… Coronavirus: how much is the world economy expected to shrink?
he world economy is likely to face a long slog back from the coronavirus crisis.
Two reports this week predicted that global growth will struggle to bounce back from the lockdowns, travel restrictions and business closures meant to contain the pandemic.
IHS Markit said that it expects the world economy to shrink 5.5% this year, triple the damage it sustained in the 2008 financial crisis, and then struggle to regain traction.
“While growth in the hardest-hit economies may snap back briefly, the momentum will soon fade,’’ the London-based financial research firm warned.
In China’s Crisis, Xi Sees a Crucible to Strengthen His Rule
China’s leader is using the country’s success — and the criticism against it — to urge the party and the people to weather tough days ahead.
Before an adulatory crowd of university professors and students, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, offered a strikingly bold message about the global coronavirus pandemic. Summoning images of sacrifice from Communist Party lore, he told them that the calamity was ripe with possibility for China.
“Great historical progress always happens after major disasters,” Mr. Xi said during a recent visit to Xi’an Jiaotong University. “Our nation was steeled and grew up through hardship and suffering.”
We should be wary of our spooks’ complacency about Huawei
I might be feeling more confident about the government’s decision to give Huawei a limited role in building Britain’s 5G network, ‘on the advice of intelligence agencies’, were I not reminded of the effectiveness of British spooks by the recent appearances of Alexandre del Valle on French radio.
Del Valle is the author of numerous books on Islamism and the Middle East, a knowledge accrued over many decades, including a spell in the late 1990s working for France’s General Secretariat for Defence and National Security, an inter-ministerial body answering to the Prime Minister.
His latest book, The Project, explores how the Muslim Brotherhood has successfully spread across the West, and to promote the book he’s been giving a series of media interviews. One of them was a couple of days after Usman Khan’s murderous rampage across London Bridge. It was too soon to discuss that atrocity in detail but del Valle talked at length about how the French intelligence services despaired at Britain’s disastrous complacency towards Islamic extremism in the 1990s.
‘I remember talking to a member of MI5 when I was part of the intelligence-sharing network on terrorism,’ explained del Valle. ‘I was stupefied. Over the course of an … Read More
On Trump’s US Energy Dominance Doctrine
Zineb Riboua’s explanation highlights the importance of Trump’s US Energy Program in the shape of US’ domestic and foreign policy. She wrote :
… Read MorePresident Donald J. Trump promised during his 2016 Campaign that he is eager to make the U.S. not only an Energy independent state but also a dominant one. Marking, therefore, the trait of his “Make America Great Again” slogan by promoting energy as a national security matter. U.S. presidents have always put in their political agendas a plan to make the United States energy-independent but couldn’t proceed entirely in establishing it for various reasons. As Ronald Reagan declared: “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The U.S. Geological Survey has told me that the proven potential for oil in Alaska alone is greater than the proven reserves in Saudi Arabia,”.
North Korea: Who could become leader if Kim Jong-un is dead?
When Kim Jong Il died in 2011 there was no question about who would take up the reigns of the family regime. Kim Jong Un had be groomed as a dictator from an early age. Selected among his siblings as having the ambition, capability and ruthless attitude required to continue the Kim dynasty.
There’s no such obvious successor for Kim Jong Un and whether the 36-year-old is dead, incapacitated or fit and well enjoying an April sojourn at his beachside residence, the speculation surrounding his condition has raised the intriguing question of who would take over?
His own children, of whom there are thought to be three, are still too young to take over, the eldest, a girl, is thought to be around 10 years old.
Read more on ITV.com
Trump says US is investigating China as ‘they could have stopped coronavirus’
Donald Trump says he is ‘not happy’ with China over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. The President said the People’s Republic could have done more to stop the global crisis. He announced his administration was conducting ‘serious investigations’ into what happened. Last week Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States ‘strongly believed’ Beijing failed to report the outbreak in a timely manner and covered up how dangerous the respiratory illness really was. At yesterday’s White House Covid-19 press briefing Trump said: ‘We’re doing very serious investigations… We are not happy with China. ‘There are a lot of ways you can hold them accountable. We believe it could have been stopped at the source. It could have been stopped quickly and it wouldn’t have spread all over the world.’
Coronavirus could return seasonally, China’s scientists say
Coronavirus will likely be sticking around seasonally — like the common flu — largely because of asymptomatic carriers who can unwittingly spread the virus, according to a report.
“This is very likely to be an epidemic that co-exists with humans for a long time, becomes seasonal and is sustained within human bodies,” said Jin Qi, director of China’s Institute of Pathogen Biology, according to a Bloomberg report.
COVID-19 probably won’t be eradicated like its cousin SARS was nearly two decades ago, because some people who have the virus don’t show signs, meaning it can spread silently.
This makes it hard to contain, unlike SARS, which was eradicated through quarantine, a group of Chinese scientists said Monday.
Meanwhile, dozens of asymptomatic cases keep popping up in China, despite the fact that Beijing claims to have gotten the disease under control, the outlet reported.
Governments and researchers are beginning to agree that the virus won’t disappear, regardless of drastic measures many countries have taken, including stay-at-home orders that are playing havoc on the world’s economy, the report said.
The New York Post… Read More
Ali lays bare facts about Brotherhood, Erdogan, and Islamist separatism in France
Charles de Gaulle said one should, and I quote, “go to the complex Orient with simple ideas”… but the eastern advocates of political Islam say, “go to the simple West with complex ideas of Islamization”.
After a series of deadly attacks by jihadists in France, and the desire of some Muslim citizens affected by the Muslim Brotherhood to separate themselves from the republic, President Emmanuel Macron studied the full dimensions of the problem of what we call today Islamic separatism.
This new policy for building a republican Islam has long been at the heart of the work of think tanks in Paris, including the Center for Middle East Studies in Paris (CEMO), which was founded three years ago by Member of the Egyptian parliament, Editor-In-Chief of The Reference and Director of (CEMO), Abdel Rahim Ali.
This expert on Islam and a lover of French culture has authored many works on the issue of political Islam in general and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular, some of which have been translated and published by L’Harmattan. His experience is very practical in such new policy for building a republican. Islam.
Here is the text of Ali’s interview with the French journalist:
Del Valle: … Read More
Spygate: the scandal hidden by the Italian media
by Cesare Sacchetti
The plot of this story is so thick that it could be compared to a spy story penned by the hand of John le Carrè.
But this story is neither a book, nor a movie inspired by the famous author of spy romances. It is real and its name is Spygate.
For the readers who are not familiar with it, we need to proceed with vital details in order to avoid them getting lost in the many passages of this dizzy labyrinth.
We have addressed this story before, but to better explain what’s Spygate, we must start with a central character of this romance, whose name is professor Joseph Mifsud.
The beginning of the spygate
Joseph Mifsud is an enigmatic Maltese, former professor of Link Campus, a university based in Rome.
Professor Mifsud was the man who approached then former advisor of Trump campaign advisor, Mr. George Papadopoulos in 2016.
Papadopoulos took part in a series of conferences held by Link Campus during that period.
During one of these events, the former Trump campaign aide met Mifsud, who claimed to have the possibility to receive from sources close to Moscow some compromising emails about … Read More