Federal Reserve split on timing of next rate rise
Minutes from the US central bank's last meeting show policy-makers divided over when the next rate rise should come.
According to the minutes, some Federal Reserve members felt "economic conditions would soon warrant taking another step", while others believed more data was needed.The US central bank is widely expected to raise interest rates before the end of the year, but it is not clear when. At its July meeting, the Fed opted to hold rates between 0.25% and 0.5%.
The cost of borrowing in the US has been at that level since December 2015. Investors and traders were looking for clues in the minutes about whether that increase will come in September or at its final meeting in December. Most do not think the central bank will act at its meeting in November because the timing is too close to the US election.
"Members judged it appropriate to continue to leave their policy options open and maintain the flexibility to adjust the stance of policy based on incoming information," the minutes said. "A couple of members preferred also to wait for more evidence that inflation would rise to 2% on a sustained basis," the statement continued.
Asda has worst quarterly sales drop blaming food deflation
Asda has reported a drop in sales of 7.5% in the past three months, its worst quarterly performance on record.
Walmart chief executive Doug McMillon blamed the dip on food deflation and "the competitive environment". Discount food stores such as Aldi and Lidl have been undercutting Asda and its rivals, including Tesco, Morrison and Sainsbury's. The supermarket chain is relying on £1.5bn of price reductions over five years to win customers back. "Our strategy to turn things around is focused on improving the retail basics," Mr McMillon said. "While our turnaround will take time, I'm confident in the new leadership team there and want to assure you we're addressing this with urgency."
In June, Walmart said the UK supermarket's chief executive, Andy Clarke, would be stepping down to be replaced by the head of Walmart's Chinese business, Sean Clarke. Walmart said Sean Clarke's experience would allow him to "reposition the business" in a competitive market.
'New nadir'
Asda began a price-cutting campaign in 2013, cutting £1bn in prices. In January, outgoing boss Andy Clarke extended the cuts to £1.5bn by 2018. In the same month, the company said it was shedding hundreds of jobs at its Leeds headquarters. Analysts said "a monumental challenge" lay ahead for the new chief executive.
"This time last year, ex-chief executive Andy Clarke talked about Asda's sales decline hitting a nadir - unfortunately today's results represent a new nadir, with the scale of the problems facing the grocer becoming ever more severe," said Greg Bromley from Verdict Retail. He said that Asda seemed to have been hit harder by the arrival of discounters such as Aldi and Lidl, since low prices had always been its main selling point. "If Asda has been waiting to push the button on its latest wave of price cuts, the time must be now, especially as a more uncertain post-Brexit consumer becomes ever more price sensitive," he added.
US sales
Walmart, the US-based owner of Asda supermarkets, said its own net profit for the three months to the end of July rose 8.6% to $3.77bn (£2.87bn). A rise in online sales helped revenue, excluding currency movements, to rise 2.8% to $123.6bn in the quarter. While Asda struggles with customer traffic and declining revenues, Walmart's US stores saw their eighth consecutive quarterly gain in sales and store visits grew 1.2%. Earlier this year, Wal-Mart said it would, over the next two years, spend $2.7bn to raise minimum wages to $10 an hour. The move has meant faster checkouts and cleaner stores, it says.
US to end federal use of private prisons
The US Justice Department will phase out use of privately owned prisons, citing safety concerns.
Contracts with 13 private prisons will be reviewed and and allowed to expire over the next five years.
"They do not save substantially on costs and ... they do not maintain the same level of safety and security," Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said explaining the decision.
The majority of US prisoners are held in state-run prisons.
On Wall Street, the stocks of private prison companies declined sharply after the news was announced.
An Inspector General's report released this month found that private prisons saw higher rates of violent incidents and rule infractions in comparison with government-run institutions.
During the Democratic presidential primary race, Hillary Clinton's main opponent Senator Bernie Sanders made a campaign promise to end the "private, for-profit prison racket".
Senator Sanders sponsored a bill attempting to end the use of private prisons in September 2015 saying "we cannot fix our criminal justice system if corporations are allowed to profit from mass incarceration".
Mrs Clinton's website states that she will "end the era of mass incarceration, reform mandatory minimum sentences, and end private prisons".
As of December, private prisons housed 22,660 federal inmates.
Is Russia hacking the US election?
Huge leaks of data from US organisations have been attributed by some to Russia, so has the former Soviet state launched cyberwar on the US elections?
Hacking tools allegedly developed by the US National Security Agency (NSA) were dumped online by a group calling itself Shadow Brokers. It follows a string of recent leaks of data from the Democratic National Committee (DNC). There are also now suspicions that the Clinton Foundation, a charitable body, may have been targeted.
Is this part of a Russian campaign to damage the US and even influence the presidential election in November, or are things a little more complicated than that?
What is in the latest leak?
Analysis of the files released by Shadow Brokers has revealed a group of malware that can be used to hack US-made firewalls and routers. Indeed, the tech firms Cisco and Fortinet have warned customers that there are some serious exploits in the dump that affect their products.
Juniper Networks has also said it is reviewing the data to see if its devices are affected. There are fears that some of the exploits were "zero-day" vulnerabilities, meaning they had gone undetected.
The hacking tools are believed to belong to a group of malware developed by "The Equation Group", which was first revealed by cybersecurity firm Kaspersky in 2015.
US ready to 'hand over' the internet's naming system
The US has confirmed it is finally ready to cede power of the internet’s naming system, ending the almost 20-year process to hand over a crucial part of the internet's governance.
The Domain Naming System, DNS, is one of the internet’s most important components.
It pairs the easy-to-remember web addresses - like bbc.com - with their relevant servers. Without DNS, you’d only be able to access websites by typing in its IP address, a series of numbers such as "194.66.82.10".
More by circumstance than intention, the US has always had ultimate say over how the DNS is controlled - but not for much longer.
It will give up its power fully to Icann - the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - a non-profit organisation.
The terms of the change were agreed upon in 2014, but it wasn’t until now that the US said it was finally satisfied that Icann was ready to make the change.
Icann will get the “keys to the kingdom”, as one expert put it, on 1st October 2016. From that date, the US will lose its dominant voice - although Icann will remain in Los Angeles.
If anyone can, Icann?
Users of the web will not notice any difference - that’s because Icann has essentially being doing the job for years anyway.
But it’s a move that has been fiercely criticised by some US politicians as opening the door to the likes of China and Russia to meddle with a system that has always been “protected” by the US.
"The proposal will significantly increase the power of foreign governments over the Internet,” warned a letter signed by several Republican senators, including former Presidential hopeful, Ted Cruz.
Whether you think those fears are justified depends on your confidence in the ability of Icann to do its job.
Ford will be releasing self driving cars within 5 year
Today is a milestone moment in Ford's history.
We're announcing our intent to have fully autonomous vehicles in commercial operation for a ride-hailing or ride-sharing service beginning in 2021. This is significant. Ford will be mass producing vehicles capable of driving fully autonomously within five years. No steering wheel. No gas pedals. No brake pedals. A driver will not be required.
If someone had told you 10 years ago -- even five years ago -- that a major American car company would announce the mass production of a vehicle with no steering wheel, you would have said they were crazy.
As little as four years ago, our approach was aligned with the thinking of most automakers today, which is taking incremental steps to achieve full autonomy by advancing driver assist technology. This is not how we look at it today. We learned that to achieve full autonomy, we'd have to take a completely different pathway.
So, we abandoned a stepping-stone approach and created a dedicated "top down" engineering program to deliver fully autonomous vehicles and the new mobility solutions and business opportunities that a fully autonomous vehicle could deliver.
The world is changing, and it's changing quickly. We're not sitting on the sidelines. Ford will be actively driving that change.
It's now clear that the next decade will be defined by automation of the automobile. In fact, we see autonomous vehicles as having as big an impact on society as Ford's moving assembly line did a hundred years ago.
It's important to understand that this is not just about building an autonomous vehicle. There's something deeper, something that motivates us every day, something that's in the DNA of our company.
More than a hundred years ago, we were founded with a clear mission: to make people's lives better. Our founder Henry Ford believed making transportation accessible would advance human progress. Cars used to just be for rich people, but the innovations at Ford brought the automobile to millions of people.
At the time, it was a radical idea. Most people in the U.S. didn't travel very far from their homes. When car ownership became a reality for millions, people became more connected; they explored more and found greater opportunity because they could live, work and play where they wanted. In a way, it was a revolution in the connectivity of average people the likes of which we haven't seen again until recently.
This principle of bringing life-changing technologies to millions of people is at the core of what we do. When we step back and look at how we can make the most difference in people's lives during the next 100 years, we see the autonomous car changing the way the world moves once again. That's because autonomous cars address a host of safety, social, and environmental challenges.
BAHAMAS PUBLIC FORECAST
BAHAMAS PUBLIC FORECAST FOR TODAY AND TONIGHT THURSDAY 18TH AUGUST 2016
GENERAL SITUATION: A WEAK SURFACE HIGH PRESSURE RIDGE REMAINS ACROSS THE AREA WHILE AN UPPER LEVEL TROUGH NEAR THE NORTHWEST BAHAMAS WIL SUPPORT ISOLATED SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS OVER PARTS OF THE NORTHWEST BAHAMAS DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE DAY.
NORTHWEST BAHAMAS
WEATHER: PARTLY SUNNY AND HOT TODAY WITH SOME CLOUDY PERIODS AND ISOLATED MORNING SHOWERS OR THUNDERSTORMS TURNING FAIR AND WARM TONIGHT.
ADVISORY: BOATERS SHOULD BE ALERT FOR GUSTY WINDS AND HIGHER SEAS IN OR NEAR SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS
WINDS: EAST TO SOUTHEAST 10-15 KNOTS OVER OPEN WATERS, FALLING LIGHT AND VARIABLE AT TIMES
SEAS: 2-3 FEET OVER THE OCEAN
CENTRAL AND SOUTHEAST BAHAMAS
WEATHER: PARTLY SUNNY AND HOT WITH AN ISOLATED AFTERNOON SHOWER TURNING FAIR AND WARM TONIGHT
WINDS: EASTERLY AT 10 TO 15 KNOTS IN THE CENTRAL AND SOUTHEAST BAHAMAS
SEAS: 2 TO 4 FEET OVER THE OCEAN
DAYTIME HIGH TEMPERATURE 91 °F 33 °C
OVERNITE LOW TEMPERATURE 79 °F 26 °C
SUNRISE: 6:45 AM MOONRISE: 8:01 PM LOW TIDE: 2:28 PM
SUNSET: 7:41 PM MOONSET:7:54 AM FRI HIGH TIDE:8:18AM HIGH TIDE: 8:43PM
EXTENDED FORECAST: (FOR THE NEXT TWO DAYS) THE WEAK SURFACE HIGH PRESSURE WILL CONTINUE ACROSS THE AREA HOWEVER THE UPPER LEVEL LOW OVER THE NORTHWEST BAHAMAS WILL MOVE WESTWARD AND OUT OF THE AREA THIS AFTERNOON.
FORECAST FOR FRIDAY
WEATHER: PARTLY SUNNY AND HOT.
WINDS: LIGHT AND VARIABLE
SEAS: 3 FEET OR LESS OVER THE OCEAN.
FORECAST FOR SATURDAY
WEATHER: CONTINUING PARTLY SUNNY AND HOT.
WINDS: LIGHT AND VARIABLE.
SEAS: 3 FEET OR LESS OVER THE OCEAN.
TROPICAL WEATHER OUTLOOK: SEE NEW ITEM ON TROPICAL STORM FIONA
BASIL A. DEAN/vm
TROPICAL STORM FIONA
NEWS ITEM ON TROPICAL STORM FIONA ISSUED BY THE BAHAMAS DEPARTMENT OF METEOROLOGY FORECAST OFFICE SECTION, AT 6:00AM THURSDAY 18TH AUGUST, 2016
AT 5AM EDT, THE CENTER OF TROPICAL STORM FIONA WAS LOCATED NEAR LATITUDE 16.2°NORTH AND LONGITUDE 40.3° WEST OR ABOUT 1080 MILES WEST OF THE CAPE VERDE ISLANDS.
TROPICAL STORM FIONA IS MOVING TOWARD THE WEST-NORTHWEST AT 16 MPH AND THIS GENERAL MOTION WITH SOME DECREAS IN FORWARD SPPED IS EXPECTED DURING THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS.
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARE NEAR 45 MILES PER HOUR WITH HIGHER GUSTS AND SOME ADDITIONALLY STRENGTHENING IS POSSIBLE TODAY FOLLOWED BY SLOW WEAKENIN BY THE WEEKEND.
THE NEXT NEWS ITEM WILL BE ISSUED AT NOON
PREPARED BY FORECASTER: BASIL A. DEAN
6AM THURSDAY 18TH AUGUST, 2016
Stable Credit Rating
FortisTCI Maintains 'BBB' Outlook: Stable Credit Rating
Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands (Wednesday, August 17, 2016) – The international independent credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P), recently commenced an annual review of the FortisTCI (the “Company”) ‘BBB’ corporate rating. This rating was initially achieved by the Company in 2014 and reconfirmed in 2015. The S&P 2016 review results were announced on Thursday, August 11, 2016, concluding that FortisTCI has maintained it’s ‘BBB’ (Outlook: Stable) global corporate credit rating.
According to S&P standards, “an obligor rated 'BBB' has adequate capacity to meet its financial commitments. However, adverse economic conditions or changing circumstances are more likely to lead to a weakened capacity of the obligor to meet its financial commitments.”
The report highlighted as it has in previous years, that “simple contract, cost-of-service style regulation, and the expectation that there will be no material changes to the licensing agreement and tariff structure” were positives in the rationale. The FortisTCI strategic relationship with parent company Fortis Inc. was also highlighted as a positive. S&P also stated in their report that, “Although we do not expect a downgrade during the outlook horizon, any material adverse regulatory decision, unfavourable changes to the regulatory structure or operating license or weakening in the Turks and Caicos Islands’ economy could all lead to a downgrade.”
President and CEO Eddinton Powell commented saying, “There is great value in having an investment-grade corporate credit rating, particularly in the electric utility industry which is one of the most capital-intensive industries there is. Since achieving the S&P credit rating, FortisTCI has gained access to competitive capital markets in New York, as well as the domestic market through the National Insurance Board (NIB), helping to fund much-needed investment in energy infrastructure projects benefiting the Turks and Caicos Islands. Therefore, we are pleased to have achieved a successful outcome from the annual review by S&P.” Mr. Powell added, “On behalf of FortisTCI, I wish to thank our parent company, Fortis Inc. for their support, and extend congratulations to the Turks and Caicos Islands Government for their effort in maintaining the Sovereign rating of BBB+ announced in July. Without an investment-grade Sovereign rating, an investment-grade corporate debt rating, and the benefits it offers to all stakeholders, would not be possible.”
DECR records a bountiful start to Lobster Season 2016
MINISTRY OF TOURISM, ENVIRONEMNT, HERITAGE AND GAMING
Lobster season 2016/2017 kicked off on Monday, 15 August, with opening catch landed at processing plants in South Caicos and Providenciales totalling 43,206 pounds (lb), approximately 80% of the landings recorded for the first day of the open season in 2015.
“While the opening day was lower than last year, a number of boats brought back over 1000 lbs of lobster each which was good. However, it is too early to tell how the season will turn out this year, and there are mixed reports from fishermen about the quantity of lobsters out there and if the weather just before the start of the season has made it harder to catch them. This is something that will become clearer over the coming weeks” said Dr. John Claydon, Director of the Department of Environment & Coastal Resources (DECR)
DECR Officers have been inspecting catch as fishermen come into the plant and while at sea, and boat patrols have been conducted to deter illegal activities. However, the DECR fleet has been on stand-by to assist rescuing fishermen when needed.
Restrictions relating to crawfish, as per the Fisheries Protection Ordinance, are listed below:
Crawfish size restrictions are as follows:
When whole, a length of 3.25 inches measured from the front of the groove between the horns directly above the eyes, along the middle of the back to the rear edge of the back shell; or
When the tail has been separated, a tail weight of 5 ounces whether processed or not;
Fishers are not to be in the possession of any egg-bearing crawfish;
Fishers are not to remove eggs from egg-bearing crawfish;
Fishers are not to take or be in possession of moulting / soft-shelled crawfish or crawfish in early stages of spawning (described as appearing ‘tar-spotted’); and
Fishers are to ensure that the crawfish are landed unharmed and whole after being taken and landed at processing plants or at home, unless processed at sea as per the terms of the processing license.
The DECR appeals to citizens, residents and visitors in the Turks & Caicos Islands, to familiarise themselves with and to uphold the Fisheries Regulations, and urges all responsible citizens to call DECR at 338 4170 or email environment@gov.tc to report any violations.