The Bloomberg News report followed a meeting between CEO Lip-Bu Tan and President Donald Trump on Monday

International News via Reuters:

Intel shares rose nearly 4% on Friday on hopes of more financial aid for the turnaround of the struggling chipmaker after a report that the U.S. government may buy a stake.

The Bloomberg News report followed a meeting between CEO Lip-Bu Tan and President Donald Trump on Monday after Trump demanded the new Intel chief’s resignation over his “highly conflicted” ties to Chinese firms.

Trump, who called the meeting “very interesting,” has taken an unprecedented approach to corporate interventions, including a deal that would make the Department of Defense the largest shareholder in rare-earth producer MP Materials.

In the latest move, Trump’s administration is considering using funds from the 2022 CHIPS Act, signed into law by his predecessor Joe Biden, to take a stake in Intel, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the discussions.

Intel last year secured nearly $8 billion in subsidies, the largest outlay under the act, to build new factories in Ohio and other states as former CEO Pat Gelsinger bet on them to restore the company’s manufacturing edge.

Tan, however, pared back such ambitions, slowing construction in Ohio. He plans to build factories based on demand for the services, which analysts have said could put him at odds with Trump’s push to shore up American manufacturing.

Intel and the White House did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

Federal backing could give Intel more time to revive its loss-making foundry business, analysts said, but it still faces a weak product roadmap and trouble attracting customers for new factories.

It could be a “game-changer”, said Matt Britzman, senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown. But he warned “government support might help shore up confidence, but it doesn’t fix the underlying competitiveness gap in advanced nodes.”

Intel lost its competitive edge years ago to Taiwan’s TSMC. It has virtually no presence in the booming AI chips market dominated by Nvidia and is losing market share in PCs and datacenters to AMD.

Its latest 18A manufacturing process is facing quality issues, Reuters has reported, as only a small share of chips produced are good enough for customers, while it remains partly dependent on TSMC to make Intel in-house designed chips.

“Intel also needs capability; can the US government do anything to help here?” Bernstein analysts said. 

“Without a solid process roadmap the entire exercise would be economically equivalent to simply setting 10s of billions of dollars on fire.”

Reporting by Alun John in London and Rashika Singh and Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru; Editing by Jan Harvey, Rashmi Aich and Arun Koyyur

A 12-day heatwave and southerly winds meant firefighters were facing another challenging day in one of the worst summers for fires in the past 20 years

International News via Reuters:

Spain battled against 14 major fires on Friday as authorities warned of “unfavourable conditions” to tackle fires that have already killed seven people and burned more than 150,000 hectares (579 square miles).

A 12-day heatwave and southerly winds meant firefighters were facing another challenging day in one of the worst summers for fires in the past 20 years, said Virginia Barcones, director general of emergency services.

“In the western part of the country the situation is extremely worrying,” Barcones said on RTVE.

In Galicia, several fronts had joined together to form an even bigger blaze forcing the closure of highways and rail services to the region.

The national weather agency AEMET warned of extreme fire risk in the north and west of the country, as temperatures expected to reach as high as 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) on the north coast were set to add fuel to the flames.

“Today will be another very difficult day, with an extreme risk of new fires,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez wrote on X.

Firefighters have been battling to put out wildfires across southern Europe, with the flames stoked by the extended heat wave gripping the region.

Avincis, the largest operator of emergency aerial services in Spain and Europe, said it had registered a 50% increase from last year in flight hours dedicated to firefighting operations in Spain and Portugal so far this season.

A fire near Molezuelas de la Carbellada in the Castile and Leon region that was one of the largest in Spain’s history hadn’t advanced since Thursday, said Angel Sanchez, head of the region’s forest fire service.

“We will continue working to stabilise it,” he said.

Reporting by Charlie Devereux and Ana Cantero; Editing by Toby Chopra

Gushing mudslides and floodwaters inundated the village of Chasoti on Thursday

International News via Reuters:

Rescuers in Indian Kashmir used shovels and earthmovers to search for survivors under boulders and debris on Friday, a day after sudden floods triggered by heavy rains killed at least 60 people and left 200 others missing.

Gushing mudslides and floodwaters inundated the village of Chasoti on Thursday, washing away pilgrims who had gathered for lunch before trekking up the hill for a popular religious site, in the second such disaster in the Himalayas in a little over a week.

“We heard a huge sound and it was followed by a flash flood and slush. People were shouting, and some of them fell in the Chenab River. Others were buried under the debris,” said Rakesh Sharma, a pilgrim who was injured.

Bags, clothes and other belongings, caked in mud, lay scattered amid broken electric poles and mud on Friday, as rescue workers used ropes and crossed makeshift bridges in an attempt to extricate people from the debris. 

At least 60 people were killed, more than 100 injured and another 200 still missing, Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Omar Abdullah told reporters on Friday.

The Himalayas are prone to floods and landslides, but some scientists say the intensity and frequency of these events are increasing due to climate change.

The Machail Yatra is a popular pilgrimage to the high-altitude Himalayan shrine of Machail Mata, one of the manifestations of the Goddess Durga. Pilgrims trek to the temple from Chasoti, where the road for vehicles ends. 

Thursday’s incident comes a little over a week after a similar flood and mudslide engulfed an entire village in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand. 

“Nature has been testing us. In the last few days, we have had to deal with landslides, cloudbursts and other natural calamities,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at the start of a nearly two-hour speech on the country’s 79th independence day.

A cloudburst, according to the Indian Meteorological Department, is a sudden, intense downpour of over 100 mm (4 inches) of rain in just one hour that can trigger sudden floods, landslides, and devastation, especially in mountainous regions during the monsoon.

In neighbouring Nepal, at least 41 people have died, 21 are missing and 121 injured in floods, heavy rains, landslides and hailstorms since early monsoon rains started in June this year, according to data provided by the country’s disaster management authority.

And more than 50 people were killed overnight in rain-related incidents across the mountainous north of Pakistan, rescue officials said on Friday. Flooding and the collapse of the roofs of houses caused the deaths.

In Pakistan-administered Kashmir, where eight people were killed – including six members of a family buried in the debris of their home – evacuation operations were ongoing for stranded domestic tourists.

Reporting by Fayaz Bukhari in Srinagar, Gopal Sharma in Kathmandu, Mushtaq Ali in Peshawar and Tariq Maqbool in Muzaffarabad. Writing by Shilpa Jamkhandikar; Editing by Michael Perry and Saad Sayeed