The World Bank Group’s EAP Economic Update, released today, reports that economic growth in the East Asia and Pacific (EAP) region is projected to slow in 2026 due to external shocks.

Key points

• 📉 Regional slowdown: Growth in East Asia and Pacific is projected to fall from 5.0% in 2025 to 4.2% in 2026, mainly due to energy shocks from the Middle East conflict, trade barriers, and global uncertainty.
• 🇨🇳 China’s deceleration: China’s growth is expected to drop from 5.0% in 2025 to 4.2% in 2026 and 4.3% in 2027, with weak domestic demand and property sector challenges weighing heavily.
• 🌏 Rest of the region: Growth outside China will slow to 4.1% in 2026 but could rebound to 5.0% in 2027 if geopolitical tensions ease.
• ⚡ Energy shock impact: Countries more dependent on energy imports face greater risks. A sustained 50% rise in fuel prices could cut household incomes by 3–4%.

Regional growth is projected to slow to 4.2% in 2026 from 5.0% in 2025, as the energy shock due to the Middle East conflict compounds the adverse impact of elevated trade barriers, global policy uncertainty, and domestic economic difficulties.

China’s economic growth to slow from 5.0% in 2025 to 4.2% in 2026.

Growth in China, the region’s largest economy, is projected to decelerate from 5.0% in 2025 to 4.2% in 2026 and 4.3% in 2027, as weak domestic demand and property sector challenges persist, and the global slowdown dampens export growth. Growth in the rest of the region will slow to 4.1% in 2026 and is projected to rebound to 5.0% in 2027 as geopolitical tensions ease and uncertainty diminishes.

“Growth in East Asia and Pacific continues to outperform much of the world, even in uncertain times,” said Carlos Felipe Jaramillo, World Bank Vice President for East Asia and Pacific. “Yet, sustaining growth levels requires countries to confront structural challenges and seize the opportunity of the digital age to increase productivity and create more jobs.”

Rising fuel prices may lower regional household incomes

The impact of the Middle East conflict depends on each country’s reliance on energy imports, existing vulnerabilities, and economic policy flexibility. Prolonged and intensified conflict may further increase economic distress and reduce regional growth. A sustained 50 % increase in fuel prices could lead to a 3-4% loss in income for households in the region. Targeted support—for both the poor and the vulnerable and the small and medium enterprises—can help those most in need without fiscal strain.

“The region’s past resilience is remarkable, but present difficulties could increase economic distress and  inhibit productivity growth,” said Aaditya Mattoo, World Bank Group Director of Research.

“Measured support for people and firms could preserve jobs today and reviving stalled structural reforms could unleash growth tomorrow.”

The report identifies surging AI-related exports and investment as a bright spot in 2025, especially in Malaysia, Thailand, and Viet Nam. AI could also lead to higher productivity growth, but adoption in EAP remains limited because of gaps in connectivity and skills. Only 13 to 17% of multinational subsidiaries in China and Thailand currently use AI, which is one third of the proportion in industrial countries.

Source : Energy Shock and Uncertainty Slow Growth in East Asia and Pacific

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Skyways Air Services, CJ Darcl Logistics, Leap India, Caliber Mining & Logistics, Shiprocket, Horizon Industrial Parks and Yatayat Corporation India Ltd have filed draft red herring prospectuses (DRHPs) with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi).

Together, these firms are expected to raise roughly ₹8,000-9,000 crore over the next few quarters.

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Investor Confidence Rises in Sector’s Structural Growth

Horizon Industrial Parks is likely to anchor the fundraising wave with a planned issue size of around ₹2,600 crore, followed by Leap India Ltd and Shiprocket that are planning to raise around ₹2,400 crore each, while Skyways Air Services, CJ Darcl Logistics and Yatayat Corporation India are expected to launch mid-sized offerings.

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The upcoming logistics IPO pipeline reflects increasing confidence in the sector’s structural growth story, said Dharmesh Mehta, managing director & CEO — DAM Capital Advisors.
“Achieving India’s projected growth trajectory will be difficult without a meaningful scale up of the logistics eco system, which in turn requires access to growth capital,” he said.Skyways Air Services, CJ Darcl Logistics, Leap India, Caliber Mining & Logistics and Shiprocket have already received regulatory approval to launch their IPOs.

The rush to public markets comes at a time when logistics companies are expanding capacity to cater to rising demand from e-commerce, manufacturing and infrastructure sectors.

Logistics Firms Enter the Last Mile for IPO Delivery
“Demand visibility has improved significantly over the past few quarters, driven by strong consumption trends and industrial activity,” said Deep Shah, a senior manager at Unistone Capital Pvt Ltd, a merchant banking firm. “Companies are now looking to strengthen their balance sheets and fund expansion through public capital. At the same time, global geopolitical tensions and disruptions in key trade routes have added complexity to supply chains.”

Higher freight and insurance costs, along with volatility in fuel prices, have forced companies to recalibrate pricing strategies and optimize operations, said Shah.

The valuation benchmark that looms over the current pipeline is Delhivery, which raised ₹5,235 crore in its May 2022 IPO but spent nearly two years trading below its issue price before recovering. That experience may prompt institutional investors to be choosy.

“The market has a longer memory now,” said Dev Chandrasekhar, partner at Transcendum, a valuations branding advisory. “Logistics remains a great sector, but pricing needs to reflect the capital intensity honestly.”

SAN FRANCISCO — Bluesky experienced a partial outage Thursday, with users across multiple regions reporting difficulties accessing feeds, loading posts and connecting to the decentralized social media platform as its official status page confirmed an ongoing incident.

Bluesky’s status page updated at 06:42 GMT that it was investigating a service disruption in one of its regions, noting that some systems were down while engineers implemented fixes and continued monitoring. The company reported early signs of recovery later in the morning but acknowledged that many users and services remained impacted as of mid-morning Pacific Time.

Downdetector and other outage trackers showed elevated user reports beginning around 2:39 a.m. EDT, with complaints centered on inaccessible feeds, slow loading and blank timelines. While not a full platform-wide failure, the issues affected a significant portion of users, prompting widespread discussion on alternative platforms including X and Threads.

Bluesky, the Jack Dorsey-backed decentralized social network built on the AT Protocol, has grown rapidly as an alternative to legacy social media. The platform emphasizes user-controlled data and federation, but Thursday’s incident highlighted ongoing challenges in scaling infrastructure amid surging adoption.

Company engineers had previously published a detailed post-mortem on an earlier April 2026 outage that occurred earlier in the month, which affected roughly half of users for about eight hours. That incident, detailed by systems engineer Jim Calabro on April 10, stemmed from a combination of ephemeral port exhaustion on backend TCP/IP connections and memory saturation triggered by a new internal service that unexpectedly sent large batches of requests.

The earlier outage prompted apologies from the team and underscored the complexities of operating a distributed system even with decentralized principles. Thursday’s regional disruption appeared separate but added to user frustration with reliability as the platform competes for attention in a crowded social media landscape.

Users reported a range of symptoms: some could not refresh their timelines, others saw error messages when trying to post or interact, and a subset experienced complete inability to load the app or website. The issues seemed concentrated in certain geographic regions or tied to specific backend services, consistent with the status page’s acknowledgment of a regional incident.

Bluesky’s decentralized architecture, which allows users to run their own servers or connect across federated instances, did not fully shield the platform from centralized points of failure in its core services. Critics noted that while the protocol aims for resilience, many users still rely on Bluesky’s hosted infrastructure for the primary experience.

The timing of the outage coincided with heightened global interest in alternative social platforms, as users seek spaces less influenced by traditional algorithms and moderation controversies. Bluesky has positioned itself as a more open and community-driven option, attracting millions of users fleeing other networks.

Platform representatives have not yet issued a full public statement beyond the status updates, but the team has a track record of transparent communication during incidents. The earlier April outage post-mortem was praised in technical communities for its candor, detailing root causes including unexpected request patterns from a recently deployed service that overwhelmed available network ports.

Technical observers pointed to classic scaling challenges: even small changes in request volume or batching behavior can cascade into widespread saturation when systems operate near capacity. In the prior incident, a service sending batches of 15,000-20,000 URIs at once — despite low overall requests per second — exhausted the 65,000 available ephemeral ports on localhost connections, leaving them in TIME_WAIT status and blocking new connections.

Engineers mitigated the earlier problem temporarily by randomizing localhost addresses to expand the effective port pool, then addressed the root cause. Thursday’s regional issue may stem from similar infrastructure strain, though details remain under investigation.

For affected users, common troubleshooting steps include refreshing the app or browser, clearing cache, checking internet connectivity, or trying the web version if the mobile app fails. Some reported success by switching to Wi-Fi from cellular data or vice versa, suggesting possible edge network or CDN involvement.

Bluesky’s rapid growth has tested its engineering team repeatedly in 2026. The platform, which allows custom feeds and algorithmic choice, has seen user numbers climb as it differentiates from more centralized competitors. However, outages — even partial or regional — can erode trust, especially among users who migrated seeking greater stability or freedom.

The incident drew immediate reactions online, with users sharing screenshots of error messages and speculating on causes ranging from DDoS attempts to routine maintenance gone awry. Many turned to X to vent or ask if others were experiencing the same problems, creating a secondary wave of meta-discussion about platform reliability.

Bluesky’s uptime over the past 90 days stood at approximately 99.98 percent before Thursday’s event, according to its status dashboard, indicating generally strong performance punctuated by occasional disruptions. The company has invested in redundancy and monitoring, yet the decentralized model introduces unique operational complexities compared to traditional monolithic services.

As the day progressed, the status page indicated progress with fixes deployed and recovery underway. Users were advised to remain patient while monitoring official channels for updates. No estimated full resolution time was provided initially, though early signs suggested the impact was easing for some regions.

This marks the latest in a series of visibility challenges for Bluesky in April 2026. The earlier multi-hour outage generated significant discussion in developer communities, with Hacker News threads analyzing the technical details and praising the transparency of the post-mortem.

Industry analysts note that social platforms of all sizes face increasing scrutiny over uptime as users depend on them for real-time news, community engagement and professional networking. Even brief disruptions can amplify perceptions of unreliability, particularly for newer entrants challenging established players.

Bluesky continues to iterate on features, including enhanced moderation tools, custom feed algorithms and improved federation capabilities. The team has emphasized building a more resilient infrastructure to support long-term growth without compromising the decentralized ethos.

For now, affected users can check the official status page at status.bsky.app for the latest updates or follow Bluesky’s account for announcements. The company typically provides post-incident summaries to help the community understand and learn from events.

As social media usage evolves toward more distributed models, incidents like Thursday’s serve as reminders that technical challenges persist regardless of architecture. Bluesky’s response — combining rapid fixes with eventual transparent reporting — will likely shape user sentiment in the coming days.

The platform’s leadership has previously stressed a commitment to reliability as a core value, especially as it positions itself as a viable long-term alternative. Whether Thursday’s regional outage resolves quickly and without further recurrence could influence ongoing migration trends among disillusioned users from other networks.

As of late morning on April 16, partial recovery was underway, but full service restoration for all users remained in progress. The incident, while not catastrophic, underscores the delicate balance required to scale innovative social technologies amid growing demand.

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index dropped 0.4%, snapping a three-day rally. The cautious end to the week followed a 10-day rally in global equities that pushed markets to a record high, as traders bet easing tensions will lower oil prices and support economic growth. Wall Street gauges also closed at an all-time high for a second consecutive day.

Global crude benchmark Brent slipped 1.3% to $98.14 a barrel after President Donald Trump expressed optimism about securing a permanent ceasefire with Iran ahead of the expiry of the current truce next week. Gold edged higher, while Treasuries were little changed

Investors are awaiting progress in talks that could reopen the Strait of Hormuz, easing crude flows and relieving pressure on economies after oil prices surged following the conflict’s onset in late February. While oil has pared its war-driven premium and stocks have climbed to record highs, economists are warning that markets may be underestimating the war’s economic toll.

“Markets head into the final session of the week sitting at key technical and psychological levels, with conviction still lacking as traders wait for clearer signals out of the Middle East,” Nick Twidale, chief market analyst at AT Global Markets, wrote in a note.

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Trump claimed, without evidence, that Iran had agreed to terms it has long resisted, including giving up ambitions for a nuclear weapon and turning over nuclear material. The deal would also include “free oil” and an opening of the Strait of Hormuz, the President said. Tehran hasn’t confirmed it’s made those concessions.
The prospects for a deal with Iran are “looking very good.” Trump said.Earlier, Trump announced a 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. His announcement on Thursday made no mention of Hezbollah. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed in a video message that he’d agreed to the truce.

Traders are also focused on the dollar, which has weakened after rallying on haven demand since the war began in late February. Deutsche Bank AG and Wells Fargo & Co. are among banks declaring the greenback’s war-driven haven rally is likely over as the fragile ceasefire between the US and Iran prompts investors to seek riskier assets.

Elsewhere, Netflix Inc. slid in after-hours trading after issuing a second-quarter forecast that missed analysts’ expectations. US equity-index futures were mixed with contracts for the S&P 500 Index edging up 0.1%, while contracts for the Nasdaq 100 was flat.

US stocks were buoyed by cooler-than-expected US producer and import prices this week, and got another lift after initial jobless claims for the week ending April 11 came in below economist forecasts.

“This is yet another sign of headline fatigue as it relates to the war in the Gulf region,” said Ian Lyngen at BMO. “The prevailing consolidation pattern is also suggestive that the influence of fresh geopolitical headlines is waning.”

NEW YORK — LIV Golf’s 2026 season will proceed as scheduled and “at full throttle” despite swirling reports that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund may cut financial support after this year, league CEO Scott O’Neil assured players and staff in a memo Wednesday amid mounting speculation about the breakaway tour’s long-term viability.

O’Neil’s message, obtained by multiple outlets including The Associated Press, sought to quell concerns after the Financial Times and other publications reported that the PIF is on the verge of ending its backing for the league it has funded since its launch in 2022. The Saudi sovereign wealth fund has poured more than $5.3 billion into LIV Golf, with cumulative losses projected to exceed $6 billion by the end of 2026, according to industry estimates.

“We are heading into the heart of our 2026 schedule with the full energy of an organization that is bigger, louder, and more influential than ever before,” O’Neil wrote. “I want to be crystal clear: Our season continues exactly as planned, uninterrupted and at full throttle.”

The memo followed a day of intense speculation triggered by the PIF’s announcement of a new five-year investment strategy that emphasizes domestic priorities, efficiency and a slowdown in certain global projects. Reports indicated the fund, strained by the ongoing Iran conflict and reduced oil revenues from disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, is reassessing expenditures on ventures that have yet to show returns.

Sources close to the situation told Reuters and others that funding for the remainder of the 14-event 2026 schedule remains secure, with the next tournament set for early May at Trump National Golf Club in Washington, D.C. However, multiple outlets including Fox News reported that PIF backing is expected to end after the 2026 season, citing a shift in Saudi priorities.

LIV Golf, which features a team-based format with 54-hole events and shotgun starts, has attracted star players such as Bryson DeChambeau, Sergio Garcia, Cameron Smith and Jon Rahm with massive guaranteed contracts. Yet the league has struggled with viewership, sponsorships outside Saudi interests and integration with the broader golf ecosystem.

Critics, including Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee, have been vocal. Chamblee described LIV as an “ill-conceived” and “lame-brained tour” that has lost billions while delivering a product with limited appeal. “Would it surprise anyone if the Saudis came to their corrupted senses and finally euthanized the whole lame-brained tour?” he posted on social media.

Player reactions have been mixed. Garcia told reporters that players were informed earlier in the year that funding was in place for “many years,” potentially through 2032. Some participants expressed confusion and sought reassurances from league officials as rumors spread following the Masters Tournament.

The financial pressures come as LIV continues its fifth season. Prize funds increased in 2026, adding to the cost base at a time when monthly net spending has averaged around $100 million in recent years. A $266.6 million capital injection approved by PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan in February brought the total investment past $5.3 billion.

O’Neil has previously acknowledged that profitability could be five to 10 years away. The league has failed to attract significant outside investors for its teams despite efforts to build franchise value.

The uncertainty coincides with broader Saudi economic challenges. The Iran war has impacted oil exports, leading to shutdowns of offshore fields and petrochemical facilities. PIF’s new strategy reportedly focuses on increasing investment efficiency and prioritizing domestic programs over high-profile international sports ventures that have not yet delivered clear returns.

LIV officials and sources with knowledge of operations pushed back against immediate collapse narratives. A high-ranking league source told one outlet that “funding and operations for LIV Golf are continuing as planned” for at least the remainder of 2026. Reuters cited sources confirming the remaining nine events would proceed with full PIF support.

The league’s relationship with the PGA Tour remains complicated. While talks of a potential framework agreement have occurred in the past, no full merger or comprehensive deal has materialized. Some view LIV’s model as a disruptive force that has forced the traditional tour to increase purses and innovate, while others see it as a divisive experiment that has fractured the sport.

As the 2026 schedule advances, questions linger about player contracts, team stability and the future of events in locations such as Adelaide, Australia, and other international stops that have drawn strong local support.

League leadership has emphasized growth in influence and fan engagement, pointing to larger crowds at certain events and the global platform provided to players. Yet television ratings and digital metrics have generally lagged behind PGA Tour benchmarks, contributing to the financial strain.

For players with multi-year deals, the immediate focus remains on competition. Many have expressed loyalty to the LIV format, citing the team atmosphere, no-cut events and substantial compensation. However, the prospect of funding changes beyond 2026 has introduced anxiety, particularly for those without PGA Tour pathways secured.

Golf insiders note that even with reduced or ended PIF support, alternative funding models could emerge, though finding investors willing to absorb ongoing losses would prove challenging. Some speculate about potential restructuring, sale of assets or a scaled-back operation if Saudi backing fully withdraws.

The PIF’s broader sports portfolio includes investments in soccer, Formula 1 and other properties. Observers suggest the fund is applying more rigorous return-on-investment criteria across its holdings as it navigates fiscal realities.

As of Thursday, no official announcement had come from the PIF regarding LIV Golf’s future. League events continue uninterrupted, with players preparing for the upcoming leg of the season.

The situation highlights the high-stakes nature of sportswashing debates and the intersection of geopolitics, economics and professional athletics. LIV Golf was launched with the stated goal of growing the game globally, but its reliance on a single sovereign fund has left it vulnerable to shifts in national priorities.

O’Neil’s assurances aim to project stability heading into the heart of the 2026 campaign. Whether that confidence holds through the season — and what comes after — will depend on decisions made in Riyadh and the league’s ability to demonstrate sustainable value.

For now, the show goes on, as O’Neil declared. The 2026 season remains fully funded and operational, but the long-term future of LIV Golf hangs in a delicate balance amid financial uncertainty and evolving Saudi investment strategies.