flash

Authored by Anders Hagstrom via The Daily Caller,

The U.S.-based Human Rights Foundation (HSF) has worked with North Korean defectors to smuggle flash drives and other tools into their dictatorial homeland to counter the regime’s propaganda throughout 2017.

HSF director Alex Gladstein claims that his organization has successfully smuggled up to 10,000 flash drives into the country containing documentaries countering state narratives, according to The Telegraph.

Spanish stocks and the euro fell, while Spanish government bond yields hit their highest levels in over a month after Catalan secessionists delivered an unexpected blow to the government of Spanish PM Rajoy by winning the Catalan regional election. Meanwhile across the Atlantic, U.S. equity futures and the dollar rose on the last trading session before the Christmas holiday. The MSCI index of world stocks was flat.

One day after the Fed hiked rates by 25 bps as part of Janet Yellen's final news conference, it is central bank bonanza day, with rate decisions coming from the rest of the world's most important central banks, including the ECB, BOE, SNB, Norges Bank, HKMA, Turkey and others.

Despite a Wednesday dive in high-flying U.S. tech stocks on worries their boom may have peaked following a MS downgrade, which presured Asian stocks leading to a slide in Hong Kong and South Korean share, on Thursday morning the dip buyers have emerged and both European stocks and US equity futures are once again solidly in the green as yesterday's tech selloff is quickly forgotten.

After reassuringly positive Eurozone PMIs, US Manufacturing and Services disapointed with the composite PMI slumping to 5-month lows in November.