Flash News

TREE NEWS update: US President Donald Trump said on October 16 that he never ordered restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Starshield, adding he was unsure who was responsible and did not believe SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was behind it. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had earlier accused the US side of limiting Ukrainian forces’ access to the Starshield service.

TREE NEWS reports: China’s autumn grain harvest has topped 70% nationwide as of Oct. 17, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said, citing the latest crop monitoring. By region, the northeast is over 60% harvested, the Huang-Huai-Hai and southwest regions above 80%, the northwest near 80%, the middle and lower Yangtze over 60%, and the south over 30%. Winter wheat sowing has passed 10% and winter rapeseed over 30%.

TREE NEWS update: China’s National Data Group may be officially inaugurated in the coming days, a reporter learned on Oct. 17. The new entity is expected to be established shortly, though no exact date or further details were immediately disclosed.

TREE NEWS update: China’s outdoor sports participants exceeded 500 million by the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan period, with the related industry reaching a total scale of about 3.17 trillion yuan, according to a report released at the 2026 China Outdoor Sports Industry Conference in Beijing’s Changping District on May 16. The figure compares with more than 400 million participants reported as of early April 2025.

TREE NEWS update: The Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway marked its third anniversary of operations on Oct. 17, having carried over 18 million passengers since opening, with 58,666 train services operated, more than 8.9 million kilometers run safely and an on-time rate of 99.4%, CCTV reported.

TREE NEWS update: JinkoSolar Chief Technology Officer Jin Hao said on October 17 at the company’s 2026 Global Technology Day that solar module prices, which have dropped more than 95% over the past 20 years, are expected to fall a further 50% in the next five years. He said traditional cost-reduction paths are nearing an end, with future cuts driven by technological innovation, base-metal applications and AI-enabled smart cost reduction.

TREE NEWS update: Peru’s President Keiko Fujimori on April 16 urged citizens to prepare for an El Niño event she called “unprecedented” in decades. Her call followed a April 15 announcement of preventive actions in high-risk areas, targeting more than 500 critical risk points. The government has approved 22 supreme and emergency decrees and allocated about 2 billion soles (roughly $580 million) for disaster preparedness and emergency response.

TREE NEWS update: China’s permanent representative to the UN, Fu Cong, called for stronger global climate governance and a faster, fair green transition in remarks on the 16th at a UN General Assembly high-level meeting convened by the GA president. Developed countries should honor climate commitments and multilateral development banks and the private sector should scale up climate investment to help developing nations close funding, technology and capacity gaps, he said.

TREE NEWS update: Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy said a supertanker carrying more than 2 million barrels of crude struck a mine in the Strait of Hormuz and exploded and caught fire after attempting to transit with all navigation and radar systems switched off and with U.S. military support. The IRGC repeated that the Strait of Hormuz is closed.

TREE NEWS update: China’s Huachu Network published a notice on the rotation and stockpiling of central reserve frozen pork, scheduling a competitive auction for Oct 22, 2026. The auction will list 13,800 tonnes of frozen pork for the state reserve rotation. The notice sets out the arrangements for the purchase-and-rotation bidding transaction.

TREE NEWS update: China’s new labor force entrants now average 14.35 years of education, according to the China Vocational Education White Paper released on October 17 at the 2026 World Vocational and Technical Education Development Conference. In 2025, higher vocational institutions graduated 5.82 million students and secondary vocational schools 5.22 million, with the system supplying nearly 10 million skilled workers to the economy each year.

TREE NEWS update: Forty-five countries jointly released the World Vocational and Technical Education Standards Framework, known as the Beijing Accord, at the closing ceremony of the 2026 World Vocational and Technical Education Development Conference on October 17. The framework sets common values for vocational education and proposes reforms including AI-empowered teaching, industry-education collaboration on curricula, and school-enterprise teacher training. It is China’s first internationally developed vocational education standard.

TREE NEWS update: China’s Dongjiang Maritime Safety Administration issued a navigation warning closing parts of the Bohai Sea to shipping from 0:00 on October 17 to 24:00 on October 27 for a military task. Vessels are prohibited from entering the designated waters during the period.

TREE NEWS update: US President Donald Trump exempted multiple sanctions, restrictions and tariffs under the Lindsey Graham Sanctions on Russia and Iran Act of 2026. The exemptions cover a 500% tariff on Russian goods imported into the United States and a 100% tariff on countries that are major importers of Russian energy or help Russia evade oil-trade sanctions.

TREE NEWS reports: Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces struck Ukrainian port infrastructure and vessels early on the 16th, hitting a logistics center in Odesa region and a ship carrying supplies to Odesa port. Ukraine’s State Emergency Service reported damage to energy infrastructure in Odesa region. Ukraine’s General Staff said 304 battles occurred along the front over the past day and that Ukrainian forces downed 693 Russian drones.

TREE NEWS update: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio plans to visit the world’s largest refinery in Jamnagar, India, owned by billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, as US diesel prices surge and midterm elections approach. On his second India trip this year, Rubio will meet senior Indian officials and business leaders to promote commercial investment and economic cooperation opportunities.

TREE NEWS reports: Prediction market traders pushed the probability of a Tesla-SpaceX merger to above 50% for early 2027 after Barclays published a report Wednesday outlining a possible combination of the two companies. As of Friday morning ET, the odds of integration by March jumped to 56% from 29%, with April and May contracts rising to similar levels. The contract, “When will Tesla and SpaceX merge?”, will be verified via news media and the SEC’s EDGAR database.

TREE NEWS reports: The CDX high yield index fell 0.4 points to 105.84, with cash spreads widening 7.4 basis points to 362.9 basis points. Technology and communications were the worst-performing sectors, widening 13.8 and 11.8 basis points respectively, while senior financial debt tightened 5.8 basis points. Volume across CDX high yield series totaled $14.3 billion.

TREE NEWS reports: The CDX investment-grade index spread widened 1.8 basis points to 62.3 basis points, with technology the worst-performing sector at +3.0bp. Cash spreads also widened 1.8bp to 120.0bp. D.R. Horton and DXC Technology contracts performed best while Oracle and Netflix lagged, with CDX IG series volume at $53.2 billion.

TREE NEWS update: North Korea conducted a live-fire test of its new ultra-high-speed precision-guided torpedo weapon system, “Submarine-2.0,” on 15 July, state news agency KCNA reported on 17 July. The test was carried out underwater by the National Defense Academy, the Missile General Bureau and the Torpedo Weapons Research Bureau to verify technical upgrades. The torpedo’s target search and guidance functions use artificial intelligence technology.