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East Palestine testing contractor faces 1 whistleblower claim it hid data
Edgen Stock·Sep 23 2026, 22:29Share to
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[1] Contractor Played Down Contamination Risks After Ohio Train Disaster, Worker Says (https://www.wsj.com/us-news/contractor-played ...)[2] Whistleblower: EPA and railroad contractor hid East Palestine contamination (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/whistleb ...)[3] Contractor played down contamination risks after Ohio train disaster, worker says (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/contract ...)
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Sep 24 2026, 00:09
Xi lands in Washington with $30 billion tariff framework on the table
Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday for a three-day state visit, opening the first Washington summit with a US president since 2015 and putting a proposed $30 billion mutual tariff-reduction framework at the center of talks that carry a November deadline. "The idea that we would not interact with them at the highest levels is irresponsible. It's outrageous. We have to," Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in New York on Wednesday, defending the engagement as necessary between "the two largest economies in the world." Trump and first lady Melania Trump traveled by Marine One to the Maryland air base to greet Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, a planeside reception that US presidents rarely extend to visiting leaders. The gesture reciprocates Trump's May trip to Beijing, where Vice President Han Zheng met Air Force One instead. A formal arrival ceremony, troop review and black-tie state dinner in the East Room follow on Thursday, with a guest list that includes Nvidia's Jensen Huang, Tesla's Elon Musk, Apple's Tim Cook, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, OpenAI's Sam Altman and Google's Sundar Pichai. The substance is narrower than the ceremony. Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng has led a trade delegation through preliminary consultations in Washington, and negotiators are working toward a framework covering roughly $30 billion of goods in mutual tariff reductions. Both sides are pressing to extend the tariff truce struck in Busan, which lapses in November 2026 — the same month the US-China trade agreement reached last year expires. Beijing wants energy and rare earth supply guarantees; Washington wants to shield domestic manufacturers from Chinese surplus capacity without reigniting inflation ahead of the midterm elections. ## Rare earths, LNG and a $14 billion Taiwan chip Specific deliverables under discussion include increased Chinese purchases of US liquefied natural gas, agricultural products and aircraft, plus export licenses for rare earth minerals. Negotiators have also floated allowing Chinese electric vehicle factories to be built on US soil, subject to national security conditions. On the technology side, the agenda covers AI regulation and export controls on advanced semiconductors — the issue that drew the sharpest domestic pushback. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and three colleagues held a press conference warning against loosening controls on advanced chipmaking equipment, arguing it would erode the US lead in artificial intelligence. "We can and must both maintain our lead on AI by restricting China's access to our technology and put up guardrails to mitigate AI's risk," Schumer said. Republican senators Mitch McConnell and three others sent a letter urging the administration to proceed with aid and arms sales to Taiwan, noting the US paused a record $14 billion package after the May Beijing summit — a package Trump has described as a "very good negotiating chip." The domestic criticism has been loud enough to constrain the outcome. Senator Roger Wicker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on the Senate floor Tuesday that he would have advised against inviting Xi at all "based on all of the troubling issues we have with President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party," adding that "during every minute of dialogue, our commander in chief should keep in mind that his guest is a brutal, unelected, and oppressive dictator." Iran sits underneath the trade file. Washington has accused Beijing of propping up Tehran's economy and supplying components and intelligence, and wants China — the largest buyer of Iranian oil — to press its leverage. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi visited Beijing on September 16 to signal Tehran's willingness to return to diplomacy, days before Xi's departure. The precedent for reading this summit is the May meeting in Beijing, which produced a pause in Taiwan arms sales and no tariff relief. Markets have historically traded the ceremony rather than the communiqué: after the Busan truce was announced, the tariff-sensitive complex rallied on the headline and gave back part of the move once the terms were published. The same asymmetry applies now. If Thursday's closed-door session yields a signed framework on the $30 billion basket and a Busan extension, the de-escalation trade has room to run into November. If it produces only a commitment to keep talking, the November expiry becomes a live risk event with no cushion — and the $14 billion Taiwan package remains the most obvious lever either side can pull. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
Sep 23 2026, 23:55
L.A. pins 4,495 film jobs on Paramount merger concessions
Rob Bonta holds the leverage, and Los Angeles knows it. The California attorney general is trading away an antitrust lawsuit for enforceable conditions on a $111 billion studio combination, and the county's own analysts calculate that 4,495 direct film and television job-years sit in the balance between 2027 and 2030, with total employment exposure near 10,360 job-years. "The question is, 'Does this have any teeth? Does this advisory board really have any sort of impact in making sure that news organizations like CNN remain independent?'" Michael Schneider, executive television editor at Variety, said of the Editorial Independence Board that Paramount has offered as a concession. "We'll just have to wait and see." Two reports, pointing in opposite directions, frame the argument. A study commissioned by the Los Angeles County Department of Economic Opportunity and produced by CVL Economics put the exposure at 4,495 direct film and television job-years and roughly 10,360 total job-years, alongside $1.26 billion in wages, $4.06 billion in business output and $547 million in tax revenue. CVL described those figures as "employment capacity at risk" rather than a layoff forecast. A separate draft from the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., commissioned by Paramount and leaked to Politico, projected the completed merger would add as much as $1.01 billion in economic growth over five years, while a collapse would cost the state as much as $21.2 billion a year. That draft also estimated a full corporate exit from California would eliminate between 28,990 and 57,980 jobs and cut annual output by $10.6 billion to $21.2 billion. The transaction is frozen pending an antitrust suit filed by California and 11 other states. U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín in Oakland has set trial for March 2. Paramount faces a tighter deadline: if the deal does not close by Oct. 1, it owes Warner shareholders roughly $7 million per day in a "ticking fee." Bonta has said he is willing to negotiate over concessions that would prompt him to drop the suit, and has complained about what he calls Paramount's under-the-table maneuvering. ## A rally, a ticking fee and a 30-film pledge Opponents gathered outside Paramount Studios on Tuesday, organized by the Block the Merger Coalition, with actors, writers and local officials pressing to halt the transaction. Burbank City Councilmember Konstantine Anthony said upward of 30,000 redundant positions could be at risk as administrative and distribution operations combine across the two companies. Actor Constance Marie framed the dispute as a labor question: "Censorship has never been good for people of color, and that is why I'm here to say this is not good, and it's not good for labor, and we're a dominant part of the labor workforce." The rally followed a settlement between Paramount owner Skydance and 12 states, California among them, in the antitrust case. Schneider said the merger now looks close to certain. "At this point, I'm not sure there's much left to block this merger," he said. "It does seem to be happening and it's going to happen in the next couple of weeks." He added that overlap between the two companies points to cost cuts before the holidays, since the fourth quarter is already underway. What the concessions are worth depends on which commitment holds. Paramount has pledged the merged company would produce 30 feature films a year for three years; an analysis of that pledge found it could generate almost $20 billion in additional U.S. economic activity and support more than 90,000 jobs nationwide. The LAEDC draft treated the 30-film commitment as a firm anchor, though no written, enforceable guarantee exists. The combined company would carry a debt overhang estimated at $79 billion to $82 billion, which raises questions about Paramount's claim that it can generate $6 billion in annual savings by selling real estate and consolidating streaming services rather than cutting staff. The LAEDC specified it did not examine the likelihood or potential impacts of consolidation after a completed merger. For Los Angeles, the concession package is the variable that decides the outcome. If Bonta secures enforceable production and employment commitments, the county's exposure stays near the low end of the CVL range and the 30-film pledge becomes the floor for local stage and crew work. If the suit proceeds to the March 2 trial and Paramount's ticking fee keeps accruing at $7 million a day, the company's stated alternative — relocating headquarters and thousands of jobs to Georgia, Tennessee or Texas — becomes a live negotiating threat rather than a hypothetical. The companies aim to finalize the merger in October. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
Sep 23 2026, 23:30
AngloGold Ashanti slides 5.6% as gold miners lag broader market
AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. closed at $98.74 on Sept. 23, down 5.6% from the prior session, a decline that ran well past the drop in the wider U.S. equity market and left the gold miner among the session's weakest large-cap precious-metals names. The move came on volume that ran above the stock's recent average, according to exchange data, with the shares finishing near the lower end of the day's range. AngloGold's fall was roughly four times the decline recorded by the benchmark index that session, a gap that points to selling specific to the gold-mining complex rather than a uniform de-risking across equities. "Gold equities had been priced for a flat-to-higher metal price, so any unwind in that trade hits the miners harder than the index," said Priya Mehta, equity market strategist covering flows and positioning. "When a single name gives back 5.6% in one session while the tape is only modestly lower, the first question is whether it is a stock-specific repositioning or the start of a sector-wide de-rating." The scale of the move is best measured against the metal itself. Spot gold has traded in a narrow band through the period, meaning AngloGold's decline was not matched by a comparable drop in the underlying commodity — the classic signature of equity-level repositioning rather than a fundamental repricing of bullion. That divergence matters because gold miners carry operating leverage to the metal price: a 1% move in gold has historically translated into a multiple of that in miner earnings, which cuts both ways when positioning reverses. Peer read-across is the next test. Newmont Corp. and Barrick Mining Corp., the two largest North American-listed gold producers, and the VanEck Gold Miners ETF (GDX) are the instruments traders watch to determine whether the weakness is idiosyncratic to AngloGold or a broad rotation out of precious-metals equities. A single-session drop in one miner, even a large one, is usually absorbed within days; a second and third session of underperformance across the group would signal that portfolio managers are cutting sector exposure rather than trimming one position. The broader market backdrop did not help. The session's index-level decline reflected a market-wide pullback, and AngloGold's underperformance against that benchmark is the number that matters for relative-performance mandates — funds benchmarked to the index lose ground on every session the stock lags, regardless of the absolute direction of the tape. For holders, the near-term question is whether $98.74 holds as a floor. AngloGold's next scheduled disclosure and the next U.S. inflation print are the two dated events that will determine whether the unwind stops here or extends into the peer group. Traders will also watch the gold price itself: a stable metal price alongside continued miner weakness would confirm the move as positioning-driven, while a falling gold price would turn a one-day unwind into a sector re-rating. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.