Economy

Without a quick deal to move fertiliser through the strait, agricultural productivity would ‘significantly drop’.

A senior United Nations official has warned that parts of Asia and Africa could face a food security crisis unless Iran and the United States quickly agree on a UN-backed plan to move fertiliser through the embattled Strait of Hormuz.

UN ⁠Under-Secretary-General Jorge Moreira da Silva said on Wednesday that it was “absolutely critical” that the two countries agree to the proposal within weeks as planting season approaches. It calls for a UN-staffed coordination centre in Oman to help register vessels and oversee their safe passage in the waterway, through which a large portion of key global fertiliser inputs traditionally flow.

“If we miss that planting season, the productivity of agriculture would significantly drop and the impact on prices will significantly increase,” Moreira da Silva told Reuters on the sidelines of International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Bangkok, Thailand.

Farmers operate strict crop calendars, and even slight delays could severely affect yield.

‘Negligible’ fertiliser shipments

Traffic in the Strait of Hormuz has been severely disrupted since the start of the US-Israel war on Iran, with Iran targeting vessels in the strait and the US and Iran exchanging fire in and around the waterway.

The disruption has hit global supplies of urea, the world’s most widely used nitrogen fertiliser, as well as seaborne sulphur, a key input. Before the war, roughly a third of global urea shipments and nearly half of seaborne sulphur passed through the strait.

Although some ships have been able to sail through amid the crisis, fertiliser products have made up a “very negligible” share of moving cargo, according to the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute.

Moreira da Silva said the UN-backed fertiliser mechanism, drawn up in March, could be activated within seven to 10 days if both Iran and the US agree.

Under the plan, UN monitors would work alongside local authorities at Gulf ports to verify cargo loading. Ships would be tracked during transit, and additional inspections could ⁠be carried out if countries raised concerns about a vessel or its cargo, said Moreira da Silva. He did not say why the US and Iran have not yet agreed.

The passage of only five vessels per day through the Strait of Hormuz could keep fertiliser supplies flowing to countries in critical need, he added.

‘Let us do our job’

The UN mechanism could work alongside negotiations for a “comprehensive deal” to restore freedom of navigation in the strait, Moreira da Silva said.

Iran and the US have exchanged proposals through intermediaries since a June interim ceasefire collapsed. Efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz have stalled over Tehran’s conditions and Washington’s insistence on addressing Iran’s nuclear programme from the outset.

“What we are telling them is, while you continue your discussions towards a comprehensive deal, let us work, let us do our job,” said Moreira da Silva.

His plea comes amid growing concern that fertiliser shortages could hit global food supplies.

In May, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization warned that fertiliser scarcity could tighten food supplies from late 2026 into 2027, and would likely hit countries facing climate or other crises much harder.

In South Asia, where most rely on imported fertiliser, farmers are already struggling because of soaring costs and fertiliser scarcity. On Wednesday, farmers in Spain took to the streets to protest rising production costs amid high oil and fertiliser prices.

Economists divided on Fed rate hike as inflation creates uncertainty in run-up to US midterm elections in a tense market.

United States consumer prices jumped in September in the final inflation report before the midterm elections, increasing chances of an interest rate hike later this month.

Annual inflation accelerated to 3.7 percent, up from 3.4 percent in August. On a monthly basis, prices rose by 0.6 percent, according to the Consumer Price Index report released by the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Wednesday.

Petrol prices led the surge as tensions between the US and Iran, as well as Russia and Ukraine, weighed on global energy prices. Petrol prices rose 9.1 percent in September, accounting for more than half of the CPI monthly increase, according to the BLS. They were up 34.2 percent from the same time a year ago.

“The directionless war in Iran continues to disrupt global supply chains, driving up the prices of food and fuel,” Kyle Moore, chief economist at The Century Foundation, an economic think tank, said in a statement provided to Al Jazeera.

Petrol prices have continued to climb. The average price for a gallon of petrol is $4.33 ($1.14 per litre), compared with $4.31 a month ago, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA), which tracks daily petrol prices. Diesel prices are higher, at $6.29 per gallon (1.66 per litre), compared with $6.23 a month ago.

In a post on X, Patrick DeHaan, head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy, said, “2026 has now seen more days with average gas prices over $4/gal than any year before: 158 days.”

Shelter costs also jumped 0.4 percent from the previous month, following a 0.3 percent increase in August. Food costs were a bright spot in the report, remaining unchanged overall.

Food away from home, including restaurant meals, rose 0.2 percent, but that increase was offset by a 0.1 percent decline in food-at-home prices, which track grocery costs.

At the grocery store, poultry prices jumped 0.7 percent, fruit and vegetable prices rose 0.5 percent, and juice prices increased 1.1 percent. However, milk prices dropped 2.1 percent and beef prices fell 0.9 percent.

Amid heavy investment in AI infrastructure, prices for computer software and accessories have jumped 28 percent from the same time last year.

“The AI boom is playing a huge part, and we have all read about the hundreds of billions being poured into data centers, AI firms, and models,” Rami Cassis, principal of Parabellum Investment, said in comments provided to Al Jazeera.

Fed pressures

The inflation data comes days before the US Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision later this month. Last month, the US central bank raised rates by 25 basis points, bringing the target range to 3.75–4.00 percent, the first hike in three years.

Economists are divided over whether the Fed will raise rates again or hold them steady. According to CME FedWatch, which tracks the likelihood of monetary policy decisions, there is a 52.9 percent chance that rates will remain in the 3.75–4.00 percent range, while a 47.1 percent chance of a quarter of a percentage point hike that would bring them to 4.00–4.25 percent.

The inflation data puts pressure on Republicans before the midterm elections on November 3. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that about 78 percent of Americans blamed US President Donald Trump’s policies for price increases.

US markets trended downward following the inflation report. The Nasdaq fell 0.8 percent and the S&P 500 dropped 0.6 percent, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was roughly flat in midday trading.

The call comes as polls cast doubt on political leaders’ ability to manage AI risks amid US midterm elections.

A group of more than 300 scientists from around the world is calling for urgent changes to how artificial intelligence is developed and deployed amid growing concerns about its unpredictable behaviour.

The letter, released on Tuesday and signed by researchers representing universities and research institutes in 32 countries, warned that failures to follow basic cybersecurity practices could lead to damage to critical infrastructure.

Many recent incidents in which AI models escaped secure environments could have been prevented with stronger security systems, the scientists said.

They recommended that organisations developing and testing advanced AI systems capable of carrying out cyberattacks do so in more tightly controlled environments, including “air-gapped” systems that are not connected to the internet.

Growing concerns

The letter comes amid growing concerns about AI’s capabilities and its potential impact on everyday users. On Monday, Anthropic warned that its AI models could soon be capable of creating self-spreading malware that could affect everyday internet-connected devices, including smart TVs, security cameras and smart appliances such as ovens.

The report found that AI systems could identify unfamiliar devices without human intervention. The company, led by Dario Amodei, warned that smaller AI models could be capable of carrying out autonomous attacks by the end of the year.

The malware could also be difficult to contain because it might take days to infect a device and could spread across multiple machines rather than remain concentrated in a single, controlled location.

Taking control of internet-connected devices can have immediate consequences. In France, for example, hackers compromised cooling systems across hundreds of supermarkets, raising temperatures and causing more than $220,000 in damage.

Meanwhile, Axios news organisation reported on Friday that Anthropic, OpenAI and other major AI company executives are privately preparing for the possibility of a catastrophic AI-related incident that could disrupt access to major financial services, the internet and potentially critical infrastructure such as water and power systems. Several industry insiders believe a major incident could occur within the next six months to a year, it said.

The scientists also called for more safeguards, including the creation of an international organisation to establish a set of best practices for AI alignment and containment along with timely reporting of incidents.

One of the signatories, David Lie, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, said his concerns began after OpenAI’s AI agents bypassed controls and hacked into servers at the tech company Hugging Face.

“One is that OpenAI, in setting up its test environment, didn’t appreciate how capable its agents were,” Lie said.

“These were the AI agents that they were designing. Second is that the AI agents independently found each other and chose to collaborate on this attack, and third is that they also intentionally tried to deceive and mislead their human creators.”

Political pressures

The letter underscores growing public concern about AI, including in the lead-up to the US congressional midterm elections. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 57 percent of voters said President Donald Trump’s administration was not taking AI risks seriously enough, while 54 percent said the same of Congress.

An AP-NORC poll echoed those findings, with about 80 percent of respondents saying the government should keep AI under human control. Respondents also expressed little confidence in either party’s ability to manage the technology: 39 percent said neither Republicans nor Democrats could be trusted to do a good job of reining it in, while 23 percent expressed greater confidence in Democrats and 21 percent in Republicans.

Hundreds of French supermarkets have suffered unprecedented cyberattacks resulting in tonnes of food perishing and raising fears about the vulnerabilities of food systems to advanced technology.

The attacks, which appeared to target internet-linked refrigeration systems manufactured by a Danish company, raised the temperature of fridges and freezers to as high as 50 degrees Celsius (122F) at more than 500 shops and supermarkets across the country. Supermarkets confirmed the attacks on Monday.

France’s cybersecurity agency has advised companies operating affected freezer models to immediately disconnect them from the internet – or restrict access to them – and to perform software updates.

It is unclear who may have been behind the attacks, but authorities say they have now launched an investigation.

Here’s what we know:

What happened?

Hackers gained internet access to the refrigeration systems and remotely cranked up temperatures in freezers and fridges to 50C during the night when shops were closed. Millions of euros worth of food was spoiled, according to retailers. In some cases, the raised temperatures sparked fires or melted equipment.

French supermarket groups E-Leclerc, Intermarche, Carrefour, Monoprix and Cooperative U were all hit.

At least 300 of Intermarche’s stores and its Netto brand were affected. Cooperative U said more than 100 of its supermarkets were targeted, while Carrefour said 80 supermarkets were affected and Monoprix reported that about 5 percent of its roughly 490 stores were hit.

Officials are still investigating who launched the attack and how it was carried out. French TV channel BFM reported that the attackers appeared to have remotely triggered a forced defrosting option in the refrigeration systems.

The systems targeted are built by Danish manufacturer Danfoss, according to France’s government cybersecurity agency. The refrigeration models attacked included the AK-SM800 and AK-SC355.

Danfoss told the AFP news agency that most of the affected control systems were “legacy” products that had “outdated firmware”. The company said it had previously advised supermarkets to update them.

AFP also reported that officials are liaising with other European countries which may have been affected.

It is unclear exactly how much food has been lost. The attacks come after President Emmanuel Macron ordered last month that the country’s critical infrastructure be protected from Russian “hybrid attacks”.

Have supermarkets been hit by cyberattacks before?

Yes. Attacks like these have been reported in other parts of Europe and in the United States.

In April 2025, British retailer and supermarket chain Marks and Spencer suffered a sophisticated ransomware attack that the company said cost it approximately 300 million pounds ($397m) after it was forced to suspend online and app orders. The attack was orchestrated by a hacker group called Scattered Spider, using ransomware from DragonForce, another criminal group. Ransomware attacks involve using malicious software to hide essential data unless a ransom is paid.

According to UK media, the same hackers also tried to attack Co-op and the iconic Knightsbridge store, Harrods.

Similar reports have also emerged from the US. In June 2025, United Natural Foods, a frozen food company which supplies big supermarket brands such as Whole Foods, said it had discovered a cyberattack that forced it to take its systems offline. The company did not reveal the nature of the attack.

In November last year, Ahold Delhaize USA said it was the victim of a cyberattack that disrupted operations at more than 2,000 stores, including Hannaford, Food Lion and Stop and Shop.

Why target supermarkets?

They are an easy target and the consequences can be widespread.

As food and agricultural systems increasingly digitise, analysts say supermarkets selling perishable foods are increasingly vulnerable to attacks due to the nature of their stocks.

The rising sophistication of cyberattacks now means that common people and local, third-party companies relying on big chains for business are also falling victim as attacks disrupt supply chains, experts say.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, tech and cybersecurity analyst Steven Lachance said smart appliances connected to the internet will always be vulnerable as hackers seize on security lapses to log in to the systems remotely and trigger malicious features.

“It’s the new reality of having these connected equipment,” Lachance said, pointing out that attacks could evolve to target medical or energy systems.

“This should come as a global wake-up call … Throughout society, we have connected infrastructure that is live on the internet, and that can be hacked. It’s a new reality, and we absolutely need national and international measures to prevent those attacks; otherwise, it’s just going to keep happening,” he warned.

Iraq, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar face double-digit declines in GDP amid the fallout from the US-Israel war on Iran.

The economy of the Middle East and Central Asia is set to shrink in 2026 amid the fallout of the US-Israel war on Iran, with countries such as Kuwait and Qatar facing double-digit contractions, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The region’s gross domestic product (GDP) is forecast to contract by 0.3 percent this year, a sharp downgrade from the 1.9 percent expansion projected in April, the IMF said in its latest economic outlook on Tuesday.

The IMF cited the prolonged disruption to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a conduit for one-fifth of global oil supplies in peacetime, for the downgraded outlook.

Kuwait, Iraq and Qatar are forecast to have the most severe economic contractions, with their GDPs expected to shrink by 16.7 percent, 16 percent and 15.6 percent, respectively.

Bahrain’s GDP is forecast to contract by 11.3 percent, while Iran’s economy is projected to shrink by 7.6 percent.

Saudi Arabia, which has partially offset the hit to its energy sector by boosting oil exports through the East-West pipeline, is projected to record negative growth of 3.3 percent.

Kyrgyzstan is expected to have the strongest growth in the region, with GDP forecast to expand 9 percent.

The Middle East and Central Asia is the only region that is expected to experience negative growth in 2026.

Emerging and developing Asia’s GDP is forecast to grow 5.1 percent, while the economies of Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean are projected to expand 4.5 percent and 2.3 percent, respectively.

The United States and China, the world’s two largest economies, are forecast to register growth of 2.3 percent and 4.5 percent, respectively, while the eurozone’s GDP is estimated to grow 1.1 percent.

The IMF said it expected global GDP to grow 3.1 percent, up from 3 percent in its previous outlook.

The Washington, DC-based institution said while economic activity had proved resilient this year, the global economy faced multiple risks.

“Further escalation in conflicts, a reassessment of expectations surrounding artificial intelligence (AI), renewed trade tensions, and fiscal vulnerabilities could weaken growth,” it said.

“On the upside, stronger momentum in AI investment and productivity gains from AI or a sustained easing of geopolitical and trade tensions could strengthen growth.”

United States President Donald Trump has insisted that Russia and Ukraine have agreed to stop striking each other’s energy infrastructure, as he called on both sides to end the “ridiculous” war.

Trump’s comments on Monday came even as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces had struck at least six Ukrainian energy facilities since the US president declared the truce on Sunday.

“Well, they agreed,” Trump told reporters, referring to Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Because I said, ‘You agree’. That’s why they agreed, because I said they agree.”

When pressed about the Russian strikes, Trump said, “Well, I’d have to look at it and see, because there’s been violations on both sides.”

The US president called the war, which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a “disaster” and claimed, without offering evidence, that at least 32,000 people had been killed this month alone.

“All I know is that Zelenskyy and Putin have to get together and end that ridiculous war,” he said.

Kyiv blindsided

Trump had blindsided Kyiv and its European allies when he announced the purported energy ceasefire on Sunday. The announcement came two days after he temporarily eased US sanctions on Russian diesel, a move that drew outrage in Europe and Ukraine.

Zelenskyy said it reversed years of Western efforts to isolate Russia’s economy and would only embolden Putin.

Lawmakers from both major parties in the United States have also said the diesel decision appears to violate US law. Several Republicans have objected that it undercuts a law Trump himself signed to tighten restrictions on Moscow.

Zelenskyy said on Monday that Ukraine supported an energy ceasefire and had carried out no attacks on Russian refineries overnight. He said Kyiv was prepared to sign “guarantees to make sure they can be trusted”.

But he said it was “increasingly evident” that Moscow would not comply.

“Today alone, the Russians have attacked 6 energy facilities in Ukraine. 33 people were wounded across the country,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media. “This is what happens when Russia sees the prospect of higher revenues for its war machine.”

Russia, however, has rejected any pause in fighting, with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov promising to press ahead with the military campaign.

“I do not think he deserves a respite,” he said of Zelenskyy. “I don’t think we’ll be buying into assurances and promises again.” Russia, he added, would continue to pursue the goals of what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine.

US midterms

Trump, meanwhile, has portrayed Ukraine, rather than Russia, as the main obstacle to peace. He has said that Putin is more eager on a deal than Zelenskyy, and has called on Ukrainians to vote their president out of office – an unusually harsh turn in a relationship that has been strained since Trump returned to the White House in 2025.

Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, reporting from Washington, DC, said Trump has previously announced agreements between Russia and Ukraine that never materialised.

“He says he wants to protect industries in the US like farmers and ranchers, and to do that he needs the price to go down. But it seems that he thinks there’s a deal, but no one else is sure that there actually is one,” Fisher said.

The latest announcement, according to our correspondent, appeared to be driven by Trump’s desire to bring down diesel prices before the US midterm elections on November 3.

Most polls predict that Republicans will lose control of Congress as voters grow frustrated with rising prices, particularly for petrol.

An opinion survey published on October 1 by the Associated Press news agency and the University of Chicago suggested that 65 percent of US adults blame the White House for the high cost of living, especially Trump’s tariff policies and his new war against Iran.

Ukraine’s European allies, meanwhile, voiced scepticism about the energy ceasefire and approved the largest set of European Union sanctions since Russia’s 2022 invasion.

The bloc’s foreign ministers added some 1,569 people and businesses to the bloc’s sanctions list to maintain the pressure on Moscow.

“Russia will only negotiate seriously under pressure, which is why we are sticking to our sanctions against Russia,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in Berlin.

As the United States maintains a naval blockade of Iran’s ports and imposes more sanctions on its oil exports, Tehran is confronting another problem: billions of dollars in revenue from previous oil sales that it says have gone missing.

A spokesperson for Iran’s judiciary said in September that a network of oil intermediaries known as “trustees” owed the Iranian government between 10 billion euros ($11bn) and 11 billion euros ($12bn). That figure was equivalent to half of the total oil revenue projected in Iran’s government budget for the current fiscal year.

US officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, have tied Iran’s struggles to access oil revenues as evidence that its economic pressure campaign is having an effect. In August, Bessent said that “Iran’s shadow banking system was buckling” under pressure from the US campaign against the country, which has been ramped up as Washington seeks a way to force Tehran to capitulate in the war between the two countries, launched by the US and Israel in late February.

So who are the oil intermediaries, why does Iran depend on them, and what has happened to the billions of dollars they owe? Let’s take a closer look.

The debt, and the crisis it has created for the Iranian government, both stem from an oil-sales arrangement Tehran adopted in 2012 in response to US sanctions targeting Iranian oil exports.

American and European sanctions targeting Iranian oil sales and revenue collection began in 2012. The stated rationale behind both sets of measures was that revenue from oil sales helped finance Iran’s nuclear programme and that restricting Iranian oil exports could prevent the programme from advancing.

In response, the Iranian government devised a way to circumvent international sanctions on its oil sales. Unable to sell oil through the Oil Ministry and receive the proceeds through the Central Bank, it began selling oil to domestic buyers or using it to settle outstanding obligations to institutions and organisations owed money by the state.

This arrangement gave rise to a network of oil intermediaries often referred to in Iran as the “trustee network”. Rather than selling all its oil through official government channels, the state entrusted crude oil to institutions, individuals and companies to sell on its behalf. The proceeds were supposed to be transferred to the government’s treasury, with the sellers or recipient institutions subsequently recovering their agreed costs and outstanding claims. Some institutions sold the oil themselves, while others contracted private trading companies to handle the sales.

The Oil Industry Pension Fund, established for retired Oil Ministry employees familiar with the oil-sales process, was among the first institutions to receive crude oil for sale. Other recipients included Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Base, a major hub for large-scale infrastructure projects. Even the municipal police received payments owed to them by the government in the form of crude oil.

Effect of the nuclear deal

Even in those early experiments, discrepancies emerged between the revenue expected from oil sales and the amounts sellers actually deposited into the government’s treasury. These discrepancies eventually gave rise to some of Iran’s largest economic corruption cases.

The accounting discrepancies and the government’s inability to recover money from private sellers entrusted with Iranian oil persisted until 2016, when the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal was signed and when sanctions on Iranian oil sales were lifted. The government was subsequently able to regain control over oil sales.

Individuals who had sold Iranian oil but failed to return the proceeds were imprisoned. With the ability to sell oil again through legal and transparent channels, the government was able, for a time, to manage its oil revenues and spending with greater control.

How did money from oil sales go unreturned?

After US President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the JCPOA in 2018 during his first presidential term, the Iranian government once again had to rely on private oil traders to sell its oil. But the problems associated with selling oil through intermediaries rather than official state channels, including delays in returning revenues, accounting discrepancies, debts owed by oil sellers to the government, and the occasional seizure of Iranian oil shipments at sea, once again constrained the government’s ability to manage its oil revenues.

Moreover, the US expanded its sanctions beyond Iranian government institutions and interests, adding bank accounts involved in transactions with the Iranian government, currency-exchange offices, companies, and individuals to its sanctions lists. As a result, the time between individuals participating in Iran’s oil-trading network and being sanctioned themselves, along with their assets and companies, and having their accounts blocked or frozen grew progressively shorter.

This contributed to an accumulation of debts owed by sanctioned oil traders – no longer able to access their accounts – to the government. It also left Iran with little choice but to expand its private oil-sales network. That meant increasing the number of people involved in trading Iranian oil, reducing the volume of oil allocated to each individual or company and, ultimately, increasing the risk that the proceeds would not be returned.

Iranian officials have also accused trustees of exploiting the sanctions workarounds to enrich themselves.

The billions of dollars owed by private oil sellers to the Iranian government are a combination of outstanding payments, disputed financial obligations and allegations of corruption. Iran’s judiciary chief recently addressed the issue, warning that oil sellers who refuse to return the proceeds from oil sales will face legal action. But such warnings do not change the sanctions environment or remove the obstacles that prevent some oil sellers from returning the money.

The Cuban government is pushing ahead with its plans to transition to renewable energy, amid a de facto oil blockade from the United States that has strangled the island’s economy.

In an interview with the Reuters news agency on Monday, Cuban Minister of Energy and Mines Vicente de la O Levy explained that the blockade has forced Cuba to explore domestic alternatives to foreign fuel imports.

“We are seeking our own alternative solutions, using our own resources, our sun, wind, tides, fuel, Cuban crude oil and the gas produced in our wells,” de la O Levy said.

He said 144 solar farms with a combined capacity of about 1,418 megawatts have been installed on the island in recent years.

China has been the largest supplier of solar panels to the island, and shipments have increased since the blockade began in early January.

At the time, US President Donald Trump halted all oil shipments from Venezuela, a close ally of the Cuban government.

Later that month, Trump also announced he would impose heavy tariffs on any country that exported oil to Cuba, justifying the threat by calling the island’s government a “national security” threat.

Since then, only a single oil tanker from Russia has reached Havana. The US has increased its shipments of oil to Cuba’s private sector, but it has largely barred fuel exports for nationalised industries on the communist-led island.

The government-run electrical grid, widely considered to be antiquated, relies heavily on fossil fuels. Only 40 percent of Cuba’s electricity comes from ‌‌‌‌domestic ‌‌‌‌oil production, according to the International Energy Agency.

As of 2023, only nine percent of the country’s energy consumption was covered by renewable sources.

De la O Levy admitted in his interview with Reuters that the country was facing difficulties. The blockade has caused shortages of medicine, water and fuel, pushing Cuba to the brink of a humanitarian crisis.

“We are surviving and moving forward, little by little, even if not at the pace we would like,” he said.

“We face long hours of blackouts and lack fuel for cooking and transportation. We lack fuel, but we are gradually making headway through our own solutions and our people.”

Cuba’s production of domestic crude oil remains stable, he added, but is almost entirely allocated to power plants.

The United Nations and human rights watchdogs have criticised the oil blockade as a violation of international law.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla also condemned the oil blockade in his speech at the UN General Assembly last month.

“It is an unusual and unprecedented action,” Rodriguez said of the blockade.

“A superpower unilaterally deprives all states of their right to export the commodities that they wish to the country that they wish.”

The US has maintained an economic embargo on Cuba for more than 60 years, since the Cold War era.

But since taking office for a second term as president, Trump has sought to squeeze Cuba’s economy further, as part of a “maximum pressure” campaign. His administration has indicated that it wants to topple Cuba’s government.

On October 7, US authorities announced they had seized 90 biodiesel fuel shipments valued at over $2.8m destined for Cuba.

“These shipments were part of an attempt to unlawfully export fuel to Cuba in violation of federal export laws,” US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said in a statement.

But in his interview with Reuters, de la O Levy denied the Cuban government had any link to the shipments.

“No Cuban state-owned company has managed to secure a fuel contract, whether for small or large quantities,” he said.

He added that any US oil shipments to private firms fall far short of the country’s requirements.

“I would venture to say that the amount entering the country doesn’t even cover 3 percent of its fuel needs,” de la O Levy said.

Tehran, Iran – Iranian authorities have signalled they intend to disrupt an Arab-operated and United States-assisted shuttle system that has enabled more energy exports through the Strait of Hormuz during the US-Israel war on Iran.

With the US naval blockade of Iran’s southern ports in place and sanctions tightening, Tehran has said it will pursue military and diplomatic efforts to put pressure on Washington to submit to its demands regarding reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

This strategic waterway, through which roughly a fifth of global oil and gas flowed before the war, has been largely closed to shipping following Iranian attacks since the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran on February 28.

But the US Navy has reportedly opened up a route so Gulf states can export oil and other commodities amid an energy crisis.

Iran’s security chief Mohsen Rezaei responded on Sunday night, saying the shuttle system is now an explicit target for Tehran.

Rezaei claimed that the US Central Command, with the assistance of the United Arab Emirates military, was using smaller vessels to transfer oil to larger tankers. He claimed Iran had been striking five or six participating vessels nightly for weeks.

“You are smuggling, but the strait is under Iran’s control, and we manage it,” he asserted.

This appeared to be a taunt aimed at US President Donald Trump, who has hailed energy exports at times reaching pre-war levels over recent weeks.

Rezaei appeared to give the impression that Iran wants to have lasting authority over Hormuz, and promised a harsh response if Iran’s energy and civilian infrastructure were attacked again.

His threats appeared aimed at Arab regional states, with a warning that digital infrastructure could be targeted. Rezaei threatened US-linked cables, data centres and artificial intelligence facilities in the UAE and around the Strait of Hormuz.

Rezaei also accused Saudi Arabia of helping the US move oil around Iran’s restrictions. But he did not threaten a direct attack against Riyadh – which is currently being targeted by Yemen’s Tehran-aligned Houthis.

In early September, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) threatened tankers at ports and anchorages in Kuwait and Bahrain, citing US attacks on Iranian tankers. It accused both countries of complicity through hosting US armed forces.

Iran has claimed the US accepted some of Tehran’s seven conditions for the full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and ending the war. But Tehran insists that a deal will only materialise when all its demands are met.

Hamidreza Azizi, a senior Iran analyst at the Crisis Group, said this reflects Tehran’s apparent assessment that it is under no immediate pressure to reach an agreement with the US since its pressure in the Hormuz has a global impact.

“The question, however, is whether Tehran is overestimating its ability to sustain this pressure, given the growing economic costs of the confrontation for Iran itself,” Azizi wrote on X.

Transfer system

The system involves very large crude carriers (VLCCs) and smaller vessels coordinating with the US military to load crude oil at Arab ports and use southern corridors near the coast of Oman to exit the strait.

Vessels often switch off their transponders and travel at night to minimise the risk of being targeted by the Iranians. After ship-to-ship transfers in the Gulf of Oman, some of the shuttles come back to load more.

Multiple vessels were targeted overnight Sunday to Monday, including two outbound tankers and one in anchorage near Oman’s port city of Sohar, where ship-to-ship transfers are allegedly being conducted.

Other vessels were targeted by projectiles last week, indicating that attacks have extended beyond the Strait of Hormuz to target the shuttle system.

The IRGC has also increasingly driven a narrative that naval mines, believed to have been planted across the Strait of Hormuz since the start of the war, pose a serious threat to vessels attempting to navigate the waterway without coordinating with Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority.

The IRGC said three tankers suffered major damage over the weekend after being struck by mines. It also released footage of one ship ablaze that is said to have been struck by a mine, although the footage did not appear to show a mine going off.

‘Cascading impact’

The shuttle system has provided Arab national oil companies with a way out of Hormuz via the southern corridor near Oman.

Michelle Wiese Bockmann, a London-based senior maritime intelligence analyst at Windward, said this system has proven highly effective.

“Under international maritime law, which underpins 11 billion tonnes of seaborne trade annually, vessels have what’s called the right of transit passage,” Bockmann told Al Jazeera. “So, what Oman has done is allow vessels to go through under international maritime law, but they have had US military assistance.”

Tehran says shipping will be disrupted so long as the US continues its choking naval blockade against Iran, which has also stepped up its efforts to counter efforts by Arab states to export oil. At least 15 ships are believed to have been targeted in October so far, according to Winward.

“The more effective the route has become in facilitating the transport of oil and gas, the less leverage Iran has over Hormuz, and more attacks we are seeing on vessels that are using that southern corridor,” Bockmann said.

Windward’s data shows 31 ships transited the Strait of Hormuz daily in the final week of September. This was considerably lower than the 138 before the war.

Eighty-seven percent of the 45 ships targeted by Iran during the third quarter of 2026 were tankers.

Around 47 percent belonged to Gulf Arab energy companies’ national shipping fleets, Windward noted, and 93 percent of the strikes took place in the Strait of Hormuz. Most attacks targeted vessels transiting the southern corridor with their transponders turned off.

These attacks have contributed to a massive increase in freight costs. Freight represented 25-30 percent of Gulf crude’s cost, versus just 1 to 3 percent before the war, according to Windward. National oil companies have resorted to offering discounts of up to $35 per barrel below official selling prices.

The main reason for the rise is a shortage of tankers willing to make the dangerous crossing. Between 15 and 20 percent of very large crude carriers (VLCCs) are tied up with an inefficient logistics system that relies on shuttle transfers, complicated by escalating attacks and exposure at loading ports and anchorages.

“This is having cascading impacts for all vessel classes on freight and values across the world,” Bockmann said.

The Swedish academy says the academics’ models are ‘now used by central banks and ​governments around the world’.

The ⁠2026 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences has been awarded to US academics Robert Hall and Michael ⁠Woodford for their work on how monetary and fiscal policy can help stabilise fluctuations in the economy, according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

The winners of the prestigious award, formally known ⁠as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel and the final prize to be given out this year, were announced on Monday.

The two laureates developed new macroeconomic models that improve people’s ability to implement effective stabilisation policies, enabling fiscal and monetary policy measures that can reduce damaging swings in the economy.

“The laureates’ work has provided us ‌with a stable theoretical foundation for the models that are now used by central banks and governments around the world,” John Hassler, chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences, said in a statement.

“With them, we are better equipped to deal with shocks in the economy, such as energy crises or sudden changes in how much households consume.”

During the oil crises in the 1970s, the existing Keynesian models used to determine when and how measures should be implemented to tackle recessions or other economic fluctuations stopped working. Hall and Woodford then developed new tools to understand what policy responses could be the most effective.

“Rather than basing the models on statistical links between macroeconomic variables, such as inflation, production and consumption, they chose to build them on a microeconomic foundation,” the academy said. “This encompasses an understanding of how the total mass of individual households and businesses affect the economy through their actions.”

The economics prize, first awarded ⁠in 1969, is not part of the five original awards ⁠created in the 1895 will of industrialist and dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel, but was instead established by Sweden’s central bank.

The majority of previous laureates have been from the United States. Only three women have ⁠ever won, most recently Claudia Goldin in 2023 for her work on how gender has affected pay and employment over time ⁠in the US.

Last year’s winners – Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt – won for ‌their work on “creative destruction” and how new technology and production methods can boost growth and living standards.

Like the other Nobel awards, the economics prize consists of a diploma, a gold medal, and a $1.2m cheque.

The Nobel prizes for medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace were announced last ‌week, with South African jurist Navi Pillay and Canadian writer Anne Carson among the winners.

US, Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand among countries urging citizens to avoid travel to Kingdom.

Several countries have warned their citizens against travel to Saudi Arabia following a series of Houthi attacks on airports in the kingdom.

On Monday, Australia and New Zealand became the latest to issue advisories against travelling to the kingdom, following similar warnings from the United States, Canada, the UK, South Korea, and Japan.

Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said Australians should avoid King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh and “reconsider” travel to other Saudi airports.

New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade urged citizens not to travel to the Saudi capital’s main gateway and the provinces of Najran, Jazan and Asir for any reason, and to avoid “non-essential” travel to Saudi Arabia as a whole.

The US embassy in Riyadh on Sunday advised US citizens to reconsider travel to the kingdom, citing the threat of attacks by Iran and the Iranian-backed Houthis.

Global Affairs Canada issued an advisory against non-essential travel to any part of Saudi Arabia.

South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs recommended that its citizens in Saudi Arabia leave unless they are on essential business and advised anyone planning to travel to the kingdom to cancel their trip.

The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office urged citizens to avoid travel to Jeddah and Dammam, and to all airports apart from Medina International Airport, except for essential reasons.

The warnings come as Saudi Arabia reels from five attacks on its airports in less than a week.

One person was killed and 11 others were injured on Sunday when a projectile struck King Khalid International Airport, according to Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA).

A Houthi strike on the same airport on Saturday killed 13 people and injured more than 300 others, marking the deadliest attack on Saudi Arabia in more than a decade.

The Houthis claimed responsibility for all four strikes on Saudi airports before Sunday’s attack, which has yet to be claimed by any group.

King Khalid international airport and King Fahd international airport in Dammam remain closed following the attacks, causing significant disruption to aviation across the Middle East.

The attacks have also disrupted flights to and from King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah.

More than 150 flights were cancelled and 374 flights were delayed at the Jeddah airport on Sunday, according to the flight tracking website Flightradar24.

Brendan Sobie, an independent analyst and consultant in Singapore, said it was too early to predict the ramifications of the attacks for aviation across the region and beyond.

“As has been the case with the Iran war and the impact from that crisis on the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain, the impact of this latest crisis really depends on how long it lasts, how long Riyadh airport remains closed, and how long and to what extent are the restrictions once it reopens,” Sobie told Al Jazeera.

Finance officials from around the world will gather in Bangkok this week under the shadow of a widening war in the Middle East, the biggest-ever energy supply shock and rising interest rates that together pose daunting risks to already-sluggish global economic growth.

The US-Israel war on Iran, now in its eighth month, and its inflationary impact are slated to dominate the agenda and sideline conversations during the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, held outside Washington for the first time in three years.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told Reuters News Agency that 18,000 people were registered to attend the meetings, 4,000 more than the last off-site meetings held in Morocco in October 2023.

Notably absent will be United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who dispatched two senior officials in his stead while he handles some “domestic engagements”, a US official said. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Kevin Warsh will attend and is slated to participate in a public event with Georgieva on October 16.

Several other finance ministers were also staying home due to domestic budget and election duties, but most central bankers would attend, Georgieva said.

Bessent’s decision to skip the high-profile gathering and a meeting of the Group of 20 (G20) major economies, which the US leads this year, may frustrate counterparts amid rising tensions over the Iran war, Ukraine’s battle against Russia’s invasion, and the US move to impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court.

Fossil energy reserve release

The Group of Seven (G7) countries have agreed to release 100 million barrels of diesel and crude oil from emergency reserves under pressure from US President Donald Trump, who is keen to see lower petrol prices before November elections that could see his Republican Party lose control of Congress.

Trump on Friday announced a deal with Russia that would provide even more diesel to global markets and a temporary waiver of US sanctions designed to deprive Moscow of revenues for its ‌‌war on Ukraine. The move drew swift criticism from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

More than one billion barrels of oil have been released, mainly from onshore commercial inventories, since the start of the war on February 28. But industry executives say the amount of oil in storage that is accessible to the global market is running low, making the market more fragile and fuelling pressure on prices.

The IMF has signalled little change in its forecast for three percent global growth in 2026, and may edge its forecast for next year slightly higher. But some countries will see downgrades, including Ukraine, now in its fifth year of war against Russia’s invasion, and Gulf countries hit by Iranian strikes and sharply reduced energy exports.

IMF research released on Tuesday showed that sharp spikes in food and energy prices are an increasingly common source of crises that drive inflation expectations higher for longer, worsen poverty and threaten economic stability.

One headache for policymakers is the growing public debt burden that is sapping growth and adding inflationary pressures. The IMF says public debt is at the highest level since World War II and will exceed 100 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) before 2030.

Advanced economies, led by the US, have the highest debt-to-GDP ratios, but emerging markets and low-income countries are particularly vulnerable, given a perfect storm of challenges: capital outflows in search of higher US rates, weather extremes triggered by the El Nino climate phenomenon, and a lack of investment in artificial intelligence (AI), which has mitigated negative supply shocks in the US and other rich countries.

Developing countries are particularly vulnerable given high public debt levels that will have to be renegotiated at higher interest rates. Together, they face $400bn in debt payments to external creditors in 2026, and interest payments already exceed 10 percent of revenue on average.

Many lower-income countries are worried about new IMF recommendations for loan programmes that call for fewer but deeper reforms as a condition for approving lending, a change that many fear will lead to painful austerity measures.

Elon Musk’s latest comments come days before Mukesh Ambani’s low-cost Reliance Jio’s parent launches India’s largest-ever initial public offering.

‌Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has said he would price his Starlink satellite internet service affordably ⁠in India to take ⁠on Mukesh Ambani’s low-cost Reliance Jio, escalating his attacks on the rival tycoon days before Jio’s parent launches the country’s largest-ever initial public offering (IPO).

Jio Platforms, ⁠which owns the telecom arm, is targeting a valuation of $106bn in the offering. Much like SpaceX-owned Starlink, Jio’s satellite venture is also awaiting final ⁠security clearance to launch.

Cheap data is the playbook that built Jio in India, and the one Musk has used in markets like Kenya to unsettle local telecom players. SpaceX now plans to enter the mobile carrier market itself, starting in ‌the United States.

Musk did not specify prices for India, where mobile data costs about rupees 7.74 ($0.08) per gigabyte, among the lowest in the world.

“Obviously, if Starlink is too expensive in India, no one will buy it, so SpaceX will need to make pricing affordable,” he said in a post on his social media platform X on Saturday.

“The reality is that ⁠competition would greatly benefit the average citizen in India by ⁠giving them more choices, as it always does. Ambani’s profits will be lower, but he is not going out of business,” Musk added.

‘Prime Minister Ambani’

Musk’s remarks were the latest in ⁠a series of X posts in which he accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and Ambani of stalling Starlink’s entry ⁠into one of the world’s biggest internet markets to ⁠favour market leader Jio.

The posts have marked a sharp turn for Musk, who has long enjoyed a warm public rapport with Modi.

India’s government has denied any bias in its approval process, ‌noting that the three satellite ventures seeking to launch, including Starlink’s and Jio’s, are all awaiting final security clearance.

Late on Friday, Musk taunted Ambani directly, addressing ‌him as “Prime ‌Minister Ambani” and asking whether he would “consider allowing Starlink to compete”.

Reliance has not responded to Musk’s remarks.

Russia to supply 300,000 tonnes of diesel immediately, followed by 1.5 million more, as prices soar amid the Iran war.

United States President Donald Trump said that Russia has agreed to supply 300,000 tonnes of diesel fuel to global markets amid discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I have just concluded a highly successful discussion with President Vladimir Putin, of Russia, wherein it was agreed that Russia will immediately supply over 300,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel to the American and Global Marketplace, another 500,000 Tons during the month of November, and 1,000,000 Tons immediately thereafter,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.

The president added that Russia would deliver an additional 3 million tonnes of fuel “within a short period of time”. He said that the country would supply 500,000 tonnes in November.

An envoy for Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kirill Dmitriev, praised cooperation between Russia and the United States on diesel and energy in a post on X shortly after.

“Russia-US cooperation on diesel and energy will benefit the world,” Dmitriev wrote on X.

Petrol price pressures

The deal comes despite Ukrainian air strikes, which have taken more than half of the country’s oil refining capacity offline, according to claims made by Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence on Sunday.

The latest announcement comes a week after the G7 countries agreed to release 100 million barrels amid pressure from the White House.

The move also comes as prices of diesel, used in agriculture, heating homes and trucking goods, are near record highs ahead of the November 3 congressional elections that will determine control of Congress.

Diesel prices have been elevated in recent months but have started to decline. The average price for a gallon is $6.27 ($1.66 per litre), according to the American Automobile Association (AAA), which tracks daily petrol prices. That’s down $0.10 from this time last week, but up $5.94 from this time one month ago.

Diesel prices, which can drive inflation, are up 70 percent since the US and Israel’s war on Iran began this year, despite two high-profile recent moves by Trump to boost supplies of the fuel: pressuring allies ‌to release emergency reserves and expanding access to tax-exempt red-dyed diesel, which is normally used for farm equipment.

The wars in Iran and Ukraine have triggered an unprecedented global fuel supply crunch.

Sanaa, Aden and Marib, Yemen – As fighting intensifies across Yemen between the government and the Houthis, millions of people are confronting another battle far from the front lines: the deteriorating living and economic conditions in the country.

With salaries for large segments of the workforce either unpaid or irregularly disbursed – and the prices of goods and services rising – Yemen’s economic struggles have been compounded by a divided banking system that has made moving money between different parts of the country increasingly complicated.

From Aden’s struggling shoppers to displaced families in Marib and unpaid public-sector workers in Sanaa, Yemenis are being forced to make difficult choices about what they can afford, and what they must go without.

Aden: Food costs swallow salaries

In Aden, the internationally recognised Yemeni government’s interim capital in the south, the problem is not so much a shortage of goods in markets as people’s inability to afford them.

Salaries have failed to keep pace with the rising costs of food, rent, healthcare and transport, leaving workers with little money left over at the end of the month.

The consequences are evident in the smaller quantities and cheaper products that now make up shoppers’ baskets, and the decisions they are forced to make about what to cut back on.

Bushra Abdullah Abdulwarith is a government employee in Aden. She earns 78,000 Yemeni riyals ($50) a month at the black market exchange rate while typical household food costs in government-held areas run about 130,366 riyals ($83), according to estimates by the Yemen Economic Tracking Initiative. And that’s before she factors in the cost of rent, transport, healthcare and other household expenses.

The economic difficulties facing Yemenis like Bushra illustrate how more than a decade of war has devastated the economy. According to the World Bank, real GDP per capita has fallen by approximately 58 percent since 2015.

The fragmentation of Yemen’s monetary institutions between the government and the Houthis – who have operated their own institutions since seizing the capital, Sanaa, in 2014 – along with the disruption of oil exports, and declining international assistance have all contributed to the economic decline.

Bushra told Al Jazeera that rising prices have forced many households to give up almost all non-essential purchases and cut back on some expensive basics, particularly meat. Other families, she said, have resorted to buying food in smaller quantities, sometimes on credit or loans.

Reduced demand

The impact of rising prices is reflected not only in economic figures but also in the way people shop.

Ayman al-Maqtari, who works at a shopping centre in Aden’s Mansoura district, said that his customers now rarely buy non-essential items.

When it comes to the essentials such as rice, sugar, flour, and cooking oil, he has noticed that customers size up the price of each item before putting it in their baskets. They are also buying smaller quantities, for example, opting for a 5kg (11 pound) over a 40kg (90 pound) bag of rice.

“Many people have come to live day by day, or week by week,” Ayman told Al Jazeera, adding that more families are buying on credit when they run out of money before the end of the month.

The decline in purchasing power is also affecting commercial activity.

Across several streets and shopping centres in Aden, advertisements for discounts and special offers have become increasingly visible in shop windows and on retailers’ social media pages, as businesses attempt to attract customers and boost sales.

Weak demand, retailers say, is particularly evident for items that households can put off buying, such as clothing and household goods. A growing share of family income is spent on food, rent, healthcare and transport.

Limited pay increase

The Yemeni government approved a 20 percent cost-of-living allowance in May for public-sector employees in an attempt to ease the pressure of rising prices. But the amount is calculated based on each employee’s base salary, rather than their total pay, meaning the actual increase is relatively small for many workers.

Bushra, the government employee in Aden, said the increase has done little to improve her family’s financial circumstances. She described the allowance as “a temporary painkiller that does not reflect the scale of the actual pressure on people’s living standards”.

Her experience is far from isolated. In early October, the World Food Programme said its latest monitoring in accessible government-controlled areas showed that 74 percent of households were unable to meet their basic food needs.

One of the places where the crisis is evident is Marib, a government-controlled city east of Sanaa that is home to hundreds of thousands of displaced people. The sharp increase in the population over the war years, in what was previously a provincial backwater, has led to pressure on the city’s housing, employment and public services.

Government employees in Marib see their salaries disappear within the first few days after being paid, labourers struggle to find more than a few days of work and displaced families are forced to choose between buying water and milk.

Salah al-Zuhaifi works for a government institution in Marib. He said the war has separated him from his parents, who live in Houthi-controlled territory.

Alone in Marib, al-Zuhaifi said that inflation had eroded much of his salary’s purchasing power.

“No matter how much you earn, it will not be enough to meet your needs,” he said.

Abu Mohammed Nasser al-Asbahi, another government employee, described a similar struggle.

He told Al Jazeera that he earns 400,000 riyals ($250) a month, but more than half of that goes towards his rent, leaving little for his other expenses.

“We don’t even get to the first one-third of the month before the salary is gone,” he said, explaining that his family spends the rest of the month relying on loans and credit from local shops.

The healthcare sector in Marib has also been affected by widespread household spending cuts.

Pharmacist Khaled Mohsen told Al Jazeera that the rising price of medicines has prompted many patients to decline parts of their prescribed treatment and purchase only what they consider most essential.

People with chronic illnesses, meanwhile, have increasingly begun reducing their medication doses to make their supplies last longer before having to buy more, which creates serious health risks.

Houthi areas

Residents of Sanaa and other areas of Yemen’s populous northwest, controlled by the Houthis – an armed group also known as Ansar Allah (Arabic for Supporters of God) – since 2014, are also facing a worsening economic and cost-of-living crisis similar to that affecting Yemenis elsewhere in the country.

Several factors are driving the crisis, particularly unpaid public-sector salaries, declining purchasing power, rising prices for goods and services, and the continuing consequences of the division of Yemen’s currency and banking systems in the early years of the war.

Many public-sector employees in Houthi-controlled areas have gone years without receiving regular salaries, with some sectors only receiving limited payments or half-salaries at irregular intervals.

Even when payments are made, they cannot cover families’ basic needs amid the rising cost of living.

Meanwhile, private-sector workers and business owners face growing pressures as a result of declining economic activity, multiple fees and levies, and a shortage of employment opportunities. The conditions have undermined incomes and job security.

The Yemeni riyal’s exchange rate in Houthi-controlled Sanaa is more stable than in areas controlled by the government. The Houthis have imposed strict monetary controls, banning the circulation of newer banknotes printed by the Yemeni government, and have also enforced a largely fixed exchange rate.

However, that does not necessarily translate into stronger purchasing power. Markets face difficulties caused by cash shortages and the division between monetary and banking systems operating in different parts of the country, including increased costs for moving funds.

That directly affects the many households relying on domestic and international remittances.

For residents in Houthi-controlled areas, the result is an economy in which the currency may be relatively stable, but livelihoods are precarious. Years of unpaid salaries and limited employment opportunities have left many families struggling to afford basic necessities, with few options beyond borrowing, cutting spending or relying on support from relatives.

Visa probe also targets universities for allegedly exploiting international students to reduce US wage costs.

The United States government is suspending several major tech companies, including Adobe and Microsoft, from a programme that gives skilled foreign workers a path to permanent residency amid allegations of fraud.

This comes amid pressure by the White House on companies to hire more Americans. “Our message to Microsoft is: You’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers,” US Vice President JD Vance said at a news conference on Thursday.

Vance added that the Redmond, Washington-based tech giant laid off 6,000 American workers, while obtaining 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards.

“You cannot lay off American workers and replace them with foreign indentured servants,” Vance said.

“When someone comes in, they are completely subordinate to that company. If they lose that job, they have to leave the country.”

Across the tech sector, there have been more than 131,000 layoffs in 2026 alone, according to Layoffs.fyi, which tracks job cuts across the tech and startup industries.

Neither Adobe nor Microsoft responded to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling also said that several major information technology firms will be suspended from the programme as well. Among them are Indian tech giants Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services.

The Department of Labor also said it had uncovered $22bn worth of visa fraud.

“Today we are protecting something far more valuable than any dollar amount. We are protecting the American worker,” Sonderling said.

During the news conference, officials also announced a crackdown on alleged J-1 visa fraud involving nine universities, including MIT, Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Cal State, amid allegations that they brought in international students to undercut US wages. A J-1 visa allows foreign nationals to enter the US temporarily for education or cultural programmes. Universities use these visas to bring in international PhD candidates or scholars.

Vance claimed that when schools employ an American as a researcher, that person earns $20,000 more than someone brought in under a J-1 visa.

Al Jazeera asked for data supporting this claim, but the White House did not respond.

Microsoft’s stock slumped 7.5 percent on the heels of the news, while Adobe was up 4 percent in midday trading on Thursday.

Talks will focus on the €1 billion daily deficit and rare earth export restrictions.

European Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic has arrived in Beijing for talks on the European Union’s (EU) growing trade deficit with China.

Sefcovic will meet Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao on Thursday and Friday after months of discussions over the EU’s trade deficit of more than €1bn ($1.12bn) daily, as well as Chinese curbs on exports of rare earths and other critical minerals.

Meanwhile, Chinese companies are increasingly challenging Europe’s top car brands. China rejected the EU request for voluntary curbs on Chinese hybrid car exports as the two sides enter negotiations, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. The European Commission now hopes to get Beijing to accept a unilateral EU measure to cap hybrid imports instead, the outlet said, citing two diplomats briefed on the plan.

The two days of discussions come just as a majority of EU lawmakers called for a more assertive trade policy towards Beijing in a non-binding resolution on Wednesday. China vowed a “resolute response” to safeguard its industries if the European Union goes ahead with restrictions against Chinese companies or products, according to its commerce ministry.

Germany and France propose rapid EU measure

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, leaders of the bloc’s two biggest powers, on Tuesday urged the EU to prepare a “credible instrument” that could be quickly activated to strike back against countries that harm the bloc economically.

The new measure would not target any specific country. German officials said the EU needed a tool as powerful as the Section 301 tariffs imposed by the United States or China’s restrictions on critical-mineral exports.

The proposed weapon – to be discussed at an EU leaders’ summit next week – would give the European Commission the power to respond to a trade aggression within days.

China responded to the letter by urging Paris and Berlin to steer clear of “protectionist” measures.

“We hope that France and Germany, as major economies in the world, will uphold openness, cooperation and free trade,” the commerce ministry said in a statement.

“They should avoid going down the wrong path in the wrong way, only to ultimately suffer the consequences themselves.”

G20 finance leaders, except China’s, agreed in September to act against “non-market” distortions that exacerbate imbalances. Beijing says that hyping up issues such as economic imbalances and overcapacity is a form of protectionism designed to exert pressure on and restrict China.

Ongoing trade talks

EU and Chinese officials have been discussing trade imbalances since June. Sefcovic said he wanted “tangible results by October” as well as some form of commitment that can be put to EU leaders meeting in Brussels.

Trade relations with China top the summit’s agenda next week, as ballooning debt has prompted auditors to warn about the next seven-year EU budget and has spurred protests in France.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the European Parliament last month that the trade imbalance had reached a tipping point and that Europe would use every tool at its disposal to rebalance the relationship.

Rising borrowing costs have pushed mortgage applications to lowest level since February 2025.

Mortgage rates in the United States have hit their highest level in nearly three years, as cost-of-living concerns weigh on Americans less than a month before the midterm elections.

The average cost for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage jumped 19 basis points to 7.49 percent for the week ending October 2 , according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s weekly report released on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, applications for mortgages tumbled 4.2 percent from the previous week, according to the report. Applications are at their lowest level since February 2025 and have fallen by almost half since the beginning of the year.

“Very few homeowners have an incentive to refinance at these rates, and the jump in borrowing costs has caused many potential borrowers to step back from the purchase market,” Joel Kan, vice president and deputy chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association, said in a press release.

Mortgage rates are closely tied to US 10-year Treasury notes. Earlier this week, those hit a 24-year high of 5.3 percent amid surging oil prices tied to ongoing tensions with Iran.

Meanwhile, the yield on 30-year Treasury bonds rose to its highest level since 2002, at 5.7 percent on Wednesday.

Mortgage rates have jumped since late February, when the US and Israel first struck Iran. Since the strikes, mortgage rates have climbed 1.4 percent. Inflation, which has risen by 3.4 percent from a year ago, is also putting pressure on mortgage rates.

It comes as the cost of living is top of mind for voters as they approach the congressional midterm elections that could decide the balance of power in Washington, DC. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll in late August, 47 percent of voters said that the cost of living was the single most important issue ahead of the midterms.

In a separate Reuters/Ipsos poll in September, 17 percent of voters said they approved of US President Donald Trump’s handling of cost of living-related issues.

Paramount Skydance has completed its takeover of Warner Bros Discovery, bringing CNN and CBS News under the same corporate ownership, in a deal that has raised concerns about editorial independence and freedom of speech.

The acquisition, worth about $110bn including debt, combines two of Hollywood’s biggest studios after months of legal challenges lodged by state attorneys general and unions.

The new company, Skydance Corporation, brings together HBO, CBS, Nickelodeon, Showtime, Comedy Central, DC Studios and Food Network, alongside streaming services Paramount plus and HBO Max.

But its control of two major US news organisations has drawn particular scrutiny. David Ellison, Skydance’s chairman and chief executive, has promised to preserve their editorial independence, but his father, Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison is a major financial backer of the deal, and has previously donated funds to US President Donald Trump and Israel.

Asked about the takeover on Tuesday, Trump welcomed it. “They’re terrific people, and it’s going to be a great company,” he said.

Why was the merger challenged?

The takeover faced initial opposition from Hollywood workers, politicians and state prosecutors concerned about the mounting concentration of power in an industry already dominated by a handful of companies.

Netflix initially reached an agreement to buy part of Warner Bros Discovery. Paramount then launched a competing bid, prompting a bidding war before Netflix walked away.

A California-led coalition of 12 state attorneys general sued to block the deal, saying that it would reduce competition and raise prices. The Writers Guild of America brought a separate challenge.

Both cases were settled in September when Paramount agreed to commitments relating to film production, support for displaced workers and protections for the news networks, including the creation of a new editorial independence board.

But the settlement did not end opposition to the deal. “This merger will stifle creativity, weaken free speech and cost people their jobs,” actor and activist Mark Ruffalo has said.

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren linked the takeover to Trump’s efforts to restrict media access. “As Trump tries to ban CNN from the White House, it would be a massive mistake to cave on the Paramount merger,” she said, referring to the US president’s so-far thwarted attempt last month to bar reporters from several news organisations, including CNN, from accessing the White House.

Can an editorial independence board protect CNN and CBS?

One condition of the settlement requires Skydance to establish a “News Editorial Independence Board” within 180 days of completing the takeover.

The five-member body is to include active or retired journalists with at least 10 years of experience. It is intended to establish editorial principles and address disputes involving the news networks and corporate management.

However, its members will be appointed by, and will report to, Skydance’s board of directors, which Ellison chairs. Two members can belong to the same political party, and there is no requirement to publish its findings.

The condition has left critics with a multitude of questions, including: How can a member of an independent editorial board be a member of a political party? How can there be scrutiny if its findings are not public? How can it be independent if it is appointed by a board of directors, themselves appointed by the CEO of the company?

Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said, “A Paramount-appointed editorial independence board for CNN and CBS is worthless. The fish rots from the head, and this particular fish is headed by a compromised oligarch with a history of throwing journalists under the bus to advance his business interests.”

Stern also questioned whether government enforcement of the settlement could itself threaten press freedom. “The editorial board creates the same First Amendment problems it’s supposed to solve – the government meddling in the news.”

The First Amendment provides constitutional protection for freedom of speech and the press.

Ellison argues that the two networks will continue to operate independently. “We’re going to make sure that CNN and CBS News are completely editorially independent,” he said on Tuesday.

On Monday, Skydance announced that Mark Thompson would remain CNN’s chairman and editor-in-chief, while Bari Weiss will continue as CBS News’s editor-in-chief, easing previous fears that Weiss would immediately take charge of both networks.

Why are there fears for editorial independence?

The takeover gives the Ellison family control of CNN less than a month before the November 3 US midterm elections, and follows Trump’s repeated attacks on the network as it seeks to hold the US president to account.

Shortly after Paramount launched its bid in December, Trump accused CNN of spreading “poison and lies” and said it was “imperative” that it be sold, while the Trump administration has moved to bar CNN from reporting in certain areas of the White House.

Ellison donated roughly $45m to a political nonprofit group supporting Trump’s election efforts in 2024, while he donated $16.6m to Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, a charity supporting Israeli soldiers – its largest single donation at the time.

Earlier this year, the White House criticised CNN’s coverage of the US-Israeli war on Iran, while Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters that “the sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.”

Sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates also hold indirect financial interests in the combined company. They have no voting stakes, although their involvement adds another layer of scrutiny over its funding.

Concerns about the future for editorial integrity, however, intensified after Skydance acquired Paramount in 2025, and layoffs followed, alongside the closure of CBS News Radio and changes to CBS News flagship investigative programme 60 Minutes.

High-profile firings enacted under CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss and Skydance Media CEO David Ellison included correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, as well as 60 Minutes executive producer Tanya Simon.

The programme’s September season premiere attracted about 21 percent fewer viewers than a year earlier.

In 2025, Paramount also agreed to pay Trump $16m to settle a lawsuit over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

In a June 2 letter, nine advocacy groups, including Reporters Without Borders, the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Committee for the First Amendment, warned that CNN could face similar upheaval and firings.

“Bari Weiss’ shameless actions fulfil the Ellisons’ commitment to President Trump to remake CBS to his liking,” they alleged, referring to the firings and changes at 60 Minutes.

“Larry Ellison has reportedly promised to do the same at CNN if allowed to take control through the pending Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger. Not because it makes any business sense, but because they seek to control the public discourse.”

The groups described the proposed takeover as an “existential threat to the free press, independent media, and free speech in this country and beyond”.

Islamabad, Pakistan – More than 9.5 million people have received subsidised petrol under a special fuel relief scheme launched by Pakistan’s prime minister, Federal Minister Shaza Fatima Khawaja told Al Jazeera on Wednesday.

The initiative, aimed at lower-income citizens, comes as the government attempts to help households deal with fuel price increases tied to the war on Iran.

The scheme, launched in September, offers 100 rupees ($0.36) off every litre of petrol to owners of motorcycles, rickshaws and small cars, through a text-message system.

Petrol prices have risen by nearly 50 percent since the war began on February 28, adding to Pakistan’s economic hardship and putting further pressure on consumers already grappling with rising inflation.

How the scheme works

Explaining the process, Khawaja, the minister for information technology and telecommunications, said applicants text their national ID number, vehicle registration, and province to 9771. A second message, sent before each visit to a pump, generates a token redeemable anywhere in the country.

Two- and three-wheelers get 500 rupees ($1.80) a week, capped at four tokens a month. Cars with engines of up to 800cc get 1,000 rupees ($3.60) every 10 days, for three tokens monthly.

After complaints, registration, once a paid service, was made free, and a five-litre minimum purchase was scrapped for the same reason.

Khawaja told Al Jazeera the system had been redesigned based on experiences of users on the ground.

Riders no longer need the vehicle to be registered in their own name, as long as they can supply the exact registration date shown on the documents.

“Even in my own house, there’s a bike registered in our name that our cook uses for daily errands,” Khawaja said, explaining why the ownership requirement for two- and three-wheelers was dropped on September 20.

An earlier cash-transfer scheme in April had reached just over a million bike owners, she said, largely because disbursement required a bank account most riders did not have.

‘The relief is decent’

Government officials say that the scheme has been expanded to include wider sections of society, especially those who depend on their vehicles to generate income.

“There’s a benefit; it’s not like there’s nothing,” Shakeel Ahmed, 45, an electrician in Islamabad, told Al Jazeera. “The relief is decent for people who use it normally, for local trips. But for people like us, who put in 1,000 to 1,500 rupees [$3.60-$5.40] of petrol a day, it’s not enough.”

Safiya Aftab, an economist, told Al Jazeera the scheme has reached the people it was meant to.

“The scheme has indeed reached low-income segments of society, people who typically use two-wheelers and 800cc cars. So yes, it’s a good thing that they are subsidising the poor,” she said.

Aftab, however, also pointed to a levy – 114 rupees ($0.41) for every litre – that the government charges. This, she said, was helping the government raise revenue. She said the government is now earning more than 100 billion rupees ($361m) a month from the levy, which is fuelling inflation.

“The levy was originally meant as a sort of environmental tax, to discourage the use of petrol. Now it has become a full revenue earner for the government, one that helps keep the fiscal deficit down,” the economist said.

What it costs and for how long

The Pakistani government has approved 75 billion rupees ($271m) for the scheme’s first three months, through November.

Petroleum Minister Ali Pervaiz Malik put the running cost at 25-30 billion rupees ($90m-$108m) a month at launch. By late September, he said, it had risen to 35-40 billion rupees ($126m-$144m).

Malik has said the government is prepared to run the scheme for up to 10 months, or “until the end of the war”, if needed.

Pakistan is currently under a $7bn International Monetary Fund programme, and an IMF team is in Islamabad this week for talks with the government as it seeks to keep its fiscal commitments on track while responding to the fuel shock.

Officials familiar with the government’s talks with the IMF say the Fund wants relief capped at three months and routed instead through the Benazir Income Support Programme, the country’s main cash-transfer scheme.

Khawaja said the IMF’s position from the outset was that relief had to be targeted, not universal, which was why the scheme was built around actual token use rather than a blanket price cut.

Who it leaves out

But there are claims that the relief is not reaching all. Cars with engines larger than 800cc, diesel vehicles and public transport are excluded entirely, leading some experts to suggest that the subsidy scheme risks missing the most vulnerable sections of Pakistani society.

“A poor household that uses public transport, walks to work, or relies on diesel-powered transport may receive nothing while still facing higher food and transport costs,” Khaqan Najeeb, a former adviser in Pakistan’s Ministry of Finance, told Al Jazeera.

More than 8.1 million tokens had gone to two- and three-wheelers by late September, compared with fewer than 380,000 for cars, Malik said. A November 2024 Gallup Pakistan survey found that 79 percent of respondents, in rural and urban areas alike, said they use public transport such as buses or wagons.

Does the relief go far enough?

At 100 rupees a litre, the maximum monthly saving is 2,000 rupees ($7.20) for a motorcycle user and 3,000 rupees ($10.80) for an eligible car owner, Najeeb said, calling it “useful household relief, but not enough to offset the broader cost-of-living shock”.

Petrol has climbed from 266 rupees ($0.96) a litre before the war to nearly 395 rupees ($1.42), despite a partial rollback in April. Inflation rose to 10.3 percent in September from 7 percent in February, Najeeb said.

Sajid Amin Javed, a senior economist at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Islamabad, said the relief was “minimal”, but added that this was understandable given the IMF constraints on Pakistan.

“The relief is minimal, and that is understandable as we are in an IMF programme,” Javed told Al Jazeera, arguing that cutting the petroleum development levy, which still adds 114 rupees to every litre, would deliver broader relief than a capped subsidy.

“The government is using the petroleum development levy to fill its revenue gap, but that comes at a significant cost in terms of inflation, growth and household welfare,” Javed said.

Najeeb, however, argued the scheme should not become a permanent fixture of Pakistan’s energy policy – and should be used only to make oil price shocks “less damaging”.

The Venezuelan economic debate has been dominated by headlines over hydrocarbon deals and speculation around the future of the mining sector. The focus is understandable. It’s a petrostate with an abundance of natural resources, capable of propelling us out of the prolonged economic and humanitarian crisis that chavismo inflicted upon us. But as we must continue to discuss the future of the oil, gas and mining sectors, we must not forget the reforms required to allow the non-oil economy to flourish.

Although a large share of the state’s revenues and the country’s GDP is ultimately tied to hydrocarbons, the overwhelming majority of Venezuelans are not oil engineers, geologists or miners. Nor are most Venezuelan companies directly involved in extracting natural resources. The non-oil economy is there, operating under a highly restricted business environment of price controls, extortion, a minefield of a tax system and labour laws hostile to companies. All while facing a contraction in its market due to the migration crisis and severely restricted access to credit.

Venezuela is still among the hardest places to do business in the world. It is time to discuss how to give the sector, which includes formal and informal businesses of all sizes, the breathing space it needs to grow.

Let’s first put the power grid and infrastructure issues aside. The reforms required span virtually every aspect of the business environment, from the institutions that oversee the economy at the macro level, to the banking system and the nitty-gritty of tax and labour law. At the most basic level, the private sector needs confidence that contracts will be respected, property will be protected, and disputes can be resolved through institutions that are predictable and independent. Without these basic reassurances, investing in Venezuela remains a gamble that many businesses and outside investors will simply not be willing to take.

Dollarization without the institutional and financial framework to back it will fail in its mission to stabilize the economy.

As previously explained regarding the macro level, the Venezuelan Central Bank (BCV) needs to regain its independence and establish a credible monetary policy based on transparency and clear rules, supported by a board and president who are not subordinate to Miraflores. Burning through the petro-dollar cash pile to curb the Bolivar devaluation won’t cut it. The central bank is estimated to have used 65% of the oil sale proceeds to shore up the Bolivar. This has proven to be futile without a proper macro framework to support such interventions. It is the BCV’s credibility that is fundamental to correcting the distortions in the FX market and preserving confidence in the Bolivar, in order to lower the still extraordinary inflation rate hovering around 500%.

A credible BCV will also be fundamental to back whichever currency policy the State decides to embrace. Debates over dollarization have spread. However, the measure is not a magic wand, and going for it without the institutional and financial framework to back it will fail in its mission to stabilize the economy. Monetary stability with a functioning BCV will not suffice, but it’s a necessary foundation to correct the distortions that pervade the Venezuelan economy.

Surviving without credit

Reforms aimed at stimulating the non-oil private sector must not stop there. 

Venezuela needs its banks to be banks again. The country has by far the region’s lowest credit portfolio relative to GDP thanks to draconian restrictions from regulators, which limit the capacity of banks to function as credit facilitators, and reduce them to mere transactional businesses. A functioning banking system is fundamental for the private sector’s recovery. Venezuelan businesses need the capital, as much as consumers need the credit to finance purchases of the goods and services those businesses produce.

Without a functioning banking sector, the private sector costs of capital increase as businesses either accept higher rates from non-bank lenders or are forced to rely disproportionately on their own cash flow to fuel operations. Ultimately, this leads to firms forgoing investments and lower productivity. The survival-mode resource allocation and corporate planning allowed some firms to surf through the crisis, but still makes it considerably harder for a successful company to scale operations and increase productivity.

Under the right conditions, Venezuela could become fertile ground for a dynamic M&A market.

On the consumer side, there is an important advantage from which to build on. Venezuela has a relatively high degree of financial inclusion and has rapidly adopted digital technologies for payments and money transfers. This provides an infrastructure through which a consumer credit market can develop.

Time for real business-friendly laws

Labour laws and informality must also be addressed. The private sector needs to be able to absorb more workers, particularly those who will eventually transition out of an oversized public sector, without facing excessive legal and financial restrictions associated with hiring. The current system makes formal employment particularly costly for smaller businesses, contributing to informality and limiting the capacity of companies to expand their payrolls and operations.

Venezuelan businesses have performed something close to a miracle by continuing to operate under such dire conditions. But many of the businesses that remain have low productivity and have become costly to scale. The end goal of this debate should be to reduce the cost of capital and frictions that limit businesses from increasing their size and productivity, aiming to allow companies to compete at scale internationally.

We need to keep pushing for reforms across the non-oil economy so that businesses can access credit, hire more workers, invest, consolidate and attract capital.

Under the right conditions, Venezuela could become fertile ground for a dynamic M&A market. Consolidation can allow fragmented industries to achieve economies of scale, invest in technology, professionalize management, employ more people, and eventually compete internationally. Stronger and better equipped companies would become more attractive to foreign investors and better positioned to access global markets.

This is what economic reform should seek to achieve: a private sector made up of larger, more productive, inclusive, and competitive businesses.

The private sector has already demonstrated that it can survive under almost any conditions. The task now is to create the conditions for the windfall from those petro-dollars to run through a private sector that is more efficient, inclusive, and scalable. We need to continue pushing for reforms across the non-oil economy so that Venezuelan businesses can access credit, hire more workers, invest, consolidate, and attract capital. That will allow it to become one of the engines of our economic transformation.

The United States stock market has hit an all-time high as excitement around artificial intelligence continues to fuel a buying frenzy on Wall Street.

The S&P 500, the benchmark stock index, closed 0.58 percent higher on Tuesday, topping the previous peak reached in mid-August.

The Nasdaq Composite, which is more heavily weighted towards tech stocks, also hit a record high, finishing up 0.45 percent.

Tech stocks were among the top performers, with each of the “Magnificent Seven” apart from Meta closing higher.

Amazon led the pack with a 1.95 percent gain, followed by Microsoft and Tesla, which rose 0.78 percent and 0.51 percent, respectively.

Apple and Alphabet both rose 0.22 percent, while Nvidia gained 0.14 percent.

Meta, which has risen more than 20 percent since the launch last month of its new AI assistant, Muse, fell 0.41 percent.

Other big movers in tech included Marvell Technology, which rose 5.81 percent, and Cisco, which gained 4.54 percent.

Technology, AI

Keith Lerner, chief investment officer and chief market strategist at Truist Advisory Services in Atlanta, Georgia, said the market rally should be seen as a “technology and AI surge”.

“Every bull market has a dominant theme, and technology and AI remain this market’s dominant theme,” Lerner told Al Jazeera.

“Technology and communication services were the only two S&P 500 sectors to rise last month, while the other nine declined.”

Wall Street has shrugged off a host of challenges facing the US economy amid hyperscalers’ multibillion-dollar investments in AI.

Despite the energy crunch caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran and a sell-off of US government bonds partly driven by ballooning government debt, the market is well on track to record its fourth consecutive year of double-digit returns.

The S&P 500 has risen 14 percent so far in 2026, while the Nasdaq Composite is up 18.78 percent.

Lerner at Truist Advisory said the market rally had the potential to continue through the end of 2026 given historical trends and expectations for strong corporate earnings.

“We do not expect a straight line higher for markets,” Lerner said.

“Still, the fourth quarter of midterm-election years has produced an average gain of 7 percent and has been positive 84 percent of the time since 1950.”

Lerner said that rising interest rates posed the biggest risk to the upward trend.

“Still, on balance, the weight of the evidence suggests this bull market still has more upside potential,” he said.

Asian stock markets fell on Wednesday, with key indexes in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong slumping in morning trading.

The Nikkei 225 in Tokyo, Kospi in Seoul and Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong were down 0.79 percent, 1.36 percent and 0.71 percent, respectively, as of 02:30 GMT.

Oil prices, which have been elevated since the start of the war on Iran, rose on Wednesday as traders weighed the fallout of fighting between forces aligned with Yemen’s internationally recognised government and the Iran-aligned Houthis.

Brent crude futures for December delivery stood at $101.45 a barrel as of 02:30 GMT, up 0.87 percent.