The Nigerian All-Share Index (ASI) concluded the trading session on November 25, 2024, on a subdued note, slipping by 202.75 points to settle at 97,626.27, a modest decline of 0.21%. Amid the downturn, the market witnessed a notable surge in activity, with trading volume soaring by an impressive 83.33%. A total of 671 million shares exchanged hands, a sharp increase from the previous day’s 366 million shares, underscoring heightened participation on the trading floor. Related Stories Weekly Market Wrap: All-Share Index rises by 106.74 points as John Holt gains 42.49%, Multiverse tops losers Market Wrap: All-Share Index dips 0.17% as EUNISELL soars to lead gainers On the gainers’ chart, HMCALL rose by 10.00% to claim the top spot as the day’s best-performing stock. SUNUASSUR followed with a 9.81% increase, while NCR secured the third position with a rise of 9.72%. On the flip side, NSLTECH topped the losers’ chart, dropping by 9.84%, while DAARCOMM followed closely with a decline of 9.68%. FBN Holdings (FBNH) and HMCALL dominated market activity as the most actively traded stocks of the day, showcasing robust performance and sustained investor interest despite the overall market’s subdued tone. Current ASI: 97,626.27 points Previous ASI: 97,829.02 points Day Change: -0.21% Year-to-Date Performance: +30.56% Volume Traded: 671 million shares Deals: 10,464 HMCALL: up 10.00% to N5.61 SUNUASSUR: up 9.81% to N3.47 NCR: up 9.72% to N4.74 SOVRENINS: up 9.52% to N0.69 TANTALIZER: up 9.32% to N1.29 NSLTECH: down 9.84% to N0.55 DAARCOMM: down 9.68% to N0.56 AUSTINLAZ: down 9.40% to N2.41 GUINEANS: down 9.09% to N0.50 LASACO: down 8.63% to N2.33 The Nigerian equities market saw a notable surge in activity, with trading volume rising by an impressive 83.33%. Investors exchanged a total of 671 million shares, a substantial increase from the 366 million shares recorded in the previous session. FBN Holdings (FBNH) led the charge, with a staggering 245.2 million shares changing hands, firmly establishing itself as the most actively traded stock of the day. Following closely was HMCALL, which recorded a solid 47.1 million shares traded. Other significant contributors to the trading volume included TANTALIZER with 35.3 million shares, GUINEAINS at 32.8 million shares, and PRESTIGE, rounding out the top five with 32.7 million shares. On the value front, FBNH dominated once again, driving transactions worth an impressive N6.2 billion. UBA followed with trade values totalling N640.6 million, highlighting continued investor interest. ZENITHBANK and WAPCO also attracted significant attention, contributing N423.4 million and N290.9 million, respectively, to the day’s trading value. HMCALL completed the top five with N264.4 million in transactions, reinforcing its strong appeal to market participants. In the SWOOT category, which features stocks with market capitalizations exceeding N1 trillion, OANDO stood out as the sole gainer, advancing by 2.50%. The FUGAZ stocks, comprising FBN Holdings (FBNH), United Bank for Africa (UBA), Access Holdings (ACCESSCORP), and Zenith Bank (ZENITHBANK), closed the session in negative territory. GTCO led the declines, shedding 3.39%, followed by ZENITHBANK and FBNH, which lost 2.71% and 1.57%, respectively. UBA remained unchanged, maintaining a flat close. Outlook Despite the market’s slight decline, optimism persists for a rebound in the Nigerian equities market. Strong Q3 earnings across several sectors, coupled with sustained investor interest, are expected to drive upward momentum in the coming sessions.Key Takeaways Despite most of Gen Z thinking that their jobs could be replaced with AI in the next decade, the vast majority are still using AI to help complete office tasks — and they're open about it. A new survey released on Monday from Google assessed the AI habits of 1,005 full-time U.S.-based knowledge workers aged 22 to 39. Google called the group "young leaders" because they're currently in leadership positions or aspire to hold one at work. The survey found that 93% of Gen Z respondents from 22 to 27 years old are using two or more AI tools like ChatGPT or Google Gemini AI per week. In comparison, 79% of millennials ages 28 to 39 indicate that they're doing the same. Related: Worried About AI Stealing Your Job? A New Report Calls These 10 Careers 'AI-Proof' These AI users are utilizing the technology to take meeting notes, write emails, and overcome language barriers. They aren't secretive about talking to ChatGPT either: More than half of them share AI-fueled insights and experiences with their coworkers. Three in four have even recommended AI tools they have had positive experiences with to their peers. "Rising leaders are not only advocating for AI—they're deploying this technology in meaningful ways, from improving communication with colleagues to freeing up time for strategic work," said Google Workspace VP of Product Yulie Kwon Kim in a press release . Related: Google's CEO Says AI Is Now Responsible for 25% of 'All New Code' Created at the Company AI's writing abilities appeal to Gen Z and millennial workers who use it in the workplace. 70% of the survey respondents said that they have used AI to help draft an email response, while 88% said that AI can help them find the right tone when they write. AI also brings out leadership potential and carries promise. About four in five respondents want to use AI to become better managers and better lead teams. Half say AI carries great potential to automate repetitive tasks so that they can focus on strategic work. These emerging leaders "are not simply using AI as a tool for efficiency, but as a catalyst to help grow their careers," Kim stated. While AI can help grow careers, it also has the potential to replace jobs. Another survey released earlier this month by tech education firm General Assembly showed that 62% of Gen Z believed AI would replace their jobs within the next 10 years while a separate study from Duke University found that 61% of large U.S. firms plan to use AI to automate tasks previously carried out by humans within the next year. Related: Google's AI Is Now Appearing in Gmail and DocsStock market today: Wall Street hits records despite tariff talk

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Although she was just in her mid-20s, Tulsi Gabbard's hair had already started turning white shortly before she first set foot in the U.S. Senate as a legislative aide in 2006. Coming from her native Hawaii, she had landed a job with longtime Hawaii Democratic Sen. Daniel Akaka, chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who would become her mentor. Now, almost 20 years later, the former Democratic congresswoman returns to the Senate to meet with lawmakers, including members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, as President-elect Donald Trump's pick to be director of national intelligence after appearing with him a number of times on the campaign trail and serving as an honorary co-chair of his transition team. Gabbard spent the past week in Oklahoma on Army National Guard duty. She currently holds the rank of lieutenant colonel, something supporters argue qualifies her for the job as critics cite her lack of experience. She's also facing renewed scrutiny over her past comments on Syria and her meeting with now-overthrown dictator Bashar Assad. From Hawaii to Kuwait to Congress By the time she came to the Senate, Gabbard had already made history in Hawaii as one of the youngest lawmakers elected to a state legislature at age 21. Serving alongside her father, Hawaii state Sen. Mike Gabbard, she became part of the first father-daughter combination in a legislature in the country. As a Senate staffer, Gabbard remained in Hawaii's National Guard, drilling on the weekends. During her first yearlong deployment at Joint Base Balad in Iraq, nicknamed "Mortaritaville" for being hit with daily attacks, she's said fumes from a nearby burn pit would regularly sicken her fellow service members, causing flu-like symptoms they called the "crud." In 2007, she attended the Accelerated Officer Candidate School at the Alabama Military Academy, graduating at the top of her class as its first distinguished woman honor graduate. After two years working in the Senate, Gabbard volunteered for a deployment to Kuwait. As a military police platoon leader and trainer for the Kuwait National Guard's counterterrorism unit, Gabbard achieved another milestone in 2009, becoming one of the first women to set foot in a Kuwaiti military facility and the first woman to be honored by the Kuwait National Guard. In her limited free time, Gabbard continued working on her bachelor's degree from Hawaii Pacific University, taking online classes in an education tent. Although her hair returned to its natural color, she told ABC News in 2019 she eventually kept a distinctive streak of white. "It's a reminder, every single day of the cost of war of those we lost and my mission in life to to seek peace and to fight for peace," Gabbard said. Gabbard later returned to Hawaii and ran for Honolulu City Council, serving from 2010 until 2012, before being elected to Congress as the then-youngest female member. Bipartisan outreach As a new member of Congress, Gabbard worked to forge relationships with members on both sides of the aisle. She arrived armed with 434 boxes of macadamia nut toffee, homemade by her mother, for every member of Congress and an additional 435 boxes for staffers. Each box came with a handwritten letter, a form of diplomacy as a Democrat facing a Republican-controlled House. During her freshman year in Congress in 2013, Gabbard was appointed vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, but stepped down from that position to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential bid. She co-chaired the Future Caucus, a bipartisan effort to engage members of Congress under 40 years old. Gabbard also bonded with lawmakers over sports, playing on the Congressional Softball Team with New York Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and joining early morning workouts with colleagues such as Oklahoma GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin. She and Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul co-sponsored legislation, including the Stop Arming Terrorists Act. After an unsuccessful bid for the party's 2020 presidential nomination, she left the Democratic Party and became an independent and campaigned for Republicans, including Sens. Mike Lee and Chuck Grassley. She told Trump on a rally stage in October that she was registering as a Republican. Controversial views on Russia, Syria Gabbard was one of the first to enter the crowded Democratic 2020 primary and was one of the last three remaining candidates. One of her rivals in that race, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, announced she would oppose Trump's choice of Gabbard, alleging she had suggested NATO had provoked Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine. "Do you really want her to have all the secrets of the United States and our defense intelligence agencies when she has so clearly has been in Putin's pocket? That just has to be a hard no," Warren said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" in November. However, Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri defended Gabbard in November on NBC's "Meet The Press," taking aim at accusations that Gabbard was a "Russian asset." "It's a slur, quite frankly. You know, there's no evidence that she is an asset of another country. She served this country honorably," Schmitt said. Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, who entered the Senate as the first female combat veteran while Gabbard was doing the same in the House, has opposed her pick for DNI, alleging she's been compromised. "The U.S. intelligence community has identified her as having troubling relationships with America's foes. And so my worry is that she couldn't pass a background check," Duckworth said on CNN's "State of the Union" in November. Mullin struck back at Duckworth's comments, saying "That's the most dangerous thing she could say -- is that a United States lieutenant colonel in the United States is compromised and is an asset of Russia." "If she was compromised, if she wasn't able to pass a background check, if she wasn't able to do her job, she still wouldn't be in the Army," he said. Now, with the rebel takeover of Syria and the fall of Assad, Gabbard is drawing renewed attention to her controversial visit to Syria in 2017 -- what she called a fact-finding mission -- and sympathy she expressed after meeting with the Syrian dictator, saying the U.S. should stop aiding the "terrorists" trying to overthrow him. Gabbard noted in 2019 that a CIA program "was directly and indirectly helping to equip and train and provide support to different armed groups, including those who are allied with and affiliated with al-Qaeda, to overthrow the Syrian government." The "Stop Arming Terrorist Act" she worked on with Paul in the Senate said the U.S. should stop aiding the "terrorists" trying to overthrow Assad. Assad has been accused of war crimes against his own people during the Syrian civil war, in which hundreds of thousands have been killed. A few months after meeting with Assad, Gabbard said she was skeptical he had used chemical weapons against his own people, despite evidence from the U.S. government that he had, to argue against military intervention during Trump's first administration. Gabbard warned in June of 2019 that she was concerned that the toppling of Assad's regime could lead to terrorist groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda to step in to fill the void and "completely massacre all religious minorities there in Syria." In a 2019 interview on ABC's "The View" while running for president, she called Assad a "brutal dictator," but said the U.S. regime-change strategy had not improved the lives of the Syrian people.Stocks closed higher on Wall Street as the market posted its fifth straight gain and the Dow Jones Industrial Average notched another record high. The S&P 500 rose 0.3%. The benchmark index’s 1.7% gain for the week erased most of its loss from last week. The Dow rose 1% as it nudged past its most recent high set last week, and the Nasdaq composite rose 0.2%. Markets have been volatile over the last few weeks, losing ground in the runup to elections in November, then surging following Donald Trump's victory, before falling again. The S&P 500 has been steadily rising throughout this week to within close range of its record. It's now within about 0.5% of its all-time high set last week. “Overall, market behavior has normalized following an intense few weeks,” said Mark Hackett, chief of investment research at Nationwide, in a statement. Several retailers jumped after giving Wall Street encouraging financial updates. Gap soared 12.8% after handily beating analysts' third-quarter earnings and revenue expectations, while raising its own revenue forecast for the year. Discount retailer Ross Stores rose 2.2% after raising its earnings forecast for the year. EchoStar fell 2.8% after DirecTV called off its purchase of that company's Dish Network unit. Smaller company stocks had some of the biggest gains. The Russell 2000 index rose 1.8%. A majority of stocks in the S&P 500 gained ground, but those gains were kept in check by slumps for several big technology companies. Nvidia fell 3.2%. Its pricey valuation makes it among the heaviest influences on whether the broader market gains or loses ground. The company has grown into a nearly $3.6 trillion behemoth because of demand for its chips used in artificial-intelligence technology. Intuit, which makes TurboTax and other accounting software, fell 5.7%. It gave investors a quarterly earnings forecast that fell short of analysts’ expectations. Facebook owner Meta Platforms fell 0.7% following a decision by the Supreme Court to allow a multibillion-dollar class action investors’ lawsuit to proceed against the company. It stems from the privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm. All told, the S&P 500 rose 20.63 points to 5,969.34. The Dow climbed 426.16 points to 44,296.51, and the Nasdaq picked up 42.65 points to close at 2,406.67. European markets closed mostly higher and Asian markets ended mixed. Crude oil prices rose. Treasury yields held relatively steady in the bond market. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.41% from 4.42% late Thursday. In the crypto market, bitcoin hovered around $99,000, according to CoinDesk. It has more than doubled this year and first surpassed the $99,000 level on Thursday. Retailers remained a big focus for investors this week amid close scrutiny on consumer spending habits headed into the holiday shopping season. Walmart, the nation's largest retailer, reported a quarter of strong sales and gave investors an encouraging financial forecast. Target, though, reported weaker earnings than analysts' expected and its forecast disappointed Wall Street. Consumer spending has fueled economic growth, despite a persistent squeeze from inflation and high borrowing costs. Inflation has been easing and the Federal Reserve has started trimming its benchmark interest rates. That is likely to help relieve pressure on consumers, but any major shift in spending could prompt the Fed to reassess its path ahead on interest rates. Also, any big reversals on the rate of inflation could curtail spending. Consumer sentiment remains strong, according to the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index. It revised its latest figure for November to 71.8 from an initial reading of 73 earlier this month, though economists expected a slight increase. It's still up from 70.5 in October. The survey also showed that consumers' inflation expectations for the year ahead fell slightly to 2.6%, which is the lowest reading since December of 2020. Wall Street will get another update on how consumers feel when the business group The Conference Board releases its monthly consumer confidence survey on Tuesday. A key inflation update will come on Wednesday when the U.S. releases its October personal consumption expenditures index. The PCE is the Fed's preferred measure of inflation and this will be the last PCE reading prior to the central bank's meeting in December.

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GMM stock plunges to 52-week low of $0.22 amid market challengesGrowing up without the security blanket of a visa allowing a permanent place in Australia leaves asylum-seeking children with worse mental health because of parental stress, a study shows. or signup to continue reading Trauma and adversity are passed down to children when there is a lack of psychological security and safety, the study found in the of academic journal Development and Psychopathology, published in November. Researchers from UNSW Sydney and the University of Sydney examined the wellbeing of 68 Tamil children aged 10 to 18 and their mothers who sought asylum in Australia over a decade ago. A 43-year-old Tamil mother of two, who participated in the study but declined to give her name for fear of jeopardising her citizenship application, said it was a long struggle to feel stable. The woman boarded a ramshackle boat in 2012, along with about 70 other asylum seekers, carrying her nine-month-old baby and eight-year-old son and landing on Cocos Islands - remote Australian territories near Indonesia. She and her young sons were detained in several immigration detention centres for a year including Christmas Island. The woman was escaping civil war in Sri Lanka, where her husband still remains missing. After more than 12 years of visa insecurity, she is finally applying for her citizenship, along with her sons. "When my dad passed away in Sri Lanka, I couldn't go and I was very sad," she told AAP. "Maybe next year once we get passports we can visit." With dreams of becoming a teacher or a police officer, her eldest son wasn't able to enter university as a domestic student. He would have to pay exorbitant international student fees because of his visa status. "I was very upset for him because he felt like he was not like everyone else." Lead researcher Lux Ratnamohan says these disappointments of feeling like second-class citizens pile up and add to the sense of not feeling settled, which can have dire mental health consequences. "These families are coming here under lots of adversity and they just don't get a chance to build any sort of social capital or any sort of social network," Dr Ratnamohan said. "When families are subjected to prolonged visa insecurity, a higher proportion of refugee children develop along trajectories of risk rather than resilience." The former Abbott coalition government established an assessment scheme to resolve the visa applications of more than 30,000 asylum seekers who arrived by boat between 2012 and 2014. But the policy has been criticised, with some 10,000 people left in legal limbo with restricted work and study rights on their visas. Dr Ratnamohan said compared to other refugees, the legacy caseload were left severely unsupported in a new nation trying to figure it out with structural barriers put in place. "If you compare families coming in on humanitarian visas, from the outset, they're getting lots of social support whether it's through work, through education or through direct support services and gradually over time that accrues," the child and adolescent psychiatrist said. "Whereas for these asylum seeking families, they are not getting any of those opportunities and the flow-on effect is adverse." DAILY Today's top stories curated by our news team. WEEKDAYS Grab a quick bite of today's latest news from around the region and the nation. WEEKLY The latest news, results & expert analysis. WEEKDAYS Catch up on the news of the day and unwind with great reading for your evening. WEEKLY Get the editor's insights: what's happening & why it matters. WEEKLY Love footy? We've got all the action covered. WEEKLY Every Saturday and Tuesday, explore destinations deals, tips & travel writing to transport you around the globe. WEEKLY Going out or staying in? Find out what's on. WEEKDAYS Sharp. Close to the ground. Digging deep. Your weekday morning newsletter on national affairs, politics and more. TWICE WEEKLY Your essential national news digest: all the big issues on Wednesday and great reading every Saturday. WEEKLY Get news, reviews and expert insights every Thursday from CarExpert, ACM's exclusive motoring partner. TWICE WEEKLY Get real, Australia! Let the ACM network's editors and journalists bring you news and views from all over. AS IT HAPPENS Be the first to know when news breaks. DAILY Your digital replica of Today's Paper. Ready to read from 5am! DAILY Test your skills with interactive crosswords, sudoku & trivia. Fresh daily! Advertisement Advertisement

NoneHouse rejects Democratic efforts to force release of Matt Gaetz ethics report

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