A series of floods across central, central highland and South Vietnam have caused massive destruction in the country, leading to the death of at least 15 people. Six others have been reported missing, while thousands were forced to evacuate their homes.
Cold air and a tropical low pressure system swept over the country last week causing heavy rains, which led to the flooding of 41,000 homes.
Agriculture has also been adversely affected and according to the Department of Natural Disaster Prevention and Control's data as of 7 November, 12,000 hectares of rice and other crops were destroyed and more than 40,000 cattle and poultry were missing after the deluge.
The floods have reportedly washed away over 250,000 cubic metres of soil on roads, channels and dykes, damaging 15 bridges and have caused a loss of around Dong 430bn (£15.3m, $19m).
The local People's Committee, which functions as the executive arm of the provincial government, has requested for 1,100 tons of rice along with medicines from the national government to aid 33,600 people affected by the floods, the state-controlled Vietnam News Agency reported.
The Centre of Flood and Storm Prevention in Central and Central Highlands regions said flood levels in the rivers of the south-central region have gradually been subsiding, but there was still risk of flooding.
A Vietnamese villager sits on a boat next to a flooded home in Huong Khe district in the central province of Ha Tinh VIETNAM NEWS AGENCY/AFP/Getty Images
The flood which began on 1 November comes two weeks after a similar disaster, Typhoon Sarika, in Vietnam's central region of Ha Tinh and Quang Binh provinces claimed the lives of 31 people.
The US Department of Justice is set to visit London and interview a group of current and former traders at banking giant HSBC, as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into allegations of currency market manipulation.
According to sources cited by Reuters, US prosecutors are set to touchdown on British soil within the next few weeks and will use the time to gather evidence, to determine whether to file criminal charges against individual bankers.
The sources made it clear that the interviews may not lead to any criminal charges against individual bankers or lenders.
On 13 November, the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) fined five banks - Citibank, HSBC, JPM, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and UBS - a combined total of $3.4bn (£2.1bn, €2.7bn) for their role in the manipulation of the foreign exchange market.
Traders from the five banks shared information about currency orders using laddish pseudonyms and shared virtual high-fives.
Robert Hannigan, the director of the British intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), is to step down from his role citing personal reasons. Hannigan, who has had the role since 2014, said he will officially quit once a successor has been named.
In his resignation letter to the Foreign Secretary Boris Jonson, Hannigan said he feels it is "the right time to move on" and that his replacement should be properly emended into the agency in time for their centenary in 2019.
Hannigan added: "I have had the great privilege of leading the men and women of GCHQ since 2014. I am proud of what we have achieved in those years, not least setting up the National Cyber Security Centre and building greater public understanding of our intelligence work.
"I am equally proud of the relentless 24-hour operational effort against terrorism, crime and many other national security threats.
"While this work must remain secret, you will know how many lives have been saved in this country and overseas by the work of GCHQ. Underpinning this is our world-class technology and, above all, our brilliant people. As you know, I have also initiated the greatest internal change within GCHQ for thirty years, and I feel that we are now well on the way to being fit for the next generation of security challenges to the UK in the digital age."
Johnson thanked Hannigan for his role in leading GCHQ during and providing some of the "most important national security capabilities" for the UK which they continue to use while protecting the Uk from attacks such as terrorism.
Johnson added: "You also set the groundwork for a major transformation of our cyber defences, and put GCHQ on a path to meet the challenges of the future with your focus on technology and skills."
LinkedIn has said it will explore 'potential legal action' against people that make stolen information available Robert Galbraith/Reuters
With major hacks and data breaches becoming almost a daily occurrence, it's more important than ever to make sure basic security measures are taken while surfing the web – including choosing a strong username and password.
However, if the recent LinkedIn breach is anything to go by, this fundamental aspect of digital protection is still being completely ignored by hundreds of thousands of people. A list of the most commonly used passwords from the hack has been released by LeakedSource, which analysed the breach and was able to easily decrypt 90% of the credentials.
The top password, rather embarrassingly for everyone involved, was '123456' with an astonishing 753,305 accounts. This was followed by 'linkedin' with 172,523 and then 'password' with 144,458. The list continues with '123456789' being used by 94,314 people, and 'qwerty' being chosen by nearly 40,000 members.
As previously reported, a hacker called 'Peace' is now attempting to sell the dataset containing 117 million LinkedIn user accounts on the dark web. While the data is from an older breach that occurred in 2012, the scale of the breach is far worse than previously reported.
At the time of the initial hack, it was estimated that 6.5 million encrypted passwords were stolen. It has since emerged to be significantly more widespread. Furthermore, the passwords were reportedly hashed with the recently depreciated SHA-1 algorithm – meaning they can now easily be cracked with modern technology.
Responding to the reemergence of the breached data, LinkedIn has attempted to play down the severity of the incident. It said there is "no indication that this is a result of a new security breach." However, the firm later enforced a password change on many users, with emails now being sent out to anyone the social media platform thinks was impacted.
In a statement, LinkedIn's security director Cory Scott said: "In 2012, LinkedIn was the victim of an unauthorised access and disclosure of some members' passwords. At the time, our immediate response included a mandatory password reset for all accounts we believe were compromised as a result of the unauthorised disclosure. Additionally, we advised all members of LinkedIn to change their passwords as a matter of best practice."
In a 18 May update, Scott added: "We have demanded that parties cease ​making stolen password data available​ and will evaluate potential legal action if they fail to comply. In the meantime, we are using automated tools to attempt to identify and block any suspicious activity that might occur on affected accounts."
The Liberal Democrats have set up a showdown with their Conservative coalition partners by withdrawing support for the so-called "bedroom tax"
The Liberal Democrats have withdrawn their support for one of the Government's most controversial welfare reforms, antagonising their Coalition partners.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander called for fundamental changes to the high profile "bedroom tax" policy in an article in The Daily Mirror on Thursday morning. Alexander told Prime Minister David Cameron it is "clearly time to take stock and change our approach" on the spare-room subsidy reform.
The policy has seen social housing tenants deemed to have more bedrooms than necessary have their housing benefit reduced.
Writing in the paper, Alexander called for an exemption for disabled people and for no cuts in state help for those who could not find a suitable smaller property.
But the Lib Dem U-turn has been dismissed by the Tories who say the party "remains committed" to the change, Sky News reports.
Lib Dem Justice Minister Simon Hughes denies that the party has "changed our mind" about the policy, telling BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Our party was clear that what we in the end negotiated in Government was not an ideal solution.
"Personally I argued that the change that we are now agreed should be made on the evidence, which is that you can't impose a policy saying you are going to be penalised for having a spare room when you can't move to a smaller place, was practical."
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has come under pressure to oppose the policy since his party conference voted overwhelmingly to review what activists called a "reprehensible and evil" move.
Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino has admitted that Hugo Lloris is not fully fit to play against Manchester United. (Getty)
Tottenham Hotspur manager Mauricio Pochettino has admitted that goalkeeper Hugo Lloris may not be fit enough yet to play the entire 90 minutes, and thus could miss their opening Premier League encounter with Manchester United.
The French stopper fractured his wrist during the close season and was deemed a doubt for the start of the campaign, but the former Lyon 'keeper has since recovered and even managed a 35-minute cameo for Spurs during their third place play-off against AC Milan in the recently concluded Audi Cup in Munich.
However, despite the outing against the Serie A outfit, the manager feels that the player is not quite ready to start between the sticks in their opening encounter on Saturday, 8 August, but is glad to see that his number one is ready to make a return to action.
"He played 35 minutes and it was fantastic to see," Pochettino is quoted as saying by the London Evening Standard.
"Maybe in the next weeks he will be OK. It was very positive today to assess him, but maybe he is not ready for 90 minutes. But it's very important he is ready to come back," the Argentine manager added.
Lloris had been linked with a move to Old Trafford earlier in the summer, with the Frenchman admitting that he was monitoring the situation surrounding David de Gea's future at the club.
The Spanish international has been heavily linked with a move to the Spanish capital club, with AS reporting that, Louis van Gaal has asked the Red Devils' hierarchy to sanction the move.
However, the French international goalkeeper is now off the radar, according to the Daily Telegraph. Ajax's Jasper Cillessen is the Dutchman's priority target to replace De Gea, and the report claims that the 20-time English champions already have an agreement in place to bring him to Old Trafford.
While ultra-low interest rates are a boon for mortgage borrowers, they are a curse for the legions of savers who have seen their cash returns collapse.
Six years into supposed economic recovery after the seismic shock of the global financial crisis, the FTSE 100 index has gained 80% from the 2009 low to the present date.
You might have thought that retail investors would have been enjoying this impressive stock market performance. But in fact, not nearly as much as you might have thought, because according to the OECD, UK households have continued to hold very high levels of cash – some 29% of all their financial assets (excluding housing), in common with retail investors across Europe and Japan (Figure 1).
Clearly, the scars of the last two bear markets in 2000 and 2008 still run deep. But instant-access cash savings rates have never been as low as they are today in post-war Britain: in fact, they have been on a steady decline really since the height of the last property boom in 1990, falling from a heady 13.6% to 1.25% on average today (Figure 2).
It is obvious that a 1.25% interest rate is not enough to preserve the value of your savings in real terms even when shielded from tax in a cash NISA, when average UK inflation has run at 1.8% on the CPI measure this year, and an even worse 2.5% on the old RPI measure.
If you insist in keeping some of your savings in cash, then I can recommend hunting out Regular Saver bank accounts at HSBC, First Direct, Lloyds Bank and Nationwide which all pay up to 6% p.a. on regular savings of up to £250 per month. Attractive interest rates to be sure, but only available on relatively limited amounts.
A second route to higher income is through the stock market, where dividend payments have in general been growing consistently since 2009. UK households are relatively under-invested in shares at 10% of total financial assets, compared to other developed countries (Figure 3).
To identify potentially attractive income stocks, I have used Stockopedia's excellent stock screening service to identify UK large-cap companies that offer:
an attractive combination of good value and quality (based on a combination of different valuation, profitability and risk measures), as represented by the Stockopedia Quality Value Rank (scored out of a maximum 100), and
I have picked out five different UK companies which come out at the top of this ranking from a range of different industries, including house building, insurance and oil & gas (Figure 4):
A portfolio containing equal amounts of each of these five stocks would yield well over 5% and would also participate in any stock market advance. Remember in addition that company dividends tend to grow over time, potentially giving the income investor an even higher yield on initial investment over time.
Alternatively, if you just want to buy a single fund to benefit from this combination of high dividend yield plus future dividend growth, you could invest in the SPDR S&P UK Dividend Aristocrats exchange-traded fund (LSE code: UKDV), which invests in a diversified portfolio of higher-dividend yielding UK stocks. To qualify for inclusion in this fund, a UK stock must offer a high dividend yield and must also have grown its dividend consistently over the past 10 years. The current dividend yield on this fund is over 4%, with an annual management charge of only 0.30%.
Both of these investment solutions will give you a far better annual yield on your savings, and should see that yield rise over time too as dividend payments grow – a good alternative to leaving your money in low-yielding cash!
To be good communitarians of the earth, we need to expand our sense of community again, to include the creatures that have come before us and will come after us. In the human community, we can feel thankful that all sorts of things (science, technology, literature, arts, culture, language, physical infrastructure, etc.) have been developed and are available to us. We didn’t personally create all this, but we benefit from it (or at least some (we hope) major part of it!) Previous generations have created all kinds of things that have lasted beyond their lifespans. We can continue this process as we are able.
Similarly, previous generations have left alone or preserved wild places, old ways of doing things, and other “relics” of the past that are of interest and benefit to our generation. We can do the same for future generations.
Future generations, tho not yet born, are depending on us to consider their well-being, and to act to maintain or improve it. They are not here at this moment to lobby for, defend, or create the things they will need to have a decent life. It’s up to us to help them.