Moon Jae-in has triumphed in the South Korean presidential election with over 40 percent of the vote, according to exit polls. But the liberal leader’s solid victory can’t patch over deeper political wounds. Just as the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union left British society divided and Donald Trump’s election polarized Americans, the impeachment of Park Geun-hye has split South Korea. While more than 75 […]
By Suleiman Al-Khalidi | AMMAN AMMAN Syrian government warplanes struck rebel outposts near the Jordanian border early on Tuesday, rebels said, bringing the war closer to Syria’s U.S.-allied neighbour to the south. The air strikes, at around 3 a.m. (0000 GMT) were the first near that part of the border, a Jordanian official said. They came hours after Syria’s foreign minister warned Jordan against sending troops into […]
Sign up to receive FirstFT by email here Days after Donald Trump was elected, President Barack Obama warned his successor against hiring former general Michael Flynn as his security adviser. Mr Trump ignored the advice and Mr Flynn resigned after 17 days on the job amid the growing investigation of the Trump team’s ties to Russia. This is just one of the revelations to emerge following a Senate […]
Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com, Recently, I published the comment that, when the present debt bubble eventually pops, “governments will lose the economic power to continue their advance against economic freedom.” The immediate reaction from one reader was, “What could we expect next?… The governments and Deep State aren’t going to ‘just go away.’” An excellent question—one which deserves an answer. We won’t need a crystal […]
It was planned as a routine engagement for Martin Schulz — open a new children’s playground, say a few words, sign some autographs and pose for selfies. But the event in a drab suburb of the industrial western town of Hamm was anything but an easy ride for the German Social Democrat leader, who is challenging Chancellor Angela Merkel in September’s parliamentary election. What began as a […]
08 May 2017 Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia The Government of Sierra Leone has asked for the the support of Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) in agricultural development, road construction and Post-Ebola recovery plan. The President of Sierra Leone, Dr. Earmest Bai Koroma disclosed this when he received the President of IsDB, Dr. Bandar Hajjar at the Royal Guest House in Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. President Koroma […]
While the hedge fund world finds itself in a time of crisis, with a “great rotation” of capital away from active management which continues to largely underperform the broader market, and toward cheaper, passive strategies, nothing could spoil the mood at one of the industry’s biggest events held today at the Lincoln Center, the 22nd annual Ira Sohn conference, where a dozen of the hedge fund industry’s […]
By Shu Zhang and Matthew Miller | BEIJING BEIJING A Chinese government campaign to cut leverage in the banking system and limit some risky activities appears to be working, but it is also pushing borrowers back towards alternative funding sources that carry similar risks to the financial system. First-quarter official data shows banks cut the amount they lent to and borrowed from other financial institutions by 1.4 […]
GENEVA United Nations mediator Staffan de Mistura said on Monday that he was reconvening peace talks between the Syrian government and opposition in Geneva on May 16. In a statement, de Mistura voiced hope that the agreement reached last week in Astana among Russia, Iran and Turkey to set up “de-escalation” zones in Syria will be implemented in full “thus bringing about a significant de-escalation in violence, […]
Zaha Hadid’s first project in Dubai is a work of art to rival any of the renowned Iraqi-born architect’s award-winning structures, and will add something very different to the city’s burgeoning collection of prestige buildings. In many ways, a visit to Dubai’s Business Bay feels like a trip back to the future – to a city that feels eerily familiar to anyone who can remember the giddy […]
“We should all agree that in our constitutional democracy, the executive’s ability to attack another country is constrained by the law,” Justin Florence, the group’s legal director and a former Obama White House lawyer, wrote in an essay announcing the lawsuit. He added: “Some countries may tolerate a head of state launching a new conflict without offering a clear legal justification, but we should not.” Continue reading […]
By Stephanie Nebehay | GENEVA GENEVA Spreading ethnic violence is driving more people from their homes in the Democratic Republic of Congo where the humanitarian situation is “dramatically deteriorating”, the United Nations said on Monday. Some 100,000 people were uprooted last week alone, bringing the ranks of displaced in the central Kasai region to nearly 1.3 million, it said. The total number of displaced throughout Congo has […]
By Phil Stewart | COPENHAGEN COPENHAGEN U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Monday the United States would closely examine proposed de-escalation zones aimed at easing Syria’s civil war but warned “the devil’s in the details” and that much needed to be worked out. The deal to create “de-escalation” zones in the major areas of conflict in western Syria took effect on Saturday. The initiative was proposed […]
BERLIN Europe’s political establishment entered 2017 in a state of panic. Britain had voted to leave the European Union six months before and the United States had just elected a president who was hostile to their grand project and the values it stood for. The same forces that had led to Brexit and Donald Trump – popular anger with distant elites, economic inequality and immigration – threatened […]
DUBAI // A Dubai College pupil has been accepted by all 12 US universities to which she applied – and secured total of US$670,000 in scholarships. Despoina Loukos, in Year 13, said she first found out she had been accepted to Northeastern University with a $100,000 scholarship. “I was definitely shocked,” Despoina said. “I was con-vinced they wrote too many noughts. I took a screenshot so they […]
BAGHDAD Iraqi forces faced stiff resistance from Islamic State in northwest Mosul on Sunday after opening a new front against the militants there in a push to rout them from the city after seven months of fighting. Trapped in a steadily shrinking area of the city, the militants are fighting back with a barrage of suicide car bombs and snipers concealed amongst hundreds of thousands of civilians […]
By Noah Barkin and Leigh Thomas | BERLIN/PARIS BERLIN/PARIS After a decade of slow growth, rising unemployment and dwindling competitiveness, France elected a president on Sunday who says he has a plan to pull the country out of its economic malaise. Emmanuel Macron, a former investment banker who quit the government of Francois Hollande twice out of frustration with the slow pace of reforms, is promising […]
The Federal Reserve risks political interference and losing its independence if it maintains a large balance sheet in the longer term, former Fed officials have claimed, as debate over the central bank’s strategy for unwinding its interventions in financial markets intensifies. Kevin Warsh, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and former Fed governor, said permanently holding vast quantities of assets like treasuries was […]
An eerie calm in capital markets is fuelling fears on Wall Street that a first-quarter rebound in trading revenues could prove a one-off. Big investment banks reported generally solid profits over the first three months of the year, as investors reset their portfolios to take account of higher base interest rates, and as companies front-loaded efforts to raise money. For all bar four of the top 14 […]
Volkswagen bought back hundreds of thousands of emissions-cheating cars. We just discovered what it has done with them all… As Bloomberg reports, the German automaker agreed last year to buy back about 500,000 diesels that it rigged to pass U.S. emissions tests if it can’t figure out a way to fix them. Except for a handful of 2015 models, VW dealers can’t sell the cars until […]
Monday UN focus on migrants The UN will meet in Geneva to address the “human rights of all migrants, social inclusion, cohesion and all forms of discrimination, including racism, xenophobia and intolerance”. Organisers say they are working towards an ambitious global policy on migration, an issue high on the political agenda after the Mediterranean migrants’ crisis and US President Donald Trump’s clampdown on migration into the US […]
KIRKUK, Iraq At least two people were killed and six injured when multiple Islamic State suicide bombers attacked a base in northern Iraq where U.S. military advisers are stationed, security sources said on Sunday. In addition, two of the militants died when they detonated their vests at the entrance to the K1 base overnight, and three more were killed by Kurdish peshmerga forces who control the Kirkuk […]
By Andreina Aponte and Andrew Cawthorne | CARACAS CARACAS Dressed in white and chanting “Liberty!”, tens of thousands of women opposed to Venezuela’s socialist President Nicolas Maduro marched on Saturday, proffering roses to security forces who blocked their way. The women’s marches, which took place in most major cities around the South American oil producer, were the latest in five weeks of sustained protests against Maduro whom […]
Wall Street people underestimated how nasty and political the struggle over the post-Brexit fate of European clearing houses would become. This week the European Commission offered threats to London-based clearing houses and inducements for their customers to move their trade to the EU. €650bn Value of euro-denominated trades that clear through London each business day UK negotiators in turn demand that euro derivatives clearing should stay in […]
