The Norwegian government announced in a statement on Tuesday that it agreed to strengthen defense cooperation with Ukraine.
The defense sectors from both countries will be working closer "to develop new technology and increase production," the government said, detailing that Ukrainian drones will be manufactured in Norway, with the production of air defense systems and ammunition to be increased as well.
"Our two countries benefit from military cooperation. We support Ukraine's struggle for freedom, and we also use the experience the Ukrainians gain at the front to develop our own defense," Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store stated.
Two Iranian ships set sail despite the United States-imposedblockade of Iranian ports, the BBC reported on Tuesday, citing ship tracking data obtained and analyzed by BBC Verify.
According to the outlet, the cargo ship Ashkan3 left the Chabahar port and is currently sailing towards Pakistan. Meanwhile, a container ship called Shabdis is said to have left the same port and is currently sailing towards India, with its final destination transmitted as Zhuhai, China.
It was noted that neither vessel crossed the Strait of Hormuz and that both are sailing under the Iranian flag.
The United States decided to ease sanctions against the financial system in Venezuela, Axios reported on Tuesday, citing officials.
"This action supports [US President Donald Trump's] objective to revitalize the Venezuelan economy by reintegrating Venezuelan citizens into the U.S.-led global financial system," one source commented.
With this, big financial institutions in the country, including the state-run bank, will now be allowed to legally use the US currency. One source added that the move will also help with the development of Venezuela's oil sector, as well as bring stabilization to the new government.
The meeting between the Israeli ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter, and the Lebanese ambassador to the same country, Nada Hamadeh, hosted by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington, came to an end after more than two hours, Axios reported on Tuesday.
Rubio previously described the negotiations as a "historic opportunity," and said that while not all issues would be settled in the coming hours, he hoped the parties would start to move towards an agreement.
Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah's leader Naim Qassem slammed the "futile" talks in a televised speech yesterday, while calling on the government to take "a historic and heroic stance" by not attending. The last time such high-level direct talks were held between Israel and Lebanon was in 1983, which led to the May 17 agreement, which was not implemented.
Russia is ready to accept Iran's enriched uranium stockpile, Saudi state-owned TV Al Arabiya reported on Tuesday, citing Broadcasting Authority sources.
No further details have been provided, and Russia has not officially commented on the report. Earlier this month, Russia's State Atomic Energy Corporation (Rosatom) offered to assist Tehran in removing its highly enriched uranium from the country, repeating earlier proposals by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Investment firm Bernstein estimates that by 2030, prediction market volumes will surge to roughly $1 trillion.
Dollar volumes on the markets surged in 2024, spurred by the U.S. presidential election, then expanded further in 2025 thanks to sports, crypto and macro/political contracts.
While a regulatory battle is brewing, Bernstein thinks it’s unlikely to deter long-term growth.
Prediction market volumes are booming in 2026, on pace to more than quadruple this year alone and reach an estimated $1 trillion in the next four years, according to Bernstein.
Volumes have already surged in the first few months of this year, the investment bank wrote in a report Tuesday, with Kalshi and Polymarket, the two largest platforms, seeing about $60 billion in market volume year-to-date — more than the $51 billion in total prediction market volume in all of 2025.
Growth rates for the platforms rival the artificial intelligence boom, according to Bank of America. Analyst Julie Hoover in a note last week called Kalshi one of the “fastest growing non-AI companies” in the U.S. Weekly trading volume on Kalshi — which controls more than 90% of the U.S. prediction market — has surged to more than $3 billion today from about $100 million a year ago, she wrote.
While prediction market volumes initially jumped in 2024 around the U.S. presidential election, they eventually surpassed those levels in 2025 as sports, cryptocurrency and macroeconomic contracts became popular. $1 trillion by 2030
Bernstein analyst Gautam Chhugani now estimates that total market volumes in 2026 will reach $240 billion, a 370% increase compared to last year. At a compound annual growth rate of roughly 80% between 2025 and 2030, Chhugani sees prediction market trading volume of $1 trillion a year by the start of the next decade.
Chhugani expects increased regulatory clarity at the federal level will boost the potential market, and that blockchain tokenization and integration with cryptocurrencies is enabling more liquidity. The makeup of traded contracts is also likely to change, he said.
While Kalshi and Polymarket dominate the space, new names are building a presence. Robinhood, DraftKings and Underdog are all starting or have already launched their own prediction market verticals, Bank of America’s Hoover said. Public proxies
Robinhood and Coinbase Global are the key public market proxies for the private prediction market companies, Chhugani said. Robinhood’s prediction markets hub is now a year old, generating $350 million in annual recurring revenue, and accounting for some 30% of Kalshi total volume. The market is the digital finance platform’s fastest-growing business, and could encourage Robinhood to develop its own exchange, the analyst said.
While Chhugani’s long-range estimates assume the resolution of long-term regulatory risk, in the near-term state and federal regulators and the prediction markets themselves are engaged in a pitched battle. “Legal action is now pending in 14 states, plus another 4 congressional bills [are] also pending amid concerns around insider trading,” Hoover wrote.
Still, Chhugani has faith that this won’t derail the multi-year outlook.
“Despite ongoing state-level legal challenges, we expect platforms like Kalshi, Polymarket, and public proxies (HOOD, COIN) to benefit from increasing regulatory clarity and growing alignment with federal regulators (SEC, CFTC) — a key driver of market legitimacy and mainstream adoption,” he wrote.
“We expect [the] institutional market to develop around economics, business and political contracts, as investors seek more direct and discrete exposure to events,” he wrote. While sports contracts make up more than 60% of trading volume today, he sees that being cut in half by 2030. “We also expect hedging demand from corporates, [and] insurance firms exposed to specific event risks.”
An appeals court has put a stop to criminal contempt proceedings initiated by a district judge against the Trump administration.
In a brief, unsigned order on April 14, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated a previous order by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, and ordered him to terminate the contempt investigation he launched in December.
“Today’s decision by the DC Circuit should finally end Judge Boasberg’s year-long campaign against the hardworking Department attorneys doing their jobs fighting illegal immigration,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote on X.
The contempt proceedings stemmed from the deportation of illegal immigrants—suspected gang members—to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, last year. Boasberg had ordered planes carrying those detainees halted and turned around, but the men were sent to El Salvador anyway.
The Trump administration had appealed Boasberg’s order all the way to the Supreme Court, which overturned his ruling. Despite that, Boasberg tried to hold members of the administration in contempt of his order unless they returned the suspected gang members to the United States.
Boasberg reasoned that, though the Supreme Court ruled his previous order was in error, that didn’t excuse the federal government from violating it ahead of time.
The appeals court blocked that move by vacating Boasberg’s contempt order, but he decided to move ahead with a contempt investigation in November. He ordered a hearing, where he informed both parties that he would launch an inquiry to learn who was responsible for the violation of his order.
“I certainly intend to find out what happened on that day,” Boasberg told attorneys for the Department of Justice (DOJ) at the Nov. 19, 2025, proceedings. He asked the government to identify who made the decision to go ahead with the deportations.
Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made the decision, the Trump administration later informed the court.
But Boasberg was unsatisfied and “the district court again moved the goalposts,” Circuit Judge Neomi Rao wrote. On Dec. 8, 2025, Boasberg ordered a further investigation to find out whether Noem’s decision was a “willful violation” of his order.
“Undeterred, the district court is proceeding with criminal contempt for the government’s decision to transfer the plaintiffs to the custody of El Salvador,” Rao wrote.
She added that the Appeals Court needed to intervene again “to prevent the district court from assuming an antagonistic jurisdiction that encroaches on the autonomy of the Executive Branch.”
In a 2–1 decision, the appeals court ruled that Boasberg, by ordering an inquiry into why his order was defied, was trying “to probe high-level Executive Branch deliberations about matters of national security and diplomacy.”
Apart from that, Rao wrote, the government did not violate Boasberg’s written order by turning the deportees over to the El Salvadoran government.
“These proceedings are a clear abuse of discretion, as the district court’s order said nothing about transferring custody of the plaintiffs and therefore lacks the clarity to support criminal contempt based on the transfer of custody,” she wrote.
In a dissenting opinion, Circuit Judge J. Michelle Childs said the question wasn’t quite so simple and that Boasberg was right to order further investigation. She cited a transcript of Boasberg’s oral order—given a little while before his written order was issued—in which he plainly told the government to bring the detainees back to the United States.
“However that’s accomplished, whether turning around a plane or not embarking anyone on the plane or those people covered by this on the plane, I leave to you,” Boasberg had told DOJ attorney Drew Ensign during an emergency hearing last March.
Childs also wrote that the April 14 ruling sets a dangerous precedent.
“Now, any litigant can argue, based on their preferred interpretation of a court’s order, that they did not commit contempt before contempt findings are even made,” she wrote.
