Flash News

TREE NEWS update: The International Criminal Court on October 9 issued a statement strongly rejecting sanctions imposed by the United States and called on its member states to take action to ensure the court can continue operating. The statement, released locally on October 9, did not specify what measures members should take.

TREE NEWS update: Firmus Grid Ltd. withdrew its Australian initial public offering after US fund managers rejected the AI data-center company’s $30 billion valuation. Bankers tried to salvage the deal by cutting the offer price or shrinking the offering size, but failed to win over US investors. The IPO had been set to rank among Australia’s largest. Firmus is now weighing a private funding round with existing investors.

TREE NEWS reports: Italy is close to reaching an agreement with the European Union that would allow it to set a cap on natural gas prices, a move that could help Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni win voter support over energy bills. The deal is not yet finalized, and no figures or effective date were given.

TREE NEWS update: Belarus’s foreign ministry summoned Ukraine’s charge d’affaires, Novitsky, in Minsk on 9 May and handed him a protest note over a Ukrainian drone attack inside Russian territory that struck a truck with Belarusian licence plates and seriously injured a Belarusian citizen. The ministry said it lodged the formal protest the same day.

TREE NEWS reports: SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son is seeking to raise up to $100 billion from Gulf region investors for a new AI investment push, and has recently held talks with senior figures in the UAE and elsewhere. The capital would form a fund to acquire companies and improve their operations using AI and other advanced technology. SoftBank has already completed a $30 billion follow-on investment in OpenAI.

TREE NEWS update: The US National Hurricane Center said Hurricane Simon is expected to rapidly intensify over the weekend and approach Mexico’s coast as a dangerous major hurricane. Preparations to protect life and property must be rushed to completion today, the NHC said.

TREE NEWS reports: A poll published in Spanish media on the 9th indicates that if Spain holds its parliamentary election as planned at the end of next month, the conservative People’s Party and the Vox party are projected to win enough seats combined for a majority in the Chamber of Deputies. The survey points to a right-wing bloc advantage ahead of the vote.

TREE NEWS reports: Global issuance of green, social and sustainability bonds reached $1.85 trillion in the first nine months of the year, up 5% from 2025. Full-year 2026 supply is on course to exceed $2.5 trillion, which would set a record high.

TREE NEWS reports: UNESCO’s gender-focused report under the 2026 Global Education Monitoring Report, released on the 8th, found the global education gender gap has narrowed. At the global level, gender parity in enrollment has been achieved at all levels from pre-primary to upper secondary, though gaps persist in some regions. Girls still face barriers to completing school, including early marriage and pregnancy, financial hardship and lack of support.

TREE NEWS reports: Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport handled more than 7,500 flights and over 1.25 million passengers during China’s National Day holiday from October 1 to 7, with average daily cross-border passenger traffic rising more than 10% year-on-year. The airport said phased construction on its second runway since late August reduced peak-hour capacity, leading to lower daily flight and passenger volumes overall, though several popular routes to and from Shenzhen maintained high load factors.

TREE NEWS update: Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar said Hungary must significantly narrow its budget deficit to make debt financing sustainable and put the country on a path to adopting the euro. The government plans to publish its 2027 budget and medium-term fiscal outlook this month, with investors awaiting details on how the cabinet will raise revenue and cut spending. Savings are to come from terminating overpriced state contracts and a new wealth tax on assets exceeding 1 billion forint.

TREE NEWS update: The US Treasury has placed the International Criminal Court on its sanctions list. The designation means the ICC is now subject to US sanctions measures. No further details of the listing were given.

TREE NEWS update: Beijing’s Municipal Commission of Planning and Natural Resources published its 12th batch of proposed residential land supply for 2026, covering three plots with a combined land area of about 8 hectares and a buildable floor area of roughly 140,000 square metres. The sites are expected to be put on the market shortly.

TREE NEWS update: Ethiopian Airlines said it will resume flights from Addis Ababa to Mekelle, the capital of Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, starting Wednesday. The carrier had suspended services to Mekelle, Aksum and Shire on September 23 due to the local situation. The airline announced the resumption on Tuesday, saying the route would reopen from the 11th.

TREE NEWS update: David Ouellet, head of technology at Canada’s Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments), is leaving the C$321 billion asset manager. On October 9 the pension fund said Chief Risk Officer Alexandre Roy will take over Ouellet’s duties on an interim basis as chief technology, data and operations officer, confirming an earlier Bloomberg report. His exit extends a run of senior departures over the past two years.

TREE NEWS reports: Shanghai Stock Exchange data show 1.9119 million new A-share accounts were opened in September 2026, down 20.25% from the previous month and 34.91% from 2.9372 million in September 2025. Cumulative new accounts for 2026 reached 27.126 million, up 34.63% year on year.

TREE NEWS update: China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences held their 2026 annual cooperation consultation in Beijing. CAS president Hou Jianguo said the 15th Five-Year Plan period is a critical phase for building a science and technology powerhouse, and called for deeper strategic cooperation, forward planning of research topics toward 2035 and beyond, and coordinated breakthroughs on major projects across the full chain from basic research to industrialization.

TREE NEWS reports: The Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances shows median real US household income rose 7% to $82,200 between 2022 and 2025, with gains for lower-income households and declines at the top. Median net worth climbed 2% to $215,900, benefiting households across the wealth and income distribution. Median household debt was roughly flat versus 2022, but the share of households spending more than 40% of income on debt payments rose to 8.6% from 6.5%, the highest since 2013.

TREE NEWS reports: Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman said France faces a potential debt crisis and may already be “too big to bail out” for the European Central Bank. In a Thursday Substack post, he wrote that France is on a “fiscally unsustainable” path, with a rising interest burden on government debt and a large budget deficit pushing up the debt-to-GDP ratio. The warning comes as French students protest education funding and Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu pushes a contentious 2027 budget with tens of billions of dollars in austerity.

TREE NEWS update: Germany’s defence ministry denied on 9 February that Berlin had decided to withdraw from a joint next-generation main battle tank programme with France, after French chief of defence staff Fabien Mandon said on 8 February that Germany had pulled out of the Main Ground Combat System project. A ministry spokesperson said the two countries had announced adjustments months ago to reflect lessons from Russia’s war in Ukraine, adding that this did not mean the project had failed and that Germany remained committed to an equal partnership with France focused on future armoured warfare technology.