Bloomberg At least 26 people were killed in an attack on a Somalian hotel by suspected al-Shabaab fighters, according to a senior state official. The dead included two Americans, a Canadian and a Briton, as well as three each from Kenya and Tanzania, Ahmed Mohamed Islam, the president of the country’s Jubbaland state, said. At least 56 other people were ...
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India to buy drones to monitor borders
Bloomberg India is planning a large-scale purchase of drones for its 1.2 million-strong army to boost surveillance capability along its volatile borders with neighbouring Pakistan and China. The drones would enable units on the border to carry out a 24-hour watch against threats, Indian Army chief Bipin Rawat said in New Delhi. PM Narendra Modi’s government plans to spend $250 ...
Read More »Trump asks top court to allow use of Pentagon funds for wall
Bloomberg President Donald Trump asked the US Supreme Court to clear his administration to start using Pentagon funds for construction of more than 100 miles of fencing along the Mexican border. Filing an emergency request, the president asked the justices to lift a freeze on the money while a legal fight with the Sierra Club and another advocacy group plays ...
Read More »Murder shocks German leaders into action
Bloomberg It wasn’t your usual meeting of mayors in Germany’s presidential palace. One had been stabbed in the throat, another received death threats and most feared for their loved ones. They’ve all become victims of a wave of political violence that culminated last month in what appears to be the first assassination of a politician by a right-wing extremist since ...
Read More »Thai anti-junta party elects its new leader
Bloomberg The Pheu Thai Party elected Sompong Amornvivat to lead Thailand’s biggest opposition party into parliament, pledging to keep the coalition government under close scrutiny. Sompong was picked at a special assembly to succeed acting head Viroj Pao-in, who resigned earlier this month. “Our important duty is to scrutinise the workings of the government,†Sompong said in a comment posted ...
Read More »A blow against AMLO bodes ill for Mexico
After seven months of labouriously convincing the international markets that he can be trusted with the presidency of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador risks seeing all his work undone by tweet. The sudden resignation of Carlos Urzua as his finance minister, and the resignation letter he posted on Twitter are deeply damaging. In combination, they are almost exactly what investors ...
Read More »HBO and Netflix: From ‘friends’ to foes
Netflix Inc. and the soon-to-come HBO Max app need a little of what each other has. In the meantime, consumers may be the ones who lose out. If you’re like me, you’ve started to realise that despite a vast number of video-streaming apps, none on its own offers the ideal mix of content best suited to your tastes. And if ...
Read More »Bonds suggest a ceiling for the stock market
Corporate credit markets have bad news for stock investors. Low yields imply that it’s going to be tough for stocks to rally much further from here. Since equities made what was then an all-time high in January 2018, performance of the stock market has largely tracked the movement of investment-grade corporate bond yields. The rise in yields in 2018 acted ...
Read More »Donald Trump throws a tax bomb at Macron
President Donald Trump has been hunting for reasons to extract trade concessions from the European Union with the eagerness of a dog scrabbling around for a bone buried in the back yard. First came Germany’s $24 billion car trade surplus with the US, with Trump coming close to labelling the import of cars made by BMW AG, Mercedes and Volkswagen ...
Read More »Donald Trump washes his hands of climate change
President Donald Trump has a real thing for cleanliness. As he made clear at an event staged at the White House, this extends far beyond copious use of hand-sanitizer – from sea to sanitary sea, no less. Kicking off his remarks on “America’s Environmental Leadership,†the president spelled out his concerns: From day one, my administration has made it a ...
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