For footloose international money, the safest place to hide in the European financial system may be two-year German debt. The government of Europe’s largest economy not meeting such obligations in euros is as close to inconceivable as things get. The debt is also easy and cheap to trade, which means it can be a market signal of investor angst. The price of such safety set a record […]
By Emmanuel Jarry and Gérard Bon | PARIS PARIS Francois Bayrou, a centrist candidate in three past French presidential elections, was set to announce on Wednesday if he will run in this year’s race for the Elysee, a move that could erode support for independent Emmanuel Macron. Opinion pollsters give Bayrou single figure percentages in the April 23 first round of voting, and therefore only a tiny […]
By Shinichi Saoshiro | TOKYO TOKYO Asian stocks edged up on Wednesday, joining a record-setting night for world markets as investors cheered upbeat factory activity in Europe and solid earnings on Wall Street. The dollar was steady after hawkish comments from top Federal Reserve officials bolstered expectations the world’s no. 1 economy was strong enough to keep policymakers on course to further raise rates this year. MSCI’s […]
Rising angst over the outcome of France’s presidential election sent the premium investors are demanding to own French debt instead of German bonds to a new post-eurozone crisis high. The gap between the yield on 10-year French debt and German equivalent bonds exceeded 0.81 percentage points for the first time since August 2012, as a fresh poll showing far right candidate Marine Le Pen is on course […]
ROME Michele Emiliano, the leftist president of the southern region of Puglia, said on Tuesday he would challenge former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi for the leadership of Italy’s ruling Democratic Party (PD), which faces a damaging split. Emiliano, 57, made the announcement at a meeting of the PD’s executive where he launched a stinging attack on Renzi, who resigned as party leader on Sunday to pave the […]
By Gopal Sharma | KATHMANDU KATHMANDU Nepal will hold its first local elections in 20 years in May, a minister said on Monday, an important milestone in its long and difficult transition to democracy that the government hopes will culminate in a general election. The Himalayan nation has been unable to complete the journey to a republic because some regional groups rejected a constitution approved by bigger […]
BEIRUT: French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has met with the president of Lebanon, saying their two countries should be “pillars” in organizing the fight against Islamic fundamentalism.After the half-hour meeting on Monday with Michel Aoun, Le Pen said she also discussed the costs of housing refugees.Le Pen’s National Front party claims Muslim immigration to France boosts terror risks, costs jobs and drains the nation’s treasury. […]
Here we go again. The premium investors are demanding to hold French over German 10-year debt has hit a fresh post-eurozone crisis high today – exceeding 0.81 percentage points for the first time since August 2012. The yield gap has swollen to its highest in over four years this month, reflecting investor jitters about France’s upcoming and unpredictable presidential elections in three months’ time. France’s 10-year bond […]
Lenín Boltaire Moreno is in the lead after Sunday’s nail-biting presidential election in Ecuador. The anointed candidate of leftwing President Rafael Correa was close to the margin needed to avoid a second round against Guillermo Lasso, a conservative former banker, in a test for Latin America’s battered left. After a campaign that underlined the divisive legacy of Mr Correa, the US-trained economist who has been in power […]
By Erik Kirschbaum | BERLIN BERLIN Germany’s centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) have moved ahead of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) in an opinion poll by the Emnid institute for the first time since 2006, Bild am Sonntag newspaper said. The SPD’s unexpected surge of some 12 points in the last month has caught Merkel and her conservatives off guard, analysts said, just seven months before […]
Two months after an unexpected, landslide loss in the December 4 constitutional referendum which cost him his job as Italy’s prime minister, on Sunday Matteo Renzi quit as leader of Italy’s ruling party, in the process triggering a re-election fight against minority dissidents that threatens the stability of the center-left government, Bloomberg reports. Renzi told a national assembly of the ruling PD that he had handed in […]
PARIS About two-thirds of French voters wish that conservative presidential candidate Francois Fillon withdraws his bid after allegations his wife was paid for a fake job, according to an Ifop poll for Journal du Dimanche newspaper. The poll, based on 1,004 interviews with French voters on Friday and Saturday, showed that 65 percent of respondents wished Fillon would drop his candidacy. The results were down by 3 […]
By Thomas Escritt | SPIJKENISSE SPIJKENISSE Geert Wilders launched his election campaign on Saturday, promising to crack down on “Moroccan scum” he said were making the streets unsafe and urging the Dutch to “regain” their country with a vote for his anti-Muslim, anti-EU Freedom Party. Wilders was surrounded by police and security guards during a walkabout in his party’s stronghold of Spijkenisse, part of the ethnically diverse […]
In an isolated area of Ecuador’s Amazon, the face of Lenín Moreno, the anointed successor of fiery leftist President Rafael Correa in Sunday’s presidential election, is plastered on billboards proclaiming “the future is unstoppable”. That future worries Mercedes Cabrera, a peasant leader in the village of Santiago de Panantza. She says she was snatched from her bed by state security forces and branded a terrorist after a policeman […]
A huge billboard erected at the Lundu town square with a stark reminder of what the late Chief Minister Tan Sri Adenan Satem wished to do but could not accomplish following his demise in January. Picture taken February 17, 2017. — Picture by Sulok TawieLUNDU, Feb 18 — The odds are heavily stacked against State Reform Party (STAR) and Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS Baru) winning the […]
By Thomas Escritt | AMSTERDAM AMSTERDAM Geert Wilders kicks off his election campaign on Saturday, promising to ban Muslim immigration and close all the mosques in the Netherlands, hoping a global upsurge in populism will propel him to power. Security will be tight at the launch as the politician – who has lived in hiding since the 2004 murder by an Islamist of Dutch filmmaker Theo van […]
By Hyunjoo Jin and Joyce Lee | SEOUL SEOUL Samsung Group chief Jay Y. Lee was arrested early on Friday over his alleged role in a corruption scandal rocking the highest levels of power in South Korea, dealing a fresh blow to the world’s biggest maker of smartphones and memory chips. The 48-year-old Lee, scion of the country’s richest family, was taken into custody at the Seoul […]
By Steve Holland | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The first gripe came three minutes into President Donald Trump’s first solo news conference on Thursday, when he accused reporters of ignoring a poll showing him with a 55 percent approval rating – a figure at odds with most other surveys. From there, the president’s criticism of the media went from barbed to personal in a cutting assessment of what he […]
Ten years ago Vladimir Putin angrily declared that the post-cold war order was a sham. Standing before the western military and diplomatic establishment at the Munich Security Conference, the Russian president accused the US of plunging the world into chaos by warmongering, meddling in other countries’ affairs and disregarding international law. For many, it marked the moment that Mr Putin became an adversary. Now, as foreign policy […]
Submitted by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com, Nigel Farage made a brief speech in European Parliament on Monday in which he stated: “Chatham House, the reputable group, published a massive survey from 10 European states, and only 20% of people want immigration from Muslim countries to continue.” Here is the Chatham House poll referenced by Farage: What Do Europeans Think About Muslim Immigration? Chatham House Poll In […]
JAKARTA The incumbent governor of Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, was neck and neck with rival Anies Baswedan in the race to lead the Indonesian capital, early counting by private pollsters showed. Former education minister Baswedan had secured 40.54 percent of the votes, just ahead of Purnama in second place with 39.43 percent, based on a quick sample count of around 10 percent of the vote by a […]
By Gayatri Suroyo and Fransiska Nangoy | JAKARTA JAKARTA Indonesians cast ballots on Wednesday in a bitterly fought election to govern the capital, Jakarta, that has inflamed religious tensions in the Muslim-majority nation and been tied to power struggles ahead of presidential elections in 2019. The job of governor can be a springboard to the presidency and weeks of campaigning have been overshadowed by mudslinging, political intrigue […]
Polls open in heated vote for Indonesian capital’s governor Niniek Karmini and Stephen Wright, Associated Press February 14, 2017 Updated: February 14, 2017 6:26pm Photo: Achmad Ibrahim, AP An Indonesian Muslim woman holds a voting paper at a polling station during an election for Jakarta governor in Jakarta, Indonesia, Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2017. Voting began in the election for governor of the Indonesian capital after a months-long […]
A few days before the retreat, I met up with the man who, perhaps more than any other figure in the conservative movement, had maneuvered the party toward complete and unbending opposition to Obamacare: Michael Needham of the Heritage Foundation. Needham, 35, is the chief executive of Heritage Action for America, a feral cur of a lobbying organization established by the venerable conservative think tank in 2010 […]
