WASHINGTON (AP) — The negotiations hardly ran smoothly. But, in the end, persistence paid off.
Six weeks ago, not long after Hamas killed more than 1,200 people in Israel and took scores of others hostage in a surprise assault, the government of Qatar quietly reached out to the United States to discuss how to secure the release of those who were taken captive by the militant group.
The Securities and Exchange Commission charged cryptocurrency trading platform Kraken with operating as an unregistered securities exchange.
The charges are the latest effort by regulators to crack down on crypto companies, some of which the SEC views as illegally selling securities without registering with the commission.
Israel’s military campaign against Hamas has entered its sixth week, and the country is facing a growing backlash against the humanitarian toll of the war as well as uncertainty over the fate of a U.S. military aid package that has stalled amid partisan bickering in Washington, D.C.
President Joe Biden has requested $14.3 billion in military assistance for Israel as it seeks to destroy Hamas after the group killed 1,200 Israeli citizens and took more than 200 hostage last month. More than 12,000 Palestinians have died in…
It was a trading day unlike any other for traders in the $25 trillion Treasury market, with a 30-year bond auction seen as having been partially undermined by a cyberattack on the U.S. unit of a Chinese bank.
In recapping Treasury’s poorly received $24 billion bond auction on Thursday, traders said the weaker-than-expected results likely had at least something to do with this week’s ransomware hit on the American arm of Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, known as ICBC. That attack reportedly caused disruptions across the market and had some impact on liquidity, with the Financial Times citing unnamed sources as saying hedge funds and asset managers were forced to reroute trades.
Traders were grappling on Friday to answer the question of what created the sudden lack of interest at the auction, which went so badly that it also shook up U.S. stock investors. Thursday’s sale was the worst since November 2021, based on the extent to which primary dealers were forced to step in and pick up the slack in demand, one trader said. And it reinforced a recent pattern of weak auctions for the 30-year bond that may not bode well for future sales of that long-dated maturity.
It’s possible that bonds simply “look much less attractive” following a recent “explosive rally” since late October, according to Charlie McElligott, a cross-asset macro strategist at Nomura Securities in New York. However, “this might be the case of ‘more than meets the eye’ to this ‘ugly auction evidencing low demand for duration’ story,” he wrote in a note.
“One dynamic that makes yesterday’s ugly auction results murky was the ICBC cyberattack described across various financial media, which gunked-up anybody who clears UST trades through them, and made it so that many dealers were then likely unable to trade with those clients until resolved, on account of unsettled trades which weren’t able to be matched,” McElligott said.
Adding to Thursday’s uncertainty was another random event. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell appeared on stage in an International Monetary Fund panel, was interrupted by a climate protester, and then uttered a seven-letter expletive that could be heard on the event’s livestream.
Powell’s policy-related remarks, which indicated the central bank might take further action to control inflation, “didn’t help things and kind of spooked people again,” said John Farawell, head of municipal trading at New York bond underwriter Roosevelt & Cross.
On Friday, the Treasury market found stabilization as buyers returned to segments of government debt in a sign that calm was being restored. A rush of buying was seen on the 30-year bond BX:TMUBMUSD30Y,
sending its yield down to 4.733% and to a third straight weekly decline.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg News reported that the repercussions of the ICBC cyberattack included an inability to deliver U.S. debt that was being pledged as collateral. ICBC’s U.S. unit was forced to rely on a messenger carrying a USB stick across Manhattan to complete disrupted trades, according to the news service, which also described Thursday’s $24 billion 30-year bond auction as one of the worst in a decade.
The ICBC attack “might have had a dramatic impact on the auction. I don’t know how much, but I also can’t imagine it didn’t,” said Tom di Galoma, co-head of global rates trading for BTIG in New York. “When people see that there are trade-settlement issues, there’s a willingness to back off and that’s exactly what happened yesterday. Institutional accounts were saying, ‘We don’t know who is settling this trade.’ If the cyberattack hadn’t happened, I think the auction would have gone a lot better.”
Ben Emons, a senior portfolio manager and head of fixed income for NewEdge Wealth in New York, said that once the Treasury market got upended by the ICBC cyberattack, the bad auction, and the interruption during Powell’s appearance, liquidity on U.S. government debt “was, for a moment, a dark matter.”
Going back decades, if you wanted to buy or sell a stock on the open market, you had to pay a 2% commission to buy and a 2% commission to sell. Then the advent of discount brokerage, led by Charles Schwab Corp. SCHW, +1.64%,
made lower commissions available until eventually, with improved technology and efficiency, the entire industry changed to enable the average investor to avoid commissions completely.
But the internet hasn’t done much to reduce the cost of selling a home in the U.S. Sellers typically pay a 6% commission to a real-estate agent to list and sell a home, with the seller’s agent splitting that commission with the buyer’s agent. But all of that may change because of a verdict this week in a class-action lawsuit in federal court against the National Association of Realtors.
Aarthi Swaminathan covers the case, what may happen next and the implications for home sellers and buyers:
Real-estate advice from the Moneyist
MarketWatch illustration
Quentin Fottrell — the Moneyist — works with three readers to answer tricky real-estate questions:
Jon Gray, the president of Blackstone Group, spoke with MarketWatch Editor in Chief Mark DeCambre and said he expected the Fed to succeed in bringing down inflation without pushing the U.S. economy into a deep recession.
The U.S. Treasury yield curve has been inverted for nearly a year.
FactSet
Normally, longer-term bonds have higher yields than those with short maturities. But the yield curve has been inverted for nearly a year, with 3-month U.S. Treasury bills BX:TMUBMUSD03M
having higher yields than 10-year Treasury notes BX:TMUBMUSD10Y.
There has been elevated demand for long-term bonds, as investors have anticipated a recession and a reversal in Federal Reserve interest-rate policy. When interest rates decline, bond prices rise and vice versa.
As you can see on the chart above, the yield curve was narrowing until mid-October. Yields on 10-year Treasury notes were close to 5% on Oct. 19, but they have been falling the past several days as the three-month yield has remained close to 5.5%.
In the Bond Report, Vivien Lou Chen summarizes the action as investors react to the Federal Reserve’s decision not to change its federal-funds-rate target range this week and to other economic news.
For income-seekers looking to avoid income taxes, here’s a deep dive into municipal bonds, with taxable-equivalent yields and a deeper look at those within four high-tax states.
Ford’s good news — in the bond market
Ford Motor Co.’s debt rating has been lifted by S&P to investment-grade.
By now you have probably heard the term “Magnificent Seven” used to describe stocks of the tremendous tech-oriented companies that have led this year’s rally for the S&P 500 SPX
: Apple Inc. AAPL, -0.52%,
Microsoft Corp. MSFT, +1.29%,
Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, +0.38%,
Nvidia Corp. NVDA, +3.45%,
Alphabet Inc. GOOGL, +1.26%
GOOG, +1.39%,
Meta Platforms Inc. META, +1.20%
and Tesla Inc. TSLA, +0.66%.
With Tesla’s recent decline, that company is now the ninth-largest holding in the portfolio of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY,
which tracks the benchmark index. Here are the top 10 companies held by SPY (11 stocks, including two common-share classes for Alphabet), with total returns through Thursday:
Five of these stocks (including the two Alphabet share classes) are still down from the end of 2021. SPY itself has returned 14% this year, following an 18% decline in 2022. It is still down 7% from the end of 2021.
After the market close on Wednesday, PayPal Holdings Inc. PYPL, +1.89%
announced quarterly results that came in ahead of analysts’ expectations, and the stock soared 7% on Thursday even though the company lowered its target for improving its operating margin.
Consumers drive mixed reactions to earnings results
Apple Inc. reported mixed quarterly results.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
Here’s more of the latest corporate financial results and reactions. First the good news:
And now the news that may not be so good:
Harsh verdict for SBF
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
AP
It might seem that some legal battles never end, but it took only a year from the collapse of FTX for the cryptocurrency exchange’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, to be convicted on all seven federal fraud and money-laundering charges brought against him. The charges were connected to the disappearance of $8 billion from FTX customer accounts.
Here’s more reaction and coverage of the virtual-currency industry:
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Shares of real-estate names plunged Tuesday following a jury ruling that has the potential to shake up the way people purchase homes.
A Missouri jury earlier Tuesday deemed that the National Association of Realtors, HomeServices of America and Keller Williams colluded to inflate or maintain high commission rates. Jefferies analyst John Conaltuoni said in a note to clients that a judge could issue an injunction preventing commission sharing on MLSs, or multiple listing services, which would hurt the buyer-agent business.
Shares of Opendoor Technologies Inc. OPEN, -9.09%
plunged 9% on Tuesday, while shares of Zillow Group Inc. ZG, -6.87%
Z, -6.98%
fell 7%, shares of Redfin Corp. RDFN, -5.67%
dropped 6% and shares of RE/MAX Holdings Inc. RMAX, -4.36%
declined 4%.
Conaltuoni thinks the recent ruling could bring big changes to the Participation Rule, which is an NAR requirement for seller agents to disclose the compensation being offered to buyer agents when they list through an MLS. The Participation Rule could soon get banned or turn optional, in his view.
Such a ban “would cause negotiations about buyer agent commissions to occur when an offer is presented, since there would no longer be an avenue to communicate splits up front,” he wrote. “This would eliminate the seller’s incentive to compensate buyer agents, which would force them to seek compensation directly. Shifting the burden of payment to buyers would likely meaningfully reduce their use of agents given most already struggle to cover closing costs.”
Conaltuoni further commented that were the rule to become optional, the “status quo” likely would continue.
What would these developments mean for Zillow, which reports earnings Wednesday afternoon? He flagged that nearly two-thirds of the company’s revenue comes from its Premier Agent business, which itself is primarily made up of revenue from buyer agents. “[A] reduction in their usage would force [Zillow] to pivot to offering products for seller agents and create near-term headwinds to revenue,” he wrote, while cutting his price target on Zillow’s stock to $48 from $60.
Bernstein’s Nikhil Devnani wrote that Zillow “is NOT part of this case and not directly impacted by the ruling,” but there’s the potential for repercussions down the line.
“Premier Agent is built around buyer commissions,” Devnani said. “And a reduction to commission rates (which could happen if cooperative compensation were outright banned in the worst case scenario) would create challenges for industry revenue growth, in our view. Maintaining the current structure with more transparency would have less impact we believe. It would need a stronger decoupling of who pays for buyer and seller agents.”
While Redfin shares dropped Tuesday along with other names, Chief Executive Glenn Kelman put out a blog post titled: “Change Comes to the Real Estate Industry.”
“The judge may take days or weeks to decide what structural changes the jury’s verdict will entail,” he wrote, and appeals could take years.
But traditional brokers “will undoubtedly now train their agents to welcome conversations about fees, just as Redfin has been doing for years, especially when advising a seller on what fee to offer to buyers’ agents,” he continued. “Rather than saying that a fee for the buyers’ agent of 2% or 3% is customary or recommended, agents will say that a buyers’ agent fee, if one is offered at all, is entirely up to the seller. This is as it should be.”
RBC Capital Markets analyst Brad Erickson wrote after the ruling that just over half of Redfin transactions come from the buyside. Its stock and Zillow’s “partially reflected these risks coming in,” in his view.
Federal prosecutors on Monday sought to chip away at FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s credibility, pointing to discrepancies between his public comments and actions taken behind the scenes as the company collapsed.
In a steady drumbeat of questions, Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon tried to paint Bankman-Fried, the 31-year-old former wunderkind of the crypto world, as someone who lied to his customers about the safety of their investments, while secretly raiding their accounts to fund his own risky investments, luxury real estate purchases, costly celebrity endorsements and political contributions.
In his second day of testimony before a jury in his criminal fraud trial in Manhattan’s federal court, Bankman-Fried repeatedly said he couldn’t remember exactly what he had said in numerous media interviews in the days and weeks after FTX had declared bankruptcy and $8 billion in customer deposits had vanished.
He also sought to distance himself from decision-making at FTX’s sister investment firm, Alameda Research, whose risky bets helped bring the crypto trading platform down.
Sassoon pointed to multiple public comments by Bankman-Fried in which he claimed FTX’s risk management protocols made it safer than other crypto currency trading platforms, while the company allowed its own investment arm, Alameda Research to make risky bets without limit.
FTX ultimately collapsed largely as a result of the billions in loans it had extended to Alameda, which prosecutors allege was done using customer money.
Federal prosecutors have alleged that Alameda was effectively granted carte blanche to use FTX customer money to make risky bets. One key element was that certain risk-management systems that FTX used to to liquidate customer accounts that had entered into negative territory were disabled for Alameda, allowing it unfettered ability to make high-risk moves.
Throughout his testimony, Bankman-Fried claimed he had limited visibility as to what was happening at Alameda, which he founded and mostly owned, but which had ceased running day-to-day in 2021, when his ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison took over as CEO.
He said he only became aware of how bad a liquidity issue Alameda faced well after a financial crisis began sweeping through the crypto industry in the summer of 2022. Bankman-Fried said he had told Ellison, who had pleaded guilty and testified against him, that she should have taken hedge positions earlier to lessen the company’s risk.
But he said he continued to believe up until just days before the companies collapsed, that both Alameda and FTX were on firmer financial footing.
“I viewed Alameda as solvent and FTX as solvent and decently liquid,” he testified. “Had that analysis come up any other way, I would have been in full on crisis mode. But in my view at the time that wasn’t the case.”
Bankman-Fried did admit that he consulted frequently with Ellison about moves that Alameda made and even signed off on several billion-dollar investments.
“I think a few billion of them were my decision,” he said when asked about several large investments made by Alameda in 2021 and 2022.
Bankman-Fried is expected back in court for further cross examination on Tuesday. The judge in the case said he expected the case may go to the jury as early as Friday.
With China’s property bust threatening to sink the country’s economic recovery, Xi Jinping is looking for someone to blame.
After putting the billionaire founder of Evergrande, a heavily indebted property firm, under investigation for possible crimes, Beijing is expanding its probes to include bankers and financial institutions that facilitated developers’ risky behavior, people familiar with the matter say.
Rite Aid plans to shutter 154 stores, many of them in Pennsylvania and California, as part of its bankruptcy plans, according to an initial list of those closures published in court documents filed on Tuesday.
That list was released Wednesday after the drugstore chain filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New Jersey over the weekend, amid billions in debt related to opioid lawsuits. The company at that time said it would “continue assessing its footprint and close additional underperforming stores” and announced the appointment of Jeffrey Stein as chief executive.
Here are the store locations slated to close:
California 4044 Eagle Rock Boulevard, Los Angeles 4046 South Centiela Avenue, Los Angeles 7859 Firestone Boulevard, Downey 4402 Atlantic Avenue, Long Beach 935 North Hollywood Way, Burbank 139 North Grand Avenue, Covina 13905 Amar Road, La Puente 920 East Valley Boulevard, Alhambra 3813 Plaza Drive, Oceanside 1670 Main Street, Ramona 6505 Mission Gorge Road, San Diego 8985 Mira Mesa Boulevard, San Diego 25906 Newport Road, Menifee 24829 Del Prado, Dana Point 30222 Crown Valley Parkway, Laguna Niguel 19701 Yorba Linda Boulevard, Yorba Linda 1406 West Edinger Avenue, Santa Ana 2738 East Thompson Boulevard, Ventura 720 North Ventura Road, Oxnard 20572 Homestead Road, Cupertino 2620 El Camino Real, Santa Clara 901 Soquel Avenue, Santa Cruz 571 Bellevue Road, Atwater 5409 Sunrise Boulevard, Citrus Heights 1309 Fulton Avenue, Sacramento 3029 Harbor Boulevard, Costa Mesa 959 Crenshaw Boulevard, Los Angeles 3000 South Archibald Avenue, Ontario 15800 Imperial Highway, La Mirada 8509 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine 499 Alvarado Street, Monterey
Connecticut 289 Greenwood Avenue, Bethel
Delaware 25 Chestnut Hill Plaza, Newark 3209 Kirkwood Highway, Wilmington
Idaho 1600 North Main Street, Meridian 5005 West Overland Road, Boise
Maryland 5 Bel Air South Parkway, Suite 1347, Bel Air 728 East Pulaski Highway, Elkton 5624 Baltimore National Pike, Baltimore 5804 Ritchie Highway, Baltimore 7501 Ritchie Highway, Glen Burnie 7967 Baltimore Annapolis Boulevard, Glen Burnie
Massachusetts 80 East Main Street, Webster
Michigan 924 West Main Street, Fremont 507 North Lafayette Street, Greenville 715 South Clinton Street, Grand Ledge 15250 24 Mile Road, Macomb 102 North Centerville Road, Sturgis 47300 Pontiac Trail, Wixom 35250 South Gratiot Avenue, Clinton Township 51037 Van Dyke Avenue, Shelby Township 3100 East Michigan Avenue, Jackson 9155 Telegraph Road, Taylor 1243 U.S. 31 South, Manistee 29447 Ford Road, Garden City 2838 East Court Street, Flint 1900 East 8 Mile Road, Detroit 36485 Garfield Road, Clinton Township 25922 Middlebelt Road, Farmington Hills 109 North Whittemore Street, St. Johns 1124 North Ballenger Highway, Flint 2701 South Cedar Street, Lansing
New Hampshire 420 Daniel Webster Highway, Merrimack
New Jersey 4057 Asbury Avenue Suite 8, Tinton Falls 431 Haledon Avenue, Haledon 35 Mill Road, Irvington 1636 Route 38 Suite 49, Lumberton 773 Hamilton Street, Somerset 1434 South Black Horse Pike, Williamstown 3 Marshall Hill Road West, Milford 210 Bridgeton Pike, Mantua 108 Swedesboro Road Suite 20, Mullica Hill 2370 Route 33, Robbinsville 1726 Route 37, East Toms River 86 B Lacey Road, Whiting
New York 2887 Harlem Road, Cheektowaga 2002 Avenue U, Brooklyn 2 Whitney Avenue, Floral Park 71-18 Kissena Boulevard, Flushing 3131 Hempstead Turnpike, Levittown 2981 Ocean Avenue, Brooklyn 3199 Long Beach Road, Oceanside 198 West Merrick Road, Valley Stream 836 Sunrise Highway, Bay Shore 2784 Sunrise Highway, Bellmore 901 Merrick Road, Copiague 577 Larkfield Road, East Northport 695 East Jericho Turnpike, Huntington Station 700-43 Patchogue-Yaphank Road, Medford 273 Pine Hollow Road, Oyster Bay 397 Sunrise Highway, West Patchogue 593 Old Town Road, Port Jeff Station 65 Route 111, Smithtown 2453 Elmwood Avenue, Kenmore 1567 Penfield Road, Rochester
Ohio 3129 Lincoln Way East, Massillon 120 South Main Street, New Carlisle 146 Woodman Drive, Dayton 2701 Market Street, Youngstown 401 West North Street, Springfield 230 South Main Street, Bellefontaine
Oregon 2440 Southeast Cesar Chavez Boulevard, Portland
Pennsylvania 2715 Parade Street, Erie 5612 North Fifth Street, Philadelphia 350 Main Street, Pennsburg 4011 Cottman Avenue, Philadelphia 1441 Old York Road, Abington 300 Market Street, Johnstown 8716 New Falls Road, Levittown 1750 Bustleton Avenue, Philadelphia 169 West Lancaster Avenue, Ardmore 1315 East Washington Lane, Philadelphia 801 Wyoming Avenue Suite 9, West Pittston 657 Heacock Road, Yardley 2801 West Dauphin Street, Philadelphia 1709 Liberty Street, Erie 674 Route 196, Suite 14, Tobyhanna 2722 West 9th Street, Chester 950 East Baltimore Pike, Yeadon 8235 Stenton Avenue, Philadelphia 7941 Oxford Avenue, Philadelphia 5440 Lansdowne Avenue, Philadelphia 700 Stevenson Boulevard, New Kensington 208 East Central Avenue, Titusville 1080 South West End Boulevard, Quakertown 136 North 63rd Street, Philadelphia 351 Brighton Avenue, Rochester 5235 Library Road, Bethel Park 5990 University Boulevard Suite 30, Moon Township 2501 Saw Mill Run Boulevard, Pittsburgh 5410 Keeport Drive, Pittsburgh 6090 Route 30, Greensburg 4830 William Penn Highway, Export 1730 Wilmington Road, New Castle 2178 West Union Boulevard, Bethlehem 1628 South Fourth Street, Allentown 2401 East Venango Street, Philadelphia 6327-43 Torresdale Avenue, Philadelphia 200 West Ridge Avenue Suite 112, Conshohocken 301 Eisenhower Drive, Hanover 7036 Wertzville Road, Mechanicsburg
Virginia 833 North Battlefield Blvd, Chesapeake 1458 Mount Pleasant Road, Chesapeake
Washington 601 South Grady Way Suite P, Renton 3202 132nd Street Southeast, Mill Creek 110 Southwest 148th Street, Burien 10103 Evergreen Way, Everett 8230 Martin Way East, Lacey 22201 Meridian Avenue East, Graham 9600 15th Avenue Southwest, Seattle 2518 196th Street Southwest, Lynnwood 3620 Factory Blvd Southeast, Bellevue 11919 Northeast 8th Street, Bellevue 7370 170th Avenue Northeast, Redmond
BRUSSELS (AP) — Police in Belgium on Tuesday shot dead a suspected Tunisian extremist accused of killing two Swedish soccer fans in a brazen shooting on a Brussels street before disappearing into the night.
Hours after a manhunt began in the Belgian capital, Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden told broadcaster VRT: “We have the good news that we found the individual.” She said that the weapon believed to have been used in the shooting was recovered.
The federal prosecutor’s office was more cautious, saying in a text message to The Associated Press: “There are strong presumptions but no certainties” that the man was the shooter. He was shot by police in the Schaerbeek neighborhood where the rampage had taken place.
Amateur videos posted on social media of Monday’s attack showed a man wearing an orange fluorescent vest pull up on a scooter, take out a large weapon and open fire on passersby before chasing them into a building to gun them down.
“Last night, three people left for what was supposed to be a wonderful soccer party. Two of them lost their lives in a brutal terrorist attack,” Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said at a news conference just before dawn. “Their lives were cut short in full flight, cut down by extreme brutality.”
De Croo said his thoughts were with the victims’ families and that he had sent his condolences to the Swedish prime minister. Security has been beefed up in the capital, particularly around places linked to the Swedish community in the city.
“The attack that was launched yesterday was committed with total cowardice,” De Croo said.
Not far from the scene of the shooting, the Belgium-Sweden soccer match in the Belgian national stadium was suspended at halftime and the 35,000 fans held inside as a precaution while the attacker was at large.
Prosecutor Eric Van Duyse said “security measures were urgently taken to protect the Swedish supporters” in the stadium. More than two hours after the game was suspended, a message flashed on the big stadium screen saying, “Fans, you can leave the stadium calmly.” Stand after stand emptied onto streets filled with police as the search for the attacker continued.
“Frustrated, confused, scared. I think everyone was quite scared,” said Caroline Lochs, a fan from Antwerp.
De Croo said the assailant was a Tunisian man living illegally in Belgium who used a military weapon to kill the two Swedes and shoot a third, who is being treated for ”severe injuries.”
Federal Prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw described how the suspect, a 45-year-old man who wasn’t identified, had posted a video online claiming to have killed three Swedish people.
The suspect is alleged to have said in the video that, for him, the Quran is “a red line for which he is ready to sacrifice himself.”
TEL AVIV, Israel — President Joe Biden will travel to Israel and on to Jordan Wednesday to meet with both Israeli and Arab leadership, as concerns increase that the raging Israel-Hamas war could expand into a larger regional conflict.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Biden’s travel to Israel as the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip grows more dire and as Israel prepares for a possible ground attack on the 141-square-mile territory to root out Hamas militants responsible for what U.S. and Israeli officials say was the most lethal assault against Jews since the Holocaust.
Biden is looking to send the strongest message yet that the U.S. is behind Israel. His Democratic administration has pledged military support, sending U.S. carriers and aid to the region. Officials have said they would ask Congress for upward of $2 billion in additional aid for both Israel and Ukraine, which is fighting Russia’s invasion.
It’s a chance for Biden to burnish his national security credentials to U.S. voters with the 2024 election just over a year away. It’s also an opportunity to demonstrate that he’s making good on his campaign promise of exercising American leadership after four years of former President Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy.
But Biden’s presence could be seen as a provocative move by Hamas’ chief sponsor, Iran, or potentially viewed as tone-deaf by Arab nations as civilian casualties mount in Gaza. Blinken has already been traveling around the Mideast this past week trying to prevent the war with Hamas from igniting a broader regional conflict.
Blinken made the announcement early Tuesday after more than seven hours of talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials.
“He is coming here at a critical moment for Israel, for the region and for the world,” Blinken said.
Shortly after in Washington, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby announced that Biden would also go to Jordan to meet with King Abdullah II, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
“We’ve been crystal clear about the need for humanitarian aid to be able to continue to flow into Gaza,” Kirby said. “That has been a consistent call by President Biden and certainly by this entire administration.”
Truckloads of aid idled Monday at Egypt’s border with Gaza, barred from entry, as residents and humanitarian groups pleaded for water, food and fuel for dying generators, saying the tiny Palestinian territory sealed off by Israel after last week’s rampage by Hamas was near total collapse.
Biden had been scheduled to travel to Pueblo, Colorado, on Monday but decided to postpone the visit so he could consult with his aides and speak with fellow leaders about the unfolding situation in the Middle East.
The announcements came after Biden consulted with a trio of world leaders and his own national security team on Monday amid growing global concern about the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the Gaza Strip and fears that the Israel-Hamas war could metastasize into a broader regional conflict.
Biden spoke by phone with Egypt’s el-Sissi, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz about the fallout from Hamas militants’ surprise attacks on Israel that left 1,400 dead and retaliatory strikes that have killed at least 2,778 Palestinians.
European Union leaders will hold an emergency summit on Tuesday as concern mounts that the war between Israel and Hamas could fuel tensions in Europe and bring more refugees in search of sanctuary.
Biden’s call with the Egyptian leader came one day after el-Sissi met with Blinken in Cairo. Egypt’s state-run media said el-Sissi told Blinken that Israel’s Gaza operation has exceeded “the right of self-defense” and turned into “a collective punishment.”
Kirby declined to comment on el-Sissi’s concerns about how Israel is conducting the war.
“The humanitarian situation was high on the list of the discussion with President el-Sissi,” Kirby said.
Iran’s foreign minister warned Monday that “preemptive action is possible” if Israel moves closer to its looming ground offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Iran is a chief financial sponsor of Hamas militants in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The comments by Hossein Amirabdollahian follow a pattern of escalating rhetoric from Iran.
“Leaders of the resistance will not allow the Zionist regime to do whatever it wants in Gaza and then go after other resistance groups after it’s done with Gaza,” he told state television. “Therefore any preemptive action is possible in the coming hours.”
Kirby said the U.S. has not seen any signs that Iran might try to get directly involved in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
White House officials have said that U.S. intelligence shows that Iran has been broadly aware that Hamas had been preparing for a possible strike against Israel. But the U.S. says it has yet to uncover evidence of direct Iranian involvement in the Oct. 7 attack.
Israel is also preparing for the potential of a new front opening on its northern border with Lebanon, where it has exchanged fire repeatedly with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group. The military ordered residents of 28 Israeli communities near the border to evacuate.
Air raid sirens interrupted Blinken’s meetings with Israeli officials on three different occasions Monday, including twice as he huddled with Netanyahu and his war cabinet.
In Washington, Biden was briefed in the Oval Office by their national security team on the situation on the ground in Israel and Gaza. White House chief of staff Jeff Zients joined the briefing led by national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and Central Intelligence Agency Director Bill Burns, according to the White House.
Blinken was in Israel on Monday for his second visit in less than a week for talks with Israeli leaders. He has been crisscrossing the Middle East with stops in Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Blinken, in talks Monday with Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, carried back some of the feedback he received from Arab leaders. He also “underlined his firm support for Israel’s right to defend itself from Hamas’ terrorism and reaffirmed U.S. determination to provide the Israeli government with what it needs to protect its citizens,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.
White House officials said Biden’s talks with Arab leaders in Amman will largely focus on humanitarian concerns for Gaza’s 2.3 million people. He’ll also make clear that Hamas does not stand for the Palestinian people’s right to dignity and self-determination.
Still, White House officials bristled about whether Biden would ask Netanyahu and Israel officials to show restraint or set any conditions on any new U.S. military aid that could be in the pipeline.
“We are not putting conditions on the military assistance that we are providing to Israel,” Kirby said. “They have a right to defend themselves. They have a right to go after this terrorist threat.”
Drugstore chain Rite Aid Corp. filed for bankruptcy Sunday, as it faces billions of dollars of debt related to opioid lawsuits.
In a statement Sunday night, Rite Aid RAD, -16.81%
said it will close some “underperforming” stores and announced Jeffrey Stein as its new chief executive and chief restructuring officer. Interim CEO Elizabeth Burr will remain on the company’s board.
The bankruptcy filing had been expected for months, and the Wall Street Journal reported in August that Rite Aid was more than $3.3 billion in debt, due largely to hundreds of lawsuits related to its distribution of opioid painkillers. The bankruptcy filing stays pending litigation against the company.
Earlier this month, the New York Stock Exchange warned Rite Aid that it was “no longer in compliance” with the exchange’s minimum pricing and valuation standards, and gave it six months for the stock to regain compliance. Rite Aid shares have plunged about 80% year to date.
Rite Aid said Sunday that lenders will provide $3.45 billion in financing for the chain to continue operating through the chapter 11 bankruptcy process.
“With the support of our lenders, we look forward to strengthening our financial foundation, advancing our transformation initiatives and accelerating the execution of our turnaround strategy,” Stein said in a statement. “In doing so, we will be even better able to deliver the healthcare products and services our customers and their families rely on — now and into the future.”
Rite Aid said it would work to minimize the effect of store closures on its customers so there is no disruption of services, and will transfer affected workers to different locations when possible.
Rite Aid has about 2,100 stores and employs around 47,000 people. It has closed more than 200 stores in the past couple of years.
Rite Aid also said it had reached a deal for pharmacy benefit-solutions company MedImpact Healthcare Systems Inc. to acquire its Elixer Solutions business. A price for the transaction was not disclosed.
Drugstore chain Rite Aid Corp. filed for bankruptcy Sunday, as it faces billions of dollars of debt related to opioid lawsuits.
In a statement Sunday night, Rite Aid RAD, -16.81%
said it will close some “underperforming” stores and announced Jeffrey Stein as its new chief executive and chief restructuring officer. Interim CEO Elizabeth Burr will remain on the company’s board.
The bankruptcy filing had been expected for months, and the Wall Street Journal reported in August that Rite Aid was more than $3.3 billion in debt, due largely to hundreds of lawsuits related to its distribution of opioid painkillers. The bankruptcy filing stays pending litigation against the company.
Earlier this month, the New York Stock Exchange warned Rite Aid that it was “no longer in compliance” with the exchange’s minimum pricing and valuation standards, and gave it six months for the stock to regain compliance. Rite Aid shares have plunged about 80% year to date.
Rite Aid said Sunday that lenders will provide $3.45 billion in financing for the chain to continue operating through the chapter 11 bankruptcy process.
“With the support of our lenders, we look forward to strengthening our financial foundation, advancing our transformation initiatives and accelerating the execution of our turnaround strategy,” Stein said in a statement. “In doing so, we will be even better able to deliver the healthcare products and services our customers and their families rely on — now and into the future.”
Rite Aid said it would work to minimize the effect of store closures on its customers so there is no disruption of services, and will transfer affected workers to different locations when possible.
Rite Aid has about 2,100 stores and employs around 47,000 people. It has closed more than 200 stores in the past couple of years.
Rite Aid also said it had reached a deal for pharmacy benefit-solutions company MedImpact Healthcare Systems Inc. to acquire its Elixer Solutions business. A price for the transaction was not disclosed.
When Eyal Waldman thinks of his youngest daughter and her boyfriend, he sees them dancing.
“Danielle and Noam loved dancing, and I hope they continue dancing somewhere up there,” Eyal Waldman told MarketWatch.
Danielle Waldman and Noam Shay were killed at a music festival in southern Israel last week, part of a campaign by the Hamas terrorist group that has led to further bloodshed.
Danielle’s father — an Israeli tech executive who co-founded Mellanox, which became the largest acquisition in Nvidia Corp.’s NVDA, -3.16%
history — spoke with MarketWatch as Friday turned to Saturday in Israel, in hopes of increasing attention on the hostages who are still held in Gaza as well as to memorialize his daughter, who was 24, and Shay, who was 26.
“They loved to celebrate life,” Eyal Waldman said of his daughter and her boyfriend, before adding “they went down on Friday night to celebrate life, love and freedom, and they were massacred.”
Courtesy of Eyal Waldman
Danielle Waldman — who was born in Palo Alto, California, but moved back to Israel with her family at age 4 — and Israeli native Shay were students who met six years ago in the army, and her father said they had been inseparable since. They attended the Supernova music festival in early October with friends, and were killed while attempting to escape Hamas terrorists in a car that Eyal Waldman found bullet-riddled near the festival’s location.
“Danielle and Noam have done nothing bad to anyone, and they were murdered only because they were Israelis,” he said.
Eyal Waldman, a onetime Israeli combat fighter, founded Mellanox in 1999, and sold it 20 years later to Nvidia for $6.9 billion. He is known internationally for attempting to foster peace between Israelis and Palestinians through his work in technology — Mellanox hired Palestinian tech workers in Gaza, Nablus and the West Bank town of Rawabi, which led to a “60 Minutes” appearance.
“We wanted to make peace, to work together, to bring prosperity to the Palestinian people, the same as we have in Israel,” he said. “I brought even Apple AAPL, -1.03%
to open a design center in Rawabi and I brought other companies to open design centers in Rawabi.”
The death of his daughter and Shay and the scope of the attacks and counter-attacks dominating headlines in recent days have not changed Waldman’s hope for peace in the future, he said, but not the near future. He believes this time, the violence “took us back several years, if not decades.”
“We need time to build the trust, if at all, between the two nations and start working together to be able to talk about peace,” he said. “Until then, we will continue protecting ourselves in a very direct manner in Gaza and everywhere else around Israel.”
Waldman also said he would continue to try to hire Palestinians and work with them to be a part of the Israeli tech ecosystem, as long as they state “that they are working for peace, and they are not supporting — not financially and not in any other way — any terror actions, or any actions that are not civilian economics between the two nations.”
“Our hands are always reaching out for peace. But at the same time, before we do this, we need people to understand that Israel is strong, Israel is united, and we will never let anyone harm the citizens of the state of Israel again.”
Waldman was thankful for U.S. aid and was forceful in discussing the need to find hostages that were still missing. One of Nvidia’s current employees was kidnapped, according to an email that Chief Executive Jensen Huang sent to employees that was obtained by Insider, which reported that the employee was also at the Supernova music festival.
Nvidia has more than 3,000 employees in Israel mostly working for Mellanox, which makes networking gear that connects Nvidia’s high-performance data-center products. In an emailed statement, an Nvidia spokesman said “our focus now is working with our Israel leadership to ensure our employees and their families are safe and well cared for. We will then turn our focus to shoring up [the company’s] execution if necessary to ensure continued operations of our business.”
Waldman said the return of hostages is top of mind.
“What’s important now is to focus on bringing back the hostages, and that is the No. 1 priority for the State of Israel and for the international community,” he said.
Continuing to worry about others while suffering his own tragedy is a trait that Eyal Waldman seems to have passed down to his youngest daughter. He said that he had received a note from another festival attendee who was wounded in the eye in the initial attack. That victim told him that Danielle Waldman had stopped to attend to her and make sure she was safe before attempting to escape in a car that was later believed to have been attacked by Hamas terrorists with rifles.
“They loved to celebrate life,” Waldman said of his daughter and her boyfriend.
“And they went down on Friday night to celebrate life, love and freedom, and they were massacred.”
David Scott, the head of Exxon Mobil Co.’s shale oil and gas production business, was arrested in Texas and faces a charge of sexual assault.
According to public records from the Montgomery County, Texas, Sheriff’s Office, Scott, 49, was arrested Thursday afternoon on second-degree felony sexual-assault charges. According to the records, he was released on $30,000 bond. Police records show he was arrested at a La Quinta Inn & Suites hotel in Magnolia, Texas, near Exxon’s headquarters in Spring, Texas, just north of Houston.
No further details of the incident were made clear.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Scott is vice president of Exxon’s upstream unconventional unit, and has worked for Exxon for 26 years at the company’s operations in Australia, the U.K., the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Angola and the U.S.
In a statement Sunday, Exxon Mobil XOM, -1.67%
said it was “aware of the allegations and cannot comment on a personal matter.” However, “we can say that this individual will not continue work responsibilities as the investigation proceeds.”
Oil traders on Sunday said crude prices were likely to remain supported in the near term, as investors assessed the fallout from the surprise attack by Hamas on Israel and focused on the role played by Iran and the potential impact on that country’s petroleum exports.
The conflict may also hold market-moving consequences for talks aimed at normalizing relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
“While in the short term there is no impact directly on supply, it’s obvious how things play out over the next 24 to 48 hours could change that,” Phil Flynn, an analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago, told MarketWatch.
Brent crude futures BRN00, +4.17%,
the global benchmark, and West Texas Intermediate oil futures CL00, +4.35%
CL.1, +4.35%
jumped more than 3% when the market opened Sunday night. U.S. stock-index futures ES00, -0.66% traded lower, while traditional havens, including gold GC00, +0.98%
and the U.S. dollar DXY
rose.
Movements in oil prices, meanwhile, will also serve as a gauge for broader market worries around the conflict, analysts said.
Hamas, the Iran-backed, Palestinian militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, staged a sweeping attack on southern Israel early Saturday. News reports put Israeli deaths at more than 700. The Gaza Health Ministry said 413 people, including 78 children and 41 women, were killed in the territory as Israel retaliated, according to the Associated Press. Injuries in Israel and Gaza were both said to be around 2,000.
Israeli troops on Sunday were engaged in fierce fighting in an effort to retake territory in southern Israel as Hamas launched further barrages of missiles. Israeli citizens and soldiers were captured and are being held hostage in Gaza, according to the Israeli military.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Iranian security officials helped Hamas plan the attack. U.S. officials said they haven’t seen evidence of Iran’s involvement, the report said.
“Iran remains a very big wild card and we will be watching how strongly [Israeli] Prime Minister Netanyahu blames Tehran for facilitating these attacks by providing Hamas with weapons and logistical support,” said Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, in a Sunday morning note.
Iranian crude exports have risen in recent years, indicating the Biden administration has adopted a soft approach to sanctions enforcement, Croft said. Some analysts have put Iranian crude production at more than 3 million barrels a day and exports above 2 million barrels a day — the highest levels since the Trump administration pulled the U.S. out of the Iranian nuclear accord in 2018, according to the Wall Street Journal. Sales fell to around 400,000 barrels a day in 2020 as the U.S. reimposed sanctions.
RBC Capital Markets
Hedge-fund manager Pierre Andurand, one of the world’s best energy traders, said in a social-media post that a large price spike for oil isn’t likely in coming days, but emphasized the market focus on Iran.
“Now, over the last six months we have seen a very large increase in Iranian supply due to weak enforcement of sanctions. As Iran is also behind Hamas’ attacks on Israel, there is a good probability that the U.S. administration will start enforcing those sanctions on Iranian oil exports more tightly,” he wrote. “That would further tighten the oil market. Also the probability that this will lead to direct conflict with Iran is not zero.”
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal late Friday reported that Saudi Arabia had told the White House it would be willing to boost oil production next year if crude prices remained high, as part of an effort aimed at winning goodwill in Congress for a deal that would see the kingdom recognize Israel and in return get a defense agreement with the U.S.
A Saudi production cut of 1 million barrels a day that was implemented in July and recently extended through the end of the year has been given much of the credit for a rally that took global benchmark Brent crude within a few dollars of the $100-a-barrel threshold before retreating this past week. The U.S. benchmark last week briefly topped $95 a barrel for the first time in 13 months.
In a statement, Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry called on both sides to halt the escalation and exercise restraint, but also recalled its “repeated warnings of the dangers of the explosion of the situation as a result of the continued occupation, the deprivation of the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights, and the repetition of systematic provocations against its sanctities.”
With the Israeli government vowing an unprecedented response, “it is hard to envision how Saudi normalization talks can run on a parallel track to a ferocious military counteroffensive,” said RBC’s Croft.
Beyond oil, much will depend on the potential for the conflict to widen.
Stocks have stumbled, retreating from 2023 highs set in late July, as yields on U.S. Treasurys have jumped. The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond BX:TMUBMUSD30Y
rose 23.2 basis points last week to end Friday at 4.941%, its highest since Sept. 20, 2007. The 10-year Treasury note yield BX:TMUBMUSD10Y
topped 4.80% on Oct. 3, its highest since Aug. 8, 2007, and ended the week at 4.783%. Yields and debt prices move opposite each other.
The U.S. bond market will be closed Monday for the Columbus Day and Indigenous People’s Day holiday, while U.S. stock markets will be open.
The S&P 500 index SPX
rose 0.5% last week, breaking a streak of four straight weekly declines, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA
fell 0.3% and the Nasdaq Composite COMP
gained 1.6%.
“I think there will be a negative reaction. However, I don’t see a meltdown,” Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Spartan Capital Securities, told MarketWatch.
Traditional haven plays, including gold, the dollar and U.S. Treasurys may see a strong move upward, with price gains for Treasurys pulling yields down.
“Geopolitical crises in the Middle East have usually caused oil prices to rise and stock prices to fall,” said economist Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research Inc., in a note. “More often than not, they’ve also tended to be buying opportunities in the stock market.”
The broader market reaction will depend on whether the crisis turns out to be a short-term flare-up or “something much bigger, like a war between Israel and Iran,” he said. The latter is unlikely, but tensions between the two are likely to escalate.
“The price of oil may be a good way to assess the likelihood of a broader conflict,” he said.
The ruling Hamas militant group in the Gaza Strip carried out an unprecedented attack on Israel at daybreak Saturday, firing thousands of rockets as dozens of fighters infiltrated the heavily fortified border in several locations by air, land and sea, catching the country off guard on a major holiday.
Several hours after the invasion began, Hamas militants were still fighting gun battles inside several Israeli communities in a surprising show of strength that shook the country.
Israel’s national rescue service said at least 40 people have been killed and hundreds wounded, making it the deadliest attack in Israel in years.
At least 561 wounded people were being treated in Israeli hospitals, including at least 77 who were in critical condition, according to an Associated Press count based on public statements and calls to hospitals.
There was no official comment on casualties in Gaza, but AP reporters witnessed the funerals of 15 people who were killed and saw another eight bodies arrive at a local hospital. It was not immediately clear if they were fighters or civilians.
Social media was replete with videos of Hamas fighters parading what appeared to be stolen Israeli military vehicles through the streets and at least one dead Israeli soldier within Gaza being dragged and trampled by an angry crowd of Palestinians shouting “God is Greatest.”
Videos released by Hamas appeared to show at least three Israelis captured alive. The military declined to give details about casualties or kidnappings as it continued to battle the infiltrators.
“We are at war,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised address, declaring a mass army mobilization. “Not an ‘operation,’ not a ’round,’ but at war.”
“The enemy will pay an unprecedented price,” he added, promising that Israel would “return fire of a magnitude that the enemy has not known.”
At a meeting of top security officials later on Saturday, Netanyahu said the first priority was to “cleanse the area” of enemy infiltrators, then to “exact a huge price from the enemy,” and to fortify other areas so that no other militant groups join the war.
The serious invasion on Simchat Torah, a normally joyous day when Jews complete the annual cycle of reading the Torah scroll, revived painful memories of the 1973 Mideast war practically 50 years to the day, in which Israel’s enemies launched a surprise attack on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.
Comparisons to one of the most traumatic moments in Israeli history sharpened criticism of Netanyahu and his far-right allies, who had campaigned on more aggressive action against threats from Gaza. Political commentators lambasted the government over its failure to anticipate what appeared to be a Hamas attack unseen in its level of planning and coordination.
The Israeli military struck targets in Gaza in response for some 2,500 rockets that sent air raid sirens wailing constantly as far north as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) away. It said its forces were engaged in gunfights with Hamas militants who had infiltrated Israel in at least seven locations. The fighters had sneaked across the separation fence and even invaded Israel through the air with paragliders, the army said.
Israeli TV broadcast footage of explosions tearing through the Gaza-Israel border fence, followed by what appeared to be Palestinian gunmen riding into Israel on motorcycles. Gunmen also reportedly entered on pickup trucks.
It was not immediately clear what prompted Hamas to launch the attacks, which would have likely required months of planning.
But over the past year Israel’s far-right government has ramped up settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, Israeli settler violence has displaced hundreds of Palestinians there, and tensions have flared around a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site.
The shadowy leader of Hamas’ military wing, Mohammed Deif, announced the start of what he called “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm.” The Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem is the third holiest site in Islam, and is located on the holiest site for Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount.
“Enough is enough,” Deif, who does not appear in public, said in the recorded message, as he called on Palestinians from east Jerusalem to northern Israel to join the fight. “Today the people are regaining their revolution.”
In a televised address, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned that Hamas had made “a grave mistake” and promised that “the state of Israel will win this war.”
Western nations condemned the incursion and reiterated their support for Israel, while others called for restraint on both sides.
“The U.S. unequivocally condemns the unprovoked attacks by Hamas terrorists against Israeli civilians,” said Adrienne Watson, spokeswoman for the U.S. National Security Council. “We stand firmly with the government and people of Israel and extend our condolences for the Israeli lives lost in these attacks.”
In the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, just 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) from the Gaza Strip, terrified residents who were huddled indoors said they could hear constant gunfire echoing off the buildings as firefights continued even hours after the initial attack.
Watson said Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, has spoken with his Israeli counterpart, Tzachi Hanegbi.
Cars are seen on fire following a rocket attack from the Gaza Strip in Ashkelon, southern Israel, on October 7, 2023.
Ahmad Gharabli/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Saudi Arabia, which has been in talks with the U.S. about normalizing relations with Israel, released a statement calling on both sides to exercise restraint. The kingdom said it had repeatedly warned about ” the dangers of the situation exploding as a result of the continued occupation (and) the Palestinian people being deprived of their legitimate rights.”
The attack comes at a time of historic division within Israel over Netanyahu’s proposal to overhaul the judiciary. Mass protests over the plan have sent hundreds thousands of Israeli demonstrators into the streets and prompted hundreds of military reservists to avoid volunteer duty — turmoil that has raised fears over the military’s battlefield readiness and raised concerns about its deterrence over its enemies.
The infiltration of fighters into southern Israel marked a major escalation by Hamas that forced millions of Israelis to hunker down in safe rooms. Cities and towns emptied as the military closed roads near Gaza. Israel’s rescue service and the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza appealed to the public to donate blood.
“We understand that this is something big,” Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an Israeli army spokesman, told reporters. He said the Israeli military had called up the army reserves.
Hecht declined to comment on how Hamas had managed to catch the army off guard. “That’s a good question,” he said.
Ismail Haniyeh, the exiled leader of Hamas, said that Palestinian fighters were “engaged in these historic moments in a heroic operation” to defend the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
“With rockets we somehow feel safer, knowing that we have the Iron Dome (missile defense system) and our safe rooms. But knowing that terrorists are walking around communities is a different kind of fear,” said Mirjam Reijnen, a 42-year-old volunteer firefighter and mother of three in Nahal Oz.
Israel has built a massive fence along the Gaza border meant to prevent infiltrations. It goes deep underground and is equipped with cameras, high-tech sensors and sensitive listening technology.
The escalation comes after weeks of heightened tensions along Israel’s volatile border with Gaza, and heavy fighting in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Saturday’s wide-ranging assault threatened to undermine Netanyahu’s reputation as a security expert who would do anything to protect Israel. It also raised questions about the cohesion of a security apparatus crucial to the stability of a country locked in low-intensity conflicts on multiple fronts and facing threats from Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group.
Hezbollah congratulated Hamas on Friday, praising the attack as a response to “Israeli crimes” and saying the militants had “divine backing.” The group said its command in Lebanon was in contact with Hamas about the operation.
Israel has maintained a blockade over Gaza since Hamas seized control of the territory in 2007. The bitter enemies have fought four wars since then. There have also been numerous rounds of smaller fighting between Israel and Hamas and other smaller militant groups based in Gaza.
The blockade, which restricts the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza, has devastated the territory’s economy. Israel says the blockade is needed to keep militant groups from building up their arsenals. The Palestinians say the closure amounts to collective punishment.
The rocket fire comes during a period of heavy fighting in the West Bank, where nearly 200 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli military raids this year. In the volatile northern West Bank, scores of militants and residents poured into the streets in celebration at the news of the rocket barrages.
Israel says the raids are aimed at militants, but stone-throwing protesters and people uninvolved in the violence have also been killed. Palestinian attacks on Israeli targets have killed over 30 people.
The tensions have also spread to Gaza, where Hamas-linked activists held violent demonstrations along the Israeli border in recent weeks. Those demonstrations were halted in late September after international mediation.
Clorox Co. shares fell in the extended session Wednesday after the company slashed its outlook stemming from the impact of a cybersecurity attack over the summer.
Clorox CLX, +1.21%
shares fell about 3% after hours, following a 1.2% gain to close the regular session at $131.83. At Wednesday’s close, Clorox shares were down 6.1% for the year, while the S&P 500 index SPX
has gained 11.1%.
The company forecast a loss of 75 cents to 35 cents a share, or a loss of 40 cents to break-even per share on an adjusted basis, for the quarter ending Sept. 30.
Clorox said sales are expected to decrease by 28% to 23% from the year-ago first quarter of $1.74 billion, or in a range between $1.25 billion and $1.34 billion.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet had forecast first-quarter earnings of $1.29 a share on revenue of $1.77 billion.
In a statement late Wednesday, Clorox said the reduced outlook was “due to the impacts of the recent cybersecurity attack that was disclosed in August, which caused wide-scale disruption of Clorox’s operations, including order-processing delays and significant product outages.”
The company said shipment and consumption trends prior to the cyberattack factored in its prior forecast.
In early August, Clorox forecast sales in 2024 would be flat to 2% higher than 2023’s $7.39 billion, and adjusted earnings between $5.60 and $5.90 for the year, while analysts had expected $5.62 a share on revenue of $7.4 billion at the time.
Analysts currently forecast, on average, adjusted earnings of $5.78 a share on revenue of $7.5 billion.
Based on the company’s current assessment, Clorox said it expects “to experience ongoing, but lessening, operational impacts in the second quarter as it makes progress in returning to normalized operations,” and restocking retailers.
Analysts also forecast second-quarter earnings of $1.18 a share on revenue of $1.77 billion.
Clorox said it was “in the process of assessing the impact of the cybersecurity attack on fiscal-year 2024 and beyond,” and said it would provide an update during its first-quarter earnings call scheduled in November.
Google’s top executives have long established a reputation of saying as little as possible on most topics: Earnings calls. Product development plans. Management moves.
Legal matters are certainly on the list, as the company’s antitrust trial with the Justice Department concludes its third week. The public is barred from listening to the 10-week federal trial, and reporters often encounter a courtroom sealed to the public.
Secrecy around the nonjury trial belies the magnitude of the case, the biggest of its kind in tech, if not American business, since the DoJ tangled with Microsoft Corp. MSFT, +0.67%
in the 1990s and early 2000s. After years of investigation, the Justice Department claims Google used contracts worth billions of dollars with Apple Inc. AAPL, +0.30%
and other phone makers to elbow aside competing search engines that could lead to changes in Google’s business practices — even a breakup of thetech giant.
Google says it makes the best product, and vendors have a choice to work with other search-engine providers. In his opening statement, Google attorney John Schmidtlein said companies and consumers use Google’s popular search engine “because it delivers value to them, not because they have to.”
Asked by MarketWatch to comment further, a company spokesman declined.
GOOG, -0.96%,
Google’s parent company, has steadfastly redacted information about the contracts at issue in the case, citing confidential company information, and Google’s lawyers — as well as those at Apple — have consistently asked to seal the courtroom. Before opening statements started on Sept. 12, nearly two-thirds of Google’s motions and responses in the case were sealed, according to the New York Times.
At the same time, criticism has rained on U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, who has deferred to requests by Google and interested parties like Apple to hold testimony behind closed doors. (On Tuesday, Mehta countered he was relying on federal attorneys to resist persistent attempts by Google and other tech companies to seal the courtroom. He later pushed lawyers to ask more questions in public and wanted to unseal closed-session testimony.)
“A judge’s job isn’t to simply accept a party’s claim that public access to a trial would cause the sky to fall,” The Freedom of the Press Foundation said in a blog post Wednesday.
A cone of silence around such a historic case that could lead to changes to Google’s business practices or a breakup of the company is not surprising, given what is at stake.
“A trial should be open to the public, but there is a balancing act in affording companies some sort of privacy,” lawyer Abiel Garcia said in an interview. “Access to documents does disclose how a company thinks. There is a tension here in how Google wants its users to be transparent about their data, but doesn’t tell you what they are doing.”
Garcia, who presented in a preliminary injunction hearing before Mehta in 2015, said the judge has done an admirable job of respecting Google’s corporate secrets while gradually encouraging more public questioning and disclosures.
Tesla Inc. was sued Thursday by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which alleges the EV maker violated federal law by “tolerating widespread and ongoing racial harassment of its Black employees” at its Fremont, Calif., plant, and by retaliating against those opposing the harassment.
Black employees at the Fremont factory, Tesla’s TSLA, +2.44%
first assembly plant and for years its only vehicle-manufacturing facility in the U.S., “have routinely endured racial abuse, pervasive stereotyping and hostility” as well as having racial slurs hurled at them, the lawsuit alleges.
“Slurs were used casually and openly in high-traffic areas and at worker hubs,” the EEOC said. Black employees “regularly” saw graffiti with slurs, swastikas, threats and nooses throughout the facility, including on desks, in bathroom stalls and elevators, according to the suit.
Tesla, which disbanded its media relations team during the pandemic, did not immediately return a request for comment. In August, SpaceX, another one of Tesla’s Chief Executive Elon Musk’s companies, was sued by the Justice Department over its hiring practices.
Employees who spoke up against the racial hostility suffered retaliations that included being fired or transferred, the EEOC said.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California after attempts at reaching a settlement before the litigation. It seeks compensatory and punitive damages as well as back pay for the affected workers. It also seeks changes to Tesla’s employment practices to prevent discrimination in the future, the EEOC said.
Shares of Tesla have doubled so far this year, compared with an advance of around 12% for the S&P 500 index SPX.
The first Model S rolled out of the Fremont factory in 2012, and the plant now makes Model S, Model 3, Model X and Model Y vehicles, with capacity to make more than a million vehicles a year as well as energy products and battery cells.
Tesla opened up its second U.S. vehicle-making factory in the Austin, Texas, area in the spring of 2022.
