U.S. President Donald Trump said America was "poised for an economic boom the likes of which the world has never seen" next year, as he defended his policies in an address to the nation Wednesday.

Claiming he was fixing a "mess" left by his predecessor Joe Biden 11 months ago, Trump said in his speech from the White House that "our country is back, stronger than ever before."

Oil prices surged on Wednesday after US President Donald Trump ordered a blockade of "sanctioned" oil tankers heading to and leaving Venezuela.

Venezuela struck a defiant note Wednesday, insisting that crude oil exports were not impacted by US President Donald Trump's announcement of a blockade.

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he is ordering a blockade of all "sanctioned oil tankers" into Venezuela, ramping up pressure on the country's authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro in a move that seemed designed to put a tighter chokehold on the South American country's economy.

Trump's escalation comes after U.S. forces last week seized an oil tanker off Venezuela's coast, an unusual move that followed a buildup of military forces in the region. In a post on social media Tuesday night announcing the blockade, Trump alleged Venezuela was using oil to fund drug trafficking and other crimes and vowed to continue the military buildup until the country gave the U.S. oil, land and assets, though it was not clear why he felt the U.S. had a claim.

On a recent December day, Mark Latino and a handful of his workers spun sheets of vinyl into tinsel for Christmas tree branches. They worked on a custom-made machine that's nearly a century old, churning out strands of bright silver tinsel along its 35-foot (10-meter) length.

Crypto.com was under siege.

For more than a year, the firm had been investigated by President Joe Biden's Democratic administration, part of an aggressive push to regulate the largely unregulated cryptocurrency industry. Financial regulators had told the company that enforcement action was likely.

Iraq's transport ministry said Tuesday that a flight operated by Greece's Aegean Airlines had been the first European aircraft in 35 years to land at Baghdad's international airport.

Wall Street inched slightly lower early Tuesday ahead of the release of U.S. employment and inflation reports that could drive the direction of interest rates.

Futures for the S&P 500 fell 0.2% before the bell Tuesday, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average were unchanged. Nasdaq futures lost 0.2%.

France is throwing up a last-minute obstacle to a massive trans-Atlantic trade deal between the 27-country European Union and the five South American nations of the Mercosur bloc that's taken a quarter-century to negotiate.

Angry European farmers fearing new competition from the EU-Mercosur pact are marching on Brussels, and European negotiators who thought they would finally wrap up the deal this year are facing a tough week.

Since he started growing cannabis at 14, Mohamed Makhlouf has lived in the shadows, losing sleep while bracing for a knock on his door from authorities that could mean prison or his entire harvest confiscated.

But after decades of operating in secret, Makhlouf finally has gained peace of mind as Morocco expands legal cultivation and works to integrate veteran growers like him into the formal economy.