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Tuesday 06th of June 2017 |
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Macro Thoughts |
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Corbyn calls on May to quit over police cuts Law & Politics |
Asked if he would back calls made by others for May to resign, Corbyn told Sky News: "Indeed I would. Because there have been calls made by a lot of very responsible people on this, who are very worried that she was at the Home Office for all this time, presided over these cuts in police numbers and now is saying that we have a problem.
"Yes we do have a problem, we should never have cut the police numbers."
Conclusions
Corbyn is getting traction on this issue.
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Recent UK attacks have 'domestic centre of gravity' - London police chief Law & Politics |
The three attacks carried out by Islamist militants in Britain in the last three months have been largely domestic plots and the majority of the threat facing the country is not directed from overseas, London's police chief said on Monday.
"All the recent attacks I think have a primarily domestic centre of gravity," Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick told BBC radio.
"There are in the five that we have foiled and these three recent attacks, in some of them there are undoubtedly international dimensions. We will always be looking to see if anything has been directed from overseas but I would say the majority of the threat that we are facing at the moment does not appear to be directed from overseas."
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29-APR-2013 :: The Brothers Tsarnaev and the Long Tail Law & Politics |
There are more than seven billion of us now in this c21st world of ours. The long tail in a population of seven billion is not an insignificant absolute number.
‘’In statistics, a long tail of some distributions of numbers is the portion of the distribution having a large number of occurrences far from the “head” or central part of the distribution.’’
Put in a different way, there are surely many Brothers Tsarnaev in this new c21st of ours. And whilst I appreciate Osama Bin Laden is being nibbled by the fishes somewhere in the ocean, he basically inspired the likes of the Brothers Tsarnaev, i.e those disaffected with the c21st. In truth, that disaffection might have any number of reasons and I am reminded of my French O level where I studied Albert Camus’ L’Etranger and Camus said;
“The byronic hero, incapable of love, or capable only of an impossible love, suffers endlessly. He is solitary, languid, his condition exhausts him. If he wants to feel alive, it must be in the terrible exaltation of a brief and destructive action*.”
Don’t get me wrong, I do not think of these folks as byronic, not by a long shot.
And when they meet their Maker what will their Maker say?
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Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain cut relations with Qatar in a coordinated move Law & Politics |
Yemen, Libya's eastern-based government and the Maldives joined in later.
Qatar denounced the move as based on lies about it supporting militants. It has often been accused of being a funding source for Islamists, as has Saudi Arabia.
Iran, long at odds with Saudi Arabia and a behind-the-scenes target of the move, blamed Trump's visit last month to Riyadh.
"What is happening is the preliminary result of the sword dance," Hamid Aboutalebi, deputy chief of staff of Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, tweeted in reference to Trump's joining in a traditional dance with the Saudi king at the meeting.
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Qatar's Big Spenders Are Vulnerable to Palace Politics Law & Politics |
Whenever crisis hits the West, the pint-sized yet deep-pocketed nation of Qatar sails into view with the promise of cash lifeboats. Whether it's the 2008 financial meltdown, President Donald Trump's infrastructure plans or the British EU exit, the promise of Qatari wealth is dangled as a way of keeping government finances and broader investor confidence afloat.The irony now is that Qatar has its own trouble. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have severed most diplomatic and economic ties to their Gulf neighbor to punish it for its ties with Iran and Islamist groups in the region. The move is unprecedented, analysts say. Fears of a regional choke-hold on a country that's the biggest producer of liquefied natural gas sent Qatari stocks down and oil prices up.
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The dollar index touched a seven-month low ahead of testimony before Congress from former FBI director James Comey on Thursday. International Trade |
It has been reported that Comey plans to testify to conversations in which U.S. President Donald Trump pressured him to drop his investigation into former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn, who was fired for failing to disclose conversations with Russian officials.
"The dollar is already on the defensive after Friday's jobs data, and now it's facing potential geopolitical risk in the form of Comey's testimony," said Bart Wakabayashi, Tokyo Branch Manager of State Street Bank.
The dollar index .DXY, which tracks the greenback against a basket of trade-weighted peers, fell to its lowest level since the November U.S. election and was last down 0.2 percent at 96.623.
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Chinese diplomacy is spurring a shake-up in the world of frontier-bond underwriting. Frontier Markets |
When the tiny island nation of the Maldives prepared to make its dollar-debt debut last week, it looked beyond more veteran international arrangers to Bocom International Holdings Co., the securities arm of China’s fifth-biggest bank. The firm was sole lead on the $200 million, five-year bond, the latest in a slew of frontier-market dollar offerings this year.
Chinese banks also popped up in Sri Lanka’s blowout dollar-bond sale last month, with Citic Securities Co. and ICBC International Securities Ltd. -- a unit of the world’s largest lender by assets -- part of a syndicate marketing the $1.5 billion issue. Their involvement comes as China ramps up its Belt and Road initiative, with almost $80 billion in financing to be doled out to developing nations participating in President Xi Jinping’s globalization push.
The cheapest borrowing costs in four years are luring smaller, lower-rated countries to the dollar bond market, with frontier issuance in Asia already at $1.8 billion so far this year, more than triple what it was in the same period of 2016, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
“Under the Belt and Road initiative, I won’t be surprised to see more and more Chinese investors and banks involved in frontier markets who have good relationship with China,” he said.
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Democratic Republic of Congo teeters on edge of 'catastrophe' Mail and Guardian Africa |
At the national level, President Joseph Kabila is clinging to office after 16 years in power, despite the end of his legal mandate last December. His actions have triggered a political and constitutional crisis, with elections delayed and protesters shot dead by police. The political stalemate, combined with weak prices for Congo’s mineral exports, has left the economy in disarray. Congo’s currency has plummeted, food prices have soared, and public-sector salaries are deteriorating in real terms.
The national crisis has raised tensions across the country. A recent poll of 2,301 people in Congo, conducted by a U.S. research group and a Congolese polling agency, found that a strong majority expects strife in the country within months, and 69 per cent believe Mr. Kabila should have resigned in December.
“The combination of political uncertainty, predatory state institutions and low commodity prices is contributing to an increasingly toxic situation,” the International Crisis Group, an NGO based in Brussels, wrote in a recent commentary.
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DRC opposition leader wants protection if he returns Africa |
DR Congolese opposition leader Moise Katumbi filed a legal complaint with the UN Human Rights Committee, in the hope of international protection if he returns to run in a future presidential election.
"The reason I've come to make this complaint is to alert the international community, because President (Joseph) Kabila is going to organise elections without Moise Katumbi," he told Reuters.
"Despite the risk I have to go back because I'm a candidate and I will remain one. If the election timetable begins I have to back."
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Barclays Africa Powers Ahead After Parent Finally Lets Go Bloomberg Africa |
Barclays Africa Group Ltd., South Africa’s worst-performing bank stock in 2017 and 2016, has risen for three straight days after Barclays Plc sold its controlling stake in a share sale in which demand exceeded supply. The gains are paring year-to-date losses and narrowing the gap with its Johannesburg-based peers. Three analysts have rated Barclays Africa a buy since the stake sale was announced on May 31, with HSBC Holdings Plc analyst Henry Hall saying in a June 1 note that the stock could gain 17 percent.
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China is already the single-largest bilateral lender owed $3.5 billion or 19.4 per cent of total external debt by end of Q2 2016/17 fiscal year @BD_Africa Kenyan Economy |
China has downplayed concerns on Kenya’s ballooning standard gauge railway (SGR) loans whose next phase is expected soon. China awarded Kenya Sh294.3 billion or 90 per cent of the Sh327 billion spent on constructing Mombasa-Nairobi SGR line. It is also financing 90 per cent of the Sh150 billion Nairobi-Naivasha section and has since been approached for an additional Sh370 billion for the Naivasha-Kisumu line. Overall loans extended by the China Exim Bank have concessional and commercial portions. Apart from the SGR loans, China is already the single-largest bilateral lender owed $3.5 billion (Sh361.6 billion), or 19.4 per cent of total external debt by end of the second quarter of the 2016/17 fiscal year. Chinese vice Foreign minister Zhang Ming said the size of the loans should not be an issue “since the money is being put in a project that will benefit Kenyans”. “When a debt is put in the right project, it is not a burden,” said he said in a statement last week. “The investment will give the money back since SGR is the largest infrastructural project in Kenya and it will lead to economic growth of the whole region which means that the debt will be paid.”
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