Tuesday, October 27, 2026
A head of state posted an AI-generated video of explosions at the world's most important oil export terminal. There was no other evidence of an attack. For anyone pricing oil, the question is no longer whether it happened but what it costs to find out.
When Suez closed, ships went around Africa. It cost more and took longer, and it worked. The Gulf offers no equivalent, which is why traffic through Hormuz has fallen by most of itself rather than moved somewhere else.
Every party to a sea voyage can transfer the risk of a closing chokepoint to somebody else. Owners insure hulls, charterers hedge freight, underwriters lay it off again. The crew is the one link in the chain with no market to sell its exposure into.
Almost every byte that crosses an ocean crosses a cable, and the cables break constantly. The vessels that fix them are a few dozen ageing ships held on shared retainers, and the replacement pipeline is close to empty.
The fastest way to move disaster supplies is also the most expensive per tonne in existence. The alternatives cost a fraction and require somebody to fund idle capacity in advance, which no budget cycle rewards.
The long-term contracts that financed the world's liquefied natural gas terminals assumed buyers who would take the volume for decades. Those buyers are now asking to be let out, and the terminals still have debt to service.
Two Argentine courts have held that the United States is immune from a damages suit filed in 2016 by Juan Carlos Ruffier over his 2005 arrest in Paraguay and nearly nine years apart from his son. His lawyers have asked Argentina's Supreme Court to hear the case, arguing that alleged FBI surveillance and paperwork on Argentine soil fall within the law's exceptions. The appeal is still pending before the appeals court.
China exported about 919,000 passenger cars in September, up 64 per cent from a year earlier, while domestic passenger-car sales fell 27 per cent to about 1.67 million, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers reported on Monday. Nine-month exports reached 7.17 million. Two EU officials say last week's hybrid deal includes a 350,000-a-year quota, though no text has been published.
Statistics Canada reported on Friday that employment fell by 68,000 in September, the second straight monthly decline, and the unemployment rate rose to 6.5 per cent. Economists had expected a gain of about 9,200. The public sector accounted for more than the whole drop.
China's retail sales fell 0.6 percent year-over-year in May, the first contraction since the pandemic era. Fixed asset investment declined 4.1 percent in the first five months of the year. Real estate development investment fell 16.2 percent. China Vanke, one of the few major developers to have avoided default, posted a combined $2.2 billion quarterly loss.
China's suspension of its sweeping rare earth export controls expires November 10, about a month away. August export volumes already ran 18 percent below last year despite the truce. The West spent the reprieve mostly watching.
Organisers say about 150,000 people marched in some 20 German cities on Saturday demanding a ban on the AfD, six days after it won 43.8 percent in Saxony-Anhalt. Germany's constitutional court has refused a ban before because a party was too insignificant to threaten democracy. The AfD's success removes that obstacle and creates a different one.
The Philippine Coast Guard's Saturday briefing gives the same figures as Friday's: 35 dead, 43 survivors, 53 missing. Burnt remains were found in the economy accommodation. Forensic teams are working under temporary tents at the port in Coron. The count now moves at the speed of identification rather than search.
Britain has banned imports from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and sanctioned individuals and companies involved in settlement expansion. The goods ban takes six to nine months and covers a small trade flow. The measures on construction, financing, real estate and advertising start sooner and reach further.
Ursula von der Leyen announced a €200m package in Nuuk on Monday, covering connectivity, clean energy, critical raw materials, mining, tourism, education, fisheries and housing. The same day, eleven NATO countries began exercises in Greenland with about 400 personnel. The two announcements are doing different jobs.
Eurometal says 300,000 European manufacturing jobs will go before the end of this year, and marked the claim by carrying ten coffins around the European Commission. The stunt makes the figure easy to discount. The cost gap underneath it does not depend on the stunt being fair.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard says it hit three oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and three US-affiliated ships, hours after American forces disabled three Iranian tankers. CENTCOM has not confirmed it and no damage has been reported. The notice issued alongside the claim needs no confirmation.
US Central Command says it has cleared Iranian sea mines from the transit routes through the Strait of Hormuz. Two monitoring bodies still warn of drifting and uncharted mines outside the swept lanes, and analysts say the greater danger was always the missiles and drones on the shore. Clearing a channel is not the same as opening a strait.
Warships have been escorting tankers through the Strait of Hormuz for months. War-risk premiums went from one to three percent of hull value before the war to between seven and a half and ten percent, and the escort did not bring them down. Security and risk are priced by different institutions, and they do not net.
China's factory gauge says contraction. Its high-tech sub-index says expansion. A single national figure is now averaging two manufacturing economies that are moving in opposite directions.