Economy

United States President Donald Trump has imposed tariffs on European goods, made a bid to take over Greenland and demanded Europe foot the bill for its own defence. European leaders now fear the era of US-led security protections may be over. They’re accelerating efforts to reduce their military and economic dependence on the US.

At the Munich Security Conference, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted his nation is not walking away from its allies. But few in the room were convinced. Instead, leader after leader took to the podium with the same message: Europe must stand on its own.

New York has confirmed that the federal government released another $77m for new tunnels and bridges connecting the state to its neighbour New Jersey, amid a feud with United States President Donald Trump.

On Tuesday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul appeared at a construction site alongside union leaders to push for the release of the remaining funds, which were frozen in October amid a record-breaking government shutdown.

“It cannot continue like this,” Hochul, a Democrat, told workers at the site.

“The workers need to know that that job is going to be there: the one they signed up for, the one they trained for, the one they’re so proud of. It has to be there year after year, until this project is done.”

At stake is the fate of the Northeast Corridor project, a central part of the Gateway Program, an interstate initiative to expand and renovate the aging tunnels that the link metropolitan hubs between New York and New Jersey.

The federal government had pledged billions in support for the project, considered to be vital for transportation and safety reasons.

But on October 1, one day into a historically long government shutdown, the Trump administration announced it would suspend $18bn in funding for the project that had already been granted.

The move was designed to pressure Democrats — and Democrat-aligned jurisdictions — to comply with Republican demands to end the shutdown.

But Trump hinted at the time that some of the programming cuts could be permanent. The shutdown ended after 43 days in November, and still, the funding for the New York City tunnel project remained frozen.

Democrats decried the freeze an act of political revenge. “It should concern every American that the Trump Administration is willing to harm working families and our nation’s economy to punish Democrats,” Representative Jerry Nadler of New York said in response to the funding suspension.

But Trump has continued to withhold the funds. On February 3, the states of New York and New Jersey announced they were suing the Trump administration to release the funds.

“After four months of covering costs with limited operating funds, the states warn that construction will be forced to completely shut down as soon as February 6 unless federal funding resumes,” attorneys general Letitia James of New York and Jennifer Davenport of New Jersey said in a statement at the time.

Three days later, as the states hit that February 6 deadline, a US district judge ordered the funds to be released, citing the potential for irreparable harm to the project.

The ruling required more than $200m in reimbursement funds to be paid out to the states.

Over the last week, the federal government responded by releasing $30m, in addition to the $77m announced on Tuesday. But officials said it was still not enough.

At Tuesday’s news conference, union leader Gary LaBarbera emphasised that new construction was a necessity.

“Let me tell you: The existing tunnels, the trans-Hudson tunnels, are over a hundred years old. Their structural integrity has failed,” he said.

He added that the issue of maintaining safe transportation should be nonpartisan

“This isn’t a Republican tunnel or a Democratic tunnel, right? This should not be a political tug of war,” he said.

Governor Hochul, meanwhile, used part of her speech to address the president. “ Let’s stop the chaos. Let’s stop the insanity. Let them work, Mr President,” she said, in a gesture to the workers around her.

But this week, on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump doubled down on his opposition to the project.

“I am opposed to the future boondoggle known as ‘Gateway,’ in New York/New Jersey, because it will cost many BILLIONS OF DOLLARS more than projected or anticipated,” Trump wrote.

“It is a disaster! Gateway will likewise be financially catastrophic for the region, unless hard work and proper planning is done, NOW, to avoid insurmountable future cost overruns.”

He also denounced reports that he would un-freeze the funding in exchange for renaming New York’s Penn Station after him, as well as Washington’s Dulles airport.

“IT IS JUST MORE FAKE NEWS,” Trump wrote, adding that such a proposal was “brought up by certain politicians and construction union heads”, not him.

Still, his White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared to confirm the reports last week during a news briefing.

“Why not?” she told a reporter. “It was something the president floated in his conversation with [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer.”

On Tuesday, reports emerged that the Trump Organization had filed trademark claims for any airports bearing the president’s name.

Republicans in Florida’s legislature have already sought to rename the international airport in Palm Beach for Trump, citing his nearby golf courses and residence at Mar-a-Lago.

About 1.4 billion people began marking the Lunar New Year on Tuesday amid fireworks as China enters the Year of the Fire Horse, one of 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac.

Known as the Spring Festival in China, the new year, based on the lunar calendar, also brings about the world’s largest annual human migration, called Chunyun, as millions travel across the country for family reunions.

It is also a huge opportunity to boost domestic consumption in the world’s second-largest economy, which has been driven by exports.

Monday night’s gala, one of the largest state-sponsored televised events, was marked by a stunningly synchronised kung fu performance by robots and children.

The Year of the Horse, said to bring optimism and opportunity, is following the Year of the Snake, which represented transformation and strategy.

Here is a quick snapshot of the festival.

What’s Lunar New Year?

It is the most important holiday in China and is celebrated by millions of people in the country and in East and Southeast Asia.

In the days leading up to it, people clean their homes and decorate with red lanterns, couplets, and paper cuttings that represent prosperity and good fortune.

On the eve of the Lunar New Year, families gather for a large reunion dinner, exchanging hongbao, red envelopes of cash as a symbol of blessings and good fortune.

The celebrations usually last about 15 days, ending with the Lantern Festival. Fireworks, dragon and lion dances, temple fairs across big cities and the hinterland are common during this period.

In the Chinese zodiac, each year is associated with one of the 12 zodiac animals, which is believed to influence the year’s character and fortune.

The animal from the Chinese zodiac is then paired with any one of the five elements: metal, wood, water, fire and earth.

This is the Year of the Fire Horse.

This year’s official holiday is nine days, rather than the typical eight, with New Year’s Day falling on Tuesday, February 17.

What’s Year of the Fire Horse?

The Chinese zodiac system is incredibly complex, repeating every 12 years, each represented by an animal in this order: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig.

The year of one’s birth decides their zodiac sign; meaning, the ones born last year were Snakes, this year’s children would be Horses and next year’s would be Goats.

A complex mechanism decides how the year will be paired with one of the five elements.

This year, the element is Bing, or big sun, paired with the Horse. This pairing occurs every 60 years, most recently in 1966.

For those who believe in the Chinese zodiac, the Year of the Fire Horse represents an explosion of energy and independence, with unpredictable realignments.

Why is China hoping the Lunar New Year spending will boost the economy?

The Spring Festival in China is not just cultural but also economically significant, typically driving a spike in consumption across multiple sectors.

People spend heavily on food and festive goods, entertainment, and tourism, with retail and e-commerce platforms registering a surge in sales during the pre-holiday period.

The Chinese government is also expecting a record 9.5 billion passenger trips during the 40-day Spring Festival period, up from nine billion trips last year, as they travel for annual reunions.

The government has also issued consumer vouchers worth more than 360 million yuan ($52m) this month to boost consumption.

China is looking to boost domestic spending in its next five-year economic plan, where households save nearly a third of their income.

Where else is Lunar New Year celebrated?

It is a global phenomenon extending beyond China. In East and Southeast Asia, several countries observe the Lunar New Year under distinct cultural pretexts.

For instance, Vietnam celebrates Tet Nguyen Dan, which emphasises family reunions and specific culinary traditions like banh chung. In South Korea, Seollal, or the Korean New Year, focuses on honouring ancestors and the consumption of tteokguk, a rice cake soup believed to grant people another year of age.

In Southeast Asian countries like Singapore and Malaysia, the holiday is a multicultural event marked by public holidays.

Diaspora communities in cities like San Francisco, London, and Sydney also host some of the largest celebrations in the world, featuring massive parades, dragon boat races and fireworks.

Fun fact about the Year of the Horse

This Lunar New Year found its mascot in a rather unusual place: in the World of Harry Potter, a wildly popular British production. And that too in the franchise’s most popular villain, Draco Malfoy.

In Mandarin, the name Malfoy is written phonetically as “ma er fu”. The opening character, ma, signifies “horse” and the closing character, fu, represents “fortune” or “blessing”.

Democrats have called for a ban on immigration agents wearing masks and are pushing for increased oversight of their operations.

The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ran out of funding over the weekend, leading to the third partial government shutdown of President Donald Trump’s second term, as negotiations between Republicans and Democrats remain stalled while Congress is in recess until February 23.

Democrats are calling for changes to the DHS’s immigration operations after two fatal shootings of US citizens in the city of Minneapolis last month. Alex Pretti and Renee Good were shot dead by federal officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol during such operations.

On Monday, state officials in Minnesota said that the FBI has refused to share evidence with state law enforcement following Pretti’s killing on January 24.

“This lack of cooperation is concerning and unprecedented,” Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension superintendent, Drew Evans, said in a statement.

DHS entered a shutdown on Saturday, but will continue operations deemed essential. Cuts affect agencies under the DHS, including the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Customs and Border Protection (CBP) – which runs Border Patrol – ICE, and the US coastguard.

At US airports, 2,933 of the TSA’s 64,130 employees have been furloughed for the duration of the shutdown. The remaining 95 percent of staff will remain on duty but will work without pay until the DHS is funded.

Earlier this month, Democrats sent Republicans a list of 10 demands to rein in immigration enforcement. In a letter, authored by House of Representatives Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the politicians called for increased oversight of the DHS.

The letter called for DHS officers not to enter private property without a judicial warrant and to require verification that someone is not a US citizen before placing them in immigration detention. It also called for DHS to mandate that its officers do not wear masks, have visible identification, and wear clear uniforms.

Democrats are also seeking to prohibit immigration enforcement actions near courts, medical facilities, houses of worship, schools, and polling places.

They further called for increased coordination with local and state agencies after the federal government blocked state and local law enforcement from participating in investigations related to the deaths in Minneapolis.

“Federal immigration agents cannot continue to cause chaos in our cities while using taxpayer money that should be used to make life more affordable for working families,” Jeffries said in the letter.

“The American people rightfully expect their elected representatives to take action to rein in ICE and ensure no more lives are lost. It is critical that we come together to impose common sense reforms and accountability measures that the American people are demanding.”

Tom Homan, Trump’s border chief, dismissed the calls from Democrats on CBS’s Face the Nation, referring to the requests as “unreasonable”.

Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, meanwhile, echoed Homan’s stance. On CNN’s current affairs programme, State of the Union, he claimed that Democrats are engaging in “political theatre”.

Buenos Aires, Argentina: Diego Nacasio, 43, works full time as a salesman at a large hardware store in Florencio Varela, a city in the greater Buenos Aires area. He says he doesn’t need a calendar to know what day of the month it is. By the time his salary and that of his wife, who also works full time in a shop, run out, it is around the 15th.

From then on, they look for extra jobs, find things to sell, use their credit cards, and get small loans to pay for basics, including food, until the next paycheques arrive.

“I have never experienced anything like this,” Nacasio told Al Jazeera. “Over the past 25 years, we have worked hard, and our jobs allowed us to build a house from scratch, buy a car and give our 17-year-old son a decent life. Now, we have better jobs than we did then, and still cannot even afford food for the whole month.”

“Living on credit puts you in a very dangerous cycle. It’s very easy to fall behind with payments, and then it is a matter of chasing your own tail. Most people I know are in the same situation. We are living in a constant state of stress and anxiety, and it feels like there’s no way out.”

Nacasio’s story has become increasingly common in Argentina, where nearly half of the people say they are using savings, selling belongings or borrowing money from banks or relatives to cover basics, according to a report by Argentina Grande based on the latest official figures available. Another report, from Fundacion Pensar, found that 63 percent of Argentines have cut down on activities or services to make ends meet.

“The current situation in Argentina is extremely concerning. It is particularly worrying to see that even people who have one or several jobs are getting loans not to buy a house, a car or white goods [appliances], but to buy food,” Violeta Carrera Pereyra, sociologist and researcher at the Argentina Grande Institute and one of the authors of the report, told Al Jazeera.

A tale of two cities

Argentina’s President Javier Milei, who took office in December 2023, says his austerity economic plan, based on achieving fiscal balance while building up reserves of United States currency through drastic cuts to public spending, has revitalised the economy and lifted millions of people out of poverty. He is backed by the International Monetary Fund, which, despite Argentina’s record levels of foreign loans, projects an economic growth of four percent in 2026 and 2027.

But a closer look at the figures shows a different, more sombre, picture.

While economic activity in Argentina has increased overall, growth has been uneven. In November 2025, the most recent month for which data is available, sectors such as banking and agriculture saw growth, but manufacturing and commerce experienced sharp declines, with many factories and shops closing due to falling demand. Consumption, particularly of food, has been falling, with a 12.5 percent drop reported by independent food retailers.

Then there’s inflation, a key variable that in Argentina needs to be kept at bay in order to access essential foreign credit.

While Milei’s shock economic plan managed to significantly reduce inflation from record-high figures when he first took office in late 2023, experts say his administration has taken some controversial measures to keep it low. This includes forcing salaries to remain stagnant and under the rate of inflation, and opening the country up to cheaper imports. These policies have left many without money to spend and forced thousands of factories and small businesses to close.

Critics also say inflation figures are not representative of real price fluctuations. The tool used to measure inflation in Argentina, a sample basket of goods people consume, was developed in 2004 and does not reflect current consumption patterns, including the percentage that items like electricity and fuel – two areas that have seen price hikes considerably higher than inflation – represent in people’s real spending habits.

Carrera Pereyra says that figures also show that the rapid changes in Argentina’s economy have widened inequalities.

“On the one hand, we see that some sectors are able to consume more, so we see a rise in the sales of properties, cars, motorbikes, some as a result of the opening of imports,” she said. “But on the other hand, items like food and medicines are decreasing. So, some people can buy more things than before, while others are struggling to put food on the table.”

An obstacle course

Many Argentines who spoke with Al Jazeera said that making ends meet has become nothing short of an obstacle course. Juggling multiple demanding jobs, selling used items such as clothing, borrowing from relatives, seeking shark loans and bargain hunting have become a regular part of daily life.

“Shopping for food has become a job in itself,”  said Veronica Malfitano, 43, a teacher and trade unionist, whose salary was cut by a quarter when Milei slashed public spending. “I team up with relatives or people I work with, and we buy in bulk. I use my credit card or get small loans. This month, for the first time, I have only paid the credit card’s minimum, something I had never done before. It’s all very stressful. Everybody I know is in the same situation.”

Research confirms Malfitano is not alone. Nearly half of supermarket purchases in Argentina are paid with credit cards, a record, according to recent official data.

Both borrowing and default rates have increased. It is estimated that around 11 percent of personal loans are unpaid, the highest rate since the Central Bank of Argentina began keeping records in 2010, according to Central Bank data.

Griselda Quipildor, 49, who lives with her husband, two daughters and two grandchildren, says that even though several people in her family work, money usually runs out by the 18th of every month and they have to start taking loans.

“At the start of the month, we pay debts, the bills and then the money runs out and we have to start borrowing again. It’s an endless vicious circle, one that is very difficult to get away from. We borrow from people we know and people we don’t know. It wasn’t like this before.”

Lucia Cavallero, an analyst, economics expert, and member of Movida Ciudad, told Al Jazeera that even though Argentina’s economic problems are longstanding, their impact on people’s homes is worsening.

“Debt has long been a serious problem in Argentina, and it has now become a crisis,” she said. “The proliferation of informal lenders has created a dangerous situation, leaving many people with no other options.”

In response, a political party has proposed a bill that would help people in lower-income sectors unify their loans and apply for a long-term payment plan at lower rates.

Cavallero says there are some positive aspects to the initiative, but that it largely misses the central point.

“It is good to see the political class recognising that debts are a serious problem for people,” she said. “However, this approach follows the logic of borrowing to pay off debt. While it may provide temporary relief, deeper structural changes are needed.

“Just as banks are bailed out, we are calling for families to be supported. A more sustainable solution is for wages to keep pace with the cost of the basic basket, so that people do not have to go into debt just to afford food,” Cavallero told Al Jazeera.

Despite all the challenges he and his family face, Nacasio says many people like himself still count themselves lucky.

“At least we own our house,” he said. “If we didn’t and we had to pay rent, I don’t know what we would do. I just need things to change, for us and for everybody. Things cannot continue like this.”

Colombo, Sri Lanka — Almost 30 years ago today, India and Pakistan formed a combined cricket team to take on Sri Lanka ahead of the 1996 Cricket World Cup in an unprecedented moment of unity in the sport’s history.

The two age-old rivals put aside their differences and came together in an act of solidarity to support a fellow South Asian team, who faced the threat of match boycotts in a tournament they had battled hard to host.

India versus Pakistan is the most highly marketed fixture at every multination tournament – the World Cup, Asia Cup or Asian Games – whether it’s a men’s, women’s or Under-19 event.

Few sporting events globally carry the weight and anticipation of an India-Pakistan cricket match. So, when Pakistan’s government ordered its team not to face India at the ongoing T20 World Cup, the tournament was briefly pushed into a state of chaos.

It also left Sri Lanka, the designated host of the fixture, holding its collective breath.

A week of negotiations led to a dramatic late U-turn by the Pakistani government and the match will now take place as scheduled on Sunday at the R Premadasa International Cricket Stadium in Colombo.

But what if the boycott had gone ahead? The impact could have been catastrophic, not just for Pakistan, but also for the International Cricket Council (ICC), as well as Sri Lanka.

With the crisis seemingly averted, the island nation stands poised to reap the benefits in its financial landscape, diplomatic standing and community.

‘Massive impact’ on tourism

For a country that is still grappling with the aftermath of the economic crisis of 2022, an India-Pakistan cricket fixture at a World Cup could prove to be a godsend.

The tourism and hospitality industry was one of the hardest hit during Sri Lanka’s financial meltdown and this match will see an enormous influx of fans from India and Pakistan coming into the country.

Hotels in and around Colombo were fully booked out well ahead of the tournament but the industry braced itself for heavy losses after Pakistan threatened a boycott.

“There’s been a massive impact since the boycott was announced,” Sudarshana Pieris, who works in Sri Lanka’s hospitality sector, told Al Jazeera.

“All major hotels in Colombo were fully booked by Indian travel agencies well ahead [of the match] and once the boycott was announced, we lost almost all of those bookings,” he said.

“But after Pakistan reversed their decision, hotel room rates shot up by about 300-400 percent at five-star establishments in Colombo.”

It’s not just hotels but several other local businesses – from street vendors to high-end restaurants – who are hoping for an increased footfall and spending over the weekend.

These short trips and the experiences they offer could influence visitors to extend their stay or return to Sri Lanka on holiday, long after the game has ended, in a potential long-term benefit to the industry.

Another relatively underestimated impact of the game would be the employment opportunities it creates, albeit temporarily, in the media, event management, security and transportation industries.

Asanka Hadirampela, a freelance journalist and broadcaster currently working as a Sinhala language commentator for the World Cup, recognises the marquee match as a great opportunity from a personal standpoint.

“This is my first World Cup as a broadcaster,” Hadirampela said.

“The India-Pakistan fixture is the biggest and most-watched game of the tournament. So to get to work on such a match is exciting and I consider it a special achievement.”

A geopolitical win

The lines are always blurred between sport and politics in South Asia.

So while the financial gains are expected to be significant, the fixture’s impact on the region’s geopolitical environment cannot go amiss.

Pakistan’s boycott, too, was explicitly political, as confirmed by the country’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif when he said that they were offering support to Bangladesh after the Tigers were kicked out of the tournament by the ICC.

The reversal of Pakistan’s decision, which they said came after requests to reconsider the boycott by several regional “friends”, was steeped in politics, too.

Sri Lanka’s President Anura Kumara Dissanayake reportedly had a phone conversation with PM Sharif, urging his government to rethink their decision to boycott the game as the successful staging of this encounter would not only position Sri Lanka as a capable host of global sporting events but also reinforce its standing as a neutral mediator in a region fraught with geopolitical complexities.

Sri Lanka and Pakistan have always maintained strong diplomatic relations, which have extended to the cricket field as well.

Sri Lanka were one of the first teams to travel to Pakistan following their 10-year ostracisation from international cricket, which came as a result of a terrorist attack targeting the Sri Lankan team in March 2009.

When Al Jazeera reached out to Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC), its vice president Ravin Wickramaratne confirmed that SLC did, indeed, reach out to the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) after the boycott was announced.

“We asked them to reconsider the decision,” Wickramaratne said.

“It [boycott] would have impacted Sri Lanka economically, whether directly or indirectly.

“We have always had a good relationship with the PCB and we have always supported them, so we’re happy with their decision.”

A little over 24 hours ahead of the match in Colombo, there is a sense of palpable excitement and a growing buzz around the fixture as it returns from the brink of cancellation.

As of Saturday morning, 28,000 tickets had been sold for the game but local organisers expect a capacity crowd of 40,000 to make it into the stands.

Come Sunday, thousands more will line the streets in and around Maligawatte, the bustling Colombo suburb that houses the famous Premadasa Stadium.

Mumbai, India — For Indian cricket fans travelling to Sri Lanka this weekend, the opportunity to watch their team take on archrivals Pakistan in the T20 World Cup has come at the cost of inflated airfares, soaring hotel prices and a long wait for matchday tickets.

But these are mere sacrifices that thousands are willing to make to witness the most heated rivalry in the sport as it unfolds on Sunday at the R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo.

Fuelled by a decades-long fraught political relationship, cricket encounters between India and Pakistan are among the biggest spectacles in sport — often framed as bloodthirsty contests of national pride.

For the first time in the history of the World Cup, geopolitical tensions threatened to put the marquee contest in doubt until Pakistan’s government reversed its order for a boycott of the match.

While the near-last-minute U-turn revived excitement, it came at a price for the Indian supporters making late travel plans. Pakistan’s participation was confirmed only six days before the fixture, triggering a sharp surge in airfares from several Indian cities.

Fans who booked their air tickets weeks in advance, too, paid significantly higher fares due to the significantly higher demand surrounding any India-Pakistan match, which is commonly deemed the most lucrative fixture in cricket.

“I paid a premium of approximately 50 percent compared to the usual rates,” Aditya Chheda, a finance professional from Mumbai, told Al Jazeera. “This was despite booking a month in advance and opting for a layover instead of a direct flight.”

Flight, hotel prices skyrocket

A nonstop round-trip journey from India’s western metropolis Mumbai to Colombo, which typically costs approximately $275, went upwards of $1,000 two days before the match.

Similar fares were spotted for nonstop journeys from Bengaluru in southern India, while round-trip nonstop flights from Chennai to Colombo – a route that takes only about an hour and 20 minutes – had surged to at least $550, up from its usual fare of $165.

Planning ahead helped Bengaluru resident Parth Chauhan secure deals at a good price, but his friends accompanying him to Colombo had to pay a steep premium – three times the usual cost – after booking closer to the match date.

Accommodation costs rose sharply as well. Tariffs at five-star hotels in Colombo ranged between $400 and $1,000 per night from Saturday to Monday, when most spectators were expected to fly in and out.

Chauhan, who works in a cybersecurity organisation, had to wait a whopping four hours in a virtual queue to buy match tickets, but he insists the hassle was worth the wait, as he gears up to watch India play abroad for the first time.

“It’s an opportune moment, and there is a lot of exuberance to witness this because it’s a historic fixture,” he said.

For a lucky few, the surprise came not from the difficulty of securing tickets but from their unusually low price. Piyush Nathani, an IT professional from Bengaluru, paid only $5 for the fixture, which draws millions in broadcast, sponsor and advertising revenue.

“This is the cheapest ticket I’ve ever purchased. Just $5 to watch a World Cup match, that too of the magnitude of India vs Pakistan, is a steal,” said Nathani, who has travelled with a group of six friends.

‘More than a cricket match’

Having been part of the Ahmedabad crowd in 2023 that saw India beat Pakistan in a 50-over World Cup group game, Nathani is relishing the chance to watch Sunday’s match in a neutral venue, where fans from both countries are expected to be present.

“The feeling of beating Pakistan is something money cannot buy,” added the 29-year-old.

Like Nathani, Chheda has also travelled abroad previously to watch Team India. The 32-year-old watched India lift the 2024 T20 World Cup in Barbados and now wants to “pick up where I left off”.

“When there’s a World Cup, the first thing Indian fans hope for is to beat Pakistan,” he added.

“Winning the World Cup is the biggest target, but beating Pakistan feels like a moral victory – it’s more than a cricket match.”

United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has claimed that Washington engineered a dollar shortage in Iran to send the rial into freefall and cause protests on the streets.

In December and January, Iran was faced with one of the biggest antigovernment protests the country has seen since the Islamic revolution of 1979, prompted by the severe economic crisis.

Protests over soaring prices in Iran began with shopkeepers in Tehran who shuttered their shops and began demonstrating on December 28, 2025, after the rial plunged to a record low against the US dollar in late December. The protests then spread to other provinces of Iran.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s government responded with force. More than 6,800 protesters, including at least 150 children, are thought to have been killed in a sweeping crackdown by the government on the protest movement.

So, how did Washington create a “dollar shortage” in Iran, ultimately causing the rial to tank? And what effect has that had on the Iranian people?

What is a ‘dollar shortage’?

A “dollar shortage” refers to when a country does not have enough US dollars to pay for things it needs from the rest of the world.

The US dollar is the main currency used in global trade, especially for oil, machinery and loan repayments, which means countries need a steady supply of it.

If exports fall and sanctions block access to the US financial system, dollars can become scarce. As a result, the local currency weakens, prices of imported goods rise, and inflation worsens.

In Iran, a “dollar shortage” was engineered by simultaneously blocking the two main channels of foreign exchange (FX) inflow: Oil exports and international banking access, said Mohammad Reza Farzanegan, an economist at Germany’s Marburg University. The US did this by imposing sanctions on Iranian oil, meaning anyone buying or selling it would be subject to punitive measures.

Given Iran’s dependence on oil for revenue, economic sanctions on its oil can create a severe FX constraint.

“By using secondary sanctions to threaten any global entity trading in dollars with Iran, the US traps Iran’s existing reserves abroad and prevents new dollars from entering the domestic market,” Farzanegan told Al Jazeera.

What has US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said?

Replying to a query about dealing with Iran at a Congressional hearing last week, Treasury Secretary Bessent described the US strategy to send the Iranian currency plunging.

“What we [have done] at Treasury is created a dollar shortage in the country,” Bessent said, adding that the strategy came to a “grand culmination in December, when one of the largest banks in Iran went under … the Iranian currency went into freefall, inflation exploded, and hence, we have seen the Iranian people out on the street.

“We have seen the Iranian leadership wiring money out of the country like crazy,” Bessent added. “So the rats are leaving the ship, and that is a good sign that they know the end may be near.”

Before this, speaking with Fox News at the World Economic Forum last month in Davos, Bessent explained the role US sanctions played in driving the recent nationwide protests.

“President Trump ordered Treasury … to put maximum pressure on Iran, and it’s worked,” he said. “Because in December, their economy collapsed. They are not able to get imports, and this is why the people took to the streets.”

In both instances, Bessent referred to his earlier remarks at the Economic Club of New York, in March last year, when he outlined how the White House would leverage President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign to collapse Iran’s economy.

In his address there, Bessent said the US “elevated a sanctions campaign against [Iran’s] export infrastructure, targeting all stages of Iran’s oil supply chain”, coupled with “vigorous government engagement and private sector outreach” to “close off Iran’s access to the international financial system”.

What effect did the dollar shortage have in Iran?

In January, the Iranian rial was trading at 1.5 million to the dollar – a sharp decline from about 700,000 a year earlier in January 2025 and about 900,000 in mid-2025. The plummeting currency triggered steep inflation, with food prices an average of 72 percent higher than last year.

In 2018, during his first presidency, Trump withdrew from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a deal between Iran and global powers limiting Tehran’s nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief.

Since re-election last January, President Trump has doubled down on his so-called “maximum pressure” to cripple Iran’s economy and corner Tehran to renegotiate its nuclear and regional policies. Last month, Trump threatened a 25 percent tariff on countries doing business with Iran.

Through the rigorous blocking of Iran from the global financial system by creating a dollar shortage, the US pushed Tehran towards a severe “import compression, [and as a result, Iran] cannot pay for the intermediate goods and machinery required for domestic production”, said Farzanegan, the economist.

The US strategy, he said, “is particularly devastating because it leverages commercial risk management against humanitarian needs”. In short, Washington’s strategy “makes the small Iranian market a commercial liability” for any company, even if they are only dealing with medicine, for instance, Farzanegan added.

A research paper published by Farzanegan and Iranian American economist Nader Habibi last year found that the size of Iran’s middle class would have expanded by an annual average of approximately 17 percentage points, between 2012 and 2019, if it were not for US action.

In 2019, the estimated size of loss in the middle-class share of the population in Iran was 28 percentage points, the research found.

“People lost their purchasing power, and savings were wiped out,” the economist told Al Jazeera. “This is a long-term destruction of the country’s human capital.”

Besides the US action is the existing vulnerability of Iran’s economic structure, with factors like long-term mismanagement, high rates of corruption and over-reliance on oil revenues making it fragile.

While the US sanctions created external shock, a lack of domestic structural reforms left the government with “no fiscal space to cushion the blow”.

What is the US’s endgame here – and will it succeed?

Bessent’s admission that Washington deliberately created a “dollar shortage” signals the US’s shift towards a total economic warfare narrative.

“This is economic statecraft; no shots fired,” Bessent said at the WEF in Davos last month.

“This admission may complicate the US’s diplomatic standing, as it confirms that the humanitarian channels for food and medicine are often rendered useless if the entire banking system is being targeted for collapse,” Farzanegan said.

Bruce Fein, a former US associate deputy attorney general who specialises in constitutional and international law, told Al Jazeera that this type of economic coercion is “as common as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west”, pointing to economic sanctions against Russia, Cuba, North Korea, China and Myanmar.

However, unlike in other cases where the US has applied economic pressure, Farzanegan said Iran’s case is “a unique experiment due to the duration and intensity of the pressure”.

Unlike Russia, which has a more diversified export base and larger reserves, Iran has been facing varied forms of sanctions for decades since the supreme leader took power in 1979.

“Iran has a sophisticated internal mechanism for sanctions circumvention that makes the ‘dollar shortage’ a game of cat-and-mouse rather than a one-time shock,” the economist said.

With a US armada currently stationed in the Arabian Sea, the US and Iran are in talks to defuse tensions. The US wants three key things from Iran: To stop enriching uranium as part of its nuclear programme, to get rid of its ballistic missiles and to stop arming non-state actors in the region.

Ultimately, observers say, the US wants regime change in Iran.

But Fein said his experience shows that economic sanctions alone “seldom, if ever, topple regimes … Regime change comes externally only with the use of military force.

“Iran’s dollar shortage will not oust the mullahs or Revolutionary Guard,” he said, referring to Iran’s current administrative structure.

The impoverishment of Iranians will diminish, Fein told Al Jazeera, “rather than promote the likelihood of a successful revolution because day-to-day survival will be the priority”.

Nablus, the occupied West Bank – For decades, the Zenabia Elementary School has been offering an intimate learning environment to aspiring young students from across the educational spectrum in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

But now, due to Israel’s years-long withholding of tax revenues owed to the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian school system is effectively broke. Like administrators at all government-run schools in the West Bank, the Zenabia school principal, Aisha al-Khatib, is struggling to keep her small, public school in session.

For most of the week, the Zenabia school is shuttered, and children roam the streets or stay at home. School supplies are woefully missing, with even regular schoolbooks now reduced to “bundles of pages”.

“We do everything we can, but we do not have the time or the materials or the consistency to properly teach our children and keep them off the streets,” says al-Khatib. “And this is everywhere in the West Bank.”

Targeting the education of Palestine’s children, she says, “means destroying the nation”.

Under the direction of far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Israel has systematically been withholding billions of dollars in tax revenues over the past two years that Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA). The measure is partly intended to punish the PA for its longstanding policy of paying families of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel for resisting the occupation – even after the PA announced early last year that it was reforming such policies.

Public services have faced severe cuts, affecting the salaries of bureaucrats, sanitary workers, and the police.

But possibly nowhere has that budgetary crisis been felt more than in the education sector.

At Zenabia and elsewhere in the West Bank, public schools are currently only open for a maximum of three days a week. Teachers face long stretches of not being paid, and when they are, they only receive about 60 percent of what they were earning before, resulting in strikes.

And the effects of these cuts in education are showing up on the days when school is in session. Class time is so diminished at Zenabia that teachers focus almost solely on teaching mathematics, Arabic, and English, with subjects like the sciences being essentially cut altogether.

The result, educators warn, could be lasting educational gaps for a generation of Palestinian students.

“As principal of the school, I know that [the students] are not [at] the same [educational] level as before,” al-Khatib says.

‘We are always absent from school’

Spending most of his days out of school, star student Zaid Hasseneh, 10, tries to keep improving his English by looking up words on Google Translate. Zaid dreams of going to university someday in the United States, with hopes of becoming a doctor.

“I want my son to grow up to be cultured – not just memorise the material he learns at school,” says his mother, Eman. “No, I want his cultural knowledge to develop and become diverse and advanced.”

Eman helps Zaid when she can with his studies, but she is busy keeping the family afloat financially after her husband lost his work in Israel. Before Israel’s war on Gaza began in 2023, Eman’s husband worked in Tel Aviv as a mechanic. After Israel revoked his work permit, along with those of some 150,000 other West Bank Palestinians, he has been unable to find work. Eman now works in a halawa factory as the sole breadwinner.

“I go home tired from work, but I have to keep up with [Zaid] regularly,” says Eman. “I tell him, ‘The most important thing is studying. Studying is essential for life.’”

But Eman realises how limited she is in helping her son with his studies. “The teacher knows one thing, but I don’t know how to explain it,” says Eman. “And now, the books [they receive in school] aren’t complete books anymore. They’re bundles. Regular books are 130 pages, but these are 40 or 50 pages.”

To compound the dearth in school resources, students and their families describe erratic schedules that make cumulative learning a near impossibility. “The whole family’s routine is affected,” says Eman.

Even Zaid is now often spending his days out in the streets rather than studying in the classroom – or otherwise on his phone, playing mobile games.

That is the case for most students these days.

Muhammad and Ahmed al-Hajj joined Zenabia four years ago as six-year-olds when they faced extreme bullying in another school. They came to love the new school and the intimate setting it offers. But the twins now mostly spend their time on their phones. With their parents also struggling to earn enough money to get by, they’re left at home alone during their days off from school.

“It’s not good at all. We are always absent from school,” says one of the twins. “It’s not like a full schedule, and we try to study as much as we can, but still, we don’t feel good about it.”

Some families have switched their children over to private schools, but few can afford to do so. “My [monthly] salary is 2,000 shekels [$650],” explains Eman Hassaneh. “About 1,000 goes towards the home rent. Another 500 goes towards bills. And only very little is left for food. I cannot also take care of his education.”

Teachers quitting, and mounting dropouts

Collectively, the PA’s multi-year budget cuts of billions of dollars are shrinking both the attendance of students and the number of teachers, too.

“Many of the teachers left working in the schools to work in factories because they do not get enough salary,” says al-Khatib. “And they don’t feel that they are giving what they need to give the students.”

Tamara Shtayeh, a teacher at Zenabia, nowadays only teaches maths, English, and Arabic due to the reduced funding. “As a teacher, the three-day solution is a bad solution because it doesn’t cover the minimum education that is needed,” she said. “Not for the students, and not for the teachers as well.”

Due to her reduced salary, Shtayeh, a mother of three girls, is selling products online on the side to support her family. Even the school’s principal, al-Khatib, says she can now only afford to send one of her two college-age daughters to university, with the other daughter staying at home.

School hours are reduced even further as Israeli soldiers regularly raid the surrounding areas, closing the school every time they do so. With the crisis stretching on for years now, Shtayeh is sensing a generational gap widening between the previous generation that received five days of school, and this one going to school for about half of that.

Shtayeh and al-Khatib worry about the lack of routine in the children’s lives. For every student like Zaid, who is devoted to educating himself despite the circumstances, many more students are dropping out of the system altogether.

Not far from Zenabia, Talal Adabiq, 15, now spends his days selling sweets and drinks for eight hours a day on the streets of Nablus.

“I don’t really like school,” says Talal. “I prefer working.”

Talal told his parents about a year ago that he wanted to drop out of school. Though they wanted him to continue his studies, he told them he did not find much use for school anymore – and he used the irregular school schedule to prove his point.

Offering to help support his struggling family financially, Talal subsequently dropped out of al-Kindi School. He now makes “about 40 to 50 shekels a day” ($13-16) hawking street goods.

As he sells lollipops and other sweets on a Tuesday afternoon, several teenage boys looked on nearby. They say they’re still in school, but on this budget-mandated day off, some of the boys joke about how “fun” it would be to not go to school at all.

Talal, meanwhile, shrugs off questions about what dropping out of school portends for his future. “God willing, things will be better,” says Talal. “I don’t know how.”

In the estimations of educators and representatives from the Palestinian Authority, about 5 to 10 percent of students have dropped out of school in the West Bank in the past two years.

‘Our children deserve a chance at life’

While massive budget cuts roil the education sector, the Palestinian Authority is struggling to come up with solutions as its budgetary woes deepen – and schoolchildren otherwise face threats, violence and demolitions at the hands of Israeli soldiers, settlers and the Israeli Civil Administration.

Even before the war on Gaza began, the school sector was facing a variety of crises, with teacher strikes commonplace, as well as Israeli attacks on school infrastructure and children on their way to class, with at least 36 demolitions of 20 schools between 2010 and 2023.

But systemic attacks on education are now intensifying. According to Ghassan Daghlas, the governor of Nablus, in his district alone, three schools have been attacked in the last two months by settlers. In nearby Jalud last month, settlers set a school on fire. The rise in violence is leaving students at once traumatised and fearful of going to school, says Daghlas.

“In the past three months, most of the invasions that target homes in the Nablus district are targeting schoolchildren. They will take the kid along with one of the parents. They subject them to interrogation for a few hours,” says the governor. “What kind of psychological state will the students have after these interrogations?”

According to PA estimates, more than 84,000 students in the West Bank have had their education disrupted by incidents including settler attacks, military raids and demolitions of schools. More than 80 schools serving approximately 13,000 students are under threat of full or partial demolition by Israeli authorities in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem. Between July and September 2025 alone, more than 90 such education-related incidents were documented in the West Bank.

In Area C – the 60 percent of the West Bank under full Israeli military control – students from isolated villages sometimes have to walk several kilometres to reach their schools, in which they regularly face harassment or attacks from settlers as well as soldiers on the way, with a rising trend in settler outposts deliberately placed near schools.

“These are not individual acts by some violent settlers,” says Mahmoud al-Aloul, the vice chairman of the central committee of Fatah, the Palestinian Authority’s ruling political party. “Rather, it’s a general policy that is supported by the occupation.”

In 2025, Nablus governorate alone had 19 students killed by Israeli army gunfire, according to Daghlas. A total of 240 were injured.

Education officials say the longer the crisis persists, the greater the long-term impact will be as teacher attrition, interrupted learning and rising dropout rates compound over time.

“The continuation of the crisis means risking long-term institutional erosion, in which temporary solutions become permanent, and the regime becomes less able to restore its previous level of quality, efficiency and justice,” says Refaat Sabbah, the president of the Global Campaign for Education. “Saving education today is not a sectoral option, but a strategic necessity to protect society and its future.”

For Eman Hassaneh, that means safeguarding her son Zaid’s future hopes and dreams. “We hope all of these barriers to education won’t actually affect our children and their passion for learning,” she says.

“Our children deserve a chance at life.”

Ruemmler’s resignation comes after emails revealed her links to the late sex offender.

The top lawyer at Goldman Sachs, Kathy Ruemmler, has announced that she will resign following revelations of her links to the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Ruemmler’s resignation comes after the United States Department of Justice’s latest release of investigative files about Epstein showed that she had received gifts from Epstein, offered him advice on managing his reputation, and likened him to an older brother.

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon confirmed Ruemmler’s resignation in a statement on Thursday, saying that he respected her decision.

“Throughout her tenure, Kathy has been an extraordinary general counsel, and we are grateful for her contributions and sound advice on a wide range of consequential legal matters for the firm,” Solomon said in a statement provided to Al Jazeera.

“As one of the most accomplished professionals in her field, Kathy has also been a mentor and friend to many of our people, and she will be missed,” he said.

In an interview with the Financial Times on Thursday, Ruemmler, who previously served as White House counsel under US President Barack Obama, said that she would step down as chief legal officer and general counsel at the end of June.

Ruemmler told the newspaper that media attention on her relationship with Epstein, who died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, had become a “distraction”.

She had previously expressed regret for knowing Epstein, and denied providing the financier with legal representation or advocating on his behalf to any third party.

Ruemmler is just the latest in a slew of high-profile and powerful figures to exit prominent roles or face legal scrutiny in connection with the Epstein case.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday announced the resignation of his cabinet secretary, Chris Wormald, in his latest effort to quell controversy surrounding his appointment of Peter Mandelson, Britain’s former ambassador to the US, whose ties to Epstein have prompted a police investigation into suspected misconduct in public office.

Also on Thursday, police in Norway searched properties belonging to former Prime Minister Thorbjorn Jagland as part of a corruption probe focused on the politician’s associations with Epstein.

Taipei agrees to buy some $85bn of US energy, aircraft and equipment in exchange for 15 percent tariff rate.

The United States and Taiwan have finalised a trade deal to reduce tariffs on Taiwanese exports and facilitate billions of dollars of spending on US goods.

The agreement announced on Thursday lowers the general tariff on Taiwanese goods from 20 percent to 15 percent, the same level as Asian trade partners South Korea and Japan, in exchange for Taipei agreeing to buy about $85bn of US energy, aircraft and equipment.

Under the deal, Taiwan will eliminate or reduce 99 percent of tariff barriers and provide preferential market access to numerous US goods, including auto parts, chemicals, machinery, health products, dairy products and pork, the office of the US trade envoy said in a statement.

The US will, in turn, exempt a large range of Taiwanese goods from tariffs, including chalk, castor oil, pineapples and ginseng.

Taiwanese President William Lai Ching-te said Taipei had secured tariff exemptions for some 2,000 Taiwanese products, hailing the agreement as a “pivotal” moment for the self-governing island’s economy.

Lai said the deal, when various carve-outs are included, would take the average tariff rate on Taiwanese goods to 12.3 percent.

“From familiar items such as Phalaenopsis orchids, tea, bubble tea ingredients (tapioca starch), and coffee, to pineapple cakes, taro, pineapples, and mangoes – these products that represent Taiwan will become more price-competitive in the US market,” Lai said in a statement on social media.

“We aim not only to sell Taiwan’s great flavors overseas, but also to ensure Taiwanese brands truly enter international markets,” he said.

Lai made no mention of Taiwan’s chip industry, a crucial driver of the island’s economy that is estimated to account for up to 20 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

Taiwan’s exports rose by 35 percent in 2025 on the back of furious demand for its AI chips, hitting a record $640.75bn.

Thursday’s agreement notably does not include specific commitments from Taiwan to invest in the US chip industry, despite an announcement by US President Donald Trump’s administration last month that Taiwanese firms would pour $250bn into the sector.

A fact sheet released by the Office of the US Trade Representative said the two sides “take note” of the January deal, which included a prior commitment by chip giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing to invest $100bn in the US.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Thursday’s agreement built on the longstanding trade relations between Taiwan and the US and would “significantly enhance the resilience of our supply chains, particularly in high-technology sectors”.

“President Trump’s leadership in the Asia Pacific region continues to generate prosperous trade ties for the United States with important partners across Asia, while further advancing the economic and national security interests of the American people,” Greer said.

Nearly one-third of Taiwan’s exports went to the US in 2025, making the country the island’s biggest market for the first time since 2000.

Jeffrey Epstein used a former Russian official with links to Moscow’s FSB intelligence services to collect information on a woman he claimed was attempting to blackmail his business associates, according to documents released by the United States Department of Justice.

Epstein reached out to Sergei Belyakov, a former deputy minister of economic development, for advice in 2015 about what he described as an attempt to blackmail a group of “powerful” businessmen in New York, the documents contained in the latest tranche of the so-called Epstein files show.

“I need a favor,” Epstein wrote to Belyakov in a July 2015 email, describing an extortion attempt by a Russian woman who had arrived at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York the previous week.

Epstein said the situation was “bad for business for everyone involved” and asked for “suggestions”.

Belyakov, a graduate of the FSB Academy, Moscow’s institute for training intelligence personnel, wrote back that he needed some time to “get information about her” and that he would meet a man who knew the woman the next day.

Several days later, Belyakov sent Epstein a roughly 100-word description of the woman’s background and what the ex-official described as her “sex and escort” business.

“She has nobody behind her,” Belyakov said, adding that she was believed to have “no patronage”.

Belyakov said “business problems” may have led the woman to resort to blackmail, and suggested that denying her entry to the US would be a “real threat” to her business.

Epstein, the FSB Academy graduate and US billionaires

Belyakov, who took up the position of board chairman at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum after leaving the Kremlin in 2014, relied on Epstein for access to high-profile figures in the financier’s orbit, according to the documents.

After a meeting with Epstein in May 2014, Belyakov told the convicted sex offender that he did not know many people who could offer “new horizons and prospects”.

“And I’m looking forward for next meeting with you,” he told Epstein.

In July 2015, Belyakov sought Epstein’s help to organise meetings with American venture capitalist Peter Thiel and the billionaire heir and businessman Thomas Pritzker.

“Sergey – let me know when you are in SF and it would be good to find a time to meet,” Thiel wrote to Belyakov in an email in July 2015, following an introduction by Epstein.

A little over a week later, Belyakov told Epstein that Thiel and Pritzker had shared their views on Russia’s economy and other topics, calling the meetings “very helpful”.

“By the way I was surprised that they had a lot of information about Russian economy and their view about our society,” Belyakov wrote, adding he hoped to see both businessmen again in Moscow.

In 2016, Belyakov sought Epstein’s feedback on proposals he wished to discuss with business leaders in the US.

Epstein told Belyakov he liked the idea, which was not specified in the emails, but that he should get a “good English speaking editor” before sharing business proposals, and there were “pretty women” who could fill the role.

Efforts by Al Jazeera to contact Belyakov, including through the St Petersburg International Economic Forum and the e-commerce company Ozon, where he served as managing director from 2021 to 2024, were unsuccessful.

Thiel’s foundation did not respond to a request for comment. Pritzker declined to comment through a spokesperson for his foundation.

Epstein also sought to arrange meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, according to the documents, though there is no indication he was successful.

“I think you might suggest to putin, that lavrov, can get insight on talking to me,” Epstein wrote in an email to former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjorn Jagland in June 2018.

Jagland, who is under investigation in Norway on suspicion of corruption in his dealings with Epstein, wrote back that he would “suggest” the idea to Lavrov’s assistant.

Epstein, who died in 2019 while in prison awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, has long been the focus of speculation that he worked for or with intelligence agencies on behalf of various countries, including Israel.

He had close ties with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak during his lifetime, with the two men exploring numerous business ventures and regularly exchanging correspondence on personal matters.

Barak’s former aide Yoni Koren, an ex-Israeli military intelligence officer who died in 2023, also stayed at residences belonging to Epstein for long stretches while receiving cancer treatment in the US in the late 2010s.

New York City, United States – For 14 years, BC Dodge built a career telling other people’s stories as a marketing and communications professional in the nonprofit sector in the Washington, DC area in the United States. But in late 2024, that stable career hit a speed bump.

He was laid off from his job amid a round of restructuring. The news landed without warning. One day he had a job, and the next he was sitting at home, staring at the numbers, trying to figure out how to keep paying the mortgage and putting food on the table.

He is married, and his partner is a teacher, but the math did not work. One salary might cover things for a little while, but not long enough to maintain long-term stability.

So he started applying for new work immediately. Over three months, he submitted 350 job applications. He got six interviews.

After months of searching, something moved.

He advanced in the hiring process for a Washington, DC–based nonprofit, making it far enough to sit across from senior leadership. It felt like he finally caught a break.

Then the ground shifted again. As Dodge was interviewing for a new job, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, was advising the administration of US President Donald Trump on how to shrink the federal government, and that meant cutting funding to agencies that provide contracts and funds to swaths of nonprofit organisations around the country. The effects rippled outward, and Dodge was caught in the crosshairs.

Contracts were cancelled and funding streams dried up. Nonprofits that depend on government support had to pull back and scale down ambitions — those very same nonprofits from whom Dodge sought employment.

“I got a call from HR saying they weren’t going to hire for the position, and that all hiring was on hold. I couldn’t argue with them, because I’d been hearing the same thing from organisations I’d spoken to since I started applying. ‘We were relying on federal funds, and now they’re gone,’” Dodge said.

Then it was back to the drawing board. He began searching yet again, but this time with a cloud of uncertainty looming over the entire industry he works in. Dodge finally took what he could get — part-time work in his field. The pay was well below what he had been earning before, but he accepted it anyway. Some income, he reasoned, was better than none.

The result is underemployment. Underemployment can manifest in several ways, often when workers are seeking full-time work but can only find part-time positions, or when the jobs they work do not fully utilise their skills and training. It is generally associated with industries like restaurants or retail, but it also reaches into fields with fewer resources and shrinking opportunities, including the nonprofit sector, where jobs are increasingly precarious and full-time stability is harder to find because of the wave of government funding cuts in 2025.

The upshot is lower incomes for underemployed workers, sometimes below the cost of living or even pushing them into the ranks of the working poor.

Underemployment has been on the rise, according to the Economic Policy Institute, which has tracked the rate of underemployment since 1978. Today, 8 percent of the US population is underemployed, up 0.5 percent from 2024 and it is up 1.1 percent from 2023.

At the same time, many in the US are seeing their expenses increase.

The impact of tariffs has hit low-to-middle-income earners harder than others. Analysis from the Yale Budget Lab found that lower-income households are paying a higher percentage of their post-tax income on goods subject to tariffs as opposed to higher-income households, all while costs for necessities like healthcare are increasing.

Earlier this year, Congressional leaders failed to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies. Premiums increased by an average of 144 percent, according to analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

“Some people have lost their jobs and found new ones that pay less, but others have kept their jobs, but their healthcare premiums have increased. Their electric bills have also gone up. Their salaries no longer cover basic living costs,” Jillian Hishaw, a personal bankruptcy lawyer in Charlotte, North Carolina, said.

She said that because of increased costs like these and a stalling job market, she is seeing an increase in inquiries about personal bankruptcy filings in efforts by potential clients not to lose their homes to foreclosure.

“In one day last week, 85 foreclosures were filed in Mecklenburg County [where Charlotte is located]. Foreclosures happen daily, but 85 in a single day is unusually high. Two years ago, the daily average was 10 to 20, but now filings are approaching triple digits each day,” Hishaw said.

Shrinking options

The surging economic pressures hit workers across various sectors, including financial and administrative services. An Ohio-based accountant who did not want his name to be published, has worked a patchwork of accounting and administrative jobs over the past few years. In March, he was laid off from a research organisation in central Ohio.

After months of searching, he found new work, but not as an accountant, and the pay falls far short of covering his cost of living.

“I’m working as a sales coordinator, which I really don’t want to be doing, but it was the only thing I could land with how bad things are. It’s not enough to live on,” he said.

The labour market is under strain. Layoffs reached more than 1.1 million in 2025, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, while job creation failed to keep pace, with just 584,000 jobs added. As a result, more workers are settling for underpaid or part-time work that does not meet basic living expenses, including Dodge and the accountant.

Michele Evermore, senior fellow at the National Academy of Social Insurance, says that economic uncertainty driven by tariffs and developments in artificial intelligence has put businesses across a wide set of sectors essentially on pause — maintaining the status quo or scaling back.

“People who are already at the margins are getting kicked out entirely, and that’s placing pressure on everyone who is clinging to a job,” Evermore told Al Jazeera.

In January, one of the key measures of underemployment, the number of people who work part-time for economic reasons, such as an inability to find full-time work or had their hours reduced, hit 4.9 million. It was a 453,000 decline from the month before, but is up 410,000 from this time last year, according to the January jobs report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday.

Long-term unemployment jumped 386,000 from this time a year ago to 1.8 million, although it remains unchanged compared with the previous month.

The nonprofit sector has been hit particularly hard in the last year, losing 28,729 jobs in 2025, up sharply from 5,640 losses the year before, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Like the Ohio accountant, Dodge has been searching for new opportunities since he lost his full-time role a year and a half ago. He has applied for 460 jobs and only landed a handful of interviews.

Working weekends, washing dishes

The market is only getting tighter. US employers cut more than 108,000 jobs in January, while employers only announced intentions to hire 5,300 new roles for the month, the lowest on record since Challenger, Gray & Christmas started tracking that in 2009.

“Employers aren’t wanting to make any big investments right now, including increasing salaries to their workforce,” Evermore, who served as a policy adviser in the US Labor Department during the administration of former US President Joe Biden, added.

In December, labour market turnover remained stagnant. Amid economic uncertainty and a slowdown in new job growth, many Americans are hanging on to the jobs they already have. Job openings fell to 6.5 million, down 386,000 from the previous month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labour Turnover Survey (JOLTS).

Hiring and separations, which include layoffs and firings, were unchanged. That followed November’s report, which similarly showed little movement in both new hiring and the number of workers leaving their jobs.

Combined, that means that for the underemployed, finding a new role, either part-time to augment their existing income, or to replace it altogether, is increasingly difficult for people like the accountant.

“I’m also working weekends at a friend’s cafe, washing dishes, and I’m still applying and interviewing for other opportunities. But it’s the same story, no offers. At the same time, I’m debating whether to switch professions or even go back to school, even though I already have a master’s degree,” he said.

That shared distress has also created an unlikely sense of camaraderie among those struggling to get by, even as the outlook remains bleak.

Dodge finds it in late-night scrolls through Reddit, watching strangers narrate versions of the same stalled search.

“I doomscroll a lot,” he said, “getting depressed about the state of politics and the global economy, and taking some solace in knowing I’m not the only one struggling to find viable employment after 12, 13, 14, even 15 months.”

For now, that recognition of others stuck in the same place, hitting the same walls, is enough to keep him moving forward, submitting applications and waiting for a response that might not even come.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s 10-year outlook projects worsening long-term United States federal deficits and rising debt, driven largely by increased spending, notably on Social Security, Medicare, and debt service payments.

Compared with the CBO’s analysis this time last year, the fiscal outlook, which was released on Wednesday, has deteriorated modestly.

The CBO said that the deficit for fiscal 2026 – President Donald Trump’s first full fiscal year in office – will be about 5.8 percent of GDP, about where it was in fiscal 2025, when the deficit was $1.775 trillion.

But the US deficit-to-GDP ratio will average 6.1 percent over the next decade, reaching 6.7 percent in fiscal 2036 – far above US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s goal to shrink it to about 3 percent of economic output.

Major developments over the last year are factored into the latest report, including Republicans’ tax and spending measure known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” higher tariffs, and the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, which includes deporting millions of immigrants from the US mainland.

As a result of these changes, the projected 2026 deficit is about $100bn higher, and total deficits from 2026 to 2035 are $1.4 trillion larger, while debt held by the public is projected to rise from 101 percent of GDP to 120 percent — exceeding historical highs.

Notably, the CBO says higher tariffs partially offset some of those increases by raising federal revenue by $3 trillion, but that also comes with higher inflation from 2026 to 2029.

Rising debt and debt service are important because repaying investors for borrowed money crowds out government spending on basic needs such as roads, infrastructure and education, which enable investments in future economic growth.

CBO projections also indicate that inflation does not hit the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target rate until 2030.

A major difference is that the CBO forecasts rely on significantly lower economic growth projections than the Trump administration, pegging 2026 real GDP growth at 2.2 percent on a fourth-quarter comparison basis, fading to an average of about 1.8 percent for the rest of the decade.

Trump administration officials in recent weeks have projected robust growth in the 3-4 percent range for 2026, with recent predictions that first-quarter growth could top 6 percent amid rising investments in factories and artificial intelligence data centres.

CBO’s forecasts assume that tax and spending laws and tariff policies in early December remain in place for a decade. The government’s fiscal year starts on October 1.

While revived investment tax incentives and bigger individual tax refunds provide a boost in 2026, the CBO said that this is attenuated by the drag from larger fiscal deficits and reduced immigration that slows the growth of the labour force.

Jonathan Burks, executive vice president of economic and health policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center said “large deficits are unprecedented for a growing, peacetime economy”, though “the good news is there is still time for policymakers to correct course.”

‘Urgent warning’

Lawmakers have recently addressed rising federal debt and deficits primarily through targeted spending caps and debt limit suspensions, as well as deploying “extraordinary measures” when the US is close to hitting its statutory spending limit, though these measures have often been accompanied by new, large-scale spending or tax policies that maintain high deficit levels.

And Trump, at the start of his second term, deployed a new “Department of Government Efficiency”, which set a goal to balance the budget by cutting $2 trillion in waste, fraud and abuse; however, budget analysts estimate that DOGE cut anywhere between $1.4bn to $7bn, largely through workforce firings.

Michael Peterson, CEO of the Peterson Foundation, said the CBO’s latest budget projection “is an urgent warning to our leaders about America’s costly fiscal path.”

“This election year, voters understand the connection between rising debt and their personal economic condition. And the financial markets are watching. Stabilising our debt is an essential part of improving affordability, and must be a core component of the 2026 campaign conversation.”

Winning bidders include Chevron, Eni, QatarEnergy and Aiteo.

Libya has assigned new oil and gas exploration rights to foreign firms, aiming to revamp the sector after years of civil strife.

The country’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) announced the results of its first licensing round since 2007 on Wednesday. Winners included US oil giant Chevron and Africa’s largest privately-owned energy company, Nigeria’s Aiteo.

Other winning bidders were consortia: Spain’s Repsol with British Petroleum, Eni North Africa with QatarEnergy, and Repsol with Hungary’s MOLGroup and Turkiye Petrolleri.

The licensing awards signal some renewed interest in Libya’s oil sector, which foreign investors had long been wary of after the country erupted into conflict in 2011 with the overthrow of longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi. But experts said the response was smaller than expected.

“It is likely that lingering uncertainty over Libya’s political dysfunction and insecurity in the areas around the blocks on offer were factors in the underwhelming response,” Hamish Kinnear, an analyst with UK-based risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft, told the AFP news agency.

Libya remains politically divided between rival administrations in the east and west, and disputes over the central ‌bank and oil revenues often disrupt production at key oil fields.

‘Return of trust’

The licensing round, in which five of 20 blocks on offer were awarded, follows a $20bn deal last month with France’s TotalEnergies and ConocoPhillips to boost oil production over 25 years.

Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbeibah, who announced the deal, said the goal was to increase daily oil production by 850,000 barrels within that timeframe. Libya currently produces approximately 1.4 million bpd.

The round used a new, more investor-friendly contract model to replace the rigid terms that previously deterred investment.

NOC chief Masoud Suleman said a committee will be created to further “improve the terms” of the bidding system and negotiate with candidates to grant unallocated blocks.

Speaking at the bid’s announcement ceremony, he said “a return of trust and resuming institutional work in one of the country’s most important sectors after a long period of pause and challenges.”

“They are part of a broader national path that aims for prosperity, growth, the return of normalcy,” he added.

Mexican authorities say they are working to identify five other bodies after 10 workers were kidnapped last month.

Five of 10 employees who were abducted from a Canadian-run mine in Mexico last month have been confirmed as dead, authorities said.

Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office said on Monday that authorities have identified five bodies found at a property in El Verde, a rural locality in the state of Sinaloa, and are working to identify the remains of five other people.

“It is important to note that prosecutorial authorities have remained in contact with the victims’ relatives,” the office said in a statement.

“In the cases where the bodies have already been identified, they will be transferred to the states of Zacatecas in two cases, as well as to Chihuahua, Sonora, and Guerrero,” it added.

Authorities, who last week arrested four people in connection with the case, will continue gathering evidence to ensure the killings “do not go unpunished”, the office said without providing information on a possible motive.

Vizsla Silver, the operator of the Panuco gold and silver mine located near Mazatlan, Sinaloa, said earlier on Monday that it had been informed by a number of families that their loved ones had been found dead.

“We are devastated by this outcome and the tragic loss of life. Our deepest condolences are with our colleagues’ families, friends and co-workers, and the entire community of Concordia,” Michael Konnert, president and CEO of Vizsla Silver, said in a statement.

“Our focus remains on the safe recovery of those who remain missing and on supporting all affected families and our people during this incredibly difficult time,” Konnert said.

Vizsla Silver, based in Vancouver, reported on January 28 that 10 of its workers had been taken from its project site and that it had informed authorities.

Sinaloa has been rocked by escalating gang violence linked to a rivalry between factions affiliated with two cofounders of the Sinaloa Cartel, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, both of whom are in custody in the United States.

The western state in Mexico saw more than 1,680 homicides in 2025, making it the most violent year in more than a decade, according to a tally by the Mexican newspaper Milenio.

Two lawsuits accusing the world’s largest social media companies of harming children begin this week, marking the first legal efforts to hold companies like Meta responsible for the effects their products have on young users.

Opening arguments began today in a case brought by New Mexico’s attorney general’s office, which alleges that Meta failed to protect children from sexually explicit material. A separate case in Los Angeles, which accuses Meta and the Google-owned YouTube of deliberately designing their platforms to be addictive for children, is set to begin later this week.

TikTok and Snap were also named in the original California lawsuit but later settled under undisclosed terms.

The New Mexico and California lawsuits are the first of a wave of 40 lawsuits filed by state attorneys general around the US against Meta, specifically, that allege that the social media giant is harming the mental health of young Americans.

New Mexico case

In the opening argument in the New Mexico case, which was first filed in 2023, prosecutors told jurors on Monday that Meta – Facebook and Instagram’s parent company – had failed to disclose its platforms’ harmful effects on kids.

“The theme throughout this trial is going to be that Meta put profits over safety,” said lawyer Donald Migliori, who is representing the state of New Mexico against Meta.

“Meta clearly knew that youth safety was not its corporate priority… that youth safety was less important than growth and engagement.”

Prosecutors say they will provide evidence and testimony that Meta’s algorithms and account features not only enticed young people and made them addicted to social media, but also fostered a “breeding ground” for predators who target children for sexual exploitation.

Late last month, in the process of discovery, the New Mexico attorney general’s office said the company did not put in safeguards to protect children from accessing sexualised chatbots on Facebook and Instagram.

In emails obtained by the court, some of Meta’s safety staff had expressed objections that the company was building chatbots geared for companionship, including sexual and romantic interactions with users, according to the Reuters news agency.

The artificial intelligence chatbots were released in early 2024. The documents cited in the state’s filing do not include messages or memos authored by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In October 2025, Meta added parental controls to the chatbots.

California case

The California case is more wide-reaching and alleges that Meta and YouTube, which is a unit of Alphabet-owned Google, used deliberate design choices that sought to make their platforms more addictive to children to boost profits.

The case centres around a 19-year-old identified only by the initials KGM. The case could determine how thousands of other, similar lawsuits against social media companies will play out.

KGM claims that her use of social media from an early age made her addicted to the technology and exacerbated her depression and suicidal thoughts.

“Borrowing heavily from the behavioral and neurobiological techniques used by slot machines and exploited by the cigarette industry, Defendants deliberately embedded in their products an array of design features aimed at maximizing youth engagement to drive advertising revenue,” the lawsuit says.

Executives, including Zuckerberg, are expected to testify at the trial, which will last six to eight weeks. It is unclear if they will attend the New Mexico case.

The tech companies dispute the claims that their products deliberately harm children, citing a bevvy of safeguards they have added over the years and arguing that they are not liable for content posted on their sites by third parties.

“Recently, a number of lawsuits have attempted to place the blame for teen mental health struggles squarely on social media companies,” Meta said in a recent blog post. “But this oversimplifies a serious issue. Clinicians and researchers find that mental health is a deeply complex and multifaceted issue, and trends regarding teens’ well-being aren’t clear-cut or universal.

Narrowing the challenges faced by teens to a single factor ignores the scientific research and the many stressors impacting young people today, like academic pressure, school safety, socio-economic challenges and substance abuse.”

A Meta spokesperson said in a recent statement that the company strongly disagrees with the allegations outlined in the lawsuit and that it is “confident the evidence will show our longstanding commitment to supporting young people”.

Jose Castaneda, a Google spokesperson, said the allegations against YouTube are “simply not true”.

“Providing young people with a safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work,” he said in a statement.

High stakes

The outcome of the cases could shape the future of social media.

“In my mind, an existential question for social media services is whether they’re liable for harm suffered by users from using the services. If so, the damages could be more money than the defendants have, Eric Goldman, a professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law, told Al Jazeera.

“We’re talking about massive financial stakes, and we’re also talking about the ability of the plaintiffs to veto or potentially override editorial decisions by the services about what’s in the best interests of their audiences,” he said.

“It’s essentially taking away power from the services to decide and handing it to plaintiffs’ lawyers. So, not only could there be existential damages, but there could also be a massive loss of editorial control over their services. The stakes could not be higher for social media services or the internet.”

Goldman said this was because the same argument could be used to shape claims against video game makers and generative AI, which refers to AI that can create original content, including text and video.

“If these theories work against social media, they might also work against video games, against generative AI, and who knows what else. That’s why I said the stakes are so high for the internet,” he added.

There are already lawsuits that claim that interactions with OpenAI’s ChatGPT led to instances of suicide and murder-suicide.

On Wall Street, Meta stock is trending up by more than 3 percent in midday trading.

If the proposal is implemented, workers would not be able to seek remedy through an independent review board.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump is making it harder for fired federal employees to get their jobs back by limiting their right to appeal dismissals to an independent review board.

The change was proposed as part of a government plan released on Monday by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Under the proposal, federal employees seeking to challenge their termination would be required to appeal directly to OPM, which reports to the president, rather than to an independent body known as the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB).

The MSPB acts as a mediator between federal workers and the government and has been in place since 1978. After Trump took office, the board’s caseload surged by 266 percent between October 2024 and September 2025. Federal workers who were cut in early 2025 and accepted buyouts received their final paycheques at the end of September.

If implemented, the proposal would build on Trump’s broader push to shrink the federal government and limit workers’ ability to challenge those decisions. The administration forced out roughly 317,000 federal employees last year.

The move comes amid a separate proposal announced last week that would reclassify high-level career civil servants as “at will” employees. That change would give the administration broader authority to fire career officials who do not align with the sitting president’s agenda, affecting roughly 50,000 workers at the nation’s largest employer.

Outlined in a more than 250-page document, the directive would allow workers to be fired if they were “intentionally subverting Presidential directives”.

“Congress gave OPM the authority to set how reduction-in-force appeals are handled, and this rule puts that responsibility to work,” an OPM spokesperson told Al Jazeera in a statement. “It replaces a slow, costly process with a single, streamlined review led by OPM experts. That means agencies can restructure without years of litigation, and employees get faster, fairer resolution if mistakes occur.”

The proposal also comes as the administration has sought to fire political appointees from previous administrations without just cause. Since last year, the White House has been attempting to remove US Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook over alleged mortgage fraud.

Cook challenged the decision in federal court, which ruled that the president did not have the authority to fire her. The White House appealed, and the case is now before the Supreme Court.

While the court has not yet issued a ruling, a decision in the president’s favour would make it easier to remove political appointees who do not align with a given administration’s agenda.

Published on
09/02/2026 – 16:48 GMT+1

The French central bank governor handed in his resignation on Monday, which will take effect in June 2026.

This unexpected departure occurs roughly 18 months before his second term was scheduled to conclude in October 2027.

The move strategically shifts the responsibility of selecting his successor to the current President of France, Emmanuel Macron.

If Villeroy de Galhau had completed his full tenure, the appointment of the next head of the Bank of France would have fallen to the winner of the April 2027 presidential election, which current polling suggests could favour a far-right candidate.

While the French central bank governor cited personal reasons for his departure, specifically to lead the Fondation Apprentis d’Auteuil, a charity for vulnerable youth, the timing is perceived as a calculated effort to safeguard the institution’s future leadership.

In a press release, Villeroy de Galhau reassured that “a bit more than a year before the conclusion of my second term, it seems to me that I would have accomplished the core of my mission”.

In a separate letter to Bank of France employees, the governor also acknowledged that “this decision may come as a surprise”.

Resignation after stabilisation

Villeroy de Galhau may also have carefully chosen the right moment of stability in the present.

After a long and intense legislative deadlock in France, that saw the collapse of multiple governments, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu successfully navigated the approval of the 2026 budget which was announced at the start of the month.

Throughout late 2025, France’s inability to pass a budget had rattled investors, pushing the risk premium on French debt to its highest levels in years.

By waiting until this budget was finalised, Villeroy de Galhau ensured his departure did not trigger fresh market panic or exacerbate the existing political crisis.

President Emmanuel Macron can now focus on appointing a successor who will likely align with his pro-European and centrist economic vision.

Asian markets edged higher on Monday as Sanae Takaichi’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) convincingly won the elections in Japan, providing greater clarity to investors worldwide.

The Japanese stock index, Nikkei 225, rose around 4%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng jumped 1.76%, Korea’s Kospi rose 4.10%, while China’s SSE Composite Index saw a 1.41% gain.

In Europe, markets were mixed, with the STOXX Europe 600 trading less than 0.1% higher by around midday CET. France’s CAC 40 and the UK’s FTSE 100 fell, while Germany’s DAX was 0.18% higher and Spain’s IBEX 35 saw a 0.44% lift.

All eyes are now on the New York session open, with US futures trending downwards.

As for precious metals, gold is also up around 0.72% — back above $5,000 — while silver is more than 2% higher, at just under $80 per ounce.

The yen strengthened on Monday after Takaichi’s election victory, reversing six consecutive days of losses.

The PM assured the “continuation of responsible and proactive fiscal policies” after the election, although it’s unclear whether she is pursuing a weaker yen policy, highlighting that there are both advantages and disadvantages to a slide in the currency’s value.

Japan’s perceived stability

The first female Prime Minister of Japan, Sanae Takaichi, has regained a substantial amount of support for the LDP, which it had lost in recent elections due to inflation and corruption.

Following her electoral victory, Takaichi announced plans to accelerate the implementation of her campaign pledge to suspend the sales tax on food for two years.

The consequent loss of government revenue from this initiative, paired with high debt, is partially what caused a rout in Japanese bonds last month.

Nevertheless, Japan’s Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama talked down concerns over the country’s debt and the recent currency weakness, which many investors believe could prompt a rise in interest rates.

Katayama suggested utilising foreign exchange reserves to fund national expenditures. Although possible, this approach can be challenging as those reserves are usually only used for currency interventions.

The Japanese Finance Minister also underlined the ongoing collaboration and strong communication between the government and the Bank of Japan.

This assurance, together with the political stability provided by the robust mandate given to Prime Minister Takaichi, seems to have mitigated the markets’ distress — at least for the time being.

US economic reports

This week, investors worldwide are also bracing for major economic data releases in the United States, including reports delayed by the recent partial government shutdown.

The focus will be on the January jobs report on Wednesday and the January consumer price index (CPI) which comes out on Friday.

The delayed payrolls report is expected to show modest gains of roughly 60,000 jobs while the CPI is estimated to show inflation cooling to 2.5%.

Together with the release of these reports, multiple Federal Reserve governors, including Christopher Waller and Stephen Miran, are scheduled to speak throughout the week.

Investors are paying particular attention to the language used by members of the Fed to gauge the new policy line, following the announcement of Jerome Powell’s successor, Kevin Warsh, as the next Federal Reserve Chair.

Warsh is set to take over in May 2026, pending Senate confirmation.

President Donald Trump picked Kevin Warsh as a figure whose public and private track record is likely to reassure the financial markets. Warsh has advocated lower rates and a reduction in the central bank’s balance sheet.

Jeffrey Epstein pressured a media tycoon he did business with to quash coverage of allegations of his sexual abuse of girls, according to documents released by the United States Department of Justice.

Epstein leveraged close personal and professional ties with the Canadian-American billionaire Mortimer Zuckerman to try to influence the New York Daily News’s coverage of allegations against him after his 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor for prostitution, the documents show.

After Epstein reached out to Zuckerman, the then-owner of the Daily News, the tabloid first delayed its coverage of the allegations and then omitted details that the late financier had specifically requested be left out, according to the documents.

In an email dated October 9, 2009, Epstein shared a “proposed answer” to questions from the newspaper with Zuckerman that disputed allegations made against him and his girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking.

The allegations, which had been put to Epstein and Maxwell by then-Daily News journalist George Rush, included accusations that the pair had subjected a minor known as “Jane Doe No 102” to routine sexual abuse and had engaged in threesomes with “various underage girls”.

The allegations also included claims that Maxwell kept a computer database of “hundreds of girls and oversaw the schedule of girls who came to Epstein’s homes”.

In the proposed response that he shared with Zuckerman, Epstein said “no sex occurred” with Jane Doe No 102 and she had admitted in a deposition to being an “escort, call girl, and a massage parlor worker since the age of 15”.

“All of the adult establishments in which she admitted working require proof of age. Rc the rest of the questions,” Epstein’s email to Zuckerman said.

“These are all malicious fabrications designed to get Mr Edwards clients more money than they normally receive though she did testify under oath that she made as much as 2000 per day,” the email said, referring to Bradley J Edwards, a Florida-based lawyer who has represented many of Epstein’s accusers.

Later that day, Zuckerman told Epstein in an email that the Daily News was “doing major editing over huge objections” and he would “c copy asap”.

“take ghislaine out. if possible,” Epstein responded in an email a few minutes later.

“the very first plaintiff, deposed admitted in a sworn videotaped statement that she lied and was an escort , call girl since age 15. SHE took the fifth. over 40 times.. its crazy.. thanks for you help.”

“Please call me asap,” Zuckerman wrote to Epstein several hours later, before asking Epstein to call him again later that night.

The Daily News ultimately published an article on December 19, 2009, that described Epstein reaching a settlement with his accuser for an undisclosed amount of money.

The article noted that Epstein was facing “more than a dozen” lawsuits from women who accused him of sexually abusing them but made no mention of Maxwell or the allegations against her.

Zuckerman, a staunch supporter of Israel who served as head of the America-Israel Friendship League and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, has never been accused of any involvement in Epstein’s crimes.

Rush, who left the Daily News in 2010, confirmed that Epstein had tried to “cajole” Zuckerman, the current owner of US News & World Report, into burying or shaping the story to Epstein’s liking.

Rush said the Daily News decided to delay publication after Epstein offered the newspaper an interview.

“Unfortunately, Epstein immediately insisted that the interview be off the record. He also used the conversation to make remorseless claims that he was a victim of overzealous prosecutors and shyster lawyers,” Rush told Al Jazeera.

Rush said Zuckerman, who sold the Daily News in 2017, never suggested that the newspaper cancel the story altogether or publish coverage that was favourable to Epstein.

“I do recall being advised to leave Ghislaine Maxwell out of the story,” Rush said.

“At the time, the paper’s lawyers had libel concerns, and I saw it as a necessary compromise.”

Rush said he had objected to the efforts to interfere in his story but the episode did not cause a “newsroom furore”.

“Most people hadn’t heard of Epstein at that point. I didn’t like Epstein and Maxwell trying to appeal to the owner,” he said.

“But I was relieved that the story wasn’t killed, just delayed, and hopeful that Epstein might say something quotable in the interview. It speaks to Epstein’s arrogance that he thought he had the power to get Mort to do his bidding.”

Zuckerman’s personal assistant and the Zuckerman STEM Leadership Program, an initiative founded by the billionaire to fund scientific collaboration between the US and Israel, did not reply to requests for comment from Al Jazeera.

Ties for two decades

Zuckerman’s ties to Epstein stretch back more than 20 years.

In 2005, Zuckerman, who also owned The Atlantic magazine from 1984 to 1999, worked with Epstein on the short-lived relaunch of the gossip-and-entertainment magazine Radar.

After a US congressional panel in September released a scrapbook prepared for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003, Zuckerman was among a slew of high-profile names revealed to have sent the financier their well-wishes.

But the latest tranche of files from the 2019 prosecution of Epstein, released last week by US authorities, show that Zuckerman’s relationship with the sex offender was much closer than previously believed.

In 2008, Zuckerman sought Epstein’s advice on his plans for passing on his estate, sharing sensitive details about his financial affairs in the process, including a copy of his will and an evaluation of his assets that put his net worth at $1.9bn.

In 2013, Epstein drafted several agreements to provide Zuckerman with “analysing, evaluating, planning and other services” related to the billionaire’s plans for passing on his wealth.

Epstein proposed a fee of $30m in a proposal drafted in June 2013 before offering his services for $21m in a revised proposal that December, according to the documents.

In correspondence around this period, Zuckerman appeared to hold Epstein’s claimed expertise in high regard.

“Your questions have been critical to my growing understanding of how much lies ahead before my finances are properly organized,” Zuckerman wrote to Epstein in an email dated October 12, 2013, after the financier had earlier claimed to have identified “wild errors” in Zuckerman’s accounting of his finances.

“You have been an invaluable friend and In the most constructive way a provocateur I am completely grateful and am now beginning to focus, in on the issues you have raised. With appreciation from a hesitant amateur   Mort.”

It is not clear whether Zuckerman ultimately signed the agreement proposed by Epstein.

Zuckerman and Epstein communicated regularly, and the two men arranged numerous dinners and other meetings over the years, according to the documents, including at the financier’s Manhattan home.

“Mort is now booked for tonight at 8:30…i am being asked if you could see him this weekend…please advise,” Lesley Groff, Epstein’s personal assistant, wrote on May 5, 2015, in one of many emails detailing appointments.

While Zuckerman turned to Epstein for financial advice, he also appeared to regard him as a friend.

“Hi there. You are very special. And a great friend. Mort,” Zuckerman wrote to Epstein in an email dated August 24, 2014.