From Trump's first campaign rally to at-home brain stimulation – Here's your March 28 news briefing

To start off, we're looking into:

Trump's campaign kickoff

The backstory: Former US President Donald Trump is no stranger to controversy. Throughout his term from 2017 to 2021, he faced multiple allegations of racism and making inappropriate comments. Yet, despite being impeached twice (but acquitted both times) and facing a rocky re-election campaign, Trump has maintained a loyal following. After he lost the 2020 election, his followers stormed the US Capitol on January 6.

More recently: Trump has been facing a bunch of legal issues from all angles. For example, he's facing a probe in Georgia for allegedly trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He's also being investigated for paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election to prevent her from spilling the tea on them having sex. That case went before a grand jury on Monday.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing, and he's been making public comments to fire up his supporters, posting on his social media site Truth Social about "potential death & destruction in such a false charge" if he was indicted. He also said he would be arrested last Tuesday, but that didn't happen.

The development: Over the weekend, Trump launched his 2024 presidential campaign with a rally in Waco, Texas. During the event, he criticized the prosecutors investigating him, and a choir of people imprisoned for participating in the January 6 insurrection sang "Justice for All."

The former president's supporters turned up in droves, donning Trump merch and waving "witch hunt" signs. The rally venue holds up to 15,000 people, and the Waco Fire Marshal's Office estimated the attendance at around 10,000.

China's billionaire blues

The backstory: China has the most billionaires in the world, followed by the US. The two countries have produced 55% of the world's "known" billionaires, according to Hurun's 2022 Global Rich List. But COVID, a tech crackdown, geopolitical tensions and financial tightening worldwide have hit the uber-rich where it hurts – the wallet.

The development: The latest M3M Hurun Global Rich List showed that China's super-rich population dropped by more than 14%. The number of US-dollar billionaires in China fell by 164 to 969. Meanwhile, the US only saw a loss of 25 billionaires.

But, even though the country lost the most moguls, China still leads the pack with the highest number of billionaires worldwide. It's bad news for the 229 Chinese billionaires that didn't make the cut for this year's report. But China added the most new billionaires, with 69 fresh faces joining the club.

First Citizens buys SVB

The backstory: In the biggest US bank failure since 2008, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) totally collapsed earlier this month. Before it went under, SVB had US$175 billion in deposits but was rushed for withdrawals, leading to its fall. On March 10, the FDIC took control of SVB and has been looking for a buyer to cover its uninsured deposits ever since.

The development: On Sunday, First Citizens announced it would buy SVB. This buyout will make First Citizens a top 15 US bank. It’s buying about US$72 billion of SVB’s assets at a discount, leaving US$90 billion in securities and other assets with the FDIC at a loss of about US$20 billion. But, the FDIC also gets equity appreciation rights in the deal that could be worth up to US$500 million.

As of Monday, First Citizens said that 17 legacy branches would start operating as Silicon Valley Bank, a division of First Citizens. Customer accounts will stay the same for now. Investors are happy about this sale because it points toward the current banking crisis beginning to ease. Shares in the company surged almost 50% on Monday after the announcement.

First Citizens’ CFO Craig Nix told investors the bank wants to win back some SVB customers who withdrew their deposits when they were worried about losing access to cash.

To end, we'll look into:

At-home brain stimulation

At-home brain stimulation could be the next big thing for treating mental-based problems and boosting brain performance. Specifically, we're talking about transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), which involves wearable headgear that delivers a low electric current to the scalp. Usually, users get a fixed current between 1 and 2 mA. Then, the electrodes from the device send electricity into the brain.

But how does tDCS affect brain functioning?

Right now, there's growing hype around tDCS for treating conditions like depression, ADHD and even Alzheimer's disease. The actual science behind how electricity affects the brain is still in its early stages. The idea is that electrical stimulation will manipulate the electrical currents already running through your brain at any given time.

"Depression and anxiety are the top two indications for people," says Anna Wexler, an assistant professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania. "But other reasons people used it for were for enhancement, so to improve focus, to improve memory, things like that."

And some people have started self-administering tDCS at home. You can buy a tDCS device for anywhere between US$50-$500 (but we're not necessarily saying you should – we'd prefer you take that advice from a doctor). In the last decade or so, there's been a spike in the popularity of these at-home tDCS devices. Before, this kind of treatment was only used in labs and hospitals.

Some scientists aren't too happy with this development.

"We are talking about injecting electricity into someone's brain. Someone could get hurt," says Robert Reinhart, a neuroscientist at Boston University. "We need to better understand what these tools can do including any unintended consequences they may have."

And tDCS has its skeptics.

"What they've found afterwards is that tDCS is super hard to get right because you have to account for so many parameters. You have to account for things like whether that person drank coffee that morning. You have to account for the skull thickness. You have to account for all of the stuff," explained Sally Adee, a science and technology journalist, on the podcast Fresh Air.

In other news ...

📈Stocks: MSCI’s global gauge of stocks is up 0.37% at 2702.42 at the time of writing.

• Dow Jones rose 0.60% to 32,432.08.
• Nasdaq Composite lost 0.47% to 11,768.84.
• S&P 500 gained 0.16% to 3,977.53.
• Hang Seng Index slid 1.75% to 19,567.69.

🧠Some quick factors to bear in mind:

• Monday saw a mixed day for US stocks, with the Dow Jones and S&P500 going up but the Nasdaq Composite staying down.
• Adding to the bullish sentiment, deposit outflows from smaller banks to big players like JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo have reportedly slowed down. And US authorities were reportedly thinking about beefing up their emergency lending facility for banks.
• But tech shares didn't do so well because interest rates went up, making people less optimistic about growth stocks. Alphabet slid about 3%, while Meta slipped 1.5%.
• China stocks dropped on Monday as Investors were still worried about the health of the global banking sector.
• Tech stocks in Hong Kong slumped by 1.8%, with Meituan and Xiaomi taking the biggest hit. Meituan plunged nearly 7% after its fourth-quarter earnings release.
• Chinese search engine giant Baidu sank over 3% after it cancelled a live-streamed product launch of its ChatGPT-like Ernie bot.
• And a senior CCP official said on Saturday that the foundation of China's economic recovery is not solid enough, warning global economic problems could have spillover effects.

👄Some comments and chatter:

• “Market sentiment is improving as policymakers take steps to alleviate the recent challenges. An extension of the liquidity facility that had been set up by the Federal Reserve meaningfully eases prior concerns that a series of bank runs could be in the offing,” said Brian Levitt, global market strategist at Invesco.
• “The market is being pushed and pulled between banks and tech stocks. As the banks have rebounded a lot of money has come out of tech stocks which have held up the market the past two weeks. There is a lot of churning going on under the surface right now. Plus the back up in interest rates puts cold water on the tech trade,” said Joe Gilbert, portfolio manager at Integrity Asset Management.

🛢Oil: Oil prices went up by more than US$3 because some exports from Iraq's Kurdistan region were stopped, making people worry about oil supplies. With this, US crude rose 5.1% to US$72.81, and Brent gained 4.2% to US$78.12 per barrel.

👛Bitcoin: At the time of writing, Bitcoin is down 0.04% at US$27,132.30.

👩‍⚖️Israel's judiciary developments: For weeks, thousands of people in Israel have been protesting against Prime Minister Netanyahu's plans to weaken the judiciary. On Sunday, Netanyahu's office announced that Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was fired after he was the first member of the cabinet to call for a pause on the judiciary overhaul. But, Netanyahu announced he'd decided to delay his controversial plan to give a "chance for a real debate."

🙋‍♀️US VP African tour: The US is looking to counter Chinese and Russian influence in Africa. US VP Kamala Harris is on a three-week-long African tour of three countries. At her first stop in Ghana on Monday, Harris announced the US would provide Ghana and four other West African countries with US$100 million to help fight extremism and instability.

🚅Germany's historic strike: Europe has been seeing a cost of living crisis for the past few months, and different countries have been experiencing industrial action as a result. On Monday, Germany had one of the largest walkouts in decades, with airports and bus and train stations stopping operations for 24 hours.

📄Saudi bank Chair resigns: Ammar Al Khudairy, the chairman of Credit Suisse Group AG's largest shareholder, commented before Credit Suisse's epic slump about how the national bank would "absolutely not" be providing more funds for the Swiss bank if called for. On Monday, he announced he was resigning "due to personal reasons."

🖋Hungary ratifies Finland's NATO bid: On Monday, Hungary ratified Finland's bid to join NATO after months of stalling by Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Turkey has also said it will support Finland's entry, although it hasn't been ratified. Sweden's application is still on hold.

👋Ex-Taiwan prez arrives in China: A couple of weeks ago, the former president of Taiwan, Ma Ying-jeou, announced he'd be visiting mainland China and bringing along some students for a non-political trip. He arrived on Monday and said he looks forward to talking to students and visiting the graves of his ancestors.

📩New Scottish leader:  Nicola Sturgeon was Scotland's first minister and the Scottish National Party leader from 2014 until this year. She stepped down and was replaced by Humza Yousaf, the first ethnic minority leader of Scotland (he is ethnically Pakistani).

🕕Lebanon's daylight savings woes: Lebanon is seeing a lot of confusion as it deals with daylight savings time (DST) problems. The country decided to delay DST by a month because of Ramadan, but Christian residents still turned their clocks forward by an hour on Sunday. Now, the government has reversed its delay decision, so daylight savings time will begin for Lebanon starting on Wednesday night.

📄Binance lawsuit: Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) are getting sued by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission for regulatory violations. The lawsuit alleges that the firm and CZ regularly broke American derivatives rules during its rise to become the world's biggest trading platform. In a statement, Binance said the lawsuit was "unexpected and disappointing."

🚢Abandoned Russian yacht: Western sanctions have pushed many Russian oligarchs into parking their super-yachts elsewhere to avoid having them seized. Well, the government of Antigua and Barbuda said last week that the 267-foot Alfa Nero (which has a hair salon, gym and infinity pool that turns into a helipad) was considered "abandoned" and would be sold off unless the owner comes and gets it.

🤑Saudi Aramco invests billions in Chinese refinery: Saudi Aramco, a Saudi Arabian public oil company, has been pushing for more China exports. The company just announced that it's buying 10% of Rongsheng Petrochemical Co., which is a major Chinese oil refinery, for 24.6 billion yuan (US$3.6 billion).

💻Twitter source code leak: Parts of Twitter's source code, the foundational computer code for running the platform, were leaked online. On Friday, Twitter requested the code be taken off of Github, a software developing collaboration platform. In a legal filing, Twitter asked the court to order GitHub to identify who leaked the code and anyone else who downloaded it.

🎨Art or porn?: In the US state of Florida, a principal resigned after getting some flack for not pre-warning parents about an upcoming lesson on Michaelangelo's famous statue "David." Now, the Florence, Italy, museum housing the masterpiece has invited parents and students from the school to visit and see the work. The mayor also invited the principal to be honored, saying that confusing art and pornography was "ridiculous."

🌑Glass beads on the moon: There are naturally formed, tiny glass beads on the moon's surface. And scientists now think that these beads could contain billions of tons of water that astronauts could extract and use. This is groundbreaking for agencies hoping to build bases on the moon.

👶Yer a father, Harry: On Sunday, a representative for Daniel Radcliffe (who starred in the Harry Potter franchise) confirmed that he and his long-term partner, actress Erin Darke, are expecting their first baby together.

Written and put together by Joey Fung, Vanessa Wolosz, Shebby Farooq and Christine Dulion