Author: Press Room

Sprinkle the sequins and pump up the volume: The annual Eurovision Song Contest reaches its climax on Saturday with a grand final broadcast live from the United Kingdom’s city of Liverpool. There will be catchy choruses, a kaleidoscope of costumes and tributes to the spirit of Ukraine in a competition that since 1956 has captured the changing zeitgeist of a continent. Last year, 161 million people watched the competition, according to the organiser, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), making it one of the world’s most-watched events. Here’s what to expect as acts from across Europe – and beyond – vie…

Premier Mark McGowan has partly walked back his controversial comments around the latest Banksia Hill riot and juvenile detainees with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, but insists the disability is “no excuse”.The 14-hours of chaos over Tuesday night and Wednesday morning embroiled 47 of the 90-odd detainees at the facility, starting with a boy escaping from his cell by removing bricks, threatening an officer with one, then grabbing her keys.

TEGUCIGALPA: Honduras will soon begin talks toward a trade deal with China, the Central American country’s top diplomat said on Friday (May 12), marking the latest step toward stronger bilateral ties between the two nations after Honduras broke off relations with Taiwan. Honduran Foreign Minister Eduardo Enrique Reina told reporters at a press conference that the goal is to launch talks “soon” and eventually ink a “free trade” agreement with the Asian giant, the world’s second-largest economy. “It will be good news and (offer) opportunities for access to our products to China,” said Reina. In late March, Honduras ended its…

Key PointsAs seen in a video, a Ghanaian woman was instantly elevated to celebrity status during a visit to Turkey The video has generated a lot of controversy, with people debating the purity of the intentions of the locals towards her. Turkey has a covert history of racism Africans were once exhibited like zoo animals in EuropeA recently posted video of a Ghanaian woman being treated with fanfare in Turkey drew a flurry of reactions in the African Twitter community. In the video, Claudia Darlene, a tall, beautiful dark-skinned woman sporting a massive afro, is asked by crowds of strangers…

Fears for the safety of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people in path of potentially devastating storm.Thousands of people in Myanmar and Bangladesh are getting ready to evacuate ahead of Cyclone Mocha, which is expected to bring winds as fast as 175km an hour (108 mph) when it makes landfall on Sunday. The storm is currently in the Bay of Bengal and moving northwards. It is expected to cross the coast between Sittwe in Myanmar’s northwestern Rakhine state and Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. Authorities have warned of the danger of flooding, landslides and a storm surge of between 2 and…

“All of us who work in Democratic politics have been dreading this moment for two years,” said Lanae Erickson, who runs the public opinion and social policy division at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank. “It is very evident that Republicans still have an upper hand on immigration and people don’t think that Democrats particularly care about securing the border.”Progressives seem to agree. “They should have undone Title 42 on the first day in office. They didn’t,” said Chris Newman, the legal director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Los Angeles. “Now…

Biden administration rules released on Friday that will determine which companies and manufacturers can benefit from new solar industry tax credits are being criticized by U.S.-based makers of solar products, who say the guidelines do not go far enough to try to lure manufacturing back from China.The rules stem from President Biden’s sweeping clean energy bill, which offers a mix of tax credits and other incentives to try and spur the construction of more solar factories in the United States and reduce the country’s reliance on China for clean energy goods needed to mitigate climate change.The Treasury Department, in guidance…

There’s reason to believe that the S&P 500 could push a bit further to the upside in the coming months, says Barry Gilbert – Asset Allocation Strategist at LPL Financial. Why is he constructive on S&P 500? Gilbert continues to rate U.S. stocks a “modest overweight” following the latest inflation data that suggests consumer prices eased further to 4.9% in April (read more). Historically, he said in a note obtained by Invezz, market tends to do well when inflation is trending down. S&P 500 returns fared better in the year following peak inflation than in the year prior. For markets,…

Are mainstream investors ready for disaster? With the clock ticking close to a US government debt default described by Treasury secretary Janet Yellen as an “unthinkable” move with “dreadful consequences”, we could be about to find out.For specialist hedge fund managers who make money only in the event of calamities such as financial crises and pandemics, bracing for the worst is pretty easy: just keep picking up options and other instruments on the cheap that provide a hedge against sudden price falls. Then when the nightmare scenario strikes, count your billions and slap on your best suit to go on…

The writer is a former investment banker and author of ‘Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon’Once upon a time, if you wanted high pay and high prestige on Wall Street, you aspired to be a mergers and acquisitions banker, the person who advised corporate chief executives on their most important strategic deals. And if you wanted the highest pay and the highest prestige, you aspired to be an M&A banker at groups such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lazard and First Boston, the places where the biggest and most exciting M&A deals were happening. In those…