Sunday , 8 February 2026

German supreme court rejects bid to outlaw far-right party

  BERLIN / AP Germany’s supreme court on Tuesday rejected a bid by lawmakers to outlaw a far-right party accused of promoting a racist and anti-Semitic agenda. Andreas Vosskuhle, chief justice of the Federal Constitutional Court, said that even though the party had unconstitutional goals, “there are currently no concrete indications … that its actions will lead to success.” The German …

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Growing list of Democrats boycotting Trump inauguration

  WASHINGTON / AP More than 40 House Democrats plan to boycott President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Friday, casting the Republican businessman as a threat to democracy. Reps. Steve Cohen of Tennessee, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Don Beyer of Virginia on Monday joined a growing list of lawmakers who will not attend Trump’s swearing-in at the US Capitol. The …

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May’s Brexit was always going to be hard

  In February 2015, economists at HSBC Holdings in London coined the terms “hard” and “soft” Brexit. The latter would maintain “much of the status quo” if the UK voted to quit the European Union; the former entailed “huge risk and would be operationally complicated.” Even just after the Brexit vote, you could be forgiven for seeing the hard option …

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This crazy Indian tax on foreign funds will backfire

  How do you celebrate the fifth anniversary of a colossal mistake? For India’s tax department, the answer has to be: Make a new one that’s a thousand times worse, then sit back and enjoy the fun. There can be no other explanation for the “clarifications” the authorities issued before Christmas, instructing fund managers to withhold and pay taxes when …

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Trump’s trade plan is a looming disaster

  Even by his standards, President-elect Donald Trump’s statements on trade have been stunning in their recklessness. His proposals essentially amount to the repudiation of a system that has fostered global stability and lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty over the last several decades — and if he actually intends to execute his radical agenda, there’s little …

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Enigma of MH370 will haunt aviation world

  This is one of the mysteries that has already put the ability of technology to test and will continue to frustrate the world in future. The search of missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 has been abandoned after almost three years. The plane vanished during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. Crews completed their deep-sea …

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Morgan Stanley achieves 83 percent profit in Q4

  Bloomberg Morgan Stanley reported an 83 percent increase in fourth-quarter profit as fixed-income trading revenue more than doubled, surpassing analysts’ estimates. Net income climbed to $1.67 billion, or 81 cents a share, from $908 million, or 39 cents, a year earlier, the New York-based company said on Tuesday in a statement. The 2015 figure includes a 4-cent accounting charge …

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Bank of America gains market share in Brazil

  Bloomberg Bank of America Corp. is emerging as a winner in the fight for corporate clients and investment-banking fees in Brazil as some of its competitors retreat. The US firm turned in its best showing ever last year in the South American nation, raking in more fees from merger-and-acquisition advising and debt and equity underwriting than any company except …

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PBOC adopts mid-term credit tool as old benchmark fades away

  Bloomberg China is increasingly managing the flow of credit with more finely-tuned instruments than its old method of changing how much of their deposits lenders must keep locked away. Banks’ required reserve requirements haven’t changed for almost a year. Instead, the central bank has used short-term lending channels to add almost six times as much funding than would have …

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Oz banks’ mortgage lending standards improved

  Bloomberg Australian banks have ‘appreciably improved’ their mortgage-lending standards, the nation’s regulator said, as it left the amount of additional capital banks are required to hold as a buffer against the build-up of credit risk at zero. The pace of lending to property investors is currently at around half of the regulator’s recommended levels, and higher-risk mortgages had fallen, …

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