Bombshell Sexual-Harassment Suit Against JPM’s Lorna Hajdini Called “Complete Fabrication” The British tabloid newspaper Daily Mail first broke the story earlier this week about a former JPMorgan staffer who claimed that an executive director on JPM’s leveraged finance team turned him into a “sex slave” by drugging him with Rohypnol and Viagra, according to a bombshell lawsuit. However, it now appears that the sexual harassment suit […]

Exxon & Chevron Shares Jump After Big Q1 Earnings Beat The impact of the war in Iran is on full display this morning in the earnings of two oil giants – Chevron and Exxon Mobil – as both smashed earnings expectations (despite production pressures). Ahead of the results, Exxon and Chevron had both flagged major reductions in 1Q earnings due to “timing effects,” or paper losses on derivatives tied to cargoes that had not yet […]

EU Parliament Pushes Funding Cuts To Orbán-Founded Patriots Group As Witch-Hunt Continues Via Remix News, The European Parliament will vote today on suspending EU funding for the right-wing Patriots for Europe faction, founded by outgoing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. At stake is the alleged mismanagement of €4.3 million of EU funds by Philip Claeys, the former secretary general of the far-right Identity and […]

British Police Raid Islamic Group Accused Of Sex Trafficking And Slavery At least nine members of a Cheshire Islamic group have been arrested in a raid of 500 British police officers as part of an investigation into sexual offenses, slavery and forced marriage.  Officers received reports of human trafficking, rape, and other crimes involving members of a group known as the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light, based in Crewe.  […]

Canada’s Culture Minister: Regulating Online Content A Duty Of Federal Government Authored by Olivia Gomm via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), Culture Minister Marc Miller says the federal government has the role of regulating content on the internet and that Canada is years behind other countries when it comes to regulating “online harms.” Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture Marc Miller rises during Question Period in […]

“We Shouldn’t Have To Live Like This”: UK Terror Level Raised To ‘Severe’ After Stabbing Attacks Britain’s terrorism threat level was raised from “substantial” to “severe” on Thursday afternoon after a 45-year-old British national, reportedly born in Somalia, stabbed two Jewish men in North London. The elevation in the terrorism threat level suggests another terror attack is highly likely within the next six months, as […]

China Reopens Fuel Export Spigot, Offering Relief To Asian Buyers Beijing is reversing its curbs on refined fuel exports after halting shipments in the opening days of the U.S.-Iran conflict. This move suggests that Chinese domestic inventories are now at comfortable levels, allowing state refiners to reopen the export spigot, even as much of Asia remains gripped by a fuel shock caused by disrupted Gulf energy flows through the […]

Trump Threatens To Pull Some US Troops Out Of Germany While Lambasting ‘Ineffective’ Merz German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has been a bit on the defensive since his earlier in the week swipe at President Trump over launching the war against Iran. The German leader had told students in a talk that the US is being “humiliated” by Iranian leaders. He had also asserted, “If I had known that it would continue like this for five or six […]

Top Russian & Indian Think Tanks Devised A Plan For Rebalancing Economic Relations Authored by Andrew Korbybko via Substack, Sanctions, bureaucracy, and logistics are the primary obstacles to “diversifying economic ties and correcting the existing imbalance”, but these can be surmounted through SMEs playing a greater role, more localization and procedure simplifications, and optimizing their trade corridors. The Russian […]

Congress Passes 45-Day Extension Of FISA Section 702, Sending It To Trump’s Desk Authored by Joseph Lord via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a bill to extend a spying authority of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for 45 days as congressional debate on the controversial measure continues. The U.S. Capitol building on April 29, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch […]

Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund To Stop Funding LIV Golf After 2026 Season LIV Golf is preparing to inform players and staff that its main financial backer, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, will stop funding the league after the 2026 season, according to Golfweek. The announcement—expected midweek—would open the door for CEO Scott O’Neil to pursue new investment to keep the tour running. Since launching in 2022 as a […]

1 In 5 Americans Are Still Working From Home The COVID-19 pandemic marked a dramatic shift in workplace dynamics, as working from home suddenly became the norm for millions of workers in the United States and across the globe. As Statista’s Felix Richter notes, this transformation offered employees newfound flexibility, enabling them to manage their time more effectively, eliminate commutes, facilitate childcare and often […]

L3Harris’ Missile Business Files To Go Public As Trump’s War Economy Prepares For Launch We have been diligently tracking the Trump administration’s war-economy mobilization across the homeland, from the rise of so-called “war unicorns” favored by the Department of War to Trump officials talking with GM, Ford, GE Aerospace, and Oshkosh about converting underused civilian industrial capacity into weapons production. The signal to […]

Aircraft Carrier Strike Group To Leave Middle East, Reducing Footprint Amid Iran War Currently there are three American aircraft carrier groups in Middle East waters and near Iran in the context of Operation Epic Fury. By comparison, at the height of the Bush-ordered US invasion of Iraq in 2003, there were six total carrier groups – which were responsible for most of the large tomahawk missile strikes on Baghdad.  Amid the current […]

Hezbollah’s Cheap Fiber Optic Drones A Growing, Deadly Problem For Israeli Troop Convoys Via The Cradle Hezbollah attacked the Israeli army with a fiber-optic drone in the Galilee on Thursday, injuring at least a dozen soldiers and destroying a military vehicle.  Israeli Army Radio reported that 12 soldiers were injured when the drone struck a military position in the Shomera settlement. Two soldiers were “moderately” […]

Massive Lithium Lode In Appalachia Could Power 130 Million EVs: USGS America’s worrisome dependency on foreign sources of lithium could become a thing of the past: About 328 years’ worth of last year’s lithium imports is buried in Appalachia, according to a new analysis published by the US Geological Survey (USGS). That’s about 2.3 million metric tons of undiscovered but economically recoverable lithium — aka “white gold.”   […]

Hershey CEO Says GLP-1 Boom Fuels Demand For Gum And Mints Hershey reported first-quarter sales and earnings that exceeded Bloomberg-tracked analyst expectations, driven by higher candy prices and resilient consumer demand. Beyond the earnings report, CEO Kirk Tanner made one very notable comment in prepared remarks: demand for gum and mints remains strong, with the category benefiting from “functional snacking” tailwinds tied to […]

Here Come The Cancellations: Brookfield-Backed Compass Pulls Out From Major Northern Virginia Data Center Project Compass Datacenters has decided to withdraw from its plan to develop a major data-center corridor in Northern Virginia after spending years pursuing approvals and investing tens of millions of dollars, according to Bloomberg. The company ultimately concluded the project wasn’t feasible due to mounting legal […]

CCP Moves To Tighten Oversight Of Gig Workers Authored by Michael Zhuang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), Beijing is moving to tighten its grip on tens of millions of gig workers—an increasingly vital but volatile segment of China’s labor force—prompting warnings from analysts that the effort could deepen social tensions rather than contain them. Delivery workers from Chinese shopping platform Meituan gather for a […]

What Is the Trump Administration Really Trying To Do With The Latest Comey Indictment? On Tuesday, a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina handed down a two-count indictment against the former FBI director James Comey, charging him with threatening the life of President Donald Trump and transmitting that threat across state lines. The basis for the charges: an Instagram post from May 2025 in which Comey […]

Trump Says Gas Prices Will Drop “Like a Rock” Once Conflict Ends, As Senator Breaks With GOP Leadership On War Powers Summary Trump: “The [price of] gasoline and the oil will go down rapidly once the war’s over.” GOP Sen. Collins switches vote on war powers. Bessent on X: “Amid the impact of Economic Fury, Iran’s currency has hit an all-time low. The Iranian people deserve a new era, which the corrupt and shambolic […]

$25 Billion: Hegseth Accused Of Lowballing Cost Of Iran War Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth has been in a very public spat and back-and-forth with Congressional Democrats over the Trump administration’s $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget request, as well as over Iran war strategy and mounting costs. Hegseth has turned to some classic wartime fearmongering: “What is it worth to ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon?” – he posed to […]

AI Hype Meets Hardware Crunch As US Power Equipment Market Eyes $65 Billion Boom Wood McKenzie has released a report that US spending on power generation gear for data centers alone could hit $65 billion by 2030, more than triple the $20 billion logged last year. Data center capacity is forecast to reach 110 GW by the end of the decade, with Bloomberg also commenting that “total US spending on power-plant equipment may climb to […]

Goldman Maps Retailer Exposure To Working-Poor Consumers As Gas Soars With the nationwide average gasoline price accelerating above the politically sensitive $4-per-gallon level, and the consumer backdrop for low-income households darkening, Goldman analysts published a note on Wednesday identifying which big-box retailers have the greatest exposure to working-poor households. “Our economists expect spending headwinds from higher […]

Apple Drops After Mixed Results: America, Europe Revenue Miss; Iphone Sales Disappoint, But China Surges Again Ahead of today’s AAPL earnings report, we’ve had a mixed picture from Mag 7 earnings so far: GOOGL soared to a record high, MSFT and AMZN both dropped (although they recovered much of their losses throughout the day) and META crashed, all on different reads of their capex. Which leaves AAPL to complete the picture of the […]