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 […]

“Heavy Casualties” After Massive Twin Quakes Rock Venezuela, Topple Buildings; “International Response May Be Needed” Twin earthquakes rocked Venezuela on Wednesday evening, collapsing entire apartment buildings across Caracas and leaving behind scenes of widespread devastation. The USGS said the first quake registered a magnitude of 7.1, with an epicenter near Morón, about 104 miles west of Caracas, at a depth of 8 miles. One […]

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 […]

Bessent Insists US Treasury Will Oversee Unfrozen Iranian Funds: Food & Medicine Only There remains a major divergence in how Iran and the United States are interpreting the results of the MoU signing in the wake of the historic Switzerland peace talks, as lower-level teams remain in place to hammer out the technical details of the agreement. The divergence/contradiction continues to be seen in not only the latest statements […]

Antifa Leader Sentenced To 100 Years In Prison For Attack On ICE Facility The Antifa attack on the Texas ICE facility in Alvarado was a highly coordinated plan, using fireworks and a fake vandalism call to lure out ICE agents and police so that they could be shot in a hail of gunfire.  Responding Alvarado Police Department Lieutenant Thomas Gross was shot in the shoulder and the rifle round exited his neck during the crossfire, but […]

Micron Soars After Reporting Blowout Earnings, Boosts Guidance Step aside Nvidia: as we noted in our preview, with the world’s most valuable company going nowhere in recent months, all attention has shifted to Micron, which has rapidly become one of the most important stocks in the world and certainly the most actively traded, surpassing both Nvidia and Tesla in recent days. As such all eyes were on Micron’s earnings today, and […]

Hormuz Exodus Begins: Ships Finally Sailing As UN-Led Evacuation Corridor Opens Several vessels have already navigated the Strait of Hormuz utilizing a fresh evacuation framework established by the United Nations’ shipping agency, an official confirmed on Wednesday. More via newswires: US Energy Secretary Wright says roughly 72 ships have exited Strait of Hormuz in last 24 hours. “Ships have already begun to pass under the […]

DOJ Announces 455 Defendants Charged in $6.5 Billion Health Care Fraud Crackdown Via American Greatness, The Justice Department (DOJ) announced Tuesday that federal authorities have charged 455 defendants in a nationwide health care fraud operation involving an estimated $6.5 billion in false claims against government-funded health care programs. The cases are part of the department’s annual National Health Care Fraud Takedown, […]

Iran Calls MoU Deal A ‘US Defeat’ As Trump Touts Tehran Forced Into ‘Very Big Concessions’ Summary Trump Hits Back, Seeks Narrative Control: “The war is going very well. As you know, we’re winning by a lot. Iran is making very big concessions.” Iran Declares MoU A US Defeat: Tehran says the Islamabad agreement proves Washington abandoned its pressure campaign. Hormuz Traffic Resumes under UN Auspices: About 72 ships carrying […]

Google Loses Another Two High Profile AI Researchers To Anthropic A duo of leading artificial intelligence researchers at Alphabet’s Google are planning to leave for rival Anthropic, adding to a series of high-profile departures that risk undercutting the search giant’s position in AI.  Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel, both viewed internally as key contributors to Google’s Gemini AI model, are set to move to the Claude […]

Transcript Shows Bill Gates Claim Epstein Issued ‘Veiled’ Threats Over Affairs Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), Bill Gates told lawmakers in a recent interview that Jeffrey Epstein threatened him subtly over his affairs but did not overtly blackmail him, according to a transcript released on June 23. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates (C) in Washington, on June 10, 2026. Kent Nishimura/AFP via Getty […]

All Banks Pass Fed’s Stress Test, Unleashing Latest Wave Of Dividends And Buybacks In all the excitement over Micron’s blowout earnings, we almost forgot that today was another Fed stress test day – which every bank passed with flying colors as usual – which in turn allowed bank to unleash a fresh flood of dividends and buybacks. The biggest US banks boosted their dividends after passing this year’s Federal Reserve stress tests, […]

Senate Passes War Powers Resolution In Rebuke Of Trump Policy The US Senate on Tuesday passed a war powers resolution – a symbolic rebuke of President Donald Trump which calls for an end to the US-Israeli war against Iran, and requires explicit authorization from Congress. The Democrat-led concurrent resolution passed by a narrow 50-48 vote, seeking to constrain President Donald Trump’s ability to wage war against Iran. The […]

DARPA’s X-Plane Designed To Maneuver With Bursts Of Air Gets New Wings Attached Authored by Chris Young via Interesting Engineering, Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences has begun installing the wings on the X-65, an experimental drone developed under DARPA’s Control of Revolutionary Aircraft with Novel Effectors (CRANE) program. Technicians mounting the wings onto the X-65 experimental drone.Aurora Flight Sciences / X The […]

Bessent: Rate Cuts Don’t Have To Break The Dollar With rate-hikes increasingly back ‘on the table’ fort Fed Chair Warsh’s ‘regime change’ last week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says that cutting interest rates won’t necessarily lead to a weaker dollar – arguing that “you can have a strong dollar when rates are being cut” because if the fed is cutting because inflation is falling, while the economy stays strong – capital keeps […]

Fauci, The CIA, And The Unanswered Questions Of COVID Authored by Cory Franklin via RealClearWire, Did Anthony Fauci manipulate the intelligence community (IC) investigation of the origin of COVID as outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard claims? Gabbard recently released previously unseen documents and communications during the COVID pandemic between the IC and the key member of the White House Coronavirus […]

GOP Civil War Erupts On Two Fronts: Luna Freezes The House Floor, Trump Gets “Brother’d” By Cassidy In Senate Over SAVE Act The Republican Party’s long-simmering tensions over election integrity exploded into open warfare on Wednesday, with chaos breaking out simultaneously in the House and Senate – and President Trump caught in the middle of both. It started, as these things often do, with a procedural knife fight. Rep. Anna […]

72 Ships Transited Hormuz In A Day: US Energy Secretary Says ‘Taking Away’ Iran’s Key Leverage WTI futures briefly fell below $70 a barrel for the first time since the US-Iran conflict erupted, as tanker flows through the Strait of Hormuz are showing further signs of normalization and physical market tightness continues to ease. Bloomberg noted that option markets are positioning for ongoing normalization. Put volume is exceeding […]

Grand Theft Auto VI Pre-Orders Begin Thursday; Wall Street Responds… Take-Two Interactive said that its Rockstar Games studio will begin long-awaited pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto VI on Thursday. The action-packed game is priced at $79.99 and is scheduled to launch on November 19 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. “Launching November 19, 2026, for the PlayStation 5 computer entertainment systems and Xbox Series X|S games […]

Google’s Dual Nuclear Tech Strategy Takes Shape With Kairos & GE Vernova Google is placing its nuclear bets through more than one channel. Elementl Power, the independent developer that received early-stage capital from Google in 2025 to prepare three US sites, has now made its first clear technology choice on at least one of them. Elementl signed an Early Works Agreement with GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GVH) to deploy […]

Hawkish Warsh Hammers Barbarous Relic: Gold Crashes Back Below $4000 As Rate-Hike Odds Rise Gold plunged back below $4,000 an ounce for the first time since November 2025 this morning, as a resurgent dollar and the prospect of higher interest rates bring bullion’s three-year bull market to a halt (now down 30% from its January highs). The precious metal has posted double-digit gains for each of the last three years, more than […]

Oil Tanker Earnings Soar To $470,000 A Day As Hormuz Hopes Drive Tanker Frenzy By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com Oil tanker rates have soared since the U.S. and Iran announced the memorandum of understanding as oil importers scramble to charter vessels to pick up Persian Gulf cargoes in the hope these can transit the tentatively reopening Strait of Hormuz.  One tanker has been provisionally booked to ship crude from the […]

Mediocre 5Y Auction Tails As Foreign Demand Slides After yesterday’s solid 2Y auction, today’s 5Y auction was an uglier mirror image.  The sale of $70BN in 5 year paper priced at a high yield of 4.200%, up from 4.182% in May and the highest since Jan 25. It tailed the When Issued 4.193% by 0.7bps, and was the 8th consecutive tail for the 5Y tenor. The bid to cover was 2.351, better than the 2.340 in May and the highest since […]

“Real Alien Shit!”: Downed US Pilot Reported Seeing Iranian Drones Swarm in ‘Jellyfish’ Formation Authored by Antiwar.com via Dave DeCamp CNN has reported that the pilot of a US F-15 fighter jet that was shot down over Iran during the US-Israeli bombing campaign in April reported seeing a swarm of Iranian drones in a formation that resembled a jellyfish before he ejected from the aircraft. Sources told the outlet that the pilot […]