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U.S. Steel shares plummet amid questions over the fate of its merger with Nippon Steel
U.S. Steel shares plunged on Wednesday as Wall Street questioned whether its $14.1 billion deal with Japan’s Nippon Steel is at risk of derailing.
Shares of U.S. Steel plunged as much as 25% in afternoon trading after the Washington Post reported President Joe Biden is preparing to formally block the proposed acquisition. As of 2:35 p.m., shares of U.S. Steel were down $7.12, or 20%, to $28.48.
At an afternoon briefing, a White House official downplayed the Washington Post report, which cited three people familiar with the president’s plans. In a statement, the White House cited a process of review by the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, or CFIUS, a panel chaired by the Treasury Secretary.
“CFIUS hasn’t transmitted a recommendation to the President, and that’s the next step in this process,” a White House official stated.
—This is a developing story and will be updated.
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UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting spawns range of online merchandise
Shirts, mugs and stickers bearing the words “Deny Defend Depose” are appearing for sale on e-commerce websites just days after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot to death in New York City.
Those words were scrawled on three shell casings found at the scene of the Dec. 4 shooting in Manhattan, according to law enforcement sources, and loosely echo the title of a book about why insurance companies deny patient claims. The title — “Delay Deny Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It,” by Jay Feinman — is described on Amazon as “an exposé of insurance injustice and a plan for consumers and lawmakers to fight back.”
Feinman has declined to comment on the recent events, including on the words police say were written on the shell casings.
Sellers on online marketplace Etsy list over 800 items bearing “Deny Defend Depose,” including stickers, candles and apparel, while eBay is selling stickers, clothing, lawn signs and cell phone cases with the phrase.
In a statement to CBS MoneyWatch, eBay said the sale of items with the words does not violate its policies. But the company added that “items that glorify or incite violence, including those that celebrate the recent murder of UHC CEO Brian Thompson, are prohibited.”
Amazon said in a statement to CBS MoneyWatch that it had removed similar merchandise from its platform, saying that the products violated the company’s guidelines.
Merchants often race to market wares related to dramatic current events, even when they involve violence. After President-elect Donald Trump was struck in the ear by a bullet in an assassination attempt over the summer, for example, sellers quickly started hawking merchandise with images of Trump at the rally. Many products also were sold online and in stores immediately after the 9/11 attacks.
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Arctic tundra becoming a source of carbon dioxide emissions, NOAA warns
Foreboding environmental milestones abounded again this year in the Arctic, where experts say dramatic climate shifts are fundamentally altering the ecosystem and how it operates. One recent turning point for the region involves its carbon footprint: Where conditions in the Arctic historically worked to reduce global emissions, they’re now actively contributing to them.
That’s a major transition that could reap consequences on human, plant and animal life far beyond Earth’s northernmost arena, warned a cohort of scientists whose research appears in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 2024 Arctic Report Card, published Tuesday. The report is an annual assessment of the polar environment, which in recent years has become a stark alert signal marked by unprecedented and ominous observations all linked to rising temperatures from human-caused climate change.
A focus of the latest Arctic evaluation was the effects of warmer weather and wildfires on the tundra, a far-northern biome that’s typically known for extreme cold, little precipitation and a layer of permanently frozen soil, called permafrost, covering the land. Those traits collectively made the Arctic an important carbon sink for millennia, meaning the region essentially helped reduce carbon dioxide emissions worldwide by absorbing more carbon than it emitted into the atmosphere.
That has mainly been due to carbon uptake from plants, which regulate atmospheric levels of the molecule through photosynthesis, and a storage process in the permafrost, which traps carbon dioxide in the ground. But warming air temperatures in the Arctic are breaking down permafrost across the tundra, in some cases, severely. The Arctic report, for example, showed Alaskan permafrost temperatures in 2024 were the second-warmest ever recorded. That causes the soil to heat up and thaw, its carbon repositories decompose along with it.
Research included in NOAA’s Arctic report shows carbon once stored in the tundra’s permafrost is actually being released into the atmosphere. In parts of the region, it’s happening at a rate that outweighs the carbon sink and instead creates a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions — something of particular concern to climate scientists at a time when pollution from fossil fuel production has already reached a record high.
The same fossil fuels overwhelming the atmosphere and prompting ongoing admonition from top weather and climate officials at the United Nations are fueling the emissions in the Arctic, said Rich Spinrad, the administrator of NOAA, in a statement on the new report’s findings.
“Our observations now show that the Arctic tundra, which is experiencing warming and increased wildfire, is now emitting more carbon than it stores, which will worsen climate change impacts,” Spinrad said. “This is yet one more sign, predicted by scientists, of the consequences of inadequately reducing fossil fuel pollution.”
Wildfires in the Arctic have been raging at rates never seen before, and that alone drives up carbon emissions. Researchers suggest 2024 had the second-highest annual volume of wildfire emissions north of the Arctic Circle on record. Coupled with the release of carbon dioxide and methane gas from permafrost stores, they say net emissions could continue to increase in the place that climate change is heating up faster than anywhere else on the planet.
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