Oil drops below $30, Nasa’s Armageddon office and what market turbulence is telling us

The crews of two US Navy vessels were picked up by Iranian authorities in the Persian Gulf on Tuesday, setting up a new source of friction between Washington and Tehran just days before last year’s landmark nuclear agreement is due to be implemented.

The incident comes as the Obama administration faces pressure from Congress to impose new sanctions on Iran over two ballistic missile tests conducted last year. (FT)

In the news

Oil drops below $30 US oil prices fell below $30 for the first time since 2003, extending a hefty new year sell-off as BP axed 4,000 jobs and Brazil’s Petrobras cut its five-year investment plan by $32bn. (FT)

Poland’s Eurovision place threatened The country’s broadcasters run the risk of being kicked out of the European Broadcasting Union — with the added ignominy of exclusion from the Eurovision Song Contest — in the latest backlash against the country’s controversial new media laws. The president of the union warned it is monitoring the effect of rules that give the Polish government the right to hire and fire senior management at the country’s state media. (FT)

Russia to cut expenditure Moscow is cutting budget expenditure 10 per cent as it scrambles to cope with lower revenues following the latest drop in oil prices. Ministries and other government departments have been given until Friday to formulate plans for cuts of more than $9bn. (FT)

Ten dead in Istanbul terror attack Those killed in the suicide bombing in the city’s historic Sultanahmet district were mostly German tourists. Authorities said the attacker was a foreigner who belonged to Isis. It is the third major terrorist incident in Turkey since July, and heightens concerns about security as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan confronts the spiralling effects of the civil war in neighbouring Syria. (FT)

Blockbuster US bond offering brews Mega-brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev has tested investor appetite for a potentially record-breaking bond sale later this week, as the group lines up financing for its $108bn takeover of rival SABMiller. The sale could eclipse the watershed $49bn issue completed by telecom provider Verizon in 2013. (FT)

It's a big day for

Puerto Rico, which has scheduled meetings with creditors to begin talks on restructuring its $70bn debt pile. (Bloomberg)

America’s next billionaire The national Powerball lottery prize has risen to $1.5bn — making it the largest jackpot in the US, as well as the world’s biggest potential jackpot for a single winner. (Reuters)

Read our Weekahead section for more upcoming stories

Food for thought

Nasa’s Armageddon office If the prospect of an asteroid destroying the earth keeps you up at night, you can rest easy: Nasa has launched its Planetary Defense Coordination Office with a mission objective to detect and track potential doomsday rocks. This is not the first such move by the space agency. Last year, it announced it was working on plans to use nuclear weapons to deflect threats from the cosmos. (HuffPo)

What market turbulence is telling us Another set of credit bubbles, that in emerging economies, is loudly popping, argues the FT’s Martin Wolf. “This is going to leave a legacy of financial shocks and, if mishandled, bad debt.” (FT)

Britain’s ‘Pompeii’ The circular wooden houses built on stilts discovered in Cambridgeshire are being hailed as the “best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found” in the country. Indeed, so well preserved was the site that archaeologists discovered pots with meals still inside them. (BBC)

Fifa skip the main exhibit Fifa’s world football museum is to open to the public in Zürich next month — although the exhibition will be missing some important, recent events. There will be no full reference to the scandals currently engulfing the body. Officials say they “need a little more distance”. (FT)

Inside El Chapo’s safe house The white house on the corner of a nondescript residential street looks like any other in north-west Mexico — except for the armed marines outside, and the dark bloodstain around the metal front door. Welcome to the last hiding place of the world’s most notorious drug lord. (FT)

Video of the day

Online retail — devil’s in the detail Three UK online retailers have given trading updates — Boohoo, AO World and Just Eat. Lex’s Jonathan Eley and Robert Armstrong assess which of the three has the most investment potential if you had to put all your money in one basket. (FT)