Speaking with Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, agreed to a partial ceasefire—halting attacks on energy infrastructure—with Russia. Trump administration officials said that the American president proposed taking over Ukrainian energy facilities, including nuclear plants, for “protection”. Meanwhile military leaders from a coalition of Ukraine’s allies were set to meet in London to discuss plans to deploy a peacekeeping operation to the country.
The Federal Reserve left its benchmark interest rate unchanged, but said that it expects to cut rates twice this year. The central bank revised its projections for 2025, predicting that America’s economy would grow by just 1.7%, down from the 2.1% it forecast in December. On Thursday China’s central bank followed the Fed by keeping its key lending rates unchanged.
The Israel Defence Forces announced a resumption of “focused” ground operations in the Gaza Strip, particularly around the Netzarim corridor, which cuts the territory in two. Palestinian health officials said that Israeli air strikes had killed 20 people, including a UN worker. On Tuesday a large Israeli aerial attack killed at least 400 people, shattering hopes of extending a fragile ceasefire with Hamas.
Softbank said it had agreed to buy Ampere Computing for $6.5bn. Ampere makes processors for cloud servers based on a design by Arm, a British chipmaker that Softbank acquired in 2016. The deal will help the Japanese technology fund with its foray into artificial intelligence. Arm plans to start manufacturing its own chips for AI, rather than just designing them.
Thousands of people took to the streets in Istanbul after Turkish police arrested Ekrem Imamoglu, the city’s mayor. Mr Imamoglu was detained on charges related to corruption and terrorism, days before he was to be named as the main opposition candidate to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the authoritarian president. Anti-government demonstrators defied a four-day ban on public gatherings to protest.
A jury in North Dakota ordered Greenpeace to pay at least $660m in damages for protesting against an oil pipeline in the state. Energy Transfer, a Texas-based oil company, sued the environmental NGO for inciting more than 100,000 people to join a protest by the Sioux Standing Rock Tribe against the pipeline’s construction in 2016. Greenpeace argued it played only a minor role in the action.
Malaysia’s government revived the search for MH370, a Malaysian Airlines plane that went missing in 2014 while carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Under a new agreement Ocean Infinity, an American firm, will search 15,000 square km (5,791 square miles) of the southern Indian Ocean. Malaysia will award the company $70m if the wreckage is recovered.
Figure of the day: $38trn, the amount held by American households and non-profit organisations in shares of listed firms. Read the full story here.
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