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Kashkari says yield curve shows Fed may have gone too far

FILE PHOTO: Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari speaks during an interview at Reuters in New York
FILE PHOTO: Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari speaks during an interview at Reuters in New York February 17, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

March 29, 2019

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari said on Friday that the yield curve, which inverted earlier this week, is an important signal that may be signaling the Fed has tightened policy too far.

In an interview on Fox Business Network, Kashkari said that while he opposed the Fed’s recent rate increases, a recession for the United States is not his base case this year, though the risks are elevated. “A big question mark that we wrestle with is what interest rate represents neutral… I do think it’s giving us feedback on where neutral is. Have we gone above neutral? I still don’t think we have but it’s certainly possible and I don’t think we should be at a contractionary stance.”

(Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Source: OANN

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The Latest: Mother, child saved from bank fire in Paris riot

The Latest on yellow vest protests in France (all times local):

2:40 p.m.

A bank has been set ablaze as French yellow vest protesters clash with police in Paris and firefighters had to rescue a mother and her child as the fire threatened to engulf their floor.

Florian Lointier, spokesman for Paris' firefighters, told The Associated Press that 11 people sustained light injuries Saturday in the blaze, including two firefighters.

The fire in the bank, which was on the ground floor of a seven-story residential building near the Champs-Elysees Avenue, was later extinguished. Lointier said a mother and her child were saved from the flames on the second floor and other residents were safely evacuated.

French yellow vest protesters are rioting in a 18th straight weekend of demonstrations against President Emmanuel Macron.

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12:15 p.m.

Large plumes of smoke are rising above Paris' landmark Champs-Elysees avenue as French yellow vest protesters set life-threatening fires, smashed up luxury stores and clashed with police in a 18th straight weekend of demonstrations against President Emmanuel Macron.

Police tried to contain the demonstrators Saturday with tear gas and water cannons. Fire trucks rushed and extinguished two burning newspaper kiosks that had been set ablaze. Several protesters posed for a photo in front of a kiosk's charred remains.

The violence started when protesters threw smoke bombs and other objects at officers along the famed avenue in the French capital.

The violence comes after a two-month national debate that Macron organized to respond to protesters' concerns about sinking living standards, high unemployment, stagnant wages and general income inequality.

Source: Fox News World

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Head of Iran’s Quds forces says Zarif in charge of foreign policy: Fars news

FILE PHOTO: Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif delivers his statement, during the Geneva Conference on Afghanistan, at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva
FILE PHOTO: Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif delivers his statement, during the Geneva Conference on Afghanistan, at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, November 28, 2018. Salvatore Di Nolfi/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

February 27, 2019

LONDON (Reuters) – A senior Revolutionary Guards commander said on Wednesday Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was the main person in charge of foreign policy and he was supported by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Zarif tendered his resignation two days ago but President Hassan Rouhani has not accepted it yet.

“Mr Zarif is in charge of the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic, and has always been supported by the top officials,” Qassem Soleimani, head of the Quds Force — the extraterritorial branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – was quoted as saying by Fars news agency.

(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Editing by Paul Tait)

Source: OANN

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Italy’s drive to join China’s Belt and Road hits pot holes

FILE PHOTO: Chinese President Xi Jinping attends a news conference at the end of the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing
FILE PHOTO: Chinese President Xi Jinping attends a news conference at the end of the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, China May 15, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Lee/File Photo

March 15, 2019

By Crispian Balmer

ROME (Reuters) – The ancient Silk Road was a network of trading routes that stretched from China to Italy, transporting goods, skills and ideas half way around the world.

Jump forward two millennia and Italy now wants to play a pivotal role in the new Silk Road being created by Chinese President Xi Jinping. But joining the latest incarnation is proving controversial and risky for Rome’s modern-day masters.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte plans to sign a preliminary accord when Xi visits Rome next week, hooking Italy up to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – a colossal, multi-billion-dollar project designed to improve Beijing’s trade reach.

Italy’s drive to be the first Group of Seven industrialized nation to join the ambitious venture has angered Washington and alarmed Brussels, raising fears of a sellout of sensitive technologies and the handover of critical infrastructure.

With ports that offer easy gateways into Europe’s richest markets, Italy is a promising and prestigious prize for China.

In return for its endorsement, Italy’s government hopes for a boost in exports and investment that will lift its anemic economy out of its third recession in a decade.

But diplomatic analysts and political foes say Rome has not weighed the geopolitical risks, failed to consult with its Western partners and underestimated growing concern about China’s burgeoning global aspirations.

“I am afraid that up until now we have handled this in too amateurish a fashion, without any real coordination,” Lucio Caracciolo, director of the influential Limes geopolitical review, told Reuters.

“My fear is that in the end we will lose on both counts, getting nothing substantial from China while the United States retaliates against us for having got too close to Beijing.”

ITALIAN INERTIA

Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio, who leads the populist 5-Star Movement, has spearheaded the pro-Beijing policy, setting up a China Task Force within the industry ministry that has the stated aimed of making Italy a “privileged partner” in BRI.

He has visited China twice in eight months and effectively sidelined the foreign ministry on one of the most sensitive diplomatic issues of the day.

Di Maio’s task force is led by junior industry minister Michele Geraci, who lived in China for 10 years before entering government in 2018. Neither he, Di Maio nor Conte had any experience of international diplomacy before last year.

Geraci speaks Chinese and fervently backs closer ties with Beijing, saying Italy has fallen behind its partners.

“When I returned to Italy I found a certain inertia when it came to China,” Geraci, a former economics professor, told Reuters last month. “We need to play catch-up.”

According to Eurostat, Germany exported 93.8 billion euros ($106 billion) of goods to China in 2018, with Britain next on the list exporting 23.4 billion euros, France third with 20.8 billion euros and Italy fourth on 13.17 billion euros.

“There is huge potential there that other countries are already taking advantage of,” said Geraci.

But just as Italy adopts its new position, the rest of Europe seems to be having second thoughts.

Earlier this week, the European Commission branded Beijing a “systemic rival” and called on European Union leaders to back its ideas to curb Chinese state-owned enterprises.

The European Union has grown increasingly frustrated by what it sees as the slowness of China to open its economy and by a surge of Chinese takeovers in critical EU sectors, accusing it of distorting local markets.

Rome says such concerns should not stop it forging closer ties and points to the fact that 13 EU countries have already signed memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with China, including Hungary, Poland, Greece and Portugal.

However, the biggest EU exporters to China have not signed MOUs and those that have do not have much to show for it, said Lucrezia Poggetti, a research associate with the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin.

“They have been frustrated that vaguely phrased Chinese promises for economic opportunities have largely failed to materialize,” Poggetti told Reuters.

“Signing up to the BRI without taking into account geopolitical considerations and without making concrete demands, hoping that one day you will get something in return economically, is very naive,” she said.

AMERICAN ANGER

The Belt and Road project lies at the heart of China’s foreign policy strategy and was incorporated into the ruling Communist Party constitution in 2017, reflecting Xi’s desire for his country to take a global leadership role.

The United States, locked in a trade war with Beijing, worries that Xi’s initiative is designed to bolster China’s political and military influence, and could be used to spread technologies capable of spying on Western interests.

“No need for Italian government to lend legitimacy to China’s infrastructure vanity project,” a spokesman for the White House’s national security advisers said on Saturday in a rare public rebuke for one of Washington’s staunchest allies.

Refusing to back down, Italy has nonetheless tried to reassure the United States, releasing a draft of the MOU to show it offers up no firm commitments and makes no reference to the sort of technology transfers feared by Washington.

Likewise eager to show that its pro-China policy is bearing fruit, the government has leaked reports that 50 agreements might be signed during Xi’s March 21-23 visit, including deals with oil company Eni, gas infrastructure firm Snam and shipbuilder Fincantieri.

Italy also hopes to unveil projects to develop trade through its ports of Genoa, Trieste and Palermo. Although China’s COSCO Shipping has bought control of the largest port in Greece, Italy says it offers better entry points into Europe.

“There is still much work to be done on the China deals, including what money is involved,” said a business source involved in the negotiations, who declined to be named.

A welter of lucrative contracts would represent a badly needed victory for Di Maio, who is not only battling to soothe U.S. tempers, but is also struggling to sell the deal to his coalition partner, the far-right League.

Even though Geraci is a member of the League, the group appeared blindsided when news of an imminent deal emerged last week, with party chief Matteo Salvini warning against the “colonialization” of Italy by China.

“We are reviewing it,” Salvini, who serves as joint deputy prime minister with Di Maio, said on Thursday. “Before allowing someone to invest in the ports of Trieste or Genoa, I would think about it not once but a hundred times.”

(Additional reporting by Stefano Bernabei; editing by David Clarke)

Source: OANN

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McCabe reveals the 'one thing' that stood out from his fateful call with Flynn

In his new book, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe offers extensive new details of investigators' fateful January 2017 interview with former national security adviser Michael Flynn at the White House -- a breezy conversation which began, according to McCabe, with all the urgency of a "playdate."

McCabe wrote in “The Threat,” released Tuesday, that "one thing [Flynn] said stands out in my memory" -- namely that "when I told him that people were curious" about his conversations with the then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, Flynn replied, "You know what I said, because you guys were probably listening."

Without confirming Flynn's suspicions, McCabe wrote: "I had to wonder, as events played out: If you thought we were listening, why would you lie?"

According to McCabe, the interview was "very odd" because "it seemed like [Flynn] was telling the truth" to the two agents who interviewed him, including since-fired FBI agent Peter Strzok.  Flynn "had a very good recollection of events, which he related chronologically and lucidly," did not appear to be "nervous or sweating," and did not look "side to side" -- all of which would have been "behavioral signs of deception."

McCabe wrote that Flynn seemed "completely normal" -- even when, on three occasions, Flynn looked at the window and told agents, "What a beautiful black sky."

STRZOK'S TEXTS FROM MUELLER PROBE COMPLETELY WIPED -- NOTHING TO SEE HERE, IT OFFICIAL SAYS

McCabe maintained that Flynn made that memorable comment three times -- first, at "noon," then an hour later, and then one more time shortly after that. However, McCabe's timeline appeared to contradict the sentencing memorandum filed late last year by Flynn's attorneys, citing government documents.

The memorandum, which was not challenged by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team, asserted that McCabe had called Flynn to set up the interview at 12:35 p.m. on Jan. 24, 2017, and that agents arrived at the White House at 2:15 p.m. -- more than two hours after McCabe claimed that Flynn first made the comment to the agents about the "beautiful black sky."

McCabe was fired last year for multiple violations of the FBI's ethics code.

In a post-interview meeting in McCabe's office, the agents "weren't saying they believed [Flynn], and they weren't saying they didn't believe him." McCabe said the interviewers "struck me as being mainly surprised by the encounter" and "the difficulty of resolving their observations," because "what he said was in absolute, direct conflict with the information that we had."

Setting up the interview, McCabe wrote, was effortless, as Flynn brushed off the need for a lawyer to be present. In a bombshell court filing last December, Flynn's legal team noted that McCabe had suggested the Justice Department would need to get involved if Flynn sought to involve the White House Counsel or a personal lawyer -- a claim McCabe confirmed in his book.

MCCABE DISCUSSES POTENTIAL USE OF 25TH AMENDMENT TO REMOVE TRUMP

"The tone was as friendly, and as detached, as if we were planning a playdate for our kids," McCabe wrote.

The former FBI deputy director noted that then-Acting Attorney General Sally Yates thought there was "good reason to believe Flynn had lied to [Vice President Mike Pence] concerning his communications with Kislyak as of Jan. 12. Pence had appeared on national television and vouched for Flynn, saying that Flynn had explained that his communications with Kislyak did not, in any way, involve the sanctions that had been imposed by the Obama administration.

Michael Flynn arrives at federal court in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2018. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Michael Flynn arrives at federal court in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2018. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Nevertheless, McCabe said, the FBI decided that while it seemed "plausible" that Flynn was liable to be blackmailed by Russia, the concern "did not seem imminent enough to warrant disrupting the ongoing investigative work." The FBI did, however, respond to the DOJ's "sense of urgency" by "hastening the FBI's own work," including the Flynn interview.

MCCABE ALSO RAILS AGAINST OBAMA AG LORETTA LYNCH IN BOOK, SAYS SHE SHOULD'VE RECUSED AFTER TARMAC FIASCO

During the interview, Flynn told the agents "not really" when asked if he had sought to convince Kislyak not to escalate a brewing fight with the U.S. over sanctions imposed by the Obama administration, according to a FD-302 witness report released last year.

Flynn issued other apparently equivocal responses to FBI agents' questions, and at various points suggested that such conversations might have happened or that he could not recall them if they did, according to the 302. The 302 indicated that Flynn was apparently aware his communications had been monitored, and at several points he thanks the FBI agents for reminding him of some of his conversations with Russian officials.

After the interview, Yates went to the White House to explain her concerns, McCabe wrote.

Flynn was not charged with wrongdoing as a result of the substance of his calls with Kislyak -- and a Washington Post article published one day before his White House interview with the agents, citing FBI sources, publicly revealed that the FBI had wiretapped Flynn's calls and cleared him of any criminal conduct.

CLICK TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Facing other potential charges related to his overseas lobbying work, Flynn, who sold his home in Virginia last year as his legal bills mounted, declared in his guilty plea nearly 11 months later that his comments on the issue were a knowing lie to the FBI agents.

At a fiery hearing in December, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan suggested Flynn should be tried for treason before walking back his comments. He set a status conference for Flynn's sentencing on Mar. 13 -- a significant delay he said was necessary to assess Flynn's cooperation with a separate ongoing criminal case involving foreign lobbying violations in Turkey.

The date of Flynn's ultimate sentencing is undecided, pending that status conference.

Also in the book, McCabe rails against President Obama’s attorney general, Loretta Lynch, for her decisions and actions while the FBI investigated Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during the 2016 campaign, saying Lynch should have been recused from the probe and a special counsel should have been appointed.

McCabe said Lynch, after the outcry over the meeting, should have stepped away from the probe – which was code-named "Midyear Exam" by the FBI.

“She should have recused herself from Midyear at that point,” McCabe wrote. “She did not — she made things worse.”

Fox News' Alex Pappas contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Cyprus probes ‘unprecedented’ killings by serial killer suspect

Rescuers search a mine shaft at a mine where two women were found dead, near the village of Mitsero in Cyprus
Rescuers search a mine shaft at a mine where two women were found dead, near the village of Mitsero in Cyprus, April 21, 2019. Picture taken April 21, 2019. REUTERS/Stringer

April 22, 2019

ATHENS (Reuters) – Police in Cyprus are probing the actions of a possible serial killer after two women were found murdered and dumped in a mine shaft and a third, a six-year-old child, is still missing.

The victims were discovered in the space of a week at an abandoned mine about 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) west of the capital Nicosia.

One has been identified as a 39-year-old woman from the Philippines who disappeared in May, 2018 along with her six-year-old daughter.

A second victim, found late on Saturday, is thought to be a 28-year-old from the Philippines who was also reported missing last year, though has not been definitively identified.

A 35-year-old career officer with the Cypriot army is in custody on suspicion of killing all three.

“This is a form of crime unprecedented for the norms of Cyprus. It’s premature to assess the extent of this crime,” police chief Zacharias Chrysostomou told reporters.

There was an intensive search at the mine shaft, which is submerged in water, and at a reservoir in the area on Monday morning.

Both women had worked in Cyprus, which has a sizeable Filipino population.

In court hearings, police said the army officer was suspected of having approached the women on an online dating site.

Campaigners say police ignored fears expressed for their safety when they went missing last year. One campaigner, Louis Koutroukides, said police questioned his motives and suggested the 39-year-old and her child may have moved to the north of the divided island.

“If they believed me when I went to the police things would have turned out differently,” he told state TV.

Chrysostomou said police had “every intention” of investigating any perceived shortcomings and would assign responsibility where due.

(Reporting by Michele Kambas, editing by Ed Osmond)

Source: OANN

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'RUN!': NZ shooting victims recount horror, mourn the lost

They had walked that once innocuous stretch of sidewalk side-by-side so many times. Every Friday, Yasir Amin and his dad had ambled along the path toward the mosque where they prayed together in peace, a routine so serene and so ordinary that Amin was nearly blinded by confusion when the man drove up with the gun.

Amin and his father, Muhammad Amin Nasir, were just 200 meters from the Al Noor mosque on Friday when everything went wrong. They had no idea that a white supremacist had just slaughtered at least 41 people inside the mosque's hallowed halls, or that more people would be killed at a second mosque soon after. All they knew was that a car that had been driving by had suddenly stopped. And a man was leaning out the car's window, pointing a gun at them.

"RUN!" Amin screamed.

The bullets began to fly. The men began to run. But at 67, Nasir couldn't keep up with his 35-year-old son. And so he fell behind, by two or three fateful steps.

Amid the blasts, Amin turned to scream at his father to get down on the ground. But his father was already falling.

The gunman drove away. A pool of blood poured from Nasir's body.

"Daddy!" Amin screamed. "Daddy! DADDY!"

Amin had never seen anyone shot before. He left Pakistan for Christchurch five years ago, and was embraced by a multicultural city that felt like the safest place on earth. His father, who farms vegetables, wheat and rice back in Pakistan, also fell for the leafy green city at the bottom of the world.

And so Nasir began making routine visits to see his son, sometimes spending up to six months in New Zealand before returning to Pakistan to tend to his crops. Nasir had been in town only three weeks for his most recent visit when he was shot three times on the street of the city he had adopted as a second home.

From the ground, Nasir stared up at his son, unable to speak, tears running down his face. Amin ran to his car to grab his phone and called the police. Officers quickly arrived, and soon the father and son were in an ambulance racing to the hospital.

Nasir had always been more than just a dad to Amin. When Amin was just 6, his mother died, leaving Nasir to raise him along with his four siblings. Nasir became both a father and a mother, a reliable source of laughter with a huge heart. He embraced Amin's new community of New Zealand friends as if they were his own family. And in turn, the community embraced Nasir — so much so, that it initially confused him.

The elder man was baffled by the constant chipper greetings of "Hello!" he received whenever he dropped Amin's children off at school. Why do they keep saying that to me? he asked his son. Amused, Amin explained that the locals were simply trying to welcome him, their own version of the Arabic peace greeting, "As-Salaam-Alaikum."

Amin chuckled at the memory on Saturday, one day after he brought his father to the hospital. Nasir remains in an induced coma with critical injuries, though his condition has stabilized. The bullets pierced his shoulder, chest and back.

Like many other victims struggling to cope with the horrific events of Friday that left 49 dead, Amin made his way to Hagley College near the hospital. The college was serving as a community center for the grieving, and members of the public poured in with meals and drinks, doling out hugs and words of support to those in need.

Outside the college, Javed Dadabhai mourned for his gentle cousin, 35-year-old Junaid Mortara, who is believed to have died in the first mosque attack. As of Saturday, many families were still waiting to find out if their loved ones were alive.

"He's very punctual, so he would've been there at a dime. He would've been there at 1:30," Dadabhai said, a reference to the time of the attack, which began soon after.

His cousin was the breadwinner of the family, supporting his mother, his wife and their three children, ages 1 to 5. Mortara had inherited his father's convenience store, which was covered in flowers on Saturday.

Mortara was an avid cricket fan, and would always send a sparring text with relatives over cricket matches when Canterbury was facing Auckland.

"The sad thing is he was actually due to come up to Auckland next weekend for a family wedding," Dadabhai said. "We were due to have a catch-up. But I never knew a more shy, soft-spoken kind of person. ... As cousins, you'd kind of make fun of the fact when someone's so gentle like that, but he's leaving a huge void."

The long wait for information on the status of the dead was particularly painful because Muslim tradition calls for burials within 24 hours of a person's death.

Dadabhai said the community was trying to be patient, because they understood there was a crime scene involved. "But it's hard, because until that happens, the grieving process doesn't really begin," he said.

For some families, patience had worn thin by Saturday, and frustration erupted as they waited to find out the status of their relatives.

Ash Mohammed, 32, of Christchurch, pushed through a police barricade outside the Al Noor mosque Saturday morning, desperate for information, before police held him back.

"We just want to know if they are alive or dead," he could be heard telling an officer at the barricade.

In an interview later, Mohammed said he was desperate for information about his brothers, Farhaj Ashashan, 30, and Ramazvora Ashashan, 31, and his father, Asif Vora, 56, who were all at the mosque on Friday.

"We just want to know, are they alive or not alive so we can start the funerals," he said. "The hospital's not helping, cops not helping. Somebody has to help get the answers."

As Amin waited and worried over the fate of his father, he was also focused on trying to protect the youngest members of his family. He and his wife have so far tried to shield their children from hearing about the attack. But on Friday, Amin's wife briefly turned on the news and an image of an ambulance popped onto the screen. Their 5-year-old son immediately dove under a table, assuming there was an earthquake. Christchurch, no stranger to disaster, suffered a devastating quake in 2011 that left 185 dead.

Though his relatives back in Pakistan now fret that New Zealand is too dangerous, Amin believes Christchurch is the safest place in the world. And he hopes that his funny, fiercely loving father will pull through, so they can immerse themselves once again in the friendly hellos and the peaceful Friday prayers they have long cherished.

Like Amin, Farid Ahmed refuses to turn his back on his adopted home. Ahmed lost his 45-year-old wife, Husna Ahmed, in the Al Noor mosque attack, when they split up to go to the bathroom. The gunman livestreamed the massacre on the internet, and Ahmed later saw a video of his wife being shot dead. A police officer confirmed she had passed away.

Despite the horror, Ahmed — originally from Bangladesh — still considers New Zealand a great country.

"I believe that some people, purposely, they are trying to break down the harmony we have in New Zealand with the diversity," he said. "But they are not going to win. They are not going to win. We will be harmonious."

___

Associated Press videojournalist Haruka Nuga contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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FILE PHOTO: Supporters of the Spain's far-right party VOX wave Spanish flags as they attend an electoral rally ahead of general elections in the Andalusian capital of Seville
FILE PHOTO: Supporters of the Spain’s far-right party VOX wave Spanish flags as they attend an electoral rally ahead of general elections in the Andalusian capital of Seville, Spain April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Marcelo del Pozo/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By John Stonestreet and Belén Carreño

MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s Vox party, aligned to a broader far-right movement emerging across Europe, has become the focus of speculation about last minute shifts in voting intentions since official polling for Sunday’s national election ended four days ago.

No single party is anywhere near securing a majority, and chances of a deadlocked parliament and a second election are high.

Leaders of the five parties vying for a role in government get final chances to pitch for power at rallies on Friday evening, before a campaign characterized by appeals to voters’ hearts rather than wallets ends at midnight.

By tradition, the final day before a Spanish election is politics-free.

Two main prizes are still up for grabs in the home straight. One concerns which of the two rival left and right multi-party blocs gets more votes.

The other is whether Vox could challenge the mainstream conservative PP for leadership of the latter bloc, which media outlets with access to unofficial soundings taken since Monday suggest could be starting to happen.

The right’s loose three-party alliance is led by the PP, the traditional conservative party that has alternated in office with outgoing Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialists since Spain’s return to democracy in the 1970s.

The PP stands at around 20 percent, with center-right Ciudadanos near 14 percent and Vox around 11 percent, according to a final poll of polls in daily El Pais published on Monday.

Since then, however, interest in Vox – which will become the first far-right party to sit in parliament since 1982 – has snowballed.

It was founded in 2013, part of a broader anti-establishment, far-right movement that has also spread across – among others – Italy, France and Germany.

While it is careful to distance itself from the ideology of late dictator Francisco Franco, Vox’s signature policies include repealing laws banning Franco-era symbols and on gender-based violence, and shifting power away from Spain’s regional governments.

TRENDING

According to a Google trends graphic, Vox has generated more than three times more search inquiries than any other Spanish political party in the past week.

Reasons could include a groundswell of vocal activist support at Vox rallies in Madrid and Valencia, and its exclusion from two televised debates between the main party leaders, on the grounds of it having no deputies yet in parliament.

Conservative daily La Vanguardia called its enforced absence from Monday’s and Tuesday’s debates “a gift from heaven”, while left-wing Eldiario.es suggested the PP was haemorrhaging votes to Vox in rural areas.

Ignacio Jurado, politics lecturer at the University of York, agreed the main source of additional Vox votes would be disaffected PP supporters, and called the debate ban – whose impact he said was unclear – wrong.

“This is a party polling over 10 percent and there are people interested in what it says. So we lose more than we win in not having them (in the debates),” he said

For Jose Fernandez-Albertos, political scientist at Spanish National Research Council CSIC, Vox is enjoying the novelty effect that propelled then new, left-wing arrival Podemos to 20 percent of the vote in 2015.

“While it’s unclear how to interpret the (Google) data, what we do know is that it’s better to be popular and to be a newcomer, and that Vox will benefit in some form,” he said.

For now, the chances of Vox taking a major role in government remain slim, however.

The El Pais survey put the Socialists on around 30 percent, making them the frontrunners and likely to form a leftist bloc with Podemos, back down at around 14 percent.

The unofficial soundings suggest little change in the two parties’ combined vote, or the total vote of the rightist bloc.

That makes it unlikely that either bloc will win a majority on Sunday, triggering horse-trading with smaller parties favoring Catalan independence – the single most polarizing issues during campaigning – that could easily collapse into fresh elections.

(Election graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2ENugtw)

(Reporting by John Stonestreet and Belen Carreno, Editing by William Maclean)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: The logo of the OPEC is seen at OPEC's headquarters in Vienna
FILE PHOTO: The logo of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries at OPEC’s headquarters in Vienna, Austria December 5, 2018. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/File Photo

April 26, 2019

JOINT BASE ANDREWS, Md. (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday he called the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and told the cartel to lower oil prices.

“Gasoline prices are coming down. I called up OPEC, I said you’ve got to bring them down. You’ve got to bring them down,” Trump told reporters.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Source: OANN

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Sonia Bompastor, director of the Olympique Lyonnais womenÕs Youth Academy, leads a training at the OL Academy near Lyon
Sonia Bompastor, director of the Olympique Lyonnais womenÕs Youth Academy, leads a training at the OL Academy in Meyzieu near Lyon, France, April 16, 2019. REUTERS/Emmanuel Foudrot

April 26, 2019

By Julien Pretot

MEYZIEU, France (Reuters) – Olympique Lyonnais president Jean-Michel Aulas was wringing out his women’s team shirts in the locker room on a rainy London day eight years ago when he decided it was time to take gender equality more seriously.

It was halftime in their Champions League semi-final second leg against Arsenal at Meadow Park with 507 fans watching and Aulas realized that his players did not have a another kit for the second half.

“Next time, there will be a second set just like for the men, that’s how it’s going to work from now on,” he said.

Lyon have since won five Champions League titles to become the most successful women’s team in Europe and recently claimed a 13th consecutive domestic crown.

They visit Chelsea on Sunday in the second leg of their Champions League semi-final, with a fourth straight title in their sights.

At the heart of their achievements is a pervasive ethos that promotes gender equality throughout the club, starting in the youth academy.

In 2013, Aulas appointed former Lyon and France player Sonia Bompastor as head of the Women’s Academy — the female equivalent of one of France’s top youth set-ups that has produced players such as Karim Benzema, Alexandre Lacazette and Hatem Ben Arfa.

At the Youth Academy, girls and boys share the same facilities.

“Pitches, physiotherapy rooms are the same for all,” the 38-year-old Bompastor told Reuters.

As the girls train under the watch of former Lyon and France international Camille Abily, the screams of the boys practicing can be heard nearby.

The boys and girls also benefit from the same psychological support that includes hypnosis sessions and yoga.

“We have a ‘mental ability’ cell and the hypnotist acts on the girls’ subconscious, on their deeply held beliefs after observing them on and off the pitch,” Bompastor added.

SAME TREATMENT

One message the Academy staff are trying to convey is that girls are as good as boys.

“Women’s nature is such that we have low self-esteem. So self-esteem is a big topic for our girls,” said Bompastor.

This is not the case with the boys, she added.

“Some 14, 15-year-old boys still think they would beat our professional players, we tell them this would not be happening. We still need to work on those beliefs,” she said.

Female players also have to face questions that their male counterparts do not, Bompastor explained.

“In France there is a problem with the way women are considered, there are high aesthetic expectations. So we get heavy questions on femininity, intimate questions that men don’t get,” she said.

OL’s Academy has been held up as a shining example for others to follow, even in the U.S., where women’s soccer has a wider audience than in Europe.

“About one third of the (senior women’s) squad comes from the Academy, we have a good balance,” said Bompastor.

“I’m getting tons of requests from American universities and foreign clubs, who want to come and visit our facilities.”

‘ONE CLUB’

The salaries of the senior players is one area where there remains a large discrepancy between Lyon’s men’s and women’s teams.

While the three best-paid women players in the world are at Lyon with Ballon d’Or winner Ada Hegerberg earning 400,000 euros ($445,520) a year, this figure is dwarfed by the around 4 million euros earned annually by men’s player Memphis Depay.

There is, however, a level of interaction between the men’s and women’s players that is not present at many other clubs.

“When you talk about OL you talk about women and men, you talk about one club and you feel it when you are here or outside in the city,” Germany defender Carolin Simon told Reuters.

“We see it when we play in the big stadium. It’s not ‘normal’ for women’s football,” the 26-year-old, who joined the club last year, added.

Lyon’s female players also enjoy respect from their male counterparts, Simon said.

“It’s very cool, it’s a big honor to feel that it doesn’t matter if you are a professional man or woman. We talk with the men, there are handshakes, it’s a good atmosphere and it’s also why we are successful,” said Simon.

“The men respect us and it’s not just for the cameras.”

Her team mate, England’s Lucy Bronze, sees the men’s respect as key to improving women’s football.

“We might not be paid the same but they are just normal with us, they see us as footballers the same as they are,” Bronze told Reuters.

“Being at Lyon has really opened my eyes. To improve women’s football, it starts with having the respect of your male counterparts. It’s the biggest thing because they can influence so many people.”

(Reporting by Julien Pretot; Editing by Toby Davis)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: Ethiopian migrants, stranded in war-torn Yemen, sit on the ground of a detention site pending repatriation to their home country, in Aden, Yemen
FILE PHOTO: Ethiopian migrants, stranded in war-torn Yemen, sit on the ground of a detention site pending repatriation to their home country, in Aden, Yemen April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Fawaz Salman/File Photo

April 26, 2019

GENEVA (Reuters) – Yemeni authorities have rounded up about 3,000 irregular migrants, predominantly Ethiopians, in the south of the country, “creating an acute humanitarian situation,” the U.N. migration agency said on Friday.

“IOM is deeply concerned about the conditions in which the migrants are being held and is engaging with the authorities to ensure access to the detained migrants,” the International Organization for Migration said.

The migrants are held in open-air football stadiums and in a military camp, it said in a statement.

The detentions began on Sunday in the city of Aden and the neighboring province of Lahj, which are under the control of the internationally recognized government backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Iran-aligned Houthi rebels control Sanaa, the capital, and other major urban centers.

Both sides are under international diplomatic pressure to implement a United Nations-sponsored ceasefire deal agreed last year in Sweden and to prepare for a wider political dialogue that would end the four-year-old war.

Thousands of migrants arrive in Yemen every year, mostly from the Horn of Africa, driven by drought and unemployment at home and lured by the wages available in the Gulf.

(Writing by Maher Chmaytelli, Editing by William Maclean)

Source: OANN

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U.S. dollar notes are seen in this picture illustration
U.S. dollar notes are seen in this November 7, 2016 picture illustration. Picture taken November 7. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – Following are five big themes likely to dominate thinking of investors and traders in the coming week and the Reuters stories related to them.

1/DOLLAR JUGGERNAUT

The dollar has zipped to near two-year highs, leaving many scratching their heads. To many, it’s down to signs the U.S. economy is chugging ahead while the rest of the world loses steam. After all, Wall Street is busily scaling new peaks day after day.

Never mind the cause, the effect is stark. The euro has tumbled to 22-month lows against the dollar and investors are preparing for more, buying options to shield against further downside. Emerging-market currencies are also in pain, with Turkish lira and Argentine peso both sharply weaker.

Now U.S. data need to keep surprising on the upside or even just meet expectations. The International Monetary Fund sees U.S. growth at 2.3 percent this year. For Germany, the forecast is 0.8 percent. The U.S. economy’s rude health has given rise to speculation the Fed might resume raising interest rates. Unlikely. But as other countries — Canada, Sweden and Australia are the latest — hint at more policy easing, there seems to be one way the dollar can go. Up.

(GRAPHIC: Dollar outperforms G10 FX – https://tmsnrt.rs/2Dz17S5)

2/FED: UP OR DOWN?

Wall Street is near record highs and recession worries are receding, so as we mentioned above, investors might wonder if the Federal Reserve will start raising rates again.

Such a pivot is unlikely after the Fed killed off rate-rise expectations at its March meeting. And the latest Reuters poll all but puts to bed any risk of rates will go up this economic cycle, given inflation remains below the Fed’s alarm threshold and unemployment is the lowest in generations.

Before the March rate-pause announcement, a preponderance of economists penciled in one or more increases this year. But that has flipped. A majority of those surveyed April 22-24 see no further tightening through December and more are leaning toward a cut by the end of next year.

Indeed, interest rate futures imply Fed Funds will be below the current 2.25-2.50 percent target range by this December.

Recent positive consumer spending and exports data have eased market concerns of a sharp economic slowdown. But inflation probably needs to run hot for a long period to panic policymakers off their wait-and-see course.     

(GRAPHIC: Federal funds and the economy – https://tmsnrt.rs/2DzjTZz)

3/HEISEI TO REIWA

Next week ends three decades of Japan’s Heisei era. Heisei, or Achieving Peace, began in 1989 near the peak of a massive stock market bubble and closes with the country trapped in low growth, no inflation, and negative interest rates.

The new era that dawns on May 1 is called Reiwa, meaning Beautiful Harmony. It begins when Crown Prince Naruhito ascends the Chrysanthemum Throne. But do investors really want harmony? What they want to see is a bit of economic growth and inflation to shake up the status quo.

The Bank of Japan’s stimulus toolkit to revive a long-suffering economy is anything but harmonious and yet it’s set to stay. The central bank confirmed recently rates will stay near zero for a long time. But the coming days may not be harmonious or peaceful for currency markets. A 10-day Golden Week holiday kicks off on April 29 and investors are fretting over the risk of a “flash crash” – a violent currency spasm that can occur in times of thin trading turnover.

The year has already seen two yen spikes and many, including Japan’s housewife-trader brigade – so-called Mrs Watanabes – appear to have bought yen as the holiday approaches. Their short dollar/long yen positions recently reached record highs, stock exchange data showed.

(GRAPHIC: Japan stocks: from Hensei to Reiwa – https://tmsnrt.rs/2W6a7Fe)

4/EARNING TURNING

Quarterly earnings were supposed to be the worst in Europe in almost three years, but with a third of results in, things are looking a little rosier.

Two-thirds of companies’ results have beat expectations, and they point to earnings growth of 4.5 percent year-on-year. Financials have delivered the biggest surprises, according to analysis by Barclays.

That might just show how low expectations were. In fact, analysts are still taking a red pen to their estimates.

The latest I/B/E/S data from Refinitiv shows analysts on average expect first-quarter earnings-per-share for STOXX 600-listed companies to fall 4.2 percent. That would be their worst quarter since 2016 and down sharply from an estimated 3.4 percent just a week earlier.

Those estimates may end up being a little too bearish as earnings season goes on, quelling worries that Europe is heading toward a corporate recession.

GSK and Reckitt Benckiser will give the market a glimpse of the health of the consumer products market and spending on everything from toothpaste, washing powder and paracetamol.

(GRAPHIC: Earnings forecasts – https://tmsnrt.rs/2DuO2ZF)

5/WAITING FOR THE OLD LADY

Sterling has gone into the doldrums amid the Brexit delay and unproductive talks between the UK government and the opposition Labour party on a EU withdrawal deal. The resurgent dollar, meanwhile, has taken 2 percent off the pound in April. It is unlikely the Bank of England will be able to rouse it at its May 2 meeting.

Despite robust retail and jobs data of late, the economic picture is gloomy – 2019 growth is likely to be around 1.2 percent, the weakest since 2009, investment is down and Governor Mark Carney says business uncertainty is “through the roof”.

Indeed, expectations for an interest rate increase have been whittled down; Reuters polls forecast rates will not move until early 2020, a calendar quarter later than was forecast a month ago. The hunt for a new governor to replace Carney in October adds more uncertainty to the mix.

The recent run of UK data has fueled hopes of economic rebound. That’s put net hedge fund positions in the pound into positive territory for the first time in nearly a year. The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street might temper some of that optimism.

(GRAPHIC: Sterling positions – https://tmsnrt.rs/2XJwUXX)

(Reporting by Alden Bentley in New York, Vidya Ranganathan in Singapore; Karin Strohecker, Josephine Mason and Saikat Chatterjee in London; compiled by Sujata Rao; edited by Larry King)

Source: OANN

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