Anti-Islam rallies, counter-protests flare in Australia



SYDNEY // Rival rallies by anti-Islam and anti-racism groups saw hundreds protest across Australia at the weekend with violent clashes in Melbourne, as police officers fanned out across cities on Sunday to keep the two sides apart.

About 100 anti-Islam protesters from the Reclaim Australia and United Patriots Front groups waved the national flag and yelled chants at a rally in Sydney on Sunday, with signs declaring “Say no to Sharia” and “Immigration is the elephant in the room”.

They were met by around 250 counter-demonstrators who carried banners including “No racism, no Islamophobia”.

Police — including riot squad officers and mounted units — packed Martin Place in the heart of Sydney’s central business district to separate the rival groups.

Five people were arrested at the Sydney demonstrations, a New South Wales state police spokesman said, with two expected to be charged.

There were some brief scuffles but no sign of the violence seen in Melbourne city on Saturday, where police had to use capsicum spray to subdue protesters.

“While there were a small number of people who chose to do the wrong thing, the majority of participants co-operated with police, which allowed for a peaceful demonstration,” NSW police assistant commissioner Alan Clarke said.

Reclaim Australia organisers said they were not racist but that the rallies were “a public response to the shock of recent atrocities of ‘Islam’s radicals’ both inside and outside of Australia”.

Government MP George Christensen told a Reclaim Australia demonstration in Mackay in northern Queensland state it would be naive to think his country was not at war with extreme Islam.

Former politician Pauline Hanson — who rose to prominence in the 1990s as head of the right-wing, anti-immigration party she cofounded — told a rally in Rockhampton in central Queensland she was “against the spread of Islam”, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.

There were also opposing rallies in the capital Canberra, western city Perth and Tasmania’s Hobart, with the anti-racism protests attracting the same number or more participants.

Reclaim Australia demonstrations were also held in April and attracted hundreds of people who said they were protesting against Islamic extremism.

* Agence France-Presse

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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.

Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.

Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.

“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.

Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.

From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.

Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.

BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.

Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.

Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.

“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.

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“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”

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Distributed denial-of-service: Floods systems, servers or networks with information, effectively blocking them.

Man-in-the-middle attack: Intercepts two-way communication to obtain information, spy on participants or alter the outcome.

Malware: Installs itself in a network when a user clicks on a compromised link or email attachment.

Phishing: Aims to secure personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.

Ransomware: Encrypts user data, denying access and demands a payment to decrypt it.

Spyware: Collects information without the user's knowledge, which is then passed on to bad actors.

Trojans: Create a backdoor into systems, which becomes a point of entry for an attack.

Viruses: Infect applications in a system and replicate themselves as they go, just like their biological counterparts.

Worms: Send copies of themselves to other users or contacts. They don't attack the system, but they overload it.

Zero-day exploit: Exploits a vulnerability in software before a fix is found.

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