Turkish currency's freefall rocks world equity markets, euro - Reuters

AUGUST 10, 2018
Turkish currency's freefall rocks world equity markets, euro
Herbert Lash, Ritvik Carvalho

NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - A plunge in the Turkish lira rocked global equities and emerging markets on Friday and fear of further fallout sent investors scurrying for safety in assets like the yen and U.S. government bonds.

European shares and a gauge of global equity markets closed down more than 1 percent, while Wall Street also fell, though not as much. Germany’s DAX index slid 2 percent.

The lira fell as much as 18 percent against the dollar in its worst day since Turkey’s financial crisis of 2001. The plunge followed a deepening rift with the United States, worries about its own economy and lack of action from policymakers.

President Tayyip Erdogan told Turks to swap gold and dollars into lira as the currency tumbled after President Donald Trump doubled U.S. tariffs on metals imports from Turkey.

Turkey later warned the United States that sanctions and pressure would only serve to harm ties between the two NATO allies, adding Ankara would continue to retaliate as necessary against U.S. tariffs.

The lira has fallen more than 40 percent this year, fanning worries about a full-blown economic crisis.

Bank shares across Europe fell and the euro slipped to its lowest since July 2017 as the Financial Times quoted sources as saying the European Central Bank was concerned about European lenders’ exposure to Turkey. The country is not a member of the European Union but is economically linked to it.

The dollar rose as exposure to Turkey could impact European banks and spark a domino effect as people begin to pull out of those banks and into U.S. assets, said Gregan Anderson, macroeconomic strategist at brokerage Bulltick LLC.

The flare-up in tensions has made it difficult for global investors to justify remaining in Europe and is negative for emerging markets, he said.

Policy errors created the current situation, with Turkey’s central bank decision not to raise rates in their last meeting a key driver, said Charlie Wilson, an emerging markets-focused portfolio manager at Thornburg Investment Management in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

“The lira has been weakening since and it’s coming to a head today,” Wilson said, adding the downward spiral will continue if Turkey insists on a soft landing.

“The only way to correct these policy mistakes is to really make some concrete changes on the fiscal and monetary side.”

Shares in France’s BNP Paribas, Italy’s UniCredit and Spain’s BBVA, the banks seen as most exposed to Turkey, fell 3 percent or more.

An index of regional banking shares closed down 3.2 percent while the pan-European STOXX 600 index fell 1.07 percent.

The MSCI All-Country World index, which tracks shares in 47 countries, was down 1.22 percent and erased all its gains for the week.

Wall Street also fell.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 196.09 points, or 0.77 percent, to 25,313.14. The S&P 500 lost 20.3 points, or 0.71 percent, to 2,833.28 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 52.67 points, or 0.67 percent, to 7,839.11.

Investors piled into “safe” government debt, with German yields hitting three-week lows and the yield on the benchmark U.S. 10-year Treasury note falling to 2.8750 percent as investors sought its safety.

The safe-haven Japanese yen hit a one-month high of 113.38 against the dollar, and was last traded at 110.91.

The dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a group of six major currencies, breached 96, taking it to its highest level since July 2017. It was last up 0.84 percent at 96.309.

Emerging market stocks lost 1.66 percent, while the Mexican peso, a proxy for emerging market currencies, shed 1.29 percent to the dollar.

Slideshow (3 Images)
Adding to emerging market currency woes was the Russian ruble, which weakened to 67.6825 to the dollar. Overnight it had retreated to its lowest since November 2016 on threats of new U.S. sanctions, weakening beyond the psychologically important 65-per-dollar threshold.

Oil prices rose more than 1 percent as U.S. sanctions against Iran looked set to tighten supply, but futures remained lower for the week as investors worried that global trade disputes could slow economic growth and hurt demand for energy.

Benchmark Brent crude oil rose 74 cents to settle at $72.81 a barrel. U.S. light crude settled 82 cents higher at $67.33 a barrel.

U.S. gold futures for December delivery settled down 90 cents, or 0.1 percent, at $1,219 per ounce.

Reporting by Ritvik Carvalho; Writing by Herbert Lash; Additional reporting by Dhara Ranasinghe in LONDON, Rodrigo Campos in New York, and Asia markets team; Editing by Janet Lawrence, Nick Zieminski and Diane Craft

Melania Trump's parents have been granted US citizenship and the internet can't take the hypocrisy - Independent

August 11, 2018.

Melania Trump's parents have been granted US citizenship and the internet can't take the hypocrisy
Posted a day ago by Lowenna Waters in news 
UPVOTE 
              
On Thursday it was announced that Melania Trump's parents have been sworn in as official US citizens through sponsorship by their adult daughter.

There's one tiny issue with this - they appear to have gained citizenship through taking advantage of a family-based immigration system, otherwise known as 'chain migration', that the president himself has railed against vehemently.

Slovenian couple Viktor and Amalija Knavs, 73 and 71 respectively, gained their citizenship in a private ceremony in Manhattan, their immigration attorney Michael Wildes announced.

Asked whether they'd obtained citizenship through 'chain migration', he responded 'I suppose', reports the New York Times. ​

In November, the president railed against this type of family-based migration, which he regularly calls 'chain migration', saying that it is harmful to the US, and seeking to repeal it as a means of obtaining a green card.

In a speech in November, the president Trump tweeted:

CHAIN MIGRATION must end now! Some people come in, and they bring their whole family with them, who can be truly evil. NOT ACCEPTABLE!


Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
 CHAIN MIGRATION must end now! Some people come in, and they bring their whole family with them, who can be truly evil. NOT ACCEPTABLE!

9:03 AM - Nov 2, 2017

Needless to say, it didn't take long for the internet to pick up on this apparent extreme hypocrisy.

Kyle Griffin
✔
@kylegriffin1
 Asked if the Knavses (Melania's parents) obtained citizenship through family-based immigration, sometimes called 'chain migration,' their lawyer said, "I suppose. It's a dirty — a dirtier word."

In November, Trump tweeted, "CHAIN MIGRATION must end now!" https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/09/nyregion/melania-trumps-parents-become-us-citizens.html …

6:40 AM - Aug 10, 2018
Melania Trump’s parents, Amalija and Viktor Knavs, center, with their lawyer, Michael Wildes, right, after their naturalization ceremony in Manhattan on Thursday.
Melania Trump’s Parents Become U.S. Citizens, Using ‘Chain Migration’ Trump Hates
Viktor and Amalija Knavs had a private naturalization ceremony in Lower Manhattan, after being sponsored by their daughter in a program President Trump has railed against.

nytimes.com

Benjy Sarlin
✔
@BenjySarlin
 This is the exact type of green card Trump wants to eliminate and has personally excoriated in speech after speech.

MJ Lee
✔
@mj_lee
Melania Trump sponsored her parents to obtain US green cards, a source familiar tells CNN. Today, her parents became US citizens.

7:22 AM - Aug 10, 2018

MJ Lee
✔
@mj_lee
Replying to @mj_lee
To be clear, Melania Trump sponsoring her parents is a method many, many Americans use to bring their family to the US. It just happens to be a practice that Melania's husband -- the President -- wants to do away with.

7:23 AM - Aug 10, 2018

David Nakamura
✔
@DavidNakamura
 .@DavidLeopold does not mince words in my story on @FLOTUS’s parents becoming naturalized citizens today. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/melania-trumps-parents-become-naturalized-us-citizens-amid-the-presidents-hostility-toward-chain-migration/2018/08/09/646a4f62-9bf9-11e8-b60b-1c897f17e185_story.html …

5:40 AM - Aug 10, 2018

Some focused on the plight of other families at the borders.

Jonathan Van Ness
✔
@jvn
 How do you sleep at night? ⁦@realDonaldTrump⁩ ⁦@FLOTUS⁩ ⁦@IvankaTrump⁩ , how’s family reunification going at the border?  https://apple.news/A7hKok5KMRyOj1JocQ_kUyA …

7:17 AM - Aug 10, 2018
3,645
468 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy

While others highlighted the fact that Melania's own immigration story is still unclear.

Kyle Griffin
✔
@kylegriffin1
 Reminder in light of the naturalization of Melania's parents: On this date two years ago—August 9, 2016—Trump promised that Melania would hold a press conference within the next few weeks about her immigration story.

She still has never held that press conference.

12:45 PM - Aug 10, 2018

While others tried to work out exactly how the Knavses​ could have gained citizenship.

Aura Bogado
✔
@aurabogado
 There are very limited, precise ways that someone can get a green card. If Melania Trump's parents got green cards through family reunification, @realDonaldTrump's name would be listed on their application as Melania Trump’s spouse. It's also the program Trump wants to cut.

4:28 AM - Mar 6, 2018

Aura Bogado
✔
@aurabogado
Replying to @aurabogado
You can also get a green card through unemployment. Melania Trump herself got a so-called Einstein Visa. As you may have guess, there are no such visas for extraordinary farmworkers or genius housecleaners.

4:30 AM - Mar 6, 2018

Aura Bogado
✔
@aurabogado
Replying to @aurabogado
You can also get a green card through unemployment. Melania Trump herself got a so-called Einstein Visa. As you may have guess, there are no such visas for extraordinary farmworkers or genius housecleaners.

4:30 AM - Mar 6, 2018

Aura Bogado
✔
@aurabogado
Replying to @aurabogado
Unless Melania Trump's parents have been moonlighting as Afghan or Iraqi translators, religious workers, international broadcasters, they wouldn't qualify for green card as "special immigrants." Take that one off the list.

4:32 AM - Mar 6, 2018

Aura Bogado
✔
@aurabogado
Replying to @aurabogado
Are Melania Trump's parents refugees or asylees? That's another way they could have obtained green cards. There are *very* few refugees from Slovenia or Austria, tho.

4:33 AM - Mar 6, 2018

Aura Bogado
✔
@aurabogado
Replying to @aurabogado
Were Melania Trump's parents trafficked into the US by a coyote? If so, they could get a T visa. Were they victims of a serious crime? If so, they could get a U visa. With either of these, they could then get a green card.

4:35 AM - Mar 6, 2018

Aura Bogado
✔
@aurabogado
Replying to @aurabogado
If Melania Trump's parents were from Cuba, they could try to get green cards. But they're not. So they can't and they didn't.

4:36 AM - Mar 6, 2018

Aura Bogado
✔
@aurabogado
Replying to @aurabogado
Did Melania Trump's parents take their changes with the diversity lottery? It's unlikely, given that family reunification (a program Trump wants to cut) is so much easier. Trump also wants to cut the diversity lottery btw.

4:38 AM - Mar 6, 2018

Aura Bogado
✔
@aurabogado
Replying to @aurabogado
Did Melania Trump's parents take their changes with the diversity lottery? It's unlikely, given that family reunification (a program Trump wants to cut) is so much easier. Trump also wants to cut the diversity lottery btw.

4:38 AM - Mar 6, 2018

Aura Bogado
✔
@aurabogado
Replying to @aurabogado
If Melania Trump's parents had been here since 1972, they could apply for green cards through the registry program. Seems highly unlikely, however.

4:39 AM - Mar 6, 2018

Aura Bogado
✔
@aurabogado
Replying to @aurabogado
That's it. Those are the ways @MELANIATRUMP's parents could have gotten green cards. That's why so many immigration attorneys say it likely happened through family reunification. Again, that's the program Donald Trump wants to cut. Read more here: https://www.revealnews.org/blog/here-are-eight-ways-melanias-parents-could-have-received-green-cards/ …

4:42 AM - Mar 6, 2018

Here are 8 ways Melania Trump’s parents could have received green cards
Of the ways they could have received green cards, family reunification, dubbed "chain migration" by President Donald Trump, is most likely.

revealnews.org

In March this year, it was reported the Melania Trump gained citizenship of the US through an 'Einstein visa' in 2001. Only five people from Slovenia were granted green cards in the US under the programme in 2001, according to the US State Department, and in that year only 3,376 of the over 1 million green cards issued were for immigrants who had 'extraordinary ability'. At the time of her citizenship approval, the future First Lady's achievements amounted to a successful modelling career.

HT CNN

Boris Johnson 'to face probe' over Islamophobic remarks - Al Jazeera

Boris Johnson 'to face probe' over Islamophobic remarks
The former UK foreign secretary compared Muslims who wear veils with bank robbers in article published in major outlet.

10 Aug 2018
Boris Johnson has refused to apologise to Muslim women wearing full-face veils [Reuters]

Former British foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, will face an investigation following Islamophobic comments about Muslim women who wear the face veil, according to a report by the Evening Standard newspaper.

Johnson compared women wearing the veil with bank robbers or letter boxes in an article for the right-leaning Daily Telegraph.

The Conservative MP will face an investigatory panel for a possible breach of his party's code of conduct, the first step in disciplinary action that has been called for by a number of Conservative MPs and independent organisations.

Is Europe's far right a threat to democracy? - UpFront
The comments prompted severe criticism from within his own party, including Prime Minister Theresa May, and led to questions about whether he was pandering to the far right by stoking Islamophobia.

Johnson left May's cabinet in July in a dispute over her plan for leaving the European Union, which he says he finds too soft.

He is considered a frontrunner to replace May should she resign, and has support among Conservative supporters to the right of the prime minister.

Johnson is reported to have recently secretly met US far-right ideologue Steve Bannon, a former adviser to US President Donald Trump.

Bannon has come out in support of the MP, saying in July that "now is the moment" for Johnson to challenge May.

If found to have broken the Conservatives' code of conduct, he could face expulsion from the party.

A hundred Muslim women who wear the niqab had written to Brandon Lewis, the chairman of the Conservative Party, demanding that Johnson be kicked out of the party.

"Our decision to wear the niqab or burka is not an easy one, especially given the hate that many of us experience on a regular basis. Nevertheless we do so because we believe it is a means to get closer to God," the women said in a letter.

Lewis and Theresa May have both criticised Johnson for his remarks and have urged him to apologise but he has so far refused to do so.

The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) has welcomed the party's decision to launch an inquiry into the former foreign secretary's comments, a statement published on Thursday said.

"While the choice of panelists are for the Party to decide, to avoid accusations of a whitewash, the group should include people who are aware of the seriousness of the issue and its effect on society," Harun Khan, secretary general of the MCB said.

Some Muslim women who wear the niqab have petitioned the Conservative Party demanding the expulsion of Boris Johson  [ Courtesy: Nada UmmNour ]

Monsanto ordered to pay $289m damages in Roundup cancer trial - BBC News

Monsanto ordered to pay $289m damages in Roundup cancer trial
11 August 2018

Crops are often treated with the herbicide glyphosate
Chemical giant Monsanto has been ordered to pay $289m (£226m) damages to a man who claimed herbicides containing glyphosate had caused his cancer.

In a landmark case, a Californian jury found that Monsanto knew its Roundup and RangerPro weedkillers were dangerous and failed to warn consumers.

It's the first lawsuit to go to trial alleging a glyphosate link to cancer.

Monsanto denies that glyphosate causes cancer and says it intends to appeal against the ruling.

"The jury got it wrong," vice-president Scott Partridge said outside the courthouse in San Francisco.

EU settles dispute over weedkiller glyphosate
UK 'will support' pesticide ban
The villagers who fear herbicides
The claimant in the case, groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson, is among more than 5,000 similar plaintiffs across the US.

Correspondents say the California ruling is likely to lead to hundreds of other claims against Monsanto, which was recently bought by the German conglomerate Bayer AG.

Mr Johnson was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2014. His lawyers said he regularly used a form of RangerPro while working at a school in Benicia, California.

Glyphosate controversy far from settled
Analysis by James Cook, BBC North America Correspondent

The implications of this verdict will be felt far beyond Monsanto's headquarters in Missouri.

Glyphosate is the world's most common weedkiller and the science about its safety is still far from settled.

In 2015 the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the World Health Organisation's cancer agency, concluded that it was "probably carcinogenic to humans". but the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to insist that glyphosate is safe when used carefully.

Campaigners question how the EPA assessment was reached, citing evidence of what they say was inappropriate industry involvement in the decision.

Some Democrats have even called for a Department of Justice investigation into alleged collusion between government officials and Monsanto.

In California, where a judge recently ruled that coffee must carry a cancer warning, the agriculture industry sued to prevent such a label for glyphosate even though the state lists it as a chemical known to cause cancer.

In Europe, too, the battle over glyphosate has been fierce. French President Emmanuel Macron is trying to ban it despite the resistance of some French lawmakers and the fact that the European Commission recently granted the weedkiller another five-year licence.

Jurors found on Friday that the company had acted with "malice" and that its weedkillers contributed "substantially" to Mr Johnson's terminal illness.

Following an eight-week trial, the jury ordered the agricultural multi-national to pay $250m in punitive damages together with other costs that brought the total figure to almost $290m.

Mr Johnson's lawyer, Brent Wisner, said the jury's verdict showed that the evidence against the product was "overwhelming".

"When you are right, it is really easy to win," he said, adding that the ruling was just "the tip of the spear" of future legal cases.

Dewayne Johnson (R) hugged his lawyer after hearing the verdict
In a statement after the ruling, Monsanto said it was "sympathetic to Mr Johnson and his family" but it would "continue to vigorously defend this product, which has a 40-year history of safe use".

"Today's decision does not change the fact that more than 800 scientific studies and reviews - and conclusions by the US Environmental Protection Agency, the US National Institutes of Health and regulatory authorities around the world - support the fact that glyphosate does not cause cancer, and did not cause Mr Johnson's cancer," it added.

Hacking the US mid-terms? It's child's play - BBC News

August11, 2018.

Hacking the US mid-terms? It's child's play
Dave Lee
North America technology reporter

WATCH: "I'm going to try to change the votes for Donald Trump"
Bianca Lewis, 11, has many hobbies. She likes Barbie, video games, fencing, singing… and hacking the infrastructure behind the world’s most powerful democracy.

“I’m going to try and change the votes for Donald Trump,” she tells me.

“I’m going to try to give him less votes. Maybe even delete him off of the whole thing.”

Fortunately for the President, Bianca is attacking a replica website, not the real deal.

She’s taking part in a competition organised by R00tz Asylum, a non-profit organisation that promotes “hacking for good”.

Its aim is to send out a dire warning: the voting systems that will be used across America for the mid-term vote in November are, in many cases, so insecure a young child can learn to hack them with just a few minute’s coaching.

Image caption
Bianca Lewis, 11, believes election technology needs to be made more secure
"These are the websites that are very important because they report the election results to the public,” explained Nico Sell, the founder of R00tz Asylum.

“They also tell the public where to go to vote. You could imagine if either of these two things were changed, the chaos that would ensue.”

Hacking the real websites would be illegal. So instead, Ms Sell’s team created 13 sites that mimicked the real websites, gaping vulnerabilities and all, for 13 so-called “battleground" states - parts of the country where the vote is expected to be tight.

Over the course of a day, 39 kids aged between 8 and 17 took the challenge - 35 of them succeeded in bypassing the trivial security. Pranks ensued. At one time the site told us 12 billion votes had been cast. Later, we were told that candidate “Bob Da Builder” was the victor.

Eager children
The first competitor to break in was 11-year-old Audrey Jones. It took her 10 minutes.

“The bugs in the code makes us [able] to do whatever we want,” she tells me.

"We call somebody our own name if we want to, make it look like we won the election!”

The kids' zone at Def Con had more than 300 attendees on its first day - around half of them were girls
The contest was part of the kids' zone at Def Con, the annual hacking conference in Las Vegas. This year it was attended by more than 300 eager children, trying everything from lock picking to soldering. At one table I meet two-year-old Catherine Sabonis, happily picking apart a debit card reader. Organisers tell me around half of the attendees are girls.

This year is the first time election hacking has been a theme, one which was inspired by similar hacks being carried about by adult attendees at 2017’s show.

While the hacks learnt here wouldn’t change actual vote counts - even if carried out for real - they could alter how the vote results were displayed on official websites. It doesn’t take much imagination to picture the furore that would be caused were an official election website to declare the wrong candidate the winner.

The fallibility of these systems has been of concern since 2016’s presidential election, and in some cases well before that. Each state in the US is able to come up with its own system, and with budgets tight, many are relying on poorly secured databases and voting machines that run software that’s well over a decade old.

‘Our democracy is at risk'
Last month, Congress voted along party lines and rejected an amendment put forward by the Democrats. It would have injected $380m into boosting voting security during 2019, renewing a grant of the same amount approved in a previous budget.

Eleven-year-old Audrey Jones was the quickest to hack one of the election websites
A heated session culminated in supporters of the amendment chanting “USA! USA!” in the House - but it wasn’t enough to win over Republican votes.

“We need to take this threat really seriously,” says Ms Sell. “The Secretary of State websites should not be this vulnerable. These are known vulnerabilities. It’s something that we as a society need to gather together and fix, because our democracy is at risk.”

Taking a brief break from hacking, Bianca hands me a sticker with her social media persona on it. I promised I’d give it a plug. I ask her if she’s worried about the lack of security on the websites she’d been attacking, with great success, throughout the day.

“We should have it way [more] secure,” she says. “Russians are out there, people."