By Roberta Rampton and Jeff Mason | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON President Barack Obama said on Friday it was fine for President-elect Donald Trump to review Washington’s “one-China” policy toward Taiwan, but he cautioned that a shift could lead to significant consequences in the U.S. relationship with Beijing. “For China, the issue of Taiwan is as important as anything on their docket,” Obama told a news conference. “The idea […]
A group of intelligence experts, including a former head of MI6, has cut ties with fellow academics at Cambridge university, in a varsity spy scare harking back to the heyday of Soviet espionage at the heart of the British establishment. Sir Richard Dearlove, the ex-chief of the Secret Intelligence Service and former master of Pembroke college, Stefan Halper, a senior foreign policy adviser at the White House […]
Shock is a matter of perspective and expectation. Imagine a time traveller stepped through the door a year ago and said the UK would vote to leave the European Union, a presidential candidate who advocated debt renegotiation would be headed for the White House, and Italy would reject the reforms of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Who would have predicted a worldwide bull market for stocks and bonds? […]
By Ori Lewis and Matt Spetalnick | JERUSALEM/WASHINGTON JERUSALEM/WASHINGTON A senior Palestinian official warned on Friday that implementation of Donald Trump’s pledge to relocate the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem would destroy any prospects for peace with Israel, even as a spokesman for the U.S. President-elect said he remained committed to the move. Saeb Erekat, secretary-general of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, issued the grim prediction just a day […]
When President-elect Donald Trump moves into The White House, he’s going to have a lot of company. In the last week, several major news organizations — including The New York Times, Politico and The Washington Post — outlined their plans to dispatch reporters to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In what is perhaps a nod to the hyper-competitive nature of Washington, D.C. political reporting, each newsroom is devoting more reporters than […]
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts, The claims that the Russian government hacked US voting machines are absurd. Voting machines are not connected to the Internet. To hack a voting machine you have to be physically in proximity to the machine and use a hand held device. The machines can be programmed to throw the vote count to one candidate or the other, and there are other […]
By James Oliphant and Emily Stephenson | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON With more than 20 nominees now selected, Donald Trump’s cabinet appears much like the president-elect himself: mostly older, white males, many of them wealthy, who see themselves as risk-takers and deal-makers and prize action over deliberation. Trump, who says Washington is “broken” and controlled by special interests, has largely eschewed technocrats with long government experience. Instead, he has […]
By Roberta Rampton and Julia Harte | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON President Barack Obama on Friday defended the U.S. approach toward the civil war in Syria, saying he understood the desire for action to end the conflict but it would have been impossible to do “on the cheap” without a full U.S. military intervention. “Unless we were all in and willing to take over Syria, we were going to […]
By Sam Forgione | NEW YORK NEW YORK The U.S. dollar edged lower against a basket of major currencies on Friday, but still held near 14-year highs touched after Wednesday’s Federal Reserve meeting, with profit-taking halting the greenback’s rally. The dollar index .DXY, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major rivals, was last at 102.900, not far from Thursday’s 14-year high of 103.560 but […]
President Barack Obama’s vow to retaliate against Russia’s alleged interference in the American election raises the prospect that he will impose new sanctions or conduct some form of cyber operations against Russia before he leaves office on January 20. Under pressure from many Democrats for not having done more to push back and deter Russia during the election campaign, the White House is now preparing a new […]
President-elect Donald Trump will nominate Republican U.S. Representative Mick Mulvaney to be director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, a senior transition official said on Friday. An announcement naming Mulvaney is expected to be made on Monday, according to the Wichita Eagle newspaper, which first reported that the South Carolina lawmaker had been chosen. His nomination must be confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate. Mulvaney’s […]
Short takes and quick hits for the week of November 11-17, 2016. ‘Yahoo is not safe to use,’ former company engineer says Posted December 16, 2016 14:10 PST An absolutely brutal article in The Parallax by Seth Rosenblatt. After a second data breach involving as many as a billion users, what should users do? Let’s just say there aren’t many advocates for the company right now. Here’s […]
By Roberta Rampton and Jeff Mason | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday strongly suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally oversaw the computer hacks of Democratic Party emails that American intelligence officials say were aimed at helping Republican Donald Trump win the Nov. 8 election. At a pre-Christmas press conference, Obama levelled a fierce attack against Russia, calling it a smaller and weaker country […]
Washington has protested to Beijing over a US Navy underwater drone being seized by the Chinese navy in the South China Sea, marking a sharp escalation in already rising tensions between the two countries. China claims sovereignty up to the ‘Nine-dash’ line A US defence official said the device was grabbed as it was being operated by the USNS Bowditch, a survey vessel. The Obama administration issued […]
Submitted by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com, Stimulus, in a general sense, is something that causes an action or response. A ringing alarm clock may prompt someone to exit their slumber. Or a fist to the gut may force someone to gasp for breath. Stimulus can come in many forms and varieties. It can come in the form of a stick; do this and you won’t get whacked […]
Vanity Fair is the latest news organization to profit from President-elect Donald Trump’s Twitter ire. The Condé Nast magazine has seen its subscriptions rise 100 fold Thursday after Donald Trump tweeted that the publication was “way down, big trouble, dead.” This is the highest number of subscriptions sold in a single day ever at Condé Nast, according to a spokesperson. Has anyone looked at the really poor […]
MANILA Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte told the United States on Saturday to prepare for repeal of an agreement on deployment of troops and equipment for exercises, declaring “bye-bye America”, and we don’t need your money. But Duterte suggested relations could improve under a President Donald Trump. “I like your mouth, it’s like mine, yes Mr President. We are similar and people with the same feathers flock together.” […]
General Motors seems determined not to get sidelined by the recent flurry of announcements in the self-driving car category such as those issued by Waymo and Uber. GM’s Chairman and CEO Mary Barra presided a rare press conference last Dec. 15 to declare that GM’s autonomous vehicle called Chevrolet Bolt is now prowling the streets of southeast Michigan. Fleet of self-driving Bolts have already been unleashed in San Francisco […]
The hard-right views of David M. Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer who is President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice as the next ambassador to Israel, have drawn polarized responses in Israel and the United States. Mr. Friedman, who has represented Mr. Trump in matters involving Atlantic City casinos, has no diplomatic experience. He has long espoused hard-right, pro-Israel views that are often at odds with decades of United States […]
Authored by Carl Bildt, originally posted at Project Syndicate, In August 2015, I tweeted that if Donald Trump were to be elected President of the United States, we would have to “head for the bunkers.” A Trump presidency was considered highly unlikely back then; but here we are. And while heading for the bunkers might not be the most appropriate response (yet), where we are is undoubtedly […]
By Andrew Osborn and Nick Tattersall | MOSCOW/ISTANBUL MOSCOW/ISTANBUL President Vladimir Putin said he and his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan are working to organise a new series of Syrian peace talks without the involvement of the United States or the United Nations. In a snub to Washington, Putin made clear on Friday that the initiative was the sole preserve of Moscow and Turkey and that the peace […]
By Scott Malone | BOSTON BOSTON Searches for selfies led to many bad decisions, an outbreak of creepy clown sightings chilled even horror maestro Stephen King, and a hard-fought campaign ended with the election of former reality TV star Donald Trump as president of the United States. Along with moments of triumph and tragedy, 2016 brought stories that ranged from weird to wonderful, funny to flummoxing. New […]
China has ceded its status as America’s largest creditor nation to Japan after spending a large portion of its foreign exchange reserves to defend the renminbi. Beijing’s ownership of US Treasuries fell by $41.3bn to $1.12tn in October, according to data from the US Treasury released on Thursday — the sixth straight month of decline. Japan’s holdings fell by $4.5bn to $1.13tn for the same period. Thomas […]
India is set to get more Trump-branded projects as local developers seek to capitalize on the brand. A story from The Wall Street Journal Friday took a look at the many projects around the world connected to the U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, including those in India. Unimark Group, a developer based in Kolkata, has tied up to rebrand a previously planned residential apartment building in the eastern […]
