Russia’s oil tax revenue in March dropped by nearly half compared to a year earlier, highlighting the Kremlin’s financial strain just before the Middle East war delivered an unexpected boost to Moscow’s earnings. Russian producers paid 494.9 billion rubles ($6.18 billion) in oil taxes last month, down 48% year on year, according to Bloomberg calculations based on Finance Ministry data released Fri...
Russia’s oil tax revenue in March dropped by nearly half compared to a year earlier, highlighting the Kremlin’s financial strain just before the Middle East war delivered an unexpected boost to Moscow’s earnings. Russian producers paid 494.9 billion rubles ($6.18 billion) in oil taxes last month, down 48% year on year, according to Bloomberg calculations based on Finance Ministry data released Friday. Combined oil and gas revenues in the federal budget fell nearly 43% from a year earlier to 617 billion rubles. The decline reflects how March taxes were calculated using February prices for Urals, Russia’s main export blend. At the time, Urals averaged below $45 per barrel, according to government data, well under the $59 per barrel assumed in the country’s 2026 budget. Prices were pressured as the remaining buyers of Russian oil demanded steep discounts amid ongoing energy sanctions. A stronger ruble also contributed to the plunge. Falling tax revenues from the oil and gas sector have widened Russia’s budget deficit, as economic growth stalls and spending on the war in Ukraine continues to drain resources. As soon as next month, however, Russia’s budget is set for a significant spike in oil and gas revenues, after Urals prices surged in March amid the Middle East conflict. By the end of the month, Urals crude delivered to India, one of Russia’s key buyers, was trading above $120 per barrel, at a premium to the Brent benchmark. The war in Iran has all but shut the Strait of Hormuz, a key route for energy exports from Gulf nations. Russian oil doesn’t rely on this passage, making it more attractive to buyers in Asia. At the same time, in an effort to contain rising oil prices, the US has allowed a broad group of countries, including India, to purchase large volumes of Russian crude already at sea. The waiver has further boosted Asian demand for Russian barrels. Thanks to the sharp turnaround in oil prices, Moscow no longer plans any substantial cuts to budget spending a...
Barry speaks with Songyee Yoon, founder and managing partner of Principal Venture Partners. They discuss her venture firm's focus on AI-native companies, and understanding technological innovation. They also discuss the tech investment landscape and how she determines which companies are native to AI and which are chasing the boom. (Source: Bloomberg)
Barry speaks with Songyee Yoon, founder and managing partner of Principal Venture Partners. They discuss her venture firm's focus on AI-native companies, and understanding technological innovation. They also discuss the tech investment landscape and how she determines which companies are native to AI and which are chasing the boom. (Source: Bloomberg)
Bonjour et Bienvenue to the Paris Edition. I’m Bloomberg Opinion columnist Lionel Laurent . If you haven’t yet, subscribe now to the Paris Edition newsletter . Terror Worries This week will see the start of a few fresh ingredients in the Paris Edition, from reading recommendations to snippets that were either eye-grabbing or eye-rolling. But first… The Iran War is heading into its sixth week and s...
Bonjour et Bienvenue to the Paris Edition. I’m Bloomberg Opinion columnist Lionel Laurent . If you haven’t yet, subscribe now to the Paris Edition newsletter . Terror Worries This week will see the start of a few fresh ingredients in the Paris Edition, from reading recommendations to snippets that were either eye-grabbing or eye-rolling. But first… The Iran War is heading into its sixth week and second-round effects are starting to be felt in France. Petrol prices at the pump have risen by 15%, according to Unicredit, as the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz chokes off around one-fifth of global seaborne oil flows. French inflation jumped in March, a sign of things to come if the conflict escalates. Meanwhile Emmanuel Macron has understandably not leapt at Donald Trump’s offer to “take the oil” by force. Apart from the unpopularity of this war with European voters and the boost it’s given Russia, not even the US Fifth Fleet seems yet willing to test Tehran’s asymmetric muscle in a critical waterway with historical echoes of the 1956 Suez Crisis. Closer to home, fresh security risks are percolating just a stone’s throw from the Elysee Palace. Four people, including three teenagers, have been charged with terrorism-related offenses after police thwarted an attempted bombing near the Bank of America Corp. office in Paris. Security is being tightened at other US banks, which allowed work-from-home as a result. Financiers are broadly sanguine for the time being, pointing out the device used was small and nobody was harmed. But reports say the would-be bombers were recruited on Snapchat for the princely sum of somewhere between €500 and €1,000. That’s a low barrier to entry for fear and havoc that is also reminiscent of Russian hybrid warfare. The bigger significance will incite France and other European leaders to get more involved in a push for de-escalation and diplomatic restraint. Macron has expressed confidence there will be “useful” initiatives to stabilize...
Welcome to Tech In Depth, our daily newsletter about the business of tech from Bloomberg’s journalists around the world. Today, Julia Love reports on the situation facing Google employees concerned about their company’s work with the US military. Tech Across the Globe More China curbs : US lawmakers unveiled a proposal to crack down on the export of chipmaking tools to China, especially from overs...
Welcome to Tech In Depth, our daily newsletter about the business of tech from Bloomberg’s journalists around the world. Today, Julia Love reports on the situation facing Google employees concerned about their company’s work with the US military. Tech Across the Globe More China curbs : US lawmakers unveiled a proposal to crack down on the export of chipmaking tools to China, especially from overseas allies, in an effort to further restrict China from gaining the most advanced technology. More job cuts : Workforce reductions at tech companies jumped 24% in March from a year earlier, leading US industries in announcing cutbacks. More Alibaba AI : The company released its third proprietary artificial intelligence model in as many days, reinforcing efforts to ramp up profit from its flagship AI services. More Microsoft money : The Copilot operator is committing $10 billion to Japan over four years as a major pillar of its expansion in AI-hungry Asia. Revalued SpaceX has boosted its target IPO valuation to more than $2 trillion — up from $1.75 trillion — in what would be the biggest-ever public market debut. Elon Musk’s rocket company, which includes his xAI lab and X social media service, is floating that figure to prospective investors as it seeks to raise as much as $75 billion by selling its stock to the public. Changing times For some Googlers, watching Anthropic’s standoff with the Pentagon over AI weaponry is bittersweet: They’re happy to see someone taking a stand, but wish their company was the one waging the fight. Employees of Alphabet’s Google were early to sound the alarm about AI weapons. In 2018, they protested the company’s involvement in Project Maven, a Pentagon effort to develop artificial intelligence to analyze video feeds taken in America’s overseas drone wars. Google ultimately decided not to renew the contract. Much has changed since then. Last year, Google removed a passage from its artificial intelligence principles that pledged to avoid using ...
Goyle, Chert, Mire by Jean Sprackland; The House of Broken Things by Kim Moore; The Tree Is Missing by Shannon Kuta Kelly; Dog Star by Michael Symmons Roberts; Horses by Jake Skeets Goyle, Chert, Mire by Jean Sprackland (Jonathan Cape, £13) The 45 unrhymed sonnets in Sprackland’s sixth collection coalesce into three spellbinding interwoven sequences. Set in the Blackdown Hills, a remote stretch be...
Goyle, Chert, Mire by Jean Sprackland; The House of Broken Things by Kim Moore; The Tree Is Missing by Shannon Kuta Kelly; Dog Star by Michael Symmons Roberts; Horses by Jake Skeets Goyle, Chert, Mire by Jean Sprackland (Jonathan Cape, £13) The 45 unrhymed sonnets in Sprackland’s sixth collection coalesce into three spellbinding interwoven sequences. Set in the Blackdown Hills, a remote stretch between Somerset and Devon, the poems explore the friction between art and articulation, habitat and inhabitation. Here, the landscape is not a backdrop but a linguistic event: “a drop swells on the lip of a leaf and falls / like a word being said”. By removing the first person throughout, Sprackland makes us encounter the landscape intimately: it’s not mediated through a speaker’s interiority but in “mossy silence”, “the rumble of the combine harvester”, “the noise / of meltwater hurtling over stones”, or “the shattered pieces of yourself”. Overshadowed by an unnamed illness, the poems bear wounds but don’t broadcast suffering; this restraint fosters minute attention to “pilgrim gnats attending the water” and the mire’s “long translation from gley to peat”. Sprackland’s ability alternately to narrow and widen our focus – from a closeup on insect life to geological time – reveals how consciousness itself moves between scales. Unlike many nature poems that overanimate or sentimentalise, the book is alive to the limits of human agency: it knows “language itself is prone to collapse”. Yet in that collapse, we can find meaning; recognise the “spiky logic” of natural process, following it as “the sparrow enters / and follows” the “sprawling holly”. The unwavering sonnet form represents an act of courage, a disciplined response to illness and dissolution, creating order where language threatens to collapse. This is a profound, enduring collection. The House of Broken Things by Kim Moore (Corsair, £14.99) Moore’s new collection constructs an ambitious architecture for exploring inte...
Find out how bad your mental mush is How bad is your brain rot? Tally up your scores to see your results. None 3pts 1-3 2pts 4-6 1pts 6+ 0pts Never 3pts Sometimes 2pts Frequently 1pts Almost always 0pts Meditate 3pts Read 3pts Watch TV 1pts Doomscroll 0pts Almost never 0pts Less than once a week 1pts At least once a week 2pts 2-3 times a week 3pts Never 3pts Occasionally 2pts Frequently 1pts Basic...
Find out how bad your mental mush is How bad is your brain rot? Tally up your scores to see your results. None 3pts 1-3 2pts 4-6 1pts 6+ 0pts Never 3pts Sometimes 2pts Frequently 1pts Almost always 0pts Meditate 3pts Read 3pts Watch TV 1pts Doomscroll 0pts Almost never 0pts Less than once a week 1pts At least once a week 2pts 2-3 times a week 3pts Never 3pts Occasionally 2pts Frequently 1pts Basically always 0pts 7+ hours 3pts 6-7 hours 2pts Less than 6 hours 1pts Almost never 0pts Less than once a week 1pts At least once a week 2pts 2-3 times a week 3pts 6+ hours 3pts 3-6 hours 2pts 1-3 hours 1pts Less than an hour 0pts Next to me, obviously 0pts Somewhere else 3pts Never 3pts Occasionally, if it’s important 2pts Pretty much every time 0pts Continue reading...
As a state-controlled company explores for oil in the fragile Equatorial Margin the government struggles to balance its ecological promises with fossil fuel expansion. In Oiapoque, the stakes could not be higher Covering a densely forested area larger than Wales, the municipality and city of Oiapoque , in the state of Amapá , is an isolated yet renowned part of Brazil , thanks to a popular nationa...
As a state-controlled company explores for oil in the fragile Equatorial Margin the government struggles to balance its ecological promises with fossil fuel expansion. In Oiapoque, the stakes could not be higher Covering a densely forested area larger than Wales, the municipality and city of Oiapoque , in the state of Amapá , is an isolated yet renowned part of Brazil , thanks to a popular national saying. “From Oiapoque to Chuí” highlights the country’s northernmost and southernmost points, respectively, illustrating its vastness. Although well known, it is a remote area with about 30,000 inhabitants where less than 2% of the houses have access to proper sewage treatment. One-third of its residents are Indigenous people from four ethnic groups living in 68 hamlets across three Indigenous lands, 66 of which have electricity for less than 12 hours a day. Continue reading...
St Michael’s Mount and the people who live near it are still healing from the scars left by storm’s 100mph winds Three months after Storm Goretti battered St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall , the signs of the storm’s power are still evident in the scars left by uprooted trees, piles of logs and the shaking of heads from islanders who have lived there for decades and never seen the like. “It really was...
St Michael’s Mount and the people who live near it are still healing from the scars left by storm’s 100mph winds Three months after Storm Goretti battered St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall , the signs of the storm’s power are still evident in the scars left by uprooted trees, piles of logs and the shaking of heads from islanders who have lived there for decades and never seen the like. “It really was something,” said Jack Beesley, a senior gardener. “We were shocked the morning after when we saw what had happened . We had been caring for these trees for years and to see so many of them down was very sad. We’ve worked hard to get the place ready for the Easter visitors but it will still be a month or more until we’re back straight.” Continue reading...
Bondi and Kristi Noem the only two cabinet members to be removed despite string of scandals involving male officials Donald Trump has been accused of running a “misogynistic administration” after making Pam Bondi the second woman to be fired from a cabinet already dominated by men. The US president dismissed the attorney general on Thursday amid mounting frustration with her performance, especiall...
Bondi and Kristi Noem the only two cabinet members to be removed despite string of scandals involving male officials Donald Trump has been accused of running a “misogynistic administration” after making Pam Bondi the second woman to be fired from a cabinet already dominated by men. The US president dismissed the attorney general on Thursday amid mounting frustration with her performance, especially over the release of files on the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Continue reading...
The Chicago band’s frantic, urgent guitar melodies celebrate hope, friendship and family in these uncertain times From Chicago, Illinois Recommended if you like Modest Mouse, Wilco, Car Seat Headrest Up next Second album Something Worth Waiting For out 24 April, touring the US from April and Europe in summer In Friko’s hands, a swirl of influences and experiments curve the many colours of indie ro...
The Chicago band’s frantic, urgent guitar melodies celebrate hope, friendship and family in these uncertain times From Chicago, Illinois Recommended if you like Modest Mouse, Wilco, Car Seat Headrest Up next Second album Something Worth Waiting For out 24 April, touring the US from April and Europe in summer In Friko’s hands, a swirl of influences and experiments curve the many colours of indie rock into an endlessly inventive, radiant ramble. The Chicago band’s upcoming, cheekily titled second album, Something Worth Waiting For, explores the energy of yearning: for growth, for change, for stability. Across nine tracks, Friko take inspiration from their recent spate of touring to orbit the idea of finding things worth moving for and the value of the journey itself. Continue reading...
patty_c The restaurant sector has seen large declines since the spike in gas prices stoked concerns that consumers will cut back on discretionary spending in certain categories. Decliners over the last month since the Iran conflict began include Wingstop ( WING ) -33%, Jack in the Box ( JACK ) -32%, Venu Holding ( VENU ) -32%, Dine Brands ( DIN ) -18%, Bloomin' Brands ( BLMN ) -16%, Cheesecake Fac...
patty_c The restaurant sector has seen large declines since the spike in gas prices stoked concerns that consumers will cut back on discretionary spending in certain categories. Decliners over the last month since the Iran conflict began include Wingstop ( WING ) -33%, Jack in the Box ( JACK ) -32%, Venu Holding ( VENU ) -32%, Dine Brands ( DIN ) -18%, Bloomin' Brands ( BLMN ) -16%, Cheesecake Factory ( CAKE ) -13%, ( FWRG ) -10%, Chipotle ( CMG ) -9%, Texas Roadhouse ( TXRH ) -9%, McDonald's ( MCD ) -7%, and Starbucks ( SBUX ) -7%. However, Mizuho Securities analyst Nick Setyan said that any clear evidence of a slowdown in restaurant trends from higher gas prices is lacking so far. Setyan and his team see the most appealing dislocation within coffee, with Dutch Bros ( BROS ) still the firm's top pick. Mizuho also continues to view casual dining names as relatively well positioned, with top picks Cheesecake Factory ( CAKE ) and Brinker International ( QSR ). Meanwhile, Chipotle ( CMG ) is the top fast-casual pick. If there is continued pressure on consumers due to elevated gas prices, fast-food chains Wendy's ( WEN ) and Jack in the Box ( JACK ) are seen by Mizuho as being the most at risk. Baird issued a similar assessment, noting that the lower-income demographic spends a disproportionately high percentage of their income on fuel, meaning that the recent surge in gas prices acts as a direct tax on discretionary food-away-from-home spending, although the double-digit share price declines may be overstating the effect. The restaurant stocks with the highest Seeking Alpha quant scores are Noodles (NLDS), Brinker International ( EAT ), Darden Restaurants ( DRI ), Restaurant Brands International ( EAT ), and Arcos Dorados ( ARCO ). More on the restaurant sector McDonald's tries to reclaim its value crown with under-$3 menu items, $4 breakfast deal Chipotle has a plan to win 'burrito season' Dividend scorecard for AdvisorShares Restaurant ETF
The US government has unveiled an AI export initiative designed to cement American technological leadership while countering China’s growing influence in the sector. Washington is inviting US companies to form “preset” consortiums to offer full-stack artificial intelligence solutions around the world. Applications will be accepted until the end of June, the International Trade Administration (ITA)...
The US government has unveiled an AI export initiative designed to cement American technological leadership while countering China’s growing influence in the sector. Washington is inviting US companies to form “preset” consortiums to offer full-stack artificial intelligence solutions around the world. Applications will be accepted until the end of June, the International Trade Administration (ITA), an agency under the US Department of Commerce, said in a news release issued on Wednesday. The...