The PRICE of GOLD steadied around a 3-week low against the US Dollar on Wednesday, holding above $2600 per Troy ounce after plunging on talk of possible Middle East peace talks.
Despite continued fighting across Gaza and southern Lebanon, plus the death of two civilians in a Hezbollah rocket attack on the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona, crude oil prices fell further after losing almost 5% yesterday.
Western government bond prices stabilized, holding benchmark 10-year US Treasury yields above 4% per annum, while China's equity market sank 7.5% as disappointment continued over Beijing's cautious economic stimulus plans.
Since the 7th October atrocities across southern Israel by Iran-backed Hamas fighters 12 months ago, the price of gold has risen by 41.0% while the S&P500 index has gained 32.7%.
Gold prices on Tuesday
lost almost $50 inside 3 hours, hitting $2605 per Troy ounce, after news broke that leaders of the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon said they no longer demand a truce between Israel and Hezbollah's allies Hamas as a condition for discussing a ceasefire with Israel.
With leaders from Iran-backed Hamas and rival Palestinian group Fatah meeting in Cairo, Egypt today to discuss "national unity", heavy fighting in the northern Gaza city of Jabalia means
there is "no end to the hell" for refugees says the United Nation's local commissioner-general.
"Unity and cooperation to secure peace [starting with a] ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza" will top the agenda when Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araqchi visits Saudi Arabia and then Qatar – both key regional allies of the USA – on Wednesday and Thursday, Reuters quotes a senior Tehran official.
But "any assistance to Israel, such as allowing the use of a regional country's airspace for actions against Iran,
is unacceptable," the official also said as the Middle East region awaits Tel Aviv's response to last week's ballistic missile attack by the Islamic Republic.
"The United States is fully intertwined" with Israel's bombardment of Gaza and now Lebanon, claims former China government advisor Victor Gao, urging Washington "to
reflect upon its behaviour and really achieve consistency in whatever rules they are preaching to the rest of the world."
While Russian forces today continued their westwards push into Ukraine after taking the 'strategic' town of Toretsk, military strikes by Kyiv hit an oil depot in the Crimea – annexed by Moscow back in 2014 – and destroyed an arms depot 60 miles inside Russia, said to contain weapons from Moscow ally North Korea.
"Casualties among North Korean officers and soldiers in Ukraine is highly likely," said a spokesman for the South Korea's government today, "due to mutual agreements that resemble a military alliance between" the two pariah states.
US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is accused of sending Covid tests to Russia's President Putin during the 2020 pandemic in new biography War by US reporter Bob Woodward.
Trump is also accused of speaking with the Kremlin leader
at least 7 times since he left the White House in 2021, including since Moscow began its all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Silver prices also held near yesterday's sudden 3-week lows on Wednesday, trading at $30.40 per Troy ounce with a rise of 39.6% from this time last year, when Israel began its retaliation against Hamas in Gaza.
