The euro zone’s currency hit a 17-month low of $1.1161 on Monday as investors worried about France’s record public debt and the difficult political path to budget cuts, in contrast with a robust-looking US economy and currency

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The euro was poised for a fifth straight weekly drop on Friday, with early gains fading as oil prices erased earlier declines, but recent selling pressure was muted as France’s beleaguered bond market steadied.

The euro zone’s currency hit a 17-month low of $1.1161 on Monday as investors worried about France’s record public debt and the difficult political path to budget cuts, in contrast with a robust-looking US economy and currency.

The dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies, rose 0.13% to 102.25. The index was up about 0.3% on the week and on track for a fourth straight weekly gain, its longest run since May 2025.

The euro was last down 0.1% at $1.1198, and off about 0.5% on the week as it was poised for its longest streak of weekly declines against the dollar since the start of 2025.

Risk premiums on French and Italian government debt were on track for a weekly decline after jumping in late September, as investors looked for fresh developments before demanding higher compensation for fiscal and political risks.

TRUMP SIGNALS NO IRAN ATTACK

Global bond markets had calmed earlier on Friday as oil prices fell after US President Donald Trump said that the US would not attack Iran before US midterm elections on November 3 and added that there had been productive talks with Tehran over the war.

“As it stands right now, you have a confluence of factors — you have higher oil prices, you have the issue in France, so it is really tough to say what is moving the market more than the other,” said Eugene Epstein, head of trading and structured products at Moneycorp in Stamford, Connecticut.

“But practically speaking, I’d say today is in a relative holding pattern, everyone is just waiting for all the Fed speak to make its way through, because certainly you can see that the sensitivity of the dollar is high to the entire range of Fed speakers now,” Epstein said.

Crude prices moved off their lows, however, as British navy-affiliated agency UKMTO said a vessel was struck by an unknown projectile 13 nautical miles west of Al Jazeera in the United Arab Emirates.

US crude rose 0.6% to $92.04 a barrel after falling as low as $90.01 and Brent advanced to $104.88 per barrel, up 0.58% on the day, after declining to $102.33.

Bond yields around the world have climbed in recent weeks due to expectations of central bank rate hikes as well as concerns about government finances.

CENTRAL BANK POLICY IN FOCUS

But expectations for a rate hike from the Fed at its policy meeting later this month remain subdued, with markets pricing in a 19.4% chance for a rate hike of at least 25 basis points, according to CME FedWatch, even as recent economic data has pointed to persistent inflation pressure. However, investors are pricing in an 85.8% chance for a hike at the central bank’s December meeting.

On Friday, the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers showed US consumer sentiment slumped further in early October as the rising cost of living because of the Middle East conflict soured households’ views of the economy.

While many Fed officials have indicated more rate hikes will be needed to curb inflation, others have pushed back on the need for immediate hikes, and suggested the Fed should be patient and flexible in deciding the rate path.

French debt has been under pressure as politicians struggle to curb the budget deficit ahead of a divisive election in 2027. The calling of a snap election in Spain earlier in the week also added to the pressure on the euro.

Sterling gained 0.08% to $1.3235 but was on track for a seventh straight week of declines, its longest stretch since November 2024.

Against the yen, the dollar strengthened 0.25% to 158.25. The Japanese currency was on pace for its fourth straight weekly decline against the greenback, down about 0.2% on the week.

Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Additional reporting by Tom Westbrook in Singapore and Harry Robertson in London; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle, Kevin Liffey, Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Andrea Ricci

Panama television footage showed people evacuating buildings.

International News via Reuters:

A strong 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck near the southern coast of Panama on Friday at a 10 km depth, according to the US Geological Survey, yet no damage was initially reported and the Panama Canal Authority said the waterway was operating normally.

Panama television footage showed people evacuating buildings.

The quake’s epicenter was close to the rural community of La Pitaloza in a sparsely populated area in the south of the country, close to the country’s Pacific coastline.

The impact prompted the US Tsunami Warning System to warn that hazardous tsunami waves were possible along parts of the coasts of Panama, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Mexico within the next three hours.

The system also said there was a tsunami threat to Hawaii.

The quake was felt in the capital, Panama City, as well as in the capital of neighboring Costa Rica, according to Reuters witnesses. 

Reporting by Elida Moreno in Panama City and Iñigo Alexander in Mexico City, Additional reporting by Alvaro Murillo in San Jose, Editing by Daina Beth Solomon and Sanjeev Miglani

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize underlined the importance of maintaining an organised international order, the committee said in its citation

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Navi Pillay, a former ICC judge who oversaw a UN report that concluded that Israel committed genocide in Gaza, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday “for her efforts to promote peace and international law”.

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize underlined the importance of maintaining an organised international order, the committee said in its citation.

“The system of international law is under tremendous pressure, and its institutions are under attack,” it said.

“We see a shift towards power politics at the expense of legal frameworks and global respect for law and justice. Whenever might overtakes right, it undermines stability, trust and peaceful co-existence.”

Born in Durban, in South Africa’s Natal province, in a family of Indian Tamil origin, Navi Pillay, 85, has been a judge on several international courts, including the International Criminal Court and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

She was also chair of the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory that concluded last year that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. Israel dismissed the report as “scandalous”.

She has also served as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

In 1967 she became the first woman to start a law practice in Natal and the first non-white woman to serve on South Africa’s High Court.

‘FIRM MORAL COMPASS’

Pillay held states and national leaders accountable and brought hope to victims of violence and conflict, and demonstrated a firm moral compass in her long career, said the committee.

“A common thread runs from her early work defending Nelson Mandela and others who stood up against apartheid to her service as a judge in some of the key international court cases of our time,” said the citation.

The Hague-based ICC has been the target of an escalating campaign by US President Donald Trump, who last month urged countries to leave it.

Washington has already imposed targeted sanctions on several prosecutors and judges at the court and, according to sources, is considering wider sanctions in retaliation for the targeting of Israeli leaders.

The committee was not directly criticising Trump by rewarding Pillay, according to Haakon Gjerloew, acting director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo.

“I think it’s generally rather a promotion of an international legal world order. Of course, he might react to someone who has been part of the ICC, but it’s not a direct attack on Trump,” Gjerloew said.

The peace prize is the fifth Nobel awarded this week, after literature, chemistry, physics and medicine. Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado won in 2025.

The Nobel Peace Prize, worth 12 million Swedish crowns, or about $1.2 million, is due to be presented in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will.

Reporting by Gwladys Fouche, Nora Buli, Terje Solsvik, Nerijus Adomaitis and Tom Little in Oslo and Emma Farge and Olivia Le Poidevin in Geneva; Editing by Alex Richardson

The protests, now in their third week, have snowballed into a wider movement

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French student unions vowed on Friday to keep up protests after scoring their first win in a campaign that is increasingly supported by Paris’s elite universities, with 141 schools still shut around the country, according to the education ministry.

The protests, now in their third week, have snowballed into a wider movement, with some university students weighing in to express their anger over what they call a dysfunctional system, worsened by spending cuts spurred by France’s budget crunch.

The unrest poses a challenge for the government, which must balance demands for more education spending with the need to rein in public debt, and risks rekindling the kind of street protests that have historically forced French leaders to retreat on austerity measures. Student and teacher unions have called for another round of nationwide school strikes next Tuesday. 

Police cleared a blockade at Assas university, France’s top law school, in central Paris on Friday morning, BFM TV showed. Nearby, elite engineering school Mines Paris was also disrupted by blockades.

The Institut Catholique, a private university known for being particularly conservative, said on its website it would switch to remote classes due to a blockade of its campus.  

Student unions hailed what they see as their first real win, after the government late on Thursday pledged to send some 3,000 teachers, who are fully qualified but have not yet started work, to fill staffing gaps, one of the protesters’ main grievances.

That concession shows it is worthwhile for the students to continue their protests, Marius Mesnil, from a high school student union, told Franceinfo radio.

“I find it crazy we need to block hundreds of high schools just to get a vacancy plan,” he added. 

The measure is effective immediately and will cost “several dozen million euros”, Education Minister Edouard Geffray told broadcaster TF1.

MARKETS MONITORING GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO PROTESTS

Investors are closely watching the government’s next moves in a highly indebted country where street anger has often been tamed with more state spending. This time, France’s gigantic pension outlays and its need to rein in public spending leave little room for manoeuvre.

Stephane Boujnah, the head of Euronext, which runs the Paris stock market, said Paris urgently needed to make tough choices to bring down its debt, which he said was of particular interest for younger generations. 

“What sacrifice are we asking of our own children? Because we’re going to leave them with a complicated situation, and if we want them to be able to make their own choices — if we want to solve the problem for high school students — well, maybe we need to spend a little less on pensions so that we have a little more money for the children,” he told RMC radio. 

Nearly 10% of teaching hours are unstaffed at French state high schools, according to education ministry figures, prompting a growing number of wealthier parents to abandon the public sector in favour of private schooling. 

The interior ministry said 71,500 people took to the streets in Paris and elsewhere on Thursday. While most protests were peaceful, violence has increased in some places. 

A fire broke out at a school in the western city of Poitiers, the ministry said, adding there were some other instances of vandalism and attacks against education staff throughout the country.  

The unrest has not been limited to France.

In Belgium, two large labour unions were staging a national strike on Friday, impacting public transport, schools and air traffic, to protest against planned government budget cuts and the overall rising cost of living.

Tens of thousands of protesters are expected to gather in Brussels for a large demonstration later on Friday. 

reporting by Makini Brice and Dominique Vidalon in Paris, Bart Maijer in Amsterdam, writing by Tassilo Hummel, editing by Gareth Jones

Simon is forecast to become a dangerous Category 4 hurricane by Saturday as it nears the popular tourist coast of south-western and west-central Mexico

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Hurricane Simon is rapidly intensifying off Mexico’s Pacific coast with maximum sustained winds already near 90 mph (150 kph), the US National Hurricane Center said on Friday.

Simon is forecast to become a dangerous Category 4 hurricane by Saturday as it nears the popular tourist coast of south-western and west-central Mexico, NHC added.

A hurricane warning is in effect from Punta San Telmo, in the state of Michoacan, to vacation hotspot Punta Mita, in Nayarit.

“Rapid intensification is expected to continue, and Simon is expected to be a very dangerous major hurricane when it approaches the coast of Mexico,” the Miami-based center said.

In addition to its destructive winds, Simon may also bring life-threatening flooding and mudslides, forecasters said.

Mexican authorities warned heavy rainfall was expected in the states of Guerrero, Michoacan, Oaxaca, Jalisco and Colima, and urged residents to remain on alert.

Private forecaster AccuWeather expects Simon to make landfall on Mexico’s southwestern coast early on Sunday with heavy rainfall of 18 to 24 inches (46 to 61 cm) potentially affecting the coastal areas of Jalisco and Colima.

Simon was about 220 miles (355 km) south of Manzanillo early on Friday and moving northwest, according to NHC.

Reporting by Aida Pelaez-Fernandez in Barcelona; editing by Philippa Fletcher