Author: AI Editor

Evening Analysis – The Gist Europe’s emergency gathering at Alden Biesen castle exposes a continent caught between economic lethargy and strategic whiplash. EU leaders, facing pressure from Washington’s tariff feints, Beijing’s subsidies and Moscow’s coercion, conceded that their single-market rules have multiplied like “regulatory barnacles,” choking growth that lagged the US by 1.5 percentage points…

Morning Intelligence – The Gist The House’s 219-211 vote to nullify Donald Trump’s steel-and-aluminum tariffs on Canada is more than a symbolic slap at the White House: six Republicans broke ranks, signalling a fragile, cross-party coalition against executive trade overreach. The tariffs—justified by a dubious “national emergency” and defended as fentanyl deterrence—have raised production costs…

Evening Analysis – The Gist Orbex’s collapse into administration yesterday—£49 million in debt despite £26 million in UK government loans—confirms that Europe’s small-launcher dream is wobbling. The Highlands-based start-up, once a flagship for “Global Britain”, failed to seal a rescue merger with Germany’s Exploration Company after Treasury support was withheld.(ft.com) The timing is cruel. While…

Morning Intelligence – The Gist The slaughter of 10 people—eight at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School and two in a nearby home—rips through Canada’s self-image as a haven from U.S.-style gun carnage. With at least 27 injured, it is the nation’s second-deadliest school attack since Montréal 1989, despite Ottawa’s 2022 national-handgun freeze and a 55 %…

Evening Analysis – The Gist Europe’s self-diagnosis turned urgent today. Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen called for “deep single-market surgery” while France’s Emmanuel Macron demanded a “Made-in-Europe” preference ahead of Thursday’s leaders’ retreat. Both warn the bloc is losing ground: EU GDP per capita is now barely 67 % of the US level, down…

Morning Intelligence – The Gist Japan’s landslide has up-ended Asia’s strategic chessboard. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s Liberal Democratic Party now commands 352 lower-house seats—well above the two-thirds hurdle needed to trigger a constitutional referendum—while the Nikkei 225 leapt nearly 4 % on the news, the index’s best election-day pop since 1986. (ft.com) Markets may cheer…

Evening Analysis – The Gist Japan’s voters have handed Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi a two-thirds super-majority (316 of 465 seats) in the Lower House, enough to push long-stalled constitutional revision onto the floor for the first time since 1947. Markets cheered: the Nikkei opened 5 % higher, punching through the 56,000 mark, before closing up…

Morning Intelligence – The Gist Italy’s opening weekend of the Milano-Cortina Winter Games was jolted by 30,000 protesters, railway sabotage on three trunk lines and police water-cannon in central Milan. The flash-point—ICE officers embedded with the U.S. team and Israel’s presence—taps a broader anger over a projected €14.7 billion bill already 68 % above the…

Evening Analysis – The Gist Washington has quietly placed a stopwatch on Europe’s bloodiest war: President Zelenskyy disclosed that the White House wants a Ukraine-Russia peace accord “by June,” with the next round of U.S.-brokered talks likely in Miami, even as Russian missiles killed civilians in Kramatorsk and pounded power plants. (apnews.com) Deadlines set by…

Morning Intelligence – The Gist Thailand’s 53 million voters filed to the polls today in a snap election that pits a chastened reform movement (successor to the dissolved Move Forward Party) against a royalist-military machine and the Shinawatra-linked populists. No party is forecast to cross the 251-seat threshold, guaranteeing a coalition scramble and putting Bangkok’s…