Latest Developments

Europe
BBC Business

SpaceX share price drops below stock market debut

SpaceX's share price has dropped below its stock market debut just over a month ago, falling sharply from a post-float peak. The price for a single share in Elon Musk's rocket, satellite and artificial intelligence (AI) company fell to $132.62 (£98.24) on Wednesday, below its initial listing of $135 in June. SpaceX's initial public offering (IPO) made Musk the world's first trillionaire. Compared to its on-the-day high so far, the stock price is now down 41%. If the price holds, or falls further, it will mean that those who purchased stock around the time of its flotation will stand to lose money on their investment. Even amid a tumultuous few weeks for tech stocks, SpaceX has taken a particular hit. Compared to a 0.2% fall on the wider Nasdaq index, where SpaceX's shares are listed, the company's stock price fell more than 2% on Wednesday. SpaceX stock has been volatile since it began trading on the public stock market a little over one month ago. After an initial investor frenzy that saw the company valued at more than Amazon and Microsoft, the price of its shares has drifted downward. Earlier this year, SpaceX acquired Musk's AI start-up xAI, recently renamed SpaceXAI, marking it's first foray into an AI-focused business. XAI is best known for the controversial chatbot Grok, but through that acquisition, SpaceX now leases data centre capacity to other tech companies. The company's main business is the manufacture and launch of rockets and telecommunications satellites called Starlink. When Starlink said it was cutting prices in the Memphis, Tennessee area amid local concerns over a massive data centre project, SpaceX shares fell by 8%.

SpaceX share price drops below stock market debut
Europe
BBC Business

China hits out at British Steel nationalisation

Image source, Getty ImagesByPeter HoskinsBusiness reporterPublished1 hour agoChina has hit out at the nationalisation of British Steel, saying it "firmly opposes and is strongly dissatisfied with the British government's decision". On Thursday, the UK government said that taking the loss-making firm into public hands would protect jobs and safeguard a "vital national capability". The UK took control of British Steel's operations in Scunthorpe last year, though it was still owned by China's Jingye Group, limiting the government's ability to steer its future. China's commerce ministry said on Friday that the moves "seriously infringed upon Jingye's legitimate rights and interests and severely undermined the confidence of Chinese companies investing in the UK". It also called on Britain to "faithfully fulfil" its obligations under the China–UK Bilateral Investment Treaty. "Disregarding Jingye's significant contribution to the UK economy and society, the British side forcibly took control of the company in the name of national security," the ministry said. The statement added that Beijing would monitor developments closely and support Chinese firms to protect their rights, but did not specify what protecting Chinese companies' rights might involve. The decision to nationalise British Steel threatens to strain the relationship between London and Beijing just as Andy Burnham is set to become the prime minister on Monday. The incoming PM will have to weigh his approach to the issue with the economic benefits of ties with the world's second largest economy. The nationalisation came after Parliament on Wednesday passed legislation allowing the government to bring the steel industry into public ownership under circumstances where it met a public interest test. Jingye is seeking compensation, having previously said the business was losing £700,000 a day. The BBC has been unable to get a response from Jingye itself to Thursday's announcement. By taking British Steel into public ownership the government now has the power and freedom to decide on the future of the plant, while keeping the blast furnaces going.

China hits out at British Steel nationalisation
Europe
The Guardian

Kalshi to offer betting on drug trial results and FDA regulatory decisions

An advertisement for prediction market platform Kalshi in Washington DC. Photograph: Allison Robbert/APView image in fullscreenAn advertisement for prediction market platform Kalshi in Washington DC. Photograph: Allison Robbert/APTechnologyKalshi to offer betting on drug trial results and FDA regulatory decisionsMove comes as prediction platforms rapidly gain popularity and offer opportunities to bet on virtually anything Kalshi is expanding its wagers to include bets on drug trial results, an expansion into new predictions territory as platforms continue to rapidly gain popularity and offer opportunities to bet on virtually anything. The betting platform said the expansion into clinical trials and FDA regulatory decisions would help surface information on drug trials that otherwise go unreported. A publicly listed contract on a drug trial would produce a “continuously updated, public probability that reflects the weight of the evidence, rather than the preferred message of the trial sponsor”, the company said. “Drug development is one of the most important and most information-constrained industries on earth,” Kalshi’s CEO, Tarek Mansour, said in a statement. “The data that determines which drugs advance and which don’t is largely locked away from the people who need it most. Surfacing information is what Kalshi is for, and we are committed to doing it right: compliance-first, carefully scoped, and built for the long term.” The launch is described as a pilot program, and was announced as a partnership with the artificial intelligence firm AppliedXL. Critics have said prediction platforms such as Kalshi are at risk of market manipulation and insider trading. Federal regulators told CBS News on Friday that Donald Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator made tens of thousands of dollars on bets around the president’s speeches. Last month, the Department of Justice launched an investigation into George Santos, the former Republican congressman from New York, over whether he engaged in insider trading by betting on his own attendance at the State of the Union address. And in April, several congressional candidates were fined for betting on the outcomes of their own races. As a safeguard, Kalshi said it would require employment verification to prevent insider trading, as it does with its other markets. It also said it will only list contracts after enrollment in a drug trial closes, to avoid interfering with recruitment or physician referrals. Kalshi also released a 44-page white paper on the “state and future” of drug development prediction markets, which included quotes from several leaders of healthcare companies, including the founder of 23andMe, Anne Wojcicki, who wrote that the clinical trial process was opaque and difficult to understand for most people. “Most patients don’t know about the choices available in clinical trials or which programs are most promising,” Wojcicki wrote. “The opportunity to have an open, transparent dataset about trial probabilities is extremely promising and empowering for people.” Earlier this week, filings with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission revealed Kalshi was also making plans to offer contracts to users who wanted to bet on flight cancellations – the percentage of flights cancelled at a specific airport over a given timeframe. The contracts would be based on data from FlightAware, a flight tracking company, with information from the US Department of Transportation as a backup, Kalshi said in the filing.

Kalshi to offer betting on drug trial results and FDA regulatory decisions
Asia
The Hindu BusinessLine

IIT Madras signs off milestone year with 3,518 degrees awarded

His Excellency Dr. Hussein Ali Mwinyi, President of Zanzibar presents ‘President of India Prize’ to Mr. Ashwin Subramanian Murugan during IIT Madras’ 63 Convocation on 17 July 2026 The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-Madras) hosted its 63rd convocation ceremony here on Friday, where 3,518 degrees (including Joint and Dual Degrees) were awarded to 3,106 graduating students. The institute also awarded 511 doctoral degrees for the second consecutive year which V Kamakoti, Director IIT Madras suggests will be a significant step to address the faculty shortage across the higher educational institutions in the country. Addressing the graduating class, Kamakoti mentioned that 2026 had been a milestone year for the institute which has been consistently ranked as India’s number 1 engineering college. The convocation ceremony was presided over by Hussein Ali Mwinyi, President of Zanzibar, where the institute hosts its first international campus. “The establishment of IIT Madras Zanzibar, the first international campus of IIT-Madras, represents far more than an educational milestone. It reflects a shared belief that knowledge should know no borders and that excellence should never be confined by geography. Today, students from Zanzibar, mainland Tanzania, India and several other African countries study side by side. They bring different cultures, different experiences and different perspectives, yet they are united by a common pursuit of excellence,” Mwinyi said. “In the academic year 2025-26, IIT Madras expanded its undergraduate portfolio with the introduction of BS programs in Mathematics, Aeronautics and Space Technology, Management and Data Science. At the postgraduate level, the institute launched M.Tech programs in Robotics, Mechanical Engineering and Semiconductor Materials Technology among others,” Kamakoti said. During the year, the Institute also launched IIT-M Global Foundation, an initiative to launch campuses and centres of the IIT-Madras ecosystem internationally, he added. IIT-M Global has launched an AI Innovation Center in Dubai, a $7.5 million Deep Tech Hub in California. IIT-Madras is also expanding its campus footprint with the establishment of a sustainability campus of 100 acre in the Auroville township and International Industry Innovation Campus I4C of 91.5 acre in Puducherry to strengthen research, innovation, technology transfer, industry academia collaboration and regional economic development. Beyond academics, the institute has also emerged as a major entrepreneurial ecosystem with IIT Madras incubating 100+ startups for the second year in a row in 2025-26. It also launched a 600 crore venture capital fund in partnership with Unicorn India Ventures to strengthen India’s deep tech innovation ecosystem. Pawan Goenka, Chairman of the Board of Governors at IIT-Madras highlited some of the noteworthy ventures emerging from the institute’s ecosystem including Ather Energy, Agnikul Cosmos, and GalaxEye.“This campus does not merely produce graduates and publish papers. It builds industries, creates jobs, and turns research into enterprise,” he said. Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

IIT Madras signs off milestone year with 3,518 degrees awarded
Asia-Pacific
The Straits Times

Malaysia’s growth unexpectedly surges to 5.8% on exports

Strong domestic demand and a boom in semiconductor exports have made Malaysia’s economy one of South-east Asia’s fastest-growing in 2026. KUALA LUMPUR – Malaysia reported a surprise surge in economic growth in the second quarter as robust services and electronics exports countered the impact of the war in the Middle East. Gross domestic product rose 5.8 per cent in the three months to June from a year earlier, according to advance estimates from the Department of Statistics Malaysia on July 17, beating the 5.2 per cent median prediction in a Bloomberg survey. Strong domestic demand and a boom in semiconductor exports have helped offset disruptions from the conflict in the Middle East, reinforcing expectations that Malaysia’s economy can remain one of South-east Asia’s fastest-growing in 2026. A surge in investment tied to semiconductors and artificial intelligence has helped sustain growth even as the global outlook has become more uncertain. “The services sector remained the main driver of economic growth in the second quarter of 2026,” the department said. The mining sector also rebounded to grow 10.2 per cent, driven by natural gas. Construction expanded by 6.6 per cent, supported in part by data centre projects. Inflation, meanwhile, eased to 1.9 per cent in June, with analysts having expected it to stay at May’s 2 per cent level. Malaysia has largely contained consumer price increases through fuel subsidies that have offset the impact of elevated crude prices. The ringgit held a 0.2 per cent drop against the US dollar after the data, which add to evidence that South-east Asian economies are withstanding the impact of the conflict in the Middle East. Singapore and Vietnam also reported stronger-than-expected second-quarter GDP data. But the global outlook remains uncertain, with China’s economy having expanded slower than expected in the last quarter.

Malaysia’s growth unexpectedly surges to 5.8% on exports
Europe
BBC Business

I wouldn't marry him until he paid off his debt, now I'm in charge of our money

When Sarah Reeve got engaged she gave fiance Lee an ultimatum: he had to pay off his debt before she would marry him. "I was paying my mortgage and bills whereas he was giving his mum some rent," Sarah says of their situations when they met in their early 20s. So they set a wedding date for two years ahead which gave Lee the time to pay off the £2,000 bank loan - £4,000 in today's money, external - he had taken out to buy a car. Once Lee's debt was cleared, the couple paid everything into a joint account and Sarah took charge of bills, saving and budgeting. "He said 'you can sort it all out and take charge with money because I'm rubbish with it,'" she says. Sarah's experience reflects a wider trend of more than four fifths of women being actively involved in managing daily finances like day-to-day spending and household budgeting, according to St James's Place's Women and Wealth Report. Sarah earns £24,000 working part-time in insurance and Lee worked in maintenance at the same factory for 27 years, earning about £26,000, before being made redundant four years ago. The couple, who have been together for 25 years and have two daughters, aged 19 and 21, have always thought of money as shared. "It's very much our money rather than mine or yours which is really nice especially as I took four years off work when we had children," says Sarah. After getting out of debt, Sarah says she and Lee have never overstretched themselves and have made regular overpayments on their mortgage. "That really helps as if we've had a bad month, at least you know and can find the reason." Family Action, a charity that offers financial support to families, says that when money is tight the first step "is getting a clear picture of what's going on as this helps you understand your current position so you can make the best decisions possible together going forward".

I wouldn't marry him until he paid off his debt, now I'm in charge of our money
North America
Yahoo Finance

XYLD Versus SPY: The 28% Price Return Gap Nobody Discusses

The Global X S&P 500 Covered Call ETF (NYSEARCA:XYLD) pays income the way a landlord collects rent on someone else’s future gains. XYLD sits on the S&P 500 and sells one-month at-the-money call options against it, then hands the premiums back to shareholders every month. That mechanic has produced a trailing 12-month payout of $4.2378 per share, roughly a 10.3% yield on a $41 share price. The question every XYLD holder should be asking is whether that check stays this size, and the answer is: the distribution is structurally reliable, but the number attached to it is not. XYLD holds the S&P 500 and writes standard covered calls on the index each month. When those options expire worthless (the market stayed flat or fell), the fund keeps 100% of the premium and passes most of it through as a distribution. When the market rallies past the strike, the fund gives up that upside above the cap in exchange for the premium it already collected. Global X charges 0.6% for the wrapper, on top of a fund with $3.1 billion in net assets as of April 2026. The dividend, then, is really an option-premium pass-through. It cannot “get cut” the way a company slashes its payout. It floats month to month with implied volatility. Look at the monthly stream and the pattern is obvious. During the March 2026 volatility spike (VIX peaked near 31), XYLD’s March distribution came in at $0.3905 and May’s followed at $0.4012. Compare that with the sleepy tape of late 2025, when VIX bottomed near 13 and the September 2025 distribution shrank to $0.3016. Higher fear equals fatter premiums equals bigger checks. The current VIX print near 17 sits right around the 12-month median, meaning premiums are middling. That is why the forward annualized estimate of $4.0836 runs modestly below the trailing figure. Full-year totals confirm the swing: $5.0447 in the volatile 2022 tape versus $4.1708 in 2025. Same fund, same strategy, different regime. The income comes at a real price. Over the last year, SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY) delivered a total price return of 20%. XYLD, with distributions reinvested implicitly, returned 17% on price, and its five-year price gain of 45% trails SPY’s 73%. The covered-call cap ate roughly a third of the upside in a strong bull tape. That is the structural cost of turning capital appreciation into monthly cash. There is also the Treasury alternative. The 10-year is yielding 4.6%, so XYLD’s income premium over risk-free is still real, roughly 5.5 percentage points, but investors are earning it by absorbing full equity drawdowns with only a small volatility cushion. XYLD’s distribution is safe in the sense that will not fail. It is a mechanical pass-through governed by option premiums, and the fund has paid monthly without interruption for years. The risky assumption is expecting a fixed 10% yield to persist. Model your income at the forward estimate of roughly $4.08 per share and treat anything above that as a volatility bonus. If you want equity income with more room to grow the principal, a lower-yielding dividend growth fund like Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity ETF (NYSEARCA:SCHD) hits a different point on the same tradeoff. XYLD makes sense for retirees and income-first investors who need consistent monthly cash and accept muted upside. It works less well as a total-return vehicle in a market that keeps grinding higher.

XYLD Versus SPY: The 28% Price Return Gap Nobody Discusses
Europe
BBC Business

Investigation into parking tickets for drivers queuing at petrol stations

Image source, Getty ImagesByKaty Austin, Transport correspondent and Rachel Clun, Business reporterPublished16 July 2026, 11:49 BSTUpdated 32 minutes agoOne of the UK's largest private parking providers is being investigated by the competition regulator over whether parking tickets for drivers queuing at petrol forecourts are fair. Euro Car Parks' broader appeals process relating to petrol stations and car parks is also being looked into, to determine if it breaches consumer protection law. The investigation forms part of a wider crackdown by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) into potentially unfair practices by private parking operators. Research by the RAC has suggested the number of tickets issued in places like gyms, supermarkets, restaurants and retail parks more than doubled in six years, to 14.4 million. Motorists have complained about these parking issues, the CMA said, highlighting problems including unclear signage, faulty apps and broken ticket machines. The regulator said it wanted to make sure drivers are being treated fairly following complaints from motorists who feel they've been unjustly issued with parking tickets. The CMA says it has its own concerns about the way some operators are handling appeals, or attempting to make motorists pay additional fees on top of parking charges. It has written to the sector as a whole, and issued warnings to some individual operators about their practices. The CMA's executive director of consumer protection Emma Cochrane said receiving a parking ticket could be a stressful experience. "Costs are high and often unexpected which is difficult when people are budgeting carefully," she said. "Parking companies must treat motorists fairly at all stages – and a clear and consistent appeals process must be at the heart of this. "It's time for all private parking operators to comply with consumer law or risk action from the CMA."

Investigation into parking tickets for drivers queuing at petrol stations
North America
CNBC Economy

India's inflation accelerates to 4.38% in June, exceeding forecasts

India's consumer price inflation rose to 4.38% in June, up from 3.93% in May as the U.S.-Iran war ‌and a weak monsoon raised food and fuel prices, adding to cost pressures. The headline inflation number was above economists' expectations for a 4.30% rise, according to a Reuters poll. The year-on-year inflation rate based on the All India Consumer Food Price Index (CFPI) for the month of June was 5.32%, India's Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation said in a Monday release. Transport inflation rose 4.3% in June, quicker than the ​1.75% rise in May, it said. Last month, India's central bank kept interest rates unchanged but said it expects inflation to rise and growth to temper in the financial year ending March 2027. The Reserve Bank of India forecasts inflation to shoot up to 5.1% as consumers pay higher fuel prices and the country faces a risk of crop shortages caused by weather-related disruptions from El Niño this year. It pegged core inflation at 4.7% for the same period. After a brief ceasefire between Iran and the U.S. in June, hostilities between the two sides resumed last week. Global oil prices have risen as the U.S. and Iran contest for control of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most important trade routes for global energy supplies. India, the world's fastest-growing major economy, is among the countries most vulnerable to the supply disruptions caused by the Iran war. The South Asian country imports nearly 85% of its fuel needs and relies on the Strait of Hormuz for about 50% of its crude imports, 60% of its liquefied natural gas, and almost all of its liquefied petroleum gas supplies. The South Asian country is also facing the risk of El Niño this year. Despite the copious downpour that led to flooding across many parts of the country in the last two weeks, India still faces the prospect of a deficient monsoon this year. "Following a parched June, the monsoon advanced rapidly, reducing the all-India rainfall deficit from 40% to 15% as of July 8," S&P Global-owned Indian research and rating firm Crisil said in a report on Friday. But the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has forecast July rainfall will come in at 6% below the long-period average. These swings between rainfall scarcity and surplus "can be as disruptive to agriculture as a weak monsoon itself," as it influences sowing decisions, crop health and ultimately rural incomes, Crisil said.

India's inflation accelerates to 4.38% in June, exceeding forecasts