Search
AI-powered search, human-powered content.
scroll to top arrow or icon

{{ subpage.title }}

Police officers stand guard on the rooftop of Vienna's OPEC headquarters before the start of meeting of OPEC oil.

REUTERS/Heinz-Peter Bader

Hard Numbers: OPEC+ ain’t eager to pump, Mexico woos Trump with drug bust, Bitcoin to the moon, Merkel’s book is a blockbuster, Quake hits the Golden State

3.85 million: The OPEC+ oil cartel on Thursday agreed to extend production cuts of 3.85 million barrels into 2026 amid soft demand and concerns about what the incoming Trump administration’s tariff policies might mean for future markets. Some of the cuts will begin to expire in April, but the market seems to believe Trump wants low oil prices, and a full unwinding will not begin until the end of 2026, according to the new plan.
Read moreShow less

FILE PHOTO: In the photos taken on January 31, 2024, Ukrainian soldiers are deployed in the middle of the conflict with Russia. Ukrainian Intelligence has stated that Russian forces "have already made use" of some missiles delivered to the country by North Korea as part of the invasion and has stressed that there is "cooperation between the two regimes" at a military and weapons.

Handout / Latin America News Agency via Reuters Connect

Hard Numbers: North Koreans killed in Russia, Ireland approaches crucial vote, Pakistan locks down over Khan, Bitcoin to the moon!

500: Ukrainian media reported Sunday that a strike on North Korean forces operating in the Kursk region of Russia killed at least 500 troops, though Pyongyang has not (and probably won’t) confirm the figures. If true, it would be the first major casualty incident for the Korean People’s Army while fighting Ukraine, and the sheer number of deaths at once may be difficult for Pyongyang to explain at home.

Read moreShow less

Displaced Palestinians walk in a tent camp amid the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on Nov. 9, 2024.

Photo by Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Reuters

Hard Numbers: Israel expands humanitarian zone, Bitcoin bounces, Italy’s Meloni loses in court, OECD prices remain high, A very late book return

30: On Monday, Israeli officials announced they have expanded a humanitarian zone in southern Gaza just ahead of the expiration of the Biden administration’s 30-day deadline to provide more aid to Gaza’s civilian population. US officials have warned that failure to comply could have “implications for US policy,” including on US materiel support for Israel. It remains unclear whether Israel’s plan will offer Palestinians much help or satisfy US demands.
Read moreShow less

El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, who is running for reelection, greets people, on the day of the presidential and parliamentary elections in San Salvador, El Salvador, February 4, 2024.

REUTERS/Jose Cabezas

Crime fighter cruises to victory in El Salvador

Salvadorans voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to reelect President Nayib Bukele, the self-styled “world’s coolest dictator” – even though the constitution says he can’t serve a second term. Provisional results show he won 83% of the vote.

Read moreShow less

Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan speaks to Reuters during an interview in Lahore, Pakistan, in March 2023.

REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro

Hard Numbers: Imran Khan faces new sentence, Russia gets economic upgrade, Philippines and Vietnam join hands in South China Sea, Germany makes big Bitcoin seizure

10: Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan and former Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi were sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in prison for leaking state secrets. While Khan is already serving a three-year term on corruption charges, this is Qureshi’s first conviction. The new ruling comes just a week before general elections on Feb. 8. Khan’s political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, called it “a sham case” and plans to challenge the decision in a higher court.

Read moreShow less

Illustration cryptocurrency bitcoin, Suqian, Jiangsu province, China, January 3, 2024.

REUTERS

US regulators give a huge kiss to crypto

The past year and a half has been brutal for cryptocurrencies, as a barrage of bad news, scandals, and bankruptcies fanned suspicions about the credibility of digital coin.

Read moreShow less
Jess Frampton

The dollar is dead, long live the dollar

Every now and then, a story about some country seeking to diversify away from the US dollar kicks off a frenzy about the inevitable collapse of dollar dominance. Lately, there’s been more than a few such headlines, including:

Naturally, these have provided a fertile ground for gold bugs, crypto shills, hyperinflation truthers, techno-libertarians, anti-imperialists (read: anti-US zealots), and run-of-the-mill grifters to stoke fear about the dollar’s imminent death and its supposedly catastrophic consequences for the United States and the global economy.

But even mainstream media outlets and smart, well-meaning analysts have gotten swept into the current wave of hysteria.

Doomsayers offer numerous reasons for the dollar’s demise. They point to everything from China’s meteoric rise to superpower and the emerging multipolarity of the global system, to America’s stagnant productivity growth, chronic fiscal deficits, monetary expansion, growing debt burden, trade wars, financial fragility, and imperial overreach, to challenges from disruptive technologies like central bank digital currencies and crypto-assets.

Yet rumors of the dollar’s death are greatly exaggerated. Going by most usage measures, the dollar remains incontrovertibly dominant in global trade and finance, if a little less so than at its apex.

Read moreShow less

The Graphic Truth: Crypto's annus horribilis

Crypto bros can't wait for 2022 to be over. The year kicked off with cryptocurrencies riding the wave of the global post-pandemic economic boom. But then Russia's war in Ukraine upended global markets and worsening inflation prompted central banks to start hiking rates, which slashed investors' appetite for risk. What's more, a string of scandals — mainly the collapses of the TerraUSD stable coin and the FTX crypto exchange — undermined overall trust in crypto, leading to the worst annual performance in the industry's history. We track how Bitcoin and Ethereum, which together accounts for more than half of global crypto transactions, have traded since the beginning of the year.

Subscribe to our free newsletter, GZERO Daily

Latest