
Three workers rescued after being trapped at Newmont's Red Chris mine in Canada
Some operations at the mine have resumed but the underground mine remains suspended, Bernard Wessels, global group head for health, safety and security at Newmont, said at a news conference.
Wessels said Newmont will reopen the underground mine after a comprehensive investigation into the incident.
The three miners from Hy-Tech Drilling: Kevin Coumbs, Darien Maduke, Jesse Chubaty were trapped after two "fall of ground" incidents at the mine's accessway. Fall of ground refers to the walls and floors of a mine collapsing, a major safety risk for the industry.
The miners lost communication for two days and were sheltering in a designated sheltering area of the mine, known as "Refuge Bay."
"They were in good spirits, walked to the vehicle on their own, and were relieved to be out," Wessels said. The three miners followed safety protocol and stayed exactly where they were supposed to stay, he added.
Newmont has a 70% stake in the mine, with the remaining 30% held by Imperial Metals Corp (III.TO), opens new tab.
Wessels said Newmont was doing a thorough check of the psychological state of the miners. Newmont said that it does monthly investigations on its operations, and this incident caught the company by surprise.
The Red Chris mine was acquired by Newmont as part of its larger acquisition of Australian miner Newcrest in 2023. There are two mines at Red Chris, one is an open pit mine and the other is underground.
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The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
The key to understanding Trump? It's not what you think
Donald Trump embodies dealmaking as the essence of a particular form of entrepreneurship. Every deal begins with his needs and every deal feeds his wants. He thus appears to be like other super-rich people: seemingly bottomlessly greedy, chasing the next buck as if it is the last buck, even when they have met every criterion of satiation. But Trump is different, because his brand of greed harks back to an idea of leadership that is primarily about adversarial dealmaking, rather than about innovation or improved managerial techniques. Trump's entire career is built on deals, and his own narcissism is tied up with dealmaking. This is because of his early socialization into his father's real-estate dealings in and around New York. Real estate in the United States, unlike the money-making modes of super-rich individuals in other countries, relies on deals based on personal reputation, speculation on future asset values, and the ability to launder spotty career records. Profits and losses over time can be hard to identify and quantify precisely, as Trump's auditors and opponents have often confirmed, since profits, which depend on speculation and unknown future value, are by definition uncertain. Trump's incessant boasts about being an apex dealmaker cast light on almost every aspect of his approach to his presidential decision-making. Numerous observers have long cast doubt on Trump's image as a consummate dealmaker, pointing to his many failures in his long real-estate career, his abortive political and diplomatic deals, his backsliding and reversals, and his overblown claims about deals in progress. But these criticisms miss the point. Deals, whether in finance, real estate, or in any other part of the economy, are just one step in the process of reaching full-fledged, binding agreements subject to the force of law. They are a stage in the negotiation process that has no force until it is finalized as a contract. It is, at best, an agreement to agree, which can turn out to be premature, poorly conceived or unacceptable to one or other party. Put another way, it is an engagement, not a wedding. A deal allows a negotiator like Trump to claim victory and blame the other party or some other contextual variable if things do not work out. In fact, in the hands of someone like Trump, deals are ways to evade, postpone or subvert the efficient work of markets. Trump does not like markets, precisely because they are impersonal and invisible. Their results – for corporations, entrepreneurs, investors and shareholders – are subject to clear measures of success and failure. Because deals are personal, adversarial and incomplete, they are perfect grist for Trump's relentless publicity machine, and allow him to polish his brand, massage his ego and signal his prowess to opponents – without the regulations and measurable consequences of regular market risks. The downside risk for an aborted or interrupted deal is negligible, and the upside is guaranteed by the legal power of fully completed contracts. Trump has figured out to an exceptional degree that dealmaking does not need to be successful in order to massively increase his wealth. Whether or not true, his claims to successful deals are the key to his brand and profitmaking worldwide, either directly or through the business endeavors of his sons. These range from his latest Trump perfume and Trump mobile telephone services, his Maga accessories, Trump golf courses around the world, his real estate and resorts, and of course his highly profitable cryptocurrency holdings. In every case, his deals either lead to further deals, which service his branding machine, or they lead to direct increases in his personal and corporate wealth. Deals, successful or not, are Trump's magic means to amass money and feed his avarice. Avarice is a vice with a long history in Christian theology. It is widely defined as an excess of greed, an inordinate level of greed, an insatiable greed. It has been viewed by economic historians as a passion that must be curbed and replaced by calculated, moderated self-interest in order for the rationality of the modern market to function as a dominant economic principle. From this perspective, greed can have numerous objects – such as food, sex and power – whereas avarice is single-minded in its focus on money. Trump exemplifies this focus. Though he has to function in a world where avarice is meant to be regulated by the market mechanisms of price and competition, he has managed to successfully pursue his avarice with little obstacle. This driving desire defines Trump's 'egonomics' – the intimate connection between his narcissistic urges and his wish for increasing his stock of money. The governing principles of his economic policy have nothing to do with America getting its due, as his messaging about tariffs argues, or about restoring dignity to the working class, as he signals to his Maga base. Nor are they about power or prestige. The object of everything he does is money, and in the service of the boundlessness of money, which Trump has made the defining object of his desire. Other commodities are of interest to him only insofar as they serve his desire to acquire, hoard and increase his stock – of money. The first – and most soothing – theory is that Trump wants money to buy power – more of it, perhaps all of it. More power than China, than his generals, than Harvard. We all know power – via our parents, our teachers, our bosses, our police. It is a force we understand, a pull we recognize. If Trump only wants more of something that many people have, and even more want, he is legible, he is like us. But power for what? To do what? To get what? Perhaps he is chasing an unassailable place in history, both human and eternal. So then it is not just power he endlessly chases, but glory. For this we have some evidence in the clownish thesaurus of words that he uses to describe his achievements, his looks, his wit, his wisdom, his all-round superhumanity: best, most, only, incredible, ever, more. In this orgy of superlatives, he is always curled high up in the clouds, like a Maurice Sendak toddler. But since Trump, from his perspective, brooks no real competition in life, in politics, in real estate, or even in history, there can be no glory for him which is not tainted by the mediocrity of his competitors. And true glory usually requires some form of self-sacrifice, some sense of compassion, some ability to transcend oneself. Given his woeful deficits in these areas, the glory game cannot be the key to understanding Trump. And so we go to a more familiar space: the realm of prestige, status and stardom. This realm is wired into competitions, tournaments and casinos of every sort, where winning is well-defined, losing is for losers and there is usually only one survivor and one winner who takes all. The competition for status is as old as recorded human history and accompanies every human society that has had leaders and followers, more and less skilled competitors for food, shelter and sexual partners. It begins with simple rules for coming out on top and evolves over time into the most elaborate forms of status competition, often driven by males – including wartime exploits, trophy wives, palatial homes and bottomless conspicuous consumption. These tournaments of value can be observed in settings as disparate as auctions, horse races, philanthropic gifts and corporate mergers and acquisitions. There is widespread consensus among thinkers from many eras and regions that status is a limited good, which has its own economics of supply and demand, distinct from those of pecuniary gain. This insight looks, at first, like the key to Trump. But attractive as this argument may seem, it too is a red herring. Among Trump's own tactics, the one he loves to use most is tariffs. Trump's obstinate insistence on tariffs as the key to restoring American manufacturing, swelling the US treasury and reducing American consumer prices has flummoxed most mainstream economists. Tariffs are for Trump the ideal way to combine dealmaking, status-grabbing and his penchant for money as its own bottomless value. It is evident that Trump's understanding of the trade-offs of globalization is rudimentary and often internally contradictory. Indeed, he shows signs of believing that making deals of any sort requires only outsize confidence, charismatic force and bottomless access to financial backing. In fact, Trump's view of himself as an incomparable dealmaker (a claim at odds with his many entrepreneurial disasters) conceals his deep distaste of real markets – in which a large apparatus of binding promises, the tendency to stable price equilibria, and the connection of supply and demand through pricing – can frustrate his brand of deal-making, which is always oriented to maximizing his personal prestige. Trump's deep-seated desire to be the winner who takes all in the global prestige economy sheds some light on his weaponization of tariffs. We can catch a glimpse of this logic in a most unlikely context. It was captured in detail by one of the fathers of British social anthropology, Bronisław Malinowski, in his 1922 book on a unique trading system that he found in the Trobriand Islands of Oceania, on several trips there in the years between 1915 and 1917. This anthropological classic, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, casts new light on Trump's tariff mania. What Malinowski described is a system of trading across about 18 coral islands within a 175 sq mile (453 sq km) area, between 'big men', leaders of lineages who exchanged highly specific valuables (such as decorated shell necklaces and bracelets) and their counterparts in this network of islands. Called the kula system, it had a highly codified set of rules to hedge voyagers against oceanic weather dangers and hostile groups in other islands, some of whom were cannibals. The goods appropriate to kula exchange could never be hoarded, marketed or bartered like normal utilitarian goods. This was a strictly ceremonial system geared to enhancing the prestige of male elites, of moving these well-known objects in a circuit which could last for years. The diplomatic rituals of these exchanges were ensconced in an atmosphere of pretend hostility between the parties, often because other groups in these islands were real enemies, always poised for real warfare. Hanging on the knife-edge between trade and war, these exchange circuits were strictly distinguished from barter or money transactions (what we would today call market transactions). The kula system was a way of organizing exchange, averting war, signaling prestige and making allies through a tightly regulated flow of valuables outside market exchange circuits. Trump does not care about Malinowski, the Trobriand Islands, non-capitalist exchange systems or 'big man' politics in kinship-based polities. But his operating system belongs in this type of diplomatic world, one that requires nothing except a non-negotiable interest in winning deals. Trump's onslaught of tariffs, falling on everyone like nuclear ash, is meant to make him the king of the global prestige market, no matter the cost to diplomatic traditions, financial markets, customer capacities or fair balances of trade. Trump appears to be undistracted by any other economic priority outside the aim to be the apex dealmaker. The kula system is grounded in a non-monetary system of honor, prestige and reciprocity, which helps us understand Trump's tariff strategy but does not fit his narcissist drive to crush all his fellow players. Even the kula system is about relationships. Trump is strictly about winning deals. So we must beware of seeing the urge to dominate all prestige markets as Trump's bottom line. Trump's bottom line is money. Being an avaricious man, Trump worships money – both its power and its pomp – and he seeks it through his extensive networks of children, clients, tax lawyers and cronies, all devoted to the increase of his wealth. This pecuniary drive has a transcendent, epic and unquenchable force which cannot be explained by reference to the other things that money can buy. Even his quest for prestige through arm-twisting tariff deals is primarily about positioning himself to secure future deals in his individual capacity. His is a special brand of avarice. There is no better way to explore the ways in which Trump's various egonomic strategies come together than in the recent invention and propagation of cryptocurrency, which has spawned a shadow world of speculators, fraudsters, legal hucksters, elected and unelected lobbyists. Their usual victims are vulnerable citizens, low-level grifters, pensioners, badly informed investors and other natural prey. The entire industry lives in a gray economy, attached to mainstream markets, assets and regulators like the tiny remora fish that feast off sharks. It survives in a legal twilight zone, where its currency is accepted only by some businesses as legal tender, and where smart players use pump-and-dump tactics to make fast profits with short-lived 'coins' of various kinds. Whatever the utility of cryptocurrency in the real world of goods and services, it is mainly a tool for amassing wealth by gambling on its future convertibility to real money in specialized currency exchanges. Cryptocurrency puts Trump in the position of being a player and the owner of a casino-like system at the same time, so that he always wins, if not in one role, then in the other. The outrageous self-enrichment schemes of Trump and his family in the crypto industry, which have been carefully exposed in several media outlets recently, establish new frontiers for Trump's shameless violation of even the simplest norms about conflict of interest. The best example of these ventures is his memecoin, $Trump, which has made him and his close associates a fortune by selling access to Trump through a barely regulated crypto mechanism. By some estimates, Trump has gained several billions of dollars in his net worth through his crypto ventures, which combine nepotism, influence-peddling and dealmaking in a unique package. Through cryptocurrency, Trump has found the ultimate way to attach his core impulse – avarice – to the larger machinery of the markets. There is some truth to the argument that Trump wants more of everything he can get, including power, glory and prestige. But what he wants more than anything else is money, which is just a temporary token of more money, and more money for ever more. The unique instinct behind Trump's avarice, which sets him apart from other billionaires who continue to chase wealth, is that he has found a way to build his fortune through deals – whether deals that make him money by inflating the value of his brand, which can then make him more money through more deals, or through the enforceability of completed contracts. Through his dealmaking, Trump has managed to triumph over the market, making it work for him to amass greater and greater sums of money, whether his deals are seen through to fruition or not. We can summarize Trump's approach to markets by adapting a famous sentence, spoken by him, about how he grabs women: Trump grabs markets by the deal. Illustrations by Joao Fazenda


The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
A Trump IRA for kids? It's worth a bit of money. But here are better options
There's Trump Mobile, $Trump coins, Trump watches, Trump sneakers and now … the Trump baby savings accounts! Will it be popular? As a financial adviser, I'm not so sure. The Trump IRA (or individual retirement account) was established as a part of the recently passed 'big, beautiful bill' and aims to help young people save. Parents and employers can annually contribute up to $5,000 into an account for their kids who are under the age of 18. Within limits, the contributions are not taxed to the employee and employers even receive a deduction. What's nice about these accounts is that the income earned as the account grows (hopefully) is also not taxed. And, different from a typical IRA, which penalizes early withdrawals, once the child hits 18 they can withdraw the funds without any penalties. The biggest bonus? For kids born between 1 January 2025 and 31 December 2028, the government will kick in $1,000 to get things rolling. A thousand bucks? For free? Sounds good. And if you had a child this year, take advantage. Take the grand. Let it grow tax-free. At 5% interest it would be worth about $2,400 18 years from now. Why not? But that's all I'd do. Why? Because if your intention is to save money for your kids, there's at least two other strategies that make more sense. One is to lean into after-tax accounts like 529s and Roths. With a 529 account, you can put as much money away for your kids as you want into this after-tax account (be careful of gift tax limitations) and it will grow tax-free until the money is withdrawn. The catch is that the money has to be used for educational costs (tuition, books, fees, etc) at colleges and trade and vocational schools as well as private and religious schools. The new bill now also allows withdrawals to pay for professional certifications such as HVAC or plumbing licensing renewal courses. You can also set up a custodial Roth IRA for your child if they're under 18. One caveat is that the child does have to have actual income (not interest or investment income) from a W-2 wage. Contributions are limited to $7,000 this year and do not reduce taxes. But all earnings are tax-free and savings can be withdrawn at any time. 529s and Roths are good strategies if the goal is to pay for education or put money away for your child's long-term future. But the strategy that I really love? Insurance. Thanks to the advice from a great insurance adviser 30 years ago, I bought whole life insurance policies for my kids. Why? Because by naming them as both the insured and the beneficiary on their policy and then paying the bill, I locked them into insanely low premiums that continue on to this day. For example, even today a $100,000 whole life policy for a newborn might cost about $30 a month. At age 30, the same policy might cost $150 a month. Buying a whole life policy for your kids also gets them tax-free payouts for their families one day if anything – God forbid – happens to them. It also builds up cash over time. A $50,000 policy bought at age five could have $20,000-plus in cash value by age 45. There are more benefits to doing this. Many policies pay dividends each year, which can provide income to the owner. And, different than a 529 plan, you can borrow against a whole life insurance policy without potentially interrupting its benefits or cash buildup as long as you continue to pay the premiums. I have some clients who buy these policies because – in most cases – it can guarantee the ability to get more insurance in the future even if there are health issues. Of course, these are just my opinions based on what I recommend to clients and what has been recommended to me. Your circumstances may be different. So run these numbers – and strategies – by your financial adviser and tailor it to your situation. The Trump IRA has nice intentions but c'mon … it's really just a $1,000 political giveaway that at best will provide beer money for a kid once they hit 18. Sure, take it. But parents can realize a much better return on their investment by putting money away for their kids' future education, retirement or – sorry to say – death. Do this instead of the Trump IRA and your children – and their future families – will be thanking you more.


Times
7 hours ago
- Times
Markets are the casualty of Donald Trump's war on Federal Reserve
An increasingly familiar scenario unfolded once again last week between Donald Trump and Jerome Powell, chair of the US Federal Reserve. First, a salvo of insults, coupled with the suggestion that firing Powell could potentially be on the table. Next, a predictably poor response from bond markets and the dollar while the Fed chief maintains the silent stoicism of Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name. Finally, a denial by the president that he was ever considering removing him. Because there is a circular, Groundhog Day quality to the recurring events, it's tempting to treat them less seriously than they should be. While actually ousting Powell could create a market explosion that would reverberate globally, the pattern of threat followed by backtrack is becoming established and, after a brief surge in volatility, markets calm down fairly quickly. In essence, we end up where we began. No harm, no foul? Unfortunately, this misses the point. Although we are unlikely to see the dramatic market reaction that would accompany forcibly removing Powell as Fed chair, the damage has nevertheless already been done. Repeated attacks on the US central bank — however ineffective as a catalyst for change — have eroded its credibility, at least for now. Fairly or unfairly, every Fed ruling in the near term will be accompanied by investor questions about its rationale. They might ask whether a future decision to cut interest rates is based purely on impartial economic judgment, or whether the bank's Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) has been influenced by political pressure. Or, if the Fed holds rates, whether this owes more to the desire to underline its independence than to making the economically correct call. This affects markets — and specifically, the cost of US debt. Uncertainty among investors about what the Fed is thinking, and why, ultimately leads to them demanding a higher return from their bonds in exchange for the elevated risk. In short, the lower the credibility of the central bank, the more expensive it becomes to borrow. Consider, too, that currently the data coming out of the US doesn't tell a clear story. Soft data, such as sentiment surveys, paints a gloomy picture, whereas hard data, such as retail sales and industrial production, is holding up. Jobs numbers, meanwhile, now come with the added variable of mass deportations to factor in. And with the latest tariff deadline scheduled for August 1, and the promise of secondary tariffs on anyone trading with Russia unless Putin agrees to a ceasefire with Ukraine, I can't think of a time when it has been harder to read the economic tea leaves — and, therefore, to fully understand the drivers of Fed action. Whatever choices the FOMC makes, they won't be clear-cut, nor will the verdict be unanimous, leaving greater scope for questions over its decisions and motivations. • Trump's next 100 days will make the first 100 look tranquil If there is greater scrutiny of the Fed's judgment now, imagine what it will be like when Powell's term ends in May 2026 and he's eventually replaced. The new chair, whoever they are and whatever their credentials, will at least initially be regarded as somewhat politicised. For investors, this attaches a risk premium to US debt that didn't exist before. Market confidence will depend on the incoming candidate proving from the outset their imperviousness to political influence. The net effect of undermining the Fed is diminished effectiveness of what is known as 'the monetary transition mechanism' — that is, how effectively central bank policy changes feed through to the broader economy and, ultimately, inflation. If its independence continues to be questioned, future Fed interest rate cuts are unlikely to generate the same level of bond yield reductions that we've come to expect. Consequently, the irony of the president's continued demands on the Fed to lower rates is that, when it finally does, it may not have the desired impact. In a week when the Congressional Budget Office provided an additional estimate indicating that the Big Beautiful Bill could add $3.4 trillion to the national debt, this would hardly be a welcome outcome for the White House. On Thursday, Trump made the first in-person visit of a president to the Federal Reserve in 18 years. It was interpreted as another effort to crank up the pressure and followed his assessment earlier in the week that Powell is doing a 'terrible job'. The regularity of such broadsides, and the knock-on impact they've had on the way in which investors view the Fed, have made it nearly impossible for his eventual successor to do a more effective one. Seema Shah is chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management