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Trump Media, gun stocks surge after assassination attempt

Trump Media, gun stocks surge after assassination attempt
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign rally, Saturday, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP)
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Updated 16 July 2024
Reuters
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Trump Media, gun stocks surge after assassination attempt

Trump Media, gun stocks surge after assassination attempt
Updated 16 July 2024
Reuters
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Crypto stocks, gun stocks and shares of other companies that could benefit from a Donald Trump presidency jumped on Monday after an assassination attempt on the Republican candidate boosted expectations he would win the November election. Trump’s survival after he was shot in the ear during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday increased his already considerable lead in betting odds over President Joe Biden. Those odds rose more later on Monday after Trump chose US Senator J.D. Vance to be his vice presidential running mate as the Republican Party officially nominated the former president to run again at the start of the party’s national convention in Milwaukee. On politics-wagering website PredictIt, contracts for a Trump election victory traded at 70 cents, up from 60 cents on Friday, with a potential payout of $1. Contracts for a Biden victory were at 26 cents. Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group, majority-owned by Trump, soared 31 percent, lifting its stock market value to $7.7 billion, despite revenue comparable to two US Starbucks shops.
Trump Media is the parent company of social media platform Truth Social, and its shares have now surged 132 percent in 2024 as retail traders bet Trump will win a second term as president. Added: He previously served from 2017 to 2021.
“It’s nearly four months to go (until the election) and things can change, but today the markets are betting on Trump being the victor,” said Ben Laidler, head of equity strategy at Bradesco BBI, adding that Trump Media “is the tip of the spear and the most sensitive to a Trump victory.” Shares of electric vehicle maker Tesla ended 1.8 percent higher after billionaire CEO Elon Musk publicly endorsed Trump following the shooting.
Tesla gave back earlier gains of as much as 7 percent after the announcement of Vance as Trump’s running mate.
Vance last year introduced legislation to eliminate EV tax subsidies and replace them with tax credits for US-made gasoline or diesel-powered vehicles. The bill would gut a core part of the White House clean vehicle strategy and has no realistic chance of winning approval in the current Democratic-controlled Senate. Crypto stocks soared on Monday, tracking a 10 percent rally in bitcoin to a two-week high. Trump has presented himself as a champion of cryptocurrency. Crypto exchange Coinbase Global and bitcoin miners Riot Platforms and Marathon Digital jumped between 11 percent and 18 percent. Long-dated US bond yields rose on expectations that Trump policies would drive up government debt and stoke inflation, while the benchmark S&P 500 rose 0.3 percent.
“Most investors are not changing their overall commitment to US equities. After all, the broad stock market rose under the last Trump administration and has risen under the Biden administration as well,” said Rick Meckler, partner at Cherry Lane Investments.
Gun makers and ammunition stocks Smith & Wesson Brands , Sturm Ruger & Company and Ammo jumped between 5 percent and 15 percent. Gun stocks in the past have surged following mass shootings, civil unrest and fears of gun control that have led to people to buy more firearms out of fear that their availability would become limited.
Shares of private prison operators Geo Group and CoreCivic each jumped about 8 percent. Both are potential beneficiaries of a Trump presidency as he has promised to crack down on illegal immigration, which could boost demand for detention centers.
Video-sharing platform Rumble, popular with conservatives, soared 21 percent. Clean energy stocks slipped as Trump has said he would reverse many of the Biden administration’s signature climate policies, including tax incentives, if he wins the election.
The Invesco Solar ETF fell 5.9 percent and the iShares Global Clean Energy ETF fell 3.9 percent.
The iShares MSCI China ETF dropped about 2 percent. Investors believe a second Trump presidency could fuel trade tensions between Beijing and the United States. US voters view Trump as the better candidate for the economy, according to Reuters/Ipsos polls, even as Biden’s White House seeks to benefit from a solid economy with inflation slowing and low unemployment.
“In the absence of any real policy proclamations from Trump, traders are finding themselves having to speculate,” said Mark Malek, chief investment officer of Siebert Financial Corp.
“A second Trump presidency would mean expansionary economic stimulus in general, lower income taxes, less regulation, and increased tariffs.”

Topics: 2024 US Elections

Jeju Air crash black boxes stopped recording before flight crashed

Jeju Air crash black boxes stopped recording before flight crashed
Updated 26 sec ago
AFP
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Jeju Air crash black boxes stopped recording before flight crashed

Jeju Air crash black boxes stopped recording before flight crashed
  • Transport ministry statement: ‘Both the CVR and FDR data were not recorded during the four minutes leading up to the aircraft’s collision with the localizer’
Updated 26 sec ago
AFP
SEOUL: The black boxes holding the flight data and cockpit voice recorders for the crashed Jeju Air flight that left 179 people dead stopped recording four minutes before the Boeing 737-800 plane crashed, South Korea’s transport ministry said Saturday.
“The analysis revealed that both the CVR and FDR data were not recorded during the four minutes leading up to the aircraft’s collision with the localizer,” the transport ministry said in a statement, referring to the two recording devices.

Text messaging scammers stole $2m in cryptocurrency from victims, says NY lawsuit

Text messaging scammers stole $2m in cryptocurrency from victims, says NY lawsuit
Updated 11 January 2025
AP
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Text messaging scammers stole $2m in cryptocurrency from victims, says NY lawsuit

Text messaging scammers stole $2m in cryptocurrency from victims, says NY lawsuit
  • Scammers used unsolicited text messages to target people looking for remote work
  • Victims were told to review products online in order to help generate “market data”
Updated 11 January 2025
AP

NEW YORK: Scammers stole millions of dollars in cryptocurrency from people seeking remote work opportunities as part of an elaborate scheme, according to New York’s attorney general.
Attorney General Letitia James said Thursday that she’s filed a lawsuit in order to recover more than $2 million that she said was stolen from New Yorkers and others around the country.
James said the unknown network of scammers used unsolicited text messages to target people looking for remote work.
They told victims that the job involved reviewing products online in order to help generate “market data,” James’ office said. But in order to begin earning money, victims were told they had to open cryptocurrency accounts and had to maintain a balance equal to, or greater than, the price of the products they were reviewing.
The victims were assured they would get their investments back plus commission, but the funds simply went into the scammers’ crypto wallets, James’ office said. The product reviews were also conducted on a website set up as part of the scheme.
The suit cites seven victims, identified by pseudonyms, residing in New York, Virginia and Florida. One New York victim lost over $100,000, according to the suit. A Florida woman lost over $300,000.
“Deceiving New Yorkers looking to take on remote work and earn money to support their families is cruel and unacceptable,” she said in a statement. “Scammers sent text messages to New Yorkers promising them good-paying, flexible jobs only to trick them into purchasing cryptocurrency and then stealing it from them.”
James’ suit seeks to return the stolen funds.
Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said her office’s cryptocurrency unit traced over $2 million in stolen crypto and identified the digital wallets where the coins were being held. Then, working with James’ office, they were able to have the currency frozen until they could be returned to victims.
“Work scams that prey on those seeking legitimate employment not only rob victims of their hard-earned money but also shatter their trust in the job market,” she added.

Topics: cryptocurrency Letitia James New York

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UK finance minister seeks ‘pragmatic’ relations with China to boost trade

UK finance minister seeks ‘pragmatic’ relations with China to boost trade
Updated 11 January 2025
Reuters
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UK finance minister seeks ‘pragmatic’ relations with China to boost trade

UK finance minister seeks ‘pragmatic’ relations with China to boost trade
  • Rachel Reeves is seeking to revive high-level economic and financial talks that have been frozen since 2019
  • China is Britain’s fourth-largest trading partner, accounting for goods and services trade worth almost $138 billion
Updated 11 January 2025
Reuters

BEIJING: British finance minister Rachel Reeves said on Saturday during a visit to Beijing that she intended to have “pragmatic” relations with Chinese leaders to boost exports to the world’s second-largest economy.
Under pressure from market turmoil at home, Reeves is seeking to revive high-level economic and financial talks that have been frozen since 2019.
She joins the UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue meeting in Beijing with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng on Saturday, before traveling to Shanghai, accompanied by Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey and other finance leaders.
She is due to discuss financial services, trading ties and the importance of cooperation on issues like climate change, the Treasury said.
Her appearance offers a chance to persuade investors that she has plans to deal with a sharp increase in British government borrowing costs, due in part to a global bond selloff which threatens to derail her budget plans.
“The fiscal rules that I set out in my budget in October are non-negotiable and growth is the number one mission of this government to make our country better off,” Reeves told reporters after visiting a Brompton bicycles shop in Beijing.
“That’s why I’m in China to unlock tangible benefits for British businesses exporting and trading around the world to ensure that we have greater access to the second-largest economy in the world.”
Reeves’ visit follows a dialogue opened last year between Prime Minister Keir Starmer and President Xi Jinping, the first between the two countries’ leaders since 2018.
The approach taken by the Labour government, elected in July, contrasts with the previous Conservative administration which took a robust approach to differences with China — particularly over human rights, Hong Kong and allegations of Chinese espionage.
Asked on Thursday if Reeves would raise human-rights issues, Starmer’s spokesperson said her visit would fit with London’s stance that it would take a strategic approach to China and challenge it “robustly” when necessary.
Starmer has long described his desire to build a relationship with China that is “rooted in the UK’s national interests” by boosting trade, a task that may become more difficult if US President-elect Donald Trump follows through on his threat to impose tariffs on all imports.
Asked whether Britain would follow Washington and Brussels in imposing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, Reeves said: “We keep issues under review but we make decisions in our national interest.”
British car manufacturers “like Jaguar and Land Rover export substantially to Chinese markets, and we want to help them to grow.”
China is Britain’s fourth-largest trading partner, accounting for goods and services trade worth almost 113 billion pounds ($138 billion).

 

 

Topics: China-UK ties Rachel Reeves

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2024 was the hottest year on record, scientists say

2024 was the hottest year on record, scientists say
Updated 11 January 2025
Reuters
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2024 was the hottest year on record, scientists say

2024 was the hottest year on record, scientists say
  • C3S confirms first year above 1.5C since pre-industrial times
  • Climate change impacts, severe weather visible globally
  • Political will to curb emissions wanes despite rising climate disasters
Updated 11 January 2025
Reuters

BRUSSELS, Belgium: Global temperatures in 2024 exceeded 1.5 Celsius above the pre-industrial era for the first time, bringing the world closer to breaching the pledge governments made under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, scientists said on Friday.
The World Meteorological Organization confirmed the 1.5C breach, after reviewing data from US, UK, Japan and EU scientists.
“Global heating is a cold, hard fact,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement. “There’s still time to avoid the worst of climate catastrophe. But leaders must act – now.”
The bleak assessment came as wildfires charged by fierce winds swept through Los Angeles, with 10 people dead and nearly 10,000 structures destroyed so far. Wildfires are among the many disasters that climate change is making more frequent and severe.

The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said climate change was pushing the planet’s temperature to levels never before experienced by modern humans. Scientists have linked climate change to greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels.
The planet’s average temperature in 2024 was 1.6 degrees Celsius higher than in the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period, C3S said. The last 10 years are the 10 hottest years on record, the WMO said.

Climate change is worsening storms and torrential rainfall, because a hotter atmosphere can hold more water, leading to intense downpours. Atmospheric water vapor reached a record high in 2024, and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it was the third-wettest year on record.
 

In 2024, Bolivia and Venezuela suffered disastrous fires, while torrential floods hit Nepal, Sudan and Spain, and heat waves in Mexico and Saudi Arabia killed thousands. While climate change now affects people from the richest to the poorest on Earth, political will to address it has waned in some countries.
Governments promised under the 2015 Paris Agreement to try to prevent the average global temperature rise from exceeding 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
US President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, has called climate change a hoax, dismissing the global scientific consensus. During his first term in office he withdrew Washington from the Paris Agreement, and he has vowed to push greater fossil fuel production and roll back President Joe Biden’s push toward alternative energy.
Recent European elections have shifted political priorities toward industrial competitiveness, with some European Union governments seeking to weaken climate policies they say hurt business.
Matthew Jones, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia in Britain, said climate-linked disasters will grow more common “so long as progress on tackling the root causes of climate change remains sluggish.”
EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said the 1.5C breach last year showed climate action must be prioritized.
“It is extremely complicated, in a very difficult geopolitical setting, but we don’t have an alternative,” he told Reuters.

The 1.5C milestone should serve as “a rude awakening to key political actors to get their act together,” said Chukwumerije Okereke, a professor of climate governance at Britain’s University of Bristol.
Britain’s Met Office confirmed 2024’s likely breach of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, while estimating a slightly lower average temperature of 1.53C for the year.
Buontempo noted that 2024 did not breach that target since it measures the longer-term average temperature, but added that rising greenhouse gas emissions put the world on track to blow past the Paris goal soon.
Countries could still rapidly cut emissions to avoid temperatures from rising further to disastrous levels, he added.
“It’s not a done deal. We have the power to change the trajectory,” Buontempo said.
Concentrations in the atmosphere of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, reached a fresh high of 422 parts per million in 2024, C3S said.
Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at US non-profit Berkeley Earth, said he expected 2025 to be among the hottest years on record, but likely not top the rankings. He noted that temperatures in early 2024 got an extra boost from El Niño, a warming weather pattern now trending toward its cooler La Nina counterpart.
“It’s still going to be in the top three warmest years,” he said.

Topics: climate change Global warming World Meteorological Organization

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Greenland’s leader says his people don’t want to be Americans as Trump covets territory

Greenland’s leader says his people don’t want to be Americans as Trump covets territory
Updated 11 January 2025
AP
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Greenland’s leader says his people don’t want to be Americans as Trump covets territory

Greenland’s leader says his people don’t want to be Americans as Trump covets territory
  • “We do not want to be Danish, we do not want to be American. We want to be Greenlandic,” Múte B. Egede tells press conference
  • He added, though, that he understands Trump’s interest in the island given its strategic location and he’s open to a dialogue with the US
Updated 11 January 2025
AP

COPENHAGEN, Denmark: Greenland’s prime minister said Friday that the mineral-rich Arctic territory’s people don’t want to be Americans, but that he understands US President-elect Donald Trump’s interest in the island given its strategic location and he’s open to greater cooperation with Washington.
The comments from the Greenlandic leader, Múte B. Egede, came after Trump said earlier this week that he wouldn’t rule out using force or economic pressure in order to make Greenland — a semiautonomous territory of Denmark — a part of the United States. Trump said that it was a matter of national security for the US.
Egede acknowledged that Greenland is part of the North American continent, and “a place that the Americans see as part of their world.” He said he hasn’t spoken to Trump, but that he’s open to discussions about what “unites us.”
“Cooperation is about dialogue. Cooperation means that you will work toward solutions,” he said.
Egede has been calling for independence for Greenland, casting Denmark as a colonial power that hasn’t always treated the Indigenous Inuit population well.
“Greenland is for the Greenlandic people. We do not want to be Danish, we do not want to be American. We want to be Greenlandic,” he said at a news conference alongside Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in Copenhagen.

A view of Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule Air Base) in Greenland, October 4, 2023. (Ritzau Scanpix/Thomas Traasdahl via REUTERS)

Trump’s desire for Greenland has sparked anxiety in Denmark as well as across Europe. The United States is a strong ally of 27-nation European Union and the leading member of the NATO alliance, and many Europeans were shocked by the suggestion that an incoming US leader could even consider using force against an ally.

But Frederiksen said that she sees a positive aspect in the discussion.
“The debate on Greenlandic independence and the latest announcements from the US show us the large interest in Greenland,” she said. “Events which set in motion a lot of thoughts and feelings with many in Greenland and Denmark.”
“The US is our closest ally, and we will do everything to continue a strong cooperation,” she said.
Frederiksen and Egede spoke to journalists after a biannual assembly of Denmark and two territories of its kingdom, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. The meeting had been previously scheduled and wasn’t called in response to Trump’s recent remarks. Trump’s eldest son also made a visit to Greenland on Tuesday, landing in a plane emblazoned with the word TRUMP and handing out Make America Great Again caps to locals.

A view of Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule Air Base) in Greenland, October 4, 2023. (Ritzau Scanpix/Thomas Traasdahl via REUTERS)

The Danish public broadcaster, DR, reported Friday that Trump’s team encouraged homeless and socially disadvantaged people in Greenland to appear in a video wearing the MAGA hats after being offered a free meal in a nice restaurant. The report quoted a local resident, Tom Amtof, who recognized some of those in a video broadcast by Trump’s team.
“They are being bribed, and it is deeply distasteful,” he said.
Greenland has a population of 57,000. But it’s a vast territory possessing natural resources that include oil, gas, and rare earth elements, which are expected to become more accessible as ice melts because of climate change. It also has a key strategic location in the Arctic, where Russia, China and others are seeking to expand their footprint.
Greenland, the world’s largest island, lies closer to the North American mainland than to Denmark. While Copenhagen is responsible for its foreign affairs and defense, the US also shares responsibility for Greenland’s defense and operates an air force base there based on a 1951 treaty.

Topics: Greenland Donald Trump Múte B. Egede Mette Frederiksen

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