Texas / WAM A man armed with a rifle opened fire at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, killing 20 people and wounding 26 others as panicked shoppers and employees scurried for cover before the gunman surrendered to police at the scene, Reuters has reported. Many shoppers in the busy store were buying back-to-school supplies when they found themselves ...
Read More »Sudan rivals ink new power-sharing deal
Bloomberg Sudan’s ruling military council signed a deal with its political opposition outlining how they’ll share power in a three-year transitional government, the latest step towards democracy after President Omar al-Bashir’s overthrow. The two sides inked the so-called constitutional declaration on Sunday in the capital, Khartoum. The African Union’s envoy to Sudan, Mohamed el-Hassan Lebatt, said at the ceremony that ...
Read More »Beijing won’t let HK unrest go on: Xinhua
Bloomberg China’s central government won’t sit by and let the disruption in Hong Kong go on, according a commentary by the Xinhua News Agency, which condemned the violence that’s wracked the financial hub for weeks and took aim at protesters whom it said tossed a Chinese national flag into the harbour. “We must warn all the ugly forces that try ...
Read More »Hundreds detained at Moscow protests
Bloomberg Russian police detained almost 700 people, including opposition leaders, at Moscow protests against the authorities’ decision to ban anti-Kremlin candidates from running for the city council next month, according to independent legal-aid group OVD-Info. The number of protesters being held reached 685 as of 6:40 pm local time, the group estimated on its website. The Moscow police unit on ...
Read More »Immigration opens another divide for 2020 Democrats
Bloomberg Calls by some top Democratic presidential contenders to decriminalise border crossings have divided the party and risk turning the issue of immigration into one that President Donald Trump eagerly exploits during his 2020 re-election bid. Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris are among the leading candidates who’d make illegally crossing the border a civil rather than a ...
Read More »Trump’s fresh China tariffs will affect US consumers
Americans reading gloomy headlines about the trade war with China could be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about. Bloomberg’s consumer comfort index, a weekly phone survey conducted since 1985, is running at its highest levels since 2000. Similar gauges of the household sector, such as the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index and the Conference Board’s various ...
Read More »The bright spot in smartphone industry
Smartphone sales may be stagnating, but one particular strand of technological wizardry behind them is not. Companies that make the sensors powering your phone’s camera and facial recognition system are preparing for a mini boom. The slowdown in global smartphone sales has made life tougher for semiconductor makers. Chips giants from Qualcomm Inc. to Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. have all ...
Read More »Taxpayers stuck in the middle of Brexit hell
If you want an unequivocal example of how Brexit has hurt the British taxpayer, look at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc. Since its record-breaking bail-out in the financial crisis, the Scottish lender has struggled to get back on its feet. It tried shrinking its trading businesses, shedding assets and eliminating costs — only to be stymied by a string ...
Read More »Fed cannot give markets the certainty they desire
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell tried to thread the needle between dovish and hawkish at his press conference, but realistically had no hope of pleasing market participants who thought a series of interest-rate cuts were already in the bag. The Fed just isn’t there yet. This reduction in rates was the insurance against bad outcomes. Going forward, conditions will need ...
Read More »Boris Johnson dreams of a ‘side-deal’ Brexit
Boris Johnson is playing the part of the “madman†negotiator to a tee. The new British prime minister insists he will take his country out of the European Union on October 31 with either a completely new withdrawal deal or none at all — however high the economic cost. With Johnson refusing to even meet his EU counterparts until they ...
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