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HONG KONG — Shares slid further in Europe and Asia on Friday as markets shuddered while investors counted the potential costs of U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest set of tariffs.

The future for the S&P 500 lost 0.8% while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 1%.

Everything from crude oil to Big Tech stocks to the value of the U.S. dollar against other currencies has fallen. Even gold, a traditional safe haven that recently hit record highs, pulled lower after Trump announced his “Liberation Day” set of tariffs, which economists say carries the risk of a potentially toxic mix of weakening economic growth and higher inflation.

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The growing policy uncertainty and weakening economic conditions alone may already be causing some of this to occur.

Since Trump took office, companies have canceled, delayed, or scaled back at least nine US “clean energy supply chain” developments or operations, according to the Big Green Machine, a database maintained by Jay Turner, a professor of environmental studies at Wellesley College, and student researchers there. The projects that have been affected represent some $8 billion in public and private investments, and more than 9,000 jobs.

They include KORE Power’s planned battery facility in Arizona, which the company halted; Envision Automotive Energy Supply’s paused expansion in Florence County, South Carolina; and Akasol’s closure of two plants in Michigan.

VW also scaled back production at its recently expanded EV factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, amid slower-than-expected growth in sales and, perhaps, the expectation that the Trump administration will strive to roll back consumer tax credits for vehicle purchases.

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U.S. and Chinese military officials have met for their first working-level talks since U.S. President Donald Trump took office for the second time, with the two sides sharing their respective concerns over military safety on the seas.

The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement that the talks, held Wednesday and Thursday in the eastern Chinese city of Shanghai, were focused on “decreasing the incidences of unsafe and unprofessional” actions by China’s naval and air forces.

The Chinese defense ministry said it pointed out that U.S. military ships and aircraft have been conducting “reconnaissance, surveys and high-intensity drills in the sea and air spaces around China, which are prone to cause misunderstandings and miscalculations and jeopardize China’s sovereignty and military security.”

China told the U.S. that it would continue to “respond to all dangerous provocative actions” and “resolutely safeguard national territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests,” the ministry statement said.

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Trump’s sweeping tariffs sent shockwaves through Wall Street, wiping about $3.1 trillion in market value in its largest one-day decline since the Covid pandemic.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 4 percent. The S&P 500 fell 4.8 percent.

And the tech-focused Nasdaq was down 6 percent — fuelled by declines from Apple, Nvidia and Amazon.

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The New York stock exchange has closed on its worst day of trading since June 2020 – during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The main indices saw their worst one-day falls in five years as Donald Trump claimed that “the markets are going to boom” in response to his sweeping tariffs.

The S&P 500 index is down 4.9% at the close, which Reuters flags is the biggest one-day drop since June 2020.

The Dow has also posted its biggest one-day drop since June 2020, down 4%.

Meanwhile, the Nasdaq tumbled 5.9%, its worst single-day performance since March 2020.

The scale of the sell-off, wiping trillions of dollars off the value of US companies, highlights just how alarmed investors are by the tariffs, and the fears they could lead to a recession.

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Professor Jose Felipe Alvergue, head of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire English Department, has been placed on administrative leave after allegedly flipping over a table set up by the university’s College Republicans.

The incident occurred Tuesday morning, a special Election Day in Wisconsin, as members of UW-Eau Claire’s College Republicans set up an informational table advocating for conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel and superintendent candidate Brittany Kinser.

“A professor came up and flipped our table in a violent attack towards us,” Tatiana Bobrowicz, the CR chapter chair, stated in a video posted to social media following the incident. “This is unacceptable.”

According to a statement issued by Interim Provost Michael Carney, administration quickly placed Alvergue on administrative leave pending a formal investigation.

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Lich and Barber were charged with mischief, counseling others to commit mischief, intimidation and obstructing police as leaders of the Freedom Convoy that polarized residents of Ottawa in February 2022 and arguably began to roll back Covid-19 mandates.

Ontario judge Heather Perkins-McVey has found Freedom Convoy organizers Chris Barber and Tamara Lich guilty on mischief charges in Ottawa’s provincial courthouse Thursday. Charges of counseling to commit mischief were stayed. The judge found Barber and Lich not guility on charges of commiting intimidation or counseling to commit intimidation.

Lich and Barber were charged with mischief, counseling others to commit mischief, intimidation and obstructing police as leaders of the Freedom Convoy that polarized residents of Ottawa in February 2022 and arguably began to roll back Covid-19 mandates.

The judge said she read the book “The Right to Protest: an Uneasy Balance” in reaching her verdict, and asked when does the right to protest “protect those from criminal liability” or or allow the them to infringe on “the right of other citizens to enjoy their property? Charter rights are not absolute.” She recessed the court before finishing the rest of her verdict on the remaining charges.

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Elon Musk and the DOGE team have cut another 109 useless, wasteful contracts, saving the nation $420 million.

Per Breitbart News:

“Wasteful” projects across several agencies were slashed, including a $3.1 million Department of Energy (DOE) contract for “website development services,” and a $2.7 million Department of Commerce (DOC) contract for “marketing consulting services outreach and engagement support services,” DOGE said in a Monday night post:

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At a town hall question and answer with Elon Musk in Green Bay, Wis. on March 30 on behalf of Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel, the White House Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) revealed that since 2021, 5.5 million non-citizens have been given Social Security numbers.

Of those, DOGE has already identified 1.3 million who are collecting Medicaid, a $567 billion a year program to about 79.3 million people at about $7,100 per person collecting, an apparent waste of about $8 billion a year.

According to DOGE’s Antonio Gracias, “We’ve gone through on every benefit program… We found groups from this particular group of people, this 5.5 million people, in those benefit programs.”

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Pro-Hamas activists targeted Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) again. This time, they attacked the charity center in his hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania, where he was once mayor of the tiny Pittsburgh-area borough and still resides with his young family.

The Free Store 15104, which Fetterman’s wife Gisele Barreto Fetterman runs, was defaced overnight with pro-terrorism messages telling “Genocide John” and “Genocide Gisele” that they have “Blood On [Their] Hands.”

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An anonymous Tesla owner in Texas is suing a vandal for $1 million after the man was caught on video keying his Model X.

Rafael Hernandez, 56, was arrested and charged with felony criminal mischief over the weekend for vandalizing the Tesla at DFW airport in March, CBS News Texas reported.

Hernandez is one of countless Democrats who have been caught in recent weeks keying Teslas and harassing Tesla owners to show their disapproval of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s involvement in the Trump administration.

Hernandez was booked on March 22 and faces a maximum fine of $20,000.

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O’Keefe Media Group caught a National Institutes of Health (NIH) official coaching researchers how to evade DOGE and secure funding.

James Welch, a National Institutes of Health genetic counselor told an undercover OMG journalist how helps principal investigators at the NIH change “race” to “ancestry” in clinical trials to evade DOGE and secure funding.

“I had to go look at, like, what was leaked as far as the banned words, that DOGE is just like, control F searching for so I was trying to help [NIH investigator] suggest wording. I had suggested, like, ‘a history of ancestry’ instead of ‘race,’ James Welch told the OMG undercover reporter.

Welch also admitted to wanting to shoot people at the NIH.

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The U.S. government has banned American government officials in China from any romantic or sexual relationships with Chinese citizens.

The new policy was implemented by departing U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns in January.

The policy is the first “non-fraternization” policy issued by a U.S. agency since the Cold War.

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On March 4, in response to President Donald J. Trump’s strategy of using tariffs to bring manufacturing back America and restore fair trade, the Chinese embassy ominously warned that China was ready for any “type of war” with the U.S.

Should war with China extend beyond tariffs, Taiwan is a likely battleground.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wants to take Taiwan. Seizing Taiwan is integral to CCP’s objective of dominating the world.

Taiwan isn’t just an island — it’s a geopolitical tripwire, a small, highly-prized self-ruled island of 23 million with a prominent stone spine. Strategically, it anchors the First Island Chain, a natural barricade from Japan to the Philippines that keeps China’s Pacific dreams in a bottle. For Beijing, cracking Taiwan open means breaking free into blue water and dominating Asia’s rim.

For the U.S., letting it slip is a gut punch. China’s reach would stretch to Guam, and America’s Pacific shield would splinter. Further, its semiconductor plants, led by TSMC, pump out 90 percent of the world’s advanced chips, powering everything from smartphones to stealth fighters. Lose that, and the global economy chokes.