287 stories
A Russian drone/missile hit the Brody hub of Ukraine’s Druzhba pipeline on 27 Jan 2026, cutting all Russian crude transit to Hungary and Slovakia and triggering a blame-trading clash between Kyiv and Budapest.
After signing a sale agreement with Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery directors are now formally debating whether to reopen talks with Paramount Skydance following its latest bid sweeteners announced last week.
A single trading day packed with Q3 FY26 results sent multiple Indian stocks to 5 % circuits and an AI IPO to a 3 % discount, exposing acute margin bifurcation across sectors.
Alphabet’s Waymo said it will more than double its U.S. robotaxi output to over one million paid rides per week by December 2026, bankrolled by a record $16 b investment, even as it acknowledged some real-time vehicle guidance is provided by contractors in the Philippines—prompting fresh regulatory scrutiny.
A 13 Feb 2026 warehouse fire at Havana’s Nico López oil refinery was brought under control within hours, sparing critical infrastructure even as the island endures a U.S.-enforced halt to Venezuelan crude supplies.
A single day’s batch of announcements and data exposed a stark divergence—while Malta and other European/Pacific destinations logged >50 % arrival growth and new gender-inclusive programs were rolled out, the U.S. government admitted international arrivals will fall 10 % in 2026.
On 13 Feb 2026 Washington and Taipei signed the final text of a reciprocal trade agreement that locks U.S. tariffs on Taiwanese goods at 15 % and, in exchange, commits Taiwan to slash or remove almost all tariffs on U.S. products and to buy tens of billions of dollars of U.S. energy, aircraft and power equipment.
On 10 Feb 2026 Washington issued a sweeping general license letting U.S. companies ship equipment and services to start exploring, developing and producing Venezuelan oil and gas—marking the first formal opening of the country’s fields to American operators since sanctions began in 2019.
U.S. headline inflation slowed to 2.4 % year-on-year in January—down from December’s 2.7 %—sending short-term Treasury yields lower and rekindling bets on two Federal Reserve rate cuts later in 2026.
On 11 Feb 2026 the European Parliament, two weeks ahead of schedule, approved a €90 billion joint-EU loan for Ukraine—clearing the way for first disbursements in Q2 2026 and ensuring Kyiv does not run out of cash by April.
On 11 Feb 2026 President Trump signed an executive order compelling the Department of Defense to sign long-term power-purchase deals with U.S. coal-fired plants, reversing their planned retirements and injecting federal demand into a fuel now at a 16 % share of the U.S. grid.
On 11 Feb 2026 Chris Wright became the first U.S. cabinet official to enter Venezuela since Nicolás Maduro’s January capture, hours after Treasury issued General License 48 letting U.S. firms repair the country’s crippled oil infrastructure.
In the same week of February 2026, new data showed China’s emissions dipping amid a 610-km² mega-solar farm, the EU confirmed wind-and-solar overtook fossil power in 2025, while President Trump issued an executive order requiring the U.S. Defense Department to lock in long-term purchases from coal plants and touted fresh export deals.
The Labor Department’s January 2026 release showed employers added 130,000 jobs even as its annual benchmark revision wiped 898,000 positions from last year’s books, slashing 2025 job growth to just 181,000.
On 11 Feb 2026, Energy Secretary Chris Wright arrived in Caracas for a three-day inspection tour, inaugurating Washington’s hands-on $100 billion plan to revive Venezuela’s oil sector only five weeks after U.S. forces ousted Nicolás Maduro.
In less than 24 hours on 9-10 Feb 2026, Alphabet sold about $32 billion in dollar, sterling and Swiss-franc bonds—including a rare £1 billion 100-year tranche—to bankroll a planned $185 billion AI capex surge.
On 10 Feb 2026 Paramount amended its hostile $30/share all-cash tender for WBD by promising a 25-cent quarterly ‘ticking fee’ after 31 Dec 2026 and covering the $2.8 billion break-up fee owed to Netflix, while again extending the tender deadline.
On 6 Feb 2026, a payout typo at Bithumb credited 695 users with 620,000 BTC—about US$44 billion—prompting a 35-minute trade freeze and an immediate probe by South Korea’s Financial Services Commission.
On 9 Feb 2026 India’s biggest state and private refiners stopped booking March-April Russian crude cargoes days after President Trump revoked a 25% duty, signalling New Delhi’s intent to clinch a wider trade pact with Washington.
Sanae Takaichi’s 9 Feb 2026 lower-house sweep briefly drove USD/JPY to ¥157.72—a two-week low for the yen—before government intervention warnings yanked the pair back below ¥156.
Between Feb 5-8 2026, the Post cut about 300 jobs (≈30 % of staff) and, amid the backlash, publisher Will Lewis quit, leaving a 147-year-old paper suddenly leader-less and hollowed out.
After days of brinkmanship, Washington and Tehran confirmed a face-to-face meeting in Muscat at 10:00 on 6 Feb 2026—their first direct negotiation since the June 2025 Israel-Iran war—to discuss limits on Iran’s nuclear programme under the shadow of a U.S. strike threat.
On 7 Feb 2026, Damascus and Riyadh inked roughly $5.3 billion in binding contracts—including a $2 billion Elaf Fund for Aleppo’s airports and a $1 billion SilkLink fiber network—marking the first large, post-sanctions capital surge into post-Assad Syria.
On 9 Feb 2026, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s Liberal Democratic Party captured a post-war record super-majority in the lower house, instantly driving the Nikkei above 57,000 while sending bond yields and the yen into whipsaw territory.
On 7 Feb 2026 Washington and New Delhi unveiled an “Interim Agreement” that immediately cut the US reciprocal tariff on Indian goods from 50 % to 18 % and revoked an extra 25 % oil-related penalty, in exchange for India’s pledge to halt Russian crude purchases and buy more US exports.
Polling began Sunday for the snap lower-house vote called just 16 days after dissolution, as PM Sanae Takaichi’s LDP-Innovation coalition hunts the 310-seat mark even while re-nominating 43 lawmakers tied to a 2024 slush-fund scandal.
Delhi and Putrajaya jointly confirmed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will travel to Malaysia on 7–8 February 2026 for his first face-to-face meeting with Anwar Ibrahim since the August 2024 upgrade of relations to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.
On 5-6 Feb 2026 Bitcoin sank to about US$60,000—its weakest since Oct 2024—triggering the largest one-day fall since Nov 2022 and erasing roughly US$2 trillion in total crypto value since the market’s October 2025 peak.
On 7 Feb 2026 Washington rolled back last year’s 50 % levy on Indian exports to a flat 18 %, while New Delhi agreed to its broadest tariff cuts yet on US industrial and farm goods under a newly signed “interim” trade framework.
On 7 Feb 2026 Washington and New Delhi unveiled an ‘interim’ accord that rolls back Trump’s six-month-old 25 % levy on Indian imports to 18 %, conditioned on India curbing Russian-oil purchases and beginning reciprocal tariff cuts.
At the 4 Feb 2026 Critical Minerals Ministerial in Washington, the 56-nation Minerals Security Partnership was relaunched as the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement (FORGE) with South Korea appointed interim chair through June.
On 5 Feb 2026 Moscow publicly stated it has received no notice from New Delhi to curtail Russian crude purchases, directly contradicting U.S. President Donald Trump’s assertion that India agreed, under a new trade deal, to stop buying Russian oil.
On 5 Feb 2026 the European Central Bank left its deposit rate unchanged at 2.00 % for a fifth straight meeting despite January inflation sliding to 1.7 % and the euro’s jump above $1.20.
On 2 Feb 2026, after 18 months of on-again, off-again talks and a peak tariff of 50%, President Trump and Prime Minister Modi agreed to a first-tranche pact in which Washington will slash its reciprocal tariff on Indian goods from 25% to 18%.
At a 4–5 Feb 2026 State Department summit, Vice-President JD Vance proposed a price-floor-backed preferential trade bloc for critical minerals, signaling Washington’s first multilateral mechanism to curb China’s supply dominance.
Between 3–4 Feb 2026, the debut of Anthropic’s industry-specific plugins for its Claude Cowork AI agent ignited a two-day global sell-off that drove the IGV Software ETF to a 6.7 % loss and erased roughly $285 billion in software-sector market value.
On 3 Feb 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump declared that U.S. tariffs on Indian goods would drop immediately from 25-50 % to 18 % after a phone call with PM Modi, a move announced in Washington before any statement in the Indian Parliament.
On 3 Feb 2026, President Trump launched Project Vault, leveraging a $10 billion EXIM Bank loan plus $1.67 billion in private money to build the first U.S. civilian stockpile of rare-earth and other critical minerals.
On 30–31 Jan 2026, a dollar-driven sell-off wiped over 12 % from gold and 36 % from silver in hours, abruptly ending their record rally and forcing exchanges to tighten trading margins.
On 3 Feb 2026 the U.S. dropped its tariff on Indian imports from a punitive 50% to 18% after New Delhi pledged massive purchases of American energy, defence and aircraft and signalled a gradual halt to Russian oil buys.
On 3 Feb 2026, President Trump said the U.S. reciprocal tariff on Indian imports would fall from 25% to 18% immediately after a phone call with PM Modi that tied the cut to India curbing Russian-oil purchases and boosting U.S. imports.
On 30-31 Jan 2026, internal pushback at Nvidia froze a non-binding September 2025 pact to fund and build 10 GW of compute for OpenAI—slashing the prospective outlay from $100 B to a still-undecided equity infusion of merely “tens of billions.”
Speaking aboard Air Force One on 1 Feb 2026, President Trump said India will resume buying Venezuelan crude—blocked since early-2025 tariffs—signalling Washington’s post-Maduro opening of the Orinoco fields to allied importers and inviting China to follow.
On 30 Jan 2026, President Trump named former governor Kevin Warsh to succeed Jerome Powell at the Federal Reserve, instantly flipping markets toward a stronger dollar and higher yields.
On 1 Feb 2026 CEO Jensen Huang publicly rejected a Wall Street Journal report that Nvidia’s pledged investment in OpenAI had stalled, stressing the deal remains alive but will be far smaller than the previously floated $100 billion figure.
On 29-30 Jan 2026, President Trump declared via Truth Social that all Canadian-built planes would lose U.S. certification and face a 50 % import tariff unless Transport Canada certifies Gulfstream’s G500/600/700/800 jets, a stance the White House partially walked back within hours for aircraft already in service.
On 1 Feb 2026 India actually presented its Union Budget on a Sunday for the first time, while Singapore formally set Feb 12 2026, 3:30 p.m., for Prime Minister Lawrence Wong to unveil the city-state’s first Budget of its new 15th Parliament.
On 1 Feb 2026, President Trump claimed a U.S.–brokered framework in which India will replace Iranian imports with Venezuelan oil and invited China to join, days after Washington assumed control of Venezuelan crude following Nicolás Maduro’s capture.
On 30 Jan 2026 President Trump formally named former Fed governor Kevin Warsh, 55, to succeed Jerome Powell when Powell’s term ends in May, setting up a confirmation fight over Fed independence.
Between 27–28 Jan 2026, spot gold punched through the $5,100 mark—doubling in two years—and immediately set off a wave of retail coin selling in Greece, record local-currency highs from Dhaka to Colombo, and fresh political pressure on Germany to pull 1,200 t of bullion out of the Fed’s vaults.
On 30 Jan 2026, Donald Trump’s executive order threatening tariffs on any nation exporting oil to Cuba jolted Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum into restarting suspended fuel deliveries while rushing to negotiate with Washington to dodge economic blowback.
On 29 Jan 2026 the FOMC kept its policy band unchanged, ending a three-meeting cutting streak and shifting expectations for the next reduction to after Chair Jerome Powell’s term expires in May.
On 29 Jan 2026 acting president Delcy Rodríguez signed a fast-tracked amendment that scraps the state oil company’s mandatory majority stake and slashes royalties, opening Venezuela’s oilfields to direct foreign control for the first time since 2006.
New Nevada filings dated 21 Jan 2026 show SpaceX creating two “K2” merger vehicles to swap xAI shares for SpaceX stock before a June IPO expected to top $1 trillion.
On 28 Jan 2026 New Delhi and Brussels declared negotiations finished on a sweeping FTA that slashes duties on 93 % of Indian exports and phases in duty-free access for over 90 % of EU goods, locking the two economies into the largest bilateral trade zone either has ever signed.
On 28 Jan 2026, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent publicly reaffirmed Washington’s “strong dollar” doctrine and denied any covert yen support, triggering a rapid 0.5 % rebound in the dollar index only a day after it touched its weakest level since 2022.
On 28 Jan 2026 the FOMC ended a run of three quarterly cuts by voting 10-2 to keep the federal-funds rate unchanged at 3.50–3.75%, openly rebuffing President Trump’s calls for cheaper money.
On 27 Jan 2026 New Delhi and Brussels formally closed talks on a free-trade pact that will wipe out most tariffs once ratified, creating a market of two billion people.
On 26 Jan 2026, President Trump declared he will hike duties on South Korean autos, lumber and pharmaceuticals from 15 % to 25 %, citing Seoul’s failure to ratify a July 2025 $350 bn trade-investment accord.
For the first time ever, silver printed triple-digits and gold crossed the $5,000 threshold within three trading days, driven by a sliding dollar, looming Fed cuts, and fresh U.S.–NATO friction over Greenland.
On 27 Jan 2026 New Delhi and Brussels officially declared negotiations closed on a 24-chapter free-trade agreement that will bind a market of 2 billion people—25 % of global GDP—pending legal vetting before signature.
After 18 years of on-and-off bargaining, Brussels and New Delhi have signalled they will formally declare FTA negotiations "concluded" and unveil a parallel security partnership when EU leaders meet Prime Minister Modi in Delhi on 27 January 2026.
On 26-27 Jan 2026, President Donald Trump announced via Truth Social that duties on South Korean autos, lumber, pharmaceuticals and other products will jump from 15 % to 25 % because Seoul’s National Assembly has not yet ratified last year’s $350 billion investment-for-tariff deal.
European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and European Council president António Costa landed in New Delhi ahead of the 27 Jan 2026 summit where both sides are slated to announce the formal closure of the India-EU FTA talks that have dragged since 2007.
On 25 Jan 2026 Canada slashed its 100 % duty on up to 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles to 6 %, triggering U.S. President Donald Trump to warn he will hit all Canadian imports with a 100 % tariff if Ottawa edges toward broader trade with Beijing.
On 26 Jan 2026, spot gold closed above the $5,000 psychological ceiling for the first time, capping a multi-day surge that also propelled silver past $100 and platinum to fresh peaks amid intensifying geopolitical frictions and a sliding U.S. dollar.
On 22-23 Jan 2026 Washington and Beijing simultaneously approved and closed a deal that split TikTok’s U.S. business into a new company—TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC—allowing the app to keep operating past the 23 Jan legal deadline.
Weeks after U.S. special forces captured Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s parliament approved on first reading a bill that lifts decades-old state control and lets private (mainly U.S.) firms run oil fields—aiming for an 18 % output jump in 2026.
On 23 Jan 2026, Nissan agreed to sell its Rosslyn assembly and stamping facilities to Chery South Africa, with ownership transferring mid-2026 pending regulators, ending Nissan vehicle production in the country after nearly six decades.
On 23 Jan 2026 ByteDance formally registered TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, transferring majority (80.1%) ownership to U.S.-led investors and thereby satisfying the 2024 divestiture law that would have shut the app down this week.
On 23 Jan 2026 TikTok closed a deal creating "TikTok USDS JV"—80.1 % owned by US-led investors with Oracle guarding data—to satisfy the 2024 divest-or-ban law and keep the app online for 200 million American users.
Leaks on 23 Jan 2026 show Amazon will issue pink slips next week for roughly 14-16 k corporate staff, completing a plan to shed about 30 k white-collar roles after the first cuts last October.
On 22 Jan 2026, Venezuela’s National Assembly approved the first reading of a bill that scraps Chávez-era state control and lets foreign firms fully operate and market crude, a shift pushed by Washington two weeks after U.S. forces abducted ex-president Nicolás Maduro.
On 19 Jan 2026 the Kremlin disclosed that Vladimir Putin has been formally asked to sit on President Donald Trump’s new Board of Peace, a self-styled panel meant to police the Gaza cease-fire and, eventually, other conflicts.
Hours before a Jan 23 2026 ban deadline, ByteDance transferred control of TikTok’s U.S. business to a new LLC that is 80.1 % owned by American investors, keeping the app live for 200 million U.S. users.
On 22 Jan 2026 Washington confirmed that interim president Delcy Rodríguez accepted an invitation to travel to the U.S., signalling a rapid post-Maduro thaw after decades of hostility.
On 21 Jan 2026, the European Parliament halted ratification of the July 2025 Turnberry trade pact and signalled possible use of the EU’s 2023 anti-coercion instrument after President Trump threatened 10–25 % tariffs unless Denmark cedes Greenland.
Between 19-21 Jan 2026, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s snap-election tax-cut pledge sent Japan’s 40-year bond yield to a record 4.215%, and the shock propagated abroad, lifting the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury to 4.30% and pushing euro-zone and African Eurobond yields higher within 48 hours.
On 20 Jan 2026 Netflix scrapped stock consideration and switched its $82 billion pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery to a 100% cash offer, aiming to lock in WBD shareholders and blunt Paramount-Skydance’s higher but shakier hostile bid.
20–21 Jan 2026 saw spot gold blow past $4,700 an ounce for the first time, transforming a long-running rally into a full-scale scramble across physical, ETF and blockchain markets.
On 20 Jan 2026, President Trump publicly threatened a punitive 200 % duty on all French wine and champagne imports unless President Macron reverses course and signs France onto Trump’s fledgling, U.S.–chaired Board of Peace for Gaza and other conflicts.
On 17 Jan 2026, Mercosur and the EU finally inked their 25-year free-trade pact in Asunción, but Brazil’s President Lula da Silva stayed in Rio and sent his foreign minister instead.
On 19 Jan 2026, during a lightning three-hour visit to Delhi, India and the UAE committed to doubling trade to USD 200 billion by 2032, signed a decade-long LNG supply contract, and issued a letter of intent to forge a formal Strategic Defence Partnership.
On 17 Jan 2026 Ottawa and Beijing struck a deal restoring the pre-2024 6.1 % tariff on up to 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles a year, exchanging that market access for sharp reductions in Chinese duties on Canadian canola and other farm goods.
On 17 Jan 2026 the EU and Mercosur finally signed their long-negotiated trade pact in Asunción, formally creating a 700-million-person free-trade area that still awaits parliamentary ratification on both sides.
On 18 Jan 2026 Seoul opened emergency negotiations with Washington, citing a 2025 joint fact sheet guaranteeing equal treatment, after President Trump’s new AI-chip duties and threats of up to 100 % tariffs put Samsung and SK Hynix at risk unless they expand U.S. manufacturing.
On 17-18 Jan 2026, Google formally appealed the 2024 U.S. antitrust judgment and asked Judge Amit Mehta to suspend his mandate that it hand over search-index and user-interaction data to rivals such as OpenAI until the appeal is resolved.
On 17 Jan 2026, the EU and Mercosur formally inked a pact in Paraguay that scraps tariffs on over 90 % of their trade, ending a 25-year negotiation deadlock.
Within 48 hours of unveiling a tariff-exemption formula for Taiwanese chipmakers, the Trump administration said every other semiconductor-exporting nation will face tailor-made negotiations—or tariffs as high as 100 %—rather than a single global standard.
On 16 Jan 2026, Ottawa cut its punitive 100 % duty to 6.1 % on up to 49,000 Chinese electric cars per year, and Beijing agreed to slash its combined tariff on Canadian canola seed from ~85 % to 15 % by 1 Mar 2026.
Washington and Taipei have agreed in principle to cut the Trump-era 20 % reciprocal tariff to 15 %, provided TSMC roughly doubles its U.S. footprint by adding at least five more semiconductor plants in Arizona.
On 15 Jan 2026, President Trump ordered a new 25 % import tariff on two specific high-performance AI chips slated for re-export, after a nine-month national-security probe under Section 232.
In their inaugural phone conversation on 15 Jan 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump and Venezuela’s acting president Delcy Rodriguez opened formal dialogue after Maduro’s capture, pairing promises of oil shipments and prisoner releases with talk of a U.S.–managed political transition.
Customs figures released 14 Jan 2026 show China’s 2025 trade surplus jumped 20 % to $1.19 trillion, the largest in history, as exporters pivoted from a tariff-hit U.S. market to faster-growing regions.
On 13 Jan 2026, President Trump declared he will immediately levy a blanket 25 % import duty on any country that continues commercial ties with Iran, undoing months-old tariff détente with Beijing and potentially ensnaring allies from India to the EU.
On 13 Jan 2026 President Trump declared—without published regulations—that every nation maintaining commerce with Iran will immediately face an added 25 % tariff on all of its exports to the United States.
On 12 Jan 2026 Brussels issued guidance letting Chinese EV makers substitute up-to-35.3 % duties with “price-undertaking” floor prices agreed after 15 months of talks with Beijing.
On 14 Jan 2026, Prime Minister Mark Carney became the first Canadian leader in eight years to arrive in Beijing, kicking off a four-day summit aimed at swapping Canada’s 100 % electric-vehicle tariff for Chinese cuts on canola and other farm duties.
After President Trump warned on 12 Jan 2026 that any nation trading with Iran would face a 25 % tariff on its commerce with the United States, Beijing on 13 Jan publicly vowed to defend its economic interests and forego compliance.
EU governments gave the long-stalled Mercosur free-trade deal the green light on 9 Jan 2026, scheduling its formal signing for 17 Jan 2026 in Asunción after more than 25 years of negotiations.
On 12 Jan 2026 Brussels issued guidance letting Chinese EV makers escape the up-to-35.3 % counter-vailing duty if they pledge, and stick to, EU-approved minimum import prices for each vehicle variant.
On 9 Jan 2026 the Justice Department served Jerome Powell with grand-jury subpoenas, threatening indictment over his June 2025 Senate remarks on a $2.5 billion Fed headquarters renovation, a first-ever criminal probe of a sitting Fed chair that escalates White House pressure for faster rate cuts.
On 7 Jan 2026, three days after U.S. forces removed Nicolás Maduro, President Trump ordered Venezuela’s interim government to ship 30–50 million barrels of crude to U.S. ports under White House control.
On 12 Jan 2026, bullion crossed the $4,600-per-ounce threshold for the first time and silver set a fresh record as investors reacted to a U.S. Justice Department move to criminally probe Fed Chair Jerome Powell and deadly protests in Iran.
On 9 January 2026 EU ambassadors approved the long-stalled EU-Mercosur free-trade agreement by qualified majority, overruling a French-led bloc of opponents.
On 7 Jan 2026, four days after U.S. forces seized Nicolás Maduro, President Trump announced interim Venezuelan authorities will ship 30–50 million barrels of crude to the United States under his direct control for sale.
On 10 Jan 2026 President Trump signed an executive order ring-fencing Venezuelan oil proceeds in U.S. custody one day after oil-company chiefs demanded legal and financial guarantees to justify fresh investment in the post-Maduro sector.
Between 6–7 January 2026, Ursula von der Leyen pledged to unlock €45 billion of the 2028-34 farm budget to placate EU agriculture ministers and secure Italy’s decisive vote at the 9 January qualified-majority ballot on the 25-year-old EU-Mercosur trade pact.
Days after U.S. forces captured Nicolás Maduro, President Trump announced that Venezuela’s interim government will hand over up to 50 million barrels of oil to the U.S. under his direct control.
On 9 Jan 2026 the two FTSE-100 miners confirmed preliminary, all-share talks that could see Rio Tinto buy some or all of Glencore, giving Rio a 5 Feb deadline and immediately sending Glencore stock up nearly 9% while Rio fell about 3%.
Within 48 hours of Nicolás Maduro’s 4 Jan 2026 capture, Energy Secretary Chris Wright scheduled 5-7 Jan meetings with Chevron, ConocoPhillips and others in Miami to hash out a U.S.–subsidised plan to pour roughly $100 billion into restarting Venezuela’s shattered oil sector.
On 9 Jan 2026 the justices may issue an expedited decision on whether President Trump’s April 2025 10–50 % blanket import tariffs, enacted under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, were an unconstitutional overreach of executive authority.
Brussels secured Italy’s backing on 5 Jan 2026 by dangling extra farm funding, giving the EU the qualified-majority votes it lacked ahead of a 9 Jan ambassadors’ ballot and a planned 12 Jan signing of the 780-million-person trade deal.
After receiving a European Commission pledge of early access to €45 billion in farm funds, Rome switched from blocking to backing the EU-Mercosur trade agreement ahead of a decisive Council vote this Friday.
On 7 Jan 2026, President Trump declared he is initiating an outright ban on large institutional investors purchasing additional single-family houses and urged Congress to codify the restriction.
Between 3-5 Jan 2026, Washington’s post-arrest “oil quarantine” froze Venezuelan tanker traffic, filled storage, and obliged state firm PDVSA to begin shutting wells across key joint ventures.
Within hours of a 3 Jan 2026 U.S. raid that captured Nicolás Maduro, President Trump declared that American oil giants must move back into Venezuela and finance a full rebuild of its crumbling petroleum sector while the U.S. keeps its oil embargo in place.
On 6 Jan 2026 Beijing abruptly prohibited all dual-use goods headed to Japanese military end-users, tightening export licensing with immediate effect and openly linking the move to Tokyo’s November pledge to defend Taiwan.
On 6–7 Jan 2026, Elon Musk’s xAI closed an upsized $20 billion Series E whose novelty is a $12.5 billion special-purpose vehicle that buys Nvidia GPUs and rents them back to xAI, shifting risk from the start-up’s balance sheet to the chips themselves.
In a sub-ten-minute video meeting on 4 Jan 2026, the eight-member OPEC+ core reconfirmed its November pledge to keep crude production flat through March despite a 2025 price slide and fresh geopolitical crises.
On 5 Jan 2026 President Trump publicly warned he could push U.S. tariffs on Indian goods beyond the already-doubled 50 % level unless New Delhi further slashes its purchases of Russian oil, tying energy compliance to a still-unsettled bilateral trade deal.
On 6 Jan 2026 spot gold regained 0.4–0.5 % to roughly $4,470 /oz, its strongest since year-end, as markets digested dovish Fed comments and the weekend U.S. seizure of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.
On 4 Jan 2026 the eight-member OPEC+ core ratified—within minutes—a decision to keep production caps unchanged through 31 Mar 2026, shelving any further post-2023 supply restarts despite an 18 % price slide in 2025.
In a 3–4 Jan 2026 operation, U.S. troops captured President Nicolás Maduro and Donald Trump proclaimed Washington would “run” Venezuela while American oil majors pour billions into restoring its crippled crude industry.
Starting 1 Jan 2026, Beijing began charging a 55 % duty on any Australian beef that exceeds a newly set 205,000-tonne annual quota, abruptly curbing access to its second-largest export market.
On 2–3 Jan 2026, Iran’s state arms exporter Mindex publicly added cryptocurrency as an official settlement option for foreign weapons buyers, signalling an overt bid to bypass dollar-based banking sanctions.
Effective 1 Jan 2026 Beijing ended a 30-year tax exemption on condoms and birth-control drugs, making them 13 % costlier while expanding childcare tax breaks, in a bid to arrest China’s three-year population decline.
New 2025 registration data show Norway’s new-car market is now 95.9 % battery-electric, effectively ending mainstream petrol/diesel sales nine years before the EU’s postponed 2035 target.
For the first time, Tesla slipped to #2 after its 2025 deliveries fell nearly 9%, allowing China’s BYD—whose own volumes jumped—to become the world’s top battery-electric vehicle seller.
Effective 1 Jan 2026, Beijing imposed a three-year 55 % duty on any beef shipped above new country quotas totaling 2.7 Mt, abruptly curbing the world’s largest import market.
Effective 1 Jan 2026, Warren Buffett, 95, relinquished Berkshire Hathaway’s chief-executive post to long-time deputy Greg Abel while retaining the chairman’s seat.
Beijing will levy an extra 55 % duty on any beef shipments arriving after 1 Jan 2026 that push a new global quota of 2.7 million t over the limit, a three-year measure aimed at shielding China’s struggling cattle sector.
On 8 December 2025 the Trump administration reversed Biden-era controls and okayed Nvidia’s H200 GPU exports to “approved” Chinese buyers, unleashing more than two million Chinese orders and forcing Nvidia to ask TSMC to boost production starting Q2 2026.
BYD sold about 2.26 million battery-electric cars in 2025, overtaking Tesla’s estimated 1.65 million and ending the U.S. firm’s run as annual EV volume leader.
New Year’s-Eve government data (31 Dec 2025) put India’s nominal GDP at $4.18 trillion, nudging it above Japan and re-ordering the global GDP table for the first time since 2010.
At midnight on 1 January 2026, Bulgaria will scrap the lev and begin using the euro after clearing EU convergence tests, despite public opinion split almost 50-50.
Starting 1 Jan 2026, Beijing will levy an extra 55 % duty on any beef shipments that exceed newly assigned country quotas, overriding parts of existing FTAs and lasting until 31 Dec 2028.
Between 29-30 Dec 2025, spot silver rocketed to a record $84/oz then crashed 14% within hours after CME’s surprise margin increase and a bank liquidation, before clawing back to the mid-$70s.
Meta closed a fast-tracked purchase of AI-agent maker Manus for just over $2 billion on 30 Dec 2025, banking on the startup’s existing subscription revenue to justify its massive AI spend.
Between Dec 26-28 2025, spot silver vaulted to an unprecedented US$79 an ounce while CME Group abruptly raised initial margin on March 2026 contracts to US$25,000 and cut position limits, trying to cool the most explosive precious-metals rally since 1979.
On Christmas Eve 2025, Elon Musk publicly replaced the word “sustainable” in Tesla’s mission and, within days, showcased driver-out robotaxi rides in Austin—signalling a pivot from climate-driven EV leadership toward an AI-powered automation future.
Beijing has authorised commercial banks to start paying demand-deposit interest on verified e-CNY wallets on 1 January 2026, upgrading the CBDC from a cash-like token to an insured, bank-book deposit.
On 24 Dec 2025 Nvidia wired the first $13 billion of a $20 billion non-exclusive licensing and staff-migration agreement with Groq, pulling in 90 % of the startup’s engineers to extend its AI dominance from training GPUs to high-speed inference.
In the same holiday week, Tesla ran fully driver-less test rides in Austin and rewrote its mission statement, yet data showed 2025 deliveries slipping to ≈1.65 M—enough for rival BYD’s 2.07 M to claim the global EV lead.
Sofia confirmed the lev will cease to be legal tender at midnight 31 Dec 2025, formally ushering Bulgaria into the euro area and giving it a seat on the ECB Governing Council.
On 27 Dec 2025, Chile’s state miner Codelco and private producer SQM legally incorporated NovaAndino Lithium SpA, merging their Salar de Atacama assets and granting the state a controlling stake in all Chilean brine output there through 2060.
On 26-28 Dec 2025 silver vaulted to a record US$79.7 an ounce, triggering a $25,000 initial-margin hike on CME futures and coinciding with Beijing’s January 2026 export-license mandate, together redefining the market’s supply and trading landscape.
The Bank of Lithuania confirmed that every crypto firm without an EU-MiCA license must halt services or leave the market when the transition window closes on 31 Dec 2025, turning unlicensed activity into a criminal offense from 1 Jan 2026.
On 26 Dec 2025, Blue Origin named recently resigned United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno as president of its freshly created National Security Group, just four days after he quit ULA.
On 26 Dec 2025 Beijing invoked its Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law to freeze assets and bar all Chinese transactions with 20 U.S. defense firms and 10 executives in direct response to Washington’s record US$11.1 b weapons package approved for Taipei a week earlier.
On 26 Dec 2025, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s cabinet approved a record ¥9+ trillion ($58 bn) defense allocation for FY-2026, accelerating Japan’s plan to double military spending to 2 % of GDP by March 2026 instead of 2028.
Between 26-27 December 2025, spot silver pierced the $79 an ounce mark for the first time, capping a year-to-date surge of more than 150% and triggering visible strain in London’s bullion vaults.
On 24 Dec 2025, a thin-holiday trading session saw gold smash through $4,500/oz for the first time while silver, platinum and copper simultaneously logged all-time highs, marking the sharpest single-day escalation in this year’s 70-160 % metals rally.
On 24-25 Dec 2025, Nvidia signed a non-exclusive agreement that transfers Groq’s inference-chip IP and senior leadership to Nvidia for roughly $20 billion cash, while leaving GroqCloud as a stand-alone unit.
Washington concluded its year-long Section 301 probe and kept tariffs on Chinese mature-node chip imports at 0 % for now, scheduling an unspecified hike to take effect on 23 June 2027—an 18-month deferral tied to the Trump-Xi trade truce.
On 22 Dec 2025 spot gold punched through US$4,400 an ounce for the first time, capping a 67 % year-to-date surge driven by looming 2026 Fed rate cuts and escalating U.S. sanctions on Venezuelan oil.
Washington concluded its Section 301 probe and legally authorized tariffs on Chinese mature-node chips but kept the duty at 0 % until June 23 2027, buying 18 months for negotiations before any rate is set.
DHS issued a final rule on 24 Dec 2025 that replaces the random H-1B lottery with a wage-weighted draw starting 27 Feb 2026, hours after a federal judge upheld President Trump’s separate $100,000 surcharge on each new H-1B petition.
On 22 December 2025, Niigata’s legislature backed Governor Hideyo Hanazumi, removing the last local veto on re-activating TEPCO’s 8.2 GW Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant idled since Fukushima.
On 20 Dec 2025, U.S. Coast Guard commandos—backed by Navy helicopters—boarded and took control of a second vessel in international waters off Venezuela, the first enforcement action since President Trump’s 16 Dec decree imposing a “total and complete blockade” on all sanctioned oil tankers to and from Venezuela.
On 23 December 2025, spot silver pierced the $70 per-ounce mark for the first time ever, propelled by supply squeezes, geopolitical shocks, and bets on further U.S. rate cuts.
Between 19–20 Dec 2025 Washington moved an aircraft-carrier strike group and thousands of troops into the Caribbean and announced a "total blockade" on sanctioned Venezuelan oil tankers, while President Trump said he "doesn’t rule out" war and Secretary of State Marco Rubio vowed to forcibly change Caracas’s status quo.
On 22 Dec 2025 a confidence vote in Governor Hideyo Hanazumi removed the last local-consent barrier, allowing TEPCO to fire up Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Unit 6—idle since 2011—from 20 Jan 2026.
On 22 Dec 2025 the Interior Department ordered an immediate construction pause on five nearly-finished Atlantic offshore wind farms—together ~6 GW—invoking classified radar-interference threats.
On 22 Dec 2025, Niigata’s 53-seat prefectural assembly endorsed Governor Hideyo Hanazumi’s pro-restart stance, giving Tokyo Electric Power Co. final local consent to bring the first reactor at the 7-unit Kashiwazaki-Kariwa complex back online after 14 years offline.
On 21 Dec 2025 the U.S. Coast Guard moved to seize a third ‘dark-fleet’ tanker near Venezuela just 24 hours after boarding the Centuries and 11 days after capturing the Skipper, signalling the start of President Trump’s announced oil-tanker “blockade.”
On 22 Dec 2025, Prime Ministers Modi and Luxon declared FTA negotiations finished after just nine months, clearing the way for signing in early 2026 and granting Indian goods zero-duty entry to New Zealand while phasing out duties on nearly all New Zealand exports.
At dawn on 20 Dec 2025, American helicopters boarded and took control of the tanker Centuries in international waters near Venezuela—the second seizure since President Trump announced a total blockade of sanctioned Venezuelan oil on 10 December.
In a 19-20 Dec 2025 podcast blitz, Sam Altman revealed OpenAI has already entered emergency “code red” mode several times this year—halting side projects for 6-8-week sprints to harden ChatGPT after Google’s Gemini 3 and other rivals—and expects to repeat the drill one to two times every year.
On 18 Dec 2025, Paris and Rome formally withheld consent at the Brussels summit, stripping Ursula von der Leyen of the qualified majority she needed to sign the 780-million-consumer EU-Mercosur free-trade agreement in Brazil two days later.
The Bank of Japan raised its overnight call rate by 25 bp to 0.75 % on 19 Dec 2025, its first move since January and highest setting since 1995, signalling willingness to tighten further as wage-led inflation embeds.
On 19 Dec 2025, the White House secured voluntary deals with nine additional pharmaceutical companies to peg U.S. Medicaid and launch prices to the lowest charged in any rich nation, expanding Trump’s MFN drug-pricing program.
On 16-17 Dec 2025, tractor blockades and a last-minute Italian swing behind France stripped the Council of the qualified-majority needed, pushing the Mercosur trade vote—and von der Leyen’s 20 Dec signing trip—into 2026.
On 18 Dec 2025 Beijing flipped the switch on Hainan’s full “first-line open, second-line controlled” customs system, instantly expanding zero-tariff coverage from 1,900 to 6,637 items across the island-wide free-trade port.
On 19 Dec 2025 ByteDance signed binding agreements to place 50 % of TikTok’s U.S. business into a new joint venture with Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX, slated to launch 22 Jan 2026—one day before President Trump’s latest enforcement deadline.
On 18 Dec 2025 in Muscat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Sultan Haitham bin Tarik concluded a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement that wipes tariffs on 98.08 % of Omani lines for Indian exports and liberalises labour mobility, while Modi was simultaneously decorated with the Order of Oman during the visit marking 70 years of bilateral ties.
On 18 Dec 2025, Beijing transitioned the entire 30,000-km² island of Hainan into a special customs supervision zone, slashing tariffs and streamlining controls to plug the Free Trade Port into both global supply chains and China’s domestic market.
Amazon entered fluid negotiations to inject over $10 billion into OpenAI in exchange for the startup shifting part of its training workload onto AWS’s in-house Trainium chips, marking the first mega financing round since OpenAI ended Microsoft’s cloud exclusivity in October 2025.
On 16 Dec 2025 Washington publicly warned it will trigger Section 301 remedies—tariffs or service restrictions—against nine named EU firms unless Brussels relaxes its Digital Markets/Services enforcement against U.S. giants.
On 16 Dec 2025 the European Commission replaced its planned full ban on new combustion cars with a requirement that 90 % of fleetwide CO₂ emissions be eliminated by 2035, reopening the door for hybrids and limited petrol/diesel sales.
On 16 Dec 2025 the European Parliament approved a tougher safeguard package—cutting the farm-import ‘alarm bell’ to a 5 % surge and adding reciprocity rules—sending the Mercosur deal into emergency talks with national governments just four days before Ursula von der Leyen hopes to sign it in Brazil.
After EU ambassadors resolved Belgium’s burden-sharing demands on Dec 16, the bloc moved a step closer to channeling part of the €210 billion in immobilised Russian central-bank assets to Kyiv, with a final go/no-go decision slated for the Dec 18 European Council summit.
On 14-15 Dec 2025 Paris formally asked EU leaders to postpone the pre-Christmas Council vote needed for Ursula von der Leyen to sign the Mercosur free-trade agreement on 20 Dec, throwing a 25-year negotiation into last-minute jeopardy.
On 16 Dec 2025 Ford announced a $19.5 billion impairment and cancelled multiple battery-electric programs—including the F-150 Lightning pickup—in order to redirect capital to hybrids, extended-range EVs and smaller affordable BEVs.
On 15 Dec 2025 BTC slid from ~$90K to $85K as option-selling ‘OG’ whales forced market-maker hedging while looming Bank of Japan tightening yanked liquidity and triggered a cascade of $200 M long liquidations.
On 14-15 Dec 2025 Paris formally asked the EU Council to move the decisive qualified-majority vote on the 20-year-old Mercosur agreement past the 20 Dec signing deadline, citing unfinished farm safeguards.
On 10 Dec 2025, U.S. Coast Guard commandos fast-roped onto the Guyana-flagged Skipper and diverted its 1.9 m-barrel Venezuelan crude cargo to Texas, marking Washington’s first outright confiscation of Venezuelan oil under Trump’s expanded sanctions regime.
On 14 Dec 2025, Roomba-maker iRobot filed a pre-packaged Chapter 11 plan in Delaware that hands full ownership to its Chinese contract manufacturer Picea Robotics, erasing public shareholders while cancelling roughly $264 million in debt.
On 10-11 Dec 2025, SpaceX discreetly moved 1,021 BTC (~$95 m) between Coinbase Prime wallets while Bloomberg revealed the company is lining up a mid-2026 IPO to raise $30 billion+ at a ~$1.5 trillion valuation.
Between 10–13 Dec 2025 Washington boarded and diverted a Venezuelan crude tanker, froze assets of six shippers and Maduro’s in-laws, and rushed additional warships and F-35s into the Caribbean, turning a sanctions campaign into an overt military standoff.
On 11 Dec 2025 Mexico finalised a law that will, from 1 Jan 2026, slap steep duties on goods from countries lacking an FTA with Mexico, immediately drawing threats of retaliatory action from New Delhi and a protest from Beijing.
EU finance ministers have abolished the tax-free “de-minimis” rule and will charge a flat €3 on every parcel under €150 entering the bloc from 1 July 2026 until a fuller customs overhaul arrives.
On 12 Dec 2025 the 9th Circuit upheld Judge Gonzalez Rogers’ contempt finding against Apple but struck her blanket ban on external-payment commissions, ordering the district court to set a “reasonable” fee instead.
On 11 December 2025 Mexico’s Congress approved a law raising duties to as high as 50 % on 1,463 product lines from countries without a free-trade pact, to take effect 1 January 2026.
On 11 Dec 2025 the FOMC trimmed its policy range by 25 bp for a third straight meeting but, in an unusually fractious 9-3 vote, signalled no further moves until fresh data arrive and pencilled in only one cut for 2026.
Within a day of Mexico’s Senate green-lighting steep new duties on 1,400+ goods from countries without trade pacts, Beijing publicly warned the move was protectionist and demanded a rollback.
On 8 Dec 2025 Paramount Skydance bypassed Warner Bros. Discovery’s board and offered shareholders $30 per share in cash—valuing WBD at $108.4 billion—to derail the $72 billion cash-and-stock sale the board had already accepted from Netflix three days earlier.
On 10 Dec 2025, Microsoft unveiled a four-year plan starting 2026 that will pour $17.5 billion into Indian hyperscale data centers and AI skilling, the centerpiece of a wider $23 billion global AI capital push announced the same day.
At the 10 Dec 2025 Smbhav Summit in New Delhi, Amazon promised a further $35 billion for Indian AI, cloud and logistics projects, raising its end-of-decade investment target in the country from $40 billion already spent to $75 billion.
For the first time, SpaceX has opened talks with banks for a June–July 2026 stock debut that would raise at least $25 billion and value the company north of $1 trillion.
On 9 Dec 2025, Satya Nadella pledged a four-year US$17.5 billion outlay to build new hyperscale data centres, sovereign clouds, and AI-skills programs in India—Microsoft’s largest single investment in Asia—adding to the US$3 billion already underway.
On 10 Dec 2025, Amazon unexpectedly increased its India pledge by another $35 billion through 2030 to fund AI, cloud, and quick-commerce logistics, more than doubling the future capital it had publicly earmarked just five months earlier.
At a 5 Dec 2025 COREPER II meeting, Budapest alone blocked unanimous consent for issuing EU-backed eurobonds, eliminating the bloc’s fallback and forcing leaders to decide by 18 Dec whether to finance a €90-165 billion loan to Kyiv solely via profits and guarantees tied to Russia’s €200 billion in frozen reserves.
On 9 Dec 2025 India’s aviation regulator ordered IndiGo to slash its approved winter schedule and face a formal probe after the carrier’s failure to cope with new pilot-fatigue rules triggered days of 170-plus daily cancellations.
On 8 Dec 2025, President Trump authorized a $12 billion emergency payout financed by tariff revenue to offset farm income lost to his own renewed trade war, promising checks within twelve weeks.
On 9 Dec 2025, President Trump warned he will slap an extra 5 % duty on all Mexican imports unless Mexico releases 200,000 acre-feet of Rio Grande water owed under the 1944 treaty by 31 Dec, citing an 800 k-acre-feet delivery deficit hurting Texas farms.
On 5 Dec 2025, after unveiling legal texts to collateralise €210 bn in frozen Russian reserves, Ursula von der Leyen and Friedrich Merz held emergency Brussels talks with Belgian PM Bart De Wever, whose veto threatens the EU’s plan to raise a €90 bn loan for Ukraine’s 2026-27 budget.
A 5.9 % year-on-year jump in November 2025 exports pushed China’s cumulative trade surplus to a record $1.08 trillion, passing the symbolic $1 trillion mark even though sales to the U.S. collapsed.
On 7 Dec 2025 Bloomberg reported that Johny Srouji, Apple’s SVP of Hardware Technologies, told Tim Cook he may leave—capping six months in which at least six other top executives have quit or retired.
Leaks on 6–7 Dec 2025 said SpaceX is arranging a secondary share sale at >$400 a share that would peg its worth near $800 billion—twice July’s figure—while Elon Musk insists no new fundraising is underway.
As Bitcoin slipped back under $90,000 on 6-7 Dec 2025, economists led by Steve Hanke branded it “worth zero” while JPMorgan’s new model simultaneously pegged fair value near $170,000 within a year, exposing the widest mainstream valuation gap to date.
India’s aviation regulator served CEO Pieter Elbers a show-cause notice demanding answers within 24 hours after IndiGo’s network imploded under new crew-duty rules, grounding hundreds of flights for six straight days.
On 6 Dec 2025, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner agreed with Ukrainian negotiators to continue negotiations in Hallandale Beach for a third straight day, saying they had sketched a provisional U.S.-backed security framework for Ukraine contingent on Moscow’s buy-in.
On 5 December 2025 Budapest used its veto at an EU ambassadors’ meeting to block issuance of joint Eurobonds, eliminating the only unanimously-approved alternative to financing Kyiv with frozen Russian state reserves.
Facing a cascade of 500-plus cancellations in one day, India’s aviation regulator on 5 Dec 2025 issued IndiGo a one-time exemption from two key Flight Duty Time Limitation clauses until 10 Feb 2026 so the airline can keep flying while it hires more crew.
On 4 Dec 2025 the U.S. Transportation Department, at President Trump’s direction, issued a proposal to lower the 2031 fleet-wide fuel-economy goal from roughly 50 MPG to 34.5 MPG and to scrap emissions-credit trading after 2027, reversing Biden-era rules.
Between 30 Nov and 1 Dec 2025, Nicolás Maduro sent an emergency letter to all OPEC states asking them to resist U.S. “military force to seize oil” hours after President Trump warned airlines that Venezuelan airspace was “closed in its entirety” and reinforced a months-long naval build-up.
On 5 Dec 2025, IndiGo scrubbed more than 500 services in one day and asked India’s DGCA to relax new pilot-fatigue rules until 10 Feb 2026 after its crew-planning system failed to meet the tighter limits.
On 3 Dec 2025, BOTAS signed two 10-year contracts starting 2028 to import a combined 11 bcm of winter-season LNG from Germany’s SEFE and Italy’s Eni, crowning Turkey’s 2025 spree of 106 bcm in new long-term LNG commitments.
Airbus trimmed its 2025 delivery plan by 30 jets after discovering supplier-made fuselage panels on A320s were milled to the wrong thickness, forcing wide-ranging inspections.
On the eve of Vladimir Putin’s 4-5 Dec 2025 visit, New Delhi formally put next-generation Su-57 fighters and the S-500 air-defence system on the negotiating table, signalling a fresh upswing in Russian arms buys after several years of decline.
On 3 December 2025 the European Commission formally tabled legislation to collateralise a €140 billion zero-interest loan to Kyiv by confiscating all €210 billion of frozen Russian sovereign assets, immediately drawing veto threats from Belgium and a legal rebuff from the European Central Bank.
On 2 Dec 2025, President Trump said his shortlist for Jerome Powell’s successor is now “down to one” and that he will announce the nominee in early 2026, conspicuously singling out economic adviser Kevin Hassett during a televised Cabinet meeting.
On 28–29 Nov 2025 the European Union Aviation Safety Agency ordered operators to patch or replace flight-control computers before carrying passengers, temporarily grounding thousands of Airbus A320-series aircraft worldwide.
Before dawn on 29 Nov 2025, a naval drone blew out Single-Point Mooring 2 at the Caspian Pipeline Consortium’s Black Sea terminal, halting crude loadings that normally carry about 1 % of global oil supply.
On 30 Nov 2025, the eight-nation OPEC+ steering group formally locked production at December-2025 levels for Jan–Mar 2026 and commissioned DeGolyer & MacNaughton to verify each member’s maximum sustainable capacity for 2027 quota setting.
New SIPRI data show 2024 revenues for the world’s 100 largest defense firms rose 5.9 % year-on-year to an unprecedented $679 billion, with European suppliers driving most of the gain while Chinese companies registered a rare decline.
A Ukrainian naval drone disabled Single-Point Mooring 2 at the CPC Black Sea terminal on 29 Nov 2025, pausing exports and prompting Kazakhstan to issue a rare formal protest and begin rerouting its oil.
On 26 Nov 2025 Venezuela’s civil aviation agency revoked the licenses of six foreign carriers days after they halted flights in response to a U.S. FAA security alert, severing most of the country’s remaining long-haul links.
Detection of African swine fever in two wild boar outside Barcelona on 28 Nov 2025 ended Spain’s 31-year disease-free status, immediately blocking roughly one-third of its 400 export certificates and sparking import bans from major buyers.
On 28 Nov 2025 a cooling-system breakdown at CyrusOne’s Chicago data centre forced CME Group to halt its Globex platform for roughly 11 hours, resuming trade at 13:35 GMT.
On 27-28 Nov 2025, Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith signed a memorandum of understanding that scraps Ottawa’s planned oil-and-gas emissions cap and clean-power rules in exchange for jointly seeking a private proponent and Indigenous co-ownership for a one-million-barrel-per-day bitumen pipeline to British Columbia’s north coast.
After two wild boars near Barcelona tested positive for African swine fever on 27-28 Nov 2025, Spain froze exports to China and at least five importers—including the UK, China, Mexico, Taiwan and New Zealand—imposed immediate restrictions on Spanish pork.
On 27 Nov 2025, PM Narendra Modi inaugurated Skyroot Aerospace’s “Infinity Campus” in Hyderabad and formally dedicated Vikram-I—the first Indian privately built orbital-class rocket—signalling India’s hand-off of orbital launch capability to the startup sector.
On 26-27 Nov 2025 Caracas revoked the operating rights of Iberia, TAP, Avianca, LATAM, GOL and Turkish Airlines after the carriers ignored a 48-hour ultimatum to restore routes they had halted following a 21 Nov FAA security warning tied to a U.S. military build-up off Venezuela.
On 27 Nov 2025 Taiwanese prosecutors raided two homes of ex-TSMC vice-president Wei-Jen Lo after TSMC sued him for allegedly taking advanced-node secrets to his new employer Intel, which flatly denies any wrongdoing.
On 23 Nov 2025, G20 leaders formally endorsed a non-binding ‘Critical Minerals Framework’ that for the first time commits the bloc to help mineral-rich developing states capture more value beyond raw-ore exports.
On 24 Nov 2025, the two Prime Ministers formally reopened negotiations for a ‘high-ambition’ Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) that had been suspended since 2023, targeting a near-doubling of trade by 2030.
On 23 Nov 2025, during Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal’s first Israel visit in two decades, the two governments signed a Terms of Reference document that officially launches bilateral free-trade talks.
Effective 21 Nov 2025, the Modi government brought into force four consolidated labour codes that replace 29 separate statutes, creating one digital registration-and-compliance regime for wages, industrial relations, social security and workplace safety.
On 22 Nov 2025, after three hours of closing arguments, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema took the Google ad-tech case under advisement, demanding a timeline for a possible divestiture of the AdX exchange and promising a remedy decision in 2026.
Newly unsealed Nov 22-23, 2025 court documents in a U.S. school-district lawsuit show Meta killed a 2020 internal study proving a one-week break from Facebook/Instagram lowers users’ depression and anxiety, while executives simultaneously told Congress they lacked such data.
Published 20 Nov 2025 after a record 43-day data blackout, the Labor Department’s September figures show payrolls rose by 119,000—well above the 50,000 consensus—while unemployment simultaneously reached a four-year high of 4.4%.
On 21 Nov 2025, New Delhi activated the long-delayed four labour codes passed in 2019-20, scrapping 29 legacy statutes and immediately standardising an 8-hour workday, minimum wages and universal social-security coverage across the country.
On 21 Nov 2025, Foxconn agreed to co-engineer and domestically manufacture the next generations of OpenAI’s data-centre hardware, pledging up to $5 billion to scale U.S. production capacity from today’s pilot runs to mass output by 2026.
On 20 Nov 2025 Nvidia smashed Q3 estimates and, more surprisingly, guided next-quarter sales to roughly $65 billion—well above forecasts—sending markets higher and dampening talk of an imminent AI-hardware bust.
The first labor data since the record U.S. government shutdown revealed 119,000 jobs added in September but an uptick in unemployment to 4.4%, leaving the Federal Reserve with only this outdated report before its 9-10 Dec policy vote.
On 20 Nov 2025, Spain’s Commercial Court No. 15 ordered Meta to pay roughly €479–481 million in compensation to 87 Spanish news publishers for harvesting user data without valid consent between 2018-2023 to sell targeted ads.
On 19 Nov 2025, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg dismissed the FTC’s 2020 antitrust suit, ruling the agency failed to show Meta still wields monopoly power in social networking, so no divestiture is required.
Between 16–17 Nov 2025, China replied to Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s Nov 7 statement that Japan could fight over Taiwan by issuing a nationwide Japan-travel alert, sending Coast Guard ships to the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, and signalling readiness for sanctions and even armed retaliation.
Announced 18–19 Nov 2025, Anthropic secured up to $10 B from Nvidia and $5 B from Microsoft while committing to purchase $30 B of Azure and 1 GW of Nvidia-based capacity, formalising a circular three-party alliance.
On 18-19 Nov 2025, Microsoft and Nvidia pledged up to $15 billion in fresh equity to Anthropic in exchange for the startup’s binding commitment to spend $30 billion on Azure capacity powered by Nvidia’s next-gen Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin systems, nearly doubling Anthropic’s worth.
On 18 Nov 2025 Bitcoin slid under the USD 90,000 mark for the first time since April, capping a 30 % retreat from its late-October record and erasing the year’s gains while dragging the wider crypto market into a $1 trillion drawdown.
On 18 November 2025 a D.C. federal court dismissed the FTC’s five-year antitrust suit, ending the push to force Meta to divest Instagram and WhatsApp.
Belgium’s last-minute refusal to back a €140 billion loan collateralised by frozen Russian reserves forced the European Commission on 18 November 2025 to circulate an “options paper” giving leaders until the 18-19 December summit to pick alternative ways to fund Kyiv.
Athens and Kyiv signed a four-month emergency gas pact giving Ukraine its first guaranteed winter supply of U.S. LNG since Russia’s 2022 cutoff, rerouting fuel through Greece’s new Alexandroupolis hub.
With 83 % of votes counted on 16 Nov 2025, Jeannette Jara (26.7 %) and José Antonio Kast (24.1 %) finished first and second, triggering a mandatory run-off next month.
In the pre-dawn hours of 14 Nov 2025, a coordinated Ukrainian strike using swarming drones and new “Long Neptune” missiles crippled the Sheskharis terminal at Russia’s Novorossiysk port, forcing Transneft to halt crude loadings worth roughly 2 % of global supply.
On 17 Nov 2025 Greece’s DEPA and Ukraine’s Naftogaz finalised a pact to send American LNG through the Balkan “Vertical Corridor” to Ukraine from December to March, creating its first non-Russian winter gas route of the war.
On 15-17 Nov 2025 Belgium’s government and Euroclear’s CEO openly threatened to block or sue over the European Commission’s plan to leverage €193 billion in Russian central-bank assets parked in Brussels to finance a €183 billion, G-7-backed defense loan to Ukraine.
On 15 Nov 2025, Belgium and Brussels-based Euroclear signaled they may block or litigate an EU proposal to fund a €183 billion loan to Kyiv by pledging the interest on Russia’s immobilized assets held in Belgium.
On 14 November 2025, President Trump signed an executive order retroactively exempting more than 200 imported food items from the sweeping tariffs he introduced earlier this year, reversing a key pillar of his trade policy.
On 14 Nov 2025 Washington and Seoul issued a joint fact sheet that, for the first time, authorizes South Korea to build nuclear-powered attack submarines while tying the move to a $350 billion Korean investment package and a cut of U.S. tariffs to 15 percent.
On 13 Nov 2025 the Trump administration abruptly pivoted from its April “Liberation Day” duties, unveiling new trade frameworks and broader exemptions that scrap or cut tariffs on key grocery imports to blunt soaring food prices at home.
On 13 Nov 2025 EU finance ministers agreed to abolish, as early as 2026, the bloc’s €150 de-minimis customs exemption that let platforms like Shein and Temu ship goods into Europe duty-free.
On 13–14 Nov 2025, Washington and Seoul issued a joint fact sheet that, for the first time, formally authorises South Korea to build nuclear-powered attack submarines and pledges U.S. help in securing reactor fuel as part of a broader $350 bn investment-for-tariff accord.
On 13 Nov 2025 EU finance ministers reached political consensus to abolish the €150 customs-duty exemption on non-EU parcels from early 2026, two years ahead of the original 2028 schedule.
On 13 Nov 2025 Brussels formally invoked the Digital Markets Act to investigate whether Google’s “site-reputation abuse” policy pushes news pages with paid partner material so far down search results that traffic — and ad income — evaporate.
Alphabet publicly committed to spend €5.5 billion by 2029 to add a new Dietzenbach data centre, enlarge Hanau, and expand three German offices, marking its largest single-country outlay in Europe.
On 11 Nov 2025 Southwark Crown Court gave Zhimin Qian 11 years 8 months for laundering 61,000+ Bitcoin amassed from a vast Chinese pyramid scheme.
On 12 Nov 2025 the Philadelphia Mint struck the last circulating one-cent coin, triggering immediate rounding of cash prices by major chains as pennies start disappearing from tills.
On 10–11 Nov 2025, Southwark Crown Court opened a two-day hearing to decide the jail terms of Chinese fugitive Zhimin Qian and Malaysian partner Seng Hok Ling after both admitted laundering 61,000 Bitcoins seized by UK police.
On 11 Nov 2025 Google formally committed €5.5 billion to construct a new Dietzenbach data centre, enlarge its Hanau campus and expand German offices, anchoring the company’s biggest European investment yet.
On 10 Nov 2025 Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies moved from covert probe to open action, raiding 70 sites and publishing wiretaps that allegedly show a 10-15 % kickback cartel siphoning funds from state nuclear operator Energoatom.
After Ottawa invoked Labour Code Section 107 and the CIRB ordered flight attendants back by 2 p.m. ET Sunday with binding arbitration, CUPE refused, forcing Air Canada to postpone its planned Sunday flight restart to Monday evening and extend widespread cancellations.
On 18 Aug 2025, Justice Michael Lee imposed a A$90m civil penalty on Qantas for unlawfully outsourcing 1,820 ground roles in late 2020, concluding a five-year case and adding to the A$120m compensation agreed in 2024.
With Washington’s tariff pause expiring in early August (Aug 1) and reciprocal duties resuming on Aug 7, Australian polling now shows 42% of voters more worried about US trade barriers than China’s military build-up (37%), signaling a sharp shift from security to geoeconomic risk, while Asia’s trade hubs brace for sector-specific hikes.
On 15 Aug 2025 the Federal Reserve rescinded its 2023 supervisory letter and folded the special monitoring of banks’ crypto and fintech exposures back into its routine examination process.
On 15 Aug 2025 the U.S. Second Circuit temporarily froze Judge Loretta Preska’s 30 Jun order compelling Argentina to hand over its 51 % holding in YPF to satisfy a US$16.1 billion judgment, giving Buenos Aires time to pursue its appeal.
On 16-17 Aug 2025 Washington told New Delhi its delegation would skip the 25-29 Aug Bilateral Trade Agreement talks, effectively freezing negotiations until a new 50 % tariff regime on Indian goods is addressed.
On 13 Aug 2025 the Canadian Union of Public Employees gave Air Canada a 72-hour strike notice, leading the airline to start cancelling flights on 14 Aug and plan a full halt of mainline and Rouge operations at 01:00 EST on 16 Aug.
On 14-15 Aug 2025, Air Canada started cancelling flights—planning a full shutdown by 01:00 EST Saturday—after receiving a 72-hour strike notice from its 10,000 flight attendants and issuing its own lock-out.
Between 12–13 Aug 2025, a fresh wave of corporate purchases—led by Metaplanet’s 518 BTC add—pushed total public-company holdings past 791 k BTC and helped Norway’s $1.9 T wealth fund lift its indirect stake 192 % year-on-year.
On 11 Aug 2025, after a week-long emergency review, Norges Bank Investment Management liquidated all off-benchmark stakes in 11 Israeli companies and cancelled every external asset-management contract in Israel, citing the escalating Gaza humanitarian crisis.
On 11 August 2025, Norges Bank Investment Management abruptly sold its stakes in 11 Israeli companies and canceled every external asset-management contract in Israel after a week-long emergency review triggered by Gaza-war scrutiny.
With barely hours to spare on 11 Aug 2025, President Trump signed an executive order granting a fresh 90-day reprieve that keeps U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports at 30 % and Chinese tariffs at 10 %, forestalling the scheduled return to triple-digit rates.
A sudden bloom on 10–11 Aug 2025 clogged cooling-water filters at Gravelines, forcing automatic shutdown of four reactors and leaving all six units offline until later in the week.
