SpaceX Seeks Return of Debris After Mexico Pollution Complaint
Elon Musk's SpaceX rejected allegations from Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum that debris in northern Mexico from rocket launches in Texas was dangerous.
'As previously stated, there are no hazards to the surrounding area,' said SpaceX in a post on X. 'SpaceX looks forward to working with the Mexican government and local authorities for the return of the debris as soon as possible.'
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Yahoo
32 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Mexico Steps In to Run Banks Tarred by US Drug Accusations
(Bloomberg) -- Mexico's bank regulator stepped in to temporarily run three financial firms on Thursday, an extraordinary measure aimed at protecting customers following money-laundering accusations by US authorities the day before. Philadelphia Transit System Votes to Cut Service by 45%, Hike Fares US Renters Face Storm of Rising Costs Squeezed by Crowds, the Roads of Central Park Are Being Reimagined Mapping the Architectural History of New York's Chinatown US State Budget Wounds Intensify From Trump, DOGE Policy Shifts The claims that the firms were potentially facilitating drug cartels' money laundering sent shock waves through a country scarred by banking scandals and raised questions about whether more institutions could become targets of Washington. Mexico's banking lobby rushed to say the interventions wouldn't impact the country's financial system. The National Banking and Securities Commission, or CNBV, said in a statement Thursday that it was replacing management at the CIBanco SA and Intercam Banco SA 'in order to safeguard the rights of these institutions' savers and clients, given the potential implications for these banks of the measures announced by the United States Department of the Treasury.' CIBanco said in a statement that it would cooperate with the intervention and assured clients that their funds were safe under Mexican law. 'We will collaborate at all times with regulatory authorities in both Mexico and the United States, within the legal framework governing financial institutions, to address any potential concerns identified by the CNBV and FinCEN,' CIBanco said, referring to the US Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Intercam didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, but had denied the accusations on Wednesday. Late Thursday, Mexico said it was also using a separate law to take over management at Vector Casa de Bolsa SA, a brokerage without deposits. Vector representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment. FinCEN slapped CIBanco, Intercam and Vector with orders that will prohibit certain fund transmissions with US entities. The orders take effect 21 days following publication in the US Federal Register. The register's website does not yet include publication of the orders. The regulator's move comes amid risks that clients could be spooked by the allegations even as President Claudia Sheinbaum responded defiantly to the US measures, arguing she's seen no evidence to support the designations. Mexicans have seen their fair share of banking scandals, from failures tied to related-party loans in the 1990s to HSBC Holdings Plc's admission to anti-money laundering and sanctions violations that facilitated the laundering of at least $881 million in drug proceeds. The news of the US accusations snowballed with Attorney General Pam Bondi's comments before senators putting Mexico on the list with Russia, China and Iran as US adversaries. Meanwhile, Mexico's senate on Wednesday approved a new anti-money laundering law. The Asociacion de Bancos de Mexico, or ABM, said the bank interventions wouldn't impact the stability of the country's banking system. 'The announced intervention seeks to create an environment of certainty that will allow institutions to operate normally for the time required to ensure that they meet regulatory standards,' ABM said in a statement. Investors also seemed little concerned the US measures poised a major risk to Mexico, with the peso currency posting its fourth day of gains. With Mexico's economic fundamentals still intact, long-term investors are not worried by the news, Karobaar Capital's Chief Investment Officer Haris Khurshid said, even if bank stocks could see some pressure. 'This is a serious reputational hit for Mexico's banking system, even if the fundamentals remain stable,' he said. 'The real risk is contagion, not just client outflows, but broader pressure on cross-border capital flows and compliance costs.' While the three firms tagged by the US are small, they are all well-known for foreign exchange operations and overseas branches that invest the wealth of Mexicans. Vector was founded by a key ally of former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Intercam is known for its foreign-exchange traded funds. CIBanco has a nightly segment on Milenio TV explaining market moves. Manuel Somoza, a CIBanco executive, had to abandon his routine TV slot to defend his bank. He said CIBanco had not been contacted by US authorities prior to the announcement and was open to clearing up any concerns immediately. Somoza said he had been on the phone with clients throughout the afternoon, assuring them their investments were safe. 'Rumors hurt you more than formal accusations,' he said. 'That's why we want them to conduct the investigation as quickly as possible.' (Updates with Vector intervention in paragraphs one, six and seven as well as Pam Bondi comments in paragraph 11 and an anti-money laundering bill in paragraph 12.) How to Steal a House America's Top Consumer-Sentiment Economist Is Worried Inside Gap's Last-Ditch, Tariff-Addled Turnaround Push Apple Test-Drives Big-Screen Movie Strategy With F1 Luxury Counterfeiters Keep Outsmarting the Makers of $10,000 Handbags ©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
The clock's ticking on codifying DOGE cuts into law
Congress has until July 18 to pass a $9.4 billion DOGE cuts package. That includes cuts to foreign aid and public broadcasting. It's running into resistance from GOP senators. With just over three weeks to go before a critical deadline, the push to codify DOGE cuts is hitting resistance on Capitol Hill. Several GOP senators sound skeptical about the $9.4 billion in cuts to foreign aid and public broadcasting funding that the Trump administration is asking Congress to approve, raising the prospect of a high-profile setback for the DOGE project just weeks after Elon Musk and President Donald Trump's public feud. The House narrowly approved the cuts, in part identified by Musk and the White House DOGE Office, earlier this month. The administration's troubles were evident at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Wednesday. Lawmakers in both parties highlighted the potential negative impacts of clawing back the funding as they heard testimony from Russell Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. "We have Native American radio stations in South Dakota. They get their funding through NPR, 90-some percent of what they use," Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota said at the hearing. "They will not continue to exist if we don't find a way to take care of their needs." Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the committee chair, also raised concerns about the $1.1 billion in public broadcasting cuts. Another moderate Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, has previously said that she's opposed to the cuts because rural Alaskan communities depend on the funding. Several GOP lawmakers are also concerned about the $8.3 billion in foreign aid cuts. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former Senate GOP leader, broadly criticized DOGE efforts to cut wasteful foreign aid spending during his remarks at the hearing. "There's plenty of absolute nonsense masquerading as American aid that shouldn't receive another bit of taxpayer funding," McConnell said. "But the administration's attempt to root it out has been unnecessarily chaotic." Several of them have raised concerns in particular about cuts to PEPFAR, a global program to combat and treat HIV/AIDS, though the administration has insisted that life-saving programs will continue to receive funding. Democratic senators are expected to unanimously oppose the cuts, just as their counterparts did in the House. With the Senate divided 53-47, that means Republicans can only afford to lose three votes. The administration is using a process known as "rescission" to pursue the cuts, which allows the White House to ask Congress to claw back money it has already approved. The process has not been successfully used in over two decades, and the Senate rejected a rescission request in 2018, during Trump's first term. Lawmakers must approve the cuts within 45 days of the request — July 18 — or Trump is required by law to spend the money. The administration has said that this could be the first of several rescission requests. Democrats have argued that the prospect of constant rescissions threatens to undermine the bipartisan government funding process, where both parties agree to provisions in funding bills that they may not support in order to get enough votes to clear the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate. Rescissions only require 51 votes in the Senate, raising the prospect that Republicans, led by the White House, could unilaterally strip out Democratic priorities after funding bills are passed. At least one Republican senator appeared to be listening to those arguments on Thursday. "My biggest concern is that the appropriations process work, and that Republicans and Democrats agree that the process will end up in a negotiated settlement," Rounds said. "If we get to the point where the Democrats look at this and say, 'We can put it in the bill, but they're not going to fund it, or they're not going to use it,' then there's no reason for them to work with us to get to 60 votes." Rounds said that he would "try to negotiate" with the administration about preserving public broadcasting funding, while Collins told reporters after the hearing that she wanted to see "fundamental changes" to the bill and was working on an amended version. If the Senate passes an amended version of the bill, the House would have to pass the measure again before the July 18 deadline. Read the original article on Business Insider
Washington Post
2 hours ago
- Washington Post
Family files for release in lawsuit considered first involving children challenging arrests at court
A mother and her two young kids are fighting for their release from a Texas immigration detention center in what is believed to be the first lawsuit involving children challenging the Trump administration's policy on immigrant arrests at courthouses. The lawsuit filed Tuesday argues that the family's arrests after fleeing Honduras and entering the U.S. legally using a Biden-era appointment app violate the family's Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizure and their Fifth Amendment right to due process. 'The big picture is that the executive branch cannot seize people, arrest people, detain people indefinitely when they are complying with exactly what our government has required of them,' said Columbia Law School professor Elora Mukherjee, one of the lawyers representing the family. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment. Starting in May, the country has seen large-scale arrests in which asylum-seekers appearing at routine court hearings have been arrested outside courtrooms as part of the White House's mass deportation effort. In many cases, a judge will grant a government lawyer's request to dismiss deportation proceedings and then U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers will arrest the person and place them on 'expedited removal,' a fast track to deportation. Mukherjee said this is the first lawsuit filed on behalf of children to challenge the ICE courthouse arrest policy. There have been other similar lawsuits, such as in New York, where a federal judge ruled earlier this month that federal immigration authorities can't make civil arrests at the state's courthouses or arrest anyone going there for a proceeding. The Texas lawsuit was filed using initials for the children and 'Ms. Z' for the mother. Their identities have not been released because of concerns for the family's safety. As the family has been held for a month in the Dilley Immigration Processing Center , the mother has watched her 6-year-old son's health decline, Mukherjee said. He recently underwent chemotherapy treatment for leukemia and because of his arrest missed his check-in doctor's appointment, Mukherjee said. In the weeks since, he has lost his appetite. 'He's easily bruising. He has bone pain. He looks pale,' Mukherjee said. 'His mom is terrified that these are symptoms that his leukemia situation might be deteriorating.' The mother, son and 9-year-old daughter fled Honduras in October 2024 due to death threats, according to the lawsuit. They entered the U.S. using the CBP One app and were paroled into the country by the Department of Homeland Security, which determined they didn't pose a danger to the community, Mukherjee said. They were told to appear at a Los Angeles immigration court May 29. President Donald Trump ended CBP One for new entrants on his first day in office after more than 900,000 people had been allowed in the country using the app since it was expanded to include migrants in January 2023. During the family's hearing, the mother tried to explain to the judge that they wished to continue their cases for asylum, Mukherjee said. Homeland Security moved to dismiss their cases, and the judge immediately granted that motion. When they stepped out of the courtroom, they found men in civilian clothing believed to be ICE agents who arrested the family, Mukherjee said. They were transported to an immigrant processing center in Los Angeles, where they spent about 11 hours and were each only given an apple, a small packet of cookies, a juice box and water. At one point, an officer near the boy lifted his shirt, revealing his gun. The boy urinated on himself and was left in wet clothing until the next morning, Mukherjee said. They were later taken to the processing center, where they have been held ever since. 'The family is suffering in this immigration detention center,' she said. 'The kids are crying every night. They're praying to God for their release from this detention center.' Their lawyers have filed an appeal of the immigration judge's May decision, but they're at risk of being deported within days because the government says they are subjected to expedited removal, Mukherjee said. The arrests of the family were illegal and unjustified, said Kate Gibson Kumar, an attorney for the Texas Civil Rights project who is also representing the family. She said the government had already decided when they first entered the country that the family didn't need to be detained. 'The essential question in our case is, when you have these families who are doing everything right, especially with young children, should there be some protection there?' Gibson Kumar said. 'We say 'yes.'' ___ Associated Press reporter Nadia Lathan in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.
