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8 minutes ago
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Israel approves major West Bank settlement project
Israel approved a major settlement project on Wednesday in an area of the occupied West Bank that the international community has warned threatens the viability of a future Palestinian state. Israel has long had ambitions to build on the roughly 12-square-kilometre (five-square-mile) parcel known as E1 just east of Jerusalem, but the plan had been stalled for years amid international opposition. Critics say the settlement would effectively cut the West Bank in two, undermining hopes for a contiguous Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital. Last week, Israel's far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich backed plans to build around 3,400 homes on the ultra-sensitive tract of land, which lies between Jerusalem and the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim. "I am pleased to announce that just a short while ago, the civil administration approved the planning for the construction of the E1 neighbourhood," the mayor of Maale Adumim, Guy Yifrach, said in a statement Wednesday. The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority swiftly slammed the move. "This undermines the chances of implementing the two-state solution, establishing a Palestinian state on the ground, and fragments its geographic and demographic unity," the PA's foreign ministry said in a statement. It added the move would entrench "division of the occupied West Bank into isolated areas and cantons that are disconnected from one another, turning them into something akin to real prisons, where movement is only possible through Israeli checkpoints and under the terror of armed settler militias". All of Israel's settlements in the West Bank, occupied since 1967, are considered illegal under international law, regardless of whether they have Israeli planning permission. Israel heavily restricts the movement of West Bank Palestinians, who must obtain permits from authorities to travel through checkpoints to cross into east Jerusalem or Israel. King Abdullah II of Jordan on Wednesday also affirmed his country's rejection of the E1 project, saying "the two-state solution is the only way to achieve a just and comprehensive peace". - 'Bury' Palestinian statehood - Violence in the West Bank has soared since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war. Since then, Israeli troops and settlers have killed at least 971 Palestinians in the West Bank, including many militants, according to health ministry figures. Over the same period, at least 36 Israelis, including security forces, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations, according to official figures. UN chief Antonio Guterres warned last week that constructing Israeli homes in the E1 area would "put an end to" hopes for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at Ir Amim, an Israeli NGO focusing on Jerusalem within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, also condemned the move. "Today's approval demonstrates how determined Israel is in pursuing what Minister Smotrich has described as a strategic programme to bury the possibility of a Palestinian state and to effectively annex the West Bank," he said. "This is a conscious Israeli choice to implement an apartheid regime," he added, calling on the international community to take urgent and effective measures against the move. Far-right Israeli ministers have in recent months openly called for Israel's annexation of the territory. Israeli NGO Peace Now, which monitors settlement activity in the West Bank, said last week that infrastructure work in E1 could begin within a few months, and housing construction within about a year. Excluding east Jerusalem, the West Bank is home to around three million Palestinians, as well as about 500,000 Israeli settlers. acc/smw Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
8 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Nasdaq slides again as AI jitters rattle tech investors
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Tech stocks are leading declines on Wall Street, with worries about AI spurring debates about its future. The Nasdaq Composite is down around 2.4% over the last two days, the worst two-day fall since April. The semiconductor index was down 1.5%, while the information technology sector was the second biggest decliner in the S&P 500, dropping 1.1% on Wednesday. Market participants attributed the selloff to a range of factors including a technical pullback after driving much of the stock market's recovery in the weeks after April 2nd "Liberation Day." Analysts also cited deepening concerns of government interference with companies, as the Trump administration looked into taking equity stakes in chip companies such as Intel in exchange for grants under the CHIPS Act. COMMENTS: ART HOGAN, MARKET STRATEGIST, B. RILEY WEALTH MANAGEMENT, BOSTON: "Technology in general is up 40% from its April lows, and the group clearly got ahead of itself. Also, if there's anything to the market consensus that we'll see a Fed rate cut, then there will be room for other things to work as well – and there are 493 other stocks in the S&P 500 that are lagging the Mag 7 right now. So I think there's a bit of a rotation." "I don't know how long it will last, but if it does keep going, well, August and September (are) the weak period seasonally in which it could do so. Also, there are some people who are beginning to question the pace at which we need to be chasing AI capital spending. If you put all this together: when technology stocks take a breather, this is what it looks like. Nvidia and other blue chips in the group are seeing relatively steady drawdowns, but things on the speculative edge are clearly seeing more selling pressure. Palantir has gone from trading at 200 times sales to 150 times its sales, for instance." MICHAEL ASHLEY SCHULMAN, CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER, RUNNING POINT, EL SEGUNDO, CALIFORNIA: "Tuesday' s U.S. technology stock swoon and its continuation today looks like multiple compression meeting a little margin math, but the timing makes it hard to ignore the new elephant in the server room. Names that had been sprinting on AI dreams pulled back hard, with Nvidia, AMD, and Palantir Technologies among the drags." "DeepSeek's update landed on Tuesday represents a serious cocktail of capability and availability and traders well remember the original harsh tech-market pullback DeepSeek caused when it was first broadly recognized in January of this year." BRIAN JACOBSEN, CHIEF ECONOMIST, ANNEX WEALTH MANAGEMENT, BROOKFIELD, WISCONSIN: "When you go from rally to rout, it shows how vulnerable the names were to even a scent of bad news. It could have been (Sam)Altman's valuation warning and then Meta restructuring its AI division threw fuel on the fire." PHIL BLANCATO, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, LADENBURG THALMANN ASSET MANAGEMENT, NEW YORK: "It's much more about profit-taking and temporary rebalancing here. If you get a Federal Reserve cut or a mention of it on Friday, this will reverse pretty quickly, but this is a lot to do with names pushed up to really lofty levels and profit taking across the board." SETH HICKLE, PORTFOLIO MANAGER, MINDSET WEALTH MANAGEMENT, INDIANAPOLIS: "I think we are starting to see a little bit of rotation. It's always healthy to see a little bit of a pullback to that way, the markets can kind of get re-oriented." "To me, tech was overbought. Maybe it was justified, but it could have been kind of a buy on the rumor, sell it on the news type of thing where we had tech runup into earnings. We had really good earnings, and now it's kind of natural for the market just to sell some of that good news." "I wouldn't be surprised if we see a little bit of rotation into some smaller cap or into healthcare names, or consumer staples. And to me, that's kind of a healthy rotation. But honestly, I don't believe it will be a longer-term trend. It'll probably be a shorter-term trend. I think we'll see money flow back into tech in the next couple months." STEVE SOSNICK, CHIEF STRATEGIST, INTERACTIVE BROKERS, CONNECTICUT "The tech-led selloff that we saw yesterday resumed this morning. That said, dip buyers stepped in around 11am EDT and we've now recovered about half our losses. It's somewhat inevitable to expect them to arrive promptly, though it did take a bit longer than usual." "I believe that some of the early declines are related to profit-taking and risk squaring ahead of (Fed Chair Jerome)Powell's speech on Friday. That is merely rotation and relatively benign, though it gets magnified because of megacap tech stocks' heavy weighting in key indices. But some of the ferocity of the early drop was related to the President's calls for Lisa Cook's resignation." "Note that futures broke through their pre-market lows shortly after he posted on Truth Social. Markets were not perturbed that there are inquiries into the propriety of her personal mortgage applications. She gets a presumption of innocence until proven guilty, like any other person. But when the President weighed in even before the process began, then it raised the specter of politicization. That put markets on the wrong foot early, and negative momentum ruled again – at least for a couple of hours." ADAM SARHAN, CHIEF EXECUTIVE, 50 PARK INVESTMENTS, NEW YORK: "To see a little pullback here after a big move up is perfectly normal and healthy. If the selling gets worse then you'll see a rotation out of tech and into undervalued areas of the market like biotech stocks or healthcare stocks or small cap stocks because those areas have not participated this year." 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Yahoo
8 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Norway soccer federation says it will donate profits from Israel game to humanitarian work in Gaza
GENEVA (AP) — Norway's soccer federation says it 'cannot remain indifferent' to humanitarian suffering in Gaza and will donate any profits from an upcoming World Cup qualifying game against Israel to aid work there. Norway plays Israel in Oslo on Oct. 11. 'Neither we nor other organizations can remain indifferent to the humanitarian suffering and disproportionate attacks that the civilian population in Gaza has been subjected to for a long time,' Norwegian Football Federation President Lise Klaveness said in a statement Tuesday. 'We want to donate the proceeds to a humanitarian organization that saves lives in Gaza every day and provides active emergency aid on the ground,' she said. It wasn't immediately clear how much the Norwegian federation expected to earn through ticket sales for the match, which begin next week. The Israeli soccer federation responded to the move on Wednesday by urging its Norwegian counterpart also to condemn the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks and hostage-taking by Hamas. In a statement first published by British daily The Telegraph, the Israeli federation also called on the Norwegians to 'make sure that the money is not transferred to terrorist organizations or to whale hunting,' referring to an issue Norway has faced global criticism for. The Norwegian federation said it is working with UEFA and local police on security arrangements for the Oct. 11 game. Extra security is expected to limit capacity by up to 3,000 tickets, the federation said. Ullevaal Stadium typically has crowds of 26,000 for national-team games. Israel has been unable to host games in international competitions for security reasons since October 2023. It staged its 'home' qualifying game against Norway in Hungary. Norway won that game 4-2 in March. Norway currently tops the five-nation qualifying group ahead of Israel. ___ AP soccer:
