The US military on Tuesday calmed jittery financial markets for the second time in a week by denying a rumor that the US had sent special forces into Iraq.
"We have no US troops in Iraq," said a Pentagon spokesman, Marine Lieutenant Colonel Dave Lapan.
The rumor had its biggest impact on the US markets. Thirty minutes into the trading day, the firming exchanges did an about-face and turned sharply lower.
"There is a rumor that US special forces are on the ground in Iraq. I heard they are on the ground in the northern Kurdish safe-haven area," said Ahmet Okumus, president of New York-based hedge fund Okumus Capital LLC, with US$520 million in assets under management.
At 10am, the Dow Jones industrial average reached a session-high 10,187 points -- a gain of 41 points. Over the next 20 minutes, the Dow tumbled to a session-low of 10,034, a drop of 112 points and a downward swing of more than 150 points. The market recovered partially, but remained in the red, after the Pentagon denied that there were troops in Iraq.
"It certainly was the rumor that was the cause of it getting knocked down in a heartbeat and when they denied it, we recovered about 60 points in a heartbeat," said Ned Collins, head of trading at Daiwa Securities America.
Last Thursday, the Pentagon denied a similar rumor that US special forces were in Iraq. The rumor had moved prices in the energy and metals markets.
Speculation has grown that Iraq is the next US target in the war on terror after President George W. Bush described the country last month as part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and North Korea. Bush accused the three countries of developing weapons of mass destruction and supporting international terrorism. He said action will be needed if they threaten the US.
National Taiwan University (NTU) yesterday said it disqualified a person from an entrance examination for using AI smart glasses to cheat, along with two others for making untruthful statements in their curriculum vitae. The three applicants were given null scores, Taiwan’s highest-ranked university said, calling on prospective students to be honest in the admissions process. NTU registrar Lee Hung-sen (李宏森) said that the cheating applicant wore a hat and thick-rimmed glasses to the second written exam for medical school, claiming that they felt cold. Suspicions were aroused when the applicant stared oddly at the test for long stretches while steadily bringing the paper
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck off the southern coast of Mindanao in the Philippines at 7:38am today, prompting the US Tsunami Warning System to issue an alert for neighboring countries, including Taiwan. The system issued a purple alert indicating a "tsunami threat." The potential threat zone includes Taiwan, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Yap and Palau. Philippine authorities were assessing the damage from the quake, with the office of civil defense seeking to verifying initial reports that 15 people had been killed and 129 injured in the region, mostly from falling debris. Arlene Hollero, disaster chief of Maasim town in the Philippines' Sarangani Province,
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