By Ahmed Rasheed | BAGHDAD BAGHDAD No food or fuel has reached Mosul in nearly a week and the onset of rain and cold weather threatens a tough winter for more than a million people still in Islamic State-held areas of the city, residents said on Saturday. Iraqi troops waging a six-week-old offensive against the militants controlling Mosul have advanced into eastern city districts, while other forces […]
FRANKFURT German semiconductor equipment maker Aixtron will explore with its Chinese suitor what can be salvaged of the planned takeover after a U.S. presidential order ruled the deal posed a national security risk, the company said on Saturday. U.S. President Barack Obama blocked China’s Fujian Grand Chip Investment Fund (FGC) from acquiring Aixtron’s U.S. business, the Treasury Department said on Friday. “The bidder and Aixtron are evaluating […]
(Image: File photo) The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) sent letters to AT&T and Verizon on Thursday voicing displeasure with the practice of exempting their own video services from customers’ data caps. Specifically, the regulators said “zero rating” can hurt competition and consumers. In the letter obtained by the Associated Press, regulators make the case that other services could pay Verizon and AT&T to not eat into […]
NEW YORK The United States “absolutely must” complete unfinished work ending the too-big-to-fail bank problem that helped plunge the global economy into recession eight years ago, an influential Federal Reserve policymaker said on Saturday. In remarks that appeared to pre-empt President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to roll back Wall Street regulations, New York Fed President William Dudley said much progress has been made making the financial […]
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 […]
By Sinead Carew and Chuck Mikolajczak | NEW YORK NEW YORK The rally in regional U.S. bank stocks that followed last month’s election of Donald Trump may not be over, but investors may have to wait for policy to take shape for the massive move to extend further. The S&P 600 index of small-cap banks has surged more than 20 percent since Trump’s surprise Nov. 8 victory, […]
Umno-PAS political cooperation difficult but necessary for Islamic unity, say political observers Umno President Datuk Seri Najib Razak speaks during the opening ceremony of the 2016 Umno General Assembly in Kuala Lumpur December 1, 2016. — Bernama picKUALA LUMPUR, Dec 3 ― Umno-PAS political cooperation may be difficult to achieve but cooperation in the interest of Muslims and Islam, especially social welfare is expected to continue, said […]
Authored by William Blum, originally posted at Strategic-Culture.org, On November 16, at a State Department press briefing, department spokesperson John Kirby was having one of his frequent adversarial dialogues with Gayane Chichakyan, a reporter for RT (Russia Today); this time concerning U.S. charges of Russia bombing hospitals in Syria and blocking the U.N. from delivering aid to the trapped population. When Chichakyan asked for some detail about […]
BUENOS AIRES The Inter-American Commision on Human Rights on Friday called on Argentina to release social activist Milagro Sala, who has been jailed since the beginning of the year in the northwestern province of Jujuy. The commission, part of the Organization of American States (OAS), said Argentina should “give prompt attention” to recommendations from a U.N. body in October that called Sala’s pre-trial detention “unwarranted and arbitrary.” […]
ABU DHABI // French President Francois Hollande arrived in the UAE on Friday evening to take part in the conference on Safeguarding Endangered Cultural Heritage, which began earlier that day at the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi. Hollande, along with an accompanying delegation, was welcomed by Noura bint Mohammed Al Kaabi, Minister of State for Federal National Council Affairs, Madhed Hareb Al Khaili, the UAE Ambassador […]
Media executives are fond of making big speeches about the importance of press freedom. But which organizations are actually spending time and money on it? A new, searchable list from The FOIA project, a initiative from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, provides a partial answer. Earlier this week, TRAC published The News Media List, a sortable readout of the news organizations and journalists that […]
An ice storm, an email suggesting regime change and the mechanics of thinly traded futures markets have emerged as central points of contention in the market manipulation trial of one of the world’s biggest traders in financial derivatives. Donald Wilson and DRW, the trading group he leads from Chicago, are fighting civil charges they distorted the price of an interest rate futures contract. They went on trial […]
By Lucia Mutikani | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. employers boosted hiring in November and the unemployment rate dropped to a more than nine-year low of 4.6 percent, making it almost certain that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates later this month. Nonfarm payrolls increased by 178,000 jobs last month after increasing by 142,000 in October, the Labor Department said on Friday. The solid employment gains likely reflect […]
December 2, 2016 by: Mamta Badkar in New York The US economy added 178,000 jobs in November while the unemployment rate fell to its lowest level since 2007, suggesting the US Federal Reserve is on track to raise interest rates this month. The jobs tally was just shy of economists’ expectations for 180,000. That compared to the 142,000 jobs it created in October. While the data showed […]
On the heels of Jeff Gundlach‘s “there’s going to be a buyer’s remorse period” warnings yesterday, the other ‘bond king’ has raised similar fears that the Trump rally is overdone (as are the prospects for growth behind it). Putting aside the book-talking as their bond portfolios suffer, Gross echoes Gundlach’s “Trump’s not the wizard of oz” comments, noting that the next president faces serious structural headwinds and […]
Investors poured money into US equity funds and pulled it from European ones in a week dominated by hopes for an acceleration in US economic growth and anxiety over Italy’s referendum on constitutional reform this weekend. European equity funds lost $2bn in the week to November 30, according to data from EPFR, while US funds attracted $4.4bn. That takes the total inflow for US equity funds since […]
Friday 06:00 GMT Overview Stock markets across Asia, oil and the dollar have all gone into reverse on Friday, while government bonds were mixed ahead of the release later today of closely-watched US jobs data. European bourses are expected to open lower with spreadbetters predicting the UK’s FTSE 100 will slip 40 points to 6,712 and Germany’s Dax to drop 55 points to 10,479. US index futures […]
Three weeks after India invalidated its largest bank notes overnight, cash shortages are choking the world’s fastest-growing large economy. While it is too soon for much of the pain to be read from broad economic indicators—in India, even monthly ones, such as industrial output, are released with considerable lag—early signs are coming in. Some of them imply the disruption might not be as deep, or as long-lasting, […]
The measure calls for making the annual financial disclosures of D.C. court judges similar to those already required for federal judges — and making those reports available to the public. While D.C. Court judges’ paychecks come from the federal government, the judges have not been held to the same standard as federal judges when it comes to publicly disclosing their financial affairs. The measure also includes several other […]
President-elect Donald Trump has made a reputation of being very vocal, to say the least, on Twitter, with his tweets certainly getting its fair share of reach and criticism. A report by New York Magazine reveals that Trump, once he is sworn into office on Jan. 20, 2017, will gain access to a system that will allow him to send unblockable text messages to all Americans, a fact that […]
What does former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s triumph at the Supreme Court mean for the federal corruption case against Sheldon Silver? It’s apples and oranges, Manhattan federal prosecutor Preet Bharara’s office told a federal appeals court this week. Lawyers for the former New York Assembly Speaker have seized on the McDonnell ruling in their appeal to […] (via WSJ)
By Emily Stephenson | INDIANAPOLIS INDIANAPOLIS President-elect Donald Trump warned on Thursday that U.S. companies would face “consequences” for outsourcing jobs abroad, as he touted his early success in persuading an air conditioner maker to keep about 1,000 jobs in the United States rather than move them to Mexico. “Companies are not going to leave the United States anymore without consequences. Not going to happen,” the Republican […]
Richard C. Reid, aka the “Shoe Bomber,” wants a federal judge to declare him bankrupt. The al Qaeda-trained terrorist tried to light a bomb in his shoe on a Paris-to-Miami flight weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks and is serving a life sentence at a “supermax” prison in Colorado. In a handwritten letter to U.S. […] (via WSJ)
By Kristina Cooke | MENLO PARK, Calif. MENLO PARK, Calif. Facebook Inc (FB.O) is working on automatically flagging offensive material in live video streams, building on a growing effort to use artificial intelligence to monitor content, said Joaquin Candela, the company’s director of applied machine learning. The social media company has been embroiled in a number of content moderation controversies this year, from facing international outcry after […]
