PODGORICA, Montenegro – Montenegro's defense ministry says the army has discovered drugs hidden on a navy training ship ahead of its planned journey to Turkey and Greece.
The ministry says the military police searched the Jadran, or the Adriatic, early Friday after learning that certain criminal gangs were planning to use it to smuggle drugs.
According to a statement from the ministry, dozens of kilograms (pounds) of suspected drugs were found during the search at the Tivat harbor and legal proceedings are underway.
The ship has been at the center of a dispute between the small Balkan country and neighboring Croatia, which claims ownership to it following the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.
It was not immediately clear when the 86-year-old ship will set off on the planned training trip with 42 students.
MARIETTA, Ga. – A police detective says a Georgia homeowner blamed an electrician for the death of his pets before shooting him.
News outlets report Cobb County police Detective Phil Stoddard testified in court Tuesday that a doorbell camera recorded the shooting by 68-year-old Larry Epstein. Stoddard says video shows Epstein approaching 37-year-old electrician Gordon Montcalm as Montcalm and another electrician prepared to leave the home this month.
He says Epstein can be heard saying "You killed my pets" before shooting Montcalm several times. Montcalm escaped to a nearby home and survived.
The other electrician, 21-year-old Jake Horne, was later found with a gunshot wound to his head. He was taken to a hospital and died.
Stoddard says there's no evidence of pets being killed. Epstein's defense has requested a mental evaluation.
FILE PHOTO: Indonesia's presidential candidate for the upcoming general election Joko Widodo takes pictures with his supporters during his first campaign rally at a stadium in Serang, Banten province, Indonesia, March 24, 2019. REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan/File Photo
April 12, 2019
JAKARTA (Reuters) – Five days ahead of Indonesia’s general election, President Joko Widodo retains a double-digit lead over his challenger, retired general Prabowo Subianto, three opinion polls published this week show.
The election in the world’s third-biggest democracy is a repeat of the 2014 contest, and the incumbent has been comfortably ahead in most surveys after winning by almost six percentage points last time around.
Three recent surveys by Indopolling, Roy Morgan and Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting (SMRC) showed Widodo likely to win between 54 and 57 percent of the vote.
Prabowo, as he is usually known as in Indonesia, has between 32 and 37 percent of the vote, the surveys conducted in the first weeks of April show.
The SMRC survey published on Friday showed 6.3 percent of voters remain undecided, down from as many as 25 percent several months ago.
The opposition has disputed the findings of surveys putting it behind, saying big turnouts at its rallies showed it had far stronger support, as well as its own survey.
It has also claimed to have uncovered data irregularities affecting millions of people in the election rolls and vowed to take legal action, or use “people power”, if its complaints were not resolved.
Several videos appeared online this week appearing to show thousands of voting papers stuffed in bags at a warehouse in neighboring Malaysia, with many seeming to have been already marked.
One showed people holding up ballots, saying they were marked in favor of Widodo, as well as for a member of one of the political parties backing him.
Arief Budiman, chairman of Indonesia’s election panel, said he would send a team to Malaysia to investigate, along with officials from the election supervisory agency.
“There’s no decision on whether (overseas) voting will be postponed in Malaysia,” he said by text message.
The agency had received a report from Malaysia that punctured ballots in favor of Widodo had been found inside a plastic bag and a black diplomatic bag at two shophouses, a supervisory official, Ratna Dewi Pettalolo, said by telephone.
Another supervisory official, Mochammad Afiffudin, said in a statement 550,000 overseas Indonesians were set to vote on Sunday in Malaysia, with 319,293 due to mail their votes.
The Widodo campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment but a senior campaign official was quoted by the Detik.com news portal describing the incident as an attempt to discredit it.
Prabowo’s campaign denied any involvement.
(Reporting by Jessica Damiana and Yerica Lai; Writing by Fanny Potkin; Editing by Ed Davies and Clarence Fernandez)
If heroin is coffee, fentanyl is espresso. Just as a miniscule cup of espresso can hype you up more than a whole mug of coffee, a single exposure to fentanyl can get a user vastly higher than injecting the same volume of heroin.
In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin.
In a recent study funded by the National Institutes of Health, West Virginia Universityresearchers Gordon Smith, Marie Abate and Zheng Dai found that fentanyl-related deaths are on the rise in West Virginia, even as deaths related to prescription opioids decline.
By analyzing all drug-related deaths in the state from 2005 to 2017, the research team–which included medical examiners from the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources–discovered that between 2015 and 2017, deaths from fentanyl were 122 percent of what they were between 2005 and 2014.
In contrast, prescription opioids played a role in 75 percent fewer deaths between 2015 and 2017 than over the previous 10 years.
Why did fentanyl-related deaths skyrocket in 2015? One factor was a surge in illegal fentanyl imports from China. “Up until then, people who were shifting from legal prescription drugs to illegal drugs were shifting to heroin and opioids coming in from Mexico and other places. But then people started manufacturing fentanyl in China, setting up clandestine labs, staying one step ahead of drug-enforcement agencies,” said Smith, an epidemiologist in the School of Public Health.
“The big thing about fentanyl–and now carfentanil, a fentanyl analog that’s a thousand times stronger than morphine and heroin–is that it’s very easy to export. Instead of having to smuggle truckloads of heroin in, someone can send small packages through the mail,” he said.
Another contributor is fentanyl’s potency itself. Smith explained, “You might need to take–let’s say–200 Tylenol before you get into some serious trouble, but with some other pain reliever, you might only need four of them because it’s so much stronger.”
Drug users may take fentanyl or one or more of these potent fentanyl analogs without meaning to. Unbeknownst to them, it can be sold as counterfeit “prescription opioids” or blended into the heroin they buy, even from a dealer they’ve used without issue before. Accidentally drinking four ounces of espresso instead of drip coffee can make you jittery. Taking a fentanyl/heroin mix instead of unadulterated heroin can kill you.
Another problem is that the amount of fentanyl in any sample sold on the street can vary widely. For example, dealers may mix fentanyl with adulterants at the local level on their kitchen tables. If they improperly mix their product, a spoonful in one small bag may have much more fentanyl that another, even in the same batch. In addition, illegal labs in the United States can make chemical modifications to fentanyl fairly readily to produce other very potent analogs.
West Virginia’s increase is fentanyl-related deaths is part of a national trend. As the CDC reported, deaths from fentanyl overdoses spiked across the United States in 2015 and, as of 2017, continued to climb. West Virginia, however, leads the nation in fentanyl-related deaths. It also has the highest per capita rate of overdose deaths overall.
Yet West Virginia is exceptional for a more optimistic reason: its medical examiners pinpoint the cause of every drug-related death, and the relevant facts populate a statewide forensic drug database maintained at the WVU Health Sciences Center. The database includes such information as the decedent’s demographic information, cause of death, toxicology testing results, other medical conditions present and recent prescriptions for controlled substances.
This database gives scientists, healthcare providers and law enforcement officers insight into drug-misuse trends as they unfold. Abate, who directs the School of Pharmacy’sWest Virginia Center for Drug and Health Information, established the database in collaboration with the West Virginia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in 2005.
The database can help direct public-health resources to where they can do the most good–and promptly enough that they’re worthwhile. For instance, the data may suggest which towns need greater access to naloxone to treat a preponderance of overdoses. They may even help scientists decipher the chemical makeup of brand-new fentanyl analogs as soon as they hit the street.
“One of the proven ways to reduce overdoses is to decrease the number of people who are addicted and using. But with fentanyl, you could halve the number of addicts in West Virginia, and the overdose rate could still go up because the strength of the drug coming in is so much stronger and can vary widely from one day to the next,” Smith said. “This is an absolute quandary.”
He recommends more widespread naloxone distribution, including to both injection drug users and their families. It’s also important to make sure first responders–such as paramedics, firefighters and police–have adequate supplies of naloxone as usage has increased dramatically in recent years. “Multiple doses may be needed to reverse opioids toxicity,” he said, “especially if more potent or long-acting opioids are involved.”
President Trump won election because he used social media to unite his supporters, but now Big Tech has activated widespread censorship and the President has not slowed down this wave of tyranny.
The other week, the infamous and much-derided Green New Deal was voted down in the Senate and with it the dreams of a Federal spending party for tackling climate change.
But maybe its advocates have been going about this the wrong way, engaged in political solutions and international treaties such as the Paris Agreement. To anybody with insight into political decision-making — or even a healthy skepticism about the miraculous workings of the political apparatus — trying to navigate such a minefield of special interests and entrenched divisions must have seemed like a fool’s errand. Trying to address externalities and global tragedies of the commons through a political prism might not be the best option.
Apparently, climate change induced natural disasters will still be with us even if we ceased emissions tomorrow. As such, we require protection — those least able to literally weather the storm most of all. As Climate Warriors’ preferred route for transforming society — i.e., politics — has faced a setback, perhaps there’s a more voluntary and individual way to offer assistance to those facing potential climate-related damages to life and property.
Financial Markets to the Rescue: Catastrophe Bonds
Catastrophe bonds (“Cat bonds”) is a fast-growing segment of the corporate bond market that emerged out of Hurricane Andrew in the 1990s, when property damages bankrupted several insurance companies. Insurance companies of the sort that you and I usually interact with pool risks across many customers so as to afford payouts for the unlucky few that are affected by damages. To protect themselves from worst possible outcomes, they typically transfer off some of their most extreme risks to re insurance companies – essentially, insurance companies’ own insurance policies. You might think about it as “capping” risk exposure at a pre-arranged level by paying reinsurance firms a fee to accept damage claims above a particular level ( Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway has large such business; other market leaders include Swiss Re, Munich Re and Hannover Re).
Cat bonds provide the same service as this traditional reinsurance business through publicly traded financial markets instead. Much like securitization in other areas, a Cat bond complements this firm-to-firm reinsurance business by allowing insurance companies to sell off risk straight to financial markets. Investors, similarly, have recently been much more willing to buy them since a Cat bond’s value and interest rate payouts vary with natural disasters rather than business cycles or financial crashes. Indeed, a standard basket of Cat bonds have delivered remarkably stable returns, even outperforming the S&P500 since 2006 (measured very opportunistically). Their two prime virtues from an investment point of view are that they are virtually uncorrelated with other kinds of investment risk (stocks, bonds, FX), and their volatility is microscopic.
Specifically, this is how a Cat bond works:
1) An insurance company offers up (“Cedes”, “Sponsors”) a well-specified risk for a section of its claimants, packaged into a bond with a face value of, say, $100m.
2) A group of investors (through an investment bank or other vehicle) puts up $100m in a Special Purpose Vehicle that holds nothing but the Cat bond funds (usually invested in short-term CDs or government bonds to ensure some minimum real return).
3) The ceding insurance company then pays regular premiums into the SPV for the insurance protection it now receives from the bond.
4) For the duration of the Cat bond — typically 3-5 years — the SPV sends its investors regular interest payments if no event takes place. Should the “Trigger event” (the event specified in the contract, such as earthquakes floods or droughts of a certain severity) occur, the losses are deducted primarily from the set-aside funds and made instantly available to the insurance company to pay for their clients’ damages.
The great benefit for the insurance company is that the money is set aside, ring-fenced, and instantly available should the terms of the contract be fulfilled (i.e. damages of a certain kind and magnitude). For investors, the construction offers a diversifiable income stream, uncorrelated with other markets, and typically yields a few percentage points above market rates of similar duration.
Even the huge storm damages in 2017 from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma did nothing to dissipate this emergent market. A recent article in Bloomberg reported that the Cat bond market have kept growing rapidly as climate change is believed to cause even more extreme weather in the future.
How Can Cat Bonds Mitigate Climate Change Damage?
The similarities between damages from extreme weather phenomena and climate change should be fairly obvious. In both cases we are talking about out-of-the-ordinary events, with damages and consequences that many communities are typically not set up to protect against. Dealing with the costs of climate change that Climate Warriors and scientists say will inevitably come, could thus be conveniently done through the Cat bond market. And the best thing? It requires no political negotiation, no global haggling of rights or responsibilities and no expansive packages navigated through Congress. It requires Climate Warriors to simply put their money where their mouths are — and start buying Cat bonds.
This is how it could work.
AOC, Paul Krugman, Naomi Klein and Elizabeth Warren create the “CW Cat Non-Profit” and invite all their staff and supporters and the parents of the striking European school children to join. There could be membership fees and grand events filled with eloquent speeches, but the key point is to amass lots of funds through donations, and start buying Cat bonds like crazy. The purposes are twofold: assist the growth of the Cat bond market and become a large enough player so that they can start setting terms from their “upstream” partners in the insurance and reinsurance business.
If these activists and pundits truly fear the outcome for which they are protesting, and if they truly believe the grand and sharp slogans of their banners, it shouldn’t be a big problem to start pooling money to fund inevitable damages from the very thing they detest.
Quick back-of-the-envelope calculations also ensure that they could quickly reach a large share of the Cat bond market. Currently, there are Cat bonds outstanding worth $37.9 billions with new issues of some $10bn per year (some of which is simply re-investment of old bonds). Adding up a 25%-salary contribution by the hundred or so politicians who have publicly backed the Green New Deal, a one-off $200 contribution by the 2m or so participants of the last month’s #FridaysForFuture (double it to include non-attending friends, relatives and families) and add a one-time 25% wealth transfer by outspoken and well-off proponents of the Green New Deal scheme such as Maher, Krugman, Warren, Gore, Harris (naturally, they wouldn’t object…?), we’re already at a billion dollars – enough to entirely buy out the March issue of Cat bonds . With some extra cash from the $12 billion that environmental charities raise every year, and the generous support of the very vocal supporters of the Green New Deal, the “CW Cat Non-Profit” is soon on track to become the largest player in this business.
The Climate Warrior’s Edge
Now, if this is just a fund-raising attempt, why couldn’t Climate Warriors just as well pour their money into renewables, putting up solar panels or invent smart electricity grids and green car engines?
They could. But here’s the beauty: they have no particular technical or comparative advantages in those fields. As Cat investors, they do. Let me show you:
1) Long time horizon
An obstacle for Cat bonds has been their limited maturity of 3-5 years, after which they fall due and the risks revert back to the insurance companies. One reason for this is that risk-averse investors have been reluctant to commit funds to longer terms than that, partly as the combined Trigger event risk rises very high; the 30-year likelihood of at least one Magnitude 6 earthquake in the San Francisco Bay area is estimated at 98% . By emphasizing longer terms , CW Cat Non-Profit can induce market participant to expand bond durations.
2) Muchlower required rate of return
Climate Warriors are excessively concerned with future generations , and losses — in contrast to regular investors — are to be welcomed as a needed redistribution from well-off donors to those literally affected by climate change. They therefore have much lower risk premia and, not running a for-profit, consequently require much lower rates of return for holding climate risk.
3) No Liquidity premium
As long-term investors, not primarily set on earning money for themselves, CW Cat Non-Profit does not value the option of withdrawing the assets for consumption needs, i.e., places no particular price on the liquidity of the Cat instrument. As is the case today, the Cat market is still immensely small and not as liquid as many other financial markets. For ordinary investors, this kind of investment therefore demands a liquidity premium, a higher-than-otherwise interest rate. Not for CW Cat Non-Profit, and they thereby become a better client for bond originators, as CW Cat Non-Profit is willing to take on more risk for less cost.
4) Recycled return
Since the CW Cat Non-Profit has no interest in earning investment return for itself, the revenue streams generated can be fruitfully invested in social projects or infrastructure improvements — or simply re-distributed to those without insurance policies that the organization finds worthy. Indeed, should it become a large enough player on the global Cat market they can likely offer premium reductions in exchange for payouts to refugees of climate change, contingent on, say, UN status.
For Climate Warriors, the defeat of the Green New Deal should not be gloomed over, as it offers its proponents the ability to put their money where their mouths are and start alleviating climate change damages. Provided, that is, that they can overcome their hostility to financial markets.
FILE PHOTO: Pascal Canfin, head of WWF France, attends the French employer's body MEDEF union summer forum on the campus of the HEC School of Management in Jouy-en-Josas, near Paris, France, August 30, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo
March 29, 2019
By Michel Rose
PARIS (Reuters) – French President Emmanuel Macron has set his sights on the green vote in May’s European elections, aiming to tap into deepening environmental concerns to build as broad a coalition as possible in the EU parliament and increase his party’s influence.
On Wednesday, the French leader’s party announced its list of candidates for the May 26 vote, surprising rivals with the presence of a long-time member of the Green party, Pascal Canfin, in second place.
It was a signal that Macron hopes to capitalize on the renewed surge in environmental activism, especially among the young, evidenced by the success of Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg’s “school strike for climate”.
After the electoral successes of Green parties in Bavaria, Luxembourg and Belgium in recent months, Macron is keen to ensure France’s greens, who usually do better in European elections than national ones, don’t steal a march on his party.
But beyond the purely domestic appeal to environmentally conscious voters, the 41-year-old president is also betting that green names on his list will convince other Green parties in Europe to join a future coalition in Strasbourg.
That coalition — which Macron aims to build with like-minded centrist or “progressive” parties — will be critical in determining whether Macron gains influence in Brussels and ends up at the forefront of shaping legislation and filing key jobs, such as the next European Commission president.
Canfin, a former European lawmaker and minister for development who headed conservation group WWF’s French operation until he was poached by Macron, did not waste time spelling out the goal he has been tasked with.
“We’ll champion a coalition deal and clearly we’ll offer the European Greens the opportunity to join,” he told French radio this week.
Macron has confused many in Brussels with his reluctance to agree to join the liberal-centrist family in the European parliament, known as ALDE, which would seem his natural home.
Partly that is because the word “liberal” in France has long held negative associations with Anglo Saxon-style free market economics, which French officials have mentioned as a branding problem. But the main reason is Macron’s desire to build a broader church, one that, as well as the Greens, might pull in centrist MEPs from the two main groups, the centre-right EPP and the centre-left S&D.
Such a coalition, in which Macron’s potential 20-24 MEPs would likely be the biggest contingent, could put the French leader in the position of kingmaker, since polls show the EPP and the Socialists are both unlikely to win a majority.
“SUPERFICIAL GREEN REPACKAGING”
The biggest prize Macron is hoping to win is Germany’s Greens. Because of the size of the German contingent – the Gruenen currently have 13 MEPs but are likely to increase that number in the election – that could help Macron beef up the ranks of his ‘progressive’ grouping.
Macron’s campaign director, Stéphane Séjourné, named the German Greens in an interview with Reuters last October as one of the parties he was hoping to partner with.
Macron’s call to “make our planet great again” in 2017, and his self-endorsed role as defender of the Paris climate accord, have burnished his green credentials, Séjourné said.
“We’ve put a lot of political capital into European climate diplomacy,” he told Reuters. “This is how we’re identified abroad, the president is identified as a climate leader.”
Séjourné said Germany’s Greens, who are accustomed to the demands of coalition compromises, would be a better fit for Macron’s En Marche than France’s Greens, who are to the left.
But it remains to be seen whether the Gruenen would shake hands with Macron, whose high-profile environment minister quit on him last August, criticizing the former investment banker’s pro-nuclear policies in particular.
In a party that was founded on anti-nuclearism, some German Greens openly express scepticism about the sincerity of Macron’s environmental outreach.
Reinhard Buetikofer, a Gruene European lawmaker and co-chair of the European Green Party, tweeted that Macron was giving his En Marche party an environmental makeover out of simple fear of losing votes to the French Greens.
But a source in the party says the German Greens are divided over Macron. “There are ones that put his pro-Europeanism first and his slight greenness second and therefore are favorable to collaboration with him,” the source said.
“On the other side there are people who see his right-wing economic policies and see him getting cozy with the Greens as ‘greenwashing’ and they don’t really believe it.”
Jon Worth, a German green party member and EU blogger, says the fact party members shape what the party does makes it unlikely they would agree to join Macron’s ranks, especially considering the profile of candidates put forward this time.
“Many of them are quite independent-minded, quite left-wing people,” he said. “I can’t see many Macron-favourable people there on the list.”
(Reporting by Michel Rose; Editing by Luke Baker and Peter Graff)
An armed father shot a carjacker in Florida after his vehicle was stolen with his six-year-old boy inside.
The incident began at a home in West Palm Beach on Saturday, when the car thief happened upon a car with the engine on.
The father says he’d turned on the vehicle and went inside to say bye to friends.
The armed dad pursued the thief, Lamar Thurman, 29, in another vehicle and was able to catch up to him after he crashed.
But Thurman again attempted to take off when the dad tried to rescue the boy.
That’s when the dad opened fire “in an attempt to stop him from fleeing further with his child in the car,” according to Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Teri Barbera.
Thurman crashed the vehicle a second time about 200 yards away, police say, and needed to be hospitalized in critical condition.
FILE PHOTO: An employee looks up at goods at the Miniclipper Logistics warehouse in Leighton Buzzard, Britain December 3, 2018. REUTERS/Simon Dawson
April 26, 2019
LONDON, April 26 – British factories stockpiled raw materials and goods ahead of Brexit at the fastest pace since records began in the 1950s, and they were increasingly downbeat about their prospects, a survey showed on Friday.
The Confederation of British Industry’s (CBI) quarterly survey of the manufacturing industry showed expectations for export orders in the next three months fell to their lowest level since mid-2009, when Britain was reeling from the global financial crisis.
The record pace of stockpiling recorded by the CBI was mirrored by the closely-watched IHS Markit/CIPS purchasing managers’ index published earlier this month.
(Reporting by Andy Bruce, editing by David Milliken)
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad speaks at the opening ceremony for the second Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, China April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Florence Lo
April 26, 2019
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Fewer than half of Malaysians approve of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, an opinion poll showed on Friday, as concerns over rising costs and racial matters plague his administration nearly a year after taking office.
The survey, conducted in March by independent pollster Merdeka Center, showed that only 46 percent of voters surveyed were satisfied with Mahathir, a sharp drop from the 71 percent approval rating he received in August 2018.
Mahathir’s Pakatan Harapan coalition won a stunning election victory in May 2018, ending the previous government’s more than 60-year rule.
But his administration has since been criticized for failing to deliver on promised reforms and protecting the rights of majority ethnic Malay Muslims.
Of 1,204 survey respondents, 46 percent felt that the “country was headed in the wrong direction”, up from 24 percent in August 2018, the Merdeka Center said in a statement. Just 39 percent said they approved of the ruling government.
High living costs remained the top most concern among Malaysians, with just 40 percent satisfied with the government’s management of the economy, the survey showed.
It also showed mixed responses to Pakatan Harapan’s proposed reforms.
Some 69 percent opposed plans to abolish the death penalty, while respondents were sharply divided over proposals to lower the minimum voting age to 18, or to implement a sugar tax.
“In our opinion, the results appear to indicate a public that favors the status quo, and thus requires a robust and coordinated advocacy efforts in order to garner their acceptance of new measures,” Merdeka Center said.
The survey also found 23 percent of Malaysians were concerned over ethnic and religious matters.
Some groups representing Malays have expressed fear that affirmative-action policies favoring them in business, education and housing could be taken away and criticized the appointments of non-Muslims to key government posts.
Last November, the government reversed its pledge to ratify a UN convention against racial discrimination, after a backlash from Malay groups.
Earlier this month, Pakatan Harapan suffered its third successive loss in local elections since taking power, which has been seen as a further sign of waning public support.
Despite the decline, most Malaysians – 67 percent – agreed that Mahathir’s government should be given more time to fulfill its election promises, Merdeka Center said.
This included a majority of Malay voters who were largely more critical of the new administration, it added.
(Reporting by Rozanna Latiff; Editing by Nick Macfie)
The German share price index DAX graph is pictured at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Staff
April 26, 2019
By Medha Singh and Agamoni Ghosh
(Reuters) – European shares slipped on Friday after losses in heavyweight banks and Glencore outweighed gains in healthcare and auto stocks, while investors remained on the sidelines ahead of U.S. economic data for the first quarter.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index was down 0.1 percent by 0935 GMT, eyeing a modest loss at the end of a holiday-shortened week. Banks-heavy Italian and Spanish indices were laggards.
The banking index fell for a fourth day, at the end of a heavy earnings week for lenders.
Britain’s Royal Bank of Scotland tumbled after posting lower first quarter profit, hurt by intensifying competition and Brexit uncertainty, while its investment bank also registered poor returns.
Weakness in investment banking also dented Deutsche Bank’s quarterly trading revenue and sent its shares lower a day after the German bank abandoned merger talks with smaller rival Commerzbank.
“The current interest rate environment makes it challenging for banks to make proper earnings because of their intermediary function,” said Teeuwe Mevissen, senior market economist eurozone, at Rabobank.
Since the start of April, all country indexes were on pace to rise between 1.8 percent and 3.4 percent, their fourth month of gains, while Germany was strongly outperforming with 6 percent growth.
“For now the current sentiment is very cautious as markets wait for the first estimates of the U.S. GDP growth which could see a surprise,” Mevissen said.
U.S. economic data for the first-quarter is due at 1230 GMT. Growth worries outside the United States resurfaced this week after South Korea’s economy unexpectedly contracted at the start of the year and weak German business sentiment data for April also disappointed.
Among the biggest drags on the benchmark index in Europe were the basic resources sector and the oil and gas sector, weighed down by Britain’s Glencore and France’s Total, respectively.
Glencore dropped after reports that U.S authorities were investigating whether the company and its subsidiaries violated certain provisions of the commodity exchange act.
Energy major Total said its net profit for the first three months of the year fell compared with a year ago due to volatile oil prices and debt costs.
Chip stocks in the region including Siltronic, Ams and STMicroelectronics lost more than 1 percent after Intel Corp reduced its full-year revenue forecast, adding to concerns that an industry-wide slowdown could persist until the end of 2019.
Meanwhile, healthcare, which is also seen as a defensive sector, was a bright spot. It was helped by French drugmaker Sanofi after it returned to growth with higher profits and revenues for the first-quarter.
Luxembourg-based satellite operator SES led media stocks higher after it maintained its full-year outlook on the back of the company’s Networks division.
Automakers in the region rose 0.4 percent, led by Valeo’s 6 percent jump as the French parts maker said its performance would improve in the second half of the year.
Continental AG advanced after it backed its outlook for the year despite reporting a fall in first-quarter earnings.
Renault rose more than 3 percent as it clung to full-year targets and pursues merger talks with its Japanese partner Nissan.
(Reporting by Medha Singh and Agamoni Ghosh in Bengaluru; Editing by Gareth Jones and Elaine Hardcastle)
U.S. President Donald Trump gives a thumbs up to his audience as he hosts Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
April 26, 2019
By Jan Wolfe and Richard Cowan
(Reuters) – The “i word” – impeachment – is swirling around the U.S. Congress since the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s redacted Russia report, which painted a picture of lies, threats and confusion in Donald Trump’s White House.
Some Democrats say trying to remove Trump from office would be a waste of time because his fellow Republicans still have majority control of the Senate. Other Democrats argue they have a moral obligation at least to try to impeach, even though Mueller did not charge Trump with conspiring with Russia in the 2016 U.S. election or with obstruction of justice.
Whether or not the Democrats decide to go down this risky path, here is how the impeachment process works.
WHAT ARE GROUNDS FOR IMPEACHMENT?
The U.S. Constitution says the president can be removed from office by Congress for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Exactly what that means is unclear.
Before he became president in 1974, replacing Republican Richard Nixon who resigned over the Watergate scandal, Gerald Ford said: “An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.”
Frank Bowman, a University of Missouri law professor and author of a forthcoming book on the history of impeachment, said Congress could look beyond criminal laws in defining “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Historically, it can encompass corruption and other abuses, including trying to obstruct judicial proceedings.
HOW DOES IMPEACHMENT PLAY OUT?
The term impeachment is often interpreted as simply removing a president from office, but that is not strictly accurate.
Impeachment technically refers to the 435-member House of Representatives approving formal charges against a president.
The House effectively acts as accuser – voting on whether to bring specific charges. An impeachment resolution, known as “articles of impeachment,” is like an indictment in a criminal case. A simple majority vote is needed in the House to impeach.
The Senate then conducts a trial. House members act as the prosecutors, with senators as the jurors. The chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court presides over the trial. A two-thirds majority vote is required in the 100-member Senate to convict and remove a president from office.
No president has ever been removed from office as a direct result of an impeachment and conviction by Congress.
Nixon quit in 1974 rather than face impeachment. Presidents Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998 were impeached by the House, but both stayed in office after the Senate acquitted them.
Obstruction of justice was one charge against Clinton, who faced allegations of lying under oath about his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Obstruction was also included in the articles of impeachment against Nixon.
CAN THE SUPREME COURT OVERTURN?
No.
Trump said on Twitter on Wednesday that he would ask the Supreme Court to intervene if Democrats tried to impeach him. But America’s founders explicitly rejected making a Senate conviction appealable to the federal judiciary, Bowman said.
“They quite plainly decided this is a political process and it is ultimately a political judgment,” Bowman said.
“So when Trump suggests there is any judicial remedy for impeachment, he is just wrong.”
PROOF OF WRONGDOING?
In a typical criminal court case, jurors are told to convict only if there is “proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” a fairly stringent standard.
Impeachment proceedings are different. The House and Senate “can decide on whatever burden of proof they want,” Bowman said. “There is no agreement on what the burden should be.”
PARTY BREAKDOWN IN CONGRESS?
Right now, there are 235 Democrats, 197 Republicans and three vacancies in the House. As a result, the Democratic majority could vote to impeach Trump without any Republican votes.
In 1998, when Republicans had a House majority, the chamber voted largely along party lines to impeach Clinton, a Democrat.
The Senate now has 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats and two independents who usually vote with Democrats. Conviction and removal of a president would requires 67 votes. So that means for Trump to be impeached, at least 20 Republicans and all the Democrats and independents would have to vote against him.
WHO BECOMES PRESIDENT IF TRUMP IS REMOVED?
A Senate conviction removing Trump from office would elevate Vice President Mike Pence to the presidency to fill out Trump’s term, which ends on Jan. 20, 2021.
(Reporting by Jan Wolfe and Richard Cowan; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Peter Cooney)
FILE PHOTO: New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft attends a conference at the Cannes Lions Festival in Cannes, France, June 23, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard
April 26, 2019
(Reuters) – New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s lawyers on Friday are set to ask a Florida judge to toss out hidden-camera videos that prosecutors say show the 77-year-old billionaire receiving sexual favors for money inside a Florida massage parlor.
The owner of the reigning Super Bowl champions plans wants the video to not be used as evidence against him as he contests two misdemeanor counts of soliciting prostitution at the Orchids of Asia Spa in Jupiter, Florida, along with some two dozen other men.
His legal team is fresh off a win on Tuesday, when they successfully persuaded Palm Beach County Judge Leonard Hanser to block prosecutors from releasing the hidden-camera footage to media outlets, which had requested copies under the state’s robust open records law.
Kraft, who has owned the franchise since 1994, pleaded not guilty, but has issued a public apology for his actions.
His attorneys have argued in court papers that the surreptitious videotaping of customers, including Kraft, inside a massage parlor was governmental overreach and the result of an illegally obtained search warrant.
The warrant, Kraft’s lawyers claim, was secured under false pretenses because police officers cited human trafficking as a potential crime in their application. Prosecutors have since acknowledged that the investigation yielded no evidence of trafficking.
Palm Beach County prosecutors in a court filing on Wednesday said Kraft’s motion should be rejected because he could not have had any expectation of privacy while visiting a commercial establishment to engage in criminal activity.
That prompted an indignant response from Kraft’s attorneys, who said the prosecution’s position on privacy was “unhinged.”
“It should go without saying that Mr. Kraft and everyone else in the United States have a reasonable expectation that the government will not secretly spy on them while they undress behind closed doors,” they wrote.
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