Global and U.S. News

France's ten-year bond yield rose nine basis points to 5.089% early on Thursday, its highest since July 2022 and above the U.S. Treasury yield for the first time since 2013. The spread over German Bunds reached its widest in almost fifteen years, and Italian and Spanish spreads widened with it. The government cannot pass next year's budget through a deadlocked parliament, and last weekend's riots led to nearly 2,400 arrests. ING expects the ECB, at 2.5% after a September hike, to hold next week.

Brent crude rose more than 3%, above $111 a barrel, after another deadly attack in Saudi Arabia and continuing U.S.-Iran risk, according to the Wall Street Journal. U.S. stock futures tumbled with technology shares leading as worries about AI returned; European indexes fell sharply at the open and the FT reports China's CSI 300 down 1.8%.

CME Group and Silicon Data are building futures contracts on GPU rental prices, based on Silicon Data's daily indices of on-demand compute rates and backed by trading firm DRW. The partners announced the market in May, pending regulatory review; CME's Terry Duffy called compute "the new oil of the 21st century." The Wall Street Journal profiles founder Carmen Li's aim to let investors hedge, or short, the AI build-out through the price of compute.

Why it matters: A traded price for compute would give lenders and investors in AI data centres a way to hedge, and a public signal if rental rates fall.

The State Department ordered non-emergency U.S. government staff and their families to leave Saudi Arabia, covering the Riyadh embassy and the consulates, citing Iran-backed Houthi attacks on civilian airports and critical infrastructure. A strike on King Fahd International Airport in Dammam injured eight; the BBC reports one death there and the Guardian, citing Saudi aviation authorities, two. Debris from a drone intercepted over the Shaybah oilfield killed two more. The Houthi campaign against the kingdom has intensified since an informal four-year ceasefire collapsed in July.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Iran's fleet of shadow tankers has run out of oil after a monthslong U.S. blockade. The millions of barrels Tehran kept floating in Asian waters had given it a steady flow of cash while loadings at home stopped.

Israeli soldiers detained about 80 American, Israeli and British volunteers helping a Palestinian family harvest olives near Nahalin, outside Bethlehem, on Wednesday, after declaring the grove a closed military zone. Those held included Brad Lander, the Democratic congressional nominee from New York, a dozen American rabbis and Israel's former deputy attorney general Joshua Schoffman. Lander was released with a warning; the Guardian reported the others were still being held. The detentions follow a season of settler attacks on harvesters and foreign visitors.

A system built by MIT climatologist Judah Cohen and Lester Mackey uses machine learning to correct forecast models against their historical errors, and in a study published in Nature it doubled overall accuracy in the two-to-six-week window that forecasters call the predictability desert. Cohen says it also improves warnings of floods and cold spells. Farmers and energy suppliers are among the likely users.

A study published in Nature analyses proteins preserved in Middle Pleistocene fossils from Xujiayao in northern China and ties them to a common Denisovan anatomy, which Nature's news desk presents as a portrait of what the extinct human group looked like.

Missiles struck Kyiv on Wednesday night, injuring six according to mayor Vitali Klitschko, hours after Russia said it was "ready in principle" to resume peace talks following Steve Witkoff's meeting with Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg. Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov floated a new round around November 10 in Abu Dhabi while calling Ukraine's proposals unhelpful. Volodymyr Zelensky told Fox News he would accept a freeze along the current front line. Three-way talks have been paused since February.

High school protests that began in France in September have been joined by young demonstrators in at least seven other European countries, the New York Times reports, describing a generation with bleak expectations of its future.

Ukraine will buy military supplies through a NATO agency, the Financial Times reports, under an agreement that could let Kyiv receive ammunition and weapons faster and at lower cost.

A federal judge largely blocked Homeland Security agents from conducting field interviews in nine states, California among them, as part of the administration's search for noncitizens registered to vote, the New York Times reports. The ruling curbs a central element of the federal voting crackdown less than two weeks before the midterms.

The Agriculture Department confirmed the first detection of New World screwworm in American wildlife, in an elk taken by a hunter on a game ranch in Pecos County, Texas. Texas will redraw its infested zone and federal and state agencies are widening wildlife surveillance. The parasite has been found in dozens of animals since the first U.S. case in a calf in June, and the earlier halt to Mexican cattle imports helped push beef prices to records.

The Justice Department filed an emergency application on Wednesday asking the Supreme Court to lift an injunction by U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone that halted the $1.7bn barrier project in the Big Bend region of Texas. Cardone ruled that waivers of environmental and historical-preservation laws issued by homeland security secretaries exceeded their authority; the plaintiffs include the Center for Biological Diversity. The department argues Congress clearly authorised the secretary to build barriers and waive those laws.

The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal report that Mark Zuckerberg told Meta's board he planned to sell his Silicon Valley home and leave California over a proposed one-time billionaire tax. The board responded by changing the company's stock structure so he could pay the tax without losing voting control if voters approve the measure.

Barclays will shed about 5,000 roles, some 5% of its 93,000 staff, as part of more than £1.1bn of savings planned for 2027; about 60% are in support functions, including fewer software developers because "AI makes our people more productive," said finance chief Anna Cross. Third-quarter pre-tax profit rose 12% to £2.3bn, though the Wall Street Journal reports it missed forecasts on weak fixed-income trading. The bank added a £500m buyback ahead of a UK budget on October 28 that unions want to include a bank tax.

Nestlé has taken $1.95bn of net assets off its balance sheet, the Financial Times reports, after a presidential decree in September placed its Russian business under temporary state administration. The decree handed control of six factories and about 7,000 employees to LEV Management, a little-known Moscow company, Reuters reported at the time; Auchan's Russian stores were seized in the same order.

Amazon has pledged more than $17 billion to expand in Germany, the Wall Street Journal reports, spread across AI infrastructure, satellite internet, logistics and Prime Video content. It is the latest large overseas commitment by a U.S. technology company.

The New York Times reports that American and Israeli officials have drawn up plans for a renewed campaign of strikes on Iran once Israel's October 27 vote and the November 3 U.S. midterms are past. The Times notes that a second round might achieve no more than the war's first phase, and that President Trump has repeatedly cancelled plans to return to major combat. The Wall Street Journal reports diplomats racing to revive talks as more U.S. warships head to the region.

After eight months of fighting that has taken a heavy toll on civilians, Afghanistan and Pakistan are increasingly turning to proxy groups, the New York Times reports, adding a volatile element to a conflict that a March truce failed to end.

Kim Yo-jong said on Thursday that North Korean loudspeakers aimed at the South will be ready to broadcast along the entire border within days, which would be the first such exchange in 16 months. Seoul's defence ministry said a proportional response would follow if the North goes ahead, though nothing is decided; President Lee Jae Myung had switched off the South's speakers in June 2025. Relations soured after a September mine blast that wounded three South Korean soldiers.

The Reserve Bank of India has spent about $90bn raised from the Indian diaspora to support the rupee, the Financial Times reports, a costly defence of the currency.

Brazil votes on October 25 in a runoff between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 80, and Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, son of the jailed former president. Polls reported by Al Jazeera on October 16 put Bolsonaro narrowly ahead within the margin of error (Datafolha 47 to 45, Quaest 46 to 44), after he won the first round by about 2.2m votes. The Economist now casts Lula as the underdog in a tightening race.

The U.S. embassy in Ottawa issued a fact sheet accusing Canadian ministers and premiers of openly planning to influence American politics before the November midterms, citing Industry Minister Mélanie Joly's meetings with governors and Ontario premier Doug Ford's call for tariffs aimed at Trump-voting states. Ford said he had no interest in interfering, and Mark Carney noted that the United States started the trade conflict as he announced nearly C$9bn in tariff relief.

El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, announced a military operation to recover four Salvadoran aviation technicians serving with the UN-backed Gang Suppression Force, missing since gangs attacked their armoured vehicle in Croix-des-Bouquets on Sunday. "We have already finished with the gangs in El Salvador, and we can finish with you too," he warned. It is the first major attack on the force, which has more than 2,000 troops while gangs hold about 70% of Port-au-Prince.

Beijing is intensifying "grey zone" tactics against Taiwan, the Financial Times reports, blocking Taipei's diplomats abroad and asserting control over waters Taiwan administers.

China's National Natural Science Foundation has chosen 44 researchers under 35, nine of them recruited from abroad, for grants lasting 15 years, with funding doubling after five years and again after ten and no short-term performance reviews. The agency's head, Dou Xiankang, said the only test is "whether they are in the laboratory." Asia Times contrasts the scheme with cuts to research grants and student visas in the United States.

Liquidators of China Evergrande are seeking to recover money the developer gave Harvard University in the decade before its collapse, the Financial Times reports.