Having thrown the Justice Department under the bus yesterday, it appears the FBI Director has not managed to pass the hot potato of blame/responsibility for Trump's wiretap accusations. As The Hill reports, a White House spokeswoman on Monday said she "doesn't think" Trump accepts Comey's denial of the president's claims.
Moments ago, Kellyanne Conway confirmed that President Donald Trump will sign a new executive order on immigration Monday, which as Reuters reported earlier, will remove Iraq from the list of countries targeted in the travel ban. The revised order comes over a month after his controversial first attempt was blocked in the courts. According to a Reuters source, the new executive order would keep a 90-day ban on travel to the United States by citizens of six Muslim-majority nations - Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
Former French prime minister Alain Juppe, who has seen a recent surge in the polls as his conservative peer Francois Fillon has been tumbling, said on Monday that he had decided "once and for all" not to stand in France's presidential election, ending the hopes of many in his conservative party who had seen him as a logical replacement to Fillon. Juppe pulled no punches, and called the scandal-ridden Francois Fillon obstinate in his determination to continue in the face of opinion polls that show him knocked out of the race in the first round of voting, however offered no alternative plan.
Israeli bulldozers and military vehicles crossed the border fence into the besieged Gaza Strip on Sunday and flattened private Palestinian land. Four Israeli armored Caterpillar D9 bulldozers, accompanied by several tanks, entered the eastern part of the town of Fukhari in Gaza’s southern governorate of Khan Yunis during the early hours of Sunday morning.
March 15 is not only the day when the FOMC is now widely expected to hike rates by another 25 bps, and when the US debt ceiling suspension expires, but just as importantly, is the date of the 2017 Dutch General Election. Here is a full preview of what to expect courtesy of RBC Capital Markets.
By way of background, the Netherlands is the euro area’s 5th-largest economy, a founding member of the EU and one of only 3 euro area countries (along with Germany and Luxembourg) to enjoy an AAA rating from the 3 main ratings agencies.