| By Derek Caney (@stax920)
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte likened himself to Adolf Hitler, noting there are three million drug addicts in the country. "I'd be happy to slaughter them. If Germany had Hitler, the Philippines would have…," he said, pausing and pointing to himself.
The train that plowed through a station in Hoboken, New Jersey, one of the busiest commuting hubs in the New York area, was not equipped with an anti-collision system called a positive train control. The technology is designed to stop a train if the driver misses a stop signal. The crash killed a woman and injured 114 others. It was obvious the train came into the station too fast, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said at a joint press conference with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, but it was unclear why. Cuomo added it could have been human error or technical failure. He said it was too early to say whether PTC would have prevented the crash. 
REUTERS/Carlo Allegri
Digits of the day: 28 percent One of Deutsche Bank's top executives admitted that the bank has a "perception issue," which is one way to look at it when the United States wants to fine the bank $14 billion for the way it sold mortgage-backed securities and the company's share price has plummeted 28 percent in the last three weeks. Chief Executive John Cryan said in a letter to employees that the bank remains robust and that the departure of any hedge fund clients was small compared to the bank's vast customer base. Bloomberg reported yesterday that a small subset of the more than 800 clients in the bank’s hedge fund business, have moved part of their listed derivatives holdings to other firms this week. Meanwhile bond poobah Jeffrey Gundlach recommended that investors "stay away" from Deutsche Bank.
Around the world - Three Chinese fishermen were killed in a fire that broke out on their boat when the South Korean coast guard threw flash grenades into a room where they were hiding. The coast guard was trying to apprehend them for illegal fishing, a consistent irritant between China and South Korea. China's Foreign Ministry lodged a protest with Seoul about the incident. South Korean coast guard vessels regularly chase Chinese boats for fishing illegally and violent confrontations have occurred in the past.
- A year before a Communist Party conclave that could decide who will eventually replace him as China’s next leader, President Xi Jinping is maneuvering to reduce the power of a rival political bloc, the Communist Youth League, while seeking to get members of his own faction onto the country’s top ruling body.
- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shook hands and exchanged brief words at the funeral of Shimon Peres, Israel's last founding father and architect of the 1993 peace accords. But a handshake is about as far as things are expected to go for now. Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have been frozen since 2014 and Netanyahu and Abbas, deeply divided over Jewish settlement on land Palestinians seek for a state and other issues, have not held face-to-face talks since 2010.
Around the country - Hillary Clinton jumped on a Newsweek report that said one of Donald Trump's casinos secretly conducted business with Cuba while U.S. sanctions were still in place. “Today we learned about his efforts to do business in Cuba which appear to violate U.S. law, certainly flout American foreign policy, and he has consistently misled people in responding to questions about whether he was attempting to do business in Cuba,” Clinton told reporters on her campaign plane. Trump's campaign didn't immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
- Meanwhile, Donald Trump continues his commentary about Alicia Machado, the Miss Universe winner who the Republican nominee later called "Miss Piggy" and "Miss Housekeeping." Clinton pointed out Trump's remarks in Monday's debate. His latest tweets beg the question if this is the first time a presidential nominee has beckoned the public to review a sex tape as part of his opposition research. Trump's latest ruminations on the matter:
- A day after overriding President Barack Obama's veto of legislation that would permit families of 9/11 victims to sue the Saudi Arabian government, a number of high-ranking lawmakers maybe sort of kind of think the law may be flawed. "I do think it is worth further discussing," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters, acknowledging that there could be "potential consequences" to the law. House Speaker Paul Ryan said Congress might have to "fix" the legislation to protect U.S. troops in particular. Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer, who championed the law in the Senate, said he was open to revisiting the legislation. "I'm willing to look at any proposal they make but not any that hurt the families." Or as White House spokesman Josh Earnest summed it up: "I think what we've seen in the United States Congress is a pretty classic case of rapid onset buyer's remorse."
Around Wall Street - Lawmakers called for Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf's head and a top House Democrat demanded the bank be broken up because it is too big to manage. Stumpf's second trip to Capitol Hill went no better than his first as lawmakers from both parties rebuked his handling of sales abuses and said the bank had damaged customer trust as well as the broader banking system.
- China's factory sector struggled to gain speed in September while Japanese inflation went backwards in August despite the best efforts of policymakers, underscoring the limits of stimulus in reviving world growth.
Today's reason to live The Cure – Friday I'm In Love |
