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A Greek-flagged oil tanker traveling through the Red Sea came under repeated attack Wednesday, leaving the vessel “not under command” and drifting ablaze after an assault suspected to have been carried out by Yemen's Houthi rebels, the British military said. The attack, the most serious in the Red Sea in weeks, comes during a monthslong campaign by Houthis targeting ships over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip that has disrupted a trade route through which $1 trillion in cargo typically passes each year. In the attack, men on small boats first opened fire with small arms about 140 kilometers (90 miles) west of the rebel-held Yemeni port city of Hodeida, the British military's United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said.

The dollar traded near the lowest in more than a year against the euro and sterling on Thursday as a dovish Federal Reserve and fresh signs of weakness in the U.S. job market backed the case for interest rate cuts. The dollar sagged below the closely watched 145 yen mark as U.S. Treasury yields slid, ahead of weekly jobless claims data later in the day and a hotly anticipated speech by Fed Chair Jerome Powell at the central bank's annual Jackson Hole symposium on Friday. Fed officials last month were strongly leaning toward an interest rate cut at their September policy meeting and several of them would have even been willing to reduce borrowing costs immediately, according to the minutes of the July 30-31 gathering released on Wednesday.

A sharp sell-off in crude oil paused on Thursday after expectations of a rate cut by the Federal Reserve offset a bunch of weak economic data from the world's two largest economies, the United States and China. Brent crude futures were 3 cents up to $76.08 a barrel. WTI touched its lowest since early February on Wednesday after revised U.S. employment statistics showed fewer jobs than previously reported and weak economic data from China, the world's second-largest economy.

Analysts say countries like Malaysia and Thailand may want to hedge in a more polarized world and get better access to China and India.

“The Fed minutes removed all doubt about a September rate cut,” said Jamie Cox, managing partner at Harris Financial Group.

(Bloomberg) -- The Mexican peso was the biggest loser among emerging-markets currencies on Wednesday as investors assessed a range of risks — from local politics to a frailer US economy. Most Read from BloombergThe Serious Work That Free Play Can DoThe peso trimmed some losses after weakening as much as 2.2%. It took a leg down after minutes from the latest Federal Reserve meeting showed several officials saw a case for cutting interest rates last month. The Brazilian real and the Colombian peso

The release comes before a highly anticipated speech by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell at the Kansas City Fed's Jackson Hole economic symposium on Friday, which will be watched for any new clues on his view of the labor market. "It probably puts more weight on Powell's appearance at Jackson Hole," said Vassili Serebriakov, an FX strategist at UBS in New York. Markets are looking for clarity on the likely size of a rate cut at the Fed's Sept. 17-18 meeting, and whether borrowing costs are likely to be lowered at each subsequent Fed meeting.