Futures Flat At All Time Highs Ahead Of Huge Week, Semis Set For 19th Day Of Gains Risk sentiment improved overnight on another Axios report that Iran has given the US a new proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz with more detailed nuclear talks expected later. Oil pares early gains, and US equity futures jumped although they have also pared gains since and are trading flat as traders await a huge week of earnings (44% of the […]

Israel Bombs Deep Into Lebanon For First Time Of 3-Week Ceasefire There’s supposed to be a 3-week Lebanon ceasefire in effect, but that increasingly appears something merely on paper or in name only, as Israel has stepped up and expanded its attacks on Lebanon – now for the first time of the ceasefire including strikes on the far away Beqaa Valley. “The IDF says it has launched a wave of airstrikes against Hezbollah infrastructure […]

China Abruptly Blocks Meta’s $2 Billion Takeover Deal Of Manus AI With just weeks to go before the Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing, China’s National Development and Reform Commission unexpectedly blocked Meta Platforms’ acquisition of the AI-agent startup Manus on Monday morning, signaling that Beijing has no problem with tightening control over high-value AI assets ahead of high-level talks. Bloomberg reports that China’s NDRC has […]

Battered Budget Airlines Ask White House For $2.5 Billion Lifeline Budget airlines have requested a $2.5 billion relief package from the Trump administration following a meeting with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy early last week. This comes as elevated jet fuel prices squeeze operations, and after President Trump confirmed late last week that a possible U.S. takeover of bankrupt Spirit Airlines is under consideration. The […]

Iran Offers New Proposal To Reopen Strait – Trump Open To Sealing Deal Via Phone Summary After a weekend of stalemate malaise, Iran reportedly offers new proposal for opening ship traffic, while postponing the thorny nuclear issue  Trump says peace could come via telephone rather than face-to-face meetings, also warning Iranian oil infrastructure could explode from within unless flow resumes Iranian FM has been […]

WHCA Shooter’s Tweets Found, Suggesting Radicalization Fueled By Democratic Messaging Update:  Shooter’s archived tweets emerge  Shooter’s Manifesto explained about Trump admin target kill list. He wrote, “prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest” …  Shooter’s intent was to Target Trump & admin officials  Shooter donated to “Harris for President” via ActBlue  Shooter apprehended and taken into […]

Axon’s Ukraine Drone Deals Signal Big U.S. Counter-UAS Push Axon, formerly TASER International, has evolved beyond its roots as a police-tech vendor and is now positioning itself to soon be a major importer of drone and counter-drone technology after a series of deals with Ukrainian defense companies. Axon currently sells hardware to local police forces, federal agencies, security, and military-adjacent markets. Some of this […]

If The British Lose The Falkland Islands It Will Be Their Own Fault This month, after four years of tensions between Europe and Russia, the Russian Navy executed an operation in the North Atlantic on the doorstep of British waters.  Using an Akula-Class nuclear submarine as a decoy, the Russians sent covert spy subs to map underwater infrastructure, including vulnerable internet cables and pipelines.  Given the precarious nature […]

Outrage As Taliban Afghan Illegal Who Sexually Assaulted 7-Year-Old Gets Just 2.5 Years In Prison Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news, An Afghan small boat migrant with admitted ties to the Taliban kidnapped and sexually assaulted a seven-year-old girl inside a taxpayer-funded hotel – and a UK court has handed him just two and a half years in prison. This is the direct result of open borders policies that continue […]

“The Dynamic Has Shifted”: Global Automakers Now Bet Heavily On China For Global Expansion Strategies Foreign automakers are rushing to debut China-developed models at a major auto show, recognizing they can’t afford to lose ground in the world’s largest car market, according to Nikkei. After years of declining sales, many legacy brands are shifting to an “in China, for global” strategy—using local innovation not just to […]

US Has No Plan To Renew Iranian, Russian Oil Waivers, Bessent Says Authored by Kimberley Hayek via The Epoch Times, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on April 24 that the United States will not renew the sanctions waivers that enabled buyers to take delivery of Iranian and Russian crude already loaded on tankers at sea. Bessent said a one-time license covering Iranian oil on the water would not be extended, calling it […]

Where Does Eastern Europe Begin And End? Key Takeaways There is no single definition of Eastern Europe. Its borders vary depending on historical, political, and cultural context. Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus are almost always included, forming the region’s “core.” The eastern boundary is widely agreed upon, but the western edge shifts significantly across definitions. The maps below use data from various organizations to […]

Reset Germany: Breaking With An Exhausted Ruling Class Authored by Frank-Christian Hansel via American Greatness, Germany is not, in the first place, suffering from an economic crisis, an energy crisis, a migration crisis, or a crisis of state. Germany is suffering, chiefly, from a crisis of its elites. More precisely, Germany is suffering from a crisis brought on by that milieu which regards itself as the country’s morally, […]

Hayek, Orwell, And ‘The End Of Truth’ Authored by Jonathan Miltimore via Civitas Institute, In 1942, after fighting in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1937), a disillusioned writer returned to London to write about his experience. It wasn’t just that the fascists in Spain had won and his side—a small, anti-Stalinist Marxist group—had lost. What frightened him was the ease with which truth itself had been erased and replaced by […]

Compute Costs More Than Talent In AI For leading AI companies, the biggest expense is not talent. It is compute. This chart from Visual Capitalist’s AI Week, sponsored by Terzo, uses Epoch AI data to compare spending at Anthropic, Minimax, and Z.ai across R&D compute, inference compute, and staff plus other costs. In every case, compute accounts for the majority of total spending, underscoring how capital-intensive it […]

Charlottesville: The Deceit Underlying The Hoax Authored by Steve Cortes via RealClearPolitics.com, For years, Democratic politicians and their allies in the legacy media have spread the damnable Charlottesville Hoax: the propaganda myth that President Trump praised bigots who rioted in 2017 in the Virginia town. Of course, the opposite is true, as Trump actually said: “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and white […]

Futures Jump To Record High After Report Iran Offered New Non-Starter Proposal To Reopen Strait Update (10:30pm): Just when it seemed that the market may have its first red Monday in a while – and the semiconductor bubble may actually have a down day after a ridiculous 18 day streak higher – the Trump-Axios plunge protection team struck again, and courtesy of Axios’ in-house market levitator, Barak Ravid, whose specialty is creating […]

California’s Billionaire Tax Proposal Has ‘Slippery Slope’ Lever California’s latest effort to tax its richest residents into leaving is barreling toward the ballot – only this time, it’s got a built-in ‘slippery slope’ lever once voters hand them the keys. Backers of the proposed “billionaire tax” say they have already cleared the first hurdle, gathering more than enough signatures (at least 1.5 million) to qualify a […]

SBA Sends 562k Pandemic Loans To Bessent For Collections Totaling $22 Billion The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has announced a sweeping enforcement action targeting suspected pandemic-era loan fraud, referring more than 562,000 borrowers tied to $22.2 billion in delinquent loans to the U.S. Department of the Treasury for collection, according to the Small Business Association. The move marks the largest referral package […]

The Reality Behind US-Iran Negotiations Authored by Bryan Brulotte via The Epoch Times, The current negotiations between the United States and Iran are being misread as a chaotic exercise in brinkmanship. They are not. They are the predictable endgame of a contest in which leverage has shifted decisively, and in which one side is now negotiating under constraints it can no longer escape. Strip away the theatrics, and the picture […]

Ilhan Omar Probe Expands Into Hubby’s $30M Of Shady Biz Deals In Kenya, Dubai And Somalia House Oversight Chairman James Comer is cranking the investigation into Rep. Ilhan Omar’s husband, Tim Mynett, into overdrive – demanding a full accounting of shadowy international business trips and deals that stretch from the Horn of Africa straight into Kenya, Somalia and the glittering skyscrapers of Dubai. Omar has been making strange […]

Maine Governor Vetos Data Center Moratorium, Citing Job Creation And Economic Growth Maine Governor Janet Mills has vetoed a bill that would have temporarily limited the development of large data centers across Maine, despite expressing support for a broader pause on such projects, according to Maine’s website. The governor said she would have approved the legislation if it had included an exemption for a $550 million data center […]

Bessent Defends US Dollar Swap Lines As UAE Considers Formal Funding Request Several Gulf countries have discussed receiving dollar swap lines from the US, the WSJ reported last week. In the near term, there is an economic drag if volumes of oil and gas sales have fallen by more than the price effect can offset, or where tourist and business travel has dried up. The effect is similar to that of the pandemic: slowing growth and […]

“The National Security Premium”: US Plan To Counter China In Critical Miners Could Drive Up Global Prices The US is pressing its allies to rethink how they source essential minerals, urging them to accept higher prices if it means reducing reliance on China, which currently dominates much of the global supply, according to a new report from Financial Times. According to US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, countries working with […]

War Schmwar By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities Markets have been almost totally dismissive of the conflict in Iran. Frankly, the number of countries, including oil-rich nations, that had been firing at each other seemed quite high, yet most markets shrugged it off. While the Strait remained closed, or blockaded, or blocked, the market remained in Open Sesame mode this week. Moonshot Artemis II wasn’t the only “moonshot” […]