Early Bird Headlines 12 May 2015
Econintersect: Here are some of the headlines we found to help you start your day. For more headlines see our afternoon feature for GEI members, What We Read Today, which has many more headlines and a number of article discussions to keep you abreast of what we have found interesting.
Global
- Superbug strain of typhoid spreads worldwide (Al Jazeera) Antibiotic-resistant typhoid is becoming an ‘ever-increasing public health threat,’ new study, involving some 74 scientists in almost two dozen countries, shows.
U.S.
- Bernie Sanders Rising Is a Problem for Hillary Clinton (Bloomberg Politics) Sanders has gained ten points in New Hampshire but still trails Hillary 62% to 18%. Political analyst Mark Halperin says the damage to be done is Hillary moving to the left to win primaries against Sanders and then being weaker in the general election against a conservative. Econintersect: Doesn’t this sound like the mirror image of the Republican problem with candidates being forced to the right?
- This $2.1 Billion Shale Deal Will Be the First of Many (Bloomberg Business) Noble Energy Inc.’s $2.1 billion all-stock purchase of Rosetta Resources Inc. is poised to be an opening salvo in a long-predicted wave of industry consolidation that’s been slow to materialize since crude fell by more than half since June.
- Democratic brawl over Pacific trade deal escalates ahead of Senate vote (Al Jazeera) Obama trades barbs with liberal critics of Trans-Pacific Partnership in lead-up to congressional fight. Opponents of the TPP, among them labor unions, environmental groups and prominent Democratic lawmakers, argue that the pact amounts to a corporate giveaway that would override U.S. financial and environmental regulations and pad the bottom lines of businesses while doing little to protect American workers and wages.
EU
- EU seeks UN approval to sink human traffickers’ boats (Al Jazeera) EU foreign policy chief wants UN backing for plan to board and destroy smugglers’ boats in Libyan waters.
UK
- New Conservative MPs show shift in attitude to Brussels (Financial Times) Across England, pro-European Conservatives standing down from their parliamentary seats have been replaced by new MPs united in their dissatisfaction with Brussels. As a result Tory MPs cheer as David Cameron vows to fight for better EU deal.
Greece
- Greece Dodges Economic Bullet With Progress Toward Deal (Bloomberg) Greece handed the European Central Bank an excuse to maintain the life support for its financial system by persuading its skeptical German-led creditors it’s serious about delivering the policies needed to escape a default.
China
- China posts preliminary first quarter current account surplus of $78.9 billion (Reuters) The capital account balance (financial and capital flows) is minus $78.9 billion according to this report. This would mean that the trade surplus would have to be $157.8 billion. Four days ago it was announced as $34.1 billion. Econintersect: These numbers don’t add up – we await further data (certainly revised) for clarification.
Hong Kong
- Fewer Hong Kong Residents Support China-Backed Election Plans (Bloomberg) Support for China-backed legislation to overhaul Hong Kong’s next chief executive election has slipped 4 percentage points in about two weeks to 42.5%. Those opposed increased to 39.5% from 37.6%. Officials head into a third week of campaigning for public approval.
Pakistan
- Was there a cover-up in bin Laden killing? (CNN) Legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hirsch has written a lengthy piece for The New York Review of Books (The Killing of Osama bin Laden) which charges that the entire raid was a staged event arranged by the U.S. and Pakistan in a manner to create a legendary “victory” for the U.S. CIA. This article by Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst, rejects the Hirsch article almost summarily:
Hersh’s account of the bin Laden raid is a farrago of nonsense that is contravened by a multitude of eyewitness accounts, inconvenient facts and simple common sense.
- The many problems with Seymour Hersh’s Osama bin Laden conspiracy theory (Vox) Max Fisher dissects the lates Seymour Hersh expose of lies about the killing of Osama bin Laden and then goes on to discuss other articles by Hersh since his last substantiated article about prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib, Iraq in 2004. Since then Fisher charges that “Hersh has appeared increasingly to have gone off the rails“.
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