Tuesday, March 24, 2026
Trump declared Iran wants to make a deal and hailed "very good" talks with Tehran, but Iran's government called the claims "fake news" and its Revolutionary Guard branded him a "deceitful American president." The contradiction leaves the US-Iran war's diplomatic path deeply murky, while traders had already placed a $580 million oil bet on Brent and WTI contracts 15 minutes before Trump posted on Truth Social.
The US Senate confirmed Markwayne Mullin as the new secretary of Homeland Security in a 54-45 vote, handing Trump a loyalist to front his immigration crackdown. Mullin inherits a department in crisis: roughly 100,000 of its 250,000-plus employees are currently working without pay during a shutdown.
Masayoshi Son is pushing SoftBank to its borrowing limits with a $30 billion investment in OpenAI, rattling investors already nervous about the conglomerate's debt load. The bet is SoftBank's single largest AI commitment and effectively ties the company's fortunes to OpenAI's ability to monetize at scale.
The UK government has pushed back its "future homes standard," meaning new homes won't be required to include heat pumps and solar panels until March 2028, leaving buyers locked into gas heating for years longer than planned. Separately, the government rebuffed calls from the energy industry body Offshore Energies UK to expand North Sea oil and gas production.
Tonga's newly elected leader Lord Fakafānua has welcomed a partnership with the United States to explore deep-sea minerals in the South Pacific, calling it an "exciting development" as global demand for critical minerals intensifies. Environmental groups and some Tongans are alarmed by the potential impact of seabed mining on one of the planet's least-disturbed ecosystems.
