GENEVA More Syrians have fled eastern Aleppo, with reports of about 800 arriving in the past 24 hours at a disused cotton factory in the Jibreen district of west Aleppo and 1,260 in Hanano district, retaken by government forces, a U.N. official said on Wednesday. Bus loads of civilians continue to arrive in government-controlled areas of the city and leave for other sites or to lodge with […]
Inuit throat singing admittedly isn’t the easiest sell to the wider music-buying populace, but when it’s presented in the startlingly visceral form favoured by Tanya Tagaq, that’s the loss of those who choose not to listen. Not that the Nunavut-born 41-year-old has struggled to find sympathetic ears to date. She won the prestigious Canadian Polaris Music Prize in 2014, gaining the respect of multimillion-selling contemporaries including Björk […]
But in an era of internet hoaxes, fabrications and the increased use of fake news around the world to further political agendas, Bana’s Twitter account has also raised some questions of veracity and authenticity. Continue reading the main story Her messages are sophisticated for a 7-year-old, for example, particularly for one whose native language is not English. This is my reading place where I wanted to start […]
By Francesca Piscioneri and Steve Scherer | ROME ROME Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi will hand in his resignation on Friday, a parliamentary source said, as President Sergio Mattarella seeks to slow the pace of an unfolding political crisis. Renzi vowed to resign in the early hours of Monday after a bruising referendum loss, but Mattarella, whose powers include naming prime ministers and dissolving parliament, asked him […]
BEIRUT A Syrian military source said Israeli rockets hit around the Mezzeh military airport near the Syrian capital Damascus at around 3 a.m. on Wednesday. The source said the ground-to-ground rockets caused a fire but no injuries. The Israeli military did not comment on the report. (Reporting by Lisa Barrington in Beirut and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Editing by Catherine Evans) ‘); $(‘.second-article-divide’).append($(‘.slider.slider-module’)); $(‘.third-article-divide’).append(”); var median = […]
This is part of a series on the global rise of exchange traded funds Have we reached Peak ETF? And are we therefore at last in a “stockpicker’s market” where active fund managers skilled in bottom-up stock selection can feast on the mispricings and anomalies that the herd of exchange traded funds have left in their wake? It is beguiling to think that this could have happened. […]
ISTANBUL Turkish warplanes pounded 12 Islamic State targets in the al-Bab region of northern Syria on Wednesday, killing 23 militants, the military said. The air strikes were launched as Syrian rebels, backed by Turkish troops and firepower, besiege Islamic State controlled al-Bab as part of the three-month-old Euphrates Shield operation to push the jihadists and a Kurdish militia away from Turkey’s border. Separately, one Turkish soldier was […]
MOSCOW A Russian military adviser working in Aleppo has been killed by artillery shelling carried out by Syrian opposition rebels, Russian news agencies quoted the Russian Defence Ministry as saying on Wednesday. The adviser would be posthumously given a top military award, the agencies said. (Reporting by Maria Kiselyova; Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Christian Lowe) ‘); $(‘.second-article-divide’).append($(‘.slider.slider-module’)); $(‘.third-article-divide’).append(”); var median = (relatedItemsTotal / 2); var […]
Submitted by Daniel Cloud “Donald Trump is either too incompetent to understand that his foolish phone call threatens our national security, or he’s doing it deliberately because he reportedly wants to build hotels in Taiwan to pad his own pockets.” – (Democratic National Committee Spokesperson) Is that true? Did “incompetent” President-Elect Donald Trump’s “foolish” telephone conversation with Taiwan’s President Cai Yingwen actually “threaten American’s […]
By Steve Holland | FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. President-elect Donald Trump laid out a U.S. military policy on Tuesday that would avoid interventions in foreign conflicts and instead focus heavily on defeating the Islamic State militancy. In the latest stop on a “thank you” tour of states critical to his Nov. 8 election win, Trump introduced his choice for defense secretary, General James Mattis, to a large […]
December 6, 2016 by: Mark Wiedman and Richie Prager This is part of a series on the global rise of exchange traded funds How do you buy or sell bonds if the middleman is not there any more? As any bond investor will tell you, buying or selling bonds is harder and more costly than in long memory. Since the crisis, regulators have squeezed the investment bank […]
CARACAS Venezuela’s opposition said on Tuesday talks with President Nicolas Maduro’s administration were off until the leftist government keeps promises on elections and foreign aid, casting further doubt on Vatican-brokered attempts to alleviate the country’s deep political crisis. The formal talks, which began in October with facilitators from the Vatican, appeared to have led to the release of a handful of detained activists, but hopes for real […]
GFH Financial Group hopes to largely complete the acquisition of Bahrain’s Bank Al Khair in the first quarter of next year and is at an advanced stage of exploring a merger with another Bahraini bank, its chief executive said on Tuesday. “The recent merger we announced was Bank Al Khair – we hope during the first quarter of 2017 to finish most of our acquisition,” Hisham al-Rayes […]
London’s FTSE 100 stands apart as the global laggard among major stock indices with investors giving it a wide berth almost a month since the election of Donald Trump. The performance reflects concern over Brexit negotiations hurting the shares of companies exposed to the UK economy while the pound’s recent rebound against the dollar and the euro offsets the boost for resource stocks from rising crude and […]
A man holds up his mobile phone showing a M-Pesa mobile money transaction page for the photographer at an open air market in Kibera in Kenya’s capital Nairobi (Reuters/Noor Khamis). This post features a conversation with Georgia Levenson Keohane, executive director of the Pershing Square Foundation, adjunct professor of social enterprise at Columbia Business School, and author of Capital and the Common Good: How Innovative Finance is […]
Hedge fund manager Pierre Andurand has returned almost 15 per cent this year by betting on a recovery in oil prices and he forecasts the rally has further to run after Opec’s agreement last week to cut supplies. The French founder of Andurand Capital, which has grown to be one of the world’s largest oil funds, returned 6.1 per cent in November as he positioned for crude’s […]
By Angus McDowall , John Davison and Stephanie Nebehay | BEIRUT/GENEVA BEIRUT/GENEVA Syria’s army and allies closed in on areas near Aleppo’s Old City on Tuesday, looking closer than ever to achieving their most important victory of the five year civil war by driving rebels out of their last urban stronghold. Rebels said on Tuesday they would never abandon Aleppo, after reports that U.S. and Russian diplomats […]
By Ahmed Rasheed and Patrick Markey | BAGHDAD/ERBIL, Iraq BAGHDAD/ERBIL, Iraq Iraqi army units surged towards the centre of Mosul on Tuesday in an attack from the city’s southeastern edges that could give fresh impetus to the seven-week-old battle for Islamic State’s Iraqi stronghold. Campaign commander Lieutenant General Abdul Ameer Rasheed Yarallah was quoted by Iraqi television as saying troops had entered Salam Hospital, less than a […]
If you set out to make a positive investment case for Italy 20 years ago, the best hope was to play down the myriad structural inefficiencies that blighted the corporate sector and argue that this was a good economy burdened by an unworkable state. Now, after years of no growth accompanied by stubbornly high public debt, a positive case looks even harder to make, especially after the […]
By Jonathan Cable | LONDON LONDON Britain will most likely leave the European Union having signed a bilateral trade agreement, according to a Reuters poll of economists on Tuesday that also suggested there remains little chance of the country slipping into recession. Since the June 23 decision to leave the EU, Britain’s economy has performed much better than had been previously feared. The Bank of England is […]
In interviews with The New York Times, a former Taliban finance minister described how he traveled to Saudi Arabia for years raising money while ostensibly on pilgrimage. The Taliban have also been allowed to raise additional millions by extorting “taxes” by pressing hundreds of thousands of Pashtun guest workers in the kingdom and menacing their families back home, according to Vali Nasr, a former State Department adviser. […]
BAGHDAD Iraqi army units launched a fresh assault in southeast Mosul on Tuesday and a senior commander was quoted as saying an armoured division had advanced to within less than a mile (1.5 km) of the Tigris River running through the city centre. Iraqi television quoted operations commander Lieutenant-General Abdul Ameer Rasheed Yarallah as saying troops had entered the Salam Hospital in the southeastern neighbourhood of Wahda, […]
HONG KONG Asian stocks opened higher on the back of a strong Wall Street with markets discounting the potential impact of Italy’s referendum vote, while U.S. Treasury yields firmed as robust economic data pointed to an interest rate hike next week. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS rose 0.4 percent in early trade with Antiopodean markets leading gains. Korea .KS11 climbed 1 percent in […]
By Swati Pandey and Charlotte Greenfield | WELLINGTON WELLINGTON New Zealand Finance Minister Bill English said on Tuesday he planned to stand for prime minister after John Key’s surprise resignation a day earlier. English, a former Treasury Department analyst who is also deputy leader of the ruling centre-right National Party, is viewed by both lawmakers and political analysts as the front-runner for the top job. “I can […]
