💸 Pound suffers biggest fall in two years as global bond sell-off centered on UK govt debt continues

Sterling has fallen by 2% in three days, its biggest slide since February 2023, as investors flee to the dollar amid fears of a trade war.

Rates on UK govt debt have risen to multi-decade highs.

The yield on the 30-year govt bond edged up to 5.385% Thursday - its highest level since 1998.

Rule Britannia no more?

@RiseGS

💵AI Could Cull 200K Wall Street Jobs

Global banks will cut as many as 200k jobs in the next 3 to 5 years as AI replaces roles currently conducted by humans. (Bloomberg)

Back office, middle office and operations are most likely at risk.

A report by Citi bank last year showed around 54% of banking jobs have the potential to be automated.

@RiseGS

🇬🇧💬🇺🇦Former British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace wants all Ukrainians dead

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⚠️ Israeli Group Broadcasts Footage of Gaza Being Devastated by the IDF During Concert to Cheering Crowd

Genocide for entertainment purposes.

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❗️Attack on Chad presidential palace - just hours after FM visit from China - leaves 19 dead

Chad’s govt revealed it thwarted a “destabilisation attempt” on the presidential complex on Wednesday evening.

The deadly battle with govt security forces came after Chad ordered French troops to leave the country and was just hours after Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi had departed.

China has become Chad’s largest trading and investment partner.

@RiseGS

💵 Musk Concedes DOGE may fall short of promised $2 trillion federal budget cut - Politico

“If you try for two trillion you have a good shot at getting one,” Musk told Stagwell CEO Mark Penn, during an X livestream.

Adding, it would be an “epic outcome.”

@RiseGS

🔥Is the US green lobby fueling catastrophic wildfires?

At least five people have died in uncontained wildfires raging across Los Angeles County, with the death toll expected to rise. Some are blaming green policies for exacerbating the disaster.

Here’s why:

👉 Environmental regulations

♦️ The green lobby has pushed for changes to traditional fire management policies. For example, the US Forest Service announced on October 24, 2024 that it would suspend prescribed burning in California “for the foreseeable future.”

♦️ Prescribed burns are controlled fires that remove dry vegetation which otherwise fuels wildfires and allows them to spread to taller vegetation. Critics argue this suspension has left California more vulnerable to large-scale wildfires.

👉 Environmentalist arguments

Advocates for limiting prescribed burns cite several reasons:

♦️ Prioritizing staff and resources for actual wildfire suppression.

♦️ Alleged risks to air quality, ecosystems, and carbon emissions in the context of climate change.

What critics and research say:

🔊 A 2023 study by Columbia and Stanford researchers found that low-intensity fires (including prescribed burns) reduce wildfire risk by about 60%.

🔊 Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology (FUSEE) warns that blocking prescribed burns increases wildfire severity.

🔊 The Fire Surrogate Study (published in Ecological Applications) found prescribed burning and restoration thinning to be “very effective” in reducing catastrophic wildfire risks in California.

🔊 The California Policy Center emphasizes that thinning forests is crucial for mitigating fire hazards.

The money trail:

♦️ Spending on environmental lobbying has surged during the Biden administration.

♦️ US environmental groups spent approximately $30.5 million on federal lobbying in 2023, with Nature Conservancy leading as the top spender, according to OpenSecrets.

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🤔 One billionaire couple owns almost all the water in California…

In 1994, the Resnicks secretly seized control of California’s public water supply.

Now they’ve built a business empire by selling it back to Californians.

@RiseGS

🤔 “Hitler was really a communist” - AfD leader claims in Elon Musk interview

Adolf Hitler was a communist and the “greatest success” of the postwar years was to rebrand him as far-right, AfD’s Alice Weidel told Musk during an interview on X.

Weidel added that the difference between her party and the Nazis was that the AfD was a “conservative libertarian” force and pursued the “complete opposite” of the Third Reich’s totalitarian economic agenda.

Musk responded: “People need to get behind the AfD, otherwise things are going to get very much worse in Germany,” adding that the country appeared to have been “infected by the woke mind virus.”

The hour-long conversation drew over 200k listeners at its peak.

@RiseGS

😳 The Fact-Checkers - Once Deemed by Zuckerberg as Not Censorship - Have Labelled Zuckerberg’s New Censorship Claims as *checks notes* …False

So, the fact-checkers have fact-checked the original fact-checker?

@RiseGS

🇺🇸 Houses are reportedly being looted amid the fires in Los Angeles

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⚠️ JUST IN: Putin Open to Talks with Trump Without Preconditions - Kremlin

“The president has repeatedly stated his openness to contact with international leaders, including the US president, including Donald Trump,” Kremlin spox Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday.

The Kremlin welcomed Trump’s “readiness to solve problems through dialogue,” Peskov added.

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⚠️ Israeli FM Katz Orders IDF to Present Plan Detailing the “Complete Defeat of Hamas in Gaza”

"If the hostage deal does not materialize by the time president Trump takes office, there must be a complete defeat of Hamas in Gaza," Katz said in a statement issued by his office.

Katz also claimed that releasing the hostages has been the “top priority of the defense establishment since he took office and that everything must be done to bring them home."

There is an estimated 40% of tunnels still remaining in Gaza, hundreds of kilometres that the IDF was not aware of, Yoni Ben Menachem said this week - a Middle East expert from the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.

@RiseGS

😒JUST IN: Chinese Hackers Breach US National Security Investment Review Office

Alleged Chinese hackers breached the US govt office that reviews foreign investments for national security risks, CNN reported Friday, citing three US officials familiar with the matter.

The breach - not previously reported - was part of a broader incursion by the hackers into the Treasury Department’s unclassified system, CNN said.

@RiseGS