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Wednesday, November 29, 2023

11/29 WAKE-UP CALL: Negotiators Push For Truce Extension


The chief brokers of the hostage-prisoner exchange want to prolong the cease-fire in Gaza beyond the current two-day extension and start talks to end the war altogether, said Egyptian and Qatari officials. Hamas today released 12 hostages, including 10 Israelis who were kidnapped during the U.S.-designated terrorist organization’s deadly Oct. 7 attacks on the country. A continuing cease-fire would likely require Israel and Hamas to make hard-to-swallow concessions, such as trading Israeli soldiers for potentially thousands of Palestinian prisoners, Israel pausing the southern offensive intended to capture the strip and kill Hamas’s top leadership, and the militant group accepting demilitarization, the officials said.

➤HOSTAGE RELEASES BY THE NUMBERS: More than 250 Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, most of them women and children, have been exchanged in a fragile four-day cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war. The humanitarian pause, which began Friday, has been extended two more days. The agreement, brokered by the U.S., Egypt and Qatar, in essence exchanges one hostage abducted by Hamas for three prisoners held by Israel. It came six weeks after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7. Hamas has released 81 women and children since Friday. Sixty of them are Israelis, some with dual citizenship with other nations. Israel has released 180 Palestinian prisoners, 46 women and 134 children and teens, which includes an unknown number of men ages 18 to 19.

➤U-S MILITARY AIRCRAFT CRASHES: A US military V-22 Osprey aircraft crashed near an island in western Japan on Wednesday with eight people onboard, Japan’s coast guard said. A spokesperson for the coast guard said it had deployed patrol boats and aircraft to the site off Japan’s Yakushima island, but had no further details of the incident, including the status of those onboard. A spokesperson for US forces in the region said they were still gathering information about the incident. The crash happened about 2:47 p.m. local time near the island’s airport, with witnesses saying the aircraft’s left engine appeared to be on fire as it descended, Japanese media reported, citing local authorities.

➤HALEY PICKS-UP HUGE ENDORSEMENT: Billionaire Charles Koch’s political group is backing Nikki Haley in a long-shot bid to prevent Donald Trump from winning the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Americans for Prosperity Action didn’t support Trump in 2016; the group has clashed over his opposition to long-held conservative beliefs about government spending and free trade, as well as its more welcoming stance on immigration. In recent weeks, Haley has increasingly won the backing of high-profile donors on Wall Street and elsewhere. A Trump campaign spokesman responded, “Americans for Prosperity—the political arm of the China First, America Last movement—has chosen to endorse a pro-China, open borders, and globalist candidate in Nikki ‘Birdbrain’ Haley.” The former South Carolina governor served as U.N. ambassador in Trump’s administration.

✞BUFFET BIZ PARTNER CHARLES MUNGER DIES: Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s closest friend and consigliere for six decades, died at age 99.  In public, especially at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meetings, the billionaire vice chairman deferred to Buffett in private, the opposite was often true. Munger’s sharp wit dazzled generations of investors. Buffett, the chairman, nicknamed Munger the “abominable no-man” for his ferocity in rejecting potential investments. Munger, who was fascinated by engineering and technology, pushed the tech-phobic Buffett into big bets on Chinese battery and electric vehicle maker BYD and Israeli machine-tool manufacturer Iscar. Munger was a brilliant investor in his own right. He began managing investment partnerships in 1962, and from then through 1969, the S&P 500 gained an average of 5.6% annually. Buffett’s partnerships returned an average of 24.3% annually, while Munger’s averaged annualized gains of 24.4%.

💸'BE CAREFUL WHO YOU GIVE MONEY TO': Fox Business 'Making Money' host Charles Payne tells investors to be careful who they give their money to.

🏠U-S- HOME PRICES HIT HIGH:  They increased 3.9% from a year earlier, compared with a 2.5% annual increase the prior month, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index, marking the highest September level since tracking began in 1987. Higher mortgage rates have driven away potential buyers, though an unusually low inventory of homes has prevented prices from falling. Soaring rates are keeping would-be home sellers ensconced where they are because they don’t want to give up the low rates they have on their existing mortgages. In a case of “he said, she said, the housing market said,” the people staying put include divorced and separated couples.



➤U-S SUICIDES HIT RECORD HIGH:  America’s mental-health crisis drove suicides to a record-high number last year. Nearly 50,000 people in the U.S. lost their lives to suicide in 2022, according to a provisional tally from the National Center for Health Statistics. The agency said the final count would likely be higher. The suicide rate of 14.3 deaths per 100,000 people reached its highest level since 1941.  The record reflects broad struggles to help people in mental distress following a pandemic that killed more than one million in the U.S., upended the economy and left many isolated and afraid. A shortage of healthcare workers, an increasingly toxic illicit drug supply and the ubiquity of firearms have facilitated the rise in suicides, mental-health experts said.


➤CONVICTED MURDERER ALEX MURDAUGH SENTENCED: Richard "Alex" Murdaugh, a disgraced former powerhouse lawyer in South Carolina already serving life in prison for the murder of his wife and son, received a 27-year sentence on Tuesday for his guilty plea to nearly two dozen financial crimes. The sentence handed down in a Charleston courtroom, part of the plea deal Murdaugh reached earlier this month, will be served concurrently with the two life terms imposed eight months ago following his murder trial, said a spokesman for the state attorney general's office.

➤HUNTER BIDEN WILLING TO TESTIFY LAWYER SAYS: Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, is willing to be interviewed by lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee in public as part of its impeachment inquiry into the president, his lawyer said in a letter to the panel Tuesday. Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden's attorney, told Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, that the president's son will answer "any pertinent and relevant questions" lawmakers might have, but said his questioning must take place at a public committee hearing.

✞ROSALYNN CARTER FUNERAL: JIMMY CARTER AND ALL 5 LIVING FIRST LADIES ATTEND SERVICE: Former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and all five living current and former first ladies — Jill Biden, Melania Trump, Michelle Obama, Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton — gathered at a memorial on Tuesday for former first lady Rosalynn Carter in Atlanta. Carter was wheeled into the church in a wheelchair with a blanket wrapped around his legs and positioned in the front row.


🏀CUBAN SELLING HUGE STAKE IN MAVERICKS: Mavericks governor Mark Cuban is selling majority interest in the franchise to Miriam Adelson, the widow of Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, a person familiar with negotiations confirmed Tuesday to The Dallas Morning News.  Cuban, 65, would maintain operational control, even though Adelson, 78, and her family would own a greater than 50% stake, the person said, without divulging the percentage that the Adelsons are purchasing. The pending deal, if finalized and approved by the NBA Board of Governors, would merge the interests of Cuban and the Las Vegas Sands Corp., which have planned to partner in building a Dallas resort casino and arena, if gambling is legalized in Texas.




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