Bloomberg Once-popular loan Americans use to finance home renovations and college tuition is slowly dying, slashing a lucrative source of revenue for the nation’s largest banks. Home equity lines of credit, open-ended loans that homeowners tap for cash using their properties as collateral, exploded in the run-up to the housing crash a decade ago, doubling in volume from 2003 to ...
Read More »Tapping Australia shale would worsen carbon emissions: Study
Bloomberg Opening up a potentially huge shale gas region in Australia’s Northern Territory would increase the country’s already-hefty greenhouse gas emissions making it a “particularly dangerous†contributor to climate change, according to a new study. The report, commissioned by environmental lobby group Lock The Gate, tested a range of scenarios for development of the McArthur Basin and Beetaloo sub-basin, which ...
Read More »Pakistan’s tycoons offer to take over former Barrick mine
Bloomberg Pakistan’s top business tycoons have offered to take over a disputed copper and gold deposit that was once explored by Barrick Gold Corp. and Antofagasta Plc, according to people familiar with the matter. Officials at the provincial Balochistan government are said to have met with a consortium of four business groups including tycoons Arif Habib and Muhammad Ali Tabba ...
Read More »Impeachment probe: Trump gets no respite after US raid
Bloomberg President Donald Trump scored one of the biggest successes of his presidency with the killing of an IS leader, yet the battlefield victory isn’t likely to blunt the momentum of Democrats moving closer to impeaching him. The inquiry led by three House committees resumed with another slate of witnesses, even as the country absorbs Trump’s dramatic announcement of the ...
Read More »Fernandez wins in Argentina as Macri’s austerity rebuffed
Bloomberg President-elect Alberto Fernandez will discuss the transition of power in Argentina with the defeated incumbent, Mauricio Macri, after an election in which voters opted for left-wing populism over pro-market policies to combat the country’s economic crisis. Fernandez, a political insider who has never held national office, was expected to meet with Macri on Monday after sweeping to power in ...
Read More »EU agrees to ‘Brexit extension’ as UK election looms
Bloomberg The European Union agreed to grant the UK a three-month Brexit delay to January 31, removing the risk of a damaging no-deal split on Thursday as the British government tries to end the impasse in parliament. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was expected to push a vote in the House of Commons on Monday to trigger an early general election, ...
Read More »Merkel coalition battered in regional vote
Bloomberg Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition faced a renewed setback with a resounding defeat in a state election and its main ally wavering over support for the government. Merkel’s Christian Democrats Union (CDU) plummeted nearly 12 percentage points from 2014 to 21.8% in an election for state assembly in the eastern state of Thuringia, according to preliminary results. At the same ...
Read More »Mozambique’s Nyusi wins landslide victory
Bloomberg Mozambique president Filipe Nyusi won a second term by a landslide in the natural-gas-rich nation’s October 15 elections that the main opposition rejected as a “mega fraud.†Nyusi won 73% of the vote, compared with rival Ossufo Momade’s 22%, the electoral commission announced in the capital Maputo. His party also won all 10 gubernatorial ballots and more than 70% ...
Read More »Gratitude in action
With so much bad news in the world these days, it was invigorating to spend last weekend in Yerevan, Armenia celebrating some courageous human-rights activists who reminded me of what’s best in the human spirit. The event was this year’s awards ceremony of the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity. The group was founded several years ago by three Armenians who ...
Read More »Nokia has no excuse for failing
Nokia Oyj only really has two competitors in the telecoms equipment business, and one of them — China’s Huawei Technologies Co. — has been all but banned from much of the market. At the same time, phone companies are opening their checkbooks for a new generation of 5G technology that’s only supplied by Nokia, Huawei and the other big rival, ...
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