to rally but have resumed their sell-off, putting energy stocks under pressure and weighing on equity benchmarks. Hot topic (1) After a period when politicians seemed to rule […]
|By Matein Khalid| Janet Yellen confirmed the Wall Street consensus that the Federal Reserve will raise its overnight borrowing (Fed Funds) rate at the March FOMC. Wage growth, inflation, crude oil, asset prices, economic data momentum and Trump’s fiscal stimulus all reinforce the dual mandate logic of a rate hike. Only a really awful February non-farm payroll shock (consensus is 200,000 jobs) will avert a rate hike […]
By Dustin Volz and Jonathan Landay | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The disclosure this week of documents describing secret CIA hacking tools shows that intensified U.S. government efforts to prevent leaks by intelligence agency employees and contractors have largely failed, cybersecurity professionals and intelligence officials say. If the Central Intelligence Agency disclosures are confirmed to be the work of an intelligence agency contractor, as government investigators currently suspect, it […]
Continue reading the main story But the agent has his passport and has refused to refund his recruitment fee, he said. He has no money for a plane ticket. “There is a huge dependence on migrant workers who have employment terms that are no different than indentured servitude,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch, an advocacy […]
Confide, a messaging app used inside the White House and touted for its ability to allow staffers to privately leak to the press, isn’t as secure as the company claims. The multi-platform app, which first broke onto the security scene three years ago but only recently made headlines for its use across the Trump administration, claims that nobody can intercept and read messages that disappear after they […]
By Yashaswini Swamynathan U.S. stocks were little changed on Wednesday as investors focused on Friday’s crucial nonfarm payrolls report after a better-than-expected private hiring report strengthened chances of a rate increase next week. Financial stocks rose after the ADP National Employment report showed that the U.S. private sector added 298,000 jobs last month, blowing past economists’ average estimate of 190,000. The S&P 500 financial index .SPSY rose […]
SEOUL A man claiming to be the son of the slain, estranged half brother of North Korea’s leader said he was lying low with his mother and sister, in a video posted online by a group that said it helped rescue them following the murder a month ago. The governments of Netherlands, China, the United States, and a fourth unnamed country provided emergency humanitarian assistance to protect […]
Sources tell us that Google is acquiring Kaggle, a platform that hosts data science and machine learning competitions. Details about the transaction remain somewhat vague, but given that Google is hosting its Cloud Next conference in San Francisco this week, the official announcement could come as early as tomorrow. Reached by phone, Kaggle co-founder CEO Anthony Goldbloom declined to deny that the acquisition is happening. Google itself declined “to comment on rumors.” […]
By Saikat Chatterjee | HONG KONG HONG KONG Asian stocks edged lower on Wednesday after a strong start to the week due to profit-taking as investors lacked conviction to buy risky assets before a U.S. policy meeting next week that may see interest rates rising for the second time in three months. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan eased 0.1 percent in early trade, a […]
By Jennifer Ablan | NEW YORK NEW YORK Jeffrey Gundlach, chief executive officer at DoubleLine Capital, said on Tuesday he expects the Federal Reserve to begin a campaign this month of “old school” sequential interest rate hikes until “something breaks,” such as a U.S. recession. Gundlach, who oversees more than $101 billion at Los Angeles-based DoubleLine, said U.S. economic data support a rate increase as soon as […]
Banks have structured some unusual and complex deals for European companies to raise capital through a combination of debt and equity derivatives in recent weeks, reflecting investor enthusiasm for convertible securities. Last week BASF launched a $600m bond bundled with warrants, in a so-called neutral structure which effectively makes the chemicals group a middleman between its investors and its banks. The deal, put together by Deutsche Bank, […]
By Jonathan Stempel | NEW YORK NEW YORK PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP [PWC.UL] pinned the blame for MF Global Holdings Ltd’s collapse squarely on the commodity brokerage and its former chief executive, Jon Corzine, at the start on Tuesday of a trial over whether the auditor should pay about $3 billion for its alleged negligence. Jurors are considering a demand by MF Global’s bankruptcy plan administrator that PwC be […]
As Abdelmonem Alserkal tours his latest architectural commission, his pristine white kandura stands in contrast to the monochrome building that broods in Alserkal Avenue – the warehouse creative community he has brought to life in Dubai’s industrial neighbourhood of Al Quoz. A muted study in steel, small mirrors, translucent polycarbonate and sprayed, shot-blast and polished concrete, the new venue is the latest milestone in Alserkal Avenue’s decade-long […]
One week ago, we pointed out a curious bifurcation: the Fed was telegraphing an imminent rate hike – one which following Yellen’s Friday conference is now virtually assured – even though it appears the FOMC would be hiking in a quarter in which GDP comes in in the mid 1%-range, or lower. The reason: while “soft data” – which is important to animal spirits if not actual […]
GoldenEye ransomware targets human resources departments because they’re used to opening emails and attachments from unknown sources. Image: Ali Donzanti What is a ransomware attack? Cybercriminals didn’t use to be so obvious. If hackers infiltrated your corporate network, they would do everything possible to avoid detection. It was in their best interests not to alert a victim that they’d fallen victim to cybercrime. But now, if you […]
Credit: iStock/xavierarnau Michael Siminovitch, director of the California Lighting Technology Center at UC Davis, wasn’t looking for enlightenment when he wandered into a Buddhist temple in Thailand a few years ago. He was touring Thailand as a distinguished visiting professor at King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi’s school of architecture. He’d never been to a temple in his life. The temple was a highly crafted, architectural marvel, […]
In 2004, the U.S. banned cigarettes in all federal prisons and it was pretty much the best thing that could have happened to the packaged mackerel industry (yes, you read that correctly…the packaged fish). So how did a smelly package of fish become the gold standard of America’s federal prisons? Well, for a variety of reasons (we’ll let your imagination run wild) prisoners are not allowed to […]
Snap has fallen below Thursday’s opening price, losing 12 per cent on Monday as analysts issued ‘sell’ ratings on the owner of messaging app Snapchat. Shares in Snap, which went public three days ago, closed at $23.77, below its $24 opening price on the New York Stock Exchange. The broader market closed down 0.3 per cent. However, Snap is still 40 per cent above the $17 at […]
Monday 21:56 GMT Overview Global equities sold off on Monday, encouraging flows into sovereign debt, after Asian markets were rattled by North Korea firing missiles into the Sea of Japan and the Federal Reserve’s interest rate meeting drew nearer. US President Donald Trump’s latest spat with the country’s security services may also be damping the mood somewhat as markets continue to price in a rate rise by […]
The CEO of Assurant appeared on Bloomberg TV to explain why demand for his services is likely to increase: the chief executive of the mobile phone insurer said he expects a surge in demand as carriers charge customers more to replace their devices. “If you think back five years ago, you as a consumer didn’t know how much that phone cost, you thought it was free or […]
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear an appeal by a Jamaican pimp who styled himself as Dracula, even wearing gold-plated fangs, concerning his objection to being ordered to pay restitution to a woman he forced into prostitution in her native Australia. The case involving Damion Baston centered on whether American courts can compel a non-U.S. citizen convicted of sex trafficking to pay restitution to […]
Via Daniel Mitchell of The Foundation for Economic Education, I focus most of my ire on the federal government because bad policy from Washington is the biggest threat to our nation’s freedom and prosperity. But we also get plenty of bad policy from other levels of government. I periodically focus on the foibles of states such as California, Illinois, and New York. Today, though, let’s contemplate the […]
As part of the previously previewed “Two Sessions” which started on Sunday, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Sunday delivered the annual report on the work of the government in Beijing, summarizing the country’s achievements in the past year, and setting goals for this year. In his policy speech, lasting 97 minutes and 18,600 Chinese characters, Li signaled a course adjustment for the world’s second-largest economy and some […]
Construction work of Dubai Expo 2020’s three main themed districts will start by the end of March following the award of a $600 million contract to Al Futtaim Carillion. The main contractor for the site of the mega event said it is now mobilising and will be “starting work before the end of March”. The contract announced on Thursday is the first of AED11 billion worth of […]
