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Friday 18th of November 2016 |
Morning Africa |
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If you are tracking the NSE Do it via RICHLIVE and use Mozilla Firefox as your Browser. 0930-1500 KENYA TIME Normal Board - The Whole shebang Prompt Board Next day settlement Expert Board All you need re an Individual stock.
The Latest Daily PodCast can be found here on the Front Page of the site http://www.rich.co.ke |
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12-SEP-2016 :: Mirrors on the ceiling, The pink champagne on ice @TheStarKenya Africa |
Mirrors on the ceiling, The pink champagne on ice And she said “We are all just prisoners here, of our own device” Last thing I remember, I was Running for the door I had to find the passage back To the place I was before “Relax,” said the night man, “We are programmed to receive. You can check-out any time you like, But you can never leave! “
What is clear is that we are at the fag-end of this party.
Home Thoughts
The rains have come and with it a chilly breeze [if you leave your window open at night like I am wont to do until Nishet says ''What about Bats?''] My Neighbour used to sleep on his verandah at night. And its been so wonderful and silvery at night of late - The Super Moon refers. I was marvelling a couple of nights ago at how far I could see. Then I recalled this from Karen Blixen.
I have a feeling that wherever I may be in the future, I will be wondering whether there is rain at Ngong. Letter to her mother (26 February 1919)
There is something about safari life that makes you forget all your sorrows and feel as if you had drunk half a bottle of champagne — bubbling over with heartfelt gratitude for being alive.
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Out Of Africa Karen Blixen P.196 Africa |
The early morning Air of the African highlands is of such a tangible coldness and freshness that time after time the same fancy there comes back to you: you are not on Earth but in dark deep waters, going ahead along the bottom of the Sea. It is not even certain that you are moving at all: the flows of chilliness against your Face may be the deep-sea currents, and your car, like some sluggish electric Fish, may be sitting steadily upon the bottom of the Sea, staring in front of her with the glaring Eyes of her Lamps, and letting the submarine life pass by here. The Stars are so large because they are not real stars but reflections, shimmering upon the surface of the Water. Alongside your path on the sea-bottom, live things, darker than their surroundings, keep on appearing, jumping up and sweeping into the long grass, as crabs and beach-fleas will make their way into the sand. The Lights get clearer, and, about sunrise, the sea-bottom lifts itself towards the surface, a new created Island. Whirls of smells drift quickly past you, fresh rank smells of the olive-bushes, the brine scent of burnt grass, a sudden quelling smell of decay.
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Dawn colours at Ol Pejeta Conservancy. Can you see Mount Kenya in the background? @KenyaPics Africa |
“People who dream when they sleep at night know of a special kind of happiness which the world of the day holds not, a placid ecstasy, and ease of heart, that are like honey on the tongue. They also know that the real glory of dreams lies in their atmosphere of unlimited freedom. It is not the freedom of the dictator, who enforces his own will on the world, but the freedom of the artist, who has no will, who is free of will. The pleasure of the true dreamer does not lie in the substance of the dream, but in this: that there things happen without any interference from his side, and altogether outside his control. Great landscapes create themselves, long splendid views, rich and delicate colours, roads, houses, which he has never seen or heard of...” ― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa
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I was browsing through American writer Paul Theroux's The Last Train to Zona Verde [beautiful book] Africa |
I was browsing through American writer Paul Theroux’s The Last Train to Zona Verde, subtitled Overland from Cape Town to Angola, and came across some lyrical and affectionate writing about “a subgroup of !Kung people who called themselves Ju/’hoansi — a clucking, hard-to-pronounce name meaning ‘Real People’ or ‘Harmless People’. …I was ducking among thornbushes with slender, goldenskinned people who were the earth’s oldest folk, boasting a traceable lineage to the dark backward and abysm of time in the Upper Pleistocene, thirty-five thousand years or so ago, the proven ancestors of us all, the true aristocrats of the planet.”
Theroux continues: “The young woman in front of me dropped to her knees in the sand-...and began digging...Within a minute she extracted a finger-shaped tuber...Smiling, she offered the first bite to me...I passed it back and it was shared equally, a nibble each, nine bites. In the forests, deserts and hillsides across the world, foraging people like the Ju/’hoansi are scrupulous about sharing food; it is this sharing in their communal life that binds them together.”
The theory that human beings originated in Africa is widely held. The reasons given by various scientists is that “known fossils of Homo Sapiens are Africans”. “A variety of different DNA studies on modern humans all suggest a recent common ancestry from a small gene pool. Most of these point to Africa as the origin of this population,” writes Theroux. However, Christopher Singer, one of the world’s foremost paleoanthropologists modifies these theories. “I think,” he says, “the idea that modern humans originated in Africa is basically sound, but I don’t think it was that simple either within or outside Africa.” Other scientists suggest humans did not originate in one region but in several.
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14-NOV-2016 :: I think the QE [Quantitative Easing] consensus is now a busted Flush Law & Politics |
From an economic and trade perspective, I expect Trump to be much more aggressive with China. I think the QE [Quantitative Easing] consensus is now a busted Flush. Remember a vast swathe of the pro-Brexit and pro-Trump camps were the older white folks who have seen their savings evaporate in the world of negative interest rates. This is the point. They want a return on their savings and Theresa May and Trump get that. The bond markets get it as well.
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I like the tax cutting agenda. The infrastructure spend is long overdue. Law & Politics |
I like the tax cutting agenda. My theory remains (and interestingly was validated a few years ago in Russia) that when you reduce taxes to a level that folks feel is just and equitable, The tax take surges because its just more convenient to pay it. The infrastructure spend is long overdue. Higher interest rates are going to propel a big Dollar rally from here on in and its only just getting going. Emerging markets currencies which took a big tumble last week are set to crater, I am afraid.
Let me leave with you a Transcript from the Sidney Lumet movie Network (1976)
''You think you merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tide and gravity. It is ecological balance'' Sidney Lumet Network 1976.
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New photos of uncontacted Brazilian tribe mark first sighting in over a year Frontier Markets |
The images – which show the tribe members inside a circular communal structure, known as a maloca – were taken in the Yanomami Reserve near the border with Venezuela, and are the clearest yet of the apparently healthy, growing community of Moxihatetema, who had not been seen for more than a year.
The tribe – one of three Yanomami groups in the area that are monitored remotely after shunning approaches from outsiders – were a source of concern after they went missing at a time of increasing invasions by garimpeiros, or illegal miners.
Amazon tribe massacre alleged in Venezuela
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Bond notes a complete disaster for Zim: Hanke Africa |
TM: There has been a lot of debate whether or not bond notes are in fact a currency. As an expert, what is your take on this? SH: They are another currency but very low quality. They are definitely currency; anything you can use to purchase something with is a currency. Now, there are all kinds of restrictions on bond notes. For example, you can’t purchase imports, which makes it a poor quality currency. It’s unlike a dollar which you can use to buy anything in the world. You can go to Johannesburg and pay for a taxi with a dollar and the driver will accept but that won’t happen with bond notes. You know they are inferior from day one because government is in a way arguably offering a subsidy for people to take the bond notes which means the bond notes are trading at a discount to the US dollar even before they start circulating. TM: What is the best way to manage liquidity and cash crises for a multi-currency economy that is largely dollarised, given the demand for the US dollar? SH: The liquidity crisis has been created by the government and the bond notes. When they started talking about the bond notes, it created a run on the banks because everyone wanted dollars because they were afraid they were not going to be able to get dollars. The government created the liquidity crisis, the liquidity crisis is completely a function of government. The government is incompetent and has no one to run this aspect of banking. By even talking about the bond notes, the government created a bank run. First of all, government should have never talked about the bond notes and, secondly, they should never issue the bond notes. When (President Robert) Mugabe signed the papers for the bond notes he signed his death warrant, this might be the end.
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Congo's Kabila Names Opposition Member as New Prime Minister Africa |
Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila nominated an opposition politician as the copper-producing nation’s next prime minister, part of an accord to form an interim government that will run the country until elections in 2018. Samy Badibanga’s appointment was announced in a presidential decree read 17 Nov. on state television. It follows the resignation of Prime Minister Matata Ponyo Mapon on Nov. 14 as part an October political agreement that allows Kabila to remain in power until delayed elections are held. Congo’s largest opposition platform, the Rassemblement, has boycotted the agreement, saying Kabila must step down when his second term ends on Dec. 19 as required by the constitution. The group called for protests on Nov. 19 and described Badibanga’s appointment as a “non-event.” Kabila “is playing with the Congo,” opposition leader Martin Fayulu said by phone from the capital, Kinshasa. Badibanga “does not have the experience and I don’t see how he can drive a government during this period of crisis.” Badibanga didn’t answer two phone calls and a text message seeking comment on his appointment. “By appointing Badibanga, Kabila proves that he is not really interested in elections,” Berwouts said in an e-mailed response to questions. “He only wants to avoid further sanctions and decrease the potential for street violence on Dec. 19.”
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The sand is still hot under our feet. The oil thieves must have run the illegal oil refinery, which is hidden from the sea by thickets of mangrove, until just a short while ago. Africa |
The sand is still hot under our feet. The oil thieves must have run the illegal oil refinery, which is hidden from the sea by thickets of mangrove, until just a short while ago.
“Destroy everything, boys,” the commander of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps unit, Helen Amakiri, orders.
The job of the stocky, crew-cut woman is to combat oil theft, estimated to cost Nigeria a tenth of its annual oil production. It’s a rate of loss that has dethroned Nigeria as Africa’s largest oil producer.
A paramilitary NSCDC trooper, wearing a balaclava and flip-flops, obeys Amakiri by firing his automatic weapon into the rusty oil containers at close range, setting them on fire.
The flames stink sweetly of diesel. It’s pouring with rain as we surge away in speedboats, the rising column of black smoke smudging the sky.
For an hour we shoot through the creeks at high speed without seeing one mangrove shrub that hasn’t had its roots coloured black by oil pollution up to the level of high tide.
In the last five years, Nigeria has earned something like $1.5 trillion from oil. Nobody knows for sure, because the accounting is so opaque. What is also unclear is how much has been ripped off by the foreign oil companies, or a corrupt local elite.
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Senegal to Introduce National Digital Currency Africa |
The small African country of Senegal is making waves by announcing that it plans to issue a national digital currency utilizing blockchain technology, the same technology that powers Bitcoin. The new digital money, called eCFA will have legal tender status alongside the traditional CFA Franc paper notes and coins. This would make Senegal just the second country to formally adopt such a country-wide system, following Tunisia, also located on the African continent.
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@EAPCC Portland Cement to send home 1,000 workers in restructuring Kenyan Economy |
Cement manufacturer East African Portland Cement (EAPCC) is set to retrench more than two thirds of its staff in a restructuring plan which will cost the State-owned company about Sh2 billion.
The Nairobi Securities Exchange-listed firm, which was has been ruled technically insolvent by the auditor general, says it will plans to lay off over 1,000 employees, reducing its staff count to 500.
The loss-making company has offered the government 2,000 acres of its idle land for Sh10 billion to be used to turnaround its fortunes including paying for the voluntary retirement programme.
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