Home » 2019 » September (Page 376)
Iran said Wednesday it will resume full compliance with a 2015 nuclear deal if it can sell its oil or get a $15-billion credit line guaranteed by future crude sales. Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi expressed doubt, however, that such a plan cou…
September 4, 2019Read More
‘Multiple fatalities,’ lanes blocked after fiery I-75 crash in Lexington LEX18 Lexington KY NewsAuthorities have reported “multiple fatalities” in a fiery crash on Interstate Highway 75 in Lexington that continues to snarl traffic on the maj…
September 4, 2019Read More
Brexit is 57 Days away.(Bloomberg) — Sign up here to get the Brexit Bulletin in your inbox every weekday.Today in Brexit: The rebel alliance takes back control as a wounded Boris Johnson seeks an electoral escape.What’s Happening? Lots, to be honest. …
September 4, 2019Read More
US vice president Mike Pence has defended his two-night stay at Donald Trump’s golf resort while on an official visit to Ireland amid questions over his use of public money to benefit the president. The vice president spent Monday and Tuesday night at the Trump resort in Doonbeg, a small town on Ireland’s west coast on the other side of the country from his state business in the capital. Mr Pence defended the decision – which also required him to fly daily to Dublin and back on Air Force Two – by saying he wanted to have dinner at Morrissey’s, a pub owned by a distant cousin. “I understand political attacks by Democrats, but if you have a chance to get to Doonbeg, you’ll find it’s a fairly small place,” Mr Pence told reporters at the ambassador’s residence Tuesday. Mr Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, told reporters on Air Force Two that the president had merely suggested he stay at the Trump resort in Doonbeg and that it was no formal directive. “When we went through the trip, it’s like, ‘Well, he’s going to Doonbeg because that’s where the Pence family is from,’ ” Mr Short said. “It’s like, ‘Well, you should stay at my place.’” Mr Pence, who was joined on the Ireland trip by his wife, mother and sister, has deep ties directly to Doonbeg, where a distant relation owns a pub Credit: PA The vice president was in Ireland at the start of the week as part of a trip through Europe, and flew across the country to meet with Irish president Leo Varadkar to discuss trade and Brexit. Mr Trump has previously come under fire for blurring the lines between his businesses and his presidency. Notably, he decided to retain ownership of his company after the 2016 election. The president has often frequented his own properties, including the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm beach, Florida, and has now spent 295 days at a Trump property since becoming president. Such excursions have been criticised for being ethically problematic because the large travelling party generates additional revenue for the president, but at the expense of US taxpayers. The vice president, who was joined on the Ireland trip by his wife, mother and sister, has deep ties directly to Doonbeg, where a distant relation owns a pub. On Tuesday night, Mr Pence visited the restaurant, Morrissey’s Pub in Doonbeg and was greeted by his distant relation as he pointed out that used to belong to his great-grandmother. Mr Short noted that for this particular trip, Mr Pence was personally paying for the travel of his mother and sister. There was no mention of costs incurred at the Trump resort by entourage. The president has himself visited the Trump resort earlier this year during a trip to commemorate the anniversary of the D-Day landings, though he met Mr Varadkar at the airport and not in Dublin. But that means the most senior officials of the Trump administration have visited a once-obscure golf resort in County Clare, Ireland, that business filings show has not turned a profit in years. The itinerary has been defended by aides, who said it was difficult to find a secure location on short notice after he moved his trip up so he could make a trip to Poland in Mr Trump’s stead. Mr Trump decided to skip a ceremony in Poland marking the 80th anniversary of the start of World War II in order to monitor Hurricane Dorian, and sent Mr Pence to attend on his behalf.
September 4, 2019Read More
The creation of a so-called “safe zone” in northeastern Syria has gotten off to good start, with U.S.-backed Kurdish-led forces pulling back from a small, initial area along the Turkish border, a Syrian Kurdish official said — but calm can only prevail…
September 4, 2019Read More
(Bloomberg) — Want the lowdown on what’s moving European markets in your inbox every morning? Sign up here.Good morning. Boris Johnson lost his first key vote as U.K. prime minister, a crucial U.S. data point missed expectations, the trade scenario is still not much clearer and another European rate setter is sounding a little hawkish. Here’s what’s moving markets.Losing Control Six weeks into the top job and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is staring into the abyss. Members of the House of Commons voted 328 to 301 Tuesday to take control of the parliamentary agenda, and now plan to put forward a draft law that would force Johnson to delay Brexit until Jan. 31. If that vote passes, the PM says he’ll call a general election. Here’s a roundup of the equity sectors and stocks to watch if he follows through on his pledge.ISM ShockerIf you were glued to events in Westminster yesterday, you might have missed it. But from a global markets perspective, something possibly even bigger was happening, as a key U.S. factory gauge unexpectedly contracted for the first time since 2016. The Institute for Supply Management’s purchasing managers index was weaker than all forecasts in a Bloomberg survey of economists, falling below 50 to indicate the manufacturing economy is shrinking. The dollar tumbled, and it failed to recover overnight. Lacking AnswersInvestors aren’t yet getting the trade clarity they seek. U.S. President Donald Trump warned China on Tuesday that any trade deal will be much tougher on the Asian nation if it happens after he wins the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Meanwhile, China’s largest technology company, Huawei Technologies Co., was in focus again, accusing Washington of orchestrating a campaign to intimidate its employees and launching cyber-attacks to infiltrate its internal network. The recent tariff fallout has led some economists to cut their forecasts for Chinese economic growth in 2020 to below 6%.Asia MixedAsian stocks were mixed Wednesday on low volumes amid focus on the ISM number. The euro was steady as European Central Bank policy maker Francois Villeroy de Galhau added to skepticism over the need for renewed asset purchases and in Italy, Prime Minister-designate Giuseppe Conte is set to form the next government after getting the backing of supporters of the Five Star Movement. Oil futures in New York edged higher after closing 2.1% lower on Tuesday.Coming Up…Bank of England Governor Mark Carney’s appearance before the Treasury Committee today could be one of his last chances to publicly address lawmakers before the Halloween Brexit deadline. On the data front, we await the services purchasing managers’ index from the euro area and the U.K. French aerospace and defense firm Dassault Aviation SA and U.K. home-builder Barratt Developments Plc are among companies scheduled to report earnings.What We’ve Been ReadingThis is what’s caught our eye over the past 24 hours.South Korea’s imports of Japanese beer plunge amid feud. Pence under fire for staying at Trump’s golf resort. One year on from the White House resistance op-ed. Are laid-off bankers abandoning expensive bikes? The Ugandan pop-star trying to topple the president. Your next holiday might be in Saudi Arabia. Bahamas asks jet-ski owners to help with post-Dorian rescues. Like Bloomberg’s Five Things? Subscribe for unlimited access to trusted, data-based journalism in 120 countries around the world and gain expert analysis from exclusive daily newsletters, The Bloomberg Open and The Bloomberg Close.Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can’t find anywhere else. Learn more.To contact the author of this story: Joe Easton in London at [email protected] contact the editor responsible for this story: Phil Serafino at [email protected] more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
September 4, 2019Read More
Prime Minister Boris Johnson headed into a fresh Brexit showdown in parliament on Wednesday after being dealt a stinging defeat over his promise to get Britain out of the EU at any cost next month. The Conservative leader said he wanted an early gener…
September 4, 2019Read More
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani gave European powers another two months to save a 2015 nuclear deal on Wednesday, but warned that Tehran was still preparing for further significant breaches of the agreement if diplomatic efforts failed. Rouhani said t…
September 4, 2019Read More
(Bloomberg) — Welcome to the Brussels Edition, Bloomberg’s daily briefing on what matters most in the heart of the European Union. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every weekday morning.Incoming European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde wi…
September 4, 2019Read More
Corey Lewandowski, President Trump’s former campaign manager, is echoing his onetime boss as he weighs a run for the Senate in New Hampshire. Some Republicans are shuddering.
September 4, 2019Read More
(Bloomberg Opinion) — Last March, after the attempt to poison the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, U.K., it took the British government only a week to accuse Russia of being responsible; by the 10th day after the crime, it was already expelling Russian diplomats. Now, the same length of time after a very similar event in Berlin, the German government is reacting very differently.The victim of the Aug. 23 attack, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili (or Changoschwili, as it’s spelled in German), was an ethnic Chechen from Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge region who had arrived in Germany via Ukraine in 2015. After several attempts on his life in the former Soviet Union, he was looking for a safer place to call home. He applied for asylum in Berlin, home to a large Chechen diaspora, and was going through an appeal process after being rejected. Khangoshvili had been a field commander against the Russian army during the second Chechen war in the 2000s, and he’d attempted to assemble a force to fight the Russians again when they invaded Georgia in 2008. It’s unclear whether any formal criminal proceedings existed against him in Russia. At any rate, he wasn’t in Interpol’s Red Notice database as someone whom Russia actively sought.The person held by German police on charges of killing him had arrived from Russia under pretty mysterious circumstances. According to information jointly obtained by the German weekly Der Spiegel, the Russian investigative site the Insider, and the U.K.-based investigative outfit Bellingcat, the man going by the name Vadim Sokolov received a Russian passport on July 19, applied for a French visa 10 days later, received it within a day and traveled to France on July 31. The passport reportedly isn’t registered in any Russian database, which, under normal circumstances, would have made it impossible for Sokolov to leave the country. It’s also unclear how he got the French visa so quickly, especially after providing a non-existent residence address in St. Petersburg.In any case, after flying from Moscow to Paris, he traveled to Berlin. There, he allegedly rode up to Khangoshvili on an electric bicycle in a public park, shot him three times, twice in the head, then disposed of his Glock handgun, wig and bike in the Spree River. Two teenagers saw him at it and called the police, who detained him within minutes.Russian President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, has denied any connection between the Russian government and the Berlin murder. But the suspect’s passport shenanigans are reminiscent of those Bellingcat and the Insider found in the case of Skripal’s ham-handed poisoners, identified by the investigative outfits as military intelligence officers Anatoly Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin.There is one detail that doesn’t feel quite right for a Russian intelligence operation: Sokolov has tattoos, which are taboo for intelligence officers in Russia. Still, Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian security issues at the Royal United Services Institute in London, doesn’t think it would be impossible for a Russian spy service to use a freelancer on a job like the Khangoshvili hit. He noted on his blog that the FSB, Russia’s domestic intelligence, “has form hiring gangsters to kill Chechens.” The Khangoshvili execution doesn’t come out of the blue. Russia has been suspected of ordering the killings of former Chechen fighters in Turkey, Austria, the United Arab Emirates and the U.K. Two Russian intelligence officers were convicted of killing a prominent Chechen in Qatar and later extradited to Moscow. Russia almost certainly has a covert program to eliminate the separatists Putin memorably promised in 1999 to “ice” under any circumstances, “even in the toilet if that’s where we catch them.” Though Khangoshvili was never a major warlord, he was influential in the strategic Pankisi area. And he’s said to have been close to Shamil Basaev, at one time Russia’s public enemy No. 1; this alone would likely put him on the list of the Kremlin’s most hated enemies. (Basaev died in a mysterious explosion in 2006.)If Khangoshvili was killed because either the Kremlin or Chechnya’s current strongman, Ramzan Kadyrov, wanted him gone, his assassination is no less outrageous than the attempt on Skripal’s life. Though the method was less exotic than using a chemical weapon, a shooting in a public park is also a violent, dangerous action on a European country’s soil. Skripal is a U.K. citizen and Khangoshvili wasn’t a German one – but that’s a bureaucratic difference when it comes to murder. Still, even though Germany knows at least as much and likely more about Khangoshvili’s murder today than the U.K. knew about the attempted poisoning of Skripal a week after that crime, the government is curiously silent about the incident. Why?Possibly because Chancellor Angela Merkel doesn’t need a public spat with Russia right now, something former British Prime Minister Theresa May likely welcomed last spring. May was then in the midst of largely unsuccessful Brexit negotiations, and used the Skripal case to appeal to the U.K.’s alliances with European countries and the U.S., and to unite Britons around something, namely outrage about the insolent Russian action on their soil.Merkel was quick to back May then, and she’s no Putinversteher (a pejorative meaning roughly “Putin Understander”). But, as a mediator in Ukrainian-Russian talks on eastern Ukraine, she’s helping arrange a summit on the issue that could bring the first signs of progress since 2015. In addition, Russia is about three-quarters done building the NordStream 2 natural gas pipeline to northern Germany, which her government is trying to protect from possible U.S. sanctions. A diplomatic flare-up with Russia would put her in a hard-to-defend position if Washington steps up pressure on the controversial project.Germany has admitted thousands of Chechens opposed to Russian control of their homeland. But they can hardly hope to get much public support from the government over Khangoshvili’s murder. Anti-immigrant sentiment is still running high in Germany; if Merkel raised a stink about the killing, all she would get in response are questions about the wisdom of letting in this particular group of asylum seekers. So, a standard police investigation is going on. A foreigner is accused of killing a foreigner. Things like that happen in Berlin from time to time.To contact the author of this story: Leonid Bershidsky at [email protected] contact the editor responsible for this story: Tobin Harshaw at [email protected] column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Leonid Bershidsky is Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion website Slon.ru.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
September 4, 2019Read More
Recent Comments