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Evening Analysis – The Gist Japan’s ¥18.3 trn ($117 bn) extra budget—90 % funded by fresh bonds—signals Tokyo’s return to post-Abenomics deficit financing just as global debt touches an all-time high. The package lifts total FY 2025 bond issuance to roughly ¥40 trn, erasing last year’s austeri…

Morning Intelligence – The Gist Hong Kong’s Wang Fuk Court inferno has now claimed 94 lives, injured 76 and left some 250 people unaccounted for, despite the deployment of nearly 800 firefighters and 128 engines over two days. 4,800 subsidised-housing residents were boxed in by bamboo scaffold…

Evening Analysis – The Gist Britain’s second Reeves Budget may calm bond-market nerves, yet the numbers betray fragility. A £26 billion tax rise pushes the burden to a post-war record 38 % of GDP, while income-tax thresholds remain frozen until 2031—a stealth levy that will pull 10 million mor…

Morning Intelligence – The Gist Ukraine’s almost-four-year war may be approaching an inflection point: Washington confirmed that special envoy Steve Witkoff will hold Moscow talks next week, while parallel U.S.–Russia meetings in Abu Dhabi and Geneva have produced a draft 28-point cease-fire p…

Evening Analysis – The Gist Taipei’s NT$1.25 trn (US $40 bn) special-budget vaults defence outlays to 3.3 % of GDP next year—double 2015 levels and on a glide-path to 5 % by 2030. The island is signalling that the price of deterrence has permanently risen; even Berlin’s €100 bn Zeitenwende loo…

Morning Intelligence – The Gist Good morning, 06:32. Venture Global’s 20-year SPA with Tokyo Gas for 1 Mtpa of U.S. LNG, inked overnight, is more than another long-dated offtake. It lifts the Louisiana exporter’s new 2025 contract haul to 7.75 Mtpa, equal to 11 % of Japan’s total LNG imports l…

Evening Analysis – The Gist Good evening. Russia’s overnight strike on Kyiv—22 missiles and an extraordinary 464 drones—killed 7, wounded 21 and knocked out power or heat for 102,000 Ukrainians even as Washington-brokered talks inch toward a “refined” 28-point peace deal.(reuters.com) I read t…

Evening Analysis – The Gist An audacious Israeli airstrike in Beirut’s Haret Hreik suburb yesterday killed Haytham Ali Tabtabai, Hezbollah’s acting chief-of-staff, along with four others—Israel’s first strike on the Lebanese capital in months and a direct breach of the 2024 U.S-brokered cease-…

Morning Intelligence – The Gist Israel’s precision strike on Beirut’s Haret Hreik yesterday, killing Hezbollah acting chief-of-staff Ali (Haytham) Tabtabai and four others, ruptures the year-old cease-fire that followed the 2023 war. Lebanon’s health ministry counts 28 wounded, while Israel fr…

Evening Analysis – The Gist Israel’s precision strike on Beirut’s Haret Hreik—its first hit on the Lebanese capital in five months—killed at least 5 people and, by Israeli accounts, eliminated Hezbollah chief-of-staff Ali (Haytham) Tabtabai. Reuters, AP and the Guardian concur on the timing (2…