Ukraine deployed driverless exploding cars in a sweeping counter-attack | Credit: 3rd Army Corps |
Ukraine kept Operation Vivaldi under wraps for months. However, Andrei Biletsky, the commander of the 3rd Army Corps, has now revealed details of the third “season” of the counter-attack to the north of Lyman. It involved the capture of 250 Russian soldiers and a territorial advance taking the total regained to nearly 80 sq miles. Intriguingly, it also saw the first battlefield use of “zombie cars” – think of a driverless Waymo packed with explosives and used for kamikaze attacks. Memphis Barker, our Senior Foreign Correspondent, spoke to one of the engineers behind the technology. Continue reading ➤ |
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Trump’s Iran gamble hits homeHoward Lutnick, the US secretary of commerce, will be sweating over the state of the economy | Credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque |
Donald Trump’s war in Iran shows no sign of ending, after the US president rejected Tehran’s latest proposal to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
The news pushed up oil prices and deepened a sell-off in US government debt.
US bond markets are flirting with sending a recession warning, underlining the mounting cost at home of the war in the Middle East. Donald Trump is considering a ban on US diesel exports | Credit: Reuters/Fred Greaves |
Normally, borrowers demand a higher premium to lend money that will be paid back in 10 years rather than one or two.
So when shorter-term borrowing is seen as more risky by investors, it is usually a sign that a recession is looming.
The inverted yield curve, as it is called in the jargon, has preceded all eight US recessions since the 1960s.
Last week, the premium that investors demanded on holding a 10-year Treasury over a two-year one slipped to as little as 0.17 percentage points, the lowest since early 2025.
There have been false positives in the past, but if the yield curve inverts, investors will become nervous.
This is largely a problem of Trump’s own making: oil prices are influencing government borrowing costs to the greatest extent since the Gulf War in 1990. “We are in a one-factor world where rates are likely to drive all asset classes, and rates are being driven by oil prices,” says Mohit Kumar at Jefferies.
The American voter faces a smorgasbord of unpleasantries: diesel prices at three-decade highs, mortgage rates topping 7 per cent for the first time since early 2025, and inflation running hot.
On the other hand, business activity is expanding at its fastest in five years, pointing to a booming economy fuelled by eye-watering AI spending. The expansion is coming with huge inflationary pressures, raising the spectre of the Federal Reserve having to increase interest rates aggressively to cool the economy.
It all leaves American allies with a growing problem before winter, as energy and borrowing costs squeeze their spending power.
Trump’s strategy has been to choke Iran’s economy. He risks inflicting significant pain on his own voters and allies too. |
Nato has been stepping up its response to mounting Russian aggression |
The alliance held a major drill for high-intensity combat off the Scottish coast amid fears of imminent aggression, Tom Cotterill, our Defence Editor, reports from the North Sea. Continue reading ➤ |
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Elif Eralp’s party wants to expropriate homes from property firms that own more than 3,000 |
The next mayor of Germany’s capital could “trigger a meltdown” in the housing market with a radical expropriation policy, writes James Rothwell, our Berlin Correspondent. Continue reading ➤ |
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Jackie Metellian (left), the Last Ditch’s owner, hoped to increase business by relaxing the bar’s strict mask mandate |
It started with an Instagram post relaxing mask mandates. What followed was an ideological execution that serves as a warning to us all, Ed Cumming and Natasha Leake report from Greenfield, Massachusetts. Continue reading ➤ |
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What they’re talking about in... Ankara |
A corruption crisisFatma Betul Sayan Kaya (right) resigned after being accused of improperly profiting before a major market crash | AFP via Getty Images/Ozan Kose |
 | Sophia Yan Senior Foreign Correspondent |
Turkey is gripped by a crisis involving allegations of organised crime, corruption, fraud and market manipulation, reaching as high as the deputy chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president.
In an effort to contain the fallout, the AKP has accepted the resignation of Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya, the deputy accused of improperly profiting before a major market crash linked to the fund crisis – to the tune of 1.3bn lira (£20m).
The outrage is real. Even columnists at Yeni Safak, the government-aligned daily reportedly read by Erdogan, have called for accountability.
In one such piece last week, journalist Ersin Celik courted controversy by writing that corruption scandals of this scale could “pave the way” for external figures to take over on the political scene – vague words taken by over-excited readers as a suggestion that Erdogan could be replaced.
Celik, however, made clear that the public had a right to know the truth.
“People should at least know who they were robbed by. However, revealing a few names and reassuring the public is not the solution to the problem,” Celik wrote. “Responsibilities need to be revealed and grievances need to be resolved.” |
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