US FINANCIAL MARKET

Stocks Climb on Bets Fed, ECB Closer to Rate Cuts: Markets Wrap – Bloomberg, 3/7/2024

• Stocks hit all-time highs in the run-up to the US jobs report, with investors betting some of the world’s major central banks will start slashing interest rates as soon as June.
• Wall Street traders were glued to their screens for further insights from Jerome Powell, who said rate reductions “can and will begin” this year while noting policymakers are well aware of the risks of cutting too late.
• Earlier Thursday, his European counterpart Christine Lagarde indicated officials may be in a position to ease policy in June.
• The European Central Bank — just like the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England — is contemplating when to sound the all-clear on inflation and begin undoing the unprecedented monetary tightening deployed to subdue it.
• All major groups in the S&P 500 rose, while the Nasdaq 100 added over 1% — with Nvidia leading gains in big tech.
• Broadcom’s results after the close will be the next test of the artificial-intelligence rally.
• Treasury 10-year yields were little changed at 4.1%.
• The euro edged higher after falling in the immediate aftermath of the ECB decision.
• Speaking after policymakers left the deposit rate at 4% for a fourth straight meeting, Lagarde said there’s a definite slowdown in consumer prices but that she and her colleagues aren’t “sufficiently confident” at present to commence monetary easing.
• Just 24 hours before the all-important US payrolls report, data showed jobless claims held at historically low levels last week — the latest evidence of a resilient labor market.
• The government’s monthly employment report due Friday is forecast to show a pullback in hiring and wage growth in February after both advanced significantly in the previous month.
• General Electric’s aerospace division set plans to return more of its profits to shareholders, including restoration of a significant dividend as it accelerates earnings as an independent company.
• Two Nvidia directors sold about $180 million in shares of the chipmaker in recent days, becoming the latest insiders to cash in as the stock continues to push deeper into record territory.
• Kroger shares rose after the grocer’s full-year adjusted profit guidance beat analyst expectations, making it the latest retailer to offer an upbeat outlook as customers show resilience.
• Victoria’s Secret plunged after the beleaguered lingerie maker’s full-year sales guidance fell short of analysts’ expectations.
• Novo Nordisk touted the potential of its next-generation obesity treatments, releasing promising data on an experimental daily pill and sending the shares soaring to a record.

Kroger Stock Rises After Retailer’s Adjusted Earnings Top Expectations – Wall Street Journal, 3/7/2024

• Kroger sales increased 6% in the fourth quarter as customer visits increased, despite macroeconomic pressures.
• Sales climbed to $37.06 billion, a touch below analyst estimates, according to FactSet.
• Kroger said digital sales grew more than 10% when excluding the 53rd week.
• Identical sales, which strip out effects from store openings and closings, fell 0.8% in the quarter, excluding fuel sales.
• Net income rose to $736 million. Analysts polled by FactSet expected $799.2 million in net income.
• Stripping out one-time items, Kroger’s adjusted quarterly earnings were $1.34 a share, trumping analysts’ expectations for $1.13.
• For 2024, Kroger guided for adjusted earnings per-share in the range of $4.30 and $4.50.
• Analysts expected $4.56 in adjusted earnings per-share.

American Eagle unveils strategy to grow profits, takes $94 million in impairment charges for logistics business – CNBC, 3/7/2024

• American Eagle on Thursday announced a new strategy to boost profitable growth over the next three years, as the retailer said it wrote off $94 million in impairment charges related to its internal logistics business Quiet Platform.
• Revenue: $1.68 billion vs. $1.67 billion expected.
• During the fourth quarter, its gross margin stood at 37.3%. It was higher than the 36.6% that StreetAccount had expected, but far below the gross margin of its longtime rival Abercrombie & Fitch, which on Wednesday reported a fiscal fourth quarter margin of about 63%.
• Earnings per share: 61 cents adjusted vs. 50 cents expected.
• In the current quarter, American Eagle expects sales to be up by a mid-single digit percentage, which is in line with estimates of up 5%, according to LSEG.
• For the full year, it expects sales to be up 2% to 4%, the higher end of which would beat the 2.9% analysts had expected, according to LSEG.

Victoria’s Secret Falls Most Ever in Faltering Turnaround – Bloomberg, 3/7/2024

• Victoria’s Secret & shares plunged as much as 28%, the most on record, after the beleaguered lingerie maker’s full-year sales guidance fell short of analysts’ expectations.
• In the quarter ended Feb. 3, which included the crucial holiday shopping season, comparable sales at Victoria’s Secret fell 6%.
• The company has been highlighting strong performance in its international business, where total sales grew about 24% in the fourth quarter.
• But that segment makes up less than 10% of the overall business.
• Profitability, meanwhile, beat expectations thanks in part to better inventory management.
• Underscoring the retailer’s struggle to gain relevance with customers, the company said Wednesday it expects net sales of $6 billion this year, weaker than last year.

Big Lots’ stock turns higher as ‘extreme bargains’ set stage for sales to bottom – Market Watch, 3/7/2024

• Shares of Big Lots rallied Thursday to reverse an earlier sharp loss after the discount home-essentials retailer provided an upbeat gross-margin outlook and said same-store sales may bring an end to the long quarterly streak of declines.
• Chief Executive Bruce Thorn said on the post-earnings call with analysts that he expects to “significantly grow” the percentage of sales marked as “bargains” to 75%, as the assortment of “extreme bargains” has expanded.
• Sales fell 7.2% to $1.43 billion, in line with the FactSet consensus and with guidance provided a month ago.
• Gross margin improved to 38% from 36.3%, in line with guidance.
• For the fiscal fourth quarter that ended Feb. 3, comparable-store sales, or sales at stores open at least a year, fell 8.6% from a year ago, compared with the FactSet consensus estimate of an 8.5% decline.
• Excluding nonrecurring items, such as distribution-center closing costs, the adjusted per-share loss was 28 cents, compared with the FactSet loss consensus of 23 cents.
• For the first quarter, the company expects gross margin to improve “significantly,” in the range of 2 to 2.5 percentage points, because of fewer price cuts, lower freight costs and other cost-cutting actions.

NYCB Raises More Than $1 Billion in Equity Led by Steven Mnuchin’s Firm – Bloomberg, 3/7/2024

• Commercial real estate lender New York Community Bancorp received an equity investment of more than $1 billion, gaining a vote of confidence in the struggling lender from investors including former US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
• The capital injection was led by Mnuchin’s Liberty Strategic Capital, Hudson Bay Capital and Reverence Capital Partners, NYCB said in a statement Wednesday, confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report.
• “In evaluating this investment, we were mindful of the bank’s credit risk profile,” Mnuchin said in the statement.
• “With the over $1 billion of capital invested in the bank, we believe we now have sufficient capital should reserves need to be increased in the future to be consistent with or above the coverage ratio of NYCB’s large bank peers.”
• NYCB also named Joseph Otting, the former comptroller of the currency, as its new chief executive officer.
• Liberty, which counts Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund among its backers, will invest $450 million.
• Other investors include Hudson Bay at $250 million and Reverence at $200 million, according to the statement.
• Citadel Global Equities, an equities business of Ken Griffin’s hedge fund, is also an investor.
• In connection with the deal, NYCB will add four new directors to its board, including Mnuchin and Otting.
• The investors will buy common shares at $2 apiece and get some convertible preferred stock with a conversion price also at $2, to raise $1.05 billion in total.
• The group will also get warrants with an exercise price of $2.50 per share.

Exxon Files for Arbitration Over Chevron’s Deal for Hess – Wall Street Journal, 3/7/2024

• Exxon Mobil has filed for arbitration to protect what it says is its right to pre-empt Chevron’s bid for a stake in a prolific oil project off Guyana, escalating a dispute that could torpedo Chevron’s $53 billion deal for Hess.
• Chevron last week warned investors that Exxon and China’s Cnooc say they have the right to counter Chevron’s offer for Hess’s stake in the Guyana project, which Exxon operates and is one of the largest oil finds in years.
• Chevron said arbitration could be pursued in the event that talks between the companies fell apart.
• Exxon senior vice president Neil Chapman said Wednesday that Exxon had filed that day for arbitration in the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris.
• He said Exxon had taken tremendous exploration, financial and commercial risks developing the South American oil project, and that it had a responsibility to shareholders to ensure it realized the value that it had created in Guyana.
• Chevron spokesman Braden Reddall has said Chevron and Hess don’t believe a right-of-first refusal applies to the Hess deal.
• He said in a statement Wednesday that Chevron remains fully committed to the transaction and is confident in its position.

• The dispute boils down to the terms of a joint operating agreement, or JOA, signed more than a decade ago, which governs the consortium.

US ECONOMY & POLITICS

US Trade Deficit Widens to Largest Since April on Higher Imports – Bloomberg, 3/7/2024

• The US trade deficit widened in January by more than forecast, driven by a pickup in the value of imports while exports were little changed.
• The shortfall in goods and services trade expanded 5.1% from the prior month to $67.4 billion, the widest since April, Commerce Department data showed Thursday.
• The gap exceeded all estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists.
• The value of imports rose 1.1% to the highest level in a year, led by capital goods and motor vehicles.
• Exports edged up 0.1%.
• On an inflation-adjusted basis, the merchandise trade deficit increased to a three-month high of $86 billion in January.
• Travel exports — or spending by visitors to the US — edged up slightly to the highest since December 2019.
• Travel imports — a measure of Americans traveling abroad — climbed to a fresh record.
• The US merchandise-trade deficit with China widened slightly.
• The goods shortfall with Mexico shrank to the lowest level in three months.

US Jobless Claims Hold at Historically Low Level of 217,000 – Bloomberg, 3/7/2024

• Applications for US unemployment benefits held at historically low levels last week, the latest evidence of a resilient labor market.
• Initial claims was unchanged at 217,000 in the week ending March 2, according to Labor Department data released Thursday.
• That was in line with the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists.
• In the decade before the pandemic, such claims averaged more than 300,000 a week.
• Continuing claims, a proxy for the total number of people receiving unemployment benefits, ticked up to 1.91 million in the week ending Feb. 24.
• The four-week moving average, which smooths out some of that volatility, was also little changed at 212,250 last week.
• The unadjusted data on initial claims, which doesn’t take into account seasonal influences, rose to 213,152.
• New York accounted for the majority of the increase.

Powell Reiterates Fed Needs More Confidence on Inflation to Cut – Bloomberg, 3/7/2024

• Robinhood Markets is seeing as much as 25% of total trading volume coming outside of traditional market hours as investors take advantage of extended days on the retail-brokerage platform.
• Consumers have traded more than $10 billion in volume overnight since Robinhood launched its 24-hour, five-day-a-week trading capabilities last May — data the firm hasn’t previously announced.
• Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell reiterated to lawmakers that the US central bank is in no rush to cut interest rates until policymakers are convinced they have won their battle over inflation.
• In testimony before a House panel Wednesday, the Fed chief said it will likely be appropriate to begin lower borrowing costs “at some point this year,” but made clear officials are not ready yet.
• “The committee does not expect that it will be appropriate to reduce the target range until it has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2%,” Powell told the House Financial Services Committee, adding later that officials would approach the decision “carefully and thoughtfully.”

Brainard Pushed to Change Biden Rate Forecast to Rosier View – Bloomberg, 3/7/2024

• Joe Biden’s top economic aide, Lael Brainard, successfully pressed to adjust a White House forecast in a way that resulted in a slightly rosier outlook in the president’s forthcoming budget plan, according to people familiar with the matter.
• The disagreement was over forecasts for 10-year Treasury yields in the budget, a linchpin estimate that is intertwined with other measures, like debt service costs.
• Forecasts in the president’s budget proposal — scheduled for release Monday — are typically set by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young and the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Jared Bernstein.
• The group is known in fiscal circles as the troika.
• The difference between the views was modest and both were well within range of private-sector estimates, the people said.
• The result of Brainard’s push was to lower the projected rate by 10 basis points across three years of the forecast, one of the people said.
• Two of the people described the discussion as strained, while another downplayed that idea, casting it as a normal discussion among economists.
• While it’s not uncommon for NEC directors and staff to participate in the budget-making process, they typically are not closely involved in setting the precise forecasts, which are technically set by the troika, the people said.

Trump Dares Biden to Debate After Jilting Republican Rivals – Bloomberg, 3/7/2024

• Donald Trump challenged President Joe Biden to debate after refusing to attend the same forums with his Republican primary challengers, a change in attitude that coincides with the effective start of the 2024 general election.
• “It is important, for the Good of our Country, that Joe Biden and I Debate Issues that are so vital to America, and the American People,” Trump wrote Wednesday in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.
• “Therefore, I am calling for Debates, ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, ANYPLACE!”
• Trump’s desire to debate comes hours after his final Republican rival, Nikki Haley, dropped out of the race, marking the start of the longest general presidential election in recent history.

Biden Pushes More Corporate-Tax Hikes to Draw Contrast With Trump – Wall Street Journal, 3/7/2024

• President Biden is expected to propose raising taxes on large companies in his State of the Union address Thursday, taking aim at executive compensation as he lays out a campaign-year message that contrasts with that of rival Donald Trump and his tax agenda.
• Biden’s plan reprises many corporate-tax ideas he has pitched since the 2020 campaign and failed to get through Congress even when Democrats were in charge, such as raising the corporate tax rate to 28% and boosting taxes on U.S. companies’ foreign profits.
• The additional proposals include raising a corporate minimum tax, which took effect this past year, to 21% from 15%.
• Biden will also call for imposing stiffer limits on companies’ ability to deduct the wages of their highest-paid workers, according to White House officials.
• Biden’s proposals will highlight the biggest differences between the two parties on an issue—tax policy—that will be crucial during the campaign and in 2025.
• Biden wants to extend tax cuts for households making less than $400,000 a year while raising taxes on corporations and high-income Americans and beefing up Internal Revenue Service enforcement.

Layoffs rise to the highest for any February since 2009, Challenger says – CNBC, 3/7/2024

• Layoff announcements in February hit their highest level for the month since the global financial crisis, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
• The total of 84,638 planned cuts showed an increase of 3% from January and 9% from the same month a year ago, with technology and finance companies at the forefront.
• For the year, companies have listed 166,945 cuts, a decrease of 7.6% from a year ago.
• Layoff announcements at financial firms have risen 56% compared to the first two months of 2023.
• Other industries planning significant cuts include industrial goods manufacturing (up 1,754% from a year ago), energy (up 1,059%) and education (up 944%).
• Challenger’s experts say companies most often cite restructuring plans as the main reason for the reductions in workforce.
• Artificial intelligence has been cited for just 383 cuts, though “technological updates” in general have been at the root of more than 15,000 reductions, or nearly as much as all the years combined since 2007.

Espionage Probe Finds Communications Device on Chinese Cranes at U.S. Ports – Wall Street Journal, 3/7/2024

• A congressional probe of Chinese-built cargo cranes deployed at ports throughout the U.S. has found communications equipment that doesn’t appear to support normal operations, fueling concerns that the foreign machines may pose a covert national-security risk.
• The installed components in some cases include cellular modems, according to congressional aides and documents, that could be remotely accessed.
• The discovery of the modems by lawmakers, which hasn’t been previously reported, has added to concerns in Washington about port security and China.
• The Pentagon and intelligence officials at other agencies in the Biden administration have grown increasingly alarmed by the potential threat of disruption and espionage presented by the giant cranes built by ZPMC, a China-based manufacturer that accounts for nearly 80% of ship-to-shore cranes in use at U.S. ports.
• The Chinese government “is looking for every opportunity to collect valuable intelligence and position themselves to exploit vulnerabilities by systematically burrowing into America’s critical infrastructure, including in the maritime sector,” said Rep. Mark Green (R., Tenn.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, which has been investigating Chinese maritime security threats.
• “The United States has clearly overlooked this threat for far too long.”

TikTok Faces U.S. Ban in New Draft Bill – Wall Street Journal, 3/7/2024

• TikTok, the short-video platform owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance, is facing renewed political pressure in the U.S. from a draft bill that could lead to a ban of its popular video-sharing app.
• The bill, introduced in Congress on Tuesday, calls for Beijing-based ByteDance to divest itself of TikTok or face the platform being banned from app stores and web-hosting services in the U.S.
• ByteDance would have a little more than five months from the enactment of the bill to comply.
• The bill, introduced by Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, who leads the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, and Democrat Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, addresses “foreign adversary-controlled applications,” and flags what it says are national security risks posed by TikTok and “any other application or service developed or provided by Bytedance.”
• “America’s foremost adversary has no business controlling a dominant media platform in the United States,” Gallagher said in a press release, referring to China.
• Krishnamoorthi added that the bill would give the U.S. president tools to “press dangerous apps to divest and defend Americans’ security and privacy.”
• The bill defined control by a foreign adversary as a business with a minimum 20% stake held directly or indirectly by a foreign adversary, or with headquarters that are in or subject to direction by a foreign adversary.
• A TikTok spokesperson described the bill as “an outright ban of TikTok,” adding that it would “trample” on First Amendment rights and affect 170 million American users and 5 million small businesses on the platform in the U.S.

EUROPE & WORLD

Novo Keeps the Good Times Rolling With Positive Results on Obesity Pill – Wall Street Journal, 3/7/2024

• Obesity drugs are all about creating a feeling of satiety. Investors, however, keep coming back for more.
• On Thursday, Novo Nordisk released promising results from an early-stage study of an obesity pill, adding to the enthusiasm that a more convenient oral solution could be on the market a few years down the line.
• In a Phase I study, participants on the experimental pill Amycretin experienced 13.1% weight loss after 12 weeks, besting a 6% weight loss on the Novo injectable Wegovy at 12 weeks.
• Novo is far from being the only company working on obesity pills.
• Eli Lilly is developing a non-peptide GLP-1 pill called orforglipron.
• The once-daily pill, taken for 36 weeks, helped volunteers lose up to 14.7% of their body weight in a mid-stage clinical trial of more than 270 people with obesity.

Aviva Upgrades Targets After Operating Profit Beat – Wall Street Journal, 3/7/2024

• Aviva expects its operating profit to keep growing, and has upgraded its targets for other metrics as it reported a better-than-expected figure for 2023 and launched a 300 million pound ($382 million) share buyback.
• The British insurer and asset manager on Thursday said that it now targets an operating profit of around GBP2 billion by 2026.
• It expects its Solvency II own funds generation to reach GBP1.8 billion by 2026, compared with a previous view of GBP1.5 billion by 2024, and targets over GBP5.8 billion in cash remittances cumulatively over the 2024 to 2026 period, up from over GBP5.4 billion for 2022 to 2024.
• The group posted an operating profit for the 12 months ended Dec. 31 of GBP1.47 billion, beating company-complied consensus of GBP1.43 billion and the previous year’s GBP1.35 billion.

Continental Hikes Dividend After Net Profit Soars – Wall Street Journal, 3/7/2024

• Continental said it would hike its dividend after net profit soared as production efficiency improved and supply-chains stabilized.
• The German car-parts manufacturer said Thursday that net profit for 2023 jumped to 1.16 billion euros ($1.26 billion) from EUR66.6 million a year earlier.
• Analysts had expected net profit of EUR1.35 billion, according to a poll from Visible Alpha.
• Group sales rose to EUR41.42 billion from EUR39.41 billion, helped by an 11% revenue jump in its automotive division.

ECB Interest Rates Held as Weaker Inflation Raises Prospect of Cuts – Bloomberg, 3/7/2024

• The European Central Bank left interest rates unchanged for a fourth meeting as a softer outlook for inflation and economic growth bolstered expectations for cuts starting in June.
• The deposit rate was kept at a record 4% — as all economists surveyed by Bloomberg predicted.
• The Governing Council reiterated that maintaining this level of borrowing costs for “sufficiently long” will make a “substantial contribution” to returning consumer-price growth to the 2% goal.
• President Christine Lagarde said there’s a definite slowdown in inflation but that she and her colleagues aren’t “sufficiently confident” at present to lower rates.
• “We clearly need more evidence, more detail,” she told reporters Thursday in Frankfurt.
• “We know that this data will come in the next few months. We will know a little more in April, but we will know a lot more in June.”
• Their latest quarterly outlook puts inflation at 2.3% this year — down from 2.7% in December — and revises the 2025 forecast down to 2%.
• The economy, meanwhile, is seen expanding by 0.6% in 2024 versus 0.8% previously.

China’s Export Bounce Draws Notes of Caution From Economists – Bloomberg, 3/7/2024

• China’s exports posted their biggest gain in more than a year, a glimmer of hope for the world’s largest trading nation but one economists cautioned shouldn’t be confused with the beginning of a revival.
• Figures released Thursday showed shipments abroad in US dollar terms rose 7.1% in January and February from a year earlier, and imports were up 3.5%.
• That widened the trade surplus to a record $125 billion.

Hamas Leaves Gaza Talks With No Cease-Fire Deal – Wall Street Journal, 3/7/2024

• Hamas has pulled out of talks aimed at securing a cease-fire in Gaza, Egyptian officials said Thursday, after the group’s leadership hardened its bargaining position by requesting Israel’s commitment to discuss a permanent stop to the fighting.
• U.S. and Arab officials for weeks have sought to strike a deal between Israel and Hamas aimed at a temporary cease-fire in Gaza, where a humanitarian crisis worsens by the day.
• Mediators were hoping to reach an agreement for a six-week truce over the next few days, ahead of the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan around Sunday.
• The remaining Hamas officials who were in Cairo for cease-fire negotiations left on Thursday and it is unclear whether they would return, Egyptian officials said.
• The group may return to Cairo on Sunday for more talks, they said.
• Hamas Thursday said its delegation was leaving Cairo “to consult with the movement’s leadership.”
• It added that negotiations would continue aimed at achieving the movement’s key goals: an end to the fighting, securing more humanitarian aid and allowing displaced Gazans to return to their homes.

Temu’s Push Into America Pays Off Big Time for Meta and Google – Wall Street Journal, 3/7/2024

• Meta Platforms’ top advertiser by revenue in 2023 was the e-commerce company Temu, an upstart discounter founded in China that has emerged as an increasingly potent force in American business.
• PDD Holdings, the parent company of Temu, spent nearly $2 billion on advertisements last year at Meta, according to people familiar with the matter, surprising executives at the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.
• Temu also became one of Google’s top five advertisers by spending last year, according to people familiar with the business.
• A Temu spokesman disputed the $2 billion figure but declined to disclose the company’s spending levels at Meta.
• The volume of advertising from Temu, which launched in 2022, has caught executives off guard at both tech companies, which have long been the dominant players in digital advertising.
• Temu, fast-fashion giant Shein and other online shopping platforms with Chinese roots are spending aggressively to reach American consumers, pushing up digital advertising prices, poaching logistics employees and delivering so many products that they have become a boon to the shipping industry.
• Internally, Meta employees joked that they should thank Temu by sending them a hefty Temu gift card, a person familiar with the issue said.

China’s Foreign Minister Questions U.S. Confidence as World Power – Wall Street Journal, 3/7/2024

• China’s foreign minister painted the U.S. as a paranoid superpower and criticized Europe’s policy toward Beijing as increasingly muddled, comments that laid bare how deep distrust persists between China and the West despite a surge of diplomacy to stabilize ties.
• In a 90-minute press conference Thursday, Foreign Minister Wang Yi also warned of the possible escalation in the war between Russia and Ukraine, celebrated the close ties between Beijing and Moscow and echoed recent comments by Russian President Vladimir Putin about the risk of a protracted conflict.
• “Where is the confidence of a great power if the U.S. grows anxious when it hears the word ‘China?’” he said.
• “The challenge facing the U.S. lies within itself and not with China. If you’re focused on suppressing China, you’ll inevitably hurt yourself.”
• “If the United States insists on monopolizing the high end of the value chain, and only allowing China to remain at the low end, then where is the fair competition?” Wang said.

Houthi Attack on Ship Off Yemen Kills Three – Wall Street Journal, 3/7/2024

• Three people on board a Barbados-flagged ship died after it was struck in an attack claimed by Yemen’s Houthis on Wednesday, according to the ship’s owner, the first known loss of life since the rebel group began attacking ships in the Red Sea region in late November.
• The bulk carrier True Confidence caught fire after being hit early Wednesday local time by a missile as it sailed 50 nautical miles southwest of Aden, forcing the crew to abandon the ship, the vessel’s managers and owners said in a joint statement.
• Three people—two Filipino and one Vietnamese—were killed in the attack and two crew members have suffered serious injuries, the owner and the manager said in a statement.
• It said the vessel was run by Third January Maritime of Greece and is the property of True Confidence Shipping of Liberia.

Factmonster – TODAY in HISTORY

• Daniel Webster gave a three-hour speech endorsing the Compromise of 1850. – 1850
• Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for the telephone. – 1876
• Adolf Hitler broke the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact when he ordered troops to march into the Rhineland. – 1936
• During World War II, U.S. troops crossed the bridge at Remagen, the first incursion into Germany by Allied forces. – 1945
• Peaceful civil rights demonstrators marching from Selma, Ala., are brutally attacked with billy clubs and tear gas by police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The event is later called “Bloody Sunday.” – 1965
• Iran broke off diplomatic relations with Britain over Salman Rushdie’s novel Satanic Verses. – 1989
• Gene Robinson of New Hampshire was invested as the first openly gay Episcopal Church bishop. – 2004

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