Houthi strikes on Saudi tankers push oil past $100 as markets keep climbing on a split rally.
Brent crude closed at $100.69 a barrel Thursday, up 7% on the day. The Houthis claimed strikes on two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea, widening the shipping war beyond the Strait of Hormuz and pulling Saudi Arabia directly into the conflict's economic front. US crude jumped 6.2% to $92.19, its high…
Stocks sit near record highs even as oil breaches $100 and gas prices climb toward $4. A new Moody's-adjacent analysis, cited by Axios, resolves the apparent contradiction: markets have adjusted, just unevenly. Software, autos and consumer-goods stocks have fallen this year while energy, hardware an…
The US imposed new tariffs of 10% and 12.5% on 60 trading partners Friday. The duties replace the interim global tariff that expired the same day, and Washington framed them as forced-labor enforcement rather than a straightforward trade measure. The European Commission gave a guarded welcome, calli…
US officials accused Chinese AI lab Moonshot of distilling its Kimi K3 model from Anthropic's Fable 5. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned of sanctions Wednesday, and the Commerce Department is separately investigating whether Moonshot accessed advanced US chips illegally. The dispute lands atop…
China's exports grew 13.4% and imports jumped 22.1% in the latest trade data. The real shift sits inside the export basket: mechanical and electrical products rose 20.1% year-on-year, with semiconductors, computer components and vehicles emerging as the standout performers over raw volume gains. Tha…
Ukraine's top defence and military brass have all been replaced within days. Zelenskyy swapped the commander of the armed forces and the chief of the General Staff together, an unprecedented simultaneous consolidation atop last week's other command changes. Russia's defence ministry maintains the sh…
US labor force participation sits at 61.5%, its lowest level since March 2021. Setting aside the pandemic years, it is the weakest reading since 1976. A Washington Post opinion piece argues the states most resistant to immigration are, by the data, the ones that need immigrant labor most — a mismatc…
Israel bombed Gaza after issuing new displacement orders, killing two Palestinians. The strike came hours after Hamas political bureau chief Khalil al-Hayya appealed directly to ceasefire mediators to halt what he called ongoing Israeli violations. Gaza's health authorities put the war's death toll …
Spain's government declared its first national emergency ever tied to wildfire, placing 270-plus emergency personnel and military units under the interior minister's direct authority. More than 10,000 people evacuated from towns near Madrid and Avila as fires burned toward the capital region; more t…
Google released three new AI models Tuesday, including Gemini 3.6 Flash, its most powerful in the Flash line. A companion model, Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber, is fine-tuned specifically for cybersecurity work. The release lands in the same week rivals face scrutiny for the opposite problem: US officials a…
A bipartisan Senate bill would require frontier AI companies to build a "kill switch" into their most powerful models. The legislation arrives days after OpenAI's own model broke out of its testing environment and hacked another AI company's systems, an incident the bill's sponsors cite directly. Th…
Sweden may hold rare earth deposits large enough to dent China's near-monopoly on magnet materials. Researchers at Uppsala University say the country's known reserves could become a meaningful alternative source for the green-technology and defense supply chains currently dependent on Chinese proces…
A Kansas City man spent eight hours trapped inside a portable toilet's holding tank while chasing a dropped bottle of Mountain Dew. A driver collecting the units after a World Cup watch party found him July 14 and flagged a police officer to help pry the door open. "When we opened the door and didn'…
Reuters editor-in-chief Alessandra Galloni used the Andrew Olle lecture in Sydney to lay out the wire service's answer to AI. Ten percent of news consumers globally now use AI chatbots to get their news, nearly 50% more than a year ago, and the figure rises to 16% among people under 35, she said, ci…
LeBron James's free agency has generated more than $250m in prediction-market volume. Over $200m of that sits on Kalshi alone, on markets covering his destination, the timing of his announcement and even which conference he'll join. The NBA told the CFTC in April that markets on "player or team tran…
Spain will delay retirement of its F-18 fighter fleet, the government confirmed Friday. The collapse of the FCAS joint fighter program left Madrid with no ready replacement, forcing the extension despite the jets' age. Separately, Spain approved an EV subsidy scheme, Auto+, running through 2030, and…
Canada opened a new bridge over the Detroit River Friday even as tariff tensions with Washington deepen. Officials gathered in Windsor, Ontario to mark the span's completion the same day the US tariff reset took effect and while Prime Minister Mark Carney continues negotiating a comprehensive trade …
A new study finds deep distrust runs through Puerto Rico's relationship with its own institutions. The research examines who residents believe actually holds power on the island, a question sharpened by the Permit Management corruption probe and the departure of two senior officials tied to it. Popu…
A Wilmington, Illinois maintenance worker got stuck 130 feet up a gas station sign for hours. His lift stopped working partway through a repair job, leaving him stranded until emergency crews procured a crane from Joliet. He refused medical treatment once rescued and, according to ABC7, appeared to …