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Let’s get into today’s top stories.

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🇵🇱 Poland enters the top 20 with a long post-communist sprint. Poland is now among the world’s 20 largest economies. That would have sounded fanciful in 1989. Back then, bread lines and state planning defined the country. Since joining the European Union in 2004, Poland’s economy has grown 3.8% a year on average. That beats the European average of 1.8%. Analyst Marcin Piątkowski said the country escaped the poverty trap through multiple reforms, not one miracle. The next ambition is not just catching up, but inventing. In Poznan, researchers are building Poland’s first AI factory beside a quantum computer. Poland is gunning for pole position.

🇨🇺 Cuba goes dark again as its energy system keeps fraying. An islandwide blackout hit Cuba on Monday. About 11M people were affected. Officials said the power grid continues to crumble. The outage deepened an already punishing energy crisis. A major outage just over a week ago had already left millions without power in the west. Another major blackout struck western Cuba in early December. Critical oil shipments from Venezuela were halted after Washington’s January move against Nicolás Maduro. Cuba produces about 40% of its own petroleum, but still cannot meet demand. For many Cubans, the lights keep going out faster than the explanations arrive.

📦 $10.5B storage merger bets America keeps hoarding. Public Storage said it will buy National Storage Affiliates in an all-stock deal worth about $10.5B. If approved, the tie-up would create a self-storage giant. The combined company would control 327M square feet. It would span nearly 4,600 locations across the country. The merger would join the largest and fourth-largest American storage firms by market capitalization. Public Storage said it wants deeper reach in fast-growing Sun Belt markets. Investors in National Storage would receive 0.14 of a Public Storage share, or about $41.68 per share. National Storage shares jumped nearly 30% at the opening bell. In a country drowning in possessions, square footage is strategy.

🚛 North America’s trade pact heads back to the negotiating table. Talks begin Monday to renew the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). At stake is $1.6T in annual goods trade. The three countries could renew the pact unchanged for another 16 years. That outcome looks unlikely. Under the agreement’s renewal rules, they effectively have until 2036 to work it out. Any member can still leave with six months’ notice. That possibility worries Canada and Mexico, whose economies are tightly tied to the American market. American farmers are also watching closely. Last year they shipped nearly $31B in agricultural goods to Mexico and $28B to Canada.

🏆 Michael B. Jordan gets his first Oscar, and a long-expected coronation. Michael B. Jordan won best actor at the 98th Academy Awards. It was his first Oscar. He won for playing identical twins Smoke and Stack in “Sinners.” The film is a supernatural blues-horror story set in 1930s Mississippi. Jordan’s victory was widely treated as one of the night’s crowd-pleasing results. The role gave him the kind of part people had long expected him to conquer. “Sinners” entered the ceremony with 16 nods, and left with 4 wins. Hollywood loves reinvention and adores overdue validation.

📈 Stocks rebound as oil cools and traders rediscover their nerve. Wall Street had its best day since the Iran war began. The rally arrived when oil prices eased. The Standard & Poor’s 500 (S&P 500) rose 1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 387 points, or 0.8%. The Nasdaq composite climbed 1.2%. Benchmark American crude fell 5.3% to $93.50 after topping $102 earlier in the day. Brent crude dropped 2.8% to $100.21 after touching $106.50. Nvidia ($NVDA) rose 1.6% and was the strongest lift for the S&P 500. On Wall Street, relief is often panic gasping for air.

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That’s all for today!

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