Pakistan, Turkey & Saudi Arabia Trigger Mecca Defense Pact In a historic first, the Mecca Defense Pact between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey is now in force, according to the allies at an emergency meeting in Riyadh. It was only signed in August, but soon after it was formalized an all-out war between the Houthis and Saudi coalition in Yemen erupted, with the Ansar Allah movement now increasingly targeting Saudi civilian […]

CIA Officer Arrested With Gold Bars Admits Exposing Top-Secret Source To Foreign Government Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times, A CIA officer arrested with gold bars and cash in his home has admitted to stealing from the government and exposing a top-secret source, according to court filings made public on Oct. 6. During their search of David Rush’s home, investigators seized about 300 gold bars, federal officials […]

US Reiterates “Do Not Travel” Warning For Russia After Lab Worker’s Death Raises Plague Fears The Trump administration formally asked Russia for details about the reported death of a laboratory worker at a facility studying pneumonic plague in Siberia’s Irkutsk region. Russian authorities said they found no plague in the deceased worker or contacts. *US PREPARING FORMAL REQUEST TO RUSSIA ON PLAGUE DEATH: WAPO — zerohedge […]

Blanche Says DOJ Is Using Fraud Laws To Combat Birth Tourism Authored by Tom Gantert via The Epoch Times, Despite a Supreme Court setback in June, the Justice Department (DOJ) is working with federal immigration agencies to combat birth tourism by using existing laws, U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said. Attorney General Todd Blanche speaks during an interview in Washington on Oct. 5, 2026.Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch TimesBirth […]

Isaias Forecast To Become Season’s First Atlantic Hurricane, Threatening Gulf Coast Rigs, Major Refineries Tropical Storm Isaias is forecast to strengthen into a Category 2 hurricane, with the northern US Gulf Coast in its crosshairs later this week. The cone of uncertainty includes critical energy assets, such as offshore oil rigs and major refineries. Isaias was about 285 miles west of Progreso, Mexico, with maximum sustained […]

Futures Slide From Record As Oil Jumps On Hormuz Tanker Attacks, 30Y Yield Hits 2002 High US equity futures are sliding from Tuesday’s record close as oil climbs back above $100, global bond yields resume their ascent and the AI bubble debate makes an unwelcome comeback. As of 8:00am ET, S&P futures are 0.4% lower, trading around 7,844, while Nasdaq 100 and Dow futures drop 0.6%; small caps are also under pressure with Russell […]

World Bank Warns Asia Is Running Out Of Money To Fight Energy Shock Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com, Asian countries have responded more aggressively than others to the energy supply crunch caused by the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran and now they are running out of resources to continue their response, the World Bank warned in a new report. The report actually focuses on the potential of artificial intelligence to help […]

Standard Chartered Says Hormuz Oil Flows Are Far From Normal Authored by Alex Kimani via OilPrice.com, Gulf oil exports rebounded to roughly 16.5 million bpd in September, near pre-war levels, despite only 60% of those barrels crossing Hormuz versus 83% before the war. Exporters have adapted through pipelines, bypass ports and extensive ship-to-ship transfers, but the system is more expensive, inefficient and increasingly […]

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 […]

$240 Million Triton Spy Drone Stops Feet From Disaster After Apparent Florida Runway Overrun A roughly $240 million MQ-4C Triton surveillance drone built by Northrop Grumman apparently overran a runway at Naval Station Mayport near Jacksonville, Florida, last week, stopping just dozens of feet from plunging into the water.  Footage circulating on X appears to show the drone perched on shoreline riprap beyond the departure end of […]

UK Makes 7th Arrest Over Security Incident Near RAF Fairford Airbase Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times, Authorities in the United Kingdom have announced the arrest of another suspect in connection with a recent security incident near the RAF Fairford airbase used by U.S. forces. On Oct. 6, the UK’s Office for Counter Terrorism Policing announced the arrest of a 22-year-old male British national in the Westminster […]

Lithuanian Parliament Advances Measure To Reverse Nuclear Weapons Ban Back in July, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda declared that his country must be part of the NATO alliance’s nuclear sharing program: “We would like to be the integral part of this nuclear deterrence,” he had said at the time. He was addressing a big hurdle written into Lithuanian law, namely the existent constitutional ban on nuclear weapons from […]

Ballot Box Jihad: The Non-Violent Conquest Of The West Authored by Robert Williams via Gatestone Institute, “This could be the first election in Sweden where the Muslim immigration that we have had is decisive in a parliamentary election,” predicted the leader of the Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Åkesson, days before Sweden’s election on September 13. He was right. Sweden’s center-right Sweden Democrats government indeed lost the […]

France’s Triple Crisis: Far-Left Riots, A Ticking Debt Bomb, And Mass Migration Collide France is tearing itself apart as far-left riots, a dire fiscal situation and years of unfettered mass migration collide, while President Emmanuel Macron loses his grip and his approval rating craters, raising the prospect of a victory for right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen in next year’s presidential election. Far-left riots gained momentum in […]

Interventionism Created Spain’s Housing Crisis And Is A Warning To America Authored by Daniel Lacalle via dlacalle.com, Socialist Americans are promising affordable housing through rent controls and government intervention. The evidence shows that these policies deliver the opposite. Spain’s housing crisis is presented by socialists as proof that they must impose tougher rent controls, higher taxes on owners, tighter […]

China In Large Russia-Hosted Drills Featuring ‘Applied Lessons Of Ukraine War’ Russia has just wrapped up hosting mass military drills involving troops and defense technology from eight countries which state media hailed as applying lessons learned from the Ukraine war. The Tsentr-2026, or Centre-2026, drills ran throughout all last week into Saturday, located in the central western Chelyabinsk region, which is situated in the […]

Cowardly Europe Fears Dissent Authored by J.B. Shurk via American Thinker, Orwellian brutes now govern Europe… Former-banker-turned-tiny-French-President Emmanuel Macron blasted what he called “American free speech” while speaking to reporters last week. Defending the European Union’s robust censorship policies, le petit fromage insisted that Europe’s speech-policing Digital Services Act should censor information that […]

The Petrodollar Could Break Soon – And Upend The Global Financial System Authored by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com, The Iran war could claim a casualty far more consequential than a missile battery, an air base, or an oil tanker: the petrodollar system. For more than 50 years, US protection of the Gulf monarchies has helped support global demand for dollars and US government debt. That bargain may now be coming under […]

Skyfall: Fitch Downgrade Sends Legacy Paramount Bonds To Record Low As Merger Closes Last week, when we documented how Paramount’s record bond offering cratered before the ink was dry, we flagged one line from the Bear Traps chat as deserving extra attention: “Paramount’s existing unsecured bonds? Primed.” Today, with the $110 billion Warner Bros. Discovery takeover officially closed and the combined company (now simply “Skydance”, […]

Andrew Huberman Predicts A “Scary” New Way Humans Will Radically Alter Their Brains Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman is predicting a startling future in which humans could undergo gene therapy and use an AI-powered wearable to literally turn up their own motivation. Huberman laid out the futuristic scenario during an appearance on the “Invest Like the Best” podcast, describing technology that could allow people to […]

Forest Majeure: Finland Orders Google To Halt Work At Two Data Centers Less Than A Month After €13BN Splash The data center delay contagion has officially gone global. Just hours after we laid out how Oracle’s 1.3GW Wisconsin campus became the next domino to slip after the indefinite delay of the company’s New Mexico-based, Project Jupiter, and on the same day Google locked up 3.6GW of Constellation’s nuclear output in PJM, […]

“Don’t Be Evil”? Ex-Google CEO Schmidt’s Attack Drones Get Warheads From US Army Bomb Plant The U.S. Army’s McAlester Army Ammunition Plant is a massive munitions plant located in southeastern Oklahoma and will soon be producing warheads for former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s suicide drone arsenal. Defense Blog reports that McAlester plant officials held a “ribbon-cutting ceremony to open the partnership” with Schmidt’s drone […]

The Few Dominating AI Could Wield Insane Concentration Of Power, Researcher Warns Authored by Jacob Burg and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times, Imagine a world where intelligent machines easily outmatch humans across a broad spectrum of tasks, deconstructing complex concepts and mathematical equations in seconds, and bringing to life creative products and ideas that once seemed inseparable from the human mind. In this world, your […]

Brazil’s Rightward Shift: UBS-Hosted Consultancy Puts Bolsonaro’s Runoff Election Odds At 85% Brazil’s benchmark Ibovespa index surged above 200,000 for the first time Monday, posting its biggest one-day gain in more than six years, while the real rallied sharply after right-wing Senator Flávio Bolsonaro finished ahead of socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the first round of the presidential election. Market […]

Explosion Rocks Venezuela’s Second-Largest Refinery More bad news for the global refining market broke late Tuesday when Venezuela’s second-largest refinery halted operations after a fire erupted at the facility. The 310,000-barrel-a-day Cardon refinery shut down earlier today, according to a Reuters report citing people familiar with the matter, who said a gas line connected to its diesel hydrotreater exploded. Footage: […]