Borrowing costs climb in Europe and oil tops $105 a barrel as bank says growing price pressures in eurozone will be ‘longer lasting than we had anticipated’
The European Central Bank has raised interest rates to 2.5% and warned that the risk of higher inflation over the next year has risen following renewed fighting in the Middle East.
It came as government borrowing costs soared on the back of a jump in oil and gas prices after the latest US and Iran attacks on ships in the strait of Hormuz.
The president’s latest warning barely registered, written off as typical behavior. But the threats have real-world consequences
As the US and Iran fought around the strait of Hormuz last week, Donald Trump issued one of his typical threats. In an interview with a Fox News correspondent, Trump said Iran would be “totally wiped out as a country” if it retaliated for the latest wave of US airstrikes.
That threat by the US president to wipe out another country generated few headlines, even during a relatively slow news week by Trump administration standards.
Tit-for-tat violence surges again in region, with tankers struck by the US in the Gulf of Oman, and reprisal attacks by Iran on a US base in Jordan
The US military on Tuesday said it had “destroyed” several Iranian tankers after Iran attempted to strike a US navy warship with ballistic missiles, as violence once again surged across the region, pushing the price of oil past $100 a barrel.
American forces struck the tankers in the Gulf of Oman and near Iran’s Kharg Island, US central command (Centcom) said in a statement, adding that American forces “directed the crews to abandon ship before the vessels were struck”.
It’s no surprise some analysts say we are already in the midst of the third world war, but ordinary people have more power than we think
Don’t look up! The world is a mess. The sky could fall in any day. Unending wars, expanding humanitarian crises, rising authoritarianism, dysfunctional democracies, rampant racial and religious extremism, and unchecked lawlessness cast a dark cloud as the west’s new political year begins. Set all that against a backdrop of staggering global economic inequality, corporate and individual greed, irresponsible government indebtedness, dangerous AI gambles, climate breakdown and proliferating nuclear weapons, and a truly apocalyptic global outlook begins to take shape. It’s enough to make anyone shut their eyes, cover their ears and utter a Munch-like scream. And it’s only getting worse.
Democratic leaders who promise a better, safer, more optimistic future – what Britain’s freshly arrived prime minister, Andy Burnham, calls a “new era of possibility” – cannot escape this wider international context. Last week’s global bond market upheaval, sparked by external factors, left Burnham’s cash-strapped government struggling with sharply increased borrowing costs before he barely got started. The fact he chose Ukraine for his first overseas trip, while symbolically important, highlighted another grim reality. As a lead opponent of Vladimir Putin’s invasion, Britain now finds itself in a de facto state of war with Russia – and facing attack. Argentina, too, is eyeing UK defence vulnerabilities. These are not the sort of possibilities Burnham envisaged.
President said Howard Lutnick had Venezuela operation on his mind when he was discussing Iran war on CNBC
Donald Trump has claimed his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, erroneously stated that no Americans had been killed in the war with Iran because he was thinking about a previous US operation, in Venezuela.
The claim, at odds with the Pentagon’s count of 18 US service members dead in the US-Israel war on Iran, sparked a swift backlash as Trump struggles to end the conflict after six months.
As the Trump administration refuses to end its war in Iran, it is steering into the storm, not out of it
Russia hasn’t yet killed large numbers of Europeans outside Ukraine, but it’s getting closer. The night of 4-5 August, an airport bus driver discovered an armed drone lying near the tarmac of the Leipzig-Halle airport, which is a central hub of Europe’s logistical support to Ukraine’s war effort. A cargo jet, meanwhile, may have struck a second drone shortly after takeoff, forcing an abrupt landing, and investigators found a third drone laden with military explosives nearby.
In 2024, incendiary devices hidden in parcels ignited in DHL cargo at the same airport. Had these detonated in the air, a major air catastrophe and large-scale civilian casualties would have ensued, probably resulting in a broader war.
US Central Command has released footage that purportedly shows missile and drone strikes being fired at Iranian military targets. Footage of some of the aftermath of the US attacks was shared on social media, showing shrapnel damage on a home in Sirik, southern Iran, where a wedding celebration was taking place. Since publication of this video, Iranian state media has revised the death toll to four people. Iran retaliated shortly afterwards, with video shared by Iranian media said to show missiles being fired towards Jordan.
A US Central Command spokesperson said the US was aware of reports of civilian casualties, but that the 'US military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps]'
Attacks on Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and reprisals against US bases in Middle East quash hopes that flare-up last weekend was limited in nature
The US has launched new airstrikes on Iranian targets, prompting counter strikes by Tehran targeting American interests in Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan and Iraq, and fuelling concerns about a wider renewal of hostilities.
The US Marine Corps base Camp Titin in Jordan was targeted for an “intense ballistic missile attack”, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) said early on Wednesday, according to Iranian news outlet Tasnim.
There’s little optimism about treasury secretary’s ability to handle Trump’s tariffs, Iran sanctions and colossal US debt
History remembers Gen Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the allied forces in Europe during the second world war, for his role in the D-day invasion of Normandy. Whether Scott Bessent will achieve similar posterity as the face of the “economic D-day” in Iran remains to be seen.
The US treasury secretary, already trying to manage a $40tn national debt pile, this week took charge of Donald Trump’s effort to reverse-engineer his war of choice. Whereas the US would typically take on an adversary with diplomacy, sanctions and military force, in that order, the US president started with a six-month bombing campaign and now hopes that economic isolation can finish the job.
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