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Wall Street Journal
14 minutes ago
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
Swiss Exports Slip as Frontrunning Fades, Strong Franc Hits Demand
Switzerland's exports fell in the second quarter as tariff frontrunning reversed and a strong franc likely squeezed demand. Exports decreased 5.3% to 70.1 billion Swiss francs ($87.53 billion) over the quarter, from 74.0 billion francs in the first quarter, Swiss finance-department figures showed Thursday. Exports to the U.S. were down nearly 30%, reversing a sharp increase the previous quarter, when firms rushed to get orders in ahead of the anticipated package of U.S. trade tariffs announced in April by President Trump.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
'Brace Yourself': Stephen Colbert Spots Trump Moment That Quickly 'Went Off The Rails'
'Late Show' host Stephen Colbert on Wednesday said President Donald Trump's event a day earlier 'went off the rails pretty darn quick.' Trump was supposed to discuss new investments in AI and energy, but then derailed himself with a long, strange ramble about his uncle, John Trump, who was a professor at MIT. The president boasted that his uncle was 'one of the great professors, 51 years, whatever, longest-serving professor in the history of MIT, three degrees in nuclear, chemical, and math.' 'Brace yourself,' Colbert warned his audience after playing the clip. 'None of that was true.' Trump's uncle was not the longest-serving professor at MIT. He had one degree, not three, and it was in electrical engineering not 'nuclear, chemical, and math.' Trump also said his uncle taught Ted Kaczynski, the 'Unabomber' terrorist who killed people via mail bombs. The president told a whole story about asking his uncle what kind of student Kaczynski was. His uncle, Trump claimed, told him that the future Unabomber was 'seriously good' and would correct the other students' work. 'None of that is true either,' Colbert said. Kaczynski went to Harvard, not MIT. 'Even more insane,' Colbert said, Trump's uncle died more than a decade before Kaczynski was ID'ed and arrested. 'So why on Earth would Trump have asked his uncle about him?' Colbert wondered, then broke out his impression of the president to envision how it might have happened. 'Hey, Uncle John, Uncle Professor Dr. John Trump, professor, sir, uncle. You know that random guy who isn't famous at all and lives in the woods and machines his own screws?' Colbert asked in his Trump voice. 'What was it like when you didn't teach him?' See more in his Wednesday night monologue:
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
ICE data shows less than 1% of deportees had murder convictions
President Trump campaigned on a vow to round up the "worst of the worst" offenders among the criminals who were living illegally inside the United States. But CBS News has obtained deportation data that indicates the Trump administration's deportation push has ensnared many undocumented immigrants without violent criminal records. Of the estimated 100,000 people who were deported between January 1 and June 24 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 70,583 were convicted criminals, according to an ICE document obtained by CBS News. However, the data also shows that most of the documented infractions were traffic or immigration offenses. The ICE document listed out raw data that was broken down by conviction, not by deportee. Some 2,355 of the convictions had to do with sex offenses, making up 1.8% of the total number of criminals who were deported. Another 1,628, or 1.2%, were for sexual assault. The number of homicide convictions totaled 729, or 0.58% of deportees, and the number of convicted kidnappers was 536, or 0.42%. About 10,738 convictions were for assault, or 15.2% of deportees, the data showed. ICE's public messaging about its deportation push has focused on undocumented immigrants with serious criminal records, highlighting deportees who were convicted of murder, sex offenses and other violent crimes. Another stated goal of the Trump administration was to remove those with ties to criminal organizations. The CBS News-obtained document shows that 3,256 of the more than 100,000 people removed, or 3.26%, were known or suspected gang members or terrorists. In response to a CBS News inquiry, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said ICE has now deported about 140,000 undocumented immigrants since Mr. Trump took office. She also added that 70% of those arrested by ICE were of "illegal aliens with criminal convictions or have pending criminal charges." McLaughlin declined to detail the nature of the convictions or criminal charges, or offer further specifics. Back on June 11, six Republican lawmakers who are members of the Congressional Hispanic Conference wrote to ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons to urge the Trump administration to prioritize the detention of violent offenders, convicted criminals and national security threats. ICE has now responded to that inquiry for the first time with figures of those deported since Jan. 1. The Republicans who signed the letter include the conference's chair, Rep. Tony Gonzalez of Texas, along with Reps. Monica De La Cruz of Texas, Nicole Malliotakis of New York, David Valadao of California, Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida and Gabe Evans of Colorado. ICE arrests have soared since Mr. Trump took office, averaging 1,200 per day in the first three weeks of June, according to internal figures previously reported by CBS News. White House adviser Stephen Miller has pushed the agency to aim for 3,000 arrests per day, a more-than-twofold increase that has led to pressure on ICE leadership. An increasingly large share of people held in ICE deteintion do not have criminal records, CBS News has previously reported. Around 40% of the agency's detainees since Mr. Trump took office had criminal convictions of some kind with 8% of them convicted of violent crimes. Mr. Trump and top administration officials have said their focus is on arresting and deporting people with serious criminal records. "The violent criminals in our country are the priority now," Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters last month. White House "border czar" Tom Homan says the administration's primary focus is on the "worst" offenders, but he has long said any undocumented immigrant could be subject to arrest. "If you're in the country illegally, you are not off the table," Homan said at an event in Texas this week. "We prioritize the worst, first. That makes sense. But it doesn't mean you prioritize this group and everybody else is good to go." Son of man who was violently detained by ICE reacts after release Mike Johnson breaks from Trump, calls on DOJ to release Epstein files 7.3 magnitude earthquake hits southern Alaska
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
'Brace Yourself': Stephen Colbert Spots Trump Moment That Quickly 'Went Off The Rails'
'Late Show' host Stephen Colbert on Wednesday said President Donald Trump's event a day earlier 'went off the rails pretty darn quick.' Trump was supposed to discuss new investments in AI and energy, but then derailed himself with a long, strange ramble about his uncle, John Trump, who was a professor at MIT. The president boasted that his uncle was 'one of the great professors, 51 years, whatever, longest-serving professor in the history of MIT, three degrees in nuclear, chemical, and math.' 'Brace yourself,' Colbert warned his audience after playing the clip. 'None of that was true.' Trump's uncle was not the longest-serving professor at MIT. He had one degree, not three, and it was in electrical engineering not 'nuclear, chemical, and math.' Trump also said his uncle taught Ted Kaczynski, the 'Unabomber' terrorist who killed people via mail bombs. The president told a whole story about asking his uncle what kind of student Kaczynski was. His uncle, Trump claimed, told him that the future Unabomber was 'seriously good' and would correct the other students' work. 'None of that is true either,' Colbert said. Kaczynski went to Harvard, not MIT. 'Even more insane,' Colbert said, Trump's uncle died more than a decade before Kaczynski was ID'ed and arrested. 'So why on Earth would Trump have asked his uncle about him?' Colbert wondered, then broke out his impression of the president to envision how it might have happened. 'Hey, Uncle John, Uncle Professor Dr. John Trump, professor, sir, uncle. You know that random guy who isn't famous at all and lives in the woods and machines his own screws?' Colbert asked in his Trump voice. 'What was it like when you didn't teach him?' See more in his Wednesday night monologue:
Times
2 hours ago
- Business
- Times
I could have made 185% on bitcoin. But I'm still happy I sold
It's quite rare in life that you get to witness what might have been. You will never know if you would have been promoted at the company that you left, how a relationship might have worked out if you had stuck with it, or whether studying for that master's degree would have improved your career trajectory. In the world of investing, though, you can see exactly how things would have turned out. It's easy to track the movements of the share price of a company or fund after you sell up — and either curse yourself for the rash decision or praise yourself for your investing know-how. As the price of bitcoin hit a new record high, this week has been one of those moments for me. I bought £500 worth of bitcoin back in September 2021. I had always been against cryptocurrencies, but was strong-armed into it by my husband (then my fiancé) who had convinced me that we should dabble in this new, exciting way to make money. His argument at the time was simple but effective: 'But what if the value just keeps going up?' I later sold at a slight loss, having decided to reinstate my membership of the Cryptocurrency Is For Fools Club. Since then, I have happily ignored all the fanfare that has surrounded bitcoin and other digital currencies such as President Trump's $TRUMP coin. But this week, which has been dubbed 'crypto week' by Republicans in the US, it has been impossible to block out the noise. The price of bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency, exceeded $122,000 (about £90,000) for the first time on Monday. The record high is predominantly down to a series of debates by US lawmakers about the regulation of digital assets such as bitcoin, which would lend them greater legitimacy and could boost their use. This comes amid Trump's desire to make America the 'crypto capital of the world'. Spurred on by the possibility that cryptocurrencies may be endorsed by the US government, the price of bitcoin has jumped 13 per cent in the past month. This, plus a hefty rise in its price since Trump was elected, means that my bitcoin holding would be worth £1,425 today — a return of 185 per cent. Since I bought bitcoin the S&P 500, the US's main stock market, has returned 40 per cent, and the FTSE 100, the UK equivalent, has returned 27 per cent. My stocks and shares portfolio is up about 26 per cent. While these figures made me choke on my breakfast, and momentarily rethink my stance on cryptocurrencies, I'm still happy that I sold up. There are four main reasons for this. First, I don't properly understand bitcoin or cryptocurrencies. I have my head around the basics (it's digital money that is not issued by a central bank, and there are a finite number of coins recorded on a central database, known as a blockchain) — but I don't have a grasp on how they, or the market, function — at least not to the same level as I do the stock market. • Are your savings too tied to US stocks? As Warren Buffett once said: 'Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing.' He avoided chasing any digital currency or new technology that he didn't understand, and if that strategy is good enough for the Oracle of Omaha, it's good enough for me. Then there's the fact that cryptocurrencies are highly volatile and speculative assets. Jason Hollands from the wealth manager Evelyn Partners said that unlike buying shares in a company, where you can seek to understand its strategy, assess its profits, dividends and outlook, it's anyone's guess as to what the fair value of bitcoin should be. 'It has no physical assets standing behind it, nor a yield attached,' he said. 'The price is ultimately down to what the next person is prepared to pay for it, and demand and supply can ebb and flow dramatically.' Cryptocurrency supporters will often point out that the stock market is not too different. Sentiment about a company or sector can drive share prices, and even moderately bad omens for a firm's future earnings can see a sharp sell-off, particularly in growth stocks whose share prices are often based on future potential earnings, such as many US-based technology stocks. • Your complete guide to crypto and bitcoin But as Laith Khalaf from the investment platform AJ Bell said: 'If the essay question is whether the global stock market will be higher in ten years' time than it is today, we can with a high degree of confidence say that it will be, based on historic performance. 'Over the next decade bitcoin may well continue to rise, but there is also a chance that it will lose all its value.' Cryptocurrency is often used to finance some murky activities, and although mention of this has died down, it is still a factor in my choosing not to buy it. The Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies, a research company, found evidence of criminal activity within the mining process for cryptocurrency (where computers are used to solve complex mathematical problems and are rewarded with new coins) and that some criminal networks were using mining facilities to launder funds. It said there was also evidence of cryptoassets being used for the funding of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. And then there is the question of what comes next. The momentous rise in bitcoin's price since it first looked like Trump could win the US election (it has roughly doubled in value since September) is proof that how investors feel about it can change at pace. If the US's pro-crypto policies are watered down, or Trump simply changes his mind, everything could change again. If I had bought my bitcoin in November 2021, I could been sitting on a loss of about 70 per cent a year later. As the past teaches us, a crypto sell-off can be brutal.
