France bombs Islamic State HQ; police conduct 150 raids

• Greg Keller and Raf Casert, Associated Press

• 10h
• 33

syndication.ap.orgThe Eiffel Tower is illuminated in the French national colors red, white and blue in honor of the victims of the terror attacks last Friday in Paris, Monday, Nov. 16, 2015. France is urging its European partners to move swiftly to boost intelligence sharing, fight arms trafficking and terror financing, and strengthen border security in the wake of the Paris attacks. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

PARIS (AP) — France identified a 27-year-old Belgian who once boasted about killing "infidels" and fought for the Islamic State group in Syria as the mastermind of the Paris attacks, and President Francois Hollande vowed Monday to forge a united coalition capable of defeating the jihadists at home and abroad.

Addressing lawmakers after France observed a minute of silence honoring the 129 people killed and 350 wounded, Hollande said the victims came from at least 19 nations, and the international community, led by the United States and Russia, must overcome their deep-seated divisions over Syria to destroy Islamic State on its home turf.

"Friday's acts of war were decided and planned in Syria. They were organized in Belgium and perpetrated on our soil with French complicity with one specific goal: to sow fear and to divide us," Hollande told Parliament in a rare joint session convened at the Palace of Versailles.

"Syria has become the biggest factory of terrorism the world has ever known and the international community is still too divided and too incoherent."

As he spoke, thousands gathered around candlelit memorials at the Place de la Republique square and beneath the Eiffel Tower, which like many top attractions in one of the world's most-visited cities reopened for business Monday in a defiant spirit. The tower was bathed in red, white and blue floodlights of the French tricolor, with the city's centuries-old slogan — "Tossed but not sunk," suggesting an unsinkable city braving stormy seas — projected in white lights near its base.

French and other Western intelligence agencies face an urgent challenge to track down the surviving members of the three Islamic State units who inflicted the unprecedented bloodshed in France and, perhaps more importantly, to target their distant commanders in IS-controlled parts of Syria.

A French security official said anti-terror intelligence officials had identified Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian of Moroccan descent, as chief architect of the Friday the 13th attacks on a rock concert, a soccer game and popular nightspots in one of Paris' trendiest districts.

The official cited chatter from IS figures that Abaaoud had recommended a concert as an ideal target for inflicting maximum casualties, as well as electronic communications between Abaaoud and one of the Paris attackers who blew himself up.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive investigation.

Abaaoud came to public attention last year by boasting in an IS propaganda video about his pride in piling the dead bodies of "infidel" enemies into a trailer. Anti-terror agencies previously linked him to a series of abortive shooting plots this year in Belgium and France, including a planned attack on a passenger train that was thwarted by American passengers who overpowered the lone gunman.

French police have used emergency powers to conduct 168 searches since Sunday night that netted 127 arrests and 31 weapons.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said police seized a Kalashnikov assault rifle, three automatic pistols and a bulletproof vest from a suspected arms dealer with jihadist sympathies, and a rocket launcher and other military-grade gear from his parents' home.

But police have yet to announce the capture of anyone suspected of direct involvement in Friday's slaughter. Seven attackers died — six after detonating suicide belts and a seventh from police gunfire — but Iraqi intelligence officials told The Associated Press that its sources indicated 19 participated in the attack and five others provided hands-on logistical support.

French police accidentally permitted the suspected driver of one group of gunmen, 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, to avoid arrest at the border Saturday and cross to his native Belgium. On Monday, Belgian police in balaclavas, gas masks and body armor raided Abdeslam's suspected hideout in the Molenbeek district of Brussels but came out empty-handed.

Abdeslam's brother, Brahim, was among the suicide bombers and killed one civilian after blowing himself up outside a restaurant. Police in Molenbeek arrested another brother, Mohamed, but freed him Monday without charge.

After he left police custody, Mohamed Abdeslam told reporters that his family couldn't believe that both of his brothers were jihadists. He said all three siblings grew up in Belgium and seemingly were content with life in the West.

"I have not been involved in any way with what happened on Friday the 13th in Paris. We are an open-minded family. We never had any problem with justice," he said.

He said he didn't know where his brother Salah was or whether he would surrender to police, and expressed familial loyalty to him despite his shock over the mass killings. "You have to understand that we have a family, we have a mom, and he remains her child," he said.

Determined to root out jihadists within French communities, Hollande said he would present a bill Wednesday seeking to extend a state of emergency — granting the police and military greater powers of search and arrest, and local governments the right to ban demonstrations and impose curfews — for another three months.

He also pledged to hire 5,000 more police within the next two years, to freeze cuts in military personnel through 2019, and to introduce other bills that would stiffen jail terms for arms trafficking and make it easier to deport suspected terrorists.

Hollande said he hoped to meet soon with U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who on Monday were attending the G-20 summit of nations in Antalya, Turkey. The two leaders maintained a publicly frosty demeanor, reflecting strained relations over Russia's support for Syrian President Bashar Assad and Russia's go-it-alone pursuit of airstrikes against both IS and anti-IS rebels in the country, a strategy that bolsters Assad. The air power of the United States, France and Britain is solely targeting IS targets.

In hopes of killing Islamic State organizers and trainees, France overnight launched its heaviest airstrikes yet on the city of Raqqa, the group's de-facto capital in Syria. French authorities said Sunday night's bombings destroyed a jihadi training camp and munitions dump.

The Defense Ministry said 12 aircraft based in Jordan and the Persian Gulf dropped a total of 20 bombs. It called the operation the largest attack by French air power since France joined the U.S.-led coalition in targeting suspected IS power bases in Syria in September.

In his Versailles address, Hollande said the United States and Russia needed to cooperate in attacking IS targets "to unify our strength and achieve a result that has been too long in coming."

"We need a union of all who can fight this terrorist army in a single coalition," he said.

"We are not in a war of civilizations, because these assassins don't represent one. We are in a war against jihadist terrorism, which threatens the entire world."

Speaking in Turkey, Obama said the Paris bloodshed marked a "terrible and sickening setback" in the West's anti-Islamic State campaign. But he insisted his strategy of building an international coalition to launch airstrikes, while training and equipping more moderate forces on the ground, remained the best approach. He didn't comment on whether Russia should join that coalition.

"The strategy that we are putting forward is the strategy that ultimately is going to work," Obama said. "It's going to take time."

The Islamic State group issued a new 12-minute video Monday threatening to attack all nations involved in bombing IS positions in Syria and Iraq. One man in the video threatened to target the United States in the same style as Paris, saying that as "we struck France on its ground in Paris, we will strike America on its ground in Washington."

In Paris, harrowing accounts of survival continued to emerge, particularly from the Bataclan concert hall, where three attackers shot into the fleeing crowd. Two then detonated suicide vests as police stormed the building, then fatally shot the third attacker.

Julien Pearce, a journalist at Europe 1 radio who escaped by crawling onto the Bataclan stage, said he got a good look at one attacker who appeared "very young."

"That's what struck me: his childish face, very determined, cold, calm, frightening," Pearce said.

Paris remains on edge amid three days of official mourning. French troops have deployed by the thousands in support of police to restore a sense of security, but any sound of loud bangs can send people scurrying for cover.

Panic ensued Sunday night as police abruptly cleared mourners from the Place de la Republique square, where police said firecrackers sparked a false alarm. Some trampled over memorial candles and floral bouquets to escape what they feared was more gunmen.

"Whoever starts running starts everyone else running," said a city councilwoman, Alice Carton, who was at the square. "It's a very weird atmosphere."

___

Casert reported from Brussels. Associated Press reporters Lori Hinnant, Sylvie Corbet, Philippe Sotto, Jamey Keaten, Raphael Satter, Angela Charlton, Jill Lawless, Thomas Adamson and John Leicester in Paris, John-Thor Dahlburg in Brussels and Shawn Pogatchnik in Dublin contributed to this report.

Fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq may be accelerating its attacks around the world

• Pamela Engel
 
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• 4h
• 3,707
 
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NashirAn ISIS militant with an ISIS flag.

See Also

ISIS makes sure to avoid one apocalyptic prophecy about the Antichrist

Here’s why Obama said just a day before the Paris attacks that ISIS was ‘contained’

Here's what Islamic State really believes and why it matters

As ISIS loses ground in the Middle East, it might step up attacks on foreign countries in order to create the perception that it is winning, experts say.

The Friday-night attacks in Paris, in which terrorists killed 129 people and injured hundreds more as they took hostages, detonated suicide vests, and shot people across the city, could have been a move to distract from the losses ISIS (also known as the Islamic State) has taken in its core base of support.

"If an extremist group that has seized territory starts to lose it, it will be highly incentivized to turn to terrorist operations that allow for maximizing effects at a lower cost," Clint Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and former Army infantry officer,wrote for War on the Rocks.

Watts continued:

The Islamic State propelled its recruitment and resourcing over the past three years by sustaining the initiative, growing its state through battlefield successes and acquisitions. But the group has now peaked: It is losing territory, many of its fighters are dying in battle, defections from their ranks continue to increase, recruitment flows are slower and smaller, and new regional Islamic State affiliates in countries like Libya and Egypt now provide a range of options for potential recruits to join a group locally rather than travel to Syria.

To sustain its brand and supporting global fan base, the Islamic State needs to show success. If it cannot achieve battlefield victories and broadcast them on social media, then its affiliates and global network need to pick up the slack with terrorist attacks that capture the imagination of mass media.

Other experts have echoed this assessment.

The Paris attack "strikes at those who are fighting [ISIS]," Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a counterterrorism analyst and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Business Insider over the weekend. "It increases their prestige in the jihadist movement, thus diminishing Al Qaeda and raising ISIS’s stature. It energizes their base, it presents this perception of a [win] particularly when they’ve been losing ground in their caliphate holdings."

Will McCants, an expert on jihadist groups and author of the recent book, "The ISIS Apocalypse," told Business Insider on Friday that ISIS might try to retake territory to offset its losses, and that the US-led anti-ISIS coalition's recent efforts in the region could "damage ... its claim to be continually expanding."

Reuters

Over the weekend, he pointed out that ISIS has also carried out other high-profile attacks against its foreign enemies in recent weeks. The group has also claimed responsibility for thedowning of a Russian passenger plane over Egypt at the end of October and for suicide bombings against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

"All of that suggests that ISIS wants to put pressure on those governments," McCants said on Saturday.

ISIS's strategy to expand its caliphate and mount spectacular attacks on its enemies in the West plays into the group's grand plan to drag the West into a final apocalyptic showdown in Dabiq, Syria.

"In a prophecy attributed to Muhammad, the Prophet predicts the Day of Judgment will come after the Muslims defeat Rome at al-Amaq or Dabiq, two places close to the Syrian border with Turkey," McCants wrote for the Brookings Institution last year. ("Rome" could be understood to mean Western nations in general.)

In his book, McCants further explained the apocalyptic fervor of ISIS:

The US invasion of Iraq and the stupendous violence that followed dramatically increased the Sunni public’s appetite for apocalyptic explanations of a world turned upside down. A spate of bestsellers put the United States at the center of the End-Times drama, a new 'Rome' careering throughout the region in a murderous stampede to prevent violence on its own shores. The main antagonists of the End of Days, the Jews, were now merely supporting actors. Even conservative Sunni clerics who had previously tried to tamp down messianic fervor couldn’t help but conclude that 'the triple union constituted by the Antichrist, the Jews, and the new Crusaders' had joined forces 'to destroy the Muslims.'

Reuters

Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, also mentioned ISIS's apocalyptic vision in light of the Paris attacks.

"ISIS and its ilk want to fashion a clash of civilizations," Hamid told CNN. They want this to be 'us versus them.' They want to exploit growing anti-Muslim and anti-refugee sentiment to push a narrative that French Muslims and Western Muslims more generally will never be fully accepted by their countrymen."

He continued: "ISIS is rather clear about this intent: They wish to extinguish the 'gray zone' and provoke a sort of apocalyptic world war, where Muslims are forced to choose sides."

As Russia, France, and the US become more deeply involved in Middle East, increasing airstrikes in Syria and in some cases sending in ground forces, ISIS recruits more and more people with the message that they're fighting the "infidels" in the West as a means to fulfill a centuries-old prophecy.

And Hamid cautioned against bargaining with dictators like Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, who has resorted to attacking and bombing civilians as he struggles to maintain power.

"Perhaps these politicians are unaware that the point of terrorism is to provoke target populations to do things they otherwise wouldn't do," Hamid said. "Let's start by not doing it for them."

SEE ALSO: 'We are not terrorists' — Europe's 'open door' refugee policy is already coming under assault

There Will Be Blood: Paris and the Future of Islamist Terrorism

BY KURT EICHENWALD 11/14/15 AT 8:21 PM

Two women take part in a vigil to pay tribute to the victims of the Paris attacks, at Trafalgar Square in London, Britain November 14, 2015. REUTERS

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FILED UNDER: Opinion

For 14 years, Western intelligence officials have lived in fear of this moment. With Friday’s attack on Paris, the world has passed a tipping point in what is sure to be a decades-long battle against Islamist terrorism. And, to combat it, America and its allies — from government leaders to citizens — have to move past the fear and partisan politics of the last decade. They have to realize that Friday’s Paris strike is not just another in a growing cavalcade of terrorist assaults; instead it signals a tactical change in Islamist terrorist strategies—one that militants have been moving towards for years.

One of the biggest limitations on Islamist terrorist groups executing successful attacks has been competition. Al-Qaeda is not ISIS, ISIS is not the Haqqani network, Haqqani is not Hamas. Each is vying to recruit among the same potential supporters, and Western intelligence agencies say these groups once believed that grandiose, complicated plots such as blowing up major bridges or national landmarks would win them more members. But the more intricate the plots and the more predictable the targets, the more likely it is that Western intel officials can thwart them.

Not anymore. The Paris attacks show that global jihadists have realized what counterterrorism specialists have long feared: strikes on soft targets such as restaurants, concerts and sports venues—using small arms and easy-to-assemble bombs—are harder to stop and can inflict massive damage.

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An American intelligence officer first discussed this with me in 2007, laying out a scenario for an attack that was frighteningly similar to what occurred in Paris. This individual described the intelligence agency’s concerns while making a broader point about the use of resources on the condition that I wouldn’t write about these concerns and inadvertently pass on the idea to Islamists. With the Paris attack, that individual, now retired, released me from that promise, saying that the world needs to understand how Paris has changed everything, and what that means for how politicians, strategists and citizens of Western countries should respond.

The first signal that terrorists might have been shifting tactics to wide-scale soft-target attacks came in 2008, when 10 members of Lashkar-e-Taiba — a Pakistan-based Islamist group — engaged in a series of shooting and bombing attacks in Mumbai. Over a period of four days they struck hotels, a railway station, taxis and other unprotected targets. Western intelligence braced for the strategy to expand, and successfully disrupted several planned strikes. But then, the attempts dwindled.

The next major sign that raised concerns: the January attack on the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical weekly newspaper that often lampooned Islam. Two gunmen, who identified themselves as belonging to a group called Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, raided the offices and killed 12 people. The attack sparked a massive global reaction, far more than the response to the Mumbai assault, with marches and public commitments to stand up to terrorists. On the other side, however, some condemned the editors of Charlie Hebdo for insulting Muslims —as if there was some sort of equivalence between murder and drawing a cartoon.

Classified analysis by a foreign intelligence agency that one overseas official discussed with me concluded that the Charlie Hebdo attack, despite its relatively small size, might serve as both a lesson and a challenge to other terrorist groups. With ISIS attempting to grab global headlines, the success of the Al-Qaeda affiliate may have given it more allure to potential recruits; it demonstrated the group’s affiliates knew how to carry out the type of high-profile assault that ISIS had yet to execute. In this analysis, Paris and Berlin were deemed the most in danger of small-arms terrorist assaults. A least two years would have to pass, the foreign intelligence analysts concluded, before the West could feel somewhat assured that ISIS had not learned the tactical lesson from the Charlie Hebdo assault by striking soft-targets with hard-to-detect, small weaponry. Doing so would inflict wide-scale damage and show the Islamist world that ISIS could outdo Al-Qaeda.

Now that it has happened, the West has to learn new ways to think about terrorism.  Intelligence agencies have long said that, once the change of tactics succeeded somewhere in the West, America and its allies would be hit. “This isn’t a question of if,’’ the retired American intelligence official told me. “It’s a question of when.” It is too easy to carry out one of these small-arms attacks and the impact is too enormous.

What then should be done? The first step is simple, and one that the CIA and other agencies have been clamoring for in secret sessions before Congressional intelligence committees: Stop politicizing terrorist attacks. If you listen to members of the intelligence committees discuss terrorism, you might notice it is sometimes impossible to tell the difference between Republicans and Democrats. They often speak in a single voice, because they have been told that those who use terrorist attacks to drive anger against the opposing political party are encouraging small-scale assaults.

That has been, for example, the problem with the vast politicization of the 2012 attack on the American mission in Benghazi. As one intelligence official told me last year, Islamists follow news about American reactions to terrorist attacks very closely. They are fully aware that this comparatively small strike has been used by American politicians in attempts to effect the outcome of the next election. Despite the fact that many reports have assessed the attack from every angle, the bogus investigations and hysterical screams of politics continue.

Some of the reactions to the Paris attack has been more of the same. Even as people continued to be executed, conservative commentators rushed to social media to attack Obama, protesting students at the University of Missouri, gun control advocates and immigration policies. It was a parade of inhuman obscenities led by pundits like Ann Coulter, Monica Crowley, Newt Gingrich, Michelle Malkin. Some criticized Obama for refusing to blame Islamists before the intelligence was confirmed, or calling the president a “whitewasher-in-chief” who had nothing to contribute.

This instantaneous reaction attacking the American government came because terrorists struck another country. Our tribal division between liberals and conservatives — while not violent — has become nearly as irrational and self-destructive as the one between the Sunnis and the Shiites. Imagine what will happen when the attack takes place in the United States. The outrage and attacks on the White House will come from whatever party isn’t in power. The terrorists will successfully turn us against each other, rather than uniting us against the people who want to destroy us.

So, what is to be done? Americans need to move beyond their internecine squabbles. Did President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq help create ISIS and fuel the growth of Islamist terrorism? Yes. Was Hillary Clinton’s Libya strategy a blunder? Yes. Have Obama’s Syria policies been incoherent? Yes. Was Bush’s agreement in 2008 to withdraw from Iraq in 2011 difficult-to-avoid mistake? Yes.

Okay, it’s all been said. Now, let’s face where we are now. Conservatives need to stop screaming about Obama when it comes to national security, and liberals need to stop spinning conspiracy theories about war or ranting over Bush’s past mistakes. The National Security Agency’s domestic spying program — the one created by Bush and supported by Obama — needs to be enhanced; citizens need to understand that the government doesn’t want to know what porn sites you’ve subscribed to, they want to be able to disrupt attacks, including small-scale ones.

American politicians need to stop pretending this is a simple problem. ISIS is not going to run away when faced with the steely-eyed gaze of some soft politician. Nor will they be killed. ISIS spreads a philosophy; it can only be contained and disrupted. But idiotic statements like “bomb them” — which the United States is already doing on the battle lines — appear to be designed to trick Americans into believing that ISIS is in a single location, away from civilian populations, waiting to be hit. Americans cannot face the reality of this challenge if politicians do not tell the truth.

We also need to grow more sophisticated about Western Muslims. Are they violent enemies, ready to attack at any time? No. They are our neighbors and fellow citizens. But are small groups of Muslims hiding in plain sight and eager and prepared to kill? Yes. When it comes to security, let’s stop pretending that a 68-year-old grandmother is as much a potential threat as a 25-year-old Muslim male. This is not bias or racism; it’s fact. If middle aged white guys were more likely to engage in mass, organized terrorist attacks than other citizens, I not only would expect to receive closer attention, I would want it. After all, terrorists are just as likely to kill their own. What this means is some sort of security profiling cannot be avoided. However, we have to recognize and accept that law-abiding Muslims — who make up the vast, vast majority of American practitioners of Islam — are as much victims as anyone else. Laws need to protect them and demagogues need to leave them alone.

Next, it’s time for to hold our supposed allies accountable. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have been allowed to engage in their dalliances with terrorist groups for far too long. The Saudis provide money to the Sunni extremists like ISIS, while Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) provides extremist groups with protection. The Taliban was an ISI creation; Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group behind the Mumbai attacks, is still supported by these government officials. America needs to confront these governments with diplomatic and financial force. The Saudi royal family needs to be told that if they are unable to control the flow of cash to those terrorists set on harming America, there will be severe consequences to pay. For example — even though it is exactly what the Sunni terrorists want — the U.S. could withdraw its military troops from Saudi Arabia and adopt a strategic tilt toward Iran, whose Shiite government is aligned with America in the interest of destroying ISIS.

The American government also has to understand that we have no real allies in the Middle East—there are only those that are willing to work with us. If that means aligning ourselves with our erstwhile enemies, like Iran, in the face of this Sunni threat, so be it. It also means we may have to pressure Israel. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear that it cares little about the ISIS threat in Syria, since the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, has allowed his regime to become a conduit of weapons from Iran to the Shiite terror group Hezbollah, one of Israel’s greatest enemies. The Netanyahu government’s attitude toward ISIS is foolish. If the group manages to seize control in Syria, it will only be a matter of time before the unfolding chaos in the Middle East spreads to the Israeli border.

The industrialized powers also must unify under a single strategy, including a military one. The Western nations must join with Russia under the authority of the United Nations to engage ISIS. The Kurds — and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard — have won major victories in Iraq with the assistance of American bombing campaigns. If stabilizing Syria ultimately requires the West to prop up Assad — a bloodthirsty madman who is a threat to Israel — so be it. There are no good choices here; that is why finding answers has been so difficult. The only way to try and put the Middle East back together is by taking on one issue at a time. ISIS and the other Islamist militant groups come first.

Finally, Western citizens must stop cowering. Perhaps the most important moment in France came hours after the attack, when Parisians came outside with signs proclaiming “We are not afraid.” The terrorists want us to be scared. That is how they win.

The truth is, any individual is more likely to die in a car crash while driving home from a movie theater than to be killed by an explosion while the film is running. A relatively small number of us will die at the hands of terrorists, no matter what we do; this is an undeniable fact. So be it. . When bombs were raining down on London during World War II, its citizens went about their business. Today, there are no bombs falling in the West; the threat we face does not come close to compared to what the British confronted.

So, go about your business. Put the threat of these attacks in perspective. Do not let the terrorists win. Be like those brave people in Paris who, even as dead bodies lay littered the ground, confronted terrorists with the message that, while they may have killed some of their fellow citizens,  they hadn’t put a dent in the nation’s spirit.

Asia: Stocks surge after Wall St takes Paris attacks in stride

PHOTO: REUTERS

NOV 17, 201511:30 AM

[TOKYO] Asian stocks rose across the board on Tuesday, relieved after seeing Wall Street take the Paris attacks in stride and surging overnight, while expectations for a December rate hike by the Federal Reserve kept the dollar on a bullish footing.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 1.6 per cent, bouncing from a 6-week low struck the previous day on risk aversion triggered by the assault on the French capital.

South Korea's Kospi was up 1.3 per cent, Australian shares gained 1.4 per cent and Shanghai shares climbed 1.7 per cent. Japan's Nikkei added 1.6 per cent.

"Investors think that the attacks in Paris would have little impact on the global economy in the long-term," said Hikaru Sato, senior technical analyst at Daiwa Securities in Tokyo. "Depending on new developments, the market could get affected in the future, but right now, market consensus is that the attacks have a limited impact on the stock market."

Asia took early leads from Wall Street, which surged on Monday as investors decided Friday's attacks in Paris would have little long-term impact on the US economy and corporate earnings. The Dow rose 1.4 per cent and the S&P 500 surged 1.5 per cent.

European equities had also held firm on Monday, with the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index edging up 0.16 per cent and France's CAC dipping only 0.12 per cent.

"In light of all the tragedy in France, it is refreshing to see that the terrorists did not successfully terrorize the financial markets...and even though investors sold the EUR/USD, the decline could have been a lot steeper. "In fact we did not see any unusually large moves in currencies," wrote Kathy Lien, managing director of FX Strategy for BK Asset Management.

The dollar rose to a 1-week high of 123.40 yen, a safe-haven currency usually sought in times of geopolitical tension. The greenback also rose to an 8-month high against the Swiss franc, another haven.

The euro dipped to US$1.0659, a 7-month trough.

Crude extended gains after the Paris attacks raised geopolitical tensions that were seen to threaten global oil supply.

US crude was up 0.2 per cent at US$41.80 a barrel after surging 2.4 per cent on Monday. Brent crude nudged up 0.2 per cent to US$44.66 a barrel, adding to overnight gains of 2.2 per cent.

Spot gold was little changed at US$1,083 an ounce. The precious metal pared gains overnight as an initial flow of flight-to-safety buying after the Paris attacks petered out.

Investor focus has returned to a potential rate hike by the Fed in December. Higher interest rates would diminish the allure of the non-interest-paying gold.

REUTERS

    
 

Investment banks' revenue set to decline again in 2015: survey

Revenue at the world's 10 largest investment banks is on course to decline again in 2015 by two percent to US$148 billion compared to a year ago, although a strong showing in equities will limit the fall, a survey on Tuesday showed. 

PHOTO: BLOOMBERG

NOV 17, 20158:18 AM

[LONDON] Revenue at the world's 10 largest investment banks is on course to decline again in 2015 by two percent to US$148 billion compared to a year ago, although a strong showing in equities will limit the fall, a survey on Tuesday showed.

It follows a weak third quarter, when revenue slipped by 8 per cent, the survey by industry analytics firm Coalition showed.

Investment banking revenue has slumped in recent years, especially in Europe, as tougher regulations, litigation costs and market volatility have prompted banks to restructure, shedding staff and exiting certain business lines.

Trading in fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC) divisions, which make up about half of investment banks'revenues and has been particularly hit by new regulation, is set to fall a further 7 per cent to US$64.8 billion in 2015 compared to last year, Coalition's data showed.

It has declined by about 50 per cent at the top 10 investment banks globally since 2009, according to the data.

One bright spot was banks' equity businesses, where revenue is set to rise 12 per cent year-on-year to US$44.8 billion, as investors rotate out of fixed income products into equities with the prospect of a US rate hike in December looking increasingly likely.

Investment banking divisions (IBD), which advise on mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and equity and debt underwriting are set to record a 6 percent decline from last year to US$38.2 billion, with a buoyant mergers and acquisitions market offsetting weakness in debt and equity issuance.

Across all the investment banks tracked by Coalition, which include Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citi, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and UBS, revenue declined 8 per cent in the third quarter to US$34.1 billion compared to a year ago.

In the third quarter, FICC revenue declined 18 per cent to US$14.2 billion, IBD revenue declined 3 per cent to US$9.1 billion and equities revenue increased 4 per cent to US$10.9 billion.

Headcount at the investment banks declined 1 per cent in the third quarter compared to a year ago, with a 3 per cent decline recorded in FICC, whilst IBD and equities remained the same.

REUTERS

    
 

Oil-rich Saudi to privatise airports to diversify economy

Saudi Arabia's civil aviation authority has announced a plan to privatise its airports by 2020, as the kingdom looks to diversify its economy to boost non-oil income. 

PHOTO: CHANGI AIRPORTS INTERNATIONAL (CAI)

NOV 16, 20154:37 PM

[RIYADH] Saudi Arabia's civil aviation authority has announced a plan to privatise its airports by 2020, as the kingdom looks to diversify its economy to boost non-oil income.

The initiative was set to be launched in the first quarter of 2016 with the privatisation of the capital's main international airport, said the state-owned General Authority for Civil Aviation.

In the second and third quarters of next year, the kingdom plans to privatise the aviation services sector and the information technology system, respectively, it said in a statement issued at the weekend.

All privatised airports and services will be supervised and managed by the Saudi Civil Aviation Company Holding "which will undertake the privatisation of all international, regional and domestic airports" by 2020, it said.

The oil-rich kingdom has at least three major international airports in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam in addition to a large number of domestic airports in most Saudi cities.

The privatisation programme was aimed at upgrading services by operating on a commercial basis and generating funds for state coffers, said the civil aviation authority.

Oil income, which makes up more than 90 per cent of the country's public revenues, has plummeted by more than 50 per cent due to the sharp fall of crude prices.

AFP