The Morning Brief - Lignet
Turkey: Loss of Arbiter Role Boosts Western Interests
Turkey’s decade-long quest to become the Mideast’s leading power and
mediator is crumbling amid a series of increasingly intractable regional
crises. Turkish diplomacy was becoming a quiet but often useful
mechanism for bringing together nations in regional conflicts, but its
“honest broker” reputation has been undermined not just by the conflict
in Syria but also by the sudden role of Egyptian President Mohammed
Morsi as a leading regional arbiter as well as growing hostility toward
Israel by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. For several reasons,
Turkey's new role may be largely a good thing for the West, as LIGNET
explains.
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LIBOR Scandal Deepens as UBS Under Fire
The global banking sector was dealt another massive blow last week as
Swiss banking giant UBS (NYSE: UBS; Zurich: UBSN) was fined $1.5 billion
for its extensive involvement in the manipulation of the London
interbank offered rate (LIBOR) during the six years leading up to 2010.
More than 45 employees of various levels have been identified for
wrongdoings.
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US Shale Gas Boom Forces Trinidad and Tobago to Regroup
Trinidad and Tobago, the leading producer of oil and natural gas in the
Caribbean, is ramping up development of its large energy deposits as it
prepares to face the threat of reduced demand due to the shale gas boom
in the United States. To meet this challenge, the country has sought to
boost production, awarding four new deep-water blocks for exploration to
Anglo-Australian BHP Billiton [NYSE: BBL] earlier this month, weeks
after BP [NYSE: BP] subsidiary BP Trinidad & Tobago (BPTT), discovered
one trillion cubic feet of natural gas in an offshore field known as
Savonette in mid-November, doubling the gas field's estimated size.
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