Author: Finance for Sight

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump declined in an interview aired Sunday to rule out the possibility that the United States might enter a recession this year. “I hate to predict things like that,” he told a Fox News interviewer when asked directly about a possible recession in 2025. “There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big – we’re bringing wealth back to America,” he said, adding, “It takes a little time.” Trump threatens new Russia sanctions after strikes on Ukraine But Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, was more definitive when asked Sunday about the possibility of…

Saudi Arabia’s stock market ended higher on Sunday, snapping a three-day losing streak, in response to Friday’s rise in oil prices . Oil prices – a catalyst for the Gulf’s financial markets – gained on Friday but retreated from session highs after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened sanctions on Russia if it fails to reach a cease-fire with Ukraine. Saudi Arabia’s benchmark index added 0.2%, helped by a 1.5% rebound in oil behemoth Saudi Aramco. Aramco has been falling since Tuesday when the firm reported a drop in annual profit and signalled it will slash its dividend payouts by nearly…

WASHINGTON: The U.S. Secret Service shot an armed man outside the White House early on Sunday after a confrontation, and the man is now in an area hospital, it said in a statement. President Donald Trump was not in the White House at the time, as he is spending the weekend at his Florida residence. Secret Service officials received a tip on Saturday from local authorities that a suicidal person may be traveling to Washington from Indiana and the person’s car was found a block from the White House, it said in the statement. The man brandished a firearm as…

Wall Street’s main indexes ticked up in choppy trading, boosted by a jump in energy stocks, while investors assessed a key jobs report and awaited comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for clues on the health of the U.S. economy. At 09:51 a.m. ET the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 124.23 points, or 0.29%, to 42,703.31, the S&P 500 gained 24.38 points, or 0.46%, to 5,764.57 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 120.10 points, or 0.66%, to 18,186.29. Energy led sectoral gains on the S&P 500 with a 1.8% rise, tracking a 2% increase in oil prices. Nasdaq component Broadcom…

BANGKOK: Five people were killed and more than a dozen wounded in two attacks in Thailand’s troubled south, police said on Sunday. A low-level conflict has simmered in Thailand’s southernmost provinces since 2004, killing more than 7,000 people, as rebels in the Muslim-majority region battle for greater autonomy. A group of more than 10 assailants opened fire outside the district office of Sungai Kolok, a town on the Malaysia-Thailand border, at around 7:00 pm Saturday (1200 GMT), provincial police said. They also threw explosives and detonated bombs in an attack that killed two defence volunteers guarding the office and wounded…

LONDON: A man who scaled London’s Big Ben, and spent the day perched on the historic clock tower with a Palestinian flag, was arrested shortly after he came down after midnight Sunday, police said. Pictures from the scene showed a cherry picker transporting him to waiting emergency crews on the ground. London’s Metropolitan Police force, which was first alerted to the climber around 0700 GMT Saturday, said the man was arrested after the “protracted incident”. The man spent the day perched barefoot on a ledge several metres up the landmark, even as emergency crews urged him to come down from…

Canada’s main stock index recouped early losses to rise on Friday, as investors parsed domestic and U.S. employment data, but remained on track for its biggest weekly fall since September 2023. At 10:45 a.m. ET, the Toronto Stock Exchange’s S&P/TSX composite index rose 0.2% to 24,635.20. For the week, the index was still set to fall 3%. The benchmark lost 1.2% on Thursday. Throughout the week, investors faced a tumultuous ride with trade uncertainties. On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump’s 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico took effect. But on Thursday, Trump announced a temporary exemption for goods…

DUBAI: Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Saturday that Tehran will not be bullied into negotiations, a day after US President Donald Trump said he had sent a letter to the country’s top authority to negotiate a nuclear deal. In an interview with Fox Business, Trump said “there are two ways Iran can be handled: militarily, or you make a deal” to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. In a meeting with senior Iranian officials, Khamenei said the aim of Washington’s offer for negotiations was to “impose their own expectations”, Iranian state media reported. “The insistence of some…

Buying rally continued at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX), with the benchmark KSE-100 Index closing the final session of the week with a gain of nearly 700 points. The bourse maintained a positive trend throughout the trading session, with the benchmark index hitting an intra-day high of 114,721.58. At close, the KSE-100 Index settled at 114,398.69 level, an increase of 685.52 points or 0.6%. Buying was observed in key sectors including commercial banks, fertilizer, oil and gas exploration companies, OMCs, power generation and refinery. Index-heavy stocks including ARL, NRL, HUBCO, PSO, SNGPL, POL, PPL, HBL, MCB and NBP traded in…

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said it conducted an air strike on Saturday in the Gaza Strip targeting several people attempting to retrieve a drone that had crossed into the Palestinian territory. According to the military, the drone had flown from Israeli territory before being targeted by an Israeli aircraft in south Gaza. “An IAF aircraft struck the drone and several suspects who collected it in the southern Gaza Strip,” the military said in a statement. The military has previously stated that drones have been used to smuggle weapons into the territory. On Friday, the military conducted an air strike…