now it becomes how much of a consequence they allow for dat.
morning
Lebanese Judge Issues Warrant for Ex-Minister Over Port Blast
A Lebanese judge investigating last year’s port explosion issued an arrest warrant for a former minister after he failed to show up for questioning, National News Agency said.
Tarek Bitar had asked Youssef Finianos, who previously served as public works minister, to appear on Thursday. Former Prime Minister Hassan Diab also hasn’t appeared for questioning despite repeated requests for him to do so. The two are among a number of officials Bitar has summoned as part of the inquiry into the blast on Aug. 4, 2020, when a large consignment of ammonium nitrate exploded at the port, damaging swathes of Beirut and killing more than 200 people. All deny wrongdoing. More than a year on, the investigation has made little progress, drawing anger and protests from the families of the victims who want to know why the highly-explosive material was left at the port for years before the disaster.
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/lebanese-judge-issues-warrant-for-ex-minister-over-port-blast-1.1653144
China slams U.S.-led plan to give nuclear submarines to Australia
Beijing calls on Washington, London, Canberra to drop 'zero-sum game mentality'
China slammed the new Indo-Pacific security alliance unveiled by the U.S., the U.K. and Australia on Wednesday, especially the plan to deliver nuclear-powered submarines to Canberra.
Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a regular briefing on Thursday that the three English-speaking nations should "abandon their Cold War and zero-sum game mentality." Otherwise, he said, they would "lift a rock that drops on their own feet," according to the Global Times, a Communist Party-backed newspaper. Under the pact, dubbed AUKUS, Australia will be only the second country after Britain, in the 1950s, to gain access to American technology to build nuclear-powered submarines. A joint statement said the three nations would seek to deliver at least eight vessels. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison talked up the submarines' capabilities, while strenuously denying any intention to arm them with atomic weapons.
China's Zhao said the decision by Washington and London to export nuclear-powered submarine technology to Canberra proves that they are using nuclear exports for geopolitical gains. He added that should Australia as a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons import the technology, then its neighbors and the international community would question its sincerity in meeting the terms of that treaty. The alliance is another move by U.S. President Joe Biden to turn the security screws on China, which is acting increasingly aggressively toward Taiwan and in the South China Sea. The announcement slammed by France as it now misses out on a submarine deal with Australia came a day before the European Union was due to publish its Indo-Pacific strategy, and ahead of a meeting in Washington of the so-called Quad security dialogue.
Van Jackson, a senior lecturer in international relations at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, said the launch of AUKUS seems to serve Canberra's and Washington's purposes by making a big decision that appears to be a game changer. "They wanted to orchestrate some kind of announceable deliverable that showed the U.S. living up to its goal of countering China and showing the flag in Asia," Jackson told Nikkei Asia. He added that China will respond by simply keeping the economic thumbscrews on Australia. "There will surely be some aggressive wolf-warrior comments from China soon enough, but the meaningful reaction is the one that's already ongoing."
A senior Chinese military expert told the Global Times that when Australia acquires such technology, it will potentially pose a nuclear threat to other countries. "It's easy for the U.S. and the U.K. to deploy nuclear weapons and submarine-launched ballistic missiles on the Australian submarines if they believe it's necessary, and Biden's and Morrison's promises of 'not seeking nuclear weapons' are meaningless," said the expert who requested anonymity. The announcement has already created rifts between U.S. allies in Europe, and raised tensions between Australia and New Zealand. France acted furiously to the announcement as its $90 billion deal to supply 12 conventionally powered submarines has now been scrapped. "This unilateral, brutal, unpredictable decision is very similar to what Mr. Trump did," Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told a radio show, referring to former U.S. President Donald Trump. "This kind of behavior should not happen between allies... we were talking about all this with the United States a short time ago, and here is this rupture. It is quite unbearable," he added. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson insisted that despite the announcement triggering the cancellation of the French submarine deal with Australia, his nation's relationship with Paris was "rock solid."
Jackson said the idea that the U.S., the U.K. and Australia a subgroup of Five Eyes intelligence-sharing agreement that also includes Canada and New Zealand would convene on a deeper level was being planned as early as 2019. "This comes at France's expense because the decision for Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines as part of this new tripartite arrangement means it won't be acquiring French submarines," he said. "Five-Eyes is pretty much the most trusted technocratic arrangement that any of these countries has, and France is not part of Five-Eyes, so France was never going to be part of this specific decision." Jackson added that Japan and India members of the Quad along with the U.S. and Australia were not included simply because the intention was always to make AUKUS a sub-Five Eyes grouping.
moar
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Indo-Pacific/China-slams-U.S.-led-plan-to-give-nuclear-submarines-to-Australia
Powell Orders Review Of Fed Ethics Rules After Trading Disclosures Spark Mass Outrage
Fed Presidents Robert Kaplan and Eric Rosengren have committed to liquidating their portfolios (at a particularly auspicious time for stocks, which continued to smash through ATHs all summer long) in the wake of a market-shaking scandal caused by the release of senior Fed officials' financial disclosure forms, which revealed that Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan made several million-dollar trades in 2020, while his fellow Fed officials (including Boston's Eric Rosengren) made smaller trades of their own. The financial revelations followed speculation about Fed Chairman Powell's portfolio late last month in research published by Dylan Grice.
But even Grice probably didn't expect the popular backlash elicited by news that senior Fed officials were playing the stock market, just like the unwashed Robinhood-loving masses, while their hands were on the money printer. On social media, users mocked the news as potentially damning for the central bank's credibility, since even the appearance of potential corruption is enough to destroy trust in a public institution, even if Powell & Co. continue to deny that their finances have now sway over policy. None of them have placed their money in blind trusts, which are considered the gold standard for dispelling conflicts of interest.
Cleraly sensing just how drastic this threat to the Fed's credbility has become, Fed Chairman Powell has Thursday directed board staff to take a fresh and comprehensive look at the ethics rules around permissible financial holdings and activities by senior Fed officials. A Fed spokesman also said the Fed has a set of supplemental rules that are stricter than those that apply to members of Congress and other agencies. The announcement comes after Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who recently led the charge to jeopardize Powell's reappointment as Fed chair, challenged the Fed to impose a ban on the ownership and trading of individual stocks by senior officials.
After the stock trading debacles at the Dallas and Boston Federal Reserve banks, Sen. Warren writes to all 12 presidents: within 60 days, impose a ban on the ownership and trading of individual stocks by senior officials https://t.co/VtILTutTU1 pic.twitter.com/PavneO6v1z— Brian Cheung (@bcheungz) September 16, 2021
It's too early to say whether this "review" might lead to the censure, or ouster, of any senior Fed officials. But it's clear that Powell senses the threat to the Fed's independence that the trading revelations represent. Unfortunately, at this point, it's a little like slamming the barn door after the horse has bolted.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/powell-orders-review-fed-ethics-rules-after-trading-disclosures-spark-mass-outrage
>>89543 pb Dallas Fed’s Robert Kaplan was an active buyer and seller of stocks last year-foxbiusiness
appreciate dat as always.