U.S. stocks rally;
Dow surges 669
News that the U.S. and China are open to negotiating to avert a trade war put investors in a buying mood Monday, giving the market its best day in more than two years and erasing about half of its huge losses last week.
Technology companies accounted for much of the broad rally, which powered the Dow Jones industrial average to a gain of nearly 670 points. Microsoft was the biggest gainer in the 30-company Dow and the Standard &Poor’s 500 index, climbing nearly 8 percent.
Banks also notched solid gains, benefiting from a pickup in bond yields. Retailers, consumer goods companies and health care stocks were among the big gainers.
The market rebound followed the worst week for U.S. stocks in two years as investors traded last week’s jitters for a more optimistic outlook on trade, and an opportunity to buy.
Is Zuckerberg willing to act boldly to fix Facebook crisis?
As questions mounted last year about whether Facebook had been exploited to tilt the U.S. presidential election, Mark Zuckerberg’s to-do list landed him on a fishing trawler off Alabama’s Gulf coast.
But the chatter surrounding the CEO’s arrival in port was that it signaled something bigger than just the start of a 30-state personal tour: his designs on a job even more powerful than leading the social network that links 2.2 billion people worldwide.
“It was one of the last things I asked him, thinking it would put a smile on his face — and it did,” said Dominick Ficarino, who owns a shrimp business in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, and hosted a dockside lunch for Zuckerberg that Sunday afternoon.
“I asked him if he was interested in running for president of the United States. And his answer to me was: ‘Can I answer you with a question? If you were me, would you?’”
U.S., allies band together to expel Russians over spies
WASHINGTON — From Washington to Warsaw, Western nations banded together Monday to expel more than 100 Russian diplomats they accused of being spies, punishing Moscow for its alleged poisoning of an ex-intelligence officer in Britain.
President Donald Trump, under constant political heat for his reluctance to challenge Russia, ordered 60 of its diplomats out of the U.S. — all of them spies, the White House said. The United States called it the largest expulsion of Russian spies in American history, and also shuttered Russia’s consulate in Seattle, deeming it a counterintelligence threat.
All told, at least 21 countries have ousted more than 135 Russians, including 23 kicked out earlier by the U.K.
“Together we have sent a message that we will not tolerate Russia’s continued attempts to flout international law and undermine our values,” British Prime Minister Theresa May told Parliament.
By wire sources
