Reuters World News - Venezuela tanker, Fed, SpaceX and World Cup Pride

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

The U.S.has seized a sanctioned tanker off Venezuela, escalating tensions with Caracas. The Fed cuts rates but signals a pause. U.S. bombers fly over the Sea of Japan after Chinese and Russian drills near Taiwan. Elon Musk hints at possible SpaceX IPO. Plus, Pride plans for during an Egypt–Iran World Cup match spark a backlash. *This episode has been corrected to remove a line saying an IPO above a trillion dollars would be the biggest in the world. Saudi Aramco had a $1.7 trillion listing in 2019. Recommended Read: Nonna was right! Italian cuisine wins a place on UNESCO's cultural heritage list Listen to Morning Bid podcast ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter ⁠⁠here⁠⁠.  Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices.  You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, I'm Christopher Waljasper in Chicago. It's Thursday, December 11th. Today, the U.S. seizes a sanctioned oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. The U.S. Fed lowers rates, but signals a pause on rate cuts for now. Elon Musk hints at a possible SpaceX IPO, and pride events are set to go ahead outside a planned Egypt-Iran World Cup match. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week.

The U.S. Coast Guard has seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. Asked what would happen with the oil, President Donald Trump had this to say. Well, we keep it, I guess. A video posted by U.S. Attorney General Pambondi shows two helicopters approaching a vessel and armed individuals in camouflage repelling onto it. The seizure has sent oil prices higher and sharply escalated tensions between Washington, D.C. and Caracas. In response, the Venezuelan government has described the seizure

as an act of international piracy. Meanwhile, in Oslo, Venezuelan main opposition figure Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Carina Machado being cheered by well-wishers on her hotel balcony and joining them in singing the Venezuelan National Anthem. She secretly left Venezuela for Oslo in defiance of a decade-long travel ban imposed by authorities after spending more than a year in hiding.

She wasn't able to make it to Oslo in time to receive the award which her daughter accepted in her name. Machado says she plans to return to Venezuela, despite the risks she faces. A sharply divided Fed cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point on Wednesday. And now the question on everyone's mind is, what about further cuts? That was the first question to Fed Chair Jerome Powell from our reporter Howard Schneider. Does that indicate that the Fed is now on hold until there's some clearer signal from

inflation or jobs or the evolution of the economy along the baseline outlook? So, yes, the adjustments since September bring our policy within a broad range of estimates of neutral. We called up, Howard, to see what he made of Powell's answer. He did indeed verify that they meant to communicate that. So as expected, the cut that they approved really is going to be it for a while, at least a while, probably. They have one more cut penciled in for the year. Who knows when that will come or if it'll even happen. but the point is they've gotten through this cycle now,

reached a bit of a stopping point around what Powell says as a neutral rate of interest, and they're going to hold there for now. Second question had to do with the outlook, and I think here he was a bit more expansive, as was the outlook. And I think if you were sitting in the White House right now, the Oval Office, you know, Donald Trump

might not like the fact that they indicated they're not going to be cutting interest rates much further or faster. But what they said about the economy ought to be pretty encouraging. to the administration that growth is going to accelerate next year, partly because Powell is buying into the productivity hypothesis, whether from AI or other factors. So growth's going to be above trend. At the same time, the unemployment rate is not going to go up, if at all, but sort of

holds steady around 4.4% through the year. And inflation is going to fall through out that period, coming down from where it is right now, around 2.8% to under 2.5% heading back to the Fed's target. So all at all, a pretty robust outlook for the economy next year that makes the higher interest rates maybe a little more tolerant. For more on how markets are responding, here's Mike Dolan from our sister podcast, Morningby. Look, Wall Street greeted that bed cut with a great deal of cheer last night. It ended the session higher on the day. Most of what it saw was what it expected. It still sees an additional two Fed rate cuts next year, even though the Fed has only indicated one. And that begins around mid-year sometime. It'll become complicated,

I think, early next year. And that's what many in the market will worry about. The rest of the World Central Banks, with the exception of the Bank of England, are signaling the end of their easing cycles. And even though the Fed has more to go, it'll be hard to rein that in. But the positivity overnight was cut short because of Oracle's latest earnings. Oracle's stock bell 12% after it missed on its top line. And even its additional $15 billion spend in the AI space was treated with some skepticism as Oracle is one of those companies that's borrowing heavily to do so. And that's not tech stocks around the world and has seen Wall Street head into today's open in negative territory.

Thanks, Mike. For the latest market news, you can hear morning bid wherever you get your podcasts or on your smart speaker. U.S. nuclear-capable bombers flew over the sea of Japan yesterday alongside Japanese fighter jets in a show of force after Chinese and Russian drills near Japan and South Korea. The move comes as Taiwan reports a step-up of Chinese military presence around the island. billionaire Elon Musk has hinted at a possible SpaceX IPO in a post on X. Industry experts say the move could see the company valued at over a trillion dollars. Our space reporter Joey Roulette says one area SpaceX could use that mountain of cash

is in its capital-intensive development of Starship. Starship is stuffing a lot of cash in SpaceX has invested billions of dollars in that program so far. They've done 11 full-scale flight test attempts. Some of them have ended in explosions. That's part of SpaceX's kind of test to failure development campaign. And it's hard developing rockets, right? Especially for something as giant as Starship. So there's a lot more that they have to do in Starship development.

And I would imagine much of this capital will go to that. The overall concern about SpaceX being a public company is whether or not it would be able to retain its kind of scrappy test to failure rocket development culture that it's known for, and that has been central to its success since it was founded in 2002. You know, that requires a lot of explosions, and it requires a lot of heavy, you know, accidents and hardware-rich development cycles that, you know, the big public companies of today have kind of steered clear of, and they don't do that because they're beholden to, you know, retail investors and the scrutiny of a public market.

You know, everyone that I've talked to has kind of really said that SpaceX will either change or it'll struggle as a public company if it has that risk exposure. SpaceX did not immediately respond to request for comment. While the World Cup doesn't begin for another six months, controversy has already flared around one game. It's a game that falls on the weekend that Seattle's celebrating LGBTQ pride. Local organizers have designated the game a pride match with celebrations and artwork displays

outside the stadium. But the events have drawn criticism and concern from the countries playing in Seattle that day, Egypt and Iran. Ashraf Hamid Atta covers sports for us out of Cairo. Seattle Local Organizing Committee decided to do a pride show supporting people of sex relations, and they have done this before the draw of the World Cup. But Egypt and Iran were drawn to Muslim and the conservative countries that are criminalizing and severely punishing same-sex relations.

In Iran, it can be a death penalty in Egypt multiple years in prison. That is why the Egyptian Federation sent a very detailed letter to ask the FIFA Secretary-General to prevent such things and not to provoke the fans of the two teams because they want to focus only on sports and you can't control fans when they see

something like that. Organizers in Seattle say the pride events will go ahead as planned stressing that they will be outside the stadium. FIFA hasn't responded to Reuters' requests for comment. In the 2022 World Cup in Qatar,

FIFA threatened yellow cards for players wearing one-love armbands in support of LGBTQ plus rights. And for today's recommended read, Nona was right. Italian food, I love it. I love it so much. It's fantastic. German tourist Sabina Hamer adding to the high praise for Italian cuisine, now formally recognized for its quality. UNESCO has added Italian food to its list of intangible cultural heritage. You can read more by following the link in the podcast description.

For more on any of the stories from today, check out reuters.com or the Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast player. If you're listening on a smart speaker, just ask for the latest news from Reuters seven days a week. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show.