peshkov Oil prices jumped on Thursday after U.S. President Donald Trump said the country will strike Iran “extremely hard” over the next two to three weeks, while signaling the conflict could be short-lived and that talks with Tehran remain ongoing. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures ( CL1:COM ) gained 6.1% to $106.21 a barrel, and the international benchmark Brent crude futures ( CO1:COM ...
peshkov Oil prices jumped on Thursday after U.S. President Donald Trump said the country will strike Iran “extremely hard” over the next two to three weeks, while signaling the conflict could be short-lived and that talks with Tehran remain ongoing. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures ( CL1:COM ) gained 6.1% to $106.21 a barrel, and the international benchmark Brent crude futures ( CO1:COM ) rose 6.57% to $107.80 per barrel, at the time of writing. In a rare prime-time address on Wednesday, Trump portrayed the Iran war as nearing success, saying U.S. forces had largely achieved their objectives, including crippling Iran’s missile capabilities and degrading its air force, navy, and industrial base. He said the campaign would weaken Tehran’s proxies and block its path to nuclear weapons. Trump signaled a potential escalation in military action, saying the U.S. could intensify strikes over the next two to three weeks and warning Iran would be pushed “back to the stone ages.” At the same time, he left the door open to diplomacy, saying talks are ongoing. Oil prices were down for the last two days as hopes of a potential de-escalation had risen after Trump had hinted at ending the conflict soon. The conflict has rattled the global supply chain, as the Strait of Hormuz remained closed. Dear readers: We recognize that politics often intersects with the financial news of the day, so we invite you to click here to join the separate political discussion More on Oil Go Get Your Own Oil: The False Promise Of Peace Commodities: Oil Falls Below $100 On Optimism Over Iran War WTI Outlook: Brent-WTI Falls To 2026 Lows. Oil Corrects As War Resolution Nears Lawmakers react as Trump signals Iran escalation Trump blames Iran for surge in U.S. gas prices
Dual Headwinds Weigh on Qualcomm (QCOM.US): Loss of Apple Market Share and Weak Smartphone Demand Overshadow Buybacks and AI as Stock Catalysts, Say Goldman Sachs and Bernstein Moomoo
Dual Headwinds Weigh on Qualcomm (QCOM.US): Loss of Apple Market Share and Weak Smartphone Demand Overshadow Buybacks and AI as Stock Catalysts, Say Goldman Sachs and Bernstein Moomoo
Indra Sistemas SA plans to appoint Ángel Simón as non-executive chairman following a dispute with the Spanish government that led to the departure of predecessor Ángel Escribano. Simón, 68, is a veteran executive who moved to industrial investment group Criteria Caixa after serving as president of Agbar, a water-management company, for more than a decade. He will be Indra’s fourth chairman in five...
Indra Sistemas SA plans to appoint Ángel Simón as non-executive chairman following a dispute with the Spanish government that led to the departure of predecessor Ángel Escribano. Simón, 68, is a veteran executive who moved to industrial investment group Criteria Caixa after serving as president of Agbar, a water-management company, for more than a decade. He will be Indra’s fourth chairman in five years. Indra didn’t release details about his appointment in statement early on Thursday. The company did add that José Vicente de los Mozos will continue as chief executive officer. Spain’s largest defense company has been embroiled in a dispute over Escribano’s plans to acquire a company owned by his family. The deal was scrapped but it sparked criticism over potential conflicts of interest, even as the state — Indra’s biggest shareholder — seeks to bolster its defense sector to compete for larger contracts. Read More: Indra Chairman Steps Down After Clash With Spain Over Deal Simón’s appointment was communicated at 3:30 a.m. following a late-Wednesday board meeting that saw Escribano resign. Despite being designated as an “external” appointment, his candidacy was proposed by state holding company SEPI. In the role, Simón will focus on oversight while operational control remains with the CEO, a move that concentrates executive powers around the chief executive. Simón was ousted as CEO of Criteria Caixa in 2025 after tensions with the chairman. His tenure at the holding company, which manages assets worth about €45 billion, capped a turbulent period marked by an aggressive investment push that was later scaled back.
Battlefield outcomes are connected by the sharing of weapons and intelligence as well as the damage to the global economy The Iran and Ukraine wars are becoming more intertwined with every passing week – to the point that some analysts argue the two conflicts are beginning to merge. Quite how each war will affect the trajectory of the other is hard to predict, but it is already clear that their in...
Battlefield outcomes are connected by the sharing of weapons and intelligence as well as the damage to the global economy The Iran and Ukraine wars are becoming more intertwined with every passing week – to the point that some analysts argue the two conflicts are beginning to merge. Quite how each war will affect the trajectory of the other is hard to predict, but it is already clear that their interconnectedness is drawing more countries into both cauldrons, extending an arc of instability that straddles Europe and the Middle East. Continue reading...
The southern Africa country has the world’s highest prevalence of HIV but the amount of lenacapavir reaching it is too small to reach all those at risk If Precious asks her client to use a condom, she can charge him 100 lilangeni – about £4.50. If she agrees not to use one, she can charge double. The financial incentive for sex workers in Eswatini not to use protection is obvious – as is the risk,...
The southern Africa country has the world’s highest prevalence of HIV but the amount of lenacapavir reaching it is too small to reach all those at risk If Precious asks her client to use a condom, she can charge him 100 lilangeni – about £4.50. If she agrees not to use one, she can charge double. The financial incentive for sex workers in Eswatini not to use protection is obvious – as is the risk, in a country where one in four people are infected with HIV . Last year, Precious visited a clinic with five other sex workers to get tested. Four of them had the virus. Continue reading...
Britain’s swift population fell by two-thirds between 1995 and 2023. Make their lives a little easier with a bit more food and more places to nest Swifts are wheeling, screaming endurance athletes. They don’t touch the earth for nine months of the year and fly about 14,000 miles annually – travelling from sub-Saharan Africa to nest in the UK, then back again. In Britain, they’re the sign that summ...
Britain’s swift population fell by two-thirds between 1995 and 2023. Make their lives a little easier with a bit more food and more places to nest Swifts are wheeling, screaming endurance athletes. They don’t touch the earth for nine months of the year and fly about 14,000 miles annually – travelling from sub-Saharan Africa to nest in the UK, then back again. In Britain, they’re the sign that summer is coming or taking its leave. In between, they provide a heart-soaring display of beauty. No wonder they’re beloved. “Swifts spark joy,” says Hannah Bourne-Taylor , a passionate swift advocate and author of Nature Needs You: The Fight to Save Our Swifts . Continue reading...
Listen to Odd Lots on Apple Podcasts Listen to Odd Lots on Spotify Watch Odd Lots on YouTube Subscribe to the newsletter When you consider the fact that many people don't know how and where to place a comma, it's safe to say that AI is already better than most people at writing. It's clean copy. It can be surprisingly persuasive. And sometimes, it's even informative. But there's frequently still s...
Listen to Odd Lots on Apple Podcasts Listen to Odd Lots on Spotify Watch Odd Lots on YouTube Subscribe to the newsletter When you consider the fact that many people don't know how and where to place a comma, it's safe to say that AI is already better than most people at writing. It's clean copy. It can be surprisingly persuasive. And sometimes, it's even informative. But there's frequently still something about it that just seems... off. Many people can tell quite quickly when they're reading AI-generated text. And beyond the style, the existence of AI generated text has all kinds of ramifications, from making it easier for students to cheat, to the rise of deceptive chatbots, to potentially degrading the experience on sites like Reddit. So how do you actually tell if a piece of writing was generated by AI? On this episode, we speak with Max Spero, the CEO of Pangram Labs, a company that built software to detect whether a piece of content was AI generated or not. We talk about the advanced techniques they use, the risk of false positives and false negatives, and what AI writing means in general for the future of the Internet.
Gri-spb Gulf Arab states are now considering new pipelines to export oil and gas to avoid the Strait of Hormuz, as Iran seeks to control the waterway, the Financial Times reported. Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline — built in the 1980s — has now become an export lifeline, delivering 7M barrels of oil a day to the Yanbu port in the Red Sea while bypassing the Strait of Hormuz. The kingdom is now co...
Gri-spb Gulf Arab states are now considering new pipelines to export oil and gas to avoid the Strait of Hormuz, as Iran seeks to control the waterway, the Financial Times reported. Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline — built in the 1980s — has now become an export lifeline, delivering 7M barrels of oil a day to the Yanbu port in the Red Sea while bypassing the Strait of Hormuz. The kingdom is now considering how it can export more oil through the pipeline, including looking into whether it should expand the pipeline's capacity further or build new routes. High costs and complexity have stalled plans for pipelines across the Gulf region in the past, but now, the mood appears to be changing. "I'm sensing a shift from hypotheticals into operational reality," Maisoon Kafafy, senior adviser to the Atlantic Council's Middle East programs, told FT . She added that the most resilient option would be "a web of corridors" instead of a single alternative pipeline. One option could be reviving plans for the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), with Israel's Haifa Port serving as a major gateway. The corridor would include a railway network as well as maritime and road transport routes. But creating new pipelines would be very costly, according to Christopher Bush, CEO of Cat Group, one of the main builders of the East-West pipeline. Building that pipeline involved blasting through the hard basalt of the Hijaz mountain on Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast, and the cost of replicating that today would be at least $5B, Bush told FT . Constructing other complicated routes from Iraq through Jordan, Syria or Turkey would cost $15B-$20B and would involve security risks and difficult terrain. The most viable options in the near term may be to expand the East-West pipeline and Abu Dhabi's existing route to Fujairah. More on Iran war Go Get Your Own Oil: The False Promise Of Peace Sell The Rally - There Is No Easy Way Out Of Iran War Tehran: Future of Hormuz will be decided betwee...