US seeks to tame oil price surge

Plus, Banksy revealed.

Get full access to Reuters.com for just $1/week. Subscribe now. Daily Briefing Daily Briefing By Kate Turton Hello. A complex tug-of-war inside the White House is driving Trump's shifting public statements on the course of the Iran war. Elsewhere, back-to-back outbursts of violence added to rising concerns about the possibility ‌of attacks on US soil. Plus, British street artist Banksy's identity has been debated and closely guarded for decades. Until now.  Today's Top News   Aftermath of a strike on a police station, Tehran. Majid Asgaripour/WANA via REUTERS  War in the Middle East A complex tug-of-war inside the White House is driving US President Donald Trump's shifting public statements on the course of the Iran war, as aides debate when and how to declare victory even as the conflict spreads across the Middle East. Read our exclusive.  Trump derided Iran's leaders as "deranged scumbags" and said it was his great honor to kill them as the war in the Middle East approached the two-week mark with heavy exchanges of drone and missile strikes across the region. Follow our live updates. The Shajareh Tayyebeh School was adjacent to an Iranian military compound and was among at least seven buildings struck on February 28. Iranian officials have said students made up most of the 175 people killed that day in Minab. Read our visual investigation. In other news A convicted Islamic State supporter opened fire in a Virginia university classroom, killing one person and injuring two others before he was killed, while in Michigan a Lebanon-born US citizen crashed his truck into a synagogue and its preschool and was shot dead. Investors in World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture co-founded by Trump and his sons, have secured what the company described on its website as "guaranteed direct access"  to certain members of its team for those who lock up $5 million worth of their tokens for a six-month period in exchange for voting rights. A three-year-old party won Nepal's general elections by a landslide, authorities said, positioning its candidate Balendra Shah to become the next prime minister, with a mandate for the rapper-turned-politician to restore political stability. Ukraine is opening access to its battlefield data for its allies to train drone AI software, the defense minister said, as Kyiv seeks to harness the experience it has ‌garnered fending off Russia's four-year, full-scale invasion. Business & Markets   A view shows oil pump jacks outside Almetyevsk in the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia June 4, 2023. REUTERS/Alexander Manzyuk The US issued a 30-day waiver for countries to buy sanctioned Russian oil and petroleum products currently stranded at sea, in what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said was a step to stabilize ‌global energy markets roiled by the Iran war. Some governments are taking steps to protect their own energy security. Tony Munroe tells the Reuters World News podcast some Asian countries are pushing austerity measures like closing universities and fuel rationing.  US grain prices have surged since the Iran war began, triggering a flurry of corn and soybean sales by farmers who squirreled away last year's harvests due to weak prices. Britain's economy stagnated unexpectedly in ‌January and expanded only weakly in preceding months, underlining investor concerns about its vulnerability to the economic fallout from the war in Iran, official data showed. Oil prices headed for weekly gains, despite the US trying to ease supply concerns by issuing a 30-day license for countries ‌to buy Russian oil and petroleum products stranded at sea. The Week Ahead France will hold municipal elections on Sunday and March 22, votes seen as a key test ahead of next year's presidential election. Top names in Hollywood will gather on Sunday to hand out the annual Academy Awards at a red-carpet ceremony brimming with an unusual amount of drama in the major races. The US Federal Reserve concludes its two-day meeting on Wednesday. Trump's Homeland Security pick Senator Markwayne Mullin is scheduled to face a confirmation hearing on Wednesday.  It's a big day for Europe on Thursday, with euro area, Swiss and UK central banks meeting. Everything you need to know about the coming week in financial markets. In search of Banksy   REUTERS/Gleb Garanich, Simon Gardner, David Moir, Peter Macdiarmid, Luke MacGregor The identity of British street artist Banksy has been debated, and closely guarded, for decades. A quest to solve the riddle took Reuters from a bombed-out Ukrainian village to London and downtown Manhattan, and uncovered much more than a name. Read our Special Report And Finally... Figures from the "KPop Demon Hunters" toy series are on display at Mattel's booth at the Nuremberg Toy Fair in Nuremberg, Germany. REUTERS/ Angelika Warmuth/File Photo Netflix confirmed that a sequel to "KPop Demon Hunters," the streaming platform's most watched film of all time, is officially in development.   Read more   Sponsors are not involved in the creation of newsletters or other Reuters news content. Advertise in this newsletter or on Reuters' website   Reuters Daily Briefing is sent 5 days a week. Think your friend or colleague should know about us? Forward this newsletter to them. They can also sign up here. Want to stop receiving this email? Unsubscribe here. To manage which newsletters you're signed up for, click here. This email includes limited tracking for Reuters to understand whether you’ve engaged with its contents. For more information on how we process your personal information and your rights, please see our Privacy Statement. Terms & Conditions   © 2026 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved. 3 Times Square, New York, NY 10036

Tankers attacked in the Gulf

Plus, airline hedging strategies fall short as jet fuel price surges.

Get full access to Reuters.com for just $1/week. Subscribe now. Daily Briefing Daily Briefing By Kate Turton Hello. In the latest news from the war in the Middle East, oil tankers burn near Iraq as Iranian strikes defy Trump's claim to have won. And US intelligence says Iran's government is not at risk of collapse. Elsewhere, airline hedging strategies fall short as jet fuel price surges, and the US opens unfair-trade probes to rebuild Trump's tariff pressure. Today's Top News   Tanker carrying Iraqi fuel oil damaged after catching fire, following unidentified attacks that targeted two foreign tankers, near Basra, Iraq. REUTERS/Mohammed Aty War in the Middle East Two tankers were ablaze in Iraqi waters after what appeared to be Iranian strikes, the latest wave of attacks on oil and transport facilities across the Middle East. Follow our live updates. US President Donald Trump said that "we won" the Iran war but that the US will stay in the fight to finish the job."You never like to say too ⁠early you won. We won," Trump told a campaign-style rally in Hebron, Kentucky. "In the first hour it was over." US intelligence indicates that Iran's leadership is still largely intact and is not at risk of collapse any time soon after nearly two weeks of relentless US and Israeli bombardment, according to three sources familiar with the matter. A strike on an Iranian girls' elementary school, which killed 175 students and school staff, may have been conducted using outdated targeting data. Idrees Ali joins the Reuters World News podcast to discuss why investigators think the US was responsible for the attack.  In other news The first passenger train service between the Chinese and North Korean capitals left Beijing Railway Station, ending a six-year gap, as China moves to ‌shore up cross-border infrastructure and rebuild ties with its neighbor. A man was arrested with more than 2,200 live garden ants in his luggage at Nairobi's main airport this week amid a rise in cases of smuggling ‌of the insects in Kenya. Ant aficionados pay large sums to maintain colonies in large transparent vessels known as formicariums. Russia's Foreign Ministry condemned a deadly Ukrainian strike on the western Russian city of Bryansk as a "terrorist attack" and accused Britain, whose missiles it said ⁠were used, of overstepping international legal norms. The US Senate is poised to pass legislation aimed at boosting affordable housing construction nationwide, giving lawmakers the ability to campaign for re-election this year by highlighting efforts to ease the burden of ‌high living costs. Business & Markets   A semi-truck drives past Chinese shipping containers at the Port of Los Angeles in Wilmington, California. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo Trump's administration said it was launching two trade investigations into excess industrial capacity in 16 major trading partners and into forced labor, rebuilding tariff pressure after the Supreme Court tore down much of Trump's tariff program last month. Global shares fell as attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf shattered any prospects of an imminent de-escalation in the Middle East conflict, pushing oil prices above $100 a barrel and stoking fresh inflation concerns. As a sharp rise in oil prices rattles global transport markets, airlines face an additional threat: the price of jet fuel has risen far faster than crude prices. Even airlines that use hedging contracts to protect ‌against sudden spikes in oil prices are rapidly announcing fare hikes, fuel surcharges and capacity cuts. Nintendo said it has sold more than 2.2 million copies of "Pokemon Pokopia" in the four days since its launch ‌as the game's popularity helps offset fear about Switch 2 sales momentum. Artificial intelligence is being deployed on both sides of the tug-of-war between US healthcare systems that want to be paid more for medical procedures and insurers who want proof the services were necessary, and experts are having a hard time predicting a winner. Though investors are still pricing in a swift end to the Middle East conflict, the disruption to oil and gas flows from the region is producing early signs of stress. In this week's Viewsroom podcast, Breakingviews columnists debate how bad the economic and political fallout could get. Brazil's dreams for industrial-scale cocoa farms fading after price crash   Cocoa farmers in Brazil have slammed the brakes on new planting projects following a 70% plunge in cocoa prices from their 2024 record high, stalling growth that investors had expected would make the country a major supplier of the main ingredient in chocolate. At current prices of around $3,000 per metric ton, farmers and analysts told Reuters they expected around half the projects in Brazil to ‌grow cocoa on an industrial scale could be canceled. Read more And Finally... Artist's conception of a magnetar surrounded by an accretion disk exhibiting Lense-Thirring precession. Joseph Farah and Curtis McCully/Handout via REUTERS A supernova - the explosion marking the end of a massive star's life - is one of the brightest cosmic events, usually about a billion times more luminous than the sun. But some - a small fraction - are even brighter than that, 10 to 100 times more luminous. These are called superluminous supernovas. Why these are so bright has been a ‌mystery in astrophysics. But one such superluminous supernova involving a huge star in a galaxy about a billion light-years from Earth is now helping scientists solve the mystery.  Read more   Sponsors are not involved in the creation of newsletters or other Reuters news content. Advertise in this newsletter or on Reuters' website   Reuters Daily Briefing is sent 5 days a week. Think your friend or colleague should know about us? Forward this newsletter to them. They can also sign up here. Want to stop receiving this email? Unsubscribe here. To manage which newsletters you're signed up for, click here. This email includes limited tracking for Reuters to understand whether you’ve engaged with its contents. For more information on how we process your personal information and your rights, please see our Privacy Statement. Terms & Conditions   © 2026 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved. 3 Times Square, New York, NY 10036