Massive Smoke Plume As Tanker Erupts In Flames, Spills Oil Off Russia’s Sochi Coast The Black Sea tanker wars have continued Tuesday. In the latest tit-for-tat episode, a large so-called ‘shadow fleet’ tanker is ablaze close to the Russian Black Sea port of Sochi. The vessel, identified in reports as likely being the Aframax Rio, which was previously sanctioned by Ukraine for alleged involvement in Russian oil exports, is […]

Kremlin Says Russians Should Ignore “Rumors” On Possible Plague Outbreak In Siberia Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times, The top Kremlin spokesman sought to tamp down “various rumors and speculation” about reports of a possible plague outbreak in Siberia and said that Russians should only monitor statements from government sources. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in Moscow on Feb. 18, 2022. Sergey Guneev/Sputnik/Kremlin […]

Nickelodeon’s Parent Hub Is A Nightmare Woke Indoctrination Syllabus For Kids Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news, The network that once sold slime and SpongeBob is running a parent portal that treats political activism as bedtime reading. The children’s channel has assembled a disturbing syllabus, and it wants the parents to administer it. Libs of TikTok flagged nickparents, the network’s own resource hub, on Monday. […]

Trump To Unveil Anduril Deal, Bringing Submarine Parts Factory To Baltimore Bethlehem Steel’s Sparrows Point complex near crime-ridden Baltimore City was once the largest steelmaking facility in the US and viewed by some as once the world’s largest steel mill. Decades of deindustrialization led to the mill’s closure in 2012. By 2014, the 3,300-acre site entered a redevelopment phase and was transformed into a giant logistics and […]

Office CMBS Delinquency Rate Re-Spikes To 12.2%, Far Worse Than Financial Crisis Peak As End Of Extend-And-Pretend Looms Authored by Wolf Richter via WolfStreet.com, The dictum morphs from “Survive till ’25” (when low interest rates were supposed to return) to “Sell at today’s price, or the lender will.” The delinquency rate of office mortgages that have been securitized into commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) re-spiked […]

The $1 Million Tanker Was Just The Start: Every Crude Freight Index Hits Record High As Hormuz “Works” Too Well Just when we thought crude tanker rates couldn’t go any higher, they did – again. A week ago, a record million dollars a day charter for a supertanker was the punchline. Now it’s the floor: the Baltic Exchange’s TD3C, the benchmark Saudi Arabia-to-China VLCC route, hit yet another all-time high of $1.33 million per day on […]

The Education Cartel And The Blue State School Scam Authored by Jonathan Turley via JonathanTurley.org, Below is my column in the Hill on the education cartel and how it is destroying our K-12 school system. After decades of bloated budgets and failing scores, our school system is now less popular than Cuba and communism. It is a particularly telling comparison in Chicago where union members went to Venezuela to praise the worker’s […]

Germany’s Former Spy Chief Arrested In Biggest Espionage Scandal Of The Century August Hanning, former head of the German BND foreign intelligence agency, which is Germany’s equivalent of the CIA, has been arrested on espionage charges in a shocking and unprecedented situation in which a country’s top intelligence officer and head of a national spy agency was caught spying for another state. The 80-year-old faces formal charges […]

Ugly 3Y Auction Stops Through At Highest Yield In 20 Years Despite Plunge In Foreign Demand, Record Directs With bond traders still bruised from the catastrophic, “mega-tailing” 5Y auction two weeks ago, some were looking toward this week’s restart of Treasury coupon auctions with trepidation, although after the brutal selloff in recent weeks, there probably was enough concession to avoid another disaster. And sure enough, after we […]

Asia’s Gold Producers Start Hoarding Their Own Metal As Faith In The Dollar Erodes For most of modern history, the gold trade worked one way: emerging-market mines dug it up, shipped it out (often as cheap ore, more often through the back door), and London and New York did the rest. But that arrangement is now quietly breaking down. According to a must-read report in Nikkei Asia, countries across Asia are moving to capture more of […]

OpenAI Shops $30 Billion Round To UAE Funds, BlackRock As Altman’s ‘Bad Things’ Remark Draws Bipartisan Fire With its planned IPO on ice for the moment, OpenAI is pitching a $30 billion funding round to a group of United Arab Emirates sovereign funds led by Abu Dhabi’s MGX, along with BlackRock, at a $1.4 trillion pre-money valuation, Bloomberg reported Monday. There is no lead investor, and the price was set by OpenAI rather than […]

Drones Hit Two Ships Within Bulgaria’s Economic Zone, Sinking One, Crew Missing Escalation in the Black Sea has now become a daily occurrence in the context of the Ukraine war, and more dangerous is that Russia and NATO are inching closer to direct conflict. Bulgaria has announced Tuesday that two commercial ships were hit by drones in what it says marks a first attack on shipping within the NATO member’s exclusive economic zone […]

Google Plugs Into Constellation’s Nuclear Reactors As PJM’s “Bring Your Own Power” Era Arrives For most of 2026, the bear case on the US power producers could be summed up in one sentence: nobody is signing data center PPAs in PJM. Last week Amazon did. This morning Google did, too, and this one is five times bigger. Google parent Alphabet has contracted for 3,590 megawatts of power from Constellation Energy (CEG) inside PJM, the […]

Columbia’s Satire Paper Declares “Land Acknowledgments” Are No Laughing Matter Authored by Jonathan Turley via JonathanTurley.org, Columbia University satire student paper The Federalist has long relished triggering viewers, particularly conservatives. When it mocked the murder of Charlie Kirk, it shrugged off objections that people need to get a sense of humor. However, the paper has now apologized for something beyond satire: […]

Debate Over Islam Divides A Texas County Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times, In Collin County, home to a growing Muslim population, residents of McKinney have been gathering signatures to recall the city council members and the mayor who approved a mosque site plan after a tense city council meeting in August. A few miles south, on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, protesters gathered outside a Plano mosque, […]

50 Iranian Tanker Logjam Unfolds As US Naval Blockade Starves Tehran Of Oil Revenue Bloomberg cites a new report from United Against Nuclear Iran that claims the US naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has created a parking lot of more than 50 Iranian tankers that dare not cross the critical waterway. The nonprofit think tank, which focuses on combating threats posed by Iran, said the number of laden tankers was broadly unchanged […]

AI Geniuses Are Decidedly Not Policy And Economic Geniuses Authored by David McGarry via RealClearMarkets, Geniuses are an odd species. To paraphrase Montesquieu, the exceptional are often also a bit loony. Cornelius Vanderbilt, a devotee of spiritualism, believed himself to have communicated with the spirit of George Washington. To improve his health, Henry Ford devoured weeds, and Thomas Alva Edison was averse to bathing. The […]

Federal Survey Of 21,990 Kids Ties COVID Shots To Autism, ADHD Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news, A new analysis of the federal National Health Interview Survey finds children who received a COVID-19 shot had higher odds of autism, ADHD, anxiety, asthma and special-education use than children who did not. The authors, including epidemiologist Nicolas Hulscher and cardiologist Peter McCullough, say the pattern survived […]

Americans Are Turning To AI Chatbots For Voting Advice In Midterm Elections Authored by Bryan Hyde via American Greatness, A growing number of American voters are turning to AI chatbots for voting advice in the midterm elections, including researching their ballots, comparing candidates, and fact-checking political claims. Breitbart reports about half of American adults admit they use AI chatbots, according to Pew Research […]

FBI Tracked Trump Aide’s Phone, Monitored Melania Trump Before Mar-a-Lago Raid: Declassified Memos Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times, Newly declassified memos released Oct. 5 by the White House show former special prosecutor Jack Smith and FBI agents during the Biden administration monitored President Donald Trump’s campaign manager’s phone and tracked First Lady Melania Trump and her son Barron Trump’s travel ahead […]

Houthis Attack Multiple Saudi Airports, Wounding Bystanders – Warn Civilian Infrastructure Now In Crosshairs Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement, or Houthis, have over the past 48 hours been targeting airports along with Aramco sites within Saudi territory, and have warned further that civilian infrastructure will increasingly be fair game in retaliation for the Saudi blockade imposed on Yemen. Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree also […]

Rioters Torch Paris School Exit And Trap 100 Students Inside Via Remix News, Masked attackers set fires at the doors of a Paris vocational high school Monday, confining about 100 students and staff inside, as nationwide student protests over school conditions entered another week with thousands already arrested and hundreds reported injured. At the Nicolas-Louis Vauquelin High School in the 13th arrondissement, Principal Carole […]

S&P Set To Open At Record High As Oil Slides, Bond Rout Takes A Breather US equity futures are higher for a fourth day, putting the S&P on course for its longest winning streak in two months, and on pace for a record open. Tech is leading again, though the rest of the market is finally joining in, and the bond market has stopped screaming for a few hours. As of 8:00am ET, S&P futures are 0.5% higher at 7,865 and Dow […]

Sequence Of Return Risk The Math That Breaks Retirements Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, The sequence of return risk is the quiet reason two retirees with identical average returns can end up in very different places. Let’s start with an easy example. Two people retire on the same day with the same million dollars. They have the same portfolio and the same 30-year average return. They should both live […]

French Bonds Rally As Le Pen Unveils Shadow Budget To Pull France Back From Fiscal Brink European bond and currency markets are signaling growing investor unease over France’s political crisis and deteriorating fiscal position, as growing budget deficits under President Emmanuel Macron undermine confidence in the government’s ability to stabilize public finances. French bond yields rose Monday before reversing sharply on Tuesday, […]