By Leonardo Goy | SALGUEIRO, Brazil SALGUEIRO, Brazil The rusting tracks of Brazil’s Transnordestina railway peter out and give way to a dirt trail in a remote corner of the country’s arid northeast, far from the ports or farms it was meant to serve. No trains run on these tracks and the cleared path for one of Brazil’s most ambitious infrastructure projects is used only by local […]
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler announced Thursday that he will step down on January 20 — inauguration day for incoming US President Donald Trump. Wheeler was appointed to the top position at the FCC more three years ago by President Barack Obama. The FCC issued the following statement from Wheeler regarding his resignation: Serving as F.C.C. Chairman during this period of historic technological change has been […]
The US dollar marched higher on Thursday, reaching its strongest level against the euro for more than a decade, after the US Federal Reserve signalled a more aggressive outlook for interest rate policy. Europe’s single currency was among the hardest hit, falling through the $1.04 level to trade at its lowest level since early 2003. Driving the dollar’s strength is a growing divergence between benchmark interest rates […]
“If they’ve managed to sleep through the night, bonds traders in the US will have quite a shock when they check their screens in the morning,” Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz, tweeted early on Thursday. Wall Street bond traders and investors will have turned in on Wednesday night already jolted by the Federal Reserve, which under Janet Yellen’s leadership has become synonymous with caution on […]
A few years ago, Alabama Media Group moved its photo archives into one place. Nearly 100 years of negatives from The Birmingham News, The Huntsville Times and Mobile’s Press-Register were brought to the building that housed the presses in Mobile. It was a reminder, said Michelle Holmes, vice president of content, of what they had. The newspapers started using more from the archives. “And we kept going […]
Thursday 11:00 GMT Overview Stock markets are trading cautiously as Treasury yields hit fresh highs after the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates for only the second time since the financial crisis. The prospect of the US central bank perhaps having to tighten policy faster than expected to reflect any additional boost to growth from president-elect Trump’s fiscal plans is lifting the dollar to a 14-year […]
By Howard Schneider and Lindsay Dunsmuir | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates on Wednesday and signaled a faster pace of increases in 2017 as central bankers adapted to the incoming Trump administration’s promises of tax cuts, spending and deregulation. The increase in the federal funds rate to a range of between 0.50 percent and 0.75 percent was widely expected. But the prospect of […]
Steve Garey, who retired from the Anacortes refinery in 2015 after almost 25 years and served as president of the United Steelworkers local, said that while some positive changes were made after the 2010 accident, upper management at Tesoro remains “contemptuous” of its work force and is “hiding behind incredibly permissive process safety regulations.” Those regulations grew out of a string of catastrophic events in the 1980s, […]
Commercial banks in Qatar will see their profitability fall under continued pressure in the coming years as deposit growth slows and interest rates drop, new research shows. A report by BMI Research, part of Fitch Group, states: “In the first 10 months of 2016, the average interest rate on government securities stood at 2.65 percent, well below the average of 5.96 percent that banks demand on private […]
Submitted by Carey Wedler via TheAntiMedia.org, According to the DEA, the problem with cannabis in the United States isn’t that it’s still designated a dangerous drug with no medicinal value in spite of volumes of emerging scientific research indicating otherwise. The problem is actually that the media has made it difficult for government agents to arrest people for selling and consuming it. The DEA also blames the […]
Katherine Goldstein is stepping down as chief of the securities fraud unit in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office to become a partner at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP. Ms. Goldstein, who has worked as a federal prosecutor for 12 years, will leave the government next month. In 2014, she became the first woman since […] (via WSJ)
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 […]
Telstra is addressing the skills shortage in the technology sector through the launch of their Business Technology Services (BTS) academy, which will see a handful of new recruits trained as security or network specialists by the telco. With 29 participants six weeks into their three-year academy course, Telstra BTS executive director Christopher Smith told ZDNet the initiative has so far seen the recruits undergo intensive training and […]
By Julia Love and Ginger Gibson | SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON Alphabet’s Google is racing to hire more conservatives for its lobbying and policy arm, trying to get a foothold in President-elect Donald Trump’s Washington after enjoying a uniquely close relationship with the administration of President Barack Obama. In the weeks since the Nov. 8 election, Google has ramped up efforts to hire Republican lobbying firms and […]
KUALA LUMPUR Malaysia’s federal court rejected on Wednesday jailed opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim’s final bid to set aside his sodomy conviction and five-year jail term. A panel of judges ruled there was no merit in Anwar’s application for a review of his conviction, his final legal option for an acquittal. He will now have to serve out the remaining 16 months of his prison term. (Reporting by […]
(Image: PBO) The equity put into the company responsible for deploying the National Broadband Network across Australia will result in an annual AU$2.1 billion drag on the federal government’s underlying cash balance by 2026-27, the Parliament Budget Office (PBO) has said. PBO said the cost was entirely due to interest payments on the securities issued by the government as part of its debt issuing practices. For 2015-16, […]
Wednesday 02:20 GMT Overview Stock markets across Asia were mixed as anticipation of the Federal Reserve’s policy decision dulled the effect of another set of record highs for Wall Street. What to watch All eyes were on the end of the Fed’s two-day policy meeting later in the day, with the US central bank expected to raise interest rates 25 basis points. Roughly a year ago the […]
In a massive (in a literal sense, printing at 25 pages and over 8,000 words as there is little new information revealed in the piece itself) expose issued by the NYT tited “The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S.” and meant to piggyback on the WaPo’s recent reporting and solidify the left-leaning media’s case that Hillary lost the election, the New York Times try to […]
The former minister of mines and geology for the African Republic of Guinea was arrested on Tuesday in New York and charged with taking $8.5m in bribes in exchange for assigning lucrative investment rights to a Chinese-owned conglomerate. Mahmoud Thiam, an American citizen, was arrested at his home in Manhattan and was expected to appear in court later in the day. Mr Thiam, a former UBS banker, […]
By Eric M. Johnson A 20-year-old British tourist who prosecutors say caused a security scare at a Donald Trump campaign rally in Las Vegas by trying to wrestle a gun from a police officer was sentenced on Tuesday to a year and a day in prison. Michael Sandford, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge James Mahan in Las Vegas after pleading guilty in September under a plea […]
In this July 20, 2015 file photo, a pedestrian crosses in front of a vehicle as part of a demonstration at Mcity on its opening day on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor, Mich. Cars that wirelessly talk to each other are finally ready for the road, creating the potential to dramatically reduce traffic deaths, improve the safety of self-driving cars and someday maybe even […]
Submitted by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, During my morning reading, I ran across an interesting article from Paul Lim via Time giving several reasons why the stock market will “rise for a ninth straight year.” “For ordinary Americans, 2017 is likely to feel like the best year economically since the Great Recession. The recovery is finally expected to trickle down to you in the form of […]
A senior Justice Department official has apologized to federal prosecutors around the country for suggesting some of them do not follow or understand department rules for pursuing white-collar criminal cases. Leslie Caldwell, who oversees the Justice Department’s criminal division, sent a “Dear Friends and Colleague” letter over the weekend to all the U.S. attorney’s offices around […] (via WSJ)
Russia’s rouble has cemented its position as the best-performing currency of the past three months, enjoying the benefits of a strong oil price at a time when the US appears to be tilting towards a more accommodating relationship with Vladimir Putin. A 2.3 per cent rise in the rouble’s value against the dollar on Monday was followed by a further half per cent gain during Tuesday trading. […]
