Moody’s has agreed to pay $864m to settle allegations that it inflated the credit ratings of subprime mortgage bonds that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis, the Department of Justice said on Friday. The settlement with the rating agency includes a $437.5m federal civil penalty to the US government — the second-largest payment of this type ever by a rating agency — and ends an investigation carried […]
Investors have returned to the world of debt in a cooling of the Trumpflation trade that pummelled bond markets and propelled equities to record highs after the US election. The shift, which has included fresh inflows to municipal, Treasury and emerging market bond funds over the past week, dovetails with a near month-long rally in haven US Treasuries and fatigue in benchmark stock indices. Municipal funds, which […]
By David Brunnstrom and Matt Spetalnick | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The incoming U.S. administration’s tough talk against China has set the stage for showdowns on everything from security to trade and cyberspace, but contradictory signals are sowing uncertainty over how far President-elect Donald Trump is prepared to go in confronting Beijing. Highlighting the contested South China Sea as a potential flashpoint, Trump’s Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson […]
“We open a new hotel every 36 hours,” Sébastien Bazin remarks, after outlining the impressive portfolio of French hospitality chain AccorHotels, with 4,100 hotels spread across 95 countries and employing 240,000 people. The significant sum includes properties gained through the recent acquisition of FRHI, a hotel management company formerly owned by Qatar Investment Authority, billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s private investment arm Kingdom Holding and Oxford […]
The Middle East Smart Landscape Summit 2017 will be held on 15th and 16th May in Dubai Dubai, United Arab Emirates, January 12, 2017 Rapid population growth coupled with people across the world migrating to cities has fueled the growth rate of urban development. With rapid urbanization and diminishing natural landscapes and greenery, the need for managing urban areas and developing sustainable cities is at the core […]
By Kylie MacLellan | LONDON LONDON The British government must publish a detailed plan for Brexit by mid-February setting out its position on future membership of the European Union’s single market and customs union, a committee of lawmakers said in a report published on Saturday. Parliament’s Exiting the EU committee, made up of lawmakers from several parties including Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservatives and opposition Labour, also […]
If Donald Trump was concerned by the clashing views that emerged from his cabinet nominees in the first days of Senate confirmation hearings, he did not show it on Friday. “All of my Cabinet nominee (sic) are looking good and doing a great job,” the president-elect tweeted before sunrise in New York. “I want them to be themselves and express their own thoughts, not mine!” But the […]
Rex Tillerson, the former Exxon chief, didn’t get where he is by being nice to China. When Beijing tried to force his company to abandon a gas exploration project in the waters off Vietnam in 2008, ExxonMobil showed it the finger. BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and several others caved to Chinese pressure. ExxonMobil is still there, drilling on a Vietnamese license in waters also claimed by China. Is […]
The digital humanities is the most exciting field you haven’t heard of—unless you happen to work on a college or university campus. For everyone else, I’ll risk censure and offer the pithiest definition I can muster: digital humanities is an interdisciplinary field in which scholars and educators bring computational tools and methods to humanistic inquiry. (For a more thorough definition, I recommend curious readers visit […]
Motherhood brings with it many joys but if a new study is to be believed, then women who conceive at a later age could be prone to birth complications. According to a new research conducted by King’s College London and published in The Journal of Physiology, pregnant women above the age of 35 have maximum chances of birth complications. Research suggests that the longer labor stages and delay […]
Deir al-Zour, an oil-rich province that borders Iraq, is largely under Islamic State control and has been the focus of American-led airstrikes and other military action. Continue reading the main story Since early 2015, the jihadists have besieged the provincial capital, also called Deir al-Zour, where about 200,000 people live. The Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, controls roughly half of the city, while the […]
Throughout the presidential campaign and since Donald Trump’s election, former diplomats, retired generals, and foreign-policy analysts have attempted to decipher, explain, and predict his foreign-policy strategy. Will he pursue the big-stick model of Teddy Roosevelt? Embrace a neo-Nixonian “madman” strategy? Is Trump actually a champion of foreign-policy realism, or perhaps no realist at all? But all those questions make the same mistake — they assume the incoming […]
Fragile market conditions, poorly controlled algorithms and inexperienced staff all contributed to last October’s flash crash in sterling, global policymakers have concluded, with the Bank for International Settlements urging banks and other market participants to learn from their mistakes. The BIS — the central bank for central banks — said on Friday that no single event was responsible for the extraordinary 9 per cent plunge in the […]
The debate over what yield on the 10Y spells the end of the 30 year bond bull market, and would spillover into selling among other asset classes, is heating up. Earlier this week, in his monthly annual letter Bill Gross wrote that 2.6% is the only level for the market that matters: “This is my only forecast for the 10-year in 2017. If 2.60% is broken on […]
The proposal — opposed by businesses that make and use the solvent — comes eight years after the European Union approved a ban on sales of methylene chloride paint strippers to consumers and companies, with the exception of businesses using it in industrial sites with protective equipment and other cautionary measures. The chemical is also known as dichloromethane. The would-be rule is the third the EPA has […]
ANKARA: Turkey’s threat to close its strategic southern Incirlik Air Base to US-led international coalition flights seem to have paid off, according to analysts.The US recently announced its decision to provide regular aerial intelligence to support Turkey in its military operation against Daesh around the Syrian town of Al-Bab.Incirlik does not belong to NATO, but is a Turkish base that remains open to the operations of NATO […]
By David Shepardson | NEW YORK NEW YORK Japan’s Takata Corp is expected to plead guilty to criminal wrongdoing as early as Friday as part of a $1 billion settlement with the U.S. Justice Department over its handling of air bag ruptures linked to 16 deaths worldwide, sources said. The settlement includes a $25 million criminal fine, $125 million in victim compensation and $850 million to compensate […]
A newly recognized primate that lives in eastern Myanmar and southwestern China has been named after Star Wars‘ Luke Skywalker. Jedi Name The scientists who discovered the animal decided to choose the name Skywalker hoolock gibbon not just because of their love for Jedis and the make-believe world created by George Lucas. The scientific name of the Skywalker hoolock is hoolock tianxing. In Chinese, tianxing translates to “Heaven’s […]
Donald Trump’s upcoming presidency has led many investors to size up oil, coal and gold trades that could benefit from the sweeping changes he has promised. But a growing band of specialist commodity traders think investors may be overlooking the one raw material in line for bigger price gains than others when the US president-elect takes office: uranium. While interest in the key fuel for nuclear power […]
Can your smart watch detect when you are becoming sick? A new study indicates that this is possible. By following 60 people through their everyday lives, researchers found that smart watches and other personal biosensor devices can help flag when people have colds and even signal the onset of complex conditions like Lyme disease and diabetes. (via WSJ)
MIAMI/NEW YORK A U.S. judge on Thursday ordered a Volkswagen executive charged in the Justice Department’s diesel emissions investigation held without bail pending trial. Oliver Schmidt was arrested Saturday at Miami’s International Airport as he planned to fly home after a vacation. He was one of six current and former VW executives charged this week in U.S. District Court in Detroit. The other five are in Germany […]
By Mehreen Zahra-Malik | ISLAMABAD ISLAMABAD A Pakistani Senate committee is set to debate how to prevent the country’s blasphemy laws being applied unfairly, despite opposition from religious conservatives who support legislation that carries a mandatory death penalty for insulting Islam. Senator Farhatullah Babar told Reuters that the Senate Committee on Human Rights, of which he is a member, will start discussions on blasphemy laws as early […]
Wikimedia Commons IBM has announced a new partnership with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in a study designed to determine whether blockchain technology can be used to keep medical data transfers safe from theft or exploit. The tech giant announced the collaboration between IBM Watson Health and the FDA on January 11. The research initiative is a two-year agreement between the FDA and IBM which […]
Global investors sold the dollar and sought government bonds and gold on Thursday in the wake of Donald Trump’s pre-inauguration press conference, revealing the first sign of buyers remorse for a reflation rally that has dominated global markets since early November. Mr Trump’s press conference, his first as president-elect, was held in New York’s Trump Tower on Wednesday and was dominated by his ties to Russia, his […]
