Good morning. US regional banks are suddenly in the grip of credit fears. Ozempic is about to get a lot cheaper. And Japan’s beloved denims are fading in more ways than one. Listen to the day’s top stories.
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Stocks are sliding into the weekend amid fresh worries about the credit health of regional US banks. While the tens of millions in fraud losses disclosed by Zions and Western Alliance pale next to the recent collapse of First Brands and Tricolor, they’ve reignited Wall Street’s debate over whether the era of easy money is facing a reckoning.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Donald Trump in the Oval Office in August. Photographer: Aaron Schwartz/CNP
Déjà vu. Donald Trump hosts Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the White House today. Although the US president has adopted a distinctly warmer tone toward Ukraine’s leader since giving him a dressing down in the Oval Office earlier this year, the meeting will be nervously watched. In the run-up to the tête-à-tête, Trump announced a second summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Unmasked. Hedge funds in the Cayman Islands probably held about $1.85 trillion in US Treasuries at the end of 2024—a remarkable $1.4 trillion more than official data show, Fed researchers said. That makes the islands the largestforeignowner of US government debt, ahead of China, Japan and the UK. The official data probably didn’t fully pick up transactions linked to the something called basis trades. Here’s how they work—and what can go wrong.
A vessel is shown right before a US strike in a video posted to Donald Trump’s Truth Social account on Oct. 14. Photographer: Donald J. Trump/Truth Social
Trump’s “gunboat diplomacy” in the Caribbean is creating ever-bigger waves. Venezuela’s ambassador to the United Nations accused the US of killing innocent people in an attack this week, citing local reports that two Trinidadian fishermen died.
Trump says the strikes are designed to disrupt a route used by “narcoterrorists” shipping drugs from Venezuela to the US, and claimed the vessel was affiliated with a designated terrorist organization he didn’t identify.
A 33-second video included in a social media post by the president showed an aerial shot of a boat that’s struck by a missile and explodes in a fireball.
The bombings have triggered debate over whether the US has the right to kill people in international waters without a legal process, and with little public information about who’s been targeted.
Trump has also authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to take covert action in Venezuela, and sent more than 4,000 sailors and Marines to the seas around Latin America, as well as at least three destroyer warships and a guided-missile cruiser. Here’s why.
The Big Take
Nyachianya Duoth holds her son, Kai, in Mirmir village, Koch County, South Sudan. Kai, 5, was born with no eyes. Photographer: Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi/Bloomberg
In 2011, Petronas—Malaysia’s national oil and gas company and one of the world’s largest crude producers—was warned its South Sudan oil wells may be causing congenital disease. Over a decade later, children are still being born with serious deformities, a Bloomberg investigation has found. Watch the documentary.
