Trump Requests $88 Billion Supplemental Funding Package Focused On Iran War Funds, Farm Aid, And Ebola Response President Donald Trump formally asked Congress on Wednesday for $87.6 billion in supplemental appropriations – your tax dollars (for our American readers) – to cover urgent needs stemming from the U.S. military campaign against Iran, provide economic relief to American farmers, and respond to the Ebola outbreak in Central […]

Continuing Jobless Claims At 3-Month-Highs, Initial Claims Tumble Back To 2021 Levels The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits for the first time fell last week to 215k (after hitting four month highs last week), well below the 225k expectations and back to the same levels it was at in 2021… New Jersey and Oregon saw the biggest WoW rise in initial jobless claims while Minnesota and Pennsylvania saw the biggest […]

Services Costs Drag Fed’s Favorite Inflation Signal To 3-Year Highs, Savings Rate Holds Near Lows After accelerating in March and April, The Fed’s favorite inflation indicator – Core PCE (a measure of price changes in consumer goods and services that excludes volatile food and energy costs) – was expected to rise once again in May. And it did with the crucial inflation signal up 0.3% MoM (as expected) and up 3.4% YoY (as expected) […]

Rubio In Gulf Says ‘Zero Support’ For Hormuz Tolls, As IRGC Warns Ships Not Complying ‘Will Be Dealt With’ Secretary of State Marco Rubio has made some fresh Thursday remarks in Manama, Bahrain after his meeting with Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) foreign ministers. “We had a very productive meeting,” he acknowledged. The US top diplomat emphasized that “zero support” from Gulf countries for tolls or fees on the Strait of Hormuz, […]

Futures Jump As Micron Revives AI Euphoria, Oil Erases War Gains Global stocks and S&P futures are higher while Nasdaq futures are on a tear after Micron’s sales forecast blew the lights out, brushing aside fears over a near-term pullback in the AI trade, while Qualcomm set aggressive targets at its investor day in New York. As of 8:00am ET, a revival of the AI demand theme is sending contracts on the Nasdaq 100 up 2.1% […]

Another OPEC Exit? Iraq Warns It Could Abandon Oil Cartel If Quota Hike Rejected Iraq is sending a warning shot to OPEC: raise Baghdad’s oil production quota to better reflect its capacity and fiscal needs, or risk yet another defection from the oil-producing cartel. “The ministry currently has no intention of withdrawing from OPEC, and we remain committed to operating within the organization’s framework and mechanisms,” Oil […]

The AI Race Will Be Won Or Lost On Power Infrastructure By Amanda Simonian, chief marketing officer at TerraFlow Energy, first published in UtilityDive Over the past several months, moving between conversations on Capitol Hill, industry conferences, and meetings with operators, developers and policymakers, I have been struck by how often very different discussions keep circling back to the same underlying concern: power. In […]

Trump Says US “Ready To Help” After Twin Quakes Level Apartment Towers In Venezuela, USGS Warns Death Toll Could Hit 100K Summary Buildings collapsed in several districts of Caracas Venezuela declared a state of emergency after the earthquakes  Secretary of State Marco Rubio Deploys First Responders  Trump Says “U.S.A. stands ready, willing, and able to help”  USGS Says Quakes May Prompt “International Response”  USGS […]

Heat Dome Sends European Power Prices Soaring An intense heat wave continues to bake France and parts of Europe, with temperatures surging well above the 30-year average for this time of year. Welcome to summer.  They think we are stupid, that our memories cannot stretch back to when life was normal, and when our lives were not based on fear… Summer, it gets hot, Winter it gets cold… It’s NORMAL. https://t.co/hYHvZ3dI2w — […]

Chinese Humanoids Take On Penalty Challenge As Messi, Ronaldo Light Up FIFA World Cup Authored by Jijo Malayil via Interesting Engineering, As the World Cup fever grows around stars like Messi and Ronaldo, Shanghai hosts a unique penalty shootout featuring humanoid robots. Humanoid robots are stepping up for a penalty shootout.Boston Dynamics/YouTube At MWC Shanghai 2026, humanoid robots are stepping up to the spot in the Humanoid […]

European Rearmament Efforts Snuffed By Chinese Control Of Critical Materials Yesterday we reported that, in a tit-for-tat move, China announced it is targeting US rare earths firms in response to a Pentagon list of Chinese firms: this, as Rabobank noted, is largely a symbolic move, but it still underlines the tensions in this area. So does the Nikkei reporting that ‘China minerals control threatens EU rearmament, as bloc seeks […]

EU Commissioner Claims That Ukraine Is Gaining The Upper Hand On The Battlefield, In the Air, And At Sea Via Remix News, Ukraine is gaining the upper hand on the battlefield, in the air and at sea, while Ukrainian drones have stopped Russia’s ground advance and are causing serious disruptions to Russian logistics, EU Commissioner for Defense and Space Policy Andrius Kubilius said on Tuesday in Brussels. In his speech launching […]

India’s Imports Of Russian Oil Set For New Record High India is set to import a record-high volume of Russian crude in June as the Hormuz crisis and the U.S. waivers on Russia’s barrels have pushed the world’s third-largest crude importer to gorge on Moscow’s oil again, OilPrice reported. India has imported 2.6 million barrels per day (bpd) of Russian crude oil so far in June, according to preliminary vessel-tracking data […]

London’s West End To Be Blanketed With AI Facial Recognition Cameras Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News, In the latest dystopian lunge toward a total surveillance state, the London Metropolitan Police has confirmed plans to deploy static live facial recognition cameras in the West End, including Soho and areas around major theatres and retail spots, with installation targeted for the end of this year. Six additional […]

Albanian PM Pooh-Poohs ‘Pink Flamingo’ Protesters Opposing Jared Kushner Resorts After weeks of daily protests, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama is digging in to defend two luxury resort projects backed by Jared Kushner’s investment company that have resulted in thousands of people protesting in the streets of the capital Tirana and on the southern coast, where one of the resorts is slated to be built.  Protesters opposed to […]

So, How’s Spain’s Mass Migrant Amnesty Working Out? Authored by Aaron Hanscom via PJMedia.com, Half a million. That’s the number that made headlines in April when Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist government approved plans to grant legal status to 500,000 illegal migrants. But a leaked police report warned that the true number could be much higher, estimating that between 750,000 and 1 million illegal migrants […]

National Insecurity: America’s Continuing Reliance On Critical Chinese Materials Authored by Benjamin Weingarten via RealClearWire, At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 – with face masks, gloves, and other basic protections in high demand – Chinese leaders threatened to plunge America into the “mighty sea of coronavirus” by withholding essential medical supplies in retaliation for measures such as the U.S. travel ban on […]

Troubling Pattern Of Left-Wing Revolutionaries Targeting “Capitalists” Raises Alarm Over Youth Radicalization A troubling pattern appears to be emerging. In a recent foiled terror plot targeting UFC Freedom 250 at the White House, authorities said the suspect of an underground network, led by an illegal alien ringleader, planned to use suicide drones and a sniper team against “capitalist elites.” Separately, Rebel News described […]

US Escalates Crackdown On Overseas Scam Network Targeting Americans Authored by Arthur Zhang via The Epoch Times, The United States has taken coordinated action against a Southeast Asia-based scam and money-laundering network that officials say used forced-labor compounds and online investment fraud to steal billions of dollars from Americans. Scam center workers and victims from China arrive at the border checkpoint with Thailand, […]

Tennessee Considers Up To 26 GW Of Gas-Fired Generation By Diana DiGangi of UtilityDive The Tennessee Valley Authority released its preliminary 2026 integrated resource plan on Monday, saying load growth in its footprint is already outpacing the reference case forecast in its draft IRP, and that it has incremental capacity needs for between 7 GW and 26 GW of natural gas between now and 2040. “TVA’s actual and forecasted […]

Medvedev Calls For International Law Mechanism Banning Western Military Bases Abroad In a hard-hitting Wednesday address at the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum (SPILF), Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, didn’t mince words regarding the sprawling global footprint of Western military power. The former Russian president called for the immediate creation of aggressive “legal mechanisms” to […]

Judge Strikes Down Trump-Era Courthouse Arrest Policy Via American Greatness, A federal judge has vacated Trump administration policies that allowed immigration agents to arrest noncitizens at immigration courthouses nationwide. U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts ruled Tuesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents may no longer conduct arrests at immigration courts under policies implemented by the administration […]

Anthropic Accuses Alibaba Of Running Major “Adversarial Distillation” Campaign To Extract Claude Capabilities Anthropic has accused Alibaba Group of orchestrating one of the largest known efforts by a Chinese company to extract capabilities from a leading U.S. artificial intelligence model, according to a letter the AI company sent to several U.S. senators and White House officials. The letter claims that operators linked to […]

China’s Refiners Slash Runs To Lowest Since 2017, As Asia Refiners Slow Purchases Of Mid-East Oil A little over a month ago, we explained that energy traders are “Traders Puzzled As Physical Oil Prices Tumble Amid Surging Chinese Crude Sales, Plunging Imports”, and highlighted how already razor-thin independent refiner (teapot) margins had plunged to record negative as a result of the war in Iran and government policies meant to […]

Maryland Protests Data Center Costs By Ethan Howland of UtilityDive A group of 80 Maryland state lawmakers are backing a complaint at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission over the PJM Interconnection’s cost allocation for transmission lines that support data centers. Driven by the way PJM spreads transmission costs, Maryland ratepayers will pay $1.6 billion over the next decade for transmission projects that were approved […]