CNN asks Alaska senator if she regrets voting for Trump's ‘big, beautiful bill'
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Yahoo
25 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Asian shares rise, dollar strengthens ahead of US earnings; JGB yields surge
By Rocky Swift TOKYO (Reuters) -Asian shares climbed and the dollar held gains on Tuesday as trade talks remained in the spotlight in a week that will see key readings on U.S. inflation and bank earnings. Oil prices edged lower after U.S. President Donald Trump issued a 50-day deadline for Russia to end the war in Ukraine to avoid energy sanctions. Japanese government bonds yields jumped to multi-decade high as a critical upper house election neared. Trump signalled he was open to discussions on tariffs after his weekend threat to impose 30% duties on the European Union and Mexico from August 1. Japan is reportedly trying to schedule high-level talks with the U.S. this Friday. Market reaction to the tariff uncertainty has been rather benign, making earnings in the United States this week all the more important for cues, said National Australia Bank strategist Rodrigo Catril. "It'll be interesting to see what companies are saying, in particular in terms of the forward-looking outlook, in terms of where they see the next quarter, how they see their margins, are they going to get squeezed, or are they planning to pass it on," Catril said in a NAB podcast. "I think that this idea of complacency is also because we're not quite sure how this whole thing is going to play out," he added. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was up 0.4%, after U.S. stocks ended the previous session with meagre gains. Japan's Nikkei gauge added 0.2%. The EU accused the U.S. of resisting efforts to strike a trade deal and warned of countermeasures if no agreement is reached. Trump said he was open to further discussions with the EU and other trading partners. Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba is arranging to meet U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in Tokyo on Friday, the Yomiuri newspaper reported, ahead of an August 1 deadline before 25% tariffs are due to take effect. Ishiba also has an election to contend with on Sunday, with polls showing his ruling coalition may lose their majority in the upper house to political opponents who are advocating for expansive spending. The benchmark 10-year JGB yield jumped to 1.595%, highest since October 2008, while the 30-year yield hit an all-time high of 3.195%. Meanwhile, the U.S. earnings season is set to begin on Tuesday, with second-quarter reports from major banks. S&P 500 profits are expected to rise 5.8% year-over-year, according to LSEG data. The outlook has dimmed sharply since the early April forecast of 10.2% growth, before Trump launched his trade war. Investors are also waiting for U.S. consumer price data for June, due on Tuesday, and will monitor for any upward pressure on prices from tariffs. The dollar was little changed at 147.71 yen after touching a three-week high. The euro was flat at $1.1672. U.S. crude dipped 0.3% to $66.80 a barrel. Trump announced new weapons shipments for Ukraine on Monday, and threatened sanctions on buyers of Russian exports unless Moscow agrees to a peace deal in 50 days. Gold inched up 0.1% at $3,348.35 per ounce, while spot silver gained 0.1% to $38.15 per ounce, after hitting its highest level since September 2011 in the previous session. In early trades, the pan-region Euro Stoxx 50 futures were up 0.1%, German DAX futures were up 0.1%, and FTSE futures were up 0.2%. U.S. stock futures, the S&P 500 e-minis, were down 0.1%. Sign in to access your portfolio
Atlantic
26 minutes ago
- Atlantic
The Trump Administration Is About to Incinerate 500 Tons of Emergency Food
Five months into its unprecedented dismantling of foreign-aid programs, the Trump administration has given the order to incinerate food instead of sending it to people abroad who need it. Nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food—enough to feed about 1.5 million children for a week—are set to expire tomorrow, according to current and former government employees with direct knowledge of the rations. Within weeks, two of those sources told me, the food, meant for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, will be ash. (The sources I spoke with for this story requested anonymity for fear of professional repercussions.) Sometime near the end of the Biden administration, USAID spent about $800,000 on the high-energy biscuits, one current and one former employee at the agency told me. The biscuits, which cram in the nutritional needs of a child under 5, are a stopgap measure, often used in scenarios where people have lost their homes in a natural disaster or fled a war faster than aid groups could set up a kitchen to receive them. They were stored in a Dubai warehouse and intended to go to the children this year. Since January, when the Trump administration issued an executive order that halted virtually all American foreign assistance, federal workers have sent the new political leaders of USAID repeated requests to ship the biscuits while they were useful, according to the two USAID employees. USAID bought the biscuits intending to have the World Food Programme distribute them, and under previous circumstances, career staff could have handed off the biscuits to the United Nations agency on their own. But since Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency disbanded USAID and the State Department subsumed the agency, no money or aid items can move without the approval of the new heads of American foreign assistance, several current and former USAID employees told me. From January to mid-April, the responsibility rested with Pete Marocco, who worked across multiple agencies during the first Trump administration; then it passed to Jeremy Lewin, a law-school graduate in his 20s who was originally installed by DOGE and now has appointments at both USAID and State. Two of the USAID employees told me that staffers who sent the memos requesting approval to move the food never got a response and did not know whether Marocco or Lewin ever received them. (The State Department did not answer my questions about why the food was never distributed.) In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told representatives on the House Appropriations Committee that he would ensure that food aid would reach its intended recipients before spoiling. But by then, the order to incinerate the biscuits (which I later reviewed) had already been sent. Rubio has insisted that the administration embraces America's responsibility to continue saving foreign lives, including through food aid. But in April, according to NPR, the U.S. government eliminated all humanitarian aid to Afghanistan and Yemen, where, the State Department said at the time, providing food risks benefiting terrorists. (The State Department has offered no similar justification for pulling aid to Pakistan.) Even if the administration was unwilling to send the biscuits to the originally intended countries, other places—Sudan, say, where war is fueling the world's worst famine in decades—could have benefited. Instead, the biscuits in the Dubai warehouse continue to approach their expiration date, after which their vitamin and fat content will begin to deteriorate rapidly. At this point, United Arab Emirates policy prevents the biscuits from even being repurposed as animal feed. Over the coming weeks, the food will be destroyed at a cost of $130,000 to American taxpayers (on top of the $800,000 used to purchase the biscuits), according to current and former federal aid workers I spoke with. One current USAID staffer told me he'd never seen anywhere near this many biscuits trashed over his decades working in American foreign aid. Sometimes food isn't stored properly in warehouses, or a flood or a terrorist group complicates deliveries; that might result in, at most, a few dozen tons of fortified foods being lost in a given year. But several of the aid workers I spoke with reiterated that they have never before seen the U.S. government simply give up on food that could have been put to good use. The emergency biscuits slated for destruction represent only a small fraction of America's typical annual investment in food aid. In fiscal year 2023, USAID purchased more than 1 million metric tons of food from U.S. producers. But the collapse of American foreign aid raises the stakes of every loss. Typically, the biscuits are the first thing that World Food Programme workers hand to Afghan families who are being forced out of Pakistan and back to their home country, which has been plagued by severe child malnutrition for years. Now the WFP can support only one of every 10 Afghans who are in urgent need of food assistance. The WFP projects that, globally, 58 million people are at risk for extreme hunger or starvation because this year, it lacks the money to feed them. Based on calculations from one of the current USAID employees I spoke with, the food marked for destruction could have met the nutritional needs of every child facing acute food insecurity in Gaza for a week. Despite the administration's repeated promises to continue food aid, and Rubio's testimony that he would not allow existing food to go to waste, even more food could soon expire. Hundreds of thousands of boxes of emergency food pastes, also already purchased, are currently collecting dust in American warehouses. According to USAID inventory lists from January, more than 60,000 metric tons of food—much of it grown in America, and all already purchased by the U.S. government—were then sitting in warehouses across the world. That included 36,000 pounds of peas, oil, and cereal, which were stored in Djibouti and intended for distribution in Sudan and other countries in the Horn of Africa. A former senior official at USAID's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance told me that, by the time she'd left her job earlier this month, very little of the food seemed to have moved; one of the current USAID employees I spoke with confirmed her impression, though he noted that, in recent weeks, small shipments have begun leaving the Djibouti warehouse. Such operations are more difficult for USAID to manage today than they were last year because many of the humanitarian workers and supply-chain experts who once coordinated the movement of American-grown food to hungry people around the world no longer have their jobs. Last month, the CEOs of the two American companies that make another kind of emergency food for malnourished children both told The New York Times that the government seemed unsure of how to ship the food it had already purchased. Nor, they told me, have they received any new orders. (A State Department spokesperson told me that the department had recently approved additional purchases, but both CEOs told me they have yet to receive the orders. The State Department has not responded to further questions about these purchases.) But even if the Trump administration decides tomorrow to buy more food aid—or simply distribute what the government already owns while the food is still useful—it may no longer have the capacity to make sure anyone receives it.
New York Times
32 minutes ago
- New York Times
Players' associations urge Congress to reject proposed bill granting NCAA antitrust exemption
Players' associations for the NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball, NHL and MLS issued a joint statement Monday urging Congress to reject proposed legislation that would grant the NCAA and its members an antitrust exemption to address NIL issues. The statement was in response to the Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements (SCORE) Act, introduced last week by members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. A markup on the bill is scheduled for Tuesday morning. Advertisement In their letter, the players' associations warned that an antitrust exemption would permit the NCAA and its members to 'collude to harm athletes.' 'Whatever progress the athletes have made has been a result of their use of the antitrust laws,' they wrote. 'The SCORE Act would take that weapon away from them.' The proposed legislation from seven Republican and two Democratic sponsors prevents athletes from obtaining employment status and mirrors many of the terms from the recent House vs. NCAA settlement. It would officially end most administrative restrictions on athletes' NIL compensation, but it allows schools and conferences to establish what is and isn't permissible. Should the federal legislation pass, it would override current state NIL laws, which vary from state to state. Earlier Monday, two members of Congress from the state of Washington, Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, and Republican Rep. Michael Baumgartner, issued a similar statement urging the House committee to delay the markup until there are significant changes. 'The bill appears to be a product of the richest conferences to cement into place the current power structure in college athletics that would leave only the wealthiest schools able to compete at the highest levels of college athletics,' the statement said. If you thought the dissolution of the Pac-12 was a heist, the SCORE Act is the National Championship of all heists. This legislation is a power grab by the two biggest conferences that will leave athletes, coaches, and small and mid-sized institutions behind. My letter with… — Sen. Maria Cantwell (@SenatorCantwell) July 14, 2025 All of the Power 5 conferences previously issued a statement endorsing the SCORE Act. 'In the absence of federal standards, student-athletes and schools have been forced to navigate a fractured regulatory framework for too long,' they wrote. 'Following the historic House settlement, this bill represents a very encouraging step toward delivering the national clarity and accountability that college athletics desperately needs.' Advertisement Last week, the NCAA said in a statement that it 'has made long overdue changes, mandating health and wellness benefits and ushering in a new system for Division I programs to provide up to 50 percent of athletic department revenue to student-athletes, but some of the most important changes can only come from Congress.' 'This bill reflects many student-athletes' priorities, and the NCAA is committed to working with Congress to build a bipartisan path forward that ensures the long-term success of college sports and the ongoing opportunities they provide to young people,' wrote Tim Buckley, the NCAA's senior vice president of external affairs. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey also praised the bill Monday. 'I think what's happening in college athletics is a nonpartisan issue, but using the typical nomenclature, to have members of both of our major political parties willing to step out and introduce the SCORE Act, is a positive step,' he said. The players' associations' letter noted that only two industries in the United States have antitrust law exemptions: railroads and Major League Baseball (partially). 'The NCAA should not have a blank check to impose (its) will on the financial future of over 500,000 college athletes,' they wrote. Justin Williams contributed to this story. (Photo of Capitol Building: Al Drago / Getty Images)
