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This year, the price of natural rubber has continued to rise, reaching its highest level in nearly two years. Currently, the spot price of natural rubber is within the 17,500—17,900 yuan/ton range, which is up 2,200 yuan/ton from the beginning of 2026, an increase of about 14%. The futures price stands at 17,460 yuan/ton, up 11% from the start of the year. Analysts point out the following reasons for the current natural rubber market rally: On the supply side, firstly, global structural shortages in natural rubber are evident. According to the Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries, global demand for natural rubber in 2026 is projected to climb to 15.602 million tons, while output is estimated at only 15.324 million tons, reflecting a clear supply gap. Secondly, expectations of disruption due to extreme weather are increasing. The National Climate Center predicts that El Niño conditions will begin in May this year, posing risks of high temperatures and drought to the main natural rubber producing regions, which may reduce output and intensify concerns about tightening supply. On the demand side, the global automotive industry is showing a moderate recovery in 2026; China’s new energy vehicle production and sales are continuing to grow; European and American tire replacement as well as export demand are rebounding, combined with acceleration in consumption from new markets such as Africa—all of which are stabilizing downstream demand for natural rubber and strongly supporting its price. In addition, geopolitical conflict in the Middle East is driving up international oil prices, directly leading to increases in synthetic rubber prices, which indirectly support natural rubber prices. (CCTV Finance)

Foresight News reported that Ethereum Foundation Kohaku Initiative researcher kassandraETH posted on Twitter revealing that kohaku-eth/railgun v0.0.1-alpha.21 has enabled relaying Railgun transactions through the ERC-4337 mempool, allowing users to benefit from privacy protection without relying on protocol-specific relay infrastructure. Support for Tornado Cash and Privacy Pools is in progress. Production-level wallets such as Ambire are preparing for integration, and related demonstrations are scheduled to debut at Berlin Blockchain Week.Kohaku is an internal privacy infrastructure research project of the Ethereum Foundation, focused on the wallet access layer. Its goal is to embed privacy pool protocols such as Tornado Cash, Railgun, and Privacy Pools into the wallet layer in a non-custodial manner, leveraging new tools such as EIP-7702 to reduce integration complexity for developers and users.

Nissan Motor Company has canceled its plan to produce all-electric vehicle drive equipment—“powertrains”—in the UK. To advance business restructuring, Nissan has already decided to reduce the number of automobile factories at home and abroad and cut down production capacity, and will also adjust the production base for powertrains. The subsidiary “Jatco,” which jointly developed EV powertrains with Nissan, was originally scheduled to carry out the production. Jatco had planned to build a factory in Sunderland, central UK, in 2026 and supply it to the nearby Nissan automobile plant.