August, 2019

• 3 August

  ‘US headed towards blockade of Venezuela’

  

  Bloomberg Donald Trump is serious about a possible US blockade of Venezuela, a senior administration official said, saying that the country’s president Nicolas Maduro has a short window to voluntarily leave power. Trump told reporters that he was considering a blockade or quarantine of the Latin American country, where the US has been trying for months to unseat Maduro. He ...

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• 3 August

  Donald Trump’s intelligence shakeup could be dangerous

  

  Among intelligence professionals, President Trump’s nomination of an inexperienced, partisan politician to oversee America’s spy agencies prompted deep dismay — but also a stolid reaffirmation of the spymaster’s credo: Let’s get on with it. This combination of incredulity and stoicism was voiced by a half-dozen current and former officers I spoke with about Trump’s choice of Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, ...

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• 3 August

  Credit Suisse, BNP bounce may be brief

  

  Wall Street’s worst first half in more than a decade for trading is turning out to be surprisingly less painful for some European firms: Credit Suisse Group AG and BNP Paribas SA managed to claw back some of the market share they had previously lost. But counting on a continued rebound could be a mistake. Switzerland’s second-biggest bank reported a ...

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• 3 August

  Congo’s Ebola outbreak is US national security threat

  In 2014, the US led the effort by governments to blunt the world’s biggest outbreak of Ebola, which took more than 11,000 lives in West Africa before it was declared over in mid-2016. Now, a smaller but more complex outbreak rages in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the US response has been shaped by indifference and bureaucratic haggling. The ...

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• 3 August

  ECB’s Draghi sends love and thanks to Powell

  Jerome Powell’s half-hearted rate cut incensed President Donald Trump, who immediately took to Twitter to say the chairman of the US Federal Reserve had “let us down”. Global equities sunk and the dollar strengthened as Powell chose to cut rates by a quarter- rather than a half-point and said this wasn’t the start of a “lengthy cutting cycle.” But the ...

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• 3 August

  China buying more US farm goods is a dead end

  

  With trade talks collapsing between the US and China in Shanghai, there’s even less hope of any resumption in American farm exports, which were once portrayed as the foundation of any agreement. That’s not good enough, according to President Donald Trump. Had a trade detente materialised, those expecting a rapid return to the status quo on farm trade likely would ...

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• 3 August

  The maker of Aston Martin is struggling to stay on the road

  

  Can the company behind Aston Martin avoid tapping its shareholders? Yes, if everything goes to plan. The snag is that Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings Plc is proving increasingly accident prone. Shares in the sports car maker fell as much as 22 percent. That’s all too familiar. The stock dropped 26 percent and 18 percent on consecutive days last week. ...

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• 3 August

  Solar and mobile will fuel Africa’s future economy

  

  Backyard industrialisation has been tried; it was a miserable failure. During the so-called Great Leap Forward in China under Mao Zedong, peasants were encouraged to erect steel furnaces in their back yards. Predictably, most people had no idea how to build a mini steel plant much less make steel, and there was no market for their wares. The result was ...

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• 3 August

  Apple faces life after iPhone, but banks on its flagship product

  

  Bloomberg Apple Inc generated less than half of its total quarterly revenue from sales of the iPhone for the first time since 2012 — a sign the company is entering life beyond its flagship product. While Apple reported a record $11.5 billion in sales of services in the fiscal third quarter, and demonstrated strong performances from wearables such as the ...

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• 3 August

  Voice software pioneer says Amazon used its tech in Alexa

  

  Bloomberg A voice software tech developer is suing Amazon.com, saying the e-commerce giant infringed on patents when developing software for the Alexa digital assistant. VB Assets LLC, which owns the rights to some of the technology developed by voice software pioneer VoiceBox Technologies, said in a lawsuit filed in Delaware federal court that Amazon infringed on six of its patents ...

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