Turkey Reports Another Iranian Missile Near-Miss Over NATO Skies Another near-miss has unfolded over NATO skies, with Turkey on Monday announcing that air defenses intercepted a ballistic missile fired from Iran. It’s another dangerous indication that the Iran war could easily expand into a broader conflict at any moment.  The intercept was carried out by air and missile defense assets positioned in the Eastern Mediterranean, […]

TSA Agents Finally Get Paid After Trump Signs Order Summary: AP reported that, by early afternoon, TSA agents began receiving pay. Reuters reported that as many as 50,000 TSA agents would receive paychecks as early as Monday. Trump officially issued a presidential memorandum on Friday instructing DHS to pay TSA agents. TSA Agents Get Paid  AP News reports that most Transportation Security Administration (TSA) […]

Denver Imposes Water Restrictions, Orders Restaurants To Serve Only On Request Authored by Jacki Thrapp via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), Restaurants in Colorado’s capital are only allowed to serve water to guests if they ask, according to new restrictions by the Denver Board of Water Commissioners. A scenic view of the Denver skyline at sunset, with the Rocky Mountains in the background and a forest in the foreground. Bill […]

Dutch Treasury Banking Portal Goes Dark For 1,600 Public Institutions After Cyberattack The Dutch Finance Ministry informed members of Parliament in a letter on Monday about “unauthorized access” to several of its banking systems, including the digital portal for treasury banking. “Because of the ongoing forensic investigation and for security reasons, several systems have been temporarily taken offline, including the digital […]

UAE Will Be Pounded If US Invades, Iranian Officials Warn Via Middle East Eye Tehran believes the United Arab Emirates is playing an active role in the US-Israeli war on Iran and any ground invasion could lead to widespread attacks on Emirati state assets, two senior Iranian sources told Middle East Eye. A month into the conflict, which has battered global markets, Donald Trump is weighing whether to use ground troops to […]

Trump Signals Potential Military Action Coming Against Cuba Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), President Donald Trump again suggested that U.S. military action could be coming against Cuba as his administration has placed economic pressure on the communist-ruled island nation. U.S. President Donald Trump waves as he boards Air Force One at Pope Army Airfield at Fort Bragg, N.C., on Feb. 13, 2026, on his […]

Iran Arrests Dozens In Starlink Black Market Network Bloomberg cites Iran’s ISNA news agency, which says local authorities have arrested dozens of people for selling SpaceX Starlink terminals across 19 provinces.  These satellite internet terminals have become popular among opposition and activist networks operating in the country amid an ongoing nationwide internet blackout during the U.S.-Iran conflict. Sardar Ahmad-Reza […]

A 10% Dip Is Not A Green Light To Go All In Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance This is the kind of environment where how you deploy capital matters far more than just being “in the market.” One lesson I’d repeat to myself here: don’t go throwing all your cash into the market just because we’re down 10% from the highs. That kind of thinking assumes the decline is basically over, when there’s no rule that says it is. In […]

Sony “Temporarily Suspends” Memory Card Orders In Japan As Global Memory Crunch Worsens First, Sony hiked PlayStation console prices, blaming “continued pressures in the global economic landscape.” Now, Sony Japan is warning that the global memory shortage has become severe enough to force a temporary halt to new orders for memory cards, as supply can no longer keep up with production needs. “Due to the global shortage of […]

Dallas Fed Mfg Activity Holds Near One Year High Despite Plunge In Respondent Sentiment On Iran War The Dallas Fed Manufacturing Index continues to straddle the unchanged line, and despite a tiny dip from 0.2 in February, the highest print since July, to -0.2 in March, just below the 1.5 median estimate, the index remained near the highest level in a year and absent a modest and brief, post-Trump election spike, this remains one of […]

Trump Signals Response To Haifa Refinery Strike ‘Shortly’ As WH Mulls Uranium Seizure Op; Bessent Vows To ‘Retake’ Hormuz ‘Over Time’ Summary Iran rejects ‘excessive, illogical’ US demands while Trump mentions ‘progress’ with a ‘more reasonable regime’. Trump again threatens to destroy Iran energy sites and Kharg Island. Hundreds of US Special Forces arrive in region. White House seriously considering ground operation to […]

Iran Alleges Series Of ‘False Flags’ – Including On Kuwait Water Plant – Designed To Perpetuate War Via The Cradle The Iranian military denied on Monday being behind the recent attack which hit a desalination plant in Kuwait, labeling the strike a US-Israeli false-flag operation aimed at “destabilizing and destroying the region.” “The brutal aggression by the Zionist regime against the desalination facility in Kuwait, carried […]

Watch Live: Fed Chair Powell Speaks At Harvard University Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who has just over a month left in his tenure as head of the world’s most important central bank, speaks at 10:30am ET to the Harvard University Principles of Economics class. He is not expected to make monetary policy comments.  As CNBC notes, this will be one of Powell’s final scheduled public appearances before his term ends in May. The […]

Vance Tops CPAC Straw Poll For 2028 GOP Presidential Nominee Authored by Tom Gantert via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), Vice President JD Vance is the leading candidate to take the Republican nomination for president in 2028, according to a straw poll taken at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on March 28. Vice President JD Vance waves as he departs Air Force Two at Rocky Mount-Wilson Regional Airport in Elm […]

Key Events This Holiday-Shortened Week: Payrolls, PMI, ISM, Retail Sales And Fed Speech Looking at the week ahead, we should start to learn about the economic consequences of the conflict, as several data releases for March are out which cover the period since the strikes began on February 28. In the US, that includes the monthly jobs report on Friday – which falls on a Holday when stocks are closed, while bonds are open for half […]

Pakistan & Afghanistan Exchange Heavy Fire After Short-Lived Truce The prior truce between warring neighbors Pakistan and Afghanistan has been breaking down since last week. Some analysts are calling it a ceasefire in name only. The globe’s attention has been on the Iran conflict, but heavy AfPak fighting has been on for almost the exact same length of time as Trump’s Operation Epic Fury against Iran. But it hasn’t received […]

The Market Is Grappling With Two Major Unknowns By Stefan Koopman, Senior Macro Strategist at Rabobank President Trump began this week’s Monday‑morning jawboning ahead of schedule. Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday evening as he returned to Washington DC, he talked up the negotiations with Iran, said that Iran’s new leadership already constitutes “regime change” and praised the “deal” with Iranian […]

NATO Member Spain Closes Airspace To US Planes Involved In Iran Operations Given worsening US-Spanish relations over Washington’s pro-Israel policies, this is a big step which is not entirely surprising – Spain has fully shuttered its airspace to US planes involved in attacks on Iran. This is an action significantly beyond its prior controversial policy to deny US use of jointly-operated military bases, and what has also been a […]

Beyond Muscle: New Research Shows Creatine Powers The Brain – Fast Creatine is an amazing compound that our bodies make naturally. Long used in the gym for peak muscle performance, a flood of recent research shows that it has profound effects on brain metabolism, cognitive performance under stress (including sleep deprivation), memory, attention, and even mood support. It’s also extremely safe for the vast majority of people.  […]

Futures, Gold Jump As Yields Fall Despite Surging Oil As Recession Fears Surpass Inflation Concerns Futures are higher despite continued Iran war escalation which pushed Brent higher by around 2% after Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen joining the war on Iran’s said, bouncing from overnight lows which may be driven by positioning, but also by a major shift in the regime with oil now rising instead of falling on higher oil […]

Global Demand Destruction: Subsidies, Empty Gas Stations, Rationing, Flight Cancelations, Export Limits, Price Controls In the past two weeks we have discussed demand destruction as a result of soaring oil prices (here and here), and we are increasingly seeing anecdotal evidence of just that (here is a table from Goldman we showed previously, laying out where demand destruction is most acute). We start, as always, with Asia which […]

Voter ID Vindicated By Obama Judge It took seven years, one reversed injunction, and an Obama-appointed judge to settle what most Americans already believed: requiring a photo to vote is not a civil rights violation. This week, U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs dropped a 134-page ruling upholding North Carolina’s photo voter ID law and dismissing claims by the state NAACP and other left-wing civil rights organizations that […]

China Flexes Robot Wolves With Machine Guns And A “Collective Brain” Four years of hyperdevelopment, battlefield testing, and deployment of FPVs, ground robots, AI-enabled kill chains, and soon humanoid robots have permanently altered the course of the modern battlefield, as war technologies once viewed as 2030s-era weapons are being pulled forward into the present day and are now proliferating across battlefields stretching from […]

US Office-To-Apartment Conversions Hit New Record: Report Authored by Mary Prenon via The Epoch Times, This year is another record year for the conversion of office buildings into residential apartments in the United States, according to a recent RentCafe report. At the beginning of 2026, 90,300 apartments were in the process of conversion across America—a 28 percent increase from 70,600 last year, according to the March 24 […]

How Gas Prices Compare Around The World The war in Iran has driven up oil prices in many countries, with gasoline prices turning into a topic of discussion around the world. The increases have been particularly pronounced in emerging markets, with gasoline prices jumping by more than 50 percent in the Philippines and nearly as much in Nigeria (around 49 percent), with diesel rising even more steeply. Advanced economies have […]