Aurelia Butler

Rioting erupted across France for a fourth night in the wake of the fatal police shooting of a 17-year-old driver of North African origin as his family prepared to bury him on Saturday in his hometown of Nanterre.The interior ministry said 994 arrests were made overnight compared with 875 on Thursday night and suggested that the ferocity of the protests was waning. Rioters caused considerable damage, with cars and buildings set ablaze, widespread looting in Marseille and around Paris, and dozens of attacks on police stations. “We can consider that events were less intense overnight,” Gérald Darmanin, the interior minister, told BFMTV news channel early on Saturday morning.He said the deployment of armoured vehicles, helicopters and 45,000 police officers, as well as the high number of arrests, had caused a “psychological shock” that deterred people from rioting. The government said the average age of people arrested on Friday was 17.The killing on Tuesday of Nahel, whose last name has not been made public, stoked a wave of anger in the Paris suburb where he lived that has spread to cities and towns across France.It exacerbated tensions between the police and young people in low-income areas that are home to minorities and immigrants, who face racial profiling by police and discrimination in housing and job opportunities, according to official studies. The unrest poses a big challenge for France’s president Emmanuel Macron who has called for calm while also describing the shooting as “inexplicable and inexcusable”.

His government has been criticised by far-right leader Marine Le Pen for being too lenient on the rioters and soft on crime, while Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the far-left politician, said violence committed by police had to end. Prosecutors have filed preliminary charges for voluntary homicide against one of the two officers allegedly involved in the shooting, and placed him in pre-trial detention, a rare move in such cases. Public buses and tramways were shut down overnight to prevent them from being targeted and set on fire while some towns set curfews. French football captain Kylian Mbappe and the national team tried to persuade the protesters to stop the violence. “Many of us are from working-class neighbourhoods, we too share this feeling of pain and sadness,” they wrote on Mbappe’s Twitter account. But they criticised the “self-destruction”, adding “it is your property that you are destroying, your neighbourhoods, your cities”. More

The average price of new homes in 100 cities fell 0.01% in June, the same-sized decline that was seen in May, data from the China Index Academy showed on Saturday.Forty-five cities reported price decreases.For the first half of the year, average prices were up 0.01% from the same period a year earlier.”In the first quarter, market confidence, driven by a concentrated release of pent-up demand, gradually returned and prices appeared to be recovering,” the real estate research firm said. “In the second quarter, the pace of market recovery slowed and there was not enough momentum for prices to rise,” it added.China’s property sector has over the past two years been thrust into a severe debt crisis – initially triggered by government moves to rein in ballooning debt – with many developers defaulting on payments as they struggle to sell apartments and raise funds.Although local governments have rolled out hundreds of measures to support the sector, and the scrapping of harsh COVID curbs in December has helped somewhat, positive investor sentiment towards the sector has been short-lived.”If policy support is limited, it will be difficult for home buyer confidence to improve,” China Index Academy said.The property sector accounts for a roughly a quarter of China’s economy. More

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. banks including JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC), Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) hiked their third-quarter dividends on Friday after sailing through the Federal Reserve’s annual health check, which showed they have enough capital to weather a severe economic downturn.JPMorgan, the biggest U.S. lender, plans to increase its quarterly stock dividend to $1.05 per share from a current $1.00. Wells Fargo will boost its dividend to 35 cents a share from 30 cents, the companies said.Goldman Sachs’ dividend will rise to $2.75 a share from $2.50, while Morgan Stanley’s will increase to 85 cents a share from the current 77.5 cents. Citigroup (NYSE:C)’s dividend will rise to 53 cents a share from 51 cents.The banks announced the dividend hikes after passing the Fed’s stress test, which determines how much capital they need to set aside before they can return money to shareholders. Under the Fed’s scenario of a major economic slump, the 23 banks tested – including JPMorgan, Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) and Goldman Sachs – would suffer a combined $541 billion in losses, while still holding more than twice the amount of capital required.The largest U.S. lenders stayed resilient despite the failures of three large regional banks that roiled the industry earlier this year. Big banks stayed on a firm footing even as the Fed raised interest rates to tame inflation, which could tip the economy into recession.”The results show that these banks are able to withstand a severe stress and maintain a capital buffer above regulatory minima, a credit positive,” rating agency Moody’s (NYSE:MCO) Investors Service in a note. Citigroup repurchased $1 billon of common stock during the second quarter and will continue to evaluate its capital actions every quarter, CEO Jane Fraser said in a statement.Citigroup’s stress capital buffer (SCB) requirement rose to 4.3%, from a current 4.0%, contrasting with large peers whose SCB dropped.The size of the SCB, an additional layer of capital introduced in 2020 that sits on top of banks’ minimum capital requirements, reflects how well a bank performs on the test.”While we would have clearly preferred not to see an increase in our stress capital buffer, these results still demonstrate Citi’s financial resilience through all economic environments,” Fraser said.Analysts had expected banks to stay conservative given the uncertain economic environment while they prepare for international capital rules that could be announced as early as this summer.Bank New Previous JPMorgan Chase $1.05 $1.00 Goldman Sachs $2.75 $2.50 Citigroup $0.53 $0.51 Morgan Stanley $0.85 $0.775 Wells Fargo $0.35 $0.30 More

The legislative proposal, also known as the Fake News bill, would put the onus on internet companies, search engines and social messaging services to find and report illegal material, and charge hefty fines for failures to do so.The bill has raised concerns from tech companies, with some launching campaigns on their platforms to defeat it.Nearly two months ago, the South American country’s top court ordered an investigation into executives at social messaging service Telegram and Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) who led a campaign criticizing the proposed regulation.Local outlet Folha de Sao Paulo had first reported that Temer confirmed he has been working as a “mediator” between the company and lawmakers for about three weeks.Temer’s adviser said the former president was hired by the company to mediate proposals and talks with Brazil’s parliament.Temer denied to Folha holding conversations with justices at the top court, but the paper reported he has met with lawmaker Orlando Silva, who is managing the internet legislation, to discuss parts of the bill. Brazil’s Supreme Court is likely to rule on two appeals that may make the internet legislation more flexible. The decision was scheduled for June, but has been postponed, according to Folha.In a statement, Google said it hires specialized agencies and consultants to help “mediate efforts to dialogue with public authorities” so that it can bring contributions to politicians and parliamentarians, “especially in important and technical issues such as the construction of a new legislation.” More

NEW YORK/BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) -The International Monetary Fund said on Friday that Argentina is current in its payment obligations, after the government said it made a $2.7 billion payment to the fund using its existing stock of the IMF’s reserve assets, and Chinese currency.A spokesperson for Argentina’s economy ministry said the June payments were made “without using dollars” but instead with the country’s holdings of the fund’s special-drawing rights (SDRs) and Chinese yuan. The operation is expected to have depleted Argentina’s $1.65 billion in SDRs, according to a central bank source, “with yuan making up the difference.”The use of yuan underscores how desperate the country’s dollar position has become. The central bank source said it was “yet another demonstration of the central bank’s liquidity in various currencies.”As a result of the payment, Argentina’s foreign currency reserves saw a sharp decrease to around $27.933 billion for end-June, the same source told Reuters, bringing foreign reserves to their lowest since March 2016.Still, the move gave a boost to Argentina’s markets on the last day of the month, which overall in June saw the stock index tick up nearly 25% and bonds up almost 13%.The IMF did not respond to requests for comment on the payment method. Reuters reported Thursday the amount and sources of the payment, citing people with direct knowledge.Both parties are now locked in talks to speed up disbursements from their $44 billion program and ease economic targets, as a major drought continues to hammer vital grains exports.Argentina’s economy ministry said a team will travel to Washington early next week to continue negotiations.”IMF staff and the Argentine authorities will continue to advance their work in the coming days, with the aim of reaching agreement on the fifth review of the Fund-supported program,” the fund said separately on Friday, after a “standard informal Executive Board briefing on Argentina” was held Thursday. More

By Divya Rajagopal and Xie YuTORONTO/HONG KONG (Reuters) – An Alberta industrial development body has ended a partnership with a Chinese private equity fund that targeted $10 billion to invest in the natural resources sector, a spokesperson for the Alberta entity told Reuters.The Alberta Industrial Heartland, a not-for-profit organization consisting of five Alberta municipalities, and the Hong Kong-based private equity firm Can-China Global Resource Fund (CCGRF) had announced their partnership in 2016 to encourage investments across North America.”This partnership no longer exists,” Karlee Conway Director Communications of the Alberta Industrial Heartland said in an email response to Reuters. The spokesperson did not respond to queries on why the partnership was called off and when.The lead investor of the fund was China’s Export-Import Bank, Vancouver-based mining firm Hunter Dickinson and Swiss commodity trader Mercuria.The previously unreported development comes as tension between China and Canada has escalated in recent years, though sources Reuters spoke to could not confirm whether the dissolution of the fund is a direct result of that.Hong Kong-based MEC Advisory Ltd, which was tasked with managing the investments, CCGRF, Mercuria, Hunter Dickinson and EXIM Bank did not respond to Reuters’ email request for comment.”I cannot confirm this is directly related to bilateral relations, but it could indeed be a product of the increased tensions between the two countries,” said Lynette Ong, Professor of Political Science at University of Toronto.She added that provincial governments might feel compelled to toe the official stance of Ottawa or not to veer too much from public opinion, as it could incur risks.FROSTY TIESThe only known investment by this fund was a C$722 million ($545.4 million) buyout of Calgary-based CQ Energy in 2017, a private natural gas production services company. The status of this investment is unknown.Diplomatic ties between Beijing and Ottawa started to worsen after Canada arrested Huawei Technologies CFO Meng Wanzhou in 2018 at the request of the United States. Following Meng’s arrest, China detained two Canadian citizens, accusing them of spying. While all three were released in 2021, the relationship between China and Canada has not returned to normal.The oil-rich province of Alberta exported C$4.5 billion worth of goods to China in 2020, making it the Canadian province’s second-biggest export market. Some of China’s large state oil companies expanded into Alberta before the collapse of oil prices in 2014.A person aware of the fund told Reuters that the $10 billion target was for marketing purposes and the first stage of the investment was no more than $1 billion. A person added that Exim Bank started looking into the structure of the fund “after it suffered big losses” and they sent a representative from Beijing to divest on certain projects.The CCGRF was set up in 2013 as part of a bilateral discussion between the governments of Canada and China to encourage investments of public and private capital into Canada’s natural resources sector.The rift between the two countries widened since Meng’s arrest. Last year, Canada forced three Chinese state investors to sell out of Canadian critical mining companies, as it tries to wean off its dependency on China in its critical mining sector.This month, Canada froze ties with the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) as it launched a probe into allegations that the institution was dominated by the Chinese Communist Party.($1 = 1.3256 Canadian dollars) More