London Attack: ‘They literally just started kicking them, punching them, they took out knives… it was a rampage really.’

Posted: June 4, 2017 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Global, Religion, Terrorism, War Room | Tags: Birmingham New Street station, British Airways, British Transport Police, Gatwick Airport, Heathrow Airport, Information technology, London, Manchester, Paul Crowther (police officer), United Kingdom | 1 Comment

The prime minister has said “it is time to say enough is enough” as she condemned a terror attack on “innocent and unarmed civilians” which left seven people dead and 48 injured in London.

A white van hit pedestrians on London Bridge at about 22:00 BST on Saturday, then three men got out and stabbed people in nearby Borough Market.

The three attackers, who wore fake bomb vests, were shot dead by police.

Several arrests have been made after police raids in Barking, east London.

It is the third terror attack in the UK in three months, following the car and knife attack in Westminster in March, which left five people dead, and the Manchester bombing less than two weeks ago, in which 22 people were killed.

Most political parties have suspended national general election campaigning, but Mrs May said full campaigning would resume on Monday and the general election would go ahead as planned on Thursday.

Eyewitnesses to the attack described seeing a white van travelling at high speed along London Bridge, hitting pedestrians, before crashing close to the Barrowboy and Banker pub.

BBC reporter Holly Jones, who was on the bridge, said it was “probably travelling at about 50 miles an hour” and hit “five or six people”.

Three men then got out and began attacking people in the nearby market – an area known for its bars and restaurants, which were busy on a warm summer evening.

Terrified drinkers rushed away from the scene, some taking shelter in London Bridge Underground station.

‘Rampage’

One witness, Gerard, told the BBC he saw a woman being stabbed “10 or 15 times” by men shouting “This is for Allah”.

Another, Eric, told the BBC the men “ran towards the people that they nearly ran over”.

“I thought, ‘Oh maybe they’re worried about them and trying to comfort them…’

“[Then] they literally just started kicking them, punching them, they took out knives… it was a rampage really.”

The three suspects were shot dead within eight minutes of the first 999 call being received.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick praised the “extraordinary bravery” of her officers, on and off duty, who risked their lives by rushing to confront the attackers.

Among the main developments:

More than 80 medics were sent to the scene. The injured, some of them in critical condition, are being treated in five London hospitals
The Met Police has set up a casualty bureau on 0800 096 1233 and 020 7158 0197 for people concerned about friends or relatives
One of those hurt was a British Transport Police officer who was stabbed as he went to help. His injuries are serious, but not threatening.
Three other police officers were also injured
Two Australian citizens “have been directly impacted,” says the country’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull
Four French citizens have been injured, one seriously, according to foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian

Another eyewitness, Steven Gibbs, who was drinking in St Christopher’s Inn, just metres from the scene, told the BBC: “A black cab drove past and the driver shouted, ‘Terrorist attack, run!’

“I stood up to take a look and then all of a sudden there were gunshots. Lots of people were screaming.”

Steven was taken into the basement of the bar before the police came in and told everyone inside to run. Read the rest of this entry »

China is Buying up American Companies Fast, and it’s Freaking People Out

Posted: February 22, 2016 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Asia, China, Economics | Tags: Beijing, Chinese New Year, Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, Hainan Airlines, IBM, Information technology, Ingram Micro, Irvine, Korean Peninsula, North Korea, Park Geun-hye, President of the People's Republic of China, Tianjin, Xi Jinping | Leave a comment

china-business

Given the recent volume of deals, it would appear that the Chinese government is supportive of the foreign-buying spree.

Portia Crowe reports: Here’s a story you’ll be hearing about a lot this year.

now-panic-and-freak-out_i-g-61-6183-1f81100z Chinese companies have been buying up foreign businesses, including American ones, at a record rate, and it’s freaking
lawmakers out.

There is General Electric’s sale of its appliance business to Qingdao-based Haier, Zoomlion’s bid for the heavy-lifting-equipment maker Terex Corp., and ChemChina’s record-breaking deal for the Swiss seeds and pesticides group Syngenta, valued at $48 billion.

Most recently, a unit of the Chinese conglomerate HNA Group said it would buy the technology distributor Ingram Micro for $6 billion.

And the most contentious deal so far might be the Chinese-led investor group Chongqing Casin Enterprise’s bid for the Chicago Stock Exchange.

Shutterstock

A deal spree

To date, there have been 102 Chinese outbound mergers-and-acquisitions deals announced this year, amounting to $81.6 billion in value, according to Dealogic. That’s up from 72 deals worth $11 billion in the same period last year.

And they’re not expected to let up anytime soon. Slow economic growth in China and cheap prices abroad due to the stock market’s recent sell-off suggest the opposite.

[Read the full story here, at Business Insider]

“With the slowdown of the economy, Chinese corporates are increasingly looking to inorganic avenues to supplement their growth,” Vikas Seth, head of emerging markets in the investment-banking and capital-markets department at Credit Suisse, told Business Insider earlier this month.

Kim Kyung-Hoon/ReutersPresident Obama and President Xi Jinping.

China’s economic growth in 2015 was its slowest in 25 years.

The law firm O’Melveny & Myers recently surveyed their mainly China-based clients and found that the economic growth potential in the US was the main factor making it an attractive investment destination. panic-betty

Nearly half of respondents agreed that the US was the most attractive market for investment, but 47% felt that US laws and regulations were a major barrier. They’d be right about that.

A major barrier

Forty-five members of Congress this week signed a letter to the Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, or CFIUS, urging it to conduct a “full and rigorous investigation” of the Chicago Stock Exchange acquisition.

“This proposed acquisition would be the first time a Chinese-owned, possibly state-influenced, firm maintained direct access into the $22 trillion US equity marketplace,” the letter reads. Read the rest of this entry »

Our Spoiled, Emasculated, De‑Spiritualised Societies in the West are in Terminal Decline

Posted: January 3, 2016 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Art & Culture, Global, Politics, Religion, Terrorism, Think Tank | Tags: Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, Angela Merkel, Beijing, China, David Cameron, EUROPE, European Union, François Hollande, Information technology, Internet, Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China, Internet governance, Member of Parliament, President of the People's Republic of China, Syria, United Kingdom, United States, Wuzhen, Xi Jinping, Zhejiang | Leave a comment

fall-of-rome_2184860b

In 2015 we witness a rare geopolitcal power shift – and in the face of every kind of new external challenge the leaders of the EU and the USA have never looked weaker or more bemused.

Christopher Booker writes: As we enter this new year, what is the most significant feature of how the world is changing that went almost unnoticed in the year just ended? Two events last autumn might have given us a clue.

One was the very peculiar nature of that state visit in October, when the president of China was taken in a golden coach to stay at Buckingham Palace, down a Mall lined with hundreds of placard-waving pro‑China stooges, while the only people manhandled away by Chinese security guards were a few protesters against China’s treatment of Tibet and abuses of human rights.

[Read the full story here, at the Telegraph]

Everywhere we see Western illusions colliding with reality, as when the reckless bid to suck Ukraine into the EU and Nato inevitably provoked a response from President Putin and a Russian sense of national interest that has left us looking pathetically impotent.

Queen Elizabeth II and President of The PeopleÕs Republic of China, Mr Xi Jinping, ride in the Diamond Jubilee State Coach along The Mall Photo: PA

Led by David Cameron, our politicians could not have fawned more humiliatingly on the leader of a country whose economy, before its recent wobbles, was predicted by the IMF to overtake that of the US as the largest in the world in 2016. While Britain once led the world in steel‑making and the civil use of nuclear power, the visit coincided with the crumbling of the remains of our steel industry before a flood of cheap Chinese steel, as our politicians pleaded for China’s help in building, to an obsolete design, the most costly nuclear power station in the world.

Three weeks later came the rather less prominent visit of Narendra Modi, prime minister of India, whose even faster-growing economy is predicted by financial analysts to become bigger than Britain’s within three years, and to overtake China’s as the world’s largest in the second half of the century. Read the rest of this entry »

Google Exploring Shanghai’s Free-Trade Zone

Posted: December 8, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Asia, China, Politics, Science & Technology | Tags: Apple Inc, Asia, California, California Institute of Technology, China, Department of Motor Vehicles, Diyarbakır, Free trade zone, Google, India, Information technology, iPad, iPhone, Shanghai, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal | Leave a comment

Companies such as Amazon and Apple use Shanghai’s free-trade zone to run some of their value-added services in China, due to the area’s looser rules on foreign capital.

Y ang Jie reports: The jury is still out on the business benefits of Shanghai’s free-trade zone— but one notable U.S. tech giant is among the firms that has dipped a toe into the pilot area’s waters.

“The free-trade zone’s rules make it easier for foreign companies to run e-commerce operations, for example. But they have little benefit when it comes to activities such as Internet search and e-mail, which are dependent on the location of the server and the storage of data”

Google, of Mountain View, Calif., set up a company in Shanghai’s pioneer free-trade zone last year, according to online filings reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Companies such as Amazon and Apple use Shanghai’s free-trade zone to run some of their value-added services in China, due to the area’s looser rules on foreign capital and greater freedom in terms of industries that foreign businesses can participate in.

The free-trade zone’s rules make it easier for foreign companies to run e-commerce operations, for example. But they have little benefit when it comes to activities such as Internet search and e-mail, which are dependent on the location of the server and the storage of data, according to people familiar with the matter.

A Google spokesman declined to comment on the issue. The company’s establishment was first reported on Monday by The Paper, a Shanghai-based media outlet.
Read the rest of this entry »

You’ve Got Mail: OPM Sends Data Breach Notifications to Millions of Employees

Posted: June 15, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Breaking News, U.S. News | Tags: China, Computer security, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Federal government of the United States, Identity theft, Information technology, List of United States federal agencies, Personally identifiable information, United States Department of Homeland Security, United States Office of Personnel Management | 2 Comments

WASHINGTON — Millions of federal workers are starting to receive notices from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management that their identity may be compromised following the recent data breach.

WNEW has obtained a copy of the letter [click to enlarge]

Read the rest of this entry »

PANIC: U.S. Stocks Lose Sense of Humor

Posted: January 5, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Breaking News, Economics, U.S. News | Tags: Associated Press, Blue chip (stock market), Chevron Corporation, Dow Jones Industrial Average, Economic data, Information technology, Intel, MarketWatch, Nasdaq Composite, S&P 500 | Leave a comment

stock-tumble

The decline in oil prices has proved a mixed blessing for stocks in recent months. Though it has led to lower gasoline prices and boosted the fortunes of ordinary consumers, the slide has also curbed profits within the once-booming energy sector, which makes up a growing piece of the U.S. economy amid resurgent domestic oil production.

The Dow industrials tumbled more than 300 points Monday, kicking off the new year on a sour note as a renewed slide in oil prices sent energy shares sharply lower.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 329 points, or 1.9%, to 17504 in late afternoon trading. The S&P 500 index slid 37 points, or 1.8%, to 2021.

“Oil is first and foremost on everybody’s mind. People are thinking if it’s going to $40, where does that leave the economy?”

— Jesse Lubarsky, senior vice president and equity trader at Raymond James in New York

The Nasdaq Composite Index declined 73 points, or 1.6%, to 4654.

Monday’s losses began at the opening bell and picked up steam as oil prices plumbed new lows, with beleaguered shares of energy companies leading the push lower. U.S. oil prices fell below $50 a barrel for the first time in nearly six years Monday, sending shares of S&P 500 energy companies tumbling nearly 4%.

The euro tumbled to a nine-year low Monday as new worries flared over Greece, where a woman in Athens passed a currency-changing business. Associated Press

“It seems like everyone is taking a step back instead of running into the new year,” said Viren Chandrasoma, managing director of equity trading at Credit Suisse . “There hasn’t been a real buying-on-the-dip mentality today.”

The decline in oil prices has proved a mixed blessing for stocks in recent months. Though it has led to lower gasoline prices and boosted the fortunes of ordinary consumers, the slide has also curbed profits within the once-booming energy sector, which makes up a growing piece of the U.S. economy amid resurgent domestic oil production.

“Oil is first and foremost on everybody’s mind,” said Jesse Lubarsky, senior vice president and equity trader at Raymond James in New York. “People are thinking if it’s going to $40, where does that leave the economy?”

Despite Monday’s rout, Wall Street trading desks said activity was relatively light given the scale of the move lower. Rather than sell en masse, many investors started the new year with a more cautious posture following double-digit gains in major indexes last year. Read the rest of this entry »

M.K.Ham: ‘The Ignorant Omniscience of President Obama’

Posted: November 15, 2013 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Health and Social Issues, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Entitlement, Information technology, Insurance, Obama, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act | 2 Comments

He knows everything and nothing at all

Mary Katherine Ham writes: He knows everything. And yet he seems to know nothing. He’s passionate about the details of domestic policy but wasn’t privy to the details of his own legacy law. He’s an academic with a command of every issue at once but seemingly only finds out what his administration is doing in news reports. He’s so brilliant every normal endeavor he’s tried has bored him, but he couldn’t bother to entertain himself with more than one monthly meeting on the make-or-break program of his presidency. He’s the captain of the Culture of Competency who has overseen the most incompetent rollout of an entitlement program in history.

I was struck by a moment in President Obama’s press conference today where this paradox was on full display. The president floated, throughout the press conference, from profession of utter ignorance to confident declaration and directive. Allahpundit noted that Obama distanced himself from the website’s problems by saying he was never informed of its problems. He knew nothing.