Chapter 1: What details emerged about the Bondi Beach shooting incident?
Australian authorities say the men accused in Sunday's Bondi Beach shooting were motivated by Islamic State. Plus, President Trump takes his legal campaign against media outlets across the pond and get ready for a jobs report with a twist.
There's been a bit of a black hole in terms of updated official government numbers. So we're going to get some answers that will hopefully fill in the blanks.
It's Tuesday, December 16th. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. And here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.
It would appear that there is evidence that this was inspired by a terrorist organization, by ISIS.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has shared new information from police investigating the shooters who attacked a Hanukkah event in Sydney over the weekend, where 15 people were killed and dozens injured.
Police said they found two homemade Islamic State flags, as well as improvised explosive devices, in a car registered to a 24-year-old man, accused alongside his 50-year-old father of carrying out Australia's worst mass shooting in 30 years.
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Chapter 2: How is President Trump's legal campaign affecting media relations?
Journal senior reporter John Emott says authorities are also examining a trip by the accused gunman to the Philippines last month.
So there's a lot of interest on the part of authorities to understand what exactly happened on this trip and why they ended up going to the Philippines. The Australians haven't said very much, but Filipino authorities have confirmed that they did list Davao, which is a major city in the southern Philippines, as a destination. Davao is on the island of Mindanao, which has...
hosted Islamic insurgencies in recent decades, some of which have been very violent and have interacted with regional terror cells and even global groups like the Islamic State. So there are a lot of questions about what exactly the two men would have been doing in the southern Philippines if they received training. That's something that authorities are actively looking into.
Prime Minister Albanese said Australia is reaching out to international security partners to see if they know more about the suspects. President Trump is suing the BBC for defamation over the British broadcaster's edit of his speech before the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. At issue is a documentary aired by news program Panorama in the run-up to the 2024 U.S.
Chapter 3: What impact will the delayed U.S. jobs data have on the labor market?
election that combined two sections of Trump's remarks and according to him, omitted his statement calling on supporters to march peacefully to the Capitol. The suit, filed in a federal court in Florida, seeks $10 billion in damages. The BBC didn't immediately return a request for comment.
Its chairman has issued an apology to the president and previously told staff there was no basis for a defamation case. The U.S. military says it killed eight people in a further round of strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats in the Eastern Pacific. Southern Command said the vessels were in international waters, with the attacks targeting people it described as narco-terrorists.
While the administration treats suspected smuggling boats as legal military targets, critics say the alleged criminals aren't in an armed conflict with the U.S., making strikes on them illegal and a possible war crime. Well, some of the fog hanging over the U.S.
Chapter 4: How are rising inflation and tariffs influencing hiring practices?
labor market will lift slightly today with the release of two months of delayed jobs data at 8.30 a.m. Eastern. But it's not a complete picture. As for the first time in nearly 80 years, the October unemployment rate is missing.
Nevertheless, journal economics reporter Chow Dang says the dual jobs report should help to clarify whether the labor market is patchy and cooling, as private indicators suggest.
In recent months, the jobs market has cooled significantly. Companies aren't expanding their workforces because of rising inflation and tariff uncertainty. And then you have Trump's administration policies targeting immigrants. That's curbing the number of job seekers.
Economists generally describe the current environment as low fire, low hire, which basically means that companies aren't laying off workers in a huge, huge way, but they're also not willing to hire too many workers.
Chapter 5: What does the term 'low fire, low hire' mean in the current job market?
workers. And that's for several reasons. One of the reasons actually is executives believe that artificial intelligence may be able to handle more work. And that's leading to some announcements about white collar layoffs.
And for more coverage on today's jobs data, head to WSJ.com. In other markets news, Canada is giving the OK for mining companies Tech Resources and Anglo American to merge. The new company, called Anglo Tech, would be one of the world's largest copper producers and could help to enhance Canada's processing of critical minerals. PayPal wants to form a bank.
The digital payments company, which also owns Venmo, has applied to establish a Utah-chartered industrial loan company, enabling it to offer business loans and savings accounts and reduce its reliance on third parties. The application comes as payments companies, crypto and buy-now-pay-later platforms have made moves to operate more like banks and big financial institutions.
Chapter 6: How is artificial intelligence shaping workforce decisions?
And Argentina's central bank will soon allow the peso to trade within expanded bands, while still stopping short of letting it float freely like the U.S. dollar and other currencies. The move comes in response to investors who've demanded President Javier Millet's government correct an overvalued currency. The central bank also said it planned to boost its foreign currency reserves.
Both moves were welcomed by the IMF, which has bailed out Argentina with tens of billions of dollars. Coming up, it's not just you. Christmas ads really did start early this year. We'll look at the fight to attract inflation-weary shoppers after the break.
We're not trying to spoil the holiday spirit here, but if you thought that the corporate-sponsored Christmas cheer started a bit early this year, your intuition was right. Advertisers have been inundating TV screens with commercials, despite many businesses trying to rein in costs to deal with President Trump's tariffs.
Chapter 7: Why did advertisers start the holiday ad season earlier this year?
For more, our producer Daniel Bach spoke to journal advertising editor Suzanne Vernizza.
So far, it looks like advertisers have been much more aggressive this year, especially with TV advertising. Over the past nine weeks alone, we've seen a 13% jump this year compared to a year ago, which is astounding given that most advertisers aren't even spending a lot on TV, and that's where they're pulling money away from on budgets to push to social media.
And that's just a fraction of what's happening out there. Retailers alone spend about 4% more on digital ads just from November 1st to December 1st. seventh. And that's up to about 5.8 billion. So you can just imagine how many ads people are getting bombarded with that have a holiday theme to them. The one other area that I'll tell you, email.
ProtonMail just sent out a survey, which is kind of have a staggering stat in it.
Chapter 8: What are consumer attitudes towards early holiday advertising?
50 retailers that they looked at generated 42 billion emails. in a 28 day period. So you could say it's a pretty aggressive advertising pace that we're in this holiday season.
Consumers and retailers are dealing with both inflation and tariffs. How is that showing up so far and how money is being spent this year?
Sure. Remember, everybody's looking to get a piece of the holiday spending. So food manufacturers, retailers, clothing, electronics. They got an early read and realized that people were already wildly worried about inflation and the price of goods even before the tariffs hit.
So what happened was they got a good signal early when lots of survey work was done and talking to consumers and they found out that consumers were actually going to start earlier looking for bargains and they needed to figure out as a consumer, how do I spread out the cost of my holiday shopping across a longer time period and therefore go earlier and
look for the bargains and hopefully save some money. Despite tariffs, despite the fact that we think people are worried about spending, the estimates are showing that consumers are going to spend a trillion dollars this year during the holiday shopping season. And that's a record. So getting that signal then allowed a lot of these advertisers to get out there early.
It's called the Christmas creep. You've seen it for years. We used to think that the starting bell was the day after Thanksgiving and it's Black Friday. But nowadays you're seeing holiday ads as early as August.
And who's spending that money? What retailers are we seeing that are spending big?
Obviously, the retailers, the big guys like the Amazons, the Walmarts and the Targets, they're very aggressive in the market. Amazon actually has more minutes over the last nine weeks, I would say, than most people on TV with their holiday ads. There's a battle going on and retail tends to be where you see the most of it.
And how are people feeling about seeing all of these ads and seeing them a lot earlier this year?
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