Coming Up This Week

• EU foreign ministers are meeting today in Brussels. They're expected to discuss a new military aid package for Ukraine, as well as fresh sanctions on both Hamas and violent Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
• Slovakia's presidential election is Saturday and Senegal's is Sunday.

• Aluminum: $2,275/ton
• Antimony (ingot min. 99.65% fob China): $13,450/ton
• Cobalt: $28,550/ton
• Copper: $9,072/ton
• Gold: $2,158/toz
• Lead: $2,130/ton
• Natural Gas (Nymex): $1.71/MMbtu
• WTI Crude Oil (Nymex): $81.58/barrel
• Zinc: $2,561/ton

• Niger's junta suddenly announced it would end its counterterrorism alliance with the U.S., which probably means it will evict the ~600 U.S. troops stationed at the drone base the U.S. spent $110 million to build.
• The WSJ reported that the junta decided to end the alliance because it's quietly considering a deal to supply uranium to Iran and didn't appreciate last week's visit from senior U.S. officials who warned against supplying Iran and urged a fast return to civilian rule.

• Unsurprisingly, Pres. Putin easily won this weekend's election and another six-year term.
• The U.S. criticized the poll as "not free or fair," and that's accurate: Putin was running essentially unopposed and still only won 87% of the vote.
• There were some signs of the "Noon Against Putin" protest that late opposition leader Alexey Navalny had called for before his death: lacking better ways to express their objection to Putin, many Russians "protested" by turning out to vote at noon on the final day of the election yesterday.
• Despite the subtle protests, Putin seemed satisfied with his new mandate and gave a bold speech after polls closed. In it, he warned that a direct conflict between NATO and Russia would be "just one step away from World War III" and referred to Navalny by name for the first time in years (he said he'd agreed to a prisoner swap involving Navalny before the "unfortunate incident" that killed him).

• China released economic data for the first two months of 2024, and it showed mixed indicators: industrial productivity grew faster than expected at 7%, but a 9% decline in property investment dampened the optimism.
• Analysts don't place much weight on China's economic data points anyway: they know Beijing cherry picks which indicators to release.

• Afghanistan and Pakistan exchanged strikes across their shared border over the weekend.
• Pakistan struck first, targeting militants in north Waziristan. The Taliban complained that those "reckless" strikes killed eight women and children - not militants - and retaliated by shelling Pakistani military posts along the border, killing seven troops.
• Pakistan then retaliated with more strikes in Khost and Paktika provinces today.

• Exxon announced yet another oil discovery in the prolific Stabroek block offshore Guyana: the Bluefin well hit hydrocarbon-containing sandstone at a depth of about 4,200 feet (1,300 meters).
• Venezuela disputes Guyana's claim to the rich offshore oilfields, and is preparing to auction its own licenses to explore and exploit them. As a preliminary step, Caracas just signed a deal with UK-based Geoex to do a 2D multi-client seismic survey of the area.

• North Korea fired some short-range ballistic missiles into the sea this morning as a protest against U.S.-South Korean military drills that ended last week.