Written by Econintersect
Early Bird Headlines 30 April 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.
U.S.
Unmasking the Men Behind Zero Hedge, Wall Street’s Renegade Blog (Bloomberg) After more than a year writing for the financial website Zero Hedge under the nom de doom of the cult classic’s anarchic hero, Colin Lokey’s going public. In doing so, he’s answering a question that has bedeviled Wall Street since the site sprang up seven years ago: Just who is Tyler Durden, anyway? The answer, it turns out, is three people. Following an acrimonious departure this month, in which two-thirds of the trio traded allegations of hypocrisy and mental instability, Lokey, 32, decided to unmask himself and his fellow Durdens. Lokey said the other two men are Daniel Ivandjiiski, 37, the Bulgarian-born former analyst long reputed to be behind the site, and Tim Backshall, 45, a well-known credit derivatives strategist.
The U.S. Is Sitting on a Mountain of Cheese (Bloomberg) If history is any guide, this year’s food trend should be extra cheese. The reason is the U.S. is sitting on more butter and cheese than it knows what to do with, and the Europeans are to blame. Exports from the European Union have climbed so far this year and last — even after the bloc’s once-largest customer, Russia, banned trade in retaliation for sanctions over its incursion in Ukraine. A glut of milk, plunging prices and a weakening euro mean the EU has been able to grab customers in Asia and the Middle East, while U.S. sales have fallen.
NYPD Chief: Police ‘Will Continue to Aggressively Enforce Nuisance Abatement’ (ProPublica) Police Commissioner Bill Bratton strongly defended the department’s use of nuisance abatement actions Thursday saying they were a critical law enforcement tool against businesses such as bodegas accused of selling alcohol to minors, illegal drugs, knives and guns. See The NYPD Is Running Stings Against Immigrant-Owned Shops, Then Pushing For Warrantless Searches which details abuse of the laws to bring nuisance cases against immigrant-owned shops, using stings to extract settlements in which storeowners agreed to warrantless searches, steep fines, and to install cameras and data-storing card readers that police can access at any time.
The Most Important Chart for Stock Market Investors (Bloomberg) Many of the signs associated with declining markets have been showing during the 15% rally since February.
EU
Pop went the weasel and down went the Large Hadron Collider (Associated Press) It’s one of the physics world’s most complex machines, and it has been immobilized – temporarily – by a weasel. Spokesman Arnaud Marsollier says the world’s largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN outside of Geneva, has suspended operations because a weasel invaded a transformer that helps power the machine and set off an electrical outage on Friday. Authorities say the incident was one of several small glitches that will delay plans to restart the $4.4 billion collider by a few days. Marsollier says Friday that the weasel died – and little remains of it.
UK
Bankers: Nearly everybody else is working harder than you (City A.M.) Workers in The City probably feel like they have one of the hardest daily grinds in the country. If you’re one of them, you might agree, but a new survey from recruitment firm Reed suggests there will be little in the way of sympathy from friends and families in other professions.
Syria
State Department Denies Abandoning Aleppo in Russian Ceasefire Deal (Foreign Policy) The United States denied Friday that it was neglecting besieged Syrians in the city of Aleppo after Russian media reports disclosed a U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement that excluded the partially rebel-held city. Aleppo has become the main battleground in the the latest flare-up of fighting between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and rebels seeking to oust him. On Friday, the city in northwest Syria came under another deadly barrage of airstrikes and shelling, including on a mosque and a clinic. The assaults – which involve both regime airstrikes and rebel attacks on pro-government neighborhoods – have killed 200 people in the last week, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Iraq
Who Will Rule Mosul? (Foreign Policy) The contest over who marches into Mosul will shape who controls the city once – or if – Islamic State militants are forced out. Virtually every major armed group in Iraq and their foreign patrons, including local Sunni Arabs backed by Turkey, Shiite militias supported by Iran, and American-equipped Kurdish forces are jockeying for a piece of the action. But despite a campaign more than a year in the making, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has yet to forge a coherent political plan that can bridge the divide between the rival groups, all but certainly pushing back a military operation yet again, U.S. officials and experts said.
Ukraine
UN says 9,333 killed since Ukraine conflict began (Associated Press) Nearly 10,000 people have been killed and more than 20,000 injured since the Ukraine conflict began in April 2014, a top U.N. official said Thursday. Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs Taye-Brook Zerihoun told the Security Council that the total number of casualties now stands at 30,729 including 9,333 people killed and 21,396 injured. He said the latest incident occurred on April 27 when shelling killed at least four civilians and injured at least eight people in Olenivka near the city of Donetsk. Zerihoun said that fighting has escalated in recent weeks to levels not seen since August 2014, when it was at its most intense and he called on all parties to cease hostilities.
India
Parts of India ban daytime cooking as hundreds die of heat (Associated Press) With sizzling temperatures claiming more than 300 lives this month in India, officials said they were banning daytime cooking in some parts of the drought-stricken country in a bid to prevent accidental fires that have killed nearly 80 more people. The eastern state of Bihar this week took the unprecedented step of forbidding any cooking between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., after accidental fires exacerbated by dry, hot and windy weather swept through shantytowns and thatched-roof houses in villages and killed 79 people. They included 10 children and five adults killed in a fire sparked during a Hindu prayer ceremony in Bihar’s Aurangabad district last week. People were instead told to cook to night. Hoping to prevent more fires, officials have also barred burning spent crops or holding religious fire rituals. Anyone defying the ban risks up to a year in jail.
China
China’s Central Bank Raises Yuan Fixing by Most Since July 2005 (Bloomberg) China’s central bank responded to an overnight tumble in the dollar by strengthening its currency fixing the most since a peg was dismantled in July 2005. The reference rate was raised by 0.6% to 6.4589 per dollar. A gauge of the dollar’s strength (the Dollar Index) extended its 1% slide on Thursday in Friday’s markets.