European leaders will formally reject British demands to hold trade talks at the same time as negotiating the terms of the UK’s "divorce" from the EU, leaving both sides heading for an early stand-off in the Brexit talks.

The hardline EU response will be outlined in draft negotiating guidelines that will be distributed by the European Council to the remaining 27 member states at a closed-door meeting in Brussels.

Theresa May’s request that the terms of the future UK-EU partnership be negotiated “alongside” the terms of the divorce – rejected by the German chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday - was shot down again on Thursday, this time by the outgoing French president, Francois Hollande.

Documents seen by the Guardian show that at least $20bn appears to have been moved out of Russia during a four-year period between 2010 and 2014. The true figure could be $80bn, detectives believe.
One senior figure involved in the inquiry said the money from Russia was “obviously either stolen or with criminal origin”.

Investigators are still trying to identify some of the wealthy and politically influential Russians behind the operation, known as “the Global Laundromat”.
They estimate a group of about 500 people were involved. These include oligarchs, Moscow bankers, and figures working for or connected to the FSB, the successor spy agency to the KGB.

US authorities have secretly required airlines from eight nations to forbid passengers from carrying any electronic or electrical device larger than a cellphone.

The new edict was distributed in an email described as “confidential” from the US transportation safety administration (TSA) on Monday.

Technologists say new rules against electronics ‘larger than a cellphone’ on flights from 10 airports seem illogical and at odds with basic computer science             

The requirement forbids passengers from bringing laptops, iPads, Kindles and even cameras larger than mobile phones into the cabin. All such devices must be checked.

Saudi Arabia’s Saudia Airlines and Royal Jordanian airlines are among the affected countries; the full list had not been revealed to the affected airlines themselves until a press briefing by the US department of Homeland Security on Monday evening.

The ban is techincally related to ten airports in eight countries:

• Queen Alia in Jordan
• Cairo International in Egypt
• Ataturk International in Turkey
• King Abudlaziz and King Khalid in Saudi Arabia
• Kuwait International in Kuwait, Mohammaed V in Morocco
• Doha International in Qatar
• Dubai international and Abu Dhabi international in the United Arab Emirates.

The affected airlines are Royal Jordainia, Egyptair, Turkish airlines, Saudia airlines, Kuwait airways, Royal Air Morocco, Qatar Airways, Emirates and Etihad.

President Trump on Saturday defended the success of his first face-to-face meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, dismissing a barrage of critical news accounts that describe it as “awkward.”  “Despite what you have heard from the FAKE NEWS, I had a GREAT meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel,” Mr. Trump said Saturday morning via his personal Twitter account.  News reports of the the meeting and a joint press conference Friday at the White House were dominated by descriptions of “awkward” moments between the two leaders, including the president’s quip that he and Ms. Merkel had “something in common” in being wiretapped by U.S. spies.  Mr. Trump was referring to revelation in 2013 that President Obama authorized National Security Agency eavesdropping on her and his claim that Mr. Obama did the same to him during the 2016 presidential campaign.  National Public Radio declared the meeting “The Axis of Awkward.”  U.S. News and World Report dubbed it “Trump’s Awkward Merkel Summit.”

The extraordinary public rebuke by the United States’ closest surveillance partner has revealed an emerging characteristic of Donald Trump’s White House: a willingness to antagonize even its allies instead of admitting error.  GCHQ, the UK surveillanceance mammoth intimately linked to the National Security Agency (NSA), has taken public exception to an allegation repeated from the White House podium that, if true, would probably shatter the Five Eyes intelligence alliance so dear to both Washington and London.  Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, credulously repeated on Thursday an account by a Fox News pundit, Andrew Napolitano, that GCHQ laundered surveillance on Trump at the behest of Barack Obama. Napolitano, who is in no position to actually know, made the allegation apparently to explain away the emerging consensus, even from senior Republicans on the intelligence committees, that there is no basis to Trump’s claim that Obama ordered that surveillance.  GCHQ practically never responds to stories about its operations. But the implications of this one are severe. There would be no way for the NSA and GCHQ, which are joined at the hip, to continue their partnership if GCHQ was willing to interfere in the US political process.  On Friday, 10 Downing Street said it had received assurances from the White House that it will not repeat the allegation, which suggests that the White House did not realize the implications of what it said. The context matters here. Spicer repeated Napolitano’s allegation for the same reason Napolitano made it: to defend Trump’s evidence-free assertion, on 4 March, that Obama had Trump’s team placed under surveillance.

The launch by British Airways’ owner of a low-cost long-haul airline could be a key staging post in the development of the growing trend for cheaper and longer flights.

'Level' has been unveiled by International Airlines Group as a low-cost, long-haul carrier operating out of Barcelona from June with flights to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Buenos Aires and Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic.

The move will put the company in direct competition with companies such as Norwegian, which has tried to carve a niche for itself in the nascent cheap long-haul flights market...Level will be run by IAG’s Spanish carrier Iberia’s flight and cabin crew and fares with start from €99 one-way or $149 compared to the lowest price for flights on Norwegian from Barcelona to San Francisco of €162, according to prices published on its website.

The Fed’s chair, Janet Yellen, said a wide range of indicators showed the US economy was in rude health, allowing its interest rate setting committee to push rates back towards historically normal levels. Policymakers voted nine to one to raise rates.
Speaking after the decision, Yellen said she had met Donald Trump’s treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, “a couple of times” but had only been “introduced” to the president himself.   “I fully expect to have a strong relationship with secretary Mnuchin,” she said. “We had good discussions about the economy, about regulatory objectives, the work of the FSOC [Financial Stability Oversight Council] global economic developments, and I look forward to continuing to work with him.” She said she had had a very brief meeting with Trump “and appreciated that as well”.

Earlier in the day the Department of Commerce said retail sales had inched up by 0.1% in February, and that they had been better than it had previously estimated in January.

The Romanian gambling sector has the best regulations in Europe, which has been admitted in the meetings which the National Gambling Office (ONJN) had at the level of the European Commission and the events it has attended, according to Odeta Nestor, the president of the Office. Besides, all the representatives of the sector, claim, in unison, that in its current form, the legislation in effect is known as being one of the most advanced internationally. Nevertheless, there are still small improvements that could be made to the new legislation, especially when it comes to online gambling. Concerning this aspect, Odeta Nestor told us: "I think that an amendment of the Fiscal Code, to implement retention tax for players, would be the best. Besides, the office has made this kind of proposals for the amendment of the legislation, because I have noticed, based on the functionality of the last few years, that everyone would benefit more through this kind of taxation system: players would be taxed correctly, and the state would earn more in taxes. Right now, aside from the fact that there are players who don't report the entirety of their own gambling revenues, this process is also bureaucratic and difficult".

BERLIN — Police ordered a shopping mall in the western German city of Essen not to open Saturday after receiving credible tips of an imminent attack.  The shopping center and the adjacent parking lot stayed closed as about a hundred police officers positioned themselves around the compound to make sure nobody could enter the mall. Several officers scoured the inside of the building to bring out early morning cleaning staff.  “As police, we are the security authority here and have decided to close the mall,” police spokesman Christoph Wickhorst said, adding that they had been tipped off late Friday by other security agencies. He did not want to provide further details because of the ongoing investigation.

The downtown mall at Limbecker Platz square will be closed for the entire day. The mall is one of the biggest in Germany with more than 200 stores, according to the shopping center’s website.  In 2016, three people were injured in an attack on a Sikh temple in Essen by radicalized German-born Muslim teenagers.

Germany has been on the edge following a series of attacks in public places over the past year.

Oil prices have plunged to the lowest level this year as US shale producers boost output at an astonishing pace and crude inventories keep rising, triggering a wave of selling by hedge funds with record speculative positions. The US surge threatens to neutralise cuts agreed by the Opec cartel and a Russia-led group of producers last November, potentially delaying a full recovery of the market until 2018 or even later.  Texas light crude fell to  $48.90 a barrel on Thursday after yet another surprise jump in US stocks. Prices have slid 8pc in three days and have broken through key levels of technical support, dousing enthusiasm for commodities across the board. Higher interest rates are expected to push up the value of the dollar and suck in foreign funds to the US financial system. Surveys show firms are concerned that the high dollar will dent exports, and Trump has accused China and rival exporting nations of winning trade wars after artificially depressing their currencies.

Pollster Nate Silver took the media to task on Friday in his website’s ongoing autopsy of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.  The man who predicted the winner of all 50 states in the 2012 election says a “liberal media bubble” that mainly encompasses New York and Washington, D.C., prevented journalists from considering the possibility of an Election Day win for Republican Donald Trump. FiveThirtyEight’s “There Really Was A Liberal Media Bubble” is the ninth installment on how President Trump defied conventional wisdom to win the White House.  “Political experts aren’t a very diverse group and tend to place a lot of faith in the opinions of other experts and other members of the political establishment,” Mr. Silver wrote. “Once a consensus view is established, it tends to reinforce itself until and unless there’s very compelling evidence for the contrary position. Social media, especially Twitter, can amplify the groupthink further. It can be an echo chamber.”  The number-cruncher went on to note multiple other factors that led to media groupthink and outlets that weren’t “contemplating the possibility of a Trump victory.” Some include:

• A lack of racial and gender diversity in newsrooms.
• A lack of political diversity. “As of 2013, only 7 percent of them identified as Republicans.”
• A hostility within the industry to “data journalists.”
• The media echo chamber is growing. “The share of total exposure for the top five news sources climbed from roughly 25 percent a decade ago to around 35 percent last year, and has spiked to above 40 percent so far in 2017. While not a perfect measure, this is one sign the digital age hasn’t necessarily democratized the news media.”

Think about how many amazing technologies you've watched soar to new heights while you kick yourself thinking, "I knew about that before everyone was talking about it, but I just sat on my hands.” If you’re like me, you can’t help thinking about the money you could have made if you’d simply bought Apple when it introduced the iPod in 2001. The stock is up over 100 times since then, turning a $10,000 investment into over $1 million!  Heck, Apple is up nearly 1,000% since it launched the iPhone seven years later. 300% since the iPad in 2010.  Did you know how great and amazing these new technologies were, but failed to invest behind them? You might be retired and lounging on a beautiful beach somewhere if you had!  Well, it appears Apple is up to something again, but this time it’s so radically different from its previous “iDevices" that you’ll be… stunned. You’ll wonder if it could really work. You’ll wonder if management has lost its mind.  But remember… that’s what many people thought after Steve Jobs introduced the iPod and iPhone! Big profits come from making bold choices.  What exactly is Apple doing?  Well, residents of Sunnydale are reporting strange noises roaring out of a mysterious Apple facility late at night. And Apple leased an enormous, 5,000-acre, abandoned military base to serve as testing grounds according to TechInsider. We know that it must be something BIG because the company's R&D budget skyrocketed to more than 50 times as much money as Apple spent to develop the original iPhone!  Here’s what we know...Apple just made a $10 billion play to get in early.  Cisco believes it will be a $19 trillion market before 2025. General Electric sees an opportunity bigger than the entire economy of China!  I saw Amazon received a patent for a piece of it just a few days ago. Can Apple really pull this moonshot off? With a track record like Apple has, I wouldn't be surprised. 

Here's a number to play with: $1.8 trillion. This is the amount of sovereign debt borrowed globally in a foreign currency, the overwhelming majority of it in US dollars. Add the amount of dollar debt attributable to foreign corporations, and the numbers soar off into the stratosphere.  Most of the time, these debts are perfectly harmless, and nobody much worries about them. But right now, they are making everyone distinctly nervous. Already over the last two years, the dollar has appreciated 25 per cent in nominal terms against the rest of the world. If analysis by Moody’s, the credit rating agency, is to be believed, Trumponomics make a further, sharp appreciation – possibly by as much as an additional 25 per cent in real terms – all but inevitable, playing havoc with the debt dynamics of many overseas countries and companies. By the by, it might also remodel global trade, potentially dramatically....

Europe -  European capital adequacy directives typically transpose Basel accords into EU law. If the Basel process stalls, transatlantic deals, which are the crucial underpinning of western capital markets, will be far harder to reach.  There is a further complication arising from Brexit. Absent any special deal between the EU27 and the UK, British and EU regulators will come together in Basel, not in the European Banking Authority. If Basel becomes a talking shop, without the ability to set firm standards, another key link in the chain will be broken, and it will be harder for the UK to argue that if London’s banks meet international standards, they should be granted equal treatment in the EU.  As central bankers bid farewell to the devil they know, financial regulation has entered a period of high uncertainty – and high anxiety for policymakers as they await an announcement from Mar-a-Lago. No likely Federal Reserve Board candidates have been spotted at poolside, or being interviewed on the golf course, but a decision cannot be far off. Nothing can be taken for granted. The financial world is holding its collective breath.

Theresa May has defiantly insisted her timetable for triggering Brexit will not be blown off course despite suffering her first Parliamentary defeat over the Article 50 bill.  The House of Lords voted to amend the Bill to force the Government to guarantee the rights of EU citizens living in the UK. Seven Tory peers - including the former pensions minister Baroness Altmann - backed the amendment.  But the Prime Minister is confident the amendment will be rejected by the Commons later this month, and Downing Street insisted the timetable for Brexit “remains unchanged”... Lords who voted to alter the Bill were accused of “playing with fire” and critics accused them of pointless “posturing” and “doing a disservice to the national interest”.  The scale of the Government’s defeat in the Lords, where the proposal to amend the Bill was passed by 358 votes to 256, prompted speculation that Mrs May could face a fresh Tory rebellion when the Bill returns to the Commons.  Conservative whips are confident, however, that no more than a handful of Tory MPs will support the amendment. Labour's amendment to the EU (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill, tabled with Liberal Democrat and crossbench support, calls for ministers to bring forward proposals ensuring the rights of EU citizens living here to continue post-Brexit, within three months of triggering Article 50.

The Balkans is in danger of slipping under Russian influence if the Trump administration ignores the region, Albania’s prime minister has warned in an interview with The Telegraph.  Questions are also being asked over whether the European Union is doing enough to ensure stability and block Moscow’s alleged plots.  In a wide-ranging interview, Albania’s charismatic prime minister, Edi Rama, said without US support “the Balkans would not be a place where there is peace and cooperation”.

“For the US this area is very important strategically and the US is very important for us,” he added.  Given Russia’s apparent role in the prime minister’s assassination plot in neighbouring Montenegro, disclosed by The Telegraph this week, there are worries Washington’s disinterest will embolden Moscow.  “Russia has been interested in spreading its influence and there’s a lot of it in this region,” Mr Rama, 52,...

Early last month, Andy Haldane, chief economist at the Bank of England, blamed“irrational behaviour” for the failure of the BoE’s recent forecasting models. The failure to spot this irrationality had led policymakers to forecast that the British economy would slow after last June’s Brexit referendum. Instead, British consumers have been on a heedless spending spree since the vote to leave the European Union; and, no less illogically, construction, manufacturing, and services have recovered. Haldane offers no explanation for this burst of irrational behaviour. Nor can he: to him, irrationality simply means behaviour that is inconsistent with the forecasts derived from the BoE’s model. It’s not just Haldane or the BoE. What mainstream economists mean by rational behaviour is not what you or I mean. In ordinary language, rational behaviour is that which is reasonable under the circumstances. But in the rarefied world of neoclassical forecasting models, it means that people, equipped with detailed knowledge of themselves, their surroundings, and the future they face, act optimally to achieve their goals. That is, to act rationally is to act in a manner consistent with economists’ models of rational behaviour. Faced with contrary behaviour, the economist reacts like the tailor who blames the customer for not fitting their newly tailored suit.

The City of London has warned that the loss of banking jobs to EU countries due to Brexit could threaten British and European financial stability. Interviews with more than half a dozen senior bankers and business leaders reveal growing certainty that the threat of losing single market access will force a wave of relocations this year and may cause an “unwinding” of a cluster of related businesses.

While the immediate loss of a few thousand jobs is viewed with relative equanimity, concern is mounting over the knock-on effect on financial stability if the City’s valuable related professions begin to fragment.   Douglas Flint, the chairman of HSBC, Britain’s biggest bank, said common regulation needed to be agreed with the remaining 27 EU members once Brexit talks got under way or there was a risk of sparking turbulence in the financial system. “One of the critical pieces is the ecosystem that exists, which effectively connects the fund managers to the risk managers to the liquidity providers to the insurance providers and the credit providers … it all benefits from all the other pieces being there,” Flint said.

Relatives of the 12 people killed in December when a truck ploughed into a Christmas market in Berlin have expressed their dismay at the negligent way they say they have been treated by German authorities. About 50 people who lost loved ones in the Islamic State-claimed terrorist attack reportedly told a private meeting called by Germany’s outgoing president, Joachim Gauck, and the interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, they felt abandoned at a deeply upsetting time.   Relatives said the first official communication they had with authorities was a bill sent to them by the coroner’s office. The letter reportedly included a warning that if the bill was not paid within a certain timeframe, the recipients would face legal action.  One relative told Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt newspapers that when she received the letter she had thought at the very least it would be a letter of condolence from Berlin’s mayor.  Those who were certain that their family members were among the dead said they were prevented by security personnel from entering the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church on Breitscheidplatz for a religious service held the day after the attack on 19 December. The reason they were given was that high-ranking German politicians – including Gauck – were among the guests. According to the papers, which reported on the four-hour meeting at Gauck’s Bellevue Palace, the president told the relatives he was distressed to hear they had been unable to enter the church and that he had not known about it at the time.

There is now a growing band of politicians, entrepreneurs and policy strategists who argue that a basic income could potentially hold the solution to some of the big problems of our time. Some of these new converts have alighted upon the basic income as an answer to our fragmenting welfare state. They point to the increasingly precarious nature of today’s labour market for those in low-paid, low-skilled work: growing wage inequality, an increasing number of part-time and temporary jobs, and rogue employers routinely getting away with exploitative practices.

This grim reality collides with an increasingly punitive welfare state. Our welfare system was originally designed as a contributory system of unemployment insurance, in which workers put in during the good times, and took out during temporary periods of unemployment. But a big chunk of welfare spending now goes on permanently supporting people in jobs that don’t pay enough to support their families. As the contributory principle has been eroded, politicians have sought to create a new sense of legitimacy by loading the system with sanctions that dock jobseeker benefits for minor transgressions.