Tag: news

With the Fed expected to continue suppressing lending margins for the foreseeable future, the slow creep of consolidation in the banking industry continued Monday morning when Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial announced that it had agreed to buy the US business of Spanish banking giant BBVA for $11.6 billion.

According to Reuters, the deal is the second-biggest banking-sector deal since the collapse of Lehman Brothers. The combined bank will have nearly $560 billion of assets and operate in more than two dozen states.

The move underscores how a loosening of financial regulations and lowering of corporate taxes under President Donald Trump has emboldened regional lenders to try and compete with JPM by joining forces with other smaller rivals. Monday’s deal appears to be the first major banking deal in the US since the combination of BB&T and SunTrust in February 2019. That deal created the infamously-named Truist Financial. The combined PNC-BBVA lender will be America’s 5th largest, compared with 6th-place Truist.

The deal was long-awaited, and terms look reasonable, according to analysts at Jefferies analysts. The question now is how the combined entity will deploy its capital.

BBC recently reported some shocking statistics regarding UK health, but which will perhaps come as no surprise to those critics who warned that far-reaching national lockdowns would cause other unseen adverse effects:

Compared with normal years, there have been more deaths at home from a number of major causes, including cancers and respiratory diseases, during the last six months.

The latest analysis published by Britain’s Office for National Statistics found that more than 26,000 “extra” deaths occurred in private homes this year, while simultaneously hospital deaths have been lower than usual. 

“More men than normal are dying at home from heart disease in England and Wales, and more women are dying from dementia and Alzheimer’s, figures show,” the report says.

The figures had been issued just ahead of European officials in Germany, France, and Italy contemplating ‘severe’ extended measures that could last as long as four to five months, as Germany is now said to be mulling. 

The BBC report further cited Alzheimer’s charity groups as lamenting the “heartbreaking” and devastating hidden adverse impact of both stay-at-home orders and social distancing measures, particularly on elderly men.

Deaths attributable to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease at home are on a major upward trajectory while being down in hospitals, strongly suggesting that more people with life-threatening but treatable diseases are simply avoiding professional medical services for fear of COVID-19 or possibly on fear of violating social distancing measures or travel bans.

The report found that hospital deaths that were dementia-related were down by 40% in England and 25% in Wales.

The UK Office for National Statistics further found that heart disease is wreaking havoc among men at a moment all eyes are on the coronavirus surge:

Between March and September 2020, there were 24,387 more deaths in England than expected in private homes, and 1,644 in Wales. The large majority did not involve Covid-19.

Of these, an extra 1,705 men died from heart disease at home in England – 25% more than normal.

In Wales there was a similar rise in men dying from heart disease at home, of 22.7%.

And again simultaneously deaths in hospitals from such significant conditions not related to coronavirus are noticeably down. 

England’s current lockdown measures in place since the start this month through December 2nd include the following:

• Restaurants, pubs and bars will close, except for takeaways and deliveries.
• All leisure and entertainment venues and most non-essential stores will shut.
• The public will be asked to work from home if possible and domestic travel, except for essential purposes, will be frowned upon.
• Schools, universities and colleges will remain open, along with the construction and manufacturing sector.
• Different households will be banned from mixing inside homes.
• People will only be able to leave home for a few reasons including exercise.
• Courts and Parliament will remain open.
• Religious services will also be stopped.
• International travel, apart from for business purposes, must also be put on hold.

• English Premier League matches will continue to be played.

The measures were put in place despite the ONS figures having been available since mid and late October, and showed soaring non-COVID deaths going back to April and May, which was at the height of the UK epidemic.

Despite the hard data showing the rapid rise in potentially treatable diseases that led to non-COVID deaths, leaders in Europe on the whole seem committed to reimposing blanket coronavirus restrictions and lockdowns, which currently includes shuttering pubs, restaurants and night venues, but in most places has stopped short of closing down schools. 

Via AlMasdarNews.com,

The US Army withdrew a number of its vehicles and soldiers from eastern Syria towards the northern region of Iraq, while it imposed a security cordon around a town in the eastern countryside of Deir Ezzor.

According to a Sputnik Arabic correspondent in Al-Hasakah, the US Army transported a number of military vehicles with about 50 soldiers from its illegal base in Al-Malikiyah to the northern region of Iraq for the second time during the past two days.

These developments coincide with media reports about the Trump administration’s intention to withdraw its soldiers from eastern Syria, especially after the changes made by the president, which included the firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who was replaced by Christopher Miller.

Earlier this week, it was revealed that the outgoing US envoy to Syria, James Jeffrey, had kept the total number of troops inside the Syrian Arab Republic from Trump.

Jeffrey had described in an interview last week with Defense One that when in December 2018 President Trump ordered a full and immediate Syria withdrawal, he and his team successfully stymied the efforts to get the US military out of Syria.

Here’s what he told Defense One:

“We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there,” Jeffrey said in an interview. The actual number of troops in northeast Syria is “a lot more than” the roughly two hundred troops Trump initially agreed to leave there in 2019. 

Meanwhile Trump’s new Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller sent a late Friday memo to the entire Department of Defense workforce signaling a likely major US troop reduction during the administration’s last weeks, especially from the Middle East. 

Spoke to Tucker Carlson on Fox News last night about why James Jeffrey’s open admission of undermining Trump’s call for a US withdrawal from Syria is all the more reason for Trump to carry one out before he leaves office: pic.twitter.com/ZFO0e10H9M

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) November 14, 2020

“We are not a people of perpetual war – it is the antithesis of everything for which we stand and for which our ancestors fought,” Miller said in the memo, and emphasized that “All wars must end.”

And in Miller’s most direct reference to a potential large-scale troop draw down, he wrote, “Ending wars requires compromise and partnership. We met the challenge; we gave it our all. Now, it’s time to come home.”

Germany is among the latest large European countries to reimpose COVID-19 restrictions nationwide, alongside France, Germany and the UK as cases rise across the continent. 

While this has included shutting down pubs, restaurants, cafes and potentially crowded night venues, the latest restrictions stopped short of school closures or retail outlets. German officials are now signaling to the public that they should brace for more months of “severe” measures to curb the surge in cases, according to Reuters on Sunday:

Germans should brace for another 4-5 months of severe measures to halt the rise in coronavirus infections and should not expect the current rules to be eased quickly, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier told weekly Bild am Sonntag.

Germany’s economy minister said the nation should be prepared for a months-long lockdown period to address surging coronavirus caseloads.

Describing that “we’re not out of the woods yet” Altmaier further emphasized that Berlin wants to avoid a “yo-yo shutdown” with the economy “constantly opening and closing”. 

“If we don’t want days with 50,000 new infections, as was the case in France a few weeks ago, we must see through this and not constantly speculate about which measures can be relaxed again,” he told a German newspaper over the weekend.

“All countries that lifted their restrictions too early have so far paid a high price in terms of human lives lost,” he added.

Last week Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that Germans can expect a “more severe” outbreak during the second wave. “As it was the case with the Spanish flu, we now also have to expect that the second wave will be more severe,” she said Wednesday.

As of Sunday Germany is on the cusp of surpassing 800,000 confirmed infections, including over 12,500 deaths, making it the 13th most infected country globally.

Authored by Robert Spencer via PJMedia.com,

Every right-thinking person, that is, everyone who thinks Jake Tapper and Chuck Todd and Adam Schiff are as honest as the day is long and always tell the God’s honest truth, knows that the Orange Man is very, very bad.

The whole world, or at least the morally superior part, seems to have decided that a president who puts his own nation first and sees to its safety and prosperity is outrageous beyond every measure, and must be destroyed. But no one knows just how bad Donald Trump is as thoroughly as London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan.

Poor Khan has had an extremely rough four years. If you thought Trump wouldn’t have time after spending his days caging children, insulting the military, and being racist to torment the hapless mayor, think again. You may be able to get a note excusing you from the next Truth and Reconciliation Commission meeting if you take some time now to understand how Sadiq Khan has suffered, and suffered terribly, because that country across the Atlantic had the temerity to elect a president who was not a socialist internationalist.

According to LBC, Khan claimed that he has been “singled out” by Trump. How had evil Trump singled out Khan? Did he spy upon him before he took office? Did he try to frame him for crimes that would get him impeached and removed as mayor? No, nothing like that.

Trump’s grave sin, Khan said, was that he put the diminutive Leftist mayor under an “astonishingly ugly spotlight.” Trump zeroed in on Khan, the mayor claimed, “for no other reason than being Muslim.”

Yes, that’s right: Despite being Mayor of London and one of the most prominent and lionized politicians in Britain, Sadiq Khan still sees himself as a victim of “Islamophobia.”

Eyes no doubt glistening, he lamented:

“Being a Muslim ain’t easy, it isn’t easy…it’s never been harder to be a Muslim than the last four years.”

It has never been harder to be a Muslim than from 2016 until now! Never! In 1,400 years of Islam, Muslims have never had it so bad! See how powerful Trump is? When Muslims were expelled from Spain in 1492, they didn’t have it this bad. When their siege of Vienna was broken in 1683, they didn’t suffer as they do now at the hands of Trump. Not even when the State of Israel was founded, which supporters of the Palestinian jihad will tell you was the worst day in human history! No, for Khan it has never been worse than it is now, and not because of China’s persecution of the Uighurs, or because of atrocities supposedly committed against the Palestinians or Rohingyas, but solely because of Trump. For now, Khan said, the world had “for the first time the leader of the free world, a mainstream politician perpetuating a view that Islam and the West are incompatible.”

In reality, there were plenty of politicians saying that during the halcyon days of the old Ottoman Empire, and right up until the Left overwhelmed American academia in the 1960s, but it is unlikely that either Khan or his Leftist supporters have much of a historical memory. Trump, Khan claimed, had perpetuated a view that “all of us must be bad, or must be terrorist because of the actions of a very small minority.”

“Let’s be frank,” he concluded.

“The reason I was singled out was not because of any other reason,” he said, “than my faith.” And now Muslims worldwide are “carrying an additional weight,” all because of Trump.

As is so very characteristic of Islamic supremacists the world over, Khan started this feud, and is now playing the victim and claiming that Trump is motivated by “Islamophobia.”

The Trump/Khan conflict began in January 2017, when Khan attacked Trump’s travel ban on several countries that could not or would not provide adequate information about the people wishing to enter. Khan said:

“I am quite clear, this ban is cruel, this ban is shameful, while this ban is in place we should not be rolling out the red carpet for President Trump.”

The following month, Khan declared:

“President Trump can’t silence me….We stand in solidarity with all those who are discriminated against because of their nationality, their faith or their background.”

After a jihad massacre in London in June 2017, Trump tweeted:

“At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack, and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’”

Two years later, in June 2019, Trump tweeted:

“@SadiqKhan, who by all accounts has done a terrible job as Mayor of London, has been foolishly ‘nasty’ to the visiting President of the United States, by far the most important ally of the United Kingdom. He is a stone cold loser who should focus on crime in London, not me.”

So it looks as if Trump has criticized Khan for being blasé after a jihad massacre, for being personally unkind to him, and for neglecting London’s skyrocketing crime rate.

What in that is singling Khan out for being a Muslim? Nothing, of course. The same charges can be made against others, and Trump has made them; he has many times criticized New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is not a Muslim (as far as anyone knows, anyway), for being soft on crime.

So on what does Khan base his claim that Trump only criticized him because he is a Muslim? Nothing except the always-pertinent fact that it will play well with his Leftist base – on both sides of the Atlantic.

Russia has confirmed its peacekeeping force of nearly 2,000 military personnel, including military police, have begun patrols on the ground Nagorno-Karabakh after fighting has been halted for days.

Defense Ministry Spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov said on Saturday that “From today, the Russian military police units are beginning patrols in the North and South responsibility areas,” according to TASS.

After six weeks of intense fighting that has killed thousands, Azerbaijan is celebrating the Russian brokered ceasefire as a “capitulation” by the Armenian side, while Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan admitted in announcing it Tuesday that it was a “painful” settlement.

He further called it a “big failure and disaster.” Russia is expected to maintain in total of just under 2,000 military personnel rotating on a permanent basis, and which are reportedly already overseeing the transferring of bodies of the deceased to either side.

From Friday through Saturday large Russian transport planes were flying into the disputed border region. “The planes have already made 95 flights since the start of the peacekeeping operation, including 22 in the past twenty-four hours,” the Defense Ministry spokesman said.

Meanwhile there are reports that Turkey is after the fact attempting to muscle its way into the peacekeeping arrangement:

While the Russian peacekeeping forces have already begun their patrols in Karabakh, the Turkish Ministry of Defense claims their troops will also be participating in the ceasefire monitoring in this region.

The Russian presidency spokesperson, Dmitri Peskov, has denied the Turkish Ministry of Defense’s claims, pointing out that no agreement has been established to allow the deployment of their troops.

It’s expected that death toll numbers will jump dramatically based on identifying recovered bodies on either side.

* * *

The Russians also on Saturday published a first official map of their peacekeeping forces deployment in Karabakh, which is below:

Authored by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute,

The Austrian government has presented a draft online hate speech law, the Communication Platforms Act, which, if passed, will limit free speech in the country. The Austrian government writes in the introduction to its proposed law:

“The main reason for the development of this draft Act is the worrying development that the Internet and social media, in addition to the advantages that these new technologies and communication channels provide, have also established a new form of violence, and hate on the Internet is increasing in the form of insults, humiliation, false information and even threats of violence and death. The attacks are predominantly based on racist, xenophobic, misogynistic and homophobic motives. A comprehensive strategy and a set of measures are required that range from prevention to sanctions. This strategy is based on the two pillars of platform responsibility and victim protection, with the present draft Act relating to ensuring platform responsibility”.

The proposed law is modelled on Germany’s much criticized NetzDG law, also known as the censorship law, which came into effect in January 2018 and requires social media companies to delete or block any online unlawful content within 24 hours or 7 days at the most, or face fines of up to 50 million euros.

In May 2020, France adopted a similar law, known as the “Avia law“, also modelled on the German NetzDG law, which requires online platforms to remove reported “hateful content” — incitement to hatred, or discriminatory insult, on the grounds of race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or disability — within 24 hours. Failure to do so could result in fines of up to 1.25 million euros or 4% of the platform’s global revenue.

Similarly, the Austrian law requires “obviously” unlawful content to be deleted within 24 hours and other unlawful content within seven days. Failure to do so could lead to fines of up to 10 million euros ($12 million). Platforms must provide a reporting function for such content and react immediately to notifications.

Just like Germany’s NetzDG law, the Austrian censorship law privatizes state censorship by requiring social media platforms to censor their users on behalf of the state. If the proposed law is passed, the freedom of speech of Austrians online will be subject to the arbitrary decisions of corporate entities, such as Twitter, Google and Facebook.

With Austria’s draft online hate speech law, yet another European country is taking another step towards making online censorship an institutionalized feature of European hate speech laws. In Austria, according to Reuters, a surprising number of private associations would like to see even wider measures implemented: Austria’s association of digital service providers, ISPA, representing more than 200 companies including Google Austria and Facebook Germany welcomed the initiative against online hate speech but called for a joint European effort.

“Only a uniform European regulation can become a successful standard and assert itself worldwide,” ISPA said in a statement. “Uncoordinated individual courses don’t get us any further here.”

There has been, however, significant pushback against government censorship: In France, the Constitutional Council, a French court that examines legislation’s compatibility with the constitution, struck down multiple provisions of the “Avia law” in June because it infringed on freedom of expression. The Constitutional Council noted in its press release:

“[According] to Article 11 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789: ‘The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious human rights: any citizen can therefore speak, write, print freely, except to answer for the abuse of this freedom in the cases determined by the law’. It is inferred from these provisions that with the present state of the means of communication and in view of the generalized development of online communication services to the public, as well as the importance of these services for participation in democratic life and the expression of ideas and opinions, this right implies the freedom to access and express yourself in these services…”

“Freedom of expression and communication is all the more precious since its exercise is a condition of democracy and one of the guarantees of respect for other rights and freedoms. It follows that the interference with the exercise of that freedom must be necessary… and proportionate to the objective pursued”.

The court found that multiple provisions of the “Avia law” infringed on freedom of expression because they were not “necessary or proportionate”.

“We too often make bad laws with good intentions. Online platforms should not censor the freedom of expression,” said Chairman of the Senate Law Commission Philippe Bas after the Constitutional Council’s decision.

It can only be hoped that European lawmakers eager to censor free speech online will heed the ruling of the French constitutional court.