Economics

Binance Hack of About $6.3 Billion, the Biggest Crypto Heist on Record, Blamed on North Korean Hackers: October 30, 2026

SINGAPORE — Cryptocurrency exchange Binance says about $6.3 billion was stolen in a hack that investigators have linked to North Korean hackers known as TraderTraitor, part of the Lazarus Group, making it the largest crypto theft on record.

Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs put the haul at approximately $6.36 billion across 10 blockchains, taken in about 20 minutes, The Guardian reported. The previous record was the $1.5 billion theft from the Bybit exchange in February 2025.

About $3 billion has been frozen, including more than $2.3 billion by stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle. Binance co-chief executive Richard Teng linked the breach to an engineer’s laptop and said the company was investigating additional points of breach.

Binance has said it will cover all losses and expects to resume withdrawals within 45 hours.

The hack rattled crypto markets. Bitcoin dropped to a six-week low of $76,368 and Ether hit a two-month low of $2,178, while shares in Coinbase fell 4.8%.

Sources: BBC News, Al Jazeera, The Guardian

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Alphabet Loses About $500 Billion in Market Value as Investors Fret Over AI Spending and Search: October 30, 2026

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California — Shares in Google’s parent company Alphabet fell more than 12%, wiping roughly $500 billion off its market value, even as the company reported a 25% jump in quarterly revenue to $127.6 billion.

The slide took Alphabet’s value from about $3.97 trillion to $3.46 trillion, according to the BBC, as investors weighed heavy spending on artificial intelligence and concerns that Google’s AI-powered search features could eat into its core advertising business.

Chief business officer Philipp Schindler said Google’s “AI mode,” which answers questions conversationally, was eating into revenue from ads shown alongside traditional search results, though he said he felt “very good about our trajectory.”

Other technology giants also reported results. Amazon shares fell about 6% in after-hours trading after it posted revenue of $201 billion, up 11%, alongside a cash flow figure of negative $42 billion as it pours money into data centres.

Microsoft reported revenue of $92.3 billion, up 19%, with its cloud business growing 30% to $63 billion.

Sources: BBC News

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ECB President Christine Lagarde to Step Down in February, Nine Months Before Her Term Ends: October 29, 2026

FRANKFURT — Christine Lagarde will step down as president of the European Central Bank on February 7, 2027, about nine months before her eight-year term was due to end, the bank said Thursday.

“European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde today informed the Governing Council and the president of the European Council Antonio Costa that she will step down from her position on 7 February 2027,” the ECB said in a statement. Costa said the process to choose her successor would begin immediately.

No reason was given. There has been speculation that an early exit would let EU leaders pick her successor before French elections next spring, which could see a eurosceptic far-right victory influence the choice. The Guardian reported that Lagarde is seen as a candidate to lead the World Economic Forum.

“I leave this institution with a sense of good work done and an ECB that is fit for the future,” Lagarde, a former French finance minister and IMF chief, said in a short video.

The announcement comes as the ECB meets this week and is expected to hold its deposit rate at 2.5% after two hikes since June to curb inflation driven by the energy shock from the Iran war, DW reported. The meeting is also likely to focus on France, where government borrowing costs rose to their highest level in 25 years last week amid a budget deadlock.

Sources: DW, The Guardian

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Australia’s Inflation Jumps to 4.3% on Fuel Costs, Making Next Week’s Rate Hike a Near Certainty: October 28, 2026

CANBERRA — Australia’s annual inflation rate rose to 4.3 percent in September from 4.0 percent in August, driven by a jump in fuel prices, sharply raising expectations of an interest rate increase next week.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics said a 9.4 percent rise in fuel costs in September was largely responsible. Petrol and diesel prices were on average 24 percent higher than a year earlier. Underlying inflation for the September quarter was 3.7 percent, above the Reserve Bank’s August forecast of 3.5 percent.

Markets now put the chance of a rate hike at the Reserve Bank’s meeting on Tuesday at 87 percent. A 25-basis-point increase would take the cash rate to 4.85 percent, its highest since 2008, ABC News reported.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the figures were “too high” but rejected opposition claims that government spending was the main driver, citing the Middle East war and a surge in private investment in data centers. “For every five dollars of demand in our economy, four dollars [are] private and one dollar is public,” he said.

Chalmers also played down the chances of further fuel tax discounts, citing budget pressures.

Sources: ABC News (Australia), The Guardian

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Fuel Costs Sink Round-the-World Residential Cruise, Stranding Passengers in Cambodia: October 28, 2026

SIHANOUKVILLE, Cambodia — A US-based residential cruise ship on a years-long voyage around the world has suspended operations in Cambodia because of soaring fuel costs, forcing its passengers to leave what had been their floating homes.

Florida-based Villa Vie Residences said monthly fuel costs per cabin that historically averaged $1,800 had reached an estimated $6,000 to $8,000 in parts of Asia during the war with Iran. Slowing the itinerary and spending more time in port could not offset the increase, it said.

“Passing the full increase on to residents is not a realistic solution,” the company said. It plans 60 days of “restructuring and recapitalisation,” though “no outcome is assured.”

The Villa Vie Odyssey carried 203 passengers of 15 nationalities, mostly Americans, and 156 crew, NPR reported. It docked in Sihanoukville on October 23 for a five-day visit and was due to sail on to Vietnam.

Passengers Lanette Canen and Johan Bodin told the BBC they were told by the company’s chief executive at 6 a.m. Tuesday that they had to leave by 2 p.m. “It felt like our dream had been crushed,” they said.

The ship left Belfast in 2024 on a planned 3.5-year voyage to nearly 150 countries. Cabins sold for $120,000 to $440,000.

Sources: BBC News, NPR / AP

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Anthropic Files for What Could Be the Biggest IPO Ever, Warning of AI’s ‘Catastrophic’ Risks: October 27, 2026

SAN FRANCISCO — Anthropic, the developer of the Claude chatbot, filed on Monday to go public, setting up a Wall Street debut next month that could become the largest initial public offering on record.

The company said it will list on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “ANT.” Reports say the offering could raise as much as $100 billion, which would eclipse the record $86 billion SpaceX raised in June. Anthropic has not yet disclosed the number of shares, a price range or a listing date.

The filing shows $16.3 billion in revenue for the first half of the year, against losses of more than $80.7 billion, BBC News reported. Anthropic was valued at $965 billion in a private funding round earlier this year.

In about 90 pages of risk factors, the company warned that advanced AI “could, if not developed, deployed, and operated with appropriate safeguards, oversight, and security measures, pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity.”

It also told investors it would sometimes make forward investments “that may seem irresponsibly large at first glance.” “In general, we will aim to be bold but sane, and to win trust with a track record of successful bets,” the filing said.

Anthropic was founded in 2021 by chief executive Dario Amodei, his sister Daniela Amodei and five others. A listing would put it ahead of rival OpenAI, whose IPO is now expected early next year.

On the same day, the owners of the rights to Elvis Presley’s music sued Anthropic, accusing it of using hundreds of his songs to train Claude.

Sources: BBC News, CBC News / AP

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European Gas Prices Hit Four-Year High on Winter Supply and Middle East Fears: October 26, 2026

LONDON — European wholesale gas prices jumped on Monday to levels not seen since 2022, as temperatures fell and fears grew over winter supply and the Middle East.

Prices hit €97 (£81) a megawatt-hour, and the UK month-ahead contract rose 4% to 240p a therm, its highest since December 2022, The Guardian reported.

Traders are pricing in more heating demand along with the risk of further supply disruption in the Middle East, amid reports that the US and Israel have drawn up plans for renewed strikes on Iran after the US midterm elections. Those reports pushed oil as high as $117 a barrel on Friday. Brent eased about 2% on Monday but stayed above $114.

Europe is heading into winter with gas stores at their lowest in more than a decade, about 75% full against a seasonal average near 80%. The shortfall follows a slowdown in exports from Qatar and heavy summer use for cooling.

British household energy bills are forecast to rise 16% in January, to about £2,000 a year for a typical dual-fuel bill.

Sources: The Guardian

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Western Sydney International Airport Opens as First Passenger Flight Takes Off: October 25, 2026

SYDNEY, Australia — Western Sydney International (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport opened to passengers on Sunday, with the first commercial flight, a sold-out Jetstar service JQ362 to the Gold Coast, taking off just before 11:30 a.m., ABC News reported.

It is the first service from a major new Australian airport in more than 50 years. The airport at Badgerys Creek, 45 kilometres from Sydney’s CBD, operates 24 hours a day, unlike Sydney’s Mascot terminals. It opened for cargo in July.

“This is an absolutely extraordinary day,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said. “This is Australia best airport without question,” he added, as quoted by ABC News.

Badgerys Creek was designated as the site of Sydney’s second airport in 1986. Airlines signed up include Fiji Airways, Vietjet, Air New Zealand, Singapore Airlines, Qatar Airways, Qantas and Jetstar, according to the Prime Minister’s office.

WSI chief executive Simon Hickey said the terminal is about the size of Adelaide Airport, around 10 million passengers a year, and that with more terminals and a second runway the airport could reach 82 million passengers a year by the 2060s. Pilot Aglaya Papadokokolakis, raised in Blacktown, flew the first departure: “It’s such an honour and something I’m going to remember for the rest of my career.”

Sources: ABC News, Prime Minister of Australia

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Bank of Israel Rebukes Netanyahu’s Idea of Using Crypto to Bypass Sanctions: October 25, 2026

JERUSALEM — The Bank of Israel has publicly rejected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s suggestion that cryptocurrency could help Israel get around possible economic sanctions, Ynet, The Times of Israel and Reuters reported.

Netanyahu had said: “There could be sanctions, and sanctions on banks so you need to set up a bypass economy … there are currencies that can bypass … We are also working on that.”

In response, the central bank said crypto “cannot be used as a route for bypassing sanctions,” adding that “the right course for Israel’s economy is to preserve our economic relations with our main trading partners,” The Times of Israel reported.

More than 100 economists, including former central bank governor Jacob Frenkel and Nobel laureates, signed a letter criticising the idea. Former bank supervisor Yair Avidan said: “Blockchain is not a solution for circumventing sanctions.”

Netanyahu told Channel 14: “I hear the resistance; I am taking it into account … I listen, but I do what I think [is best].”

Britain, France and Canada are moving to block imports from Israeli settlements. Israelis vote in a general election on Tuesday.

Sources: Ynet, The Times of Israel, Reuters via Investing.com

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Trump Announces Audi Will Build $4 Billion SUV Plant in Georgia: October 25, 2026

PERRY, Georgia — President Donald Trump announced on Saturday that German carmaker Audi will build a $4 billion factory in the United States, telling a rally in Perry, Georgia, that the plant will make 200,000 SUVs a year, DW reported.

“Think of that. 200,000 cars a year. That’s incredible,” Trump said, crediting his tariffs for the investment, as quoted by DW.

Construction is due to begin next year, with production starting in the early 2030s. A US official told Reuters the plant would build the Q7, Q8 and Q9 models and create about 4,500 jobs, according to DW.

Audi, owned by Volkswagen, has been hit hard by US import duties; tariffs cost the company €1.2 billion last year.

The announcement comes days before the November 3 midterm elections.

Sources: DW

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