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Capital Returns to the Margins as Global Banks Position for a Venezuelan Reopening

As Washington cautiously reopens channels to Venezuela’s oil sector, international banks are reassessing a market long considered untouchable. The shift is not driven by optimism alone but by calculation. Venezuela’s gradual reintegration into global energy trade is creating narrowly defined...

Temporary Gains, Lasting Biology: Why Weight and Metabolic Risks Rebound After Obesity Drugs End

The rapid rise of modern obesity medications has reshaped expectations around weight loss, metabolic health, and long-term disease prevention. Drugs that suppress appetite or alter hormonal signaling have delivered results that were previously unattainable for many patients, producing double-digit...

Global Manufacturing Splits at Year-End as Europe Falters and Asia Gains Momentum

Global factory activity ended 2025 on sharply divergent paths, underscoring how uneven the post-pandemic industrial recovery has become. Across Europe, manufacturing slipped deeper into contraction, weighed down by weak demand, cautious investment, and persistent structural headwinds. In contrast,...

U.S. Chip Controls Harden as Security Calculus Overrides Market Logic

The decision to block a small semiconductor-related acquisition marked another step in the steady tightening of U.S. controls over advanced technology assets. While the financial scale of the transaction was modest, the reasoning behind the intervention was expansive. The move reflected a view that...

Energy Markets Reassess Supply Dynamics as Venezuela’s Oil Future Is Thrown Open

The U.S. strike that removed Venezuela’s long-standing leadership immediately shifted the conversation in global energy markets from politics to barrels, refineries, and fuel prices. For traders, refiners, and policymakers, the central issue is not the shock of military action itself but what it...

Shifting Rate Expectations and Fiscal Unease Reset the Dollar’s Trajectory at the Start of 2026

The U.S. dollar entered 2026 on noticeably softer footing, extending the implications of its steepest annual decline in nearly a decade. After losing close to a tenth of its value in 2025, the greenback began the new year under pressure from forces that go well beyond short-term market positioning....

Australia’s Goldfields Draw a New Wave of Prospectors as Record Prices Rekindle Old Dreams

Australia is witnessing a modern revival of gold fever, not driven by pickaxes and mass migration, but by soaring prices, advanced technology, and a cultural rediscovery of the country’s historic goldfields. As bullion prices surge to record levels, a new generation of prospectors is fanning out...

SoftBank Turns to Data Center Control as AI Strategy Shifts From Bets to Backbone

SoftBank’s decision to acquire data center investment firm DigitalBridge for $4 billion marks a strategic turning point in how the Japanese conglomerate intends to participate in the artificial intelligence boom. After years defined by high-risk equity stakes and platform-centric investments, the...

Intelligent Payments Take Shape as AI Agents Begin to Transact on Behalf of Consumers

The global payments industry is quietly re-engineering itself for a future in which humans are no longer the primary actors at the checkout screen. Instead, artificial intelligence agents—software systems capable of reasoning, searching, negotiating, and executing transactions—are expected to...

Europe’s Strategic Balancing Act: How AI Ambitions Are Colliding With Climate Commitments

Europe’s economic future is increasingly being shaped by a tension that policymakers can no longer postpone. On one side lies the imperative to compete in artificial intelligence, a technology reshaping productivity, defence, healthcare, and industrial power. On the other stands the continent’s...

A Reset Year for Gaming: How 2025 Redefined Power, Platforms, and Player Expectations

The video game industry entered 2025 carrying unresolved tensions from the pandemic boom years and exited it reshaped by consolidation, delayed blockbusters, and a fundamental rethink of how games are made, distributed, and monetised. What initially looked like a year of momentum instead became one...

Water Stress Tightens the Screws on India’s Beverage Industry as Growth Meets Scarcity

India’s accelerating water crisis is emerging as a strategic risk for global beverage companies, reshaping how they invest, operate and engage with communities across the country. What appears on the surface as a localised struggle in arid regions such as Rajasthan is, in reality, part of a...
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