US Withdrawing All Forces From Syria, Over A Year After Regime Change By Proxy War Last week we and others reported that American forces finally after many years withdrew from the remote Al-Tanf Garrison, a base in southern Syria near the borders of Iraq and Jordan. US troops had long operated out of Tanf to pressure the Assad government as part of the long-running US-backed regime change project. The US primarily trained the […]

Waste Of The Day: Principal Bought Lobster With School Funds Authored by Jeremy Portnoy via RealClearInvestigations, Topline: Most New York public school lunches consist of room temperature chicken nuggets or reheated pizza. But at Wyandanch Memorial High School on Long Island, principal Paul Sibblies dined on steak and lobster at taxpayers’ expense. Sibblies reimbursed himself a total of $35,519 from 2021 to 2024 using cash […]

Japan’s Top Toilet Maker Is ‘Undervalued, Overlooked’ AI Play Over ‘Cryogenic Etching’ Technology, Activist Investor Says Japan’s top toilet maker, Toto, is an undervalued AI play according to activist investment fund Palliser Capital.  Employees bond a toilet bowl with a rim. The work is demanding, requiring muscles to lift bowls and tanks, as well as a delicate touch to smooth surfaces. David Walter Banks for The Wall Street […]

No ‘Gentlemen’s Agreement’ With Russia To Continue Compliance With New Start Treaty: Top Official Via The Libertarian Institute  Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control and Nonproliferation Christopher Yeaw said that there was no informal agreement between the US and Russia to maintain the limits on nuclear weapons imposed by the New Start Treaty. The pact expired earlier this month. During an event at the Hudson Institute […]

GLP-1 Anti-Obesity U.S. Drug Market In Four Charts Beyond the most recent GLP-1 feud between Hims & Hers and Novo Nordisk, UBS analysts shift attention to anti-obesity drug trends in the U.S. market for the first week of February. Analysts led by Matthew Weston focused on new data that show new-to-brand prescriptions (NBRx) for starter doses and all doses across the major obesity GLP-1s in a series of charts: Obesity GLP-1 […]

Voter ID Is Common Sense, But It Won’t Fix Anything Authored by Connor O’Keefe via The Mises Institute, As panic builds within the GOP over the approaching midterm elections, Republicans have renewed a push for one of their most popular policy proposals: voter ID. In the latest version of the so-called SAVE America Act—formerly just the SAVE Act—Congressional Republicans added a requirement for every voter in federal […]

Teacher Loses Career Over Two-Word Facebook Post Supporting ICE James Heidorn, who taught at Gary Elementary School in West Chicago, found himself at the center of a community firestorm that cost him not just his teaching position but his identity as an educator, all for posting two words on Facebook: “Go ICE.”  The incident began in late January when Heidorn, a 14-year physical education teacher, responded to a news story about a […]

Panics, Politics, & Power: America’s 3 Experiments With Central Banks Authored by Andrew Moran via The Epoch Times, The Federal Reserve, established more than a century ago, is the United States’ third experiment with central banking. For much of its existence, the institution maintained a low public profile. Only after the 2008 global financial crisis did the Fed begin communicating more openly, introducing post-meeting […]

Wexner Says He Was ‘Conned’ By Epstein, Did ‘Nothing Wrong’ After what must have been quite the prep session with lawyers, billionaire Les Wexner – who gave Jeffrey Epstein “about a billion dollars” in cash and assets – testified to the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday that he was “conned” by Epstein, and denied any wrongdoing. Les Wexner denied any wrongdoing or knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes during testimony to House […]

Three Key Constraints That Could Derail The Data Center Buildout Story The data center investment macro story centers on hyperscalers such as Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon Web Services, whose massive cloud computing services are becoming the backbone for AI workloads, including ChatGPT and others. However, as we’ve previously noted, the data center buildout has run into supply-chain snarls, including memory chip shortages, […]

LIS Technologies Initiates Engagement With NRC LIS Technologies (LIST) initiated its first engagement with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in preparation for starting up the company’s laser uranium enrichment technology facilities.  LIST submitted a Standard Practice Procedures Plan for the company’s smaller-scale demonstration facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. This is part of a process for obtaining approval from the NRC […]

Trump Tells Starmer ‘Do Not Give Away Diego Garcia’ As US May Need Island To Attack Iran Update(1504ET): President Trump has come up with another key argument for why Britain must not “give away” the key Indian Ocean territory and military base in the Indian Ocean – Diego Garcia. He says it will be crucial for use in an potentially imminent attack on Iran. “Should Iran decide not to make a deal, it may be necessary for the United […]

Oklahoma Governor Declares State Of Emergency As Fast-Moving Wildfires Scorch The Panhandle Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt declared a State of Emergency as a massive wildfire spread across the panhandle region of the state and crossed into Kansas. The Ranger Road Fire has burned 145,000 acres and is one of four wildfires raging in the northwest region of the state. In total, the fires have scorched about 156,000 acres. Latest […]

Calm Market Waters Hide Fierce Undercurrents Authored by Michael Lebowitz via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, The price movement in the broad S&P 500 index is relatively calm. Yet the market’s undercurrent, as measured by sharply diverging returns across stock sectors and factors, is anything but calm. The current market picture we paint is well embodied by a quote from Jules Verne in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. “The sea was […]

FOMC Minutes Confirm Divided Fed: “Several” Suggest Rate-Hikes Possible, Fear Private Credit “Vulnerabilities” Since the last FOMC meeting (where they held rates with two dovish dissents) on Jan 28th, Bitcoin has been the biggest underperformer (along with gold) while bonds and the dollar have rallied with stocks lagging… Source: Bloomberg March is ‘off the table’ for a rate-cut now (following last week’s payrolls beat) but […]

Nestle Weighs Scaling Back Ice Cream Unit As Investors Seek Turnaround Plan From CEO Update (1405ET) Nestlé SA reports full-year results on Thursday. Ahead of the release and investor call, CEO Philipp Navratil is expected to outline a turnaround plan, while a new report says the Swiss foodmaker is considering a smaller footprint in its ice cream business. People familiar with the discussions told Bloomberg: The Swiss food […]

Trump DOJ Blocks Largest Copper, Gold, And Silver Extraction Site In The US Over Salmon, Sending Stock Tumbling In a move that has sent shockwaves through the mining industry, the Trump administration has blocked what would have been the largest copper, gold, silver, and molybdenum extraction site in the United States, after the DOJ filed a 143-page brief late Tuesday defending the Biden Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) […]

Yields Jump After Extremely Ugly, Tailing 20Y Auction Sees Lowest Foreign Demand Since 2021 The week’s lone coupon auction, was also one of the ugliest 20Y auctions since its inception in May 2020. Moments ago, the Treasury sold $16 billion in 20Y paper in an especially disappointing auction: here are the details. The auction stopped at a high yield of 4.664%, down from 4.846% in January and the lowest since October. It tailed the […]

American-Born Pope Snubs Trump Invitation To Gaza Board Of Peace The Vatican will not be joining US President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” after Washington specifically invited Pope Leo XIV to join the massive post-war Gaza reconstruction project overseen by the United States and Israel. The Vatican’s top diplomat argued Tuesday that the United Nations should be left to handle crisis situations, and not a ‘private’ board […]

US Threatens To Quit IEA Over Green Energy Advocacy By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com The United States has threatened, once again, to quit the International Energy Agency (IEA) if the organization, created in the aftermath of the 1970s Arab oil embargo, doesn’t return to forecasting energy demand without strongly promoting green energy. “If it goes back to what it was — it was a fabulous international data recording […]

New Mexico Launches Probe Into What Happened At Epstein’s ‘Zorro Ranch’ Until now, the public’s visualizations of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal have largely centered on his Caribbean Island and his seven-story New York townhouse, but a new setting is poised to take greater prominence, as the New Mexico legislature just launched a wide-ranging investigation into what took place at Epstein’s “Zorro Ranch” about 30 miles south of Santa […]

Record Taiwan Arms Deal In ‘Limbo’ As White House ‘Vacillates’ Amid Xi Pressure: Report During their February 4 phone call, President Xi Jinping used the opportunity to warn President Donald Trump on China’s Taiwan red lines. Xi had described the US approach to Taiwan “the most important issue in China-U.S. relations,” declaring that China “will never allow Taiwan to be separated from China.” Trump has repeatedly stressed the […]

Big Tech Turns To Uranium As Data Center Power Demand Soars Big Tech is considering supporting new uranium mining projects as companies need additional reliable power capacity for their huge data center expansion, according to the top executive of Canadian uranium miner NexGen Energy.      “It’s coming. You’ve seen it with automakers. These tech companies, they’re under an obligation to ensure the hundreds of billions that […]

Apple Races To Build Smart Glasses To Take On Meta AI Ray-Bans Apple learned the hard way that a $3,500 Apple Vision Pro is well out of reach for the average consumer, while the sub-$500 Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses sit in the sweet spot and have been in hot demand. Vision Pro  Vs.  Meta smart glasses Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, citing people familiar with Apple’s product roadmap, reports that the company is accelerating […]

Wells Fargo Sees ‘YOLO’ Trade Driving $150B Into Bitcoin & Risk Assets Authored by Zoltan Vardai via CoinTelegraph.com, US tax filers may see bigger refunds in 2026 compared with previous years, a development one Wall Street strategist said may boost risk appetite for digital assets and tech stocks preferred among retail investors. In a note cited by CNBC, Wells Fargo analyst Ohsung Kwon said the coming refund wave may help […]