President Jacob Zuma has sacked Pravin Gordhan, his finance minister, and eight other cabinet members, threatening turmoil for South Africa’s fragile economy and setting the stage for the biggest crisis yet for the ruling African National Congress under his leadership. Mr Zuma’s decision to fire Mr Gordhan as part of a late-night cabinet reshuffle sent the rand down 2 per cent on Friday, taking the currency’s decline […]
“This is a discussion that started in a November time-frame, and we started to pursue this. We recognized what we were stepping into,” Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the commander of the United States Central Command, said in an interview Wednesday. “It was actually implemented for eastern Mosul, the whole urban environment, and frankly, as we kind of get ready for Raqqa. We are enabling our on-scene commanders […]
BEIRUT/ANKARA: More than 5 million Syrians are now refugees, the UN said Thursday, as aid groups urged the international community to end the country’s six-year war and provide more assistance.The new figures mean around a quarter of Syria’s population has fled since the March 2011 start of a conflict that has killed over 320,000 people.The UN refugee agency UNHCR urged more international assistance, with spokeswoman Cecile Pouilly […]
By Michelle Nichols | NEW YORK NEW YORK The United States’ diplomatic policy on Syria for now is no longer focussed on making the war-torn country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, leave power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said on Thursday, in a departure from the Obama administration’s initial and public stance on Assad’s fate. The view of the Trump administration is also at odds with European […]
There ends a third and perhaps final attempt to unite the London Stock Exchange Group and Deutsche Börse. Do they remain independent or prizes for rivals? One supposed reason for the deal was that without it both the LSE and Deutsche Börse viewed themselves as takeover targets. Now we are about to see whether that is truly the case. There are only three other global operators with bigger equity […]
By Diego Oré and Andrew Cawthorne | CARACAS CARACAS Opposition leaders branded Venezuela’s socialist President Nicolas Maduro a “dictator” on Thursday after the Supreme Court took over the functions of Congress and pushed a lengthy political standoff to new heights. There was swift and widespread international condemnation of the de facto annulment of the National Assembly, where the opposition won a majority in late 2015 amid an […]
By Idrees Ali | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The Pentagon on Thursday said it would soon release a video showing Islamic State militants herding civilians into a building in the Iraqi city of Mosul and then firing from it, the U.S. military’s latest response to an outcry over a separate explosion thought to have killed scores of civilians. The U.S. military has acknowledged that the U.S.-led coalition probably had […]
The Crisis in Scale Five million people is roughly equal to the population of Norway. If nearly a quarter of the United States’ population left the country, it would be as if the combined populations of California, New York and Ohio had disappeared. In addition, 6.3 million Syrians have been internally displaced by the war. Altogether, about half of all Syrians have been forced from their homes […]
JPMorgan is in talks to buy a new building in Dublin, but has told London staff it will not “rush into any decisions” on how it will adjust its operations after Brexit. Bloomberg reported that the US bank was in talks to buy a 130,000 sq ft office in the centre of the Irish capital which could accommodate about 1,000 people. The bank declined to comment. The news […]
Elevate, one of the biggest subprime lenders in the US, is reviving plans to go public, seeking to cash in on a big lift in sentiment since the election victory of Donald Trump. Financial stocks have rallied hard since November 8, with big banks such as Bank of America rising as much as 50 per cent on hopes of fatter lending margins, lower taxes and lighter regulation. […]
By Lesley Wroughton | ANKARA ANKARA U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrived in Turkey on Thursday for talks with a NATO ally crucial to the fight against Islamic State but increasingly at odds with Washington and its European partners. Tillerson will meet President Tayyip Erdogan to discuss the U.S.-led fight against Islamic State, including the planned offensive against its Syrian stronghold of Raqqa, where Turkey has […]
Authored by Konstantin Richter via Politico.eu, Last weekend, European leaders gathered in Rome for the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. They discussed, not for the first time, how to get the EU back on track. And they told each other they are still committed to the Union and believe in its future. (We’ve heard that one before, too.) But let’s just suppose that, when the […]
THE DEAD SEA, Jordan: European Union High Representative Federica Mogherini on Wednesday said the EU and the Arab region are “going through years of suffering. Peace and reconciliation can only come through a truly collective and cooperative approach.”Addressing Arab leaders at the Arab Summit, Mogherini said no regional or global power alone holds the key to stabilizing the Middle East or North Africa.“Peace… requires everyone’s constructive contribution,” […]
“We recognized the nature of the fight was going to change and that we had to ensure that authorities were down to the right level and that we empowered the on-scene commander,” General Votel said. He was speaking specifically about discussions that he said began in November about how the fights in Syria and Iraq against the Islamic State were reaching critical phases in Mosul and Raqqa. […]
By Idrees Ali | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON A senior U.S. general said on Wednesday it will be difficult to maintain “extraordinarily high standards” to avoid civilian casualties in Mosul, even as the U.S. military begins a formal investigation into an explosion in the Iraqi city that is believed to have killed scores of civilians. The U.S. military has acknowledged the U.S.-led coalition probably had a role in the […]
BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber driving a truck filled with explosives attacked a police checkpoint in southern Baghdad on Wednesday night, killing at least 15 people and wounding 45 others, Iraqi officials said. Three police officers were among the dead and several were wounded, but most of the victims were civilians, officials said. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Islamic State has carried […]
By Isabel Coles and John Davison | MOSUL MOSUL Iraqi special forces and police fought Islamic State militants to edge closer to the al-Nuri mosque in western Mosul on Wednesday, tightening their control around the landmark site and in Baghdad a suicide truck bomb killed at least 17 people. The close-quarters fighting is focussed on the Old City surrounding the mosque, where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr […]
Healthy food app Plotos has launched in Dubai in order to re-educate the nation’s diners and tackle the UAE’s growing obesity crisis, according to nutrition consultancy KeepEATreal and tech firm Eniverse Technologies, which have partnered to create the app. User-friendly and informative, it offers customers nine different nutrition programs, designed by experts at KeepEATreal, to tailor to the needs of busy UAE residents and focus on dietary […]
Hedge fund managers may be criticised for their recent returns but they have consistently displayed a razor sharp sense of timing when it comes to picking when to sell their own businesses. When Och-Ziff, the New York-based hedge fund founded by the former Goldman Sachs trader Daniel Och, decided to sell equity to the public markets it did so near the top of the market in late […]
In what was the clearest sign to date that the Fed is targeting the stock market bubble with its rate hikes (recall two weeks ago Goldman caused a stir when it suggested that the Fed had made a policy error by being overly dovish with its rate hike, which instead of tightening financial conditions, had the effect of a 25bps rate cut), today not one but two […]
Good morning. Here’s our morning roundup of all the media news you need to know. Want to get this briefing in your inbox every morning? Subscribe here. Donald Trump is temporary ratings gold, which is either evidence of renewed civic engagement or merely the decline of Western civilization. Variety reports that Fox News “finished far and above its competition in the ratings for the first quarter of […]
LONDON Britain’s financial sector is drawing up proposals on how it could still serve EU clients after Brexit, even as firms begin establishing new operations on the continent to keep access to the European market. Regulatory and banking experts working for the City of London and lobby group TheCityUK are basing their ideas on a ‘mutual recognition’ system. Under this, the European Union and Britain would broadly […]
Bloomberg suffered its second-ever drop in the number of ubiquitous terminals dotting global trading desks as it fell victim to cost cutting by the finance industry. The number of Bloomberg’s distinctive black terminals, used daily by bankers, traders and money managers, fell by 3,145 last year to just under 324,500, down nearly 1 per cent from 2015, according to a report on Tuesday from Burton-Taylor International, one […]
BEIRUT A bomb blast on a passenger bus in the al-Zahra district of Homs at noon on Wednesday caused deaths and injuries, Syria’s state news agency SANA reported, citing its correspondent there. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, reported that at least five people were killed in the attack in Homs, which is held by Syria’s government. (Reporting by Angus McDowall; Editing by […]
