The Trump administration’s sweeping dismissal of dozens of US attorneys held over from the Obama administration leaves the president with sudden gaps in top law enforcement positions across the country. The swift dismissals which began with Friday phone calls from Dana Boente, the acting deputy attorney-general, to 46 US attorneys, now puts pressure on the Trump administration to select candidates who will pass congressional scrutiny to fill […]
Now that a little of the hype has disappeared from the release by WikiLeaks of allegedly more than 8,000 internal CIA documents, and the sorts of hacking the American spy agency was up to, what has changed in the world of security? Unlike the Snowden documents, which fundamentally shook the world of many people with and without an interest in the world of cybers, this cache offers […]
Photo Ahmed Daqamseh, in sunglasses, was welcomed home in the village of Ibdir in northern Jordan after being released from prison, where he served 20 years. Credit Numan Alquzaa/European Pressphoto Agency The fragile treaty between the two former enemies was not even three years old when a Jordanian soldier went on a shooting rampage and killed seven Israeli schoolgirls visiting a park in a border area known […]
BABRUYSK, Belarus Thousands took to the streets in Belarus over the weekend to protest against a tax on those deemed to be doing too little work, despite government concessions after a first wave of demonstrations. Popularly known as the “tax on social parasites” it slaps a levy of $250 on those who work less than 183 days per year. Those officially registered unemployed are exempt but must […]
Here are the main questions facing investors and markets as a new trading week beckons. What will the Federal Reserve say?Sometimes words matter more than action. A quarter percentage point tightening is all but baked in after the February jobs report, when 235,000 jobs were created — eclipsing market expectations. Of greater importance is whether Fed officials indicate a willingness for a faster rate of tightening in […]
Paris Fashion Week’s fall/winter season has drawn to a close in the French fashion capital. Rebecca McLaughlin-Duane wraps up the big shows of the final days. Vivienne Westwood Giving her stamp of approval to a collection designed by her creative partner — and husband — Andreas Kronthaler, Dame Vivienne Westwood walked the runway in her brand’s show in Paris. The 75-year-old strode out firstly in an oversized […]
Property price increases were witnessed in some mid-market communities in Dubai during February but the overall market showed a continued softening in values, according to a new report. Real estate consultancy ValuStrat said its February residential ValuStrat Price Index (VPI) declined marginally due to falling prices in prime locations monitored by the index. However, monthly uplifts of between 0.4-1.9 percent were recorded for villas located in Arabian […]
By Suyeong Lee and Hyunjoo Jin | SEOUL SEOUL The South Korean politician likely to emerge as the next president promised justice and common sense on Sunday as workers renovated the home of ousted leader Park Geun-hye to prepare for her departure from the presidential Blue House. The Constitutional Court ruled on Friday to uphold a parliamentary vote to impeach Park, dismissing her from office over an […]
Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation, While the world continues to decipher, or digest, the new Trump presidency, important changes are afoot within the grand strategic triangle that lies between Russia, Iran and China Away from the current chaos in the United States, major developments are progressing, with Iran, Russia and China coordinating on a series of significant moves crucial for the future of […]
Publications have been wildly awash with numerous reports this week of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s hacking efforts to spy on American citizens through the use of different tools outlined in WikiLeaks’s document dump, causing a widespread maelstrom in the embattled narrative of data security. No, The CIA Can’t Crack Your Encrypted Messages While the hacking tools were legitimate worries themselves, no less worrying was the assertion that the […]
NEW YORK For most Americans, daylight saving time means only one thing: losing an hour’s sleep. So what is the point? This is actually a reasonable question, according to a growing body of scientific research. Daylight saving time is the practice of moving clocks forward by one hour during summer months so that daylight lasts longer into evening. Most of North America and Europe follows the custom, […]
MAG 5 Property Development has announced the launch of MAG 5, the third phase of its MAG 5 Boulevard community in Dubai. The developer said in a statement that MAG 5 has been released in response to “increasing investor demand for studios and both one and two bedroom apartments”. MAG 5 Boulevard is the second project developed by MAG 5 PD, and is its first in the […]
Harmonix, the developer behind the Rock Band franchise, and Hasbro, the company behind several popular trading card games such as Magic: The Gathering, are teaming up for a music mixing trading card game. Named DropMix, the game will be made available in September this year. ‘DropMix’: The Music Mixing Game DropMix, as described by Harmonix in its announcement, is a fast-paced music mixing game that allows players to […]
By Trevor Hunnicutt and Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss | NEW YORK NEW YORK The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday denied a request to list what would have been the first U.S. exchange-traded fund built to track bitcoin, the digital currency. Investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have been trying for more than three years to convince the SEC to let it bring the Bitcoin ETF to market. CBOE […]
A new Congress bill could make it harder for workers to prevent employers from accessing their personal genetic and medical information. The bill could also increase the financial penalties for individuals who opt out of workplace wellness programs. The bill, proposed by Republicans, suggests that companies should gather genetic data from workers and their families more easily, and it was introduced by Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-North Carolina, […]
My dad bought me a Nintendo to celebrate my first birthday in 1988, despite it being quite obvious the gift was intended for himself. Over the years though, I managed to develop some semblance of motor skills and we began taking turns playing Mario. I bonded with siblings over beating a boss in Zelda and fought with my cousins over who got to play Star Fox next. […]
Burkhard Varnholt last week paid €14 for lunch for two people at a smart restaurant in Berlin. “The euro is so cheap,” says Credit Suisse’s deputy chief investment officer. It is cheap because of one factor: Marine Le Pen. In normal circumstances, the euro would be trading a lot higher on the back of the eurozone’s record current account surplus, an unemployment rate at its lowest in […]
Hopes for a new way to trade bitcoin were dealt a blow on Friday when US regulators rejected an application that would have let the Winklevoss twins launch an exchange traded fund tracking the digital currency. The Securities and Exchange Commission said it would not allow Bats Global Markets to list shares of the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust based on concerns that “significant markets for bitcoin are unregulated”. […]
The two most powerful men in the world oil market appeared together in Houston on Tuesday to tell the world that their strategy was on track. In December, Khalid al-Falih and Alexander Novak, the energy ministers of Saudi Arabia and Russia, orchestrated a 24-nation plan to cut oil output in the first half of 2017. This week they spoke to reporters in a hotel conference room at the […]
The Wikum interface provides readers with detailed summaries of online discussions. Credit: Jason Dorfman/MIT CSAIL From Reddit to Quora, discussion forums can be equal parts informative and daunting. We’ve all fallen down rabbit holes of lengthy threads that are impossible to sift through. Comments can be redundant, off-topic or even inaccurate, but all that content is ultimately still there for us to try and untangle. Sick of […]
SEOUL Opponents of South Korea’s ousted leader, Park Geun-hye, demanded on Saturday that she be arrested a day after she was thrown out of office over a corruption scandal involving the country’s conglomerates. Park’s critics said they would rally in central Seoul, where they have been gathering every weekend for months, while the former president’s conservative supporters also planned protests, raising the risk of confrontation. The Constitutional […]
Saudi Arabia’s is set to narrow during 2017 on the back of higher oil prices, discipline in spending and non-oil revenue measures, according to a new research note by Bank of America Merrill Lynch. BofA Merrill Lynch said it sees the 2017 budget deficit at SR316 billion ($85 billion), about 12 percent of the Gulf kingdom’s GDP, compared to a deficit of SR402 billion in 2016, which […]
The way that markets are reported affects the way they are perceived, and the way that investors behave. So can the way journalists report the markets be measured? Are we doing a good job? Historically, it appears that we are not. This week, Diego Garcia of the University of Colorado at Boulder presented a paper to a conference on journalism and markets at Columbia Business School. Entitled […]
Risky US corporate bond funds suffered the largest weekly redemptions since the US election in November, as oil prices settled at their lowest level since December and benchmark stock indices slipped from record highs. The high-yield corporate bond asset class, which is comprised of speculative-rated groups judged more likely to default than their investment-grade peers, recorded outflows of roughly $2.8bn in the week to March 8, according […]
