The outage began just before noon local time (1000 GMT) and had yet to be fully resolved by 1350 GMT

International News via Reuters:

A major power outage in parts of the Czech Republic on Friday trapped people in lifts and halted hundreds of trains, while authorities said a fallen high-voltage cable was the likely cause.

The incident is likely to add to concerns about the resilience of Europe’s power grids and infrastructure after Spain suffered the worst blackout in its history in April and a fire knocked out the power supply to London’s Heathrow airport in March.

“As a result of a fallen power cable, there was an outage of the V411 transmission grid line and the Unit 6 of the Ledvice power plant,” national high-voltage grid operator CEPS said.

This had knock-on effects, overburdening another line and substation, cutting off part of the country from the grid, it said.

The outage began just before noon local time (1000 GMT) and had yet to be fully resolved by 1350 GMT.

It halted public transport in several cities, including Prague, where the underground was briefly shut down and trams stood idle for hours.

The Czech Republic has dozens of substations – facilities that convert electricity into different voltages so it can be transmitted throughout a country and distributed locally.

CEPS had earlier said the fallen line on the 45 kilometre (29 miles) high-voltage line in the northwest of the country had affected eight of these substations and caused widespread blackouts in five of the Czech Republic’s 14 regions.

All affected substations had power back before 1300 GMT, CEPS said, but distribution companies were still working to restore supplies elsewhere.

Prague city transport was nearly fully restored after three hours, but trains in many places remained at a halt. Prague’s power distribution company said it expected full restoration by 1400 GMT.

Speaking on Czech Television, Interior Minister Vit Rakusan said the authorities had no information to suggest there had been a cyber or terrorist attack.

Across the country, the outage caused 215 incidents involving people trapped in elevators, fire brigade spokesperson Lucie Pipis told Reuters, adding everyone had been rescued.

The justice ministry said 10 prisons had lost power, but that security had not been compromised. Three large hospitals in Prague temporarily ran on back-up power.

Orlen Unipetrol’s Czech refinery and chemical plant at Litvinov went into an emergency shutdown, the company said on X.

E.ON, which operates part of the grid in south and south-eastern Czech Republic, said its supply area was not affected.

Following the outage in Spain in May, analysts said that Europe’s ageing power grid and lack of energy storage capacity will require trillions of dollars in investments to cope with rising green energy output and increasing electricity demand.

Reporting by Jan Lopatka, Vera Dvorakova, Nina Chestney, writing by Alan Charlish; Editing by Mark Potter and Barbara Lewis

Event leaders were relieved to produce an outcome document

International News via Reuters:

Brutal heat scorched Spain this week, a blistering reminder of the climate change that is battering the world’s poorest countries – stretching their finances even as government debt climbs to new heights. 

But at a once-a-decade UN development finance conference in Seville, two key ingredients were in less abundance: money and power.

Just one G7 leader – France’s Emmanuel Macron – attended the event, where he and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez addressed rooms with dozens of empty chairs. Organisers initially said they expected 70 heads of state; that was whittled to 50 as the conference got under way.

Back in Washington, Paris, London and Berlin, rich-country leaders are slashing aid and cutting bilateral lending in a pivot to defence spending and rising debt at home. 

“The mood is … I would say realistic, but also a sense of unity and of pragmatism,” said Alvaro Lario, president of the International Fund of Agricultural Development, adding the question on everyone’s mind this week was how to do more with less.

“How can we come together, or think out of the box, or create new types of ways of really stretching it more?”

The Financing For Development meeting is a flagship UN conference, charting the trajectory to help tackle changes the world must make to tax policies, aid spending or key areas such as debt, health and education. Its outcomes guide global aid funding and UN policies for the decade to come.

EMPTY CHAIRS, MISSING LEADERS

Few disagree over the need for action. Hundred-year floods and storms are happening with alarming regularity, and rising debt-servicing costs are siphoning money away from health, education and infrastructure spending in the developing world.

But even top developing-world leaders Mia Mottley, the Barbados prime minister and prominent global climate champion, and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, currently chairing the Group of 20 major economies, backed out of the event at the last minute.

The media room was stacked with Spanish press gossiping about a domestic political scandal while disillusioned civil-society leaders stalked the halls, upset with the watered-down agenda and the lack of fiscal or political firepower.     

“We are facing a backsliding of many agendas that we had advanced a few years ago,” said Henrique Frota, director of ABONG, a Brazilian association of NGOs.

“Developed countries are reducing their investment in (official development assistance) and European countries are not fulfilling their commitment … they are giving less and less money right now for every kind of agenda.”    

Event leaders were relieved to produce an outcome document – despite gnawing fears in the past months that Washington would torpedo any deal. 

In the end, U.S. officials backed out altogether. 

“The entire community was very afraid of coming here because one country wasn’t attending,” said UN Assistant Secretary General Marcos Neto. “But the document ended up working out … I’m leaving happy, with more optimism than I thought I would leave with.”

Neto highlighted significant steps toward implementing climate and development goals, including the Seville Platform and multiple agreements from public and private sectors to leverage funds for the biggest possible impact. 

The Seville Commitment included tripling multilateral lending capacity, debt relief, a push to boost tax-to-GDP ratios to at least 15%, and get more rich countries to let the IMF use “special drawing rights” money for countries that need it most.

But in Seville, only host nation Spain signed on to commit 50% of its “Special Drawing Rights” for the purpose.

Civil society organisations were critical of the measures outlined in the document, saying it was watered down by wealthier nations unwilling to walk the talk.

FUNDING UNDER PRESSURE

UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed acknowledged that the attendance was not as star-studded as hoped, and that public funds were under pressure.

“But there’s innovative financing, there’s the private sector, there’s the triple lending of MDBs … so the resources are there,” she said.

“We just have to have the political will to leverage through these mechanisms that have come out of the platform of action and continue moving with them.”

U.S. President Donald Trump, despite his country’s absence, loomed large over the event; his climate change scepticism, hostility toward diversity initiatives and pledge to review U.S. participation in multilateral organisations made some keen to strip out references to climate change and rebrand initiatives as focused on resilience, education or health.

Still, some said the gloomy backdrop should not deter leaders focused on progress.

“Ultimately the important thing is doing it,” said Jose Vinals, former group chairman of Standard Chartered and co-chair of both the FFD4 Business Steering Committee and the Global Investors for Sustainable Development Alliance.

“The private sector is, for the most part, still willing to walk the talk.”

Reporting by David Latona in Seville; Additional reporting by Karin Strohecker, Simon Jessop and Marc Jones in London; Writing by Libby George; Editing by Daniel Wallis, Edmund Klamann and Kate Mayberry

China spared major cognac producers LVMH, Pernod Ricard and Remy Cointreau

International News via Reuters:

EU spirits association spiritsEUROPE on Friday welcomed China’s decision to exempt major cognac producers from dumping duties on imports into the country, but called on the government to drop all punitive measures.

China spared major cognac producers LVMH, Pernod Ricard and Remy Cointreau from new duties of up to 35% on EU brandy announced on Friday, provided they sell at a minimum price.

But duties of up to 34.9% for a period of five years starting from Saturday would be levied on producers without minimum price commitments or those that breached promised minimums, the government said in a statement.

spiritsEUROPE Director General Hervé Dumesny said this decision “risks fuelling trade tensions at a time when mutual cooperation is more important than ever”.

“We (…) welcome the conclusion of price undertakings with certain companies, as they offer partial relief, and we urge that this option be extended to all companies that have signed up.”

Reporting by Elisa Anzolin in Milan. Writing by Josephine Mason in London. Editing by Mark Potter

The U.S. imposed fresh sanctions targeting Iran’s oil trade on Thursday

International News via Reuters:

Oil futures fell slightly on Friday after Iran reaffirmed its commitment to nuclear non-proliferation, while major producers from the OPEC+ group are set to agree to raise their output this weekend. 

Brent crude futures were down 49 cents, or 0.71%, to $68.31 a barrel by 0831 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude fell 41 cents, or 0.61%, to $66.59. 

Trade was thinned by the U.S. Independence Day holiday. 

U.S. news website Axios reported on Thursday that the United States was planning to meet with Iran next week to restart nuclear talks, while Iran Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Tehran remained committed to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The U.S. imposed fresh sanctions targeting Iran’s oil trade on Thursday. 

Saudi Arabian Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman met with President Trump and other officials at the White House to discuss de-escalation efforts with Iran, media reports said. 

Trump also said on Thursday that he would meet with representatives of Iran “if necessary”. 

“Thursday’s news that the U.S. is preparing to resume nuclear talks with Iran, and Araqchi’s clarification that cooperation with the U.N. atomic agency has not been halted considerably eases the threat of a fresh outbreak of hostilities,” said Vandana Hari, founder of oil market analysis provider Vanda Insights. 

Araqchi made the comments a day after Tehran enacted a law suspending cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

OPEC+, the world’s largest group of oil producers, is set to announce an increase of 411,000 bpd in production for August as it looks to regain market share, four delegates from the group told Reuters. 

Meanwhile, uncertainty over U.S. tariff policies resurfaced as the end of a 90-day pause on higher levy rates approaches. 

Washington will start sending letters to countries on Friday specifying what tariff rates they will face on goods sent to the United States, a clear shift from earlier pledges to strike scores of individual trade deals. 

President Trump told reporters before departing for Iowa on Thursday that the letters would be sent to 10 countries at a time, laying out tariff rates of 20% to 30%. 

Trump’s 90-day pause on higher U.S. tariffs ends on July 9, and several large trading partners have yet to clinch trade deals, including the European Union and Japan. 

Separately, Barclays said it raised its Brent oil price forecast by $6 to $72 per barrel for 2025 and by $10 to $70 a barrel for 2026 on an improved outlook for demand.

Reporting by Robert Harvey in London, Mohi Narayan in New Delhi and Florence Tan in Singapore; Additional reporting by Arathy Somasekhar in Houston; Editing by Tom Hogue and Emelia Sithole-Matarise