February, 2018

• 5 February

  Paris terror attack suspect refuses to answer court

  BRUSSELS / Reuters The prime surviving suspect in the 2015 IS attacks on Paris said he would answer no questions as his trial in Belgium over a shooting that preceded his arrest got under way in Brussels on Monday. Salah Abdeslam, 28, his long black hair and beard a stark contrast to the cropped, clean-shaven young man familiar across Europe ...

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• 5 February

  Pak premier sees no military solution to Afghan war

  

  Bloomberg There’s no military solution to the long-running conflict in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said, warning little progress would be made until all sides entered into peace talks. Abbasi voiced skepticism over US President Donald Trump’s increase in troops to assist the Afghan security forces and said Islamabad was ready to help mediate talks with the Taliban, ...

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• 5 February

  Cyprus re-elects president as economic growth back on track

  

  Bloomberg Nicos Anastasiades was re-elected as Cyprus president, winning his bid to continue overseeing the Mediterranean island’s economic recovery nearly six years after the country came close to financial collapse. Anastasiades, 71, the candidate of the center-right Disy party, won 56 percent of the vote, compared with 44 percent for Stavros Malas, an independent candidate backed by the leftist Akel ...

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• 5 February

  Italy’s Berlusconi may be closer to majority than polls show

  Bloomberg Polls may be downplaying the chances that a center-right coalition backed by former Premier Silvio Berlusconi will win a majority in upcoming Italian elections on March 4. The so-called “shy-factor” in the polling process, which underestimates voting intentions for right-wing parties, and a new electoral law that favors coalitions, may give Berlusconi’s bloc enough seats to form a government, ...

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• 5 February

  Trump’s popularity wanes despite economic optimism

  

  There is an acute struggle dividing US voters that isn’t about Democrats versus Republicans or differences on issues. It’s about the public’s optimistic view of the economy during the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency and the simultaneously pessimistic view of Trump himself. The contrast is striking. Polls show overwhelming satisfaction with the state of the economy, the most since ...

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• 5 February

  China’s ‘worrisome’ Arctic expansion!

  

  Last week, China said it plans to build a ‘Polar Silk Road’ that will open shipping lanes across the largely pristine region at the top of the world. It’s an ambitious idea for a country that lacks an Arctic border, and it has raised concerns around the world about China’s ultimate intentions and its capacity for environmental stewardship. Although these ...

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• 5 February

  Save your panic. This equity slump isn’t the end of days

  

  Is it a blip, a correction or the end of days? Stock markets in Asia tumbled on Monday, extending the biggest global selloff in two years. Equity investors are fretting as Treasury yields approach 3 percent. On Friday, 10-year returns touched 2.85%, and the dollar rallied 0.9 percent. Some context, however. While the MSCI Asia ex-Japan Index’s 7.5% return in ...

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• 5 February

  Brexit politics goes from bad to worse

  Political dysfunction is unquestionably aggravating the UK’s Brexit nightmare. But the resignation of Prime Minister Theresa May, as some in her own party are calling for, would only make matters worse. The Tories will never agree about the European Union. What they need to do is get their divisions under some kind of control. At the moment, the increasingly assertive ...

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• 5 February

  With spendthrift budget, India takes a wrong turn

  

  India remains a land of missed opportunities. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi came into office in 2014, he raised hopes that he would reform administration, fix regulations, super-charge the economy and reinvigorate private investment. One can debate how much he’s accomplished on those fronts. But his record on one issue—fiscal restraint—had seemed impeccable. Helped by low crude oil prices, which ...

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• 5 February

  Deutsche Bank is fine apart from the bank bit

  

  The best news Deutsche Bank CEO John Cryan had for shareholders is that, if you take out the whole banking part, there’s a really good business there. Deutsche Bank’s asset-management business, which accounts for about one-tenth of the company’s revenue, was the only unit to report a return on equity of more than 2 percent for 2017. Across the firm, ...

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