Day: December 3, 2022

The US economy added 263,000 jobs in November, above estimates of a 200,000 gain, despite the Fed’s aggressive monetary tightening to lower inflation and efforts to slow the labor market. Job additions for October were also revised up by 23,000, from 261,000 to 284,000.

Investors fret about a more aggressive stance from the Fed after the strong jobs report. For the Fed’s next meeting on Dec. 13-14, the probability of raising rates by 75 basis points stood at less than 21% on Thursday. That number climbed to almost 28% before the opening bell Friday.

The Dow Jones rose 34 points, or 0.1%, to close at 34,429. The blue-chip index rose 0.2% for the week.

The S&P 500, on the other hand, fell 4 points, or 0.12%, to end the session at 4,071. It was up 1.1% this week.

The Nasdaq shed 20 points, or 0.18%, to finish at 11,461. The tech-heavy index soared 2.1% for the week.

The VIX volatility index, also known as the fear index, dove 4.1% to 19.03. The 10-year US Treasury yield fell 1.4% to 3.479%.

The dollar index fell 0.2% to 104.52, still around its highest in 20 years, while the euro rose 0.1% to $1.0535 against the greenback.

Precious metals were mixed. Gold was down 0.3% to $1,798 per ounce but silver gained 1.8% to $23.15.

Oil prices were down more than 1%. Global benchmark Brent crude was trading at $85.81 per barrel for a loss of 1.2%, while US benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude was around $80.17, down 1.3%.

Source: Anadolu Agency

“Moretza Talaei (is) a Second Brigadier General of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and former commander of Tehran’s Law Enforcement Forces,” the Canadian government said in a statement.

He was Tehran’s police chief in 2003 when Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi was beaten to death after taking pictures of Tehran’s Evin prison, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported.

Under the sanctions, Canada can ban those from entering the country and freeze assets they have in Canada.

“We’re looking and continuing to look at all ways to ensure that the Iranian regime knows its continued reprehensible behaviour is absolutely unacceptable,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday.

Also sanctioned were: Ali Ghanaatkar Mavardiani, a senior judge, prosecutor and interrogator of the regime who worked at the Evin Prison Court; Hassan Karami, Commander of the Islamic Republic’s Law Enforcement Forces Special Units; Safiran Airport Services, an Iranian cargo and commercial airline that has coordinated Russian military flights between Iran and Russia; Baharestan Kish Company, a subsidiary firm of the IRGC Cooperative Foundation that has entered into agreements to render research services in the technology sector and Javan News Agency, a media outlet under the Basij Cooperative Foundation that disseminates antisemitic messaging and regime’s propaganda.

Source: Anadolu Agency

He applied for asylum in Sweden in 2015 because of his sentence but was denied.

Tat was taken to a detention center in Molndal. After completing procedures he was sent to Türkiye by plane.

Sweden and Finland formally applied to join NATO in May, abandoning decades of military non-alignment, a decision spurred by Russia’s war against Ukraine.

But Türkiye — a NATO member for more than 70 years — voiced objections to their membership bids, accusing the two countries of tolerating and even supporting terror groups.

Türkiye and the two Nordic countries signed a memorandum in June at a NATO summit to address Ankara’s legitimate security concerns, paving the way for their eventual membership in the alliance.

Under the memorandum, Finland and Sweden extend their full support to Türkiye countering threats to its national security. To that effect, Helsinki and Stockholm are not to provide support to the YPG/PYD terror group or the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO) — the group behind the defeated 2016 coup in Türkiye.

In its more than 35-year terror campaign against Türkiye, the PKK — listed as a terrorist organization by Türkiye, the US, and EU — has been responsible for the deaths of more than 40,000 people, including women, children and infants. The YPG is its Syrian offshoot.

Turkish officials, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have warned that Türkiye will not give the nod to the memberships of Sweden and Finland until the memorandum is implemented.

Unanimous consent from all 30 existing allied countries is required for a country to join NATO.

Source: Anadolu Agency

In a lengthy thread, independent journalist Matt Taibbi said he received “thousands of internal documents” from Twitter sources pointing to the suppression of the Biden laptop story on Twitter in which the company controversially blocked people from tweeting and direct-messaging about the story.

“Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be ‘unsafe.’ They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography,” Taibbi tweeted.

A 2020 headline in the New York Post said “Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad,” referring to Biden’s father, current US President Joe Biden, who was the country’s vice president at the time. But the story never gained traction in the mainstream media, possibly in part to Twitter filtering the story and putting a stranglehold on its dissemination to the public.

Shortly after the Post published the article, Twitter pointed to concerns about hacked materials as the reason for blocking the story. Twitter has a policy against the distribution of “hacked materials,” a product of how political operatives stole and then leaked Democrats’ emails during the 2016 election. Twitter at the time cited that policy as one of the reasons it had suppressed the article.

“They just freelanced it,” is how one former Twitter employee characterized the decision, according to Taibbi. “Hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it.”

Taibbi’s characterization of the internal documents pointed toward a Democratic bias from Twitter’s previous management that somehow never got to the top of the executive food chain until it was too late.

“An amazing subplot of the Twitter/Hunter Biden laptop affair was how much was done without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, and how long it took for the situation to get ‘un(expletive)’ (as one ex-employee put it) even after Dorsey jumped in,” tweeted Taibbi.

Dorsey said during a congressional hearing on misinformation and social media that blocking the Post’s report was a “total mistake.”

Twitter and Facebook took major steps to limit the spread of the article.

Twitter blocked workers from tweeting out the link to the story or sending it in private messages.

Facebook said it was “reducing” the distribution of the article while third-party fact-checkers reviewed it.

Taibbi wrote that he has seen no evidence that there was government involvement in Twitter’s move to block the story.

Hunter Biden has said that federal prosecutors in the US state of Delaware are investigating his taxes but he has not been charged.

He has denied any wrongdoing.

Source: Anadolu Agency

The admission of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) as an observer member of the Organization of Turkic States (TDT) and the visit of Gambian Vice President Badara Joof drew great attention across the world, the presidency stressed in a statement.

That is why the Greek-Greek Cypriot duo made various attempts to block the TRNC’s progress toward recognition. The EU, the US and some other forces also took action, it said.

Turkish Cypriot President Ersin Tatar underscored that the chairperson of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, under the guidance of the Greek-Greek Cypriot lobby, made a claim of “Turkish occupation in Cyprus” with a pro-Greek attitude.

“First of all, the chairperson of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the whole world should know very well that the occupier who exists in Cyprus is the Greek-Greek Cypriot duo who turned the Republic of Cyprus, in which the Turkish Cypriot people are equal founding partners, into a Greek state by force of arms, and this occupation still continues,” Tatar said.

He noted that supporters of the duo, who could not digest the steps to recognize the TRNC, continued their attacks, expressing satisfaction that Menendez lifted the arms embargo imposed by the US on the Greek Cypriot Administration of Southern Cyprus and expressed that his support for armament could not be accepted.

Incident

Menendez touched on the Cyprus issue during an online event organized for the 39th anniversary of the unilateral declaration of the independence of the Turkish Cypriots, organized by the Coordinating Committee of the Cyprus Struggle (PSEKA).

“(Turkish President Recep Tayyip) Erdogan’s continuing willingness to flex his authoritarian muscles to Cyprus and around the world means that it is more important than ever that America stands shoulder to shoulder with the Republic of Cyprus,” he said. “I am proud to be a long-time supporter of the Cypriot cause and the decades of struggle for security and democracy in the Eastern Mediterranean. As you know, I am fully committed to the Republic of Cyprus’s sovereignty.”

“The threat of the occupied area is one that has to be taken very seriously,” he said. “The US should not put any F-16 fighter jets in president Erdogan’s hands.”

“I will not approve any F-16s for Türkiye until he halts his campaign of aggression across the entire region,” said Menendez.

“There is so much that Cypriots, New Jerseyans and all Americans can accomplish together when we work with each other.

“Let’s make sure that every last Turkish soldier leaves the island of Cyprus once and for all,” he said.

Decades-long dispute

Cyprus has been mired in a decades-long dispute between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, despite a series of diplomatic efforts by the UN to achieve a comprehensive settlement.

Ethnic attacks starting in the early 1960s forced Turkish Cypriots to withdraw into enclaves for their safety.

In 1974, a Greek Cypriot coup aimed at Greece’s annexation of the island led to Türkiye’s military intervention as a guarantor power to protect Turkish Cypriots from persecution and violence. As a result, the TRNC was founded in 1983.

It has seen an on-and-off peace process in recent years, including a failed 2017 initiative in Switzerland under the auspices of guarantor countries Türkiye, Greece and the UK.

The Greek Cypriot administration entered the European Union in 2004, the same year that Greek Cypriots thwarted a UN plan to end the longstanding dispute.

Source: Anadolu Agency

“We will never in any way allow the formation of a terror corridor or the activity of terrorists” on Türkiye’s southern border, National Defense Minister Hulusi Akar told reporters in the northwestern province of Canakkale, referring to terror groups such as Daesh/ISIS and the PKK/YPG.

Türkiye expects to see a “clearer picture” of a possible cease-fire in the Ukraine war or a return to the negotiating table by next spring, according to Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.

Russia is not ready for negotiations with the US on the condition of “withdrawal from Ukraine,” but Russian President Vladimir Putin remains open to contacts, said the Kremlin.

Those remarks by spokesman Dmitry Peskov came one day after US President Joe Biden said he is prepared to speak with the Russian president if he shows an interest in ending the war that started in February.

EU member countries agreed on a $60 per barrel price cap for Russian crude oil exports transported by sea.

US whistleblower Edward Snowden took an oath as a Russian citizen and obtained the country’s passport, according to his lawyer.

Biden signed into law a bill forcing labor unions and companies to accept a compromise agreement he brokered during the summer, averting a looming nationwide rail shutdown.

Source: Anadolu Agency