Brazil officials say visa requests denied to Trump officials ahead of election

Let’s address the elephant in the room: Bitcoin (BTC -1.73%) is down 48% from October’s 52-week highs as of July 20. For longtime crypto observers, this drop feels familiar. Digital assets have suffered several drawdowns of this magnitude, and the decline in 2026 isn’t even unusual by historical standards. If anything, it’s milder than the…

President Donald Trump said Wednesday he may no longer be interested in even trying to reach a deal with Iran, hours after declaring their recent ceasefire agreement “over” in light of renewed hostilities in the Strait of Hormuz. “I’m not sure I want to make a deal with them,” Trump said of Tehran during a…

Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid notes that despite higher United States (US) Treasury yields and renewed speculation about a July Fed rate hike, US equities advanced, led by a strong recovery in chip stocks. The Philly Semiconductor Index posted its best daily performance in a month, lifting the S&P 500, while markets simultaneously priced a more…

We study how residential-commercial zoning affects the allocation of urban space. Using property-level data from Taipei and 34 U.S. metropolitan areas, we infer neighborhood-level zoning wedges from the allocation of residents, workers, and floor space. We find substantially greater dispersion in these wedges in U.S. cities than in Taipei, where mixed-use development is pervasive. The…

How does a person’s own learning experience affect their ability to learn from others? We conduct a field experiment on chlorination in Pakistan, where randomized “learning-arm” households use a tool to track their children’s diarrhea before and after chlorine distribution. Learning-arm households with learning-arm neighbors chlorinate significantly more one year after the withdrawal of the…

US strategic oil reserves have fallen to the lowest level since 1983. If the recent pace of drawdowns continues unchanged, the reserve would hit its “emergency floor” in about two to three months. The pace of drawdowns may be expected to slow, but it does indicate the unusual situation. How did this happen and what…