U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who campaigned on the promise to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours once he took office, called for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine, stating that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Kyiv would “like to make a deal and stop the madness.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already taken a victory lap after the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and said it could not have happened without the IDF’s thrashing of Hezbollah and Iran, as his forces took positions in a once-demilitarized part of the Golan Heights, which has been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.
The Royal Bank of India has trimmed its growth outlook for the 2025-26 fiscal year from 7.2 percent down to 6.6 percent.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and allied nations have agreed to delay January’s planned production increases until 31 March, then spread the increases over the following 18 months.
Last month, business activity shrank in the Eurozone’s formerly robust services sector, contracting along with manufacturing, according to the Hamburg Commercial Bank’s composite purchasing manufacturers index (PMI).
High interest rates are pushing even more poor countries to the brink of financial collapse, the World Bank said in a 3 December report.
The economic landscape has presented an array of challenges that have profoundly affected the business community. Some of the most significant challenges include soaring inflation rates, escalating interest rates, increased minimum wage, looming fears of a recession, and a tangible decrease in revenues for many sectors.
The retail, restaurant, manufacturing, automotive, and tech industries continue to be hit hard as prices increase and demand slows.
Every time a shopper swipes a plastic card or taps to pay, a retailer pays a fee to the card provider, the payment network, and often to companies such as Square that provide the swipe hardware.
Over this year’s Thanksgiving weekend—stretching from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday—about 197 million people hit the stores, compared to roughly 200 million a year ago, according to a consumer survey by the National Retail Federation (NRF).