European banking sector: “A deteriorating operating environment with low economic growth”

Frankfurt-Germany

Important Takeaways:

  • Moody’s sours on banking sector outlooks for Germany, Britain and France
  • The credit rating agency Moody’s said on Thursday that it was downgrading its outlook for the banking sector in a number of European countries as weak economies erode profits.
  • It changed the outlook to negative from stable for the banking sectors of Germany, Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden.
  • Rising losses for unpaid loans and higher funding costs will chip away at profits, Moody’s said.
  • “A deteriorating operating environment with low economic growth and high borrowing costs will hit credit growth as well as loan performance in the largest European countries, particularly in the corporate sector,” said Moody’s analyst Effie Tsotsani.

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Britain to test fire nuke missile ‘Trident;’ Is it a show of force or just routine maintenance?

Trident-II-Missile

Important Takeaways:

  • Britain to test fire nuke missile in major show-of-force with sub launching 44ft Trident 2 for first time since 2016
  • Officials issued a warning to shipping as nuclear submarine HMS Vanguard sailed into the Atlantic this week.
  • It is the first time the UK has test fired a missile since a botched launch in 2016.
  • And it follows a drumbeat of warnings that the world is careering to World War Three.
  • The Sun understands the £4bn sub is scheduled to test fire an unarmed missile after completing a seven year refit in Plymouth.
  • The tests are the final hurdle for HMS Vanguard to re-enter service as part of the UK’s nuclear deterrent fleet.
  • The 30-year-old submarine was pictured sailing from Port Canavarel in Florida on Tuesday morning.
  • The Navy hailed the doomsday vessel as a 491ft “colossus” that can patrol undetected for months at a time.
  • She can carry up to 16 Trident 2 D5 missiles, each armed with multiple British-made warheads that are each more than 20 times more powerful than the weapons dropped in World War Two on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
  • The sub is expected to launch a single unarmed missile from 90km off the US east coast.

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Once in a generation storm hits Britain and France leaving millions without power

Autumn weather November 2nd 2023

Important Takeaways:

  • Over a Million Left Without Power as 100mph+ Storm Rips Through Britain and France
  • Strong winds and rain also battered southern England and the Channel Islands, where gusts of more than 160 kph (100 mph) were reported. Hundreds of schools stayed closed in the coastal communities of Cornwall and Devon as downed trees and flooding hindered morning commutes.
  • Flights from airports on the Channel Islands of Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney were canceled. Dutch airline KLM scrapped all flights leaving and arriving in the Netherlands from the early afternoon until the end of the day, citing the high sustained wind speeds and powerful gusts expected in the country.
  • “It looks like a once-in-every-few-years storm for the U.K. and France,” Bob Henson, a meteorologist and science writer with Yale Climate Connections said Wednesday, adding that Ciaran could turn into “a once in a generation storm.”

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Crimean Bridge blown up again: Some in Moscow are calling for Tower Bridge in London to be blown up for Britain’s alleged involvement

Crimean Bridge explosion

Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

Important Takeaways:

  • Kremlin blames Britain for orchestrating attack on Crimean bridge – and propagandist calls for retaliatory strike on Tower Bridge: Footage ‘shows the moment Ukrainian drone attack hits crossing
  • The Kremlin today blamed Britain for orchestrating the deadly kamikaze drone strike that hit Vladimir Putin’s £3billion bridge linking Russia to Crimea and sparked a fireball explosion.
  • Dramatic footage appears to show the moment huge explosions ripped through the 12-mile crossing, with large flashes and thunderous blasts seen and heard from neighboring towns.
  • Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Ukraine of carrying out the attack with the involvement of Britain and the US – without providing any evidence to support her outlandish claims.
  • Putin’s furious propagandists predictably parroted the Kremlin’s line and called for Moscow to conduct a retaliatory strike on the Tower Bridge in London, describing the landmark as a ‘legitimate target’.

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Former President Medvedev declares Britain as an eternal enemy

Putin and Medvedev

Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

Important Takeaways:

  • Ukraine-Russia war: Russia ‘will send disgustingly damp Britain into the abyss’
  • Russia will send ‘disgustingly damp’ Britain into the abyss with a nuclear tidal wave, Russia’s ex-president Dmitry Medvedev has threatened.
  • “Britain was, is and will be our eternal enemy,” Mr Medvedev wrote on Telegram.
  • “In any case, soon enough their impudent and disgustingly damp island will be sent into the abyss of the sea by waves created by the latest Russian weapons system.”
  • He is likely referring to the 200-tonne nuclear missile, known as “Satan II”
  • Military analysts have said it could reach London in as little as 13 minutes if it was based in Russia’s extreme west.
  • NATO chief confident Ukraine ready to make offensive gains
  • NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Friday he is “confident” that Ukraine is prepared to retake more territory as Kyiv readies for a new offensive against invading Russian forces.

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Diplomats from US, Britain walk out on UN meeting convened by Russia

UN meeting walkout

Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

Important Takeaways:

  • US, Britain walk out at UN on Russian wanted for war crimes
  • The United States, Britain, Albania and Malta walked out on Russia’s envoy for children’s rights – whom the International Criminal Court wants to arrest on war crimes charges – as she spoke by video to U.N. Security Council members on Wednesday.
  • Britain and the United States blocked the informal meeting on Ukraine, convened by Russia to focus on “evacuating children from conflict zones,” from being webcast by the United Nations.
  • The International Criminal Court last month issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Lvova-Belova, accusing them of illegally deporting children from Ukraine and the unlawful transfer of people to Russia from Ukraine since Russia invaded on Feb. 24, 2022.
  • Lvova-Belova said that since February 2022, some 5 million Ukrainians, including 700,000 children, had traveled to Russia.
  • “Russia claims it is protecting these children. Instead this is a calculated policy that seeks to erase Ukrainian identity and statehood,” British diplomat Asima Ghazi-Bouillon told the meeting

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Britain fears Blackouts during a Colder Winter

Revelations 18:23:’For the merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.’

Important Takeaways:

  • Britain braces for blackouts as Met Office warns of much COLDER winter: National Grid chief insists ‘it’s not time to panic’ but admits ‘rolling power cuts ARE a possibility’ if energy supplies run low
  • John Pettigrew, the boss of National Grid, warned blackouts were a possibility
  • But he said its ‘base case’ was that the UK would have enough energy this winter
  • It comes as the Met Office has now released its three-month long-term forecast
  • The forecast shows a higher than usual chance of a colder-than-average winter
  • The UK is already looking at delaying the closure of part of a coal-fired power station in Nottinghamshire due to fears about energy.
  • Experts fear Russia ‘is plotting to sabotage Norway-UK pipeline’ in a move that could leave households freezing this winter

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UK COVID-19 cases hit record high for second day

By Paul Sandle and Kylie MacLellan

LONDON (Reuters) -New cases of COVID-19 in Britain hit a record high for the second day running on Thursday, as England’s Chief Medical Officer warned daily hospital admissions could also hit new peaks due to the fast-spreading Omicron coronavirus variant.

Britain reported 88,376 new infections, the highest since the start of the pandemic and up around 10,000 since the previous record set on Wednesday.

The surge in cases was piling pressure on a health service struggling with staff sickness, England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty said on Thursday.

Omicron is so transmissible that even if it proves to be milder than other variants, it could still cause a surge in hospital admissions, Whitty told lawmakers.

The record for the number of people admitted to hospital with COVID-19 is 4,583 set in January.

“It is possible, because this is going to be very concentrated over a short period of time, even if it’s milder, you could end up with a higher number than that going into hospital on a single day,” he said.

However, he said vaccinations could cut the numbers admitted to intensive care and shorten the time spent in hospital. On Thursday there were 849 admissions.

Susan Hopkins, the chief medical adviser at the UK Health Security Agency, said there were 15 proven cases of Omicron in hospitals, but that the number was likely to be much higher.

Although new cases were at a record high according to official data, Britain did not have mass testing capacity in March 2020 when the pandemic first hit the country, and so the scale of infections at that point is unknown.

A senior emergency doctor said hospitals, particularly in London, were struggling to maintain staffing levels due to the number who are having to isolate with COVID-19.

“Even if we are not seeing a big rise in hospitalizations yet, we are already seeing the effect on not having the staff to run shifts properly and safely,” Katherine Henderson, an emergency consultant in London and president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told BBC Radio.

“So we are worried about patient harm coming about because we just don’t have the staff.”

The education minister also warned of problems with staff shortages, and said his department would work with ex teachers who wanted to return to the profession to help.

Britain is betting that vaccine boosters will prevent serious illness from Omicron.

The government has also advised people to work from home, mandated mask wearing in public places and has introduced COVID-19 passes to enter some venues and events in England, but has stopped short of previous lockdown measures.

“If it looked as if the vaccines were less effective than we were expecting, that for example would be a material change to how ministers viewed the risks going forward,” Whitty said.

(Additinoal reporting by William James, Editing by Guy Faulconbridge, Gareth Jones and Alison Williams)

Canada and others say patience running out with Iran over downed plane

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada, Sweden, Ukraine and Britain on Thursday said they could consider new steps in line with international law against Iran if it failed to respond by Jan. 5 to demands for reparations after the downing of a passenger airliner last year.

Most of the 176 people killed when Iran shot down a Ukrainian jet in January 2020 were citizens from those four countries, which created a coordination group that seeks to hold Tehran to account.

“The Coordination Group’s patience is wearing thin,” it said in a statement, adding that the group had pressed Tehran to open talks on reparations and to deliver justice but said Iran had shown it was reluctant to respond in a timely manner.

It said Iran should respond by Jan 5 or the group would “have to seriously consider other actions to resolve this matter within the framework of international law” but gave no details.

Tehran says Revolutionary Guards accidentally shot down the Boeing 737 jet and blamed a misaligned radar and an error by the air defense operator at a time when tensions were high between Tehran and the United States.

Last month, families of victims alleged in a report that high-ranking Iranian officials were responsible. In June, Canada said it had found no evidence that the downing of the plane had been premeditated.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Edmund Blair)

Britain warns Putin: don’t invade Ukraine

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Britain’s defense minister called on President Vladimir Putin on Thursday to pull back from the brink over Ukraine and warned that Russia would face long-term severe consequences if its forces invaded its neighbor.

“Any action by Russia to threaten the sovereignty of Ukraine would not only have severe consequences – they’d have long lasting consequences for Russia,” Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said.

Wallace called on Kremlin chief Putin to step back from any such moves which he said could trigger a deadly civil war on the edge of Europe.

“I would just urge him to think again: I don’t think Russia wants those consequences,” Wallace said. “I don’t want to see a civil war or a war at the edge of Europe.”

U.S. intelligence assesses that Russia could be planning a multi-front offensive on Ukraine as early as next year, involving up to 175,000 troops.

The Kremlin denies it plans to invade and says the West is gripped by Russophobia. Moscow says the expansion of NATO threatens Russia and has contravened assurances given to it as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

Wallace said that Russian talk of NATO encirclement was nonsense.

“Only 6% of the Russian land border is bordered by NATO countries – that’s hardly being surrounded by NATO,” Wallace said.

“NATO is a defensive alliance – it is in our articles of establishment. It is only there to defend itself and its members if it were to be attacked.”

Wallace said it was up to sovereign states and NATO members if they joined NATO – not Russia.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Kate Holton)