In this video, Dave breaks down bearish macro signals and risk management using the “line in the sand” technique! Learn how to spot key support levels, set alerts on StockCharts, and protect your portfolio!
This video originally premiered on February 26, 2025. Watch on StockCharts’ dedicated David Keller page!
Previously recorded videos from Dave are available at this link.
The United States and Ukraine are trying to hammer out a natural resources agreement that would give Washington access to Kyiv’s untapped mineral riches in exchange for investments and what Ukraine hopes would be concrete security guarantees.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said the deal could be a “big success” but that it would depend on talks with US President Donald Trump.
He said the deal was just a “framework” and insisted that some key questions remained unanswered.
Here is what we know – and don’t know – about the agreement.
The draft agreement seeks the establishment of a “reconstruction investment fund” that would be jointly managed by the American and Ukrainian governments.
Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Wednesday that Kyiv would be funneling half of the revenues from future natural resources projects into the fund, with money being reinvested in more developments.
Shmyhal stressed the deal would exclude existing “deposits, facilities, licenses and royalties” tied to Ukraine’s natural resources.
“We are only talking about future licenses, developments and infrastructure,” he said.
Trump said at the weekend that he’s “trying to get the money back,” referring to the aid provided to Ukraine under the previous administration.
The US initially demanded a $500 billion share of Ukraine’s rare earths and other minerals in exchange for the aid it has already provided to Kyiv. But Zelensky rejected that idea, saying that agreeing to it would amount to “selling” his country. Trump subsequently called Zelensky “a dictator.”
Asked on Tuesday what Ukraine would receive in the mineral deal, Trump said: “$350 billion and lots of equipment, military equipment, and the right to fight on,” repeating a false claim he has made in the past. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank that closely tracks wartime aid to Ukraine, Washington had committed a total of about $124 billion in aid to Ukraine.
Trump indicated security guarantees were not part of the deal, saying: “We’ve pretty much negotiated our deal on rare earth and various other things,” adding that “we’ll be looking to” future security for Ukraine “later on.”
However, Zelensky said his country will not be repaying money given to it by Washington in the past as part of the deal. “I will not accept (even) 10 cents of debt repayment in this deal. Otherwise, it will be a precedent,” Zelensky said Wednesday at a news conference in Kyiv.
Trump on Wednesday projected confidence that the natural resources deal would come to fruition, saying, “We’re doing very well with Russia-Ukraine. President Zelensky is going to be coming on Friday. It’s now confirmed, and we’re going to be signing an agreement.”
Ukraine’s mineral riches have long been eyed by its allies – and Kyiv has made them part of its appeal for support. Zelensky has made it clear he wants security guarantees to be part of the deal.
Some deposits are already in areas that are under Russian occupation and Zelensky has argued that one reason why the West should support Ukraine in its fight against Moscow is to prevent more of these strategically important resources from falling into the Kremlin’s hands.
“The deposits of critical resources in Ukraine, along with Ukraine’s globally important energy and food production potential, are among the key predatory objectives of the Russian Federation in this war. And this is our opportunity for growth,” Zelensky said in October when presenting his “Victory plan.”
Nataliya Katser-Buchkovska, the co-founder of the Ukrainian Sustainable Investment Fund, said that a deal cannot work without security guarantees.
“(For) the US to get access to these deposits, Ukraine must regain control over those territories, demine and rebuild the infrastructure,” she said.
Materials such as graphite, lithium, uranium and the 17 chemical elements known as rare earths are critical for economic growth and national security.
They are essential to the production of electronics, clean energy technology, including wind turbines, energy networks and electric vehicles, as well as some weapons systems.
The US largely depends on imports for the minerals it needs, many of which come from China, which has long dominated the market.
China is responsible for nearly 90% of global processing of rare earth minerals, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). On top of that, China is also the world’s largest producer of graphite and titanium, and a major processor of lithium.
Experts have long warned that relying on China for strategic materials is risky, but the latest trade tensions between Washington and Beijing make it even more important for the US to look for alternative suppliers.
The US isn’t the only one eyeing Ukraine’s resources. The European Union signed a memorandum of understanding with Ukraine in 2021 outlining future investment opportunities in mineral mining.
A similar document was prepared under the Biden administration last year. It said the US would promote investment opportunities in Ukraine’s mining projects to American companies in exchange for Kyiv creating economic incentives and implementing good business and environmental practices.
Trump has repeatedly referred to the deal as one on “rare earths” but it’s likely he was speaking more widely about critical minerals.
Ukraine doesn’t have globally significant reserves of rare earth minerals, but it does have some of the world’s largest deposits of graphite, lithium, titanium, beryllium and uranium, all of which are classed by the US as critical minerals.
But while Ukraine does have large reserves of these minerals, little has been done to develop the sector. Given the huge strain Russia’s unprovoked aggression has put on the Ukrainian economy, it is unlikely that Kyiv would be able to extract these resources without foreign investment.
“Most projects remain in the exploration phase, with no large-scale processing facilities in place,” said Katser-Buchkovska, who served as a member of the Ukrainian Parliament from 2014 to 2019 and was the head of a parliamentary committee on energy security and transition.
“Extracting rare minerals will be extremely expensive and will require years (and) billions of upfront investments, infrastructure development, and workforce training before production can even begin,” she said, adding that Ukraine’s resource extraction sector remains underdeveloped because of outdated infrastructure, war-related damage and lack of investment.
Trump’s return to the White House has resulted in a major shift in policy towards Russia.
US and Russian officials meet in Saudi Arabia earlier this month to discuss the end of the war in Ukraine – without inviting Kyiv or any of its European allies to take part.
Trump said on Monday that he was in “serious discussions” with Russia about ending the war and was “trying to do some economic development deals” with Moscow, noting its “massive rare earth” deposits.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday that Moscow was ready to work with American companies to mine rare earth mineral deposits in both Russia, and parts of Russian-occupied Ukraine.
“Russia is one of the leading countries when it comes to rare metal reserves. By the way, as for new territories, we are also ready to attract foreign partners – there are certain reserves there too,” Putin said in an interview with Russian state media, referring to Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.
Sector rotation is difficult to spot in real time because it unfolds over weeks or months and isn’t always obvious until after the fact. Since there’s no single or definitive way to monitor a rotation, you’d have to observe it from different angles. In this article, we’ll examine one combined approach you can use.
Tuesday’s Consumer Confidence report saw its worst decline in four years. This followed last week’s Consumer Sentiment report, which also caused a huge upset. If anything, these confidence reports indicate that investors are forecasting the likelihood of a recession.
Might these expectations also be evident in the way investors are allocating their capital? In other words, are we seeing an early sector rotation from cyclical to defensive stocks?
Julius de Kempenaer’s article on the top five leading sectors touches on this. If you’re not familiar with his articles, sector rotation is sort of his thing, so I recommend you follow his posts if this interests you.
FIGURE 1. RRG SECTOR CHART. Is a rotation underway?Chart source: “The Best Five Sectors #8.”Consumer Discretionary (XLY) and Financials (XLF)—both cyclical components—have begun to retreat from their leadership positions. Meanwhile, Utilities (XLU), a purely defensive sector, started showing signs of strength despite lagging behind its cyclical peers.
To get another bird’s eye view of sector activity, pull up a sector chart on MarketCarpets. Here’s a screenshot of a five-day view taken on Tuesday. It doesn’t show the type of movement the RRG chart shows, but you can view the strength of performance (and other available metrics) in percentage terms.
FIGURE 2. MARKETCARPETS SECTORS CHART. Among the cyclical stocks only, Consumer Discretionary is the weakest performer, while Consumer Staples leads the pack.Image source: StockCharts.com. For educational purposes.
Granted, five days of performance doesn’t define a trend, but this chart suggests an interesting pattern: Consumer Staples, Health Care, and Real Estate are outperforming their sector peers. Although Real Estate is generally cyclical, REITs, known for their steady income, often exhibit defensive characteristics.
What do these movements look like in terms of market breadth? The Bullish Percent Index (BPI) is a powerful tool for assessing the internal strength of an index or sector. So let’s examine the top three cyclical and defensive sectors to see what the BPI reveals.
FIGURE 3. THE TOP THREE CYCLICAL AND DEFENSIVE SECTORS BASED ON BPI.Chart source: StockChartsACP. For educational purposes.
While the BPI gives you the percentage of stocks exhibiting P&F buy signals (see the highlighted number on the vertical axis to the right), there are a lot of nuances involved in analyzing these numbers in detail. For example:
There’s more nuance to this, all of which is covered in the ChartSchool article (see link above Figure 3). That said, here are a few key points:
It would help to compare the performance of both sector groups, which is why it’s a good idea to look at ratios.
Here’s the issue: Finding a definitive index for these stocks is challenging, since sectors like Tech, Industrials, Energy, and Communications fall somewhere between cyclical and defensive. However, ETFs such as the iShares MSCI USA Momentum Factor ETF (MTUM) and the Invesco S&P 500 Low Volatility ETF (SPLV) can serve as useful proxies for cyclical and defensive stocks, respectively.
Here’s a ratio chart (SPLV:MTUM) comparing the two.
FIGURE 4. RATIO OF SPLV TO MTUM. This attempts to show the spread between defensive vs cyclical sectors.Chart source: StockCharts.com. For educational purposes.
By plotting a Zig Zag line, you can see the swing points that define the ratio’s trend. Note the following:
Keep tracking the activity of defensive and cyclical sectors using the RRG, MarketCarpets, BPIs, and ratio chart. It’s too early to tell right now whether a sustainable rotation is at play, and much of the dynamics affecting these sectors are subject to the political and geopolitical policies at play. If the likelihood of a rotation appears more evident, then drill down on sector ETFs or individual stocks within the sector.
Sector analysis is a complex topic that requires a multi-angled approach. If you’re attempting to time a rotation, you don’t want to move too early into a rotation that doesn’t pan out, but neither do you want to move too late. By using StockCharts tools like RRG charts, MarketCarpets, BPIs, and ratio analysis, you can gain clearer insights into whether investors are shifting from one sector to another. Keep a close eye on economic and policy shifts as well, as they’re likely to change the conditions of the market.
Disclaimer: This blog is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as financial advice. The ideas and strategies should never be used without first assessing your own personal and financial situation, or without consulting a financial professional.
In this exclusive StockCharts video, Joe breaks down reverse divergences (hidden divergence), key upside & downside signals, and how to use ADX and Moving Averages for better trades! Plus, he examines market trends and viewer symbol requests!
This video was originally published on February 26, 2025. Click this link to watch on Joe’s dedicated page.
Archived videos from Joe are available at this link. Send symbol requests to stocktalk@stockcharts.com; you can also submit a request in the comments section below the video on YouTube. Symbol Requests can be sent in throughout the week prior to the next show.
Home Depot on Tuesday topped Wall Street’s quarterly sales expectations, even as elevated interest rates and housing prices dampened consumer demand for large remodels and pricier projects.
For the full year ahead, the company said it expects total sales to grow by 2.8% and comparable sales, which take out the impact of one-time factors like store openings and calendar differences, to increase by about 1%. Home Depot projected adjusted earnings per share will decline about 2% compared with the prior year.
In an interview with CNBC, Chief Financial Officer Richard McPhail said “housing is still frozen by mortgage rates.” Yet he said Home Depot saw broad-based growth, as sales increased in about half of its merchandise categories and 15 of its 19 U.S. geographic regions.
Home Depot anticipates consumers will stop putting off projects as they gradually get used to higher interest rates, rather than waiting for them to fall, McPhail said.
“They tell us their lives are moving on,” he said. “Their families are growing. They’re moving for a new job. They’re upsizing their home. They want to upgrade their standard of living. Home improvement always persists, and so the question, I think, will be around the mindset of whether long-term rates have gotten to a new normal.”
Here’s what the company reported for the fiscal fourth quarter compared with Wall Street’s estimates, according to a survey of analysts by LSEG:
Home Depot shares were up nearly 5% in midday trading. The company was holding an earnings call on Tuesday morning.
In the three-month period that ended Feb. 2, Home Depot’s net income climbed to $3.0 billion, or $3.02 per share, from $2.80 billion, or $2.82 per share, in the year-ago period. Revenue rose 14% from $34.79 billion in the year-ago period.
Comparable sales, a metric also known as same-store sales, increased 0.8% across the company. Those results ended eight consecutive quarters of falling comparable sales. They also exceeded analysts’ expectations of a decline of 1.7%, according to StreetAccount. Comparable sales in the U.S. increased 1.3% year over year.
Regions hit by hurricanes Helene and Milton contributed about 0.6% to comparable sales, McPhail said.
Customers spent more and visited Home Depot’s stores and website more in the quarter compared with the year-ago period. Transactions rose to 400.4 million, up nearly 8% from the year-ago period. The average ticket was $89.11 in the quarter, up slightly from $88.87 in the prior-year quarter.
Home Depot has faced a more difficult backdrop for selling supplies for home improvement projects. Sales growth slowed in 2023, after consumers’ huge appetite for home renovations during the Covid pandemic returned to more typical patterns. Inflation and a shift back to spending on services like vacations and restaurants also dinged consumer demand for larger projects and pricier items.
Since roughly the middle of 2023, Home Depot’s leaders have pinned the company’s problems on a tougher housing market. McPhail told CNBC that the same challenge persisted in the fourth quarter, as consumers still showed reluctance to splurge on bigger projects, such as redoing a kitchen or installing new flooring.
Mortgage rates have remained high, despite interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve. The median price of a home sold in January was $396,900, up 4.8% from the year before and the highest price ever for the month of January, according to the National Association of Realtors.
Tougher weather also hurt the company’s sales in January, and that’s carried into February in some parts of the country, McPhail said.
“Where weather is good, we continue to see engagement,” he said. “Where weather is tough, projects get put on the shelf.”
Even so, he said Home Depot has focused on ways it can move the needle, such as opening new stores and investing in its e-commerce business.
Online sales rose 9% in the fourth quarter compared with the year-ago period, McPhail said, the strongest quarter of the year for Home Depot’s digital business. He chalked that up to the company’s investments in faster deliveries, particularly with getting appliances and power tools to customers.
McPhail said Home Depot opened 12 new stores in 2024, and it plans to open 13 new locations in the coming year.
Home Depot has also looked to home professionals as one of its major sales drivers. It bought SRS Distribution, a Texas-based company that sells supplies to professionals in the roofing, pool and landscaping businesses, for $18.25 billion last year. It marked the largest acquisition in the company’s history.
Some pro-heavy categories, such as roofing, drywall and lumber, saw sales increases in the quarter because of Home Depot’s push to serve contractors and other home pros better, McPhail said.
Shares of Home Depot closed Monday at $382.42. As of Monday’s close, the company’s shares have fallen about 2% so far this year. That trails behind the S&P 500′s approximately 2% gains during the same period.
McDonald’s is leaning into its reputation as a breakfast value offering, vowing to reject a surcharge on meals with eggs while announcing a special one-day discount on Egg McMuffins.
The fast-food giant said in a release that to mark the 50th anniversary of its breakfast-menu cornerstone, customers on Sunday would be able to purchase an Egg McMuffin sandwich, as well as a Sausage McMuffin With Egg sandwich, through the McDonald’s app for just $1.
“At McDonald’s, breakfast isn’t just a meal; it’s a cherished tradition and cornerstone of our brand,” McDonald’s USA President Joe Erlinger said Tuesday. “Every morning when we open our doors, we are a breakfast restaurant.”
Coinciding with the release, a McDonald’s executive emphasized in a LinkedIn post that the chain had no intention to charge customers extra for meals featuring eggs amid a nationwide shortage that has sent prices soaring and prompted at least two other national chains to do so.
‘Unlike others making news recently, you definitely WON’T see McDonald’s USA issuing surcharges on eggs, which are 100% cage-free and sourced in the U.S.,’ wrote Michael Gonda, McDonald’s chief impact officer for North America.
The announcements come as McDonald’s tries to leave a recent slump behind: Earlier this month, it reported its worst quarterly sales drop since the pandemic — but forecast improving results for 2025.
Year to date, its shares are up some 6%, outperforming broader market indexes.
Nvidia is scheduled to report fourth-quarter financial results on Wednesday after the bell.
It’s expected to put the finishing touches on one of the most remarkable years from a large company ever. Analysts polled by FactSet expect $38 billion in sales for the quarter ended in January, which would be a 72% increase on an annual basis.
The January quarter will cap off the second fiscal year where Nvidia’s sales more than doubled. It’s a breathtaking streak driven by the fact that Nvidia’s data center graphics processing units, or GPUs, are essential hardware for building and deploying artificial intelligence services like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. In the past two years, Nvidia stock has risen 478%, making it the most valuable U.S. company at times with a market cap over $3 trillion.
But Nvidia’s stock has slowed in recent months as investors question where the chip company can go from here.
It’s trading at the same price as it did last October, and investors are wary of any signs that Nvidia’s most important customers might be tightening their belts after years of big capital expenditures. This is particularly concerning in the wake of recent breakthroughs in AI out of China.
Much of Nvidia’s sales go to a handful of companies building massive server farms, usually to rent out to other companies. These cloud companies are typically called “hyperscalers.” Last February, Nvidia said a single customer accounted for 19% of its total revenue in fiscal 2024.
Morgan Stanley analysts estimated this month that Microsoft will account for nearly 35% of spending in 2025 on Blackwell, Nvidia’s latest AI chip. Google is at 32.2%, Oracle at 7.4% and Amazon at 6.2%.
This is why any sign that Microsoft or its rivals might pull back spending plans can shake Nvidia stock.
Last week, TD Cowen analysts said that they’d learned that Microsoft had canceled leases with private data center operators, slowed its process of negotiating to enter into new leases and adjusted plans to spend on international data centers in favor of U.S. facilities.
The report raised fears about the sustainability of AI infrastructure growth. That could mean less demand for Nvidia’s chips. TD Cowen’s Michael Elias said his team’s finding points to “a potential oversupply position” for Microsoft. Shares of Nvidia fell 4% on Friday.
Microsoft pushed back Monday, saying it still planned to spend $80 billion on infrastructure in 2025.
“While we may strategically pace or adjust our infrastructure in some areas, we will continue to grow strongly in all regions. This allows us to invest and allocate resources to growth areas for our future,” a spokesperson told CNBC.
Over the last month, most of Nvidia’s key customers touted large investments. Alphabet is targeting $75 billion in capital expenditures this year, Meta will spend as much as $65 billion and Amazon is aiming to spend $100 billion.
Analysts say about half of AI infrastructure capital expenditures ends up with Nvidia. Many hyperscalers dabble in AMD’s GPUs and are developing their own AI chips to lessen their dependence on Nvidia, but the company holds the majority of the market for cutting-edge AI chips.
So far, these chips have been used primarily to train new age AI models, a process that can cost hundreds of millions dollars. After the AI is developed by companies like OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, warehouses full of Nvidia GPUs are required to serve those models to customers. That’s why Nvidia projects its revenue to continue growing.
Another challenge for Nvidia is last month’s emergence of Chinese startup DeepSeek, which released an efficient and “distilled” AI model. It had high enough performance that suggested billions of dollars of Nvidia GPUs aren’t needed to train and use cutting-edge AI. That temporarily sunk Nvidia’s stock, causing the company to lose almost $600 billion in market cap.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang will have an opportunity on Wednesday to explain why AI will continue to need even more GPU capacity even after last year’s massive build-out.
Recently, Huang has spoken about the “scaling law,” an observation from OpenAI in 2020 that AI models get better the more data and compute are used when creating them.
Huang said that DeepSeek’s R1 model points to a new wrinkle in the scaling law that Nvidia calls “Test Time Scaling.” Huang has contended that the next major path to AI improvement is by applying more GPUs to the process of deploying AI, or inference. That allows chatbots to “reason,” or generate a lot of data in the process of thinking through a problem.
AI models are trained only a few times to create and fine-tune them. But AI models can be called millions of times per month, so using more compute at inference will require more Nvidia chips deployed to customers.
“The market responded to R1 as in, ‘oh my gosh, AI is finished,’ that AI doesn’t need to do any more computing anymore,” Huang said in a pretaped interview last week. “It’s exactly the opposite.”
Hundreds of millions of Hindu devotees have bathed in sacred waters, despite concerns over overcrowding and water pollution, as the world’s largest religious gathering wrapped up Wednesday in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
Over the last 45 days, more than 620 million people – nearly a third of India’s roughly 1.4 billion population – have attended the Maha Kumbh Mela, or the festival of the Sacred Pitcher, on the riverbanks in the city of Prayagraj, in a spectacle of color and expression of faith.
Followers have come to take a holy dip in the Triveni Sangam, the confluence of three holy rivers – the Ganges, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati – to purify their sins and take another step closer to “spiritual liberation.”
Every 12 years the festival carries the prefix “Maha,” which means great, as it’s the largest gathering of the Kumbh Mela that’s held every three years in one of four cities.
“It is a unique, once in a lifetime experience,” said Sushovan Sircar, 36, who works as an independent consultant in Delhi. “People from all over India are here, as I saw number plates of cars from almost every state.”
Though this year’s festivities have been marred by two separate, deadly crowd crushes, millions have turned out for the festival despite concerns of overcrowding and reports of “unsafe” levels of contamination in key bathing sites.
A report from the Central Pollution and Control Board (CPCB), part of India’s Environment Ministry, last month found high levels of coliform faecal bacteria in the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, despite the government touting sustainable initiatives and sanitation efforts.
Uttar Pradesh’s Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath denied the accuracy of the government report, insisting that the water was not just safe for bathing, but also for the Hindu ritual of drinking a handful after bathing.
Attendees often submerge themselves fully, sometimes drinking or collecting the sacred water in containers.
Sircar, the independent consultant from Delhi, said he bathed in the water at Sangam point – the confluence of the three rivers considered to be the most auspicious place to bathe and where most people take their dip – twice last week.
“There is a concern because there is nothing I can do about the contamination in the water. In your mind you tell yourself, this part looks clean, spend a few minutes in, recite prayers and come out,” said Sircar.
“I took a shower for sins and then another shower for the contamination,” he laughed. “So you need a bath after the bath… My sins are cleansed, but not (my) body.”
Before the festival began, India’s top environmental court directed the state and federal pollution boards to ensure the river water was clean enough to drink and bathe in. It called for increasing monitoring and sample collecting of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers and ensuring that no untreated sewage or solid waste would be discharged.
But a report submitted by the federal pollution board on February 3 stated that faecal coliform levels, a key indicator of untreated sewage and faecal matter in water, were far above the safe limit set by the board of 2,500 units per 100 millilitres.
At various parts of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers around Prayagraj levels were more than 1,000 over the safe limit, according to the report.
Adityanath said his government was continually monitoring the water levels to ensure its quality.
“We have ensured that the water quality has been maintained,” said Kumbh Mela officer Vivek Chaturvedi.
Aishwary Sharma, 31, a finance professional in Delhi, said he took a dip in the rivers despite knowing it could be polluted.
“I think it is quite evident that the Ganga and Yamuna are not clean rivers,” he said. “(But) there are many things that are bad for you… The air we breathe is so toxic for our health… It is just another thing that is polluted that could have a harmful impact on my health.”
For others, their faith and participating in the sacred festival was more important than their concerns.
“What (most people) are interested in is their devotion and religion and that they want to take that holy dip,” said Sunny Parasher, 34, from Panchkula in Haryana state.
“Where there is devotion, where there is religion, there is no question,” he said.
Kalpana Mishra, 55, a housewife from Prayagraj, said she would not take another holy dip after reading the pollution board’s report.
“What does being a literate person mean if you hear all this and still decide to go?” she asked.
Exposure to faecal contamination can cause water borne diseases such as typhoid, diarrhoea, cholera, gastroenteritis, E-coli, skin disease and vomiting, health experts warn.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made cleaning the Ganges, India’s holiest river, a priority since first taking office in 2014 – with billions of dollars spent or pledged on sewage treatment, cleaning surface waste and afforestation in the decade since.
The Ganges, a lifeline for 400 million people who live and work along it, runs through 50 Indian cities that pump out about 3 billion liters of sewage every day – only a fraction of which is treated before it reaches the river, according to the World Bank.
The Yamuna, a tributary of the Ganges, has also for decades been plagued by the dumping of toxic chemicals and untreated sewage.
Ahead of the festival, Indian authorities touted this year’s gathering as a “Green Kumbh,” with sustainable initiatives such as a ban on single-use plastics, eco-friendly toilets, electric rickshaws and an army of 15,000 sanitation workers hired to clean up after major bathing days.
The Ministry of Culture said in January that the festival had been “meticulously planned to uphold hygiene and ecological balance” and would “set an example for future large-scale events worldwide” in environmental responsibility.
Protecting and cleaning the river was even a major theme at a conference held on the sidelines of the festival with religious and environmental leaders coming together for the first time on how religious institutions can address the climate crisis.
“If there is no water in the rivers, there is no Kumbh. We don’t consider it water, we consider it nectar,” said Indian spiritual leader Swami Chidanand Saraswati at the meeting. “If we all do not make efforts to protect it, then the next (Kumbh Mela) will be on mere sand.”
But complicating the green efforts was the enormous crowd size at this year’s Kumbh Mela, which saw 250 million more people than originally expected, according to one expert. Authorities had planned for about 400 million people to attend over the six-week gathering, with about 9 million people per day, but about 620 million people attended in total, according to government figures.
“It is a mammoth task to take care of such a crowd,” said Dr Nupur Bahadur, an associate director with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), a research institute that looks at wastewater management, established by the Indian government.
River contamination could be better managed by adopting better on-site prevention and disinfection methods, Bahadur said.
One of them could be halting the dip after every 12 hours for one hour” and letting fresh water run through the bathing areas before “the dips can be restarted,” she said.
Bahadur said that while the festival’s “massive increase in footfall” strained its infrastructure, it has still been “the best human effort possible” in such a situation.
Prayagraj resident Mishra said she will be happy when her city gets back to normal.
“My eyes are constantly burning and there is so much dust,” she said. “I want the festival to end so I can get back to my life.”
The parents of an 8-year-old girl who died after they withheld her insulin, encouraged by members of a small Christian sect who believed God would save her, have been sentenced to at least 14 years in prison.
Elizabeth Struhs died in January 2022 on a mattress on the floor of her home in Toowoomba, west of Brisbane, five days after her father Jason Struhs, 53, declared that she no longer needed medication for Type 1 diabetes.
Her mother, Kerrie Struhs, 49, encouraged Elizabeth’s father to withhold her insulin, as did 12 other members of a Bible-based sect known as “The Saints,” who were also found guilty of manslaughter.
Sect leader Brendan Stevens, 63, was handed a prison sentence of 13 years by Justice Martin Burns in the Queensland Supreme Court on Wednesday. Eleven other members of the sect, who sang and prayed while Elizabeth died, were also due to be sentenced.
It’s not the first time Jason and Kerrie Struhs have been prosecuted for failing to give Elizabeth medical care.
In 2019, Elizabeth, then 6, was hospitalized for a month after becoming gravely ill from undiagnosed and untreated diabetes. At the time, her father rejected the sect’s insistence that God would heal her and eventually took his daughter to hospital.
That time, Jason Struhs pleaded guilty to “failing to provide the necessaries of life to Elizabeth” and was given a suspended sentence after testifying against his wife. Kerrie Struhs pleaded not guilty and was given an 18-month sentence.
What happened next all but sealed Elizabeth’s fate.
While Kerrie Struhs was in prison, her husband’s 17-year opposition to the sect crumbled, the trial heard, and he became “baptized” as its newest member.
Elizabeth died just three weeks after her mother was released from prison on parole, telling her parole officer that she’d withhold her daughter’s treatment again, if given the choice. She also said she wouldn’t intervene if anyone tried to help Elizabeth – but no one did.
The couple at the center of the case had a long and often combative relationship.
Jason Struhs told police that his wife wasn’t very religious during the first few years of their marriage, but that changed when she met sect leader Brendan Stevens and his wife Loretta in 2004.
As Kerrie Struhs grew closer to the Stevens family, she began to reject medical treatment. Jason Struhs remained a staunch non-believer, who insisted that their eight children be vaccinated.
The couple’s conflicting beliefs caused friction in the household, and for a time Jason moved to the garage to “escape the tension.” He worked night shifts and preferred to stay away from the house, either working or playing golf, he told police, according to court documents.
Kerrie Struhs told police her husband was an “angry man” who didn’t believe in God, and that she was planning to leave him after her release from prison in December 2021.
But she changed her mind after she discovered that Jason had joined the church, describing him as much calmer, like a “new person.”
“The change in him has been unbelievable,” she told police.
Jason Struhs told police he had a “mental breakdown” after Kerrie went to prison and sought support from sect members.
To the church, the conversion of someone once vehemently opposed to their teachings was something of a “miracle” – proof that God had cured his anger.
When Jason Struhs declared in early January 2022 – just five months after joining the sect – that Elizabeth no longer needed insulin, church members were elated.
Their campaign to convince him that Elizabeth could be cured by God had worked.
Within days her condition deteriorated, and even as she lay dying with the insulin in the cupboard, no one gave it to her or suggested they seek medical help.
As Elizabeth became sicker, vomiting then unresponsive, Jason Struhs seemed to waver in his conviction, but church members rallied around him, encouraging him to follow God’s will.
They sat at Elizabeth’s bedside, singing and praying. “Whatever the Lord’s plan is for us, we will follow it,” Stevens later told police.
Elizabeth died on January 7, 2022, of diabetic ketoacidosis, a complication caused by a lack of insulin and medical treatment for diabetes – the same condition she had in 2019.
The sect continued to sing, dance and pray around her body for 36 hours before Jason Struhs said it was time to phone police.
For years, the sect’s beliefs were reinforced by their leader, Brendan Stevens, who taught his followers to reject modern medicine but denied any responsibility for Elizabeth’s death.
In 2022, as Elizabeth’s condition deteriorated, Stevens told her parents, “This is just a little trial to prove that you all are truly faithful to our faithful God,” according to court documents.
Stevens’ wife Loretta, 67, and six of their adult children – Therese, Andrea, Acacia, Camellia, Alexander and Sebastian Stevens, ages 24 to 35, were also convicted, along with Elizabeth’s older brother Zachary Struhs, 22.
The others included Lachlan and Samantha Schoenfisch, a married couple aged 34 and 26, and Keita Martin, 24, who went to school with the Stevens children and moved in with the family when she was 17. During the trial, their family members told the court they’d become increasingly concerned about their extreme religious beliefs.
But not all were taken in by Brendan Stevens.
Jayde Struhs, Jason and Kerrie Struhs’ eldest daughter, gave evidence against her parents. She left their home at age 16 for fear she’d never be accepted as gay.
In a victim impact statement read in court, Jayde Struhs said: “These people only wanted to control my family and everything they did. All for the sense of power … so they could play God.”
All 14 defendants represented themselves during a 9-week judge-only trial in 2024, however none gave or called any evidence. Speaking on their behalf, Brendan Stevens called the trial a “religious persecution.”
Jayde Struhs told Australia’s national broadcaster, the ABC, that Stevens instilled an Armageddon-style fear in his followers.
“The main … messaging that Brendan puts out there is that the world’s going to end and Jesus is going to come back and save us … if you’re not absolute in the walk of God, you’ll go to hell forever,” she said.
Cult expert Raphael Aron, director of Cult Consulting Australia, says Jason Struhs would have been under “immense” pressure to join the group and follow their beliefs.
He said prison is unlikely to change the beliefs of “The Saints,” and if members are allowed further contact with each other, it could further entrench their ideology.
“I don’t know if any group has fallen apart because the leader went to jail; he’s just seen as a martyr, basically a replica of Jesus on the cross,” said Aron. “There’s all sorts of other ways of justifying it, and they keep going.”
He said he hopes Elizabeth’s death acts as a “wake up call” to anyone who may be questioning the legitimacy of people influencing themselves or a loved one.
A major red flag is the rejection of conventional medicine, Aron said, as it allows the group to conceal abusive behavior.
“The one area in life where the groups can actually be held accountable will be through the medical world, because that practitioner has a responsibility to do something about what’s going on,” said Aron.
Sect leaders also often ban members from accessing the internet because if they did, they might find damning testimony from former members, he added.
Small groups with extreme beliefs are all but impossible to detect unless people come forward, Aron said – but in Australia, unlike the United States, there are few avenues to report them.
He’s advocating for a regulatory body with the power to investigate complaints.
“The problem is, if you go to the police and no crime has been committed, they can’t do anything, and by the time the crime has been committed, it’s too late.”
China’s military has set up a zone for “live-fire training” about 46 miles (74 kilometers) off the southwestern coast of Taiwan without advance notice, the island’s defense ministry said on Wednesday.
It comes a day after Taiwan’s coast guard detained a Chinese-crewed cargo ship suspected of cutting an undersea cable in the Taiwan Strait.
Taiwan’s defense ministry said it detected 32 Chinese military aircraft in the Taiwan Strait starting shortly before 9am on Wednesday (7.42 p.m. Tuesday ET). It added that 22 of those aircraft flew near the north and southwest of the island and carried out a “joint combat readiness patrol” with Chinese warships, according to the statement.
“During this period, (China) blatantly violated international norms by unilaterally designating a drill zone approximately 40 nautical miles off the coast of Kaohsiung and Pingtung without prior warning, claiming it would conduct ‘live-fire training,’” the ministry said.
There was no immediate comment from Beijing on the Taiwan statement. China’s Foreign Ministry did not comment on it when asked at a regular news conference Wednesday, saying it’s “not a diplomatic issue.”
China’s ruling Communist Party claims Taiwan as its territory, despite having never controlled it, and has vowed to take the self-governing democracy by force if necessary. Under Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Beijing has significantly ramped up military, diplomatic and economic pressure on Taiwan.
Kaohsiung, a strategic commercial hub for Taiwan, is home to the island’s largest and busiest port.
Taiwan’s defense ministry said China declared the drill zone within international shipping lanes via temporary radio broadcasts, posing “a severe threat to the safety of international aviation and maritime navigation.”
“This is a blatant provocation against regional security and stability,” the ministry added.