USA

Wall Street stocks were back in free fall on Thursday.

Australia has declined China’s proposal to form an alliance against the United States’ tariffs, imposed by President Donald Trump’s administration. The decision comes as Washington escalates its trade war with Beijing, imposing a 10 per cent import tax on Australian goods and significantly higher tariffs on Chinese products – 125 per cent.

China’s ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, suggested that joint resistance is the only way to counter the US’ “hegemonic and bullying behavior.” He also said, “The international community… should firmly say no to unilateralism and protectionism.”

However, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stated that his country will prioritise its national interests, “speak for ourselves” and not align with China’s stance.

Defence Minister Richard Marles emphasised that Australia will not be “holding China’s hand” and instead focus on diversifying its trade relationships.

“We’re not about to make common cause with China, that’s not what’s going to happen here. I don’t think we’ll be holding China’s hand,” Marles told Australia’s Nine News. “We don’t want to see a trade war between America and China, to be clear, but our focus is on actually diversifying our trade,” he added.

Australia has expressed frustration over the tariffs but has opted not to retaliate. Instead, the country is seeking further negotiations with the White House. Xiao Qian argued that the US has “weaponised” trade issues, potentially sabotaging the international order and dragging the global economy into chaos. He emphasised the need for Australia and China to cooperate in safeguarding a fair and free trading environment.

Australia is actively exploring alternative export opportunities outside the US. The country aims to reduce its reliance on China and bolster economic resilience by diversifying trade with nations like Indonesia, India, the UK, and the UAE. “Eighty percent of trade does not involve the United States. There are opportunities for Australia and we intend to seize them”, Albanese said. Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell has recently met with counterparts from Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and India.
 

US President Donald Trump.

Wall Street shares fell sharply Thursday as a rally faded over persistent concerns about the economic fallout from President Donald Trump’s trade war despite his U-turn on steep new tariffs.

A larger-than-expected drop in US consumer inflation in March added to the pessimistic outlook, as it suggested that uncertainty over Trump’s tariff plans has already taken a toll on the world’s largest economy.

Investors in response sold off the dollar, which had already taken a hit from the trade war worries, on expectations inflation would resume pushing higher once tariffs bite.

That could force the Federal Reserve to again raise interest rates — even at the cost of hitting growth.

“Is inflation moving sustainably lower or did businesses and consumers pull in the reins as they brace for an economic slowdown?” said Bret Kenwell, US investment analyst at the eToro trading platform.

For Daniel Murray, an analyst at Swiss bank EFG, “The fear for the Fed — and likely also other central banks — is that tariffs both raise inflation and lower growth at the same time.”

Oil prices also tumbled on fears slowing growth would hit demand, while haven assets like gold — which soared 3.4 percent to a new record of $3,184 an ounce — and the Swiss franc benefitted from the search for safety.

Wall Street indices on Wednesday had posted their biggest one-day gains since 2008 when Trump announced the tariff pause late in the trading day, after his threats to impose import levies had sent stocks plummeting in recent sessions.

Asian and European markets in turn staged their own rallies at the opening Thursday, though the retreat on Wall Street took off some of the shine in the afternoon.

Trump’s shock decision to delay bigger levies on goods from scores of countries by 90 days drove the European Union to put its counter-tariffs on hold.

The trade war fears had also pummelled US Treasuries — normally considered the safest option in times of crisis — a sign of how nervous investors had become.

“The bottom line is that the tariff narrative still remains too volatile for comfort, and markets are searching for equilibrium in a sea of uncertainty,” said Fawad Razaqzada, a market analyst at StoneX.

Trump nonetheless kept a baseline 10 percent tariff intact and ramped up his trade war with Beijing by hiking duties on Chinese goods to 125 percent after facing strong retaliation.

But Chinese markets still benefitted from the relief rally on Thursday, also gaining support from optimism that Beijing would unveil fresh stimulus measures to support its economy.

Hong Kong rose more than two percent, a third day of gains after collapsing more than 13 percent on Monday, its worst trading day since the Asian financial crisis in 1997. 

“Crucially, we are currently still on course for a disorderly economic decoupling between the world’s two largest economies, with no immediate signs of either US or China backing down,” said Jim Reid, an analyst at Deutsche Bank. 

US Treasury yields have edged down after a successful auction of $38 billion in notes.

That eased pressure on the bond market, which had fanned worries that investors were losing confidence in the United States.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Hamas said Thursday that the announcement by President Emmanuel Macron that France could recognise a Palestinian state by June was an “important step”, after Israel’s foreign minister slammed the plan.

“We welcome the statements made by French President Emmanuel Macron regarding his country’s readiness to recognise the State of Palestine,” Hamas official Mahmud Mardawi told AFP.

He said the announcement was “an important step that, if implemented, would constitute a positive shift in the international position towards the legitimate national rights of our Palestinian people”.

On Wednesday, Macron said France plans to recognise a Palestinian state within months and could make the move at a UN conference in New York in June.

“We must move towards recognition, and we will do so in the coming months,” Macron, who this week visited Egypt, told France 5 television.

Mardawi said France’s move was important because it is a veto-wielding permanent member of the UN Security Council.

“France, as a country with political weight and a permanent member of the (UN) Security Council, has the ability to influence the course of fair solutions and push towards ending the occupation and achieving the aspirations of the Palestinian people,” Mardawi said.

He said those aspirations were “freedom, independence and the establishment of their state on their land, with Jerusalem as its capital.”

Palestinian minister of state for foreign affairs Varsen Aghabekian Shahin, who is based in the West Bank city of Ramallah, told AFP France’s recognition of Palestinian statehood “would be a step in the right direction in line with safeguarding the rights of the Palestinian people and the two-state solution”.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar denounced Macron’s announcement as a “prize for terror and a boost for Hamas”.

“These kind of actions will not bring peace, security and stability in our region closer — but the opposite: they only push them further away,” he said on X late on Wednesday.

Nearly 150 countries recognise a Palestinian state. In May 2024, Ireland, Norway and Spain announced recognition, followed by Slovenia in June, moves partly fuelled by anger at the high civilian death count in Israel’s devastating offensive in Gaza triggered by Hamas’s October 2023 attack.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Artificial intelligence giant OpenAI has filed counterclaims against multi-billionaire Elon Musk, accusing its former co-founder of waging a “relentless campaign” to damage the organization after it achieved success without him.

In legal documents filed Wednesday in northern California’s federal court, OpenAI alleges Musk became hostile toward the company after abandoning it years before its breakthrough achievements with ChatGPT.

“Musk could not tolerate seeing such success for an enterprise he had abandoned and declared doomed,” OpenAI said in the filing.

The lawsuit is the latest round in a bitter feud between the generative AI (genAI) start-up and the world’s richest man, who sued OpenAI last year, accusing the company of betraying its founding mission.

In its countersuit, the company alleges Musk “made it his project to take down OpenAI, and to build a direct competitor that would seize the technological lead — not for humanity but for Elon Musk.”

Musk founded his own genAI startup, xAI, in 2023, and has invested tens of billions of dollars to compete with OpenAI and the other major AI players.

OpenAI was established in December 2015 as a nonprofit research lab with the mission of ensuring that artificial general intelligence (AGI) — the term used for human-level AI — would “benefit all humanity.”

Musk was among its initial backers alongside CEO Sam Altman, giving a key investment to get the project up and running.

According to the counterclaims, Musk’s involvement was short-lived.

The filing alleges that in 2018, Musk departed after OpenAI’s leadership refused “to bow to Musk’s demands for control of the enterprise or, alternatively, its absorption into Musk’s electric car company, Tesla.”

OpenAI also contends that Musk never fulfilled his financial commitment to the organization, delivering “not even close” to a promised $1 billion.

The company is now valued at $300 billion after its latest funding round of $40 billion, the biggest capital-raising session ever for a startup.

OpenAI claims that Musk’s assault has included press attacks and malicious campaigns broadcast to Musk’s more than 200 million followers on X, the platform he owns, as well as “a sham bid for OpenAI’s assets.”

The legal battle between Altman and Musk has intensified amid OpenAI’s plans for a restructuring that would transform the company into a public benefit corporation while maintaining the nonprofit parent organization.

OpenAI claims Musk is deliberately misrepresenting this move as a full conversion from nonprofit to for-profit status.

The AI lab is seeking an injunction to halt Musk’s “further unlawful and unfair action” and compensation for damages allegedly caused by his actions.

OpenAI on Monday said it raised $40 billion in a new funding round that valued the ChatGPT maker at $300 billion, the biggest capital-raising session ever for a startup.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

A Department of Homeland Security task force has been especially created to search the social media histories of around 1.5 million immigrant students in the United States to find grounds for revoking their visas, according to a report by NBC News.

The Trump administration announced on Wednesday that moving forward, it would consider any forms of antisemitic activity on social media and “physical harassment of Jewish individuals” as grounds to revoke or deny immigration benefits.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “has made it clear that anyone who thinks they can come to America and hide behind the First Amendment to advocate for anti-Semitic violence and terrorism – think again,” she added. “You are not welcome here.”

According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the policy will consider social media content that indicates an immigrant is “endorsing, espousing, promoting, or supporting antisemitic terrorism, antisemitic terrorist organisations, or other antisemitic activity” as a negative factor in their application. This means that immigrants who have expressed support for groups like Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, or Ansar Allah (also known as the Houthis) on social media may be denied immigration benefits.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights and advocacy organisation said that the new policy is reminiscent of “McCarthyism”, a tactic that violated privacy rights and was used to identify alleged communists in the Cold War.

“The spirit of Joseph McCarthy is alive and well in the Trump administration, which has spent months dishonestly mischaracterising legitimate criticism of the Israeli government’s war crimes in Gaza as antisemitic, pursuing witch hunts into American colleges, and threatening the free speech rights of immigrants,” the organisation’s National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said in a statement.

The interesting part is that the data analytics tools that are now being used to scrutinise social media was enhanced during the Biden administration. However, the usage was completely different. A former Biden administration DHS official said that, “We were not targeting political activity or speech. We would only review them if they were inciting violence”, very different from using the tools to search social media of non violent students.

Customs and Border Protection’s National Targeting Center and National Vetting Center are handling the tools that the DHS is using to make sure security threats do not enter the United States. Potential red flags are alerted to the Citizenship and Immigration Services, which then asks the State Department if the student’s visa should be revoked.

Once it is decided that their visa needs to be revoked, the task force informs Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in local field offices to arrest and deport the student.

According to media reports, about 300 immigrant students were stripped off their visas.

Earlier the investigative work would have been done at the field office level, and then shared with ICE officers. But now, the agents are taking orders from people they do not know in the task force in Washington and are not even provided a clear guidance about why a particular person is being targeted.

The ICE Chief of Staff Jon Feere has criticised the Student and Exchange Visitor Program and has written articles for the Center for Immigration Studies, an organisation that advocates for reduced immigration to the United States.

“Blatant, widespread fraud has become a central part of America’s foreign student program, and the government agencies responsible for putting an end to it have been asleep at the wheel for far too long,” Feere said in an article he wrote.
 

The Tesla electric vehicle company owned by billionaire Elon Musk on Thursday opened its first showroom in oil-rich Saudi Arabia — where hybrid cars are still not a common sight.

The opening in the capital Riyadh comes with Tesla sales dropping and showrooms in the United States being attacked over work by the controversial Musk, the world’s richest person, for the US government.

Saudi Arabia is a key regional ally of Washington, and US President Donald Trump forged close ties during his first term with de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has promised to inject $600 billion into US trade and investments.

However, demand for electric vehicles is relatively low in Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter which enjoys bargain-basement fuel prices, with a litre costing just 2.33 riyals ($0.62).

Cheap fuel and prolonged periods of extreme heat in the vast desert country means big oil-consuming cars reign supreme.

Saudi economist Mohammed Al-Qahtani welcomed Tesla’s move, but urged even more.

“We do not want a showroom; we want a factory,” he said. “We want to be part of the production process, not just consumption.”

A lack of charging infrastructure and the country’s vast size mean that many Saudi drivers will view EVs as suitable for shorter trips, rather than as replacements for conventional vehicles.

About 950 kilometres (590 miles) separate the capital from second city Jeddah — more than the maximum range of most electric car batteries.

According to data platform Statista, Saudi Arabia has just 101 charging stations, compared with 261 in the much smaller neighbouring United Arab Emirates.

Although the Saudi EV market remains small, it tripled last year to nearly 800 cars, according to business news outlet Al-Iqtisadiyah.

Authorities are seeking to diversify the economy, which relies heavily on oil exports, aiming to install 5,000 electric vehicle chargers by 2030.

Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, PIF, now controls 60 percent of luxury electric vehicle company Lucid.

It has also secured a deal with South Korea’s Hyundai to establish a plant in the kingdom for both EVs and petrol-powered cars.

Additionally, Saudi EV brand CEER, launched in 2022, plans to start production in 2025.

A vehicle from Lucid, which opened a factory in Jeddah in 2023 after a billion-dollar Saudi investment, costs $92,000.

Last May, Chinese company BYD opened a showroom in Riyadh, selling more affordable electric cars.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

US President Donald Trump’s steep tariff hike targeting Chinese goods, which took effect Thursday, brings Washington’s additional rate on many products to 145 percent, the White House confirms.

Trump’s 90-day halt in fresh duties for dozens of countries has come into place, a White House order showed.

But he has also doubled down by raising new tariffs on Chinese imports to 125 percent, a figure that stacks atop a 20 percent additional duty from earlier in the year over China’s alleged role in the fentanyl supply chain.

This takes the total tariffs Trump has imposed on Chinese products this year to 145 percent, stacking on existing levies from past administrations.

But the latest 125 percent figure on China, aimed at addressing practices Washington has deemed unfair, contains notable exclusions.

It excludes products like steel and aluminum imports, as well as autos, which Trump slapped separate 25 percent tariffs on under separate regimes.

The number also does not apply to goods such as copper, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, lumber, and energy products — some of which Trump has signaled plans to target separately too. 

All of this paints a more complicated picture of tariff levels, even as tensions soar between Washington and Beijing.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

A Bangladeshi court on Thursday issued a new arrest warrant against deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina, her daughter Saima Wajed Putul and 17 others in a graft case, accusing them of procuring a residential plot through “fraudulent” means.

On Thursday, Dhaka Metropolitan Senior Special Judge Zakir Hossain Galib accepted the charge sheet submitted by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC).

As the accused were missing, the court issued arrest warrants against them.

“Metropolitan Senior Special Judge Mohammad Zakir Hossain Galib issued the warrant accepting the ACC charge sheet in the case,” the statutory graft agency’s prosecutor Mir Ahammed Salam told reporters.

He said the judge asked ACC to submit its investigation report on May 4 for hearing the charge involving the piece of leased out land by state-run Rajdhani Unyan Kartripakkha (RAJUK) in Purbachal area on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka.

The ACC filed the case against the deposed premier on January 12, 2025, and the other co-accused, mostly government officials.

According to the charge sheet, Putul had illegally influenced her then-prime minister mother Hasina to get the plot and apply to her instead of RAJUK, violating the laws, rules, policies and legal procedures regarding the allocation of plots in the Purbachal New City Housing Project.

The ACC alleged Putul had done that “despite the fact that she and her family members owned a house or flat or housing facility in an area under the jurisdiction of RAJUK in Dhaka city”.

Putul is serving as the South East Asian regional director for the World Health Organisation (WHO) based in New Delhi since November 1, 2023.

Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal earlier issued two identical arrest warrants against Hasina, her political colleagues and senior civil and military officials on charges like crimes against humanity.

But Thursday’s warrant came just a day after the ACC said it launched a new inquiry into the alleged “wastage” of Taka 4,000 crore by Hasina, her younger sister Sheikh Rehana and a former official for “Mujib Centenary” celebrations.

The ACC alleged that the amount it quoted was spent by the national exchequer.

He said the investigation into the matter, however, was underway as it began in January this year. “Our team is currently collecting information from various organisations.” Bangladesh observed the yearlong celebration coinciding with the 100th birthday of Bangladesh’s founding father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 2020 while Hasina’s Awami League was in power.

Rehana did not hold any official position in the past regime while the third man to be investigated by ACC is Kamal Abdul Naser Chowdhury, a former principal secretary to the government who served as the chief coordinator of the celebration after he retired from the government job.

ACC chairman Mohammad Abdul Momen earlier this week said there was no difference between the former premier and a typical corrupt individual and “the process to bring back a corrupt fugitive is the same, whether it’s Hasina or anyone else”.

Hasina is also accused of numerous charges like mass murders and crimes against humanity, enforced disappearances while these cases were being filed with Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal.

The tribunal was formed originally to try hardened collaborators of Pakistan troops during Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War and several of them were tried there and were executed as well subsequently after exhausting the appeal process.

Hasina’s 16-year-long Awami League regime was toppled on August 5 last year in a student-led violent mass uprising. Since then, 77-year-old Hasina has been living in India after secretly leaving Bangladesh.

New Delhi has so far not responded to the request made by Bangladesh’s interim government last year for the extradition of Hasina.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)