Long-term borrowing costs for lower-quality US investment-grade companies are nearing 5 per cent — the highest level in nine months — as investors anticipate rising inflation and higher growth, reversing from the six-decade low touched earlier this year. The average yield on the closely followed Moody’s Baa index has climbed to 4.9 per cent, the highest since March when the US credit market slowly recovered from a […]
DUBAI // A policewoman who stole money from a wallet left behind by a passenger at Dubai International Airport was jailed for three months on Wednesday. The 28-year-old Emirati officer was seen picking up a wallet from lost property on August 5. “Her job is to search travellers, looking for any suspicious stuff,” said a 36-year-old Emirati policeman in court at an earlier hearing. “There is a […]
Iran has told its scientists to start developing a nuclear propulsion system for shipping, in what it says is a response to the extension of US bilateral sanctions against Tehran. The US Senate voted this month to extend the president’s authority to impose financial sanctions on Iran for a further 10 years. The Islamic Republic regards the move as a breach of last year’s nuclear agreement between […]
Trading volumes across markets have soared following the US presidential election, a boon to Wall Street investment banks as money managers prepare for a new environment under the future Trump administration. Since the November election result, there have been seven days when more than $20bn of investment grade debt has traded hands — a level that had previously only been breached 18 times since data has been […]
When there is news about banks having a security issue or a systems-related problem, the story often ends with customers having their sensitive information compromised and banks scrambling to chase after the hackers who breached their systems. Earlier in the year, hackers were found to have stolen $80 million from the Bank of Bangladesh due to its poor security system, and another report revealed that the central bank of […]
DUBLIN A group of British and Irish lawyers are seeking to challenge Britain’s decision to leave the European Union in the Irish High Court to try to establish if Brexit can be reversed once divorce talks have been triggered. British Prime Minister Theresa May has said she wants to invoke Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty by the end of March, kicking off up to two […]
What are Australia’s policy options for responding to the internet threats of 2022? This question was explored in the 360° Cyber Game conducted jointly by RAND Corporation and the National Security College (NSC) at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra on Thursday. RAND has conducted two of these games before, in Washington DC and in Silicon Valley, and has written up the methodology and results in […]
Thursday 21:00 GMT Overview The European Central Bank’s latest policy surprise fuelled a volatile session for the euro and government bonds as participants appeared, initially at least, to struggle to assess its implications. But European stocks rose to 11-month highs while Wall Street overcame an early bout of fatigue to set yet more record peaks. Oil prices resumed their upward path, even as a stronger dollar unsettled […]
DUESSELDORF, Germany Germany’s highest court will decide next year on complaints brought by utilities against a tax on nuclear fuel rods, a spokesman said on Thursday, in a further challenge to the government’s energy policy. E.ON, RWE and EnBW have demanded exemption from the tax, introduced in 2011, and are claiming back the roughly 5.8 billion euros ($6.2 billion) they have already paid. The tax requires companies […]
At the end of last month it was reported that names and telephone numbers of suspects in terrorism probes carried out by the EU police agency, Europol, had been posted online by accident. The Hague-based agency, which coordinates police efforts across the EU confirmed that an ex-staff member had taken the data home in contravention of security protocols. The concerned former staff member, who is an experienced […]
BERLIN Germany’s highest court ruled on Wednesday that ultra-conservative Muslim girls must take part in mixed swimming classes at school, finding against an 11-year-old pupil who had argued that even wearing a burkini, or full-body swimsuit, breached Islamic dress codes. The Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe rejected an appeal by the girl’s parents that she should be excused the classes because a burkini did not conform with Islam’s […]
By Patricia Zengerle | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The U.S. failure to retaliate strongly for the 2014 cyber attack against Sony Pictures may have helped inspire Russian hackers who sought to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election, a senior congressional Democrat said on Tuesday. “Russia may have concluded that they could hack American institutions and there’d be no price to pay,” Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the […]
Good morning. Here’s our daily summary of all the media news you need to know. Want to get this briefing in your inbox every morning? Subscribe here. Fake news is not the sole province of slimeball digital practitioners in faraway lands enabled by the righteous souls at Facebook and Google. There’s also — as has ever been so — the government. “Police investigating a notorious gang in […]
The company responsible for rolling out the National Broadband Network across Australia was directly warned that a draft opinion piece by its chairman, Ziggy Switkowski, could potentially be seen as favouring one side during an election campaign. (Screenshot: Chris Duckett/ZDNet) In a letter submitted in response to Senate Questions on Notice late Friday afternoon, Deputy Secretary of the Department of Communications and the Arts Ian Robinson told […]
The cashless society is catching up to all of us. As SHTFPlan.com’s Mac Slavo notes, Most of Europe has shifted that way, and now India is forcing the issue. In the United States, people are being acclimated to it, and may soon find that no other option is practical in the highly-digitized online world. Once that takes hold, the banksters, bureaucrats and hackers will have total […]
Data breaches are the oil spills of the digital economy. Over 429 million people were affected by reported data breaches in 2015 – and that number is certain to grow even higher in 2016. These large-scale data breaches along with uncertainties about the use of our data, cybercrime, surveillance and other online threats are eroding trust on the Internet. This is why the 2016 edition of […]
There is an old adage that trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair. When it comes to the Internet and its users, the same holds true. For average Internet users, trust in the Internet has to be built. They have to gain confidence in the safety of their private information online. When a user’s private online information is made public, they lose […]
04 December 2016 Dubai, UAE – FireEye, Inc. (NASDAQ: FEYE), the intelligence-led security company, recently discovered a wave of attacks targeting the GCC states. In 2012, a suspected Iranian hacker group called the “Cutting Sword of Justice” used malware known as Shamoon – or Disttrack – to target energy companies in the Middle East. During that incident, tens of thousands of computers were compromised. In mid-November, Mandiant […]
Beijing’s infamous smog spiked on Sunday despite draconian measures in surrounding cities to reduce persistent pollution during the winter in northern China. The thick layer of haze has become a political liability for the ruling Communist party and has driven China’s participation in the Paris climate accord to limit emissions of carbon and other greenhouse gases. An air monitor index released by the US embassy in Beijing breached 600 […]
Like Christmas ornaments on Main Streets across America, Wall Street banks’ forecasts for the year ahead keep coming out earlier every year. At least this year analysts have something substantive to sink their intellectual teeth into: the impact of incoming president Donald Trump. The results are fascinating — especially for bonds. The fixed income market has been one of the biggest victims in the “Trumpflation trade” that […]
WASHINGTON Donald Trump’s transition team is examining proposals for new non-nuclear sanctions on Iran, the Financial Times reported on Friday, citing congressional sources who have been in contact with the president-elect’s team. Officials with Trump’s team have been in touch with fellow Republicans in Congress, where they hold the majority, to discuss possible sanctions separate from last year’s Iran nuclear deal that could focus on its ballistic […]
Britain’s new surveillance law would, among other measures, require websites to keep customer browsing history for up to a year and allow law enforcement access The British parliament this week gave the green light to new bulk surveillance powers for police and intelligence services that critics have denounced as the most far-reaching of any western democracy. The Investigatory Powers Bill would, among other measures, require websites to […]
By Anshuman Daga and Marius Zaharia | SINGAPORE SINGAPORE Singapore’s central bank imposed penalties on the local units of U.K.-based Standard Chartered (STAN.L) and private bank Coutts for money laundering breaches related to Malaysia’s scandal-tainted 1MDB fund and said it was nearing the end of its probes. The penalties – of S$5.2 million ($3.65 million) and S$2.4 million, respectively – were the latest punitive measures taken by […]
Tim Leissner, the former star dealmaker for Goldman Sachs in Southeast Asia, is to be banned from Singapore’s securities industry for 10 years over breaches relating to the multibillion-dollar scandal at Malaysia’s troubled state investment fund 1MDB, while Standard Chartered and Coutts have both been fined. Mr Leissner, who joined Goldman in Asia in 1998 and helped raise $6bn for 1MDB with three bond issuances, is being […]
