The world’s richest democracies scrambled into crisis mode on Friday, agreeing to release up to 100 million barrels of oil and diesel from their emergency reserves after President Donald Trump threatened to cut off American fuel exports and plunge Europe deeper into an energy squeeze that had already pushed British pump prices past the symbolic £2-a-litre mark.

The agreement, hammered out on a video call chaired by French President Emmanuel Macron, defused a brewing transatlantic row that had pitted Washington against its closest allies at the worst possible moment: with diesel prices at record highs, war still rattling Middle Eastern oil infrastructure, and Russian refineries under sustained Ukrainian drone attack.

Under the deal, G7 members — the US, UK, Canada, Japan, Germany, Italy and France, alongside the EU — will coordinate a drawdown of roughly 50 million barrels of crude oil and 50 million barrels of diesel through the International Energy Agency over the next four months. Crucially, officials promised a “frontloaded substantial diesel release” within just 20 days, an acknowledgment that the fuel crunch is doing the most immediate damage to consumers and businesses.

Just as significant as the barrels themselves was what the G7 agreed to stop doing: in a joint statement, leaders pledged to “refrain from export restrictions on energy and energy products” against one another — language clearly aimed at neutralising Trump’s threat to ban US diesel exports outright.

Macron said the American president had been unambiguous on that point. “We are all committed to ensuring there are no export bans, and President Trump, in particular, was very clear on this point,” he told reporters after the call. Trump, for his part, declared victory on social media, writing that Europe had “agreed to release a massive amount of their heavily stocked Diesel Oil” and that the process would “begin immediately.”

The standoff had been building for days. The US is the world’s dominant diesel exporter, refining four to five million barrels a day while consuming only about 3.6 million domestically — leaving over a million barrels a day destined for overseas buyers, many of them in Europe. But that export flow had drained America’s own stockpiles to their lowest seasonal level since 1996, sending US pump prices surging past $5.85 a gallon and creating a political headache for Trump ahead of November’s midterm elections.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent argued American truckers, farmers and businesses “should not be left carrying the burden” of propping up global supply, and pressed Europe to release its own stockpiles rather than lean indefinitely on US exports. The implicit threat, should Europe fail to act, was a ban that would have starved allies of fuel they badly needed.

For Britain in particular, the stakes could hardly have been higher. More than half the UK’s diesel is imported, with roughly 31% of that coming from the US — far more exposure than France or Germany, which each hold up to 400 days’ worth of diesel in storage. The UK’s own reserves cover only 40 to 50 days. Capital Economics warned this week that a full US export ban could have driven UK pump prices beyond 300p a litre, with chief UK economist Paul Dales cautioning that prolonged disruption would risk feeding into broader inflation and potentially force the Bank of England to keep interest rates higher for longer.

Those fears were already materialising before the G7 deal was struck. The RAC motoring group said the cost of filling an average family car in the UK had hit £110 — nearly £32 more than before the war between Israel, the US and Iran upended Middle Eastern oil flows. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband represented Britain on Friday’s call, saying the measures agreed would “stabilise energy supplies, build resilience in supply chains and shield households and businesses from price shocks.”

The broader supply picture explains why prices have spiralled so dramatically. Conflict in the Middle East has curtailed both crude extraction and refining capacity across the region, while Russia — hit by a wave of Ukrainian strikes on its refineries — has imposed its own diesel export ban, pushing its fuel output to 20-year lows. China, a major buyer of Gulf crude, has further tightened the global market. Diesel is notoriously difficult to refine compared with petrol, and because it underpins haulage and agriculture, demand is almost impossible to throttle back without hitting food and freight costs directly.

Markets registered cautious relief at the announcement. Brent crude, the global benchmark, briefly dipped below $100 a barrel before settling around $102 — still a long way above the roughly $73 it fetched before the US and Israel struck Iran, but a step back from the peak of the panic.

Beyond the immediate release, G7 leaders said they would coordinate refinery maintenance schedules to avoid multiple plants going offline simultaneously, and would encourage nations with spare refining capacity to prioritise diesel production. They also reaffirmed that sanctions on Russia over its war in Ukraine would remain firmly in place, even as the bloc leans on global supply elsewhere to ease the squeeze.

What remains unclear is exactly how the burden will be shared — which countries will release how much, and on what timetable. Macron indicated ministers would reconvene in the coming days to weigh “additional diesel releases as necessary” if the initial tranche fails to calm markets. For now, the message from the G7 was one of unity restored after a tense few days in which the prospect of Washington turning off the taps had exposed just how fragile the West’s energy security truly is — and how costly a transatlantic trade spat over barrels of fuel could become for ordinary households filling up at the pump.

The obesity drug gold rush that made Ozempic and Wegovy household names is entering a new phase, and the hormone at the center of it isn’t GLP-1. It’s amylin — a lesser-known pancreatic hormone that drugmakers now believe could unlock billions of dollars in additional weight-loss treatment, either on its own or stacked on top of the blockbuster shots millions of patients already take.

Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, the two companies that built empires on tirzepatide and semaglutide, are both pushing deeper into amylin science, betting that the next wave of obesity treatment won’t replace GLP-1 drugs so much as extend their reach. Amylin is released from the pancreas alongside insulin and plays its own role in regulating hunger and satiety, giving researchers a second biological lever to pull — one that can be used independently or layered on top of existing therapies to push weight loss further.

Lilly offered the clearest evidence yet of that strategy this week, releasing Phase 2 data on its experimental amylin-targeting drug eloralintide. In a trial involving patients with obesity and Type 2 diabetes, combining eloralintide with tirzepatide — the active ingredient in Lilly’s Zepbound and Mounjaro — produced dramatically better results than tirzepatide alone. After 48 weeks, patients on the highest-dose combination lost an average of 23.3% of their body weight, compared with 14.8% for those on a high dose of tirzepatide by itself.

Those numbers matter because Type 2 diabetes patients typically see smaller weight-loss results on these therapies than people without diabetes, making the gap all the more notable to researchers watching the space. Benjamin Bikman, a Brigham Young University professor who studies metabolic health, called the results “encouraging,” while noting the real test will come in how patients fare over longer stretches of treatment.

For Lilly, eloralintide is being developed on two tracks: as a standalone drug and as a combination therapy with tirzepatide. Wall Street is already penciling in big numbers for both. Leerink Partners analyst David Risinger projects the eloralintide franchise could generate $23.2 billion in annual sales by the end of 2035, with the standalone version reaching the market first in 2029 and the combination following roughly a year later.

The appeal isn’t just about squeezing more weight loss out of existing patients. Risinger estimates that more than 10 million people have already tried GLP-1 drugs and failed to benefit — whether because the drugs didn’t work well enough, side effects were too severe, or genetic factors made them non-responders. That’s a sizable, underserved population that amylin-based treatments could target as a monotherapy, independent of tirzepatide or semaglutide altogether.

Lilly executives see the opportunity running in both directions. Ken Custer, president of Lilly Cardiometabolic Health, framed it as filling gaps on either side of the treatment spectrum: patients who don’t get enough from tirzepatide alone, and those who don’t get enough from an amylin drug alone. Combining the two, the thinking goes, could capture patients who would otherwise fall through the cracks of either mechanism. Bikman pointed to another use case — patients who start strong on tirzepatide but hit a weight-loss plateau and need an added push.

Still, the excitement comes with real caveats. The results are drawn from a relatively small Phase 2 study, and Lilly must now replicate them in larger Phase 3 trials set to begin later this year. Tolerability is shaping up as the bigger hurdle than efficacy: in the combination arms of the trial, between 10.8% and 27% of patients discontinued treatment due to side effects, depending on dosage, compared with just 2.9% of those taking tirzepatide alone. As Bikman put it, a therapy only works if patients can actually stay on it — meaning tolerability data from the next phase of trials may matter just as much as the weight-loss numbers themselves.

Novo Nordisk, Lilly’s chief rival in the obesity-drug race, is pursuing its own amylin programs as well, underscoring that this isn’t a one-company bet but potentially the next major battleground in a market already worth tens of billions of dollars. If the science holds up through late-stage trials, amylin could do for obesity treatment what combination therapies have done in other chronic disease categories: turning a single blockbuster drug class into a multi-front portfolio business, with options tailored to patients GLP-1s never fully reached.

For now, the promise is real but unproven at scale. Investors, doctors, and patients alike will be watching Phase 3 results closely to see whether amylin’s early numbers hold — and whether people can actually stay on the drugs long enough to realize them.

The American job engine sputtered badly in September, with employers adding a mere 29,000 positions — a fraction of what economists had forecast and the clearest sign yet that the labor market is losing steam just as voters prepare to head to the polls for the midterm elections.

The figure, released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, landed at less than half of the roughly 70,000 jobs economists had penciled in, and marked a stark reversal from August’s revised gain of 133,000. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2% from 4.1%, continuing a gradual drift that has pushed joblessness higher than at any point since last November.

This was the final employment snapshot before the 3 November midterms, and its timing could hardly be worse for the White House. The report lands amid growing public frustration over living costs, with a new AP/NORC poll showing just 17% of Americans approve of President Donald Trump’s handling of the cost of living — a record low that undercuts his frequent claims that the United States is running the “hottest” economy in the world. Only 26% approve of his broader economic stewardship, also a new low.

Trump himself seemed to acknowledge the gap between his rhetoric and public perception earlier this week, telling a White House audience, “I’ve done a very bad job of explaining how good the country is doing.”

The slowdown was not evenly spread. Healthcare accounted for most of the modest gains, adding 17,000 jobs, while the information, financial and professional services sectors all shed workers. Across much of the rest of the economy — from retail to technology — headcounts barely moved at all, suggesting employers are neither aggressively hiring nor rushing to lay people off. Economists have taken to calling this dynamic a “slow-hire, slow-fire” labor market, in which companies are hunkering down rather than making big staffing bets in either direction.

Adding to the unease, the government revised down its estimates for July and August by a combined 60,000 jobs. July’s figure was revised into negative territory, showing the economy actually lost 10,000 jobs that month — an unusual contraction that had already rattled analysts when first reported.

Wage growth also slowed sharply. Average hourly earnings rose just 3% over the past year, the weakest pace in more than five years, a trend that could ease some inflationary pressure but will do little to comfort workers already squeezed by rising costs elsewhere.

The pain is not being felt equally. Unemployment among Black Americans jumped a full percentage point to 7%, double the rate for white workers, underscoring how a cooling labor market tends to hit already vulnerable groups hardest. Job openings and hiring overall were little changed in August, reinforcing the sense of a market in stasis rather than freefall.

Not every signal was quite so grim. Separate data from payroll processor ADP, released earlier in the week, painted a rosier picture of private-sector hiring, which it said accelerated for the first time since May, adding 90,000 jobs on the strength of healthcare, education and hospitality. Jobless claims also edged down for a fourth consecutive week, according to the Labor Department, suggesting layoffs remain contained even as new hiring dries up.

Economists cautioned against reading too much into a single weak month. George Brown, senior economist at Schroders, noted that job gains have been “a rollercoaster” throughout the year and that one soft report doesn’t necessarily herald a lasting collapse. Bradley Saunders of Capital Economics described the figure as “not disastrous,” pointing to a drop in government employment and changes to temporary visa policy as factors weighing on the headline number. Jeffery Roach, chief economist at LPL Financial, framed the divergence as tension between “goods producing sectors that support the AI boom” and service industries grappling with the disruptive effects of that same technology.

The report carries significant weight for the Federal Reserve, which raised interest rates last month for the first time in three years after Fed chair Kevin Warsh argued the labor market was “running consistent with full employment” even as “inflation is too high and has been for too long.” Friday’s data has cooled expectations that the central bank will push through a second rate increase at its final policy meeting before the midterms, with most officials now seen as more likely to wait until December if another hike comes at all.

Inflation, meanwhile, shows little sign of loosening its grip on household budgets. Mortgage rates jumped from 7% to 7.28% this week — the sharpest weekly rise since 2022 — while the 10-year Treasury yield, a benchmark for loans across the economy, climbed to a 24-year high amid a broader global bond sell-off. Elevated oil prices, linked in part to the ongoing US-Israel war on Iran, have cost the average American household an estimated $936 so far.

Taken together, the picture is one of an economy that is neither collapsing nor thriving — a labor market stuck in neutral, wages failing to outpace the cost of living, and borrowing costs climbing even as hiring stalls. For voters weighing the state of their wallets heading into the midterms, that muddled reality may prove more consequential than any single headline number.

Why is Toromont Industries stock surging today?

Nike will report fiscal first-quarter earnings after markets close Thursday, a moment of reckoning for a company whose stock has lost more than 40% of its value this year and whose once-dominant presence in China continues to erode.

Analysts surveyed by LSEG expect the sportswear giant to post earnings of 43 cents per share on revenue of roughly $11.32 billion. Those numbers would mark another quarter of sluggish performance for a brand that has struggled to find its footing since the pandemic-era boom faded and competitors crowded into its core markets.

The company itself has tempered expectations. Former Chief Financial Officer Matt Friend told investors earlier this year that Nike anticipated “flattish” sales for the first half of fiscal 2027, a tacit acknowledgment that the turnaround effort underway since CEO Elliott Hill took the reins has yet to translate into meaningful growth. Nike has since brought in a new finance chief, David Denton, a former Pfizer executive who stepped into the CFO role in August and will now help steer the company through investor scrutiny on Thursday’s call.

China remains the company’s most glaring problem. Sales in the region fell 12% in the most recent quarter, continuing a painful retreat from a market that was once among Nike’s most profitable. Hill has publicly insisted that Nike is “fully committed” to reclaiming its footing there, but Wall Street’s patience appears to be thinning. Bank of America analysts downgraded the stock from neutral to underperform last week, warning that “risks are rising” and predicting further disappointment out of China alongside continued pressure on the share price.

North America, Nike’s largest and historically most reliable market, has also shown cracks. Last quarter’s $4.83 billion in North American revenue fell short of the $4.88 billion Wall Street had penciled in, according to StreetAccount, suggesting that even the company’s home turf is not immune to the broader slowdown in consumer appetite for sneakers and athletic apparel.

That slowdown is playing out against a tougher macroeconomic backdrop. Rising geopolitical tensions and persistent inflation have made consumers more cautious with discretionary spending, a dynamic that has weighed on Nike alongside much of the retail sector. Executives have responded with a turnaround strategy that prioritizes different segments of the business at different speeds, betting that a more disciplined, phased approach will eventually restore growth rather than chasing quick fixes.

There was at least one unusual boost buried in the company’s last report: a nearly $986 million tariff refund that added 52 cents per share to earnings, a one-time windfall that flattered results but did little to change the underlying narrative of a brand searching for relevance. Nike said it still expects gross margin for the first fiscal quarter to tick up slightly from a year earlier, a modest sign that cost discipline and pricing strategy may be gaining some traction even as top-line growth remains elusive.

Looking ahead, analysts project full-year revenue of around $45.31 billion for fiscal 2027, with the second quarter expected to come in near $11.79 billion — hardly a dramatic acceleration from current levels. For investors, Thursday’s results and the accompanying 5 p.m. ET call with analysts will be closely parsed for any signs that Hill’s turnaround plan is beginning to bear fruit, or whether Nike’s struggles in China and sluggish demand at home will continue to define the brand’s story into 2027.

Britain is quietly lining up a contingency plan with its European neighbours to tap strategic fuel reserves, as officials brace for the fallout from a possible US ban on diesel exports that could send pump prices across the Atlantic even higher than they already are.

The BBC understands that Energy Minister Martin McCluskey spoke with European counterparts on Thursday to thrash out a coordinated response, with the UK keen to ensure it is not caught flat-footed if Washington follows through on threats to restrict diesel shipments abroad. A government source described the move as prudent preparation rather than panic, noting that reserves built up earlier this year during an earlier coordinated release remain available across Europe.

The urgency is easy to understand. UK diesel prices have already smashed through record territory, with the RAC putting the average cost at 199.79p a litre this week — up sharply from 142.38p not long ago. For hauliers, farmers and millions of ordinary motorists, that is not an abstract market wobble; it is a direct hit to household budgets and business margins at a time when both are already stretched.

At the centre of the storm is Donald Trump, who has floated banning diesel exports from the United States in an effort to force domestic pump prices down ahead of the midterm elections. “We’re thinking about it very seriously,” the US president said over the weekend, framing the idea as straightforward relief for American drivers and truckers. The logic is simple in theory: keep more barrels at home, and supply should push prices down for US consumers.

The trouble is that the rest of the world depends heavily on exactly those barrels. The US ships between 1.2 and 1.5 million barrels of diesel a day to global markets, making it one of the most important suppliers on the planet. Analysts warn that choking off that flow would not simply redistribute pain — it would amplify it. David Fyfe, chief economist at Argus Media, said cutting off American supply would likely send international prices skyrocketing, turning a domestic political fix into an international economic headache.

Britain is particularly exposed. Although its four domestic refineries produce ample petrol, they fall well short of meeting the country’s diesel needs, forcing heavy reliance on imports. That dependence leaves the UK vulnerable to exactly the kind of supply shock a US export ban could trigger, even as the number of diesel vehicles on British roads has been falling — from 15.7 million to 15.1 million over the past year, according to the Department for Transport, with diesel cars down from 10.4 million to 9.8 million.

The diesel squeeze did not start with Trump’s threats. Prices have been climbing globally since fighting between the US, Israel and Iran disrupted the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and gas normally flows. An export ban from Russia, another major diesel supplier, has piled on further pressure, leaving markets already stretched thin before Washington’s latest intervention entered the picture.

Brussels appears just as alarmed as London. A European Commission spokesperson said there had been “lots of calls, lots of meetings” on the diesel situation in recent days, including high-level contact with the US administration, as European governments weigh their own exposure to any American export curbs. The International Energy Agency’s governing board is due to meet to discuss the wider implications, underscoring how quickly a domestic US political calculation has become an international energy policy concern.

For now, the UK government is striking a reassuring tone, insisting there is no reason to fear outright shortages. “We have a diverse and resilient supply. We continue to engage with our international partners and the UK fuel industry,” a spokesperson said. But that reassurance comes with a caveat: officials are not promising prices will fall, only that supply itself should hold up. Further price rises, the government acknowledges, remain likely.

That is cold comfort for drivers already absorbing record costs at the pump, and for the haulage and agricultural sectors for whom diesel is not a discretionary expense but an operational necessity. Diesel is notoriously harder to refine than petrol, and because so much of the economy — from food distribution to construction to farming — runs on it, demand simply cannot be dialled down in response to price spikes the way it might for other goods.

What happens next largely hinges on a decision in Washington that has little to do with Britain’s energy security and everything to do with American domestic politics. If Trump proceeds with an export ban, the UK’s quiet diplomacy this week suggests it intends to respond collectively with European partners rather than scrambling alone — drawing down shared reserves while hoping that coordinated action can soften a blow that markets, and millions of drivers, are already bracing to feel.

A wave of selling swept through global bond markets on Thursday, pushing US government borrowing costs to their highest level in nearly a quarter of a century and reviving uncomfortable questions about whether the world’s largest economies can keep financing their debts without triggering a fresh inflation scare.

The yield on 10-year US Treasuries — effectively the interest rate the government pays to borrow money over that period — jumped to 5.34%, a level not seen since 2002. The move rippled across the Atlantic, where UK 30-year bond yields briefly broke above 6% for the first time since 1998, a milestone that will add fresh strain on Chancellor John Healey as he prepares his first budget later this month.

For ordinary households and businesses, rising government bond yields are far from an abstract concern. They tend to feed directly into the cost of mortgages, business loans and government debt interest payments, meaning the latest sell-off could translate into higher borrowing costs across the economy just as policymakers had hoped for some relief.

The source of the unease is a familiar one: oil. Persistently high crude prices, driven by the continuing conflict in the Middle East, have stoked fears that inflation — which many investors had assumed was being brought under control — could come roaring back. Brent crude rose a further 3% on Thursday to around $101 a barrel, even as analysts noted that oil exports through the strait of Hormuz have largely recovered to pre-conflict levels as shippers find workarounds. The lingering uncertainty over a lasting resolution to the conflict, rather than the immediate supply numbers, appears to be what is rattling markets.

Stock markets took the bond rout as a cue to retreat as well. London’s FTSE 100 shed almost 1.7% in its worst single-day fall since May, while Germany’s DAX dropped 1% and France’s CAC 40 fell 1.6%. Eurozone bonds were swept up in the selling too, with France drawing particular scrutiny from investors wary of the country’s fiscal position.

What makes this episode notable is that it came despite US inflation data released on Wednesday that actually came in softer than expected — numbers that, in calmer times, might have reassured markets that the Federal Reserve was done raising rates. Instead, traders shrugged off the good news, apparently unconvinced that lower headline inflation will hold if oil prices keep climbing and wages continue to rise in a resilient US labour market.

“There is carnage in the bond market, which is hitting stocks hard,” said Neil Wilson, investor strategist at Saxo UK, describing a “relentless rout” that is sending investors scrambling for safety.

Beyond the immediate inflation worry, analysts point to a deeper structural anxiety: the sheer volume of government debt being issued to plug widening budget deficits. Mohit Kumar, an economist at Jefferies, said markets are grappling simultaneously with concerns over inflation, deficits and the pace of bond issuance. He described what amounts to a “buyers’ strike,” with hedge funds nursing recent losses and lacking the appetite to bet against the sell-off, while larger institutional investors — so-called “real money” — are waiting on the sidelines for signs of stability before stepping back in.

That combination of nervous hedge funds and cautious long-term investors helps explain why the sell-off has proven so self-reinforcing: with few buyers willing to absorb new debt at current prices, yields have had to rise further to attract demand, which in turn unsettles markets even more.

The dollar, meanwhile, has been one of the few beneficiaries of the turmoil, climbing to a three-month high as investors sought refuge in the world’s reserve currency. Axel Rudolph, chief technical analyst at IG, said that while the softer US inflation data had dimmed expectations of an October Fed rate rise, investors remain braced for the possibility of a hike in December if oil prices stay elevated.

Japan has not been immune either, with its 10-year yield climbing back toward the 30-year high it set just last month — a reminder that this is a genuinely global phenomenon rather than a problem confined to Washington or London.

For governments already wrestling with stretched public finances, the timing could hardly be worse. Higher borrowing costs mean more of every tax pound or dollar goes toward servicing existing debt rather than public services, adding pressure on finance ministers everywhere — not least Healey, who must now craft a budget against a backdrop of the most expensive long-term borrowing Britain has faced in nearly three decades.

Whether this proves a temporary spasm or the start of a more sustained repricing of risk may hinge on developments far from any trading floor — chiefly, how the Middle East conflict and its effect on oil supplies evolve in the weeks ahead. Until then, bond markets look set to remain on edge.