Saudi stock market closes with 5-year record loss after US tariffs
The Saudi stock exchange was down 6.78 per cent on Sunday, official data showed, after sweeping trade tariffs announced by US President Donald Trump sent global markets tumbling.
The state-run Al Ekhbariya television reported online that "the Saudi stock index closed trading down (nearly) 7 per cent, losing more than 800 points", calling it "the largest daily loss in five years" since the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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ARN News Center
41 minutes ago
- ARN News Center
Gamers line up for Nintendo Switch 2 on launch day
Gaming fans queued up for the launch of Nintendo's Switch 2 on Thursday amid pent-up demand for the more powerful next-generation gaming device. "The level of demand seems to be sky-high," said Serkan Toto, founder of the Kantan Games consultancy. In the Ikebukuro shopping district of Tokyo, dozens of successful applicants to a sales lottery by electronics retailer Bic Camera lined up before the store opened to collect their devices. "I feel like I'm going to cry," Yumi Ohi, a 30-year-old delivery contractor, told Reuters. Ohi had missed out in other lotteries and had come from Saitama prefecture, adjacent to Tokyo, to receive her Switch 2. Nintendo has sold 152 million Switch home-portable devices since launching in 2017. It became a games juggernaut with titles, including two The Legend of Zelda titles and COVID-19 pandemic breakout hit Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The Switch 2 bears many similarities with its predecessor but offers a larger screen and improved graphics and debuts with titles including Mario Kart World. "The much larger audience of Switch users should translate to stronger adoption in the opening part of its lifecycle," said Piers Harding-Rolls, an analyst at Ampere Analysis. "Nintendo is better prepared this time around" to deal with the high demand, he said. The launch of the $499.99 Switch 2 is a test of Nintendo's supply chain management during US President Donald Trump's trade war. Nintendo last month forecast sales of 15 million Switch 2 units during the current financial year, as well as 4.5 million Switch units. President Shuntaro Furukawa said Nintendo will strengthen production capacity to respond to strong demand and focus on sales promotion in an effort to exceed the forecast. "Given it's a special occasion, I wanted to buy (the Switch 2) right away on its release date," said Shinichi Sekiguchi, a hotel receptionist in his thirties. Nintendo said it received 2.2 million applications for its Switch 2 sales lottery on its My Nintendo Store in Japan. Pre-orders at Target sold out in less than two hours. "You are looking at weeks or months until you can walk into a store and buy a Switch 2," said Toto of Kantan Games. Investor expectations for the new device are similarly lofty. Nintendo's shares, which closed down 2 per cent in Tokyo, have gained 28 per cent this year. Concerns include whether momentum for the Switch 2 will be sustained after hardcore gamers have upgraded. "The volume of first-party games on offer at launch isn't as strong as it could be, so some more casual users may wait and see how the games available build over the next one to two years before making the leap," said Ampere's Harding-Rolls. Ampere forecasts Switch 2 sales to exceed 100 million units in 2030. Mario Kart World has a US sticker price of $79.99, generating debate over the price of games. Nintendo is also attracting third-party titles to the system. "I've been around since the era of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and games from (that period) were expensive too so I think it's somewhat within the acceptable range," said Akitomo Takahashi, a salesman in his forties.
Khaleej Times
2 hours ago
- Khaleej Times
Trump and Xi speak as trade worries mount, China says
U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke on Thursday in a phone call intended to hash out differences on tariffs that have roiled the global economy, according to China's embassy in Washington. The talks were at Trump's request, China said, without providing further details about the leaders' conversation. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The highly anticipated call comes amid accusations between Washington and Beijing in recent weeks over critical minerals in a dispute that threatens to tear up a fragile truce in the trade war between the two biggest economies. The countries struck a 90-day deal on May 12 to roll back some of the triple-digit, tit-for-tat tariffs they had placed on each other since Trump's January inauguration. Though stocks rallied, the temporary deal did not address broader concerns that strain the bilateral relationship, from the illicit fentanyl trade to the status of democratically governed Taiwan and U.S. complaints about China's state-dominated, export-driven economic model. On Thursday, U.S. stocks ticked higher initially but were little changed after news of the call. Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has repeatedly threatened an array of punitive measures on trading partners, only to revoke some of them at the last minute. The on-again, off-again approach has baffled world leaders and spooked business executives, who say the uncertainty has made it difficult to forecast market conditions. China's decision in April to suspend exports of a wide range of critical minerals and magnets continues to disrupt supplies needed by automakers, computer chip manufacturers and military contractors around the world. Beijing sees mineral exports as a source of leverage - halting those exports could put domestic political pressure on the Republican U.S. president if economic growth sags because companies cannot produce mineral-powered products. The 90-day deal to roll back tariffs and trade restrictions is tenuous. Trump has accused China of violating the agreement and has ordered curbs on chip design software and other shipments to China, while also doubling steel and aluminium tariffs to 50%. Beijing rejected the claim and threatened counter-measures. In recent years, the United States has identified China as its top geopolitical rival and the only country in the world able to challenge the U.S. economically and militarily. Despite this and repeated trade threats and tariff announcements, Trump has spoken admiringly of Xi, including of the Chinese leader's toughness and ability to stay in power without the term limits imposed on U.S. presidents. Trump has long pushed for a call or a meeting with Xi, but China has rejected that as not in keeping with its traditional approach of working out agreement details before the leaders talk. The U.S. president and his aides see leader-to-leader talks as vital to sort through log-jams that have vexed lower-level officials in difficult negotiations. It's not clear when the two men last spoke. Both sides said they spoke on Jan. 17, days before Trump's inauguration and Trump has repeatedly said that he had spoken to Xi since taking office on Jan. 20. He has declined to say when any call took place or to give details of their conversation. China had said that the two leaders had not had any recent phone calls. The talks are being closely watched by investors worried that a chaotic trade war could cut into corporate earnings and disrupt supply chains in the key months before the Christmas holiday shopping season. Trump's tariffs are also the subject of ongoing litigation in U.S. courts. Trump has met Xi on several occasions, including exchange visits in 2017, but they have not met face to face since 2019 talks in Osaka, Japan. Xi last travelled to the U.S. in November 2023, for a summit with then-President Joe Biden, resulting in agreements to resume military-to-military communications and curb fentanyl production.
The National
2 hours ago
- The National
Elon Musk's departure proves no one lasts long in the spotlight beside Donald Trump
Last year, the world's richest man, Elon Musk, lavished hundreds of millions of dollars on the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald Trump, in a transparent effort to translate his vast wealth into personal political power. After Mr Trump returned to the White House, with Mr Musk in tow, it seemed that was indeed happening. Mr Musk was such a regular fixture in the White House that there was even silly talk of a co-presidency. But now the billionaire is gone, unlikely ever to return to the Washington halls of power. In truth, Mr Musk's tenure at the " Department of Government Efficiency" could have been better at its purported tax-cutting mission. Its goal, Mr Musk boasted in the lead-up to the election, was to save the federal government $2 trillion, though he later revised that figure to $1tn. Yet despite pulling out chainsaws on stage and gloating over the mass sackings of eminent, respectable and dedicated public servants, not to mention the gutting of crucial public and human service programmes, he barely made a dent in the federal budget. The most charitable calculation of the actual 'savings' incurred to date is around $175 billion, though Doge has published evidence purported to substantiate less than half of this. Mr Musk seems especially proud of the de facto shuttering of the US Agency for International Development and the elimination of many of its key humanitarian programmes. Although Secretary of State Marco Rubio spent much of last week denying that anyone has died because of the elimination of these crucial programmes, some experts think that the only real question is only whether these deaths, in only a few weeks, must be counted in the thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands. Journalists and Democratic lawmakers have pointed out specific cases, such as individually named orphaned children in rural Africa who were depending for survival on HIV medicine that was suddenly yanked away by the world's richest man. They're now verifiably and needlessly dead. Despite pulling out chainsaws on stage and gloating over the mass sackings of public servants, Mr Musk barely made a dent in the federal budget There are many other examples. But, as one Republican Senator, Joni Ernst, told constituents worried about their own health care last week: "Well, we are all going to die." That's as true of an impoverished African orphan as anyone else, from the point of view of a millionaire US senator or billionaire venture capitalist. Apart from the decimation of programmes and mass dismissal of public servants, Mr Musk's tenure provided the public with a close look at his lifestyle. It is inspiring to those who think people ought to have more children. He has been energetically promoting large families, in both theory and in practice. He has denied reports from The New York Times that he regularly consumed illegal drugs and amphetamines like Adderall. It might be unfair to speculate that as he was reshaping US government, Mr Musk was frequently in an altered state of consciousness. But we do know that Mr Musk and his crew had, with minimal oversight, access to the most sensitive data on not just public employees and the government, but taxpayers and the general public. The fate of this data is unknown. An even more troubling reality is that his activities were unsupervised, unconfirmed and unvetted. He had no security clearance, or even a security clearance investigation. Mr Musk's Washington adventure illustrates exactly why the founders of the American republic insisted the Senate needed to confirm all senior appointees. This has become an increasingly marginalised procedure, but the wisdom of this check has been amply illustrated by the Musk-Trump transactional relationship. While the two still praise each other, the actual chasm between them grows ever wider. Mr Musk has been increasingly vocal in condemning the " big, beautiful budget bill" that the Republican-dominated Senate is trying to pass at Mr Trump's behest. The billionaire says it is the antithesis of everything he was trying to do, since it may greatly increase the federal budget. He could never say any such thing if he were still connected to the White House. Mr Trump increasingly had little time for his billionaire former buddy. You could see it coming from the very outset. The administration could not contain two alpha males, and Washington was never going to be big enough for both of them. The only surprise is that Mr Musk lasted as long as he did. No one lasts too long in the spotlight next to Mr Trump.
