By Huda Majeed and Ahmed Rasheed | BAGHDAD BAGHDAD Tension between Iraq’s Shi’ite leaders mounted on Sunday as the toll from protests in central Baghdad on Saturday increased to six killed, five demonstrators loyal to the fiery cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and one policeman. At least 174 other protesters were injured in clashes that pitted police and Sadr’s followers who had gathered to demand an overhaul of a […]
ISTANBUL President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday the final goal of a Turkish incursion into Syria was not just to retake the city of al-Bab from Islamic State, but to cleanse a border region including Raqqa of the jihadists. Turkish-backed Syrian rebels are pressing a major offensive on al-Bab, 30 km (20 miles) south of the Turkish border. The advance risks putting them in direct conflict with […]
The Louisiana State Police never did tell White what happened to his son. He learned of their account through a news release posted online that evening, March 3, 2014. The police said that Victor White III, while detained in the back seat of a locked police car, his hands shackled behind his back, had committed suicide by shooting himself in the back with a handgun that an […]
12 February 2017 Dubai, United Arab Emirates – Marsh & McLennan Companies Inc. (NYSE: MMC), a global professional services firm offering clients advice and solutions in risk, strategy and people, is a strategic partner of the newly published 2017 Global Risks Report, an annual publication released by the World Economic Forum at Davos. This year’s 2017 Global Risks Report reveals that economic inequality, societal polarisation and intensifying […]
ERBIL, Iraq Western-backed Syrian forces should isolate Islamic State’s de facto capital in Syria “by the spring” before an offensive on the city itself, British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said on Saturday. The Syrian Democratic Forces, which includes the powerful Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, launched the campaign on Raqqa in November. It announced this month the start of a new phase in the offensive, aiming to complete […]
By Helen Reid and Abhinav Ramnarayan | COVENTRY, England COVENTRY, England U.S. Federal Reserve Vice Chair Stanley Fischer said there was significant uncertainty about U.S. fiscal policy under the Trump administration, but the Fed would be strict in meeting targets of creating full employment and getting inflation to 2 percent. Speaking at the Warwick Economics Summit on Saturday, Fischer also said he thought Dodd-Frank financial regulation would […]
By Foo Yun Chee | BRUSSELS BRUSSELS NATO accused Russia of escalating a disinformation campaign since the Kremlin’s 2014 seizure of Ukraine’s Crimea region, saying Russian websites such as Sputnik and RT had posted false stories, the alliance’s spokeswoman said on Saturday. There is increasing concern among senior NATO and European Union officials over Russia’s ability to use television and the Internet to spread what they say […]
By Paulo Whitaker | VITORIA, Brazil VITORIA, Brazil Police in the Brazilian state of Espirito Santo did not return to work on Saturday, despite the government announcing hours earlier a deal had been struck with officers to end a week-long strike that has led to a sharp increase in murders. Most of the violence has been centered in the poor regions of metropolitan Vitoria, the state capital […]
By Chuck Mikolajczak | NEW YORK NEW YORK U.S. stocks climbed on Friday, with the S&P 500 closing just short of a record high, boosted by gains in financial shares as President Donald Trump moved ahead with deregulation action and by a strong payrolls report. The S&P financial sector .SPSY jumped 2 percent to score its best day since mid-November after Trump signed an executive order to […]
Investors have warmed to Russian assets, welcoming the country in from the cold. Russian bond funds counted record inflows in the week to February 1 as higher crude prices and improving relations with the US prompted an investor rotation back into the country. Emerging markets more broadly have found renewed investor appetite as the dollar has fallen to an 11-week low. More than $1bn flowed into EM […]
GENEVA A renewed assault on Islamic State fighters in the Iraqi city of Mosul could force 250,000 civilians to flee, if they can find a way out, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said on Friday. Such an exodus would be on top of roughly 162,000 people already displaced by Iraqi government efforts to retake the city since October. Such numbers, although high, remain well below UNHCR’s initial […]
Russia is to spend more than Rbs113bn ($1.9bn) during the next month in an effort to weaken the rouble, marking a reversal from the 2014 foreign exchange shock that forced it to intervene heavily to stop the currency falling too far. The country’s central bank will spend Rbs6.3bn a day on forex transactions from February 7 to March 6, the finance ministry said in a statement on […]
Conservative Republicans are girding themselves for a clash with Donald Trump’s administration, warning that lax spending plans could put national debt on a steeper upward trajectory. The president has wrongfooted Republican deficit hawks by proposing to slash tax, protect social security and Medicare, boost defence spending and build a wall along the border with Mexico. Some lawmakers fear even fiscally conservative colleagues will buckle in the face […]
Passive investors could control over half of US stock and bond markets by 2021, according to Moody’s research — a trend that is illustrated by the strong start to this year for exchange traded funds. US actively-managed funds faced net outflows last year of $340bn as investors poured $505bn into passive products such as ETFs that track indices, according to data from Morningstar, a research service. The momentum […]
Submitted by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com, As I outlined in my article ‘The False Economic Narrative Will Die In 2017’, the mainstream media has been carefully crafting the propaganda meme that the Trump administration is inheriting a global economy in “ascension,” when in fact, the opposite is true. Trump enters office at a time of longstanding decline and will likely witness severe and accelerated decline over the […]
WASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump discussed with Jordan’s King Abdullah the possibility of establishing safe zones in Syria, the White House said on Thursday. Trump met with King Abdullah briefly in Washington on Thursday morning, the White House said in a statement. Trump said last week he would establish safe zones in Syria for refugees fleeing violence in the war-torn country. (Reporting by Eric Beech) ‘); $(‘.second-article-divide’).append($(‘.slider.slider-module’)); […]
02 February 2017 For years, mid-tier banks have been told they’re potentially heading for extinction The barbell effect dictates that the middle will be significantly challenged by an increasingly tough business environment, with only the very large and the very niche institutions being able to succeed. And indeed the outlook does look challenging, if one adds up the increased cost of regulatory compliance, the pressure on fees […]
By Isabel Coles | RASHIDIYA, Iraq RASHIDIYA, Iraq His name was Ayman, but the couple who brought the boy home to their Iraqi village after buying him for $500 called him Ahmed. Islamic State militants had killed or enslaved Ayman’s parents in their purge of the Yazidi religious minority to which he belongs, then sold the four-year-old to Umm and Abu Ahmed, who are Muslims. For the […]
La Villette, a corrugated iron convention hall on the northern rim of Paris, was meant to be François Fillon’s launch pad towards the French presidency after winning the centre-right nomination in a landslide. But on Sunday he stood in the packed venue, days after claims emerged that the Republican candidate had allegedly employed his wife in a fake parliamentary job for years and, suddenly, victory seemed to […]
For Syrians, Mr. Trump is merely pushing to extremes a process that has been going on for years. The situation of the refugees, and the underprivileged in general, has been worsening everywhere for a generation. Syria exemplifies a greater global failure. Continue reading the main story The executive order barring Syrians and the citizens of six other countries was among Mr. Trump’s very first actions in the […]
ULAANBAATAR/HONG KONG Private citizens in Mongolia are donating cash, jewelry, gold and even horses to help the government make a near $600 million payment to bondholders next month. The cash-strapped nation has been embroiled in an economic crisis brought about by a collapse in foreign investment, slowing growth in China and weak commodity prices. Its currency, the tugrik, lost nearly a quarter of its value last year. […]
Targeting the weak The us-versus-them dynamic is “easy for many people to rally around,” said Jonathan D. Weiler, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina. Targeting feared or unpopular minorities is a way of “setting a boundary,” said Sheri E. Berman, a political scientist at Barnard College — a way to distinguish between “us” deserving of protection, and “them” who are a threat. Continue reading […]
Almost a decade on from the financial crisis, a global deadline for reform of the $544tn derivatives market has triggered a last-minute scramble by hundreds of small banks, insurers and pension funds. Many of these institutions use bespoke derivatives such as swaps to protect their operations from sudden changes in asset prices. In a month’s time they face higher costs and regulatory burdens. Plenty are not ready. […]
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts, President Trump says he wants the US to have better relations with Russia and to halt military operations against Muslim countries. But he is being undermined by the Pentagon. The commander of US forces in Europe, General Ben Hodges, has lined up tanks on Poland’s border with Russia and fired salvos that the general says are a message to Russia, not a […]
