By Caroline Valetkevitch | NEW YORK NEW YORK U.S. stocks ended slightly higher on Monday and the Dow closed at a record high for a 12th straight session, as President Donald Trump said he would make a “big” infrastructure statement on Tuesday. The Dow’s streak of record-high closes matches a 12-day run in 1987, with Boeing (BA.N) and UnitedHealth (UNH.N) among the biggest boosts for the Dow […]
At Qayyarah Airfield West, a sprawling Iraq base 40 miles south of Mosul, a United States Army task force fires Himars satellite-guided rockets at targets. Apache attack helicopters, equipped with Hellfire missiles, stand ready to carry out their missions from the base’s airfield. Continue reading the main story Not to mention the punishing airstrikes by American and allied warplanes and drones. A flurry of attacks were carried […]
By Steve Holland | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he is seeking a “historic increase” in military spending to be funded by cuts elsewhere in government. Trump will seek to boost Pentagon spending by $54 billion in his first budget proposal and slash the same amount from non-defense spending, including a large reduction in foreign aid, a White House budget official said. “This […]
As observed earlier in the day, as part of the leaked preliminary Trump budget, the president was set to unveil major spending increases in the US defense budget, offset by cuts to federal agencies, and other non-defense sectors. Moments ago, the first details emerged, including that the boost to defense spending is expected to be $54 billion, but will be revenue neutral, offset by cuts in non-defense […]
On Tuesday evening, Donald Trump will head to Capitol Hill to deliver an address to both houses of Congress. Such speeches have provided the US president’s predecessors with the opportunity to convey three main messages: their assessment of the country’s overall situation, the domestic legislative programme they hope Congress will pass in coming months and the main areas of global focus — all this in the context […]
Apologies to Dickens, but this really might be the best and the worst of times for American journalism. As near-daily attacks on the press are launched from President Trump’s Twitter account and trust in the media sinks to record lows, readers are subscribing to national newspapers in droves and newsrooms across America are infused with a renewed sense of mission. “This is a moment where you’ve got […]
Here are the big questions for investors and markets this week. Will investors like what they hear from President Trump? Mr Trump will address a joint session of Congress on Tuesday (it’s not officially a State of the Union) and with US equities in record territory, investors are very much focused on tax reform and other fiscal measures. Here’s where the Trump trade — based on the […]
Top executives at some of the world’s biggest banks and insurers will have to vouch for their companies’ resilience to cyber attacks, under tough rules laid down by New York’s state regulator. A new regulation, which takes effect on March 1, requires companies supervised by New York’s Department of Financial Services to establish and maintain a cyber security programme that can protect consumers’ private data and “ensure […]
A pickup truck driven by a man who appeared to be “highly intoxicated” plowed into a crowd of spectators watching the main Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans on Saturday, sending more than 20 people to the hospital, police said. The truck, traveling along the side of the street open to traffic along the Mid-City parade route, struck three other vehicles, including a dump truck, before veering […]
BERLIN German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) are neck-and-neck in the latest Emnid poll with seven months to go before a federal election. The poll in Bild am Sonntag newspaper showed the SPD, which has surged in recent weeks since nominating former European Parliament President Martin Schulz as its candidate, dropping by one percentage point compared with the same poll last week […]
In the first tangible step toward delivering on Trump’s campaign promise to halt unauthorized immigration from Mexico, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Friday released plans for picking vendors for President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall, issuing a preliminary request for proposals saying it plans to release a formal solicitation around March 6 “for the design and build of several prototype wall structures in the vicinity […]
By Isabel Coles | MOSUL, Iraq MOSUL, Iraq U.S.-backed Iraqi forces pushed deeper into western Mosul on Saturday after retaking the city’s airport from Islamic State and punching into built-up areas of the jihadists’ last major stronghold in the country. Troops advanced in several more populated, built-up southern districts and about 1,000 civilians walked across the frontlines, the largest displacement since fighting began a week ago in […]
Sign up to receive Authers’ Note daily by email here Despite appearances to the contrary, the Trump trade may be moving into reverse as the president’s maiden State of the Union address approaches. The overall level of the stock market is, of course, at fresh records. But the pattern within it is shifting again. The end of the week saw sharp falls for almost all equity markets […]
Two years after Donald Trump was booed at an influential conservative event, the US president returned to the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday for a victory lap. But his rambling address, at an event that was more campaign rally than detailed presentation of policy, struck a jarring note at the end of a week that saw a semblance of orthodoxy from the new administration. While his […]
By Marty Graham | SAN DIEGO SAN DIEGO Family members of an illegal immigrant who died in 2010 following a brutal encounter with federal border agents that was captured on videotape have agreed to settle their lawsuit against the U.S. government for $1 million, court documents show. Video footage of a U.S. Customs officer tasering Anastacio Rojas Hernandez at least four times while he lay on the […]
Primary dealers have warned of obstacles to the US Treasury introducing very long-dated bonds, despite some early support for the plans. This week Steven Mnuchin, Treasury secretary, said his staff had begun to look into issuing US government debt with maturities of as long as 50 or 100 years. Such a move would be a historic shift in policy for the $14tn Treasury market, which has resisted […]
By Emily Stephenson and Steve Holland | NATIONAL HARBOR, Md./WASHINGTON NATIONAL HARBOR, Md./WASHINGTON President Donald Trump said he would make a massive budget request for one of the “greatest military buildups in American history” on Friday in a feisty, campaign-style speech extolling robust nationalism to eager conservative activists. Trump used remarks to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an organization that gave him one of his first […]
Transition effort led by nonprofit group For the transition, candidates set up separate nonprofit entities under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code. Those entities are permitted to accept contributions in increments of $5,000 or less, but because they also accept public money for transition expenses, must disclose the names of contributors to the public. That report, filed with the General Services Administration, was due Feb. 19. The […]
The onset of the Trump era forced economists to confront their doubts about their usefulness to the public. They shared this ordeal with political forecasters, Democrats, logicians and journalists. Maybe we all deserved the anguish. Those economists who remain in a funk should nonetheless snap themselves out of it. One reason is that the sappy self-loathing economist is now embarrassingly cliché. Take it from a sappy self-loathing […]
Alphabet contends that a manager at its autonomous car subsidiary Waymo took technical data with him when he left to launch a competing venture that went on to become Otto, Uber’s self-driving vehicle unit The race to develop self-driving vehicles took a new turn on Thursday when Google’s parent company Alphabet filed a lawsuit against Uber, accusing it of stealing technology. Alphabet contends that a manager at […]
TOKYO Asian shares took a breather on Friday, slipping from 1-1/2-year highs as material shares were hit by sudden falls in copper and other commodity prices while investors assessed Washington’s stance on tax and currency policies. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS was down 0.5 percent, giving back part of this week’s gains, though it is likely to log its fifth straight weekly advance. […]
Google has announced that it has cracked the Secured Hash Algorithm 1 (SHA-1) cryptographic function, marking a milestone that spells both danger and opportunity for the computing world. The unprecedented feat was achieved through the real-world collision attack on the cryptographic algorithm, which led to the production of two PDF files that contain similar SHA-1 signature. What Is SHA-1? As a mathematical algorithm, the SHA-1 is capable […]
US and European authorities eased enforcement of new derivatives rules on Thursday less than a week before the standards come into effect, allowing small financial institutions more time to prepare for the wide-ranging reforms. In a series of statements hours apart, supervisory watchdogs bowed to growing concerns of a potential dislocation in the swaps market and hundreds of unprepared pension funds, asset managers and credit institutions likely […]
Another day, another reversal of a legacy Obama policy. Moments ago, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions reversed an Obama-era memo to phase out the use of private prisons, signalling his support for federal use of such facilities and advising that the Bureau of Prisons will “return to its previous approach to the use of private prisons.” Sessions issued a new memo Thursday replacing one issued last August […]
