Hard Numbers: Three Stripes and Ye out, Chinese yuan hits low, Russia rejects Griner appeal, no answers on Nord Stream

Rapper Kanye West smiles during a meeting with US President Donald Trump at the White House.
Rapper Kanye West smiles during a meeting with US President Donald Trump at the White House.
REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

10: Adidas on Tuesday officially cut ties with Ye – né Kanye West – over the star musician/designer's recent antisemitic tirades. While Ye’s other business partners left him quickly, the German sportswear giant held out for weeks, likely because Yeezy-branded apparel accounts for $2 billion in sales, or nearly 10% of the three-stripe brand’s annual revenue.

15: The Chinese yuan fell to its lowest level in 15 years on Tuesday in onshore trading, as investors continued to worry about the intentions of Xi Jinping. After securing an unprecedented third term as Communist Party boss, Xi has ousted technocrats in favor of hardline loyalists.

9: A Russian court rejected WNBA star Brittney Griner’s appeal of her 9-year sentence for illegal possession of cannabis. It is unclear whether Griner’s lawyers will pursue a further legal path, but the ball is now in the White House’s court, so to speak, as the Biden administration has signaled it would take “tough decisions” to bring Americans home from foreign captivity.

0 for 3: It’s been a month since someone blew up three of the four Nord Stream natural gas pipelines that link Russia to Germany under the Baltic sea. Theories abound about who did it. The Russians? The Americans? The Ukrainians? But of the three serious investigations under way — Danish, Swedish, German — there are still zero definitive conclusions.


This comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media. Sign up today.

More from GZERO Media

President Donald Trump speaks to the media as he leaves the White House for a trip to Florida on April 3, 2025.
Andrew Leyden/NurPhoto via Reuters

Stocks have plummeted, layoffs have begun, and confusion has metastasized about the bizarre method the United States used to calculate its tariff formula. But Donald Trump says it’s “going very well."

African National Congress (ANC) members of parliament react after South African lawmakers passed the budget's fiscal framework in Cape Town, South Africa, April 2, 2025.
REUTERS/Esa Alexander

The second largest party in South Africa’s coalition, the business-friendly Democratic Alliance, launched a legal challenge on Thursday to block a 0.5% VAT increase in the country’s new budget, raising concerns that the fragile government could collapse.

The Israeli Air Force launched an airstrike on Thursday, targeting a building in the Mashrou Dummar area of Damascus. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant confirmed Israel's responsibility for the attack, which resulted in one fatality.
Rami Alsayed via Reuters Connect
A man leaves the U.S. headquarters of the social media company TikTok in Culver City, California, U.S. January 17, 2025.
REUTERS/David Swanson

Remember the TikTok ban? The new deadline President Donald Trump set for the app to find an American buyer or be banned from US app stores, midnight Saturday, is rapidly approaching.

National Security Advisor Mike Waltz looks on as he sits next to US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in the Oval Office on March 13, 2025.

REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

Someone needs to take National Security Advisor Michael Waltz’s phone out of his hand.

President Donald Trump holds a "Foreign Trade Barriers" document as he delivers remarks on tariffs in the Rose Garden at the White House on April 2, 2025.

REUTERS/Carlos Barria

Donald Trump’s much-anticipated “liberation day” tariff announcement on Wednesday is the biggest disruption to global trade in decades, so the political, diplomatic, and economic impacts will take time to become clear.

Elon Musk waves to the crowd as he exits the stage during a town hall on Sunday, March 30, 2025, at the KI Convention Center in Green Bay, Wis.

Tork Mason/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin via Reuters

Donald Trump is reportedly telling people that he and Elon Musk have agreed that Musk’s work in the US government will soon be done. Politico’s story broke just as Musk seems to have discovered the electoral limits of his charm.