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US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has unveiled a new phase of Washington's economic campaign against Iran, this time aimed not only at sanctioned Iranian institutions but at the international networks Tehran has used to keep money and goods moving. Speaking on August 24, Bessent said the United States would target what he called five economic lifelines: digital assets, technology, gold, aviation and shipping. He also warned foreign entities that help the country illicitly move money around. "Any entity that facilitates money laundering for Iran will be removed from the US dollar-based financial system," Bessent said. "The countdown starts now." The approach represents an effort to tighten secondary sanctions, putting pressure on companies, financial intermediaries and trading partners...

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has unveiled a new phase of Washington's economic campaign against Iran, this time aimed not only at sanctioned Iranian institutions but at the international networks Tehran has used to keep money and goods moving. Speaking on August 24, Bessent said the United States would target what he called five economic lifelines: digital assets, technology, gold, aviation and shipping. He also warned foreign entities that help the country illicitly move money around. "Any entity that facilitates money laundering for Iran will be removed from the US dollar-based financial system," Bessent said. "The countdown starts now." The approach represents an effort to tighten secondary sanctions, putting pressure on companies, financial intermediaries and trading partners...

A 70-year-old woman with advanced breast cancer was supposed to undergo chemotherapy every two weeks. Doctors had scheduled six treatment sessions, each costing around 100 million Iranian tomans (about $530 or €450). Iran's minimum monthly wage for workers covered by the country's labor law is 16.6 million tomans, meaning that just one of her chemotherapy sessions costs roughly six times the monthly minimum wage. The woman's children asked her doctor to postpone the next round of treatment while they searched for a loan or any other source of financial support, according to colleagues of Hamid Hemmatpour, an Iranian physician based in Austria and a member of the executive board of the Association of Healthcare Professionals for Human Rights-Austria. Her story is far from unique. Across ...

1. How full are Germany's gas storage levels right now? Germany's more than 40 gas storage facilities are barely over half full, mainly due to the ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz — currently the world's most critical energy chokepoint — because of the Iran war. According to Gas Infrastructure Europe, the industry body for the continent's gas grid operators, Germany's underground natural gas stores stood at 50.14% on Wednesday. This is the lowest level for mid-August in several years. Gas storage is around a quarter lower than on the same date last year and more than 45 percentage points lower than in 2023 and 2024, when the country made robust contingency plans due to Russia's war in Ukraine. That conflict forced Germany, along with the rest of Europe, to reduce its reliance on...

1. How severe is Germany's 2026 harvest decline? The German Farmers' Association (DBV) on Tuesday warned of a "below-average" harvest due to ongoing drought that has left large areas of farmland severely parched. In a statement, DBV President Joachim Rukwied warned that the country's grain harvest would be 7% lower than last year, blaming an "overly dry spring and a heat wave in the second half of June," which had "significantly damaged many crops." Overall grain production was expected to be 41.9 million tons this year, the DBV said, a shortfall of some 3.3 million tons compared with 2025. Rapeseed saw the largest fall, with 3.3 million tons harvested, nearly 17% lower than last year. Barley remained at last year's level despite a lower yield, as more land was used to grow the crop. ...

1. How full are Germany's gas storage levels right now? Germany's more than 40 gas storage facilities are barely over half full, mainly due to the ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz — currently the world's most critical energy chokepoint — because of the Iran war. According to Gas Infrastructure Europe, the industry body for the continent's gas grid operators, Germany's underground natural gas stores stood at 50.14% on Wednesday. This is the lowest level for mid-August in several years. Gas storage is around a quarter lower than on the same date last year and more than 45 percentage points lower than in 2023 and 2024, when the country made robust contingency plans due to Russia's war in Ukraine. That conflict forced Germany, along with the rest of Europe, to reduce its reliance on...

The founder of China's Evergrande group, a liquidated property developer, was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday by a Chinese court, which ordered all his personal property confiscated. Hui Ka Yan pleaded guilty in April to several charges, including fraud, corporate bribery, and illegally taking public deposits. Evergrande defaulted in 2021 on most of its $300 billion (roughly EUR255 billion) in liabilities and billions of dollars in wealth management product payments. Hui's former companies fined a total of $2.3 billion Hui also had his "political rights revoked for life and all his personal property confiscated," according to the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court. The court also found he "violated national laws by engaging in continuous, large-scale financial fraud and othe...

For decades, debate in Iran over the Caspian Sea has often centered on a deceptively simple question: What percentage belongs to the country? Iran, Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan all border the body of water. But the Caspian is treated neither as a conventional sea nor simply as an international lake. Instead, the five countries have developed a special legal regime governing navigation, territorial waters, fishing, security and seabed resources. The most important step came in 2018, when the five presidents signed the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea in Aktau, Kazakhstan. It established territorial waters of up to 15 nautical miles and an additional 10-nautical-mile exclusive fishing zone for each country. But it did not divide the entire Caspian into...

1. How severe is Germany's 2026 harvest decline? The German Farmers' Association (DBV) on Tuesday warned of a "below-average" harvest due to ongoing drought that has left large areas of farmland severely parched. In a statement, DBV President Joachim Rukwied warned that the country's grain harvest would be 7% lower than last year, blaming an "overly dry spring and a heat wave in the second half of June," which had "significantly damaged many crops." Overall grain production was expected to be 41.9 million tons this year, the DBV said, a shortfall of some 3.3 million tons compared with 2025. Rapeseed saw the largest fall, with 3.3 million tons harvested, nearly 17% lower than last year. Barley remained at last year's level despite a lower yield, as more land was used to grow the crop. ...

As if the vast scale of artificial intelligence (AI) investments wasn't scary enough, the head of the world's largest sovereign wealth fund is also sounding the alarm. Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norway's Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), warned last week that, in an extreme market collapse, a massive loss to its $2.4 trillion (€2.07 trillion) portfolio is "not completely improbable." The fund, created to invest the Nordic country's vast oil and gas revenues, delivered a record profit of 1,753 billion Norwegian kroner ($186 billion/€161 billion) in the first six months of the year. Nicolai Tangen, the head of Norway's sovereign wealth fund, has presided over record growthImage: Ole Berg-Rusten/NTB/IMAGO Yet, Tangen warned that the AI-chip trade — whose lofty valuations helped drive tho...