Category: Uncategorized

Evening Analysis – The Gist Brussels has broken the funding log-jam: EU ambassadors have endorsed a plan to raise up to €39 billion for Kyiv by securitising profits from the €210 billion in frozen Russian central-bank reserves held at Euroclear, effectively replacing the stalled U.S. tranche of last year’s G7 scheme.(apnews.com) The numbers matter. Interest…

Morning Intelligence – The Gist Moscow’s 12-minute trespass over Estonia’s Vaindloo Island does not sound like much—until you count the precedents. It is the fourth Russian air incursion into NATO airspace this year, forcing Italian F-35s to scramble and Tallinn to invoke Article 4 consultations for only the second time since joining the alliance. Three…

Evening Analysis – The Gist Europe at last sharpens the knife it had long waved. Brussels’ 19th sanctions package accelerates a full ban on Russian LNG to 1 Jan 2027 and blacklists 118 “shadow-fleet” tankers, crypto channels and new banks (reuters.com). Energy still funds roughly a third of the Kremlin’s budget; Russian LNG sales to…

Morning Intelligence – The Gist Washington has once again stood alone: overnight the United States cast its sixth veto on a Gaza-ceasefire resolution, blocking a 14-1 Security Council vote that demanded an “immediate, unconditional and permanent” halt to fighting, the release of hostages, and unrestricted aid access.(reuters.com) This procedural move masks structural drift. Two years…

Evening Analysis – The Gist Good evening, 18:32. Donald Trump capped his second UK state visit by urging Prime Minister Keir Starmer to “deploy the army” against Channel migrants, coupling the demand with a £150 bn U.S.–UK tech-investment pledge.(ft.com) The spectacle—royal pageantry inside Windsor, 5 000 protesters outside—laid bare a trans-Atlantic paradox: ever-deeper commercial ties…

Morning Intelligence – The Gist The Federal Reserve pivoted yesterday, trimming its policy rate by 25 bp to 4-4.25 %—its first cut of 2025—and signaling more could follow. Chair Powell framed the move as “risk-management” amid a cooling labor market, yet dissenting Governor Stephen Miran wanted a deeper slice. Markets lurched: the S&P 500 shed…

Evening Analysis – The Gist Good evening, Washington and London’s new “Tech Prosperity Deal” funnels £31 billion ($42 billion) of mostly U.S. big-tech cash into U.K. AI, quantum and nuclear projects, led by Microsoft’s £22 billion pledge, Google’s £5 billion data-centre build and Nvidia’s deployment of 120,000 GPUs—the largest such rollout in Europe. 10 Downing…

Morning Intelligence – The Gist Washington and Beijing have sketched a truce in the long-running TikTok saga: an 80 % U.S.-led consortium will control the app’s American assets while ByteDance keeps a symbolic 19.9 % stake and, crucially, the Chinese-written recommendation algorithm via a licensing deal(reuters.com)(theguardian.com). The platform’s 170 million U.S. users are no longer…

Evening Analysis – The Gist Beijing’s fiercest critics have long warned that the post-1945 legal order erodes when major powers enjoy impunity. Tonight that order faces its gravest stress-test in years: a UN Commission of Inquiry has concluded that senior Israeli officials—including Prime Minister Netanyahu—“incited and orchestrated genocide” in Gaza, where more than 37,800 Palestinians…

Morning Intelligence – The Gist Washington and Beijing have quietly forged a draft accord that would shift TikTok’s ownership—and control of its algorithm—into US hands. The outline, confirmed by Reuters and AP overnight and teased by Donald Trump himself on Truth Social, hands ByteDance a stark choice: accept a US-led restructuring or risk a nationally…