'He's laughing, very happy': Lone wolf planned New York attack for weeks

The Uzbek immigrant accused of killing eight people and injuring nearly a dozen others after he ploughed a pickup truck down a crowded bicycle path in New York executed the act "in the name of ISIS" and planned it for weeks, police said.

In the deadliest terror attack in New York post 9/11, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, 29, on Wednesday mowed down pedestrians and cyclists at high speed down a bike path in lower Manhattan.

Saipov, who came to the US legally in 2010, was shot in the stomach by a police officer before being arrested.

Unabashed, he lies in the hospital bed, bragging about the attack, multiple media reports said yesterday.

"He's talking. He's laughing. He's very happy with what he did. He feels accomplished," an unnamed source told New York Daily News.

The New York Police Department Deputy Commissioner for Counterterrorism John Miller told reporters at a news conference that it appeared that Saipov had been planning this "for a number of weeks".

Saipov did this "in the name of ISIS," he said.

Bolstering his alleged ISIS-link are the handwritten notes in Arabic recovered from the scene. The gist of the note was that the Islamic State would endure forever, the officer said.

"The gist of the note was that the Islamic State would endure forever," Miller said. Saipov also reportedly yelled "Allahu akbar" ("God is greatest") during the attack.
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Decision today: Is Trump all set to pick Jerome Powell as next Fed chair?

President Donald Trump has informed Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell that he is the pick to replace Janet Yellen at the helm of the central bank, a media report said on Wednesday.

The Wall Street Journal report quoted two people familiar with the matter as saying Trump spoke to Powell yesterday to inform him of the decision.

If confirmed by the Senate, Powell would take over from Yellen when her four-year term as Fed chair expires in February. Powell has already been through that confirmation process in order to become a member of the Fed's board.

Yellen was a potential, though dark horse candidate, and earlier in the day Trump praised her as "excellent." But he has made clear in all his appointments he wants to put his own stamp on policy.

The choice marks the first time since Jimmy Carter's administration in the 1970s that a president has failed to reappoint the Fed chair named by his predecessor.

After months of public debate, analysts say Powell represented a middle-ground option for the president, who wanted to mark a departure from the Obama era, while markets prefer continuity and favoured Yellen who has presided over an era of low inflation and steady economic growth.

An attorney by training who has voted with the majority of Fed members since his appointment by Barack Obama in 2012, Powell was seen as a centrist, unlikely to pursue steep rate hikes but a probably more amenable to the Trump administration's deregulation agenda.
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Social media firms grilled on Russia ads

Facebook, Google and Twitter - technology powerhouses actively cultivating their influence in Washington - received an unaccustomed grilling and even ridicule in their first appearance before Congress over Russian meddling in last year’s presidential campaign.

Two hearings on Wednesday may bring more of the same for top attorneys from the companies, who were forced to acknowledge to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee Tuesday that they aren’t sure they’ve measured the full extent of foreign manipulation of their social networks and don’t yet have the technology to ensure it won’t happen again.

“We need to understand the behaviour and we need to have the capacity both as a company and as an industry to be able to track it and eradicate it,” said Colin Stretch, Facebook’s general counsel. He said the company will double its safety and security staff to 20,000, including contract workers, by the end of 2018 to help track foreign interference and extremist postings.

The companies stopped short of endorsing proposed legislation that would require them to disclose all purchasers of political advertising, as old-line broadcasters have long been required to do. While some Republicans said such requirements would raise constitutional questions, Democrats on the panel said Congress must act.

The ridicule came from Democratic Senator Al Franken, who expressed amazement that Facebook had failed to detect Russians were behind American political ads on its platform even though some of them were paid for in rubles.

“People are buying ads on your platforms with rubles! They’re political ads,” the senator from Minnesota said. “You can’t put together rubles with a political ad and go like, ‘Hmmm, those two data points spell out something bad?’”
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Bitcoin hits new all-time high of $6,450

Bitcoin climbed to a new all-time high of $6,450 on Wednesday, boosted by bets the cryptocurrency could enter the financial mainstream after the world's largest derivatives exchange operator said on Tuesday it would launch bitcoin futures.

CME Group Inc said it would provide a regulated trading venue for the cryptocurrency market and would launch the new derivatives in the fourth quarter of 2017.

Bitcoin has had a bumper year with a more than sixfold increase in price, and has more than doubled in price since mid-September alone.

It was up 0.3 per cent on Wednesday on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange.
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New York attack: Twitter users express solidarity with victims

Eight persons were killed and several others were injured after a truck ploughed into pedestrians near the site of the World Trade Center memorial in Manhattan, New York on Tuesday. The suspect, identified as 29-year-old Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, an Uzbek national who came to the US in 2010, has been arrested.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a news conference, "Based on the information we have at this moment, this was an act of terror and a particularly cowardly act of terror aimed at innocent civilians."

Unconfirmed pro-ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) social media sites claim responsibility for the attack.

Twitter users took to the micro-blogging site to condemn the incident and express their fury. Former US presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton also expressed solidarity with the victims.
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Gold climbs ahead of US Fed Reserve meet, pick for Janet Yellen replacement

Gold climbed briefly back above $1,280 an ounce on Wednesday as caution ahead of this week's confirmation of the new Federal Reserve chair and a policy statement from the bank prompted some to close out bets on falling prices.

Fed Governor Jerome Powell is widely tipped to take over from incumbent Janet Yellen at the head of the U.S. central bank next year. He is seen as a less hawkish and therefore more gold friendly choice than his main challenger John Taylor, a Stanford University economist.

A statement at the end of the Fed's latest policy meeting due later will also be closely watched for clues on the outlook for U.S. interest rates. While the bank is expected to leave rates unchanged, investors will be watching for any indications that it will press ahead with another increase next month.

Spot gold was up 0.5 percent at $1,278.11 an ounce at 1035 GMT, having earlier peaked at $1,280.87. Its upward move accelerated after it broke through its 100-day moving average at $1,275 an ounce, a key chart level.

The metal has fallen for the last two weeks as the dollar has strengthened, taking it to a three-week low on Friday. While prices have recovered, they remain within a less than $15 an ounce range so far this week as traders await clarity on U.S. monetary policy.
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Brexit to cost UK 10,000 finance jobs on day-1, 75,000 in all: BoE governor

Job losses totalling 75,000 in banking and insurance because of Brexit are "plausible", Bank of England Deputy Governor Sam Woods said on Wednesday.

Woods told British lawmakers that the 65,000 to 75,000 estimate was drawn up by consultants Oliver Wyman and not the Bank of England, but that it was within a "plausible range of scenarios".

Woods also told a House of Lords committee that it was reasonable to expect that the UK financial sector will have lost about 10,000 jobs on "day one" of Brexit when Britain leaves the European Union in March 2019.

"It's a moving feast," Woods said.

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