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Good afternoon. Here’s what you should know today, March 16: |
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Declassified midair video footage showed a Russian jet buzzing a U.S. drone U.S. maternal mortality hits its highest level since 1965 NASA’s new Artemis spacesuits are designed to put a woman on the moon |
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| First Republic’s stock has been pummeled for days, but gained in afternoon trading Thursday. PHOTO: BRYAN BANDUCCI FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL |
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1. Eleven banks deposited $30 billion in First Republic Bank. |
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In a joint statement, the heads of the Treasury, Fed, FDIC and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said the rescue “demonstrates the resilience of the banking system.” First Republic is contending with a falling stock price and fleeing depositors after Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank collapsed last week. U.S. stocks closed higher after the rescue plan news. Meanwhile, a day after Credit Suisse shares sank to a new low as investor confidence evaporated, they jumped after the bank said it would borrow more than $50 billion from the Swiss National Bank, but analysts remained wary about the lender’s prospects. |
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First Republic Bank Executives Sold $12 Million in Stock in Months Before Crash (Read) Why Top Washington Officials Chose to Rescue SVB and Signature Depositors (Read) Easy Loans, Great Service: Why Silicon Valley Loved SVB (Read) Can Your Money Pass a Stress Test? Lessons From SVB’s Collapse (Read) |
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2. The Pentagon released video footage of a Russian jet harassing the U.S. surveillance drone that crashed in the Black Sea. |
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The jet buzzed and dumped fuel on the Reaper and apparently damaged its propeller in international airspace on Tuesday. It wasn’t clear whether the declassified 42-second clip showed one jet flying past the drone twice, or both jet fighters that the Pentagon says were there. Russian state media showed the video today but didn’t comment. Moscow has said it scrambled jets because the drone flew in the vicinity of Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. |
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U.S. Reaches Deep Into Its Global Ammunition Stockpiles to Help Ukraine (Read) Who Blew Up Nord Stream? Investigators Focus on Six Mysterious Passengers on a Yacht (Read) Poland to Send Four MiG-29 Jet Fighters to Ukraine (Read) |
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3. A split between Ernst & Young’s U.S. and international partners is stalling its breakup plan. |
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The Big Four accounting firm is having trouble splitting its global auditing and consulting businesses due to a dispute over its lucrative tax business. U.S. leaders want the future audit-focused firm to get a bigger piece of the tax practice, so they came up with a new plan which would move more of the tax business to the audit side, a person familiar with the matter said. That proposal is now under negotiation with the rest of the firm. Top executives’ contingency plans include selling off just the non-U.S. consulting operation. |
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4. A sale won’t resolve U.S. national-security concerns over TikTok, according to the popular video app’s CEO. |
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Shou Zi Chew said that having Chinese owner ByteDance sell its stake doesn’t offer any more protection than a multibillion-dollar plan TikTok has already proposed. The proposal? Hiring Oracle to store U.S. users’ data and safeguard against any Chinese influence over what Americans view on the app. Washington wants the sale due to concerns that Beijing could access user data and tweak its video-recommendation system to show Americans videos that would benefit China’s foreign-policy goals. The Biden administration is threatening to ban TikTok. |
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