• British Prime Minister Theresa May and European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker agreed over dinner in Brussels on Monday that the pace of negotiations over Britain’s departure from the European Union should be stepped up.
• North Korea's deputy U.N. ambassador warned Monday that the situation on the Korean Peninsula "has reached the touch-and-go point and a nuclear war may break out any moment."
"The entire U.S. mainland is within our firing range and if the U.S. dares to invade our sacred territory even an inch it will not escape our severe punishment in any part of the globe," he warned.
• China will hold a once-every-five-years meeting this week that is expected to usher in a new era of leaders — but no change at the top of the totem pole.
Held in the Chinese capital city of Beijing, the meeting is closely watched for signs of policy shifts in the world's second-largest economy.
Even though the meeting is a major national event that is well-publicized — it has a dedicated website and has been trending topic for days on Chinese microblog Weibo — proceedings are shrouded in secrecy. For a start, the duration of the meeting this year is still unknown.
• The United States is not ruling out the eventual possibility of direct talks with North Korea, Deputy Secretary of State John J. Sullivan said on Tuesday, hours after Pyongyang warned nuclear war might break out at any moment.
• The U.S. State Department said on Monday Washington was “very concerned” by reports of violence around the Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk, which was seized by Baghdad’s forces from Kurds.
• Iraqi forces completed on Tuesday an operation to take control of all oil fields operated by state-owned North Oil Company in the Kirkuk region, a senior military officer said.
• Goldman Sachs said that while oil output from the Kurdistan region was potentially at risk due to a standoff with Iraq, tensions between the United States and Iran remained a larger and longer term threat to global supply.
“In the case of Iran, there are likely no immediate impacts on oil flows and there remains high uncertainty on potential reintroduction of U.S. secondary sanctions. If they are, we expect that several hundred thousand barrels of Iranian exports would be immediately at risk,” the bank said in a note.
• Oil prices steadied on Tuesday, holding on to gains made as fighting between Iraqi and Kurdish forces threatened supplies from northern Iraq while political tension rose between the United States and Iran.
Brent crude oil LCOc1 was 5 cents higher at $57.87 a barrel by 0730 GMT, up almost a third from its mid-year levels. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude CLc1 was unchanged at $51.87.
Reference: Reuters, CNBC
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