Oil price falls after Iraq ‘signs deal’ to resume exports via Turkey – business live

A picture


The Iraqi state news agency is reporting that Kirkuk has resumed pumping oil via Turkey’s Ceyhan port at a rate of 250,000 barrels,That would only be a fraction of the country’s normal output,Before the Iranian war began, Iraq was producing 4,5 million barrels of crude oil per day,But it was forced to slash output once tankers couldn’t travel safely through the strait of Hormuz.

Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.The conflict in the Middle East continues to grip the markets, as ship traffic through the strait of Hormuz continues to be slowed by the crisis.But this morning, oil has dropped after Iraq reportedly struck a deal with Turkey to resume oil exports through their territory, having agreed with Kurdistan to resume oil exports through a pipeline in its region.According to Reuters, crude exports from Iraq’s Kirkuk fields by pipeline to Turkey’s Ceyhan port has resumed, giving an alternative route rather than braving the strait.But, the rerouting of Iraqi oil through Turkey will only partially relieve supply concerns, Bloomberg reports, adding that Iraq’s oil production has fallen to about 1.

4 million barrels a day — about a third of levels before the closure of Hormuz.Brent crude is down 1.55% this morning at $101.80 a barrel, while US crude is almost 3% lower at $93.42 a barrel.

Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote, says:double quotation markThis morning, oil is sharply down on news that Iraq signed a deal to resume oil exports via Turkey, bypassing the Strait of Hormuz, while Saudi Arabia is also rerouting exports toward the Red Sea.The region is reorganizing, preparing for the possibility of a prolonged conflict.Restoring oil exports fully will take time, and we may soon see physical-market shortages — likely keeping oil prices under upward pressure.Yet, as flows adapt to alternative routes, the initial surge in oil prices seen at the start of the war could ease.Stock markets are responding to this too – Japan’s Nikkei has gained 2.

8% this morning, while South Korea’s KOSPI has jumped by 5.7%.Investors are also hoping that central bankers will ‘look through’ the approaching spike in inflation, rather than reacting by raising interest rates.We’ll hear from America’s top central banker, Jerome Powell, tonight, when the Federal Reserve is widely expected to leave US interest rates on hold.Jim Reid of Deutsche Bank reports:double quotation markThere is also a bit more calm in markets at the moment and a small hint that there is a decoupling from the price of oil as the last 24 hours have seen more positive risk markets and lower [bond] yields.

10am GMT: Eurozone inflation report for February12.30pm GMT: US producer prices inflation (PPI) report for February1.45pm GMT: Bank of Canada interest rate decision6pm GMT: US Federal Reserve interest rate decision6.30pm GMT: Federal Reserve press conference
technologySee all
A picture

Teenage girls sue Musk’s xAI, accusing Grok tool of creating child sexual abuse material

A group of three teenage girls, two of whom are minors, filed a lawsuit on Monday against Elon Musk’s xAI artificial intelligence company alleging that its Grok image generator used photos of them to produce and distribute child sexual abuse material. The class-action lawsuit is the first filed by minors following Grok’s rampant generation of nonconsensual nude images earlier this year.“xAI chose to profit off the sexual predation of real people, including children, despite knowing full well the consequences of creating such a dangerous product,” Vanessa Baehr-Jones, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in a statement.The suit, which was brought by three Tennessee teenagers but filed in California, where xAI is headquartered, details how the girls discovered that nude, AI-altered images of them were uploaded to a Discord server and shared online without their knowledge.After they alerted law enforcement to the images, according to the complaint, police arrested a suspect later that month and found child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on his phone that was allegedly produced using xAI’s image and video generation technology

A picture

Google scraps AI search feature that crowdsourced amateur medical advice

Google has dropped a new artificial intelligence search feature that gave users crowdsourced health advice from amateurs around the world.The company had said its launch of “What People Suggest”, which provided tips from strangers, showed “the potential of AI to transform health outcomes across the globe”.But Google has since quietly removed the feature, according to three people familiar with the decision.A Google spokesperson confirmed “What People Suggest” had been scrapped. The move came as part of a “broader simplification” of its search page and had nothing to do with the quality or safety of the new feature, the spokesperson said

A picture

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra review: its huge screen blocks shoulder surfers from spying on you

Samsung’s latest Ultra superphone promises to keep shoulder surfers out of your business with a first-of-its-kind privacy display built into its huge 6.9in screen.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more

A picture

AI has exposed age-old problems with university coursework | Letter

The frustration many academics are expressing about artificial intelligence and critical thinking is understandable (‘I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff’: professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AI, 10 March). But from my experience working with students on academic writing, blaming AI risks masking a problem that universities have lived with for years.In my work with students, I have long seen the ways in which thinking can be outsourced when assessment allows it: essay mills, shared past papers, model essays passed between cohorts, or heavy reliance on tutors and friends to structure assignments. Artificial intelligence did not invent this behaviour. It has simply industrialised a shortcut that already existed

A picture

Trump administration reportedly set to be paid $10bn for brokering TikTok deal

Donald Trump’s administration is reportedly poised to be paid $10bn by investors as part of a deal to create a US-controlled version of TikTok.The $10bn, considered by the US government as a sort of transaction fee, will be paid by the administration-friendly investors who took control of TikTok’s US operations from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, according to reporting that first appeared in the Wall Street Journal.The investors in the popular social media app include software company Oracle; MGX, an investment firm based in the United Arab Emirates; and private equity business Silver Lake. These entities, along with other backers, paid $2.5bn to the US treasury when the deal closed in January and are set to make further payments in the unusual arrangement until the total hits $10bn

A picture

Meta and Google trial: are infinite scroll and autoplay creating addicts?

It was as “easy as ABC”, claimed the lawyer prosecuting a landmark social media harm case against Meta and Google which heard closing arguments this week. The defendants were guilty, said Mark Lanier, of “addicting the brains of children”. Not true, replied the tech companies. Meta insisted providing young people with a “safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work”.Features such as autoplay videos, infinite scrolling and constantly chirruping alerts woven into the fabric of online platforms were central to the six-week trial in Los Angeles, which has been compared to the cases against tobacco companies in the 1990s