Panama Canal Fees Hit Record As El Nino, Hormuz Crisis Choke Global Shipping Panama Canal transit auction prices have surged to record highs this summer as an intensifying El Niño and disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz upend global shipping routes.  A Bloomberg report Friday morning said a supertanker paid a record $4.6 million at auction to bypass the growing queue and secure an earlier transit slot next week. The spike in […]

Boeing Unveils Cheap Radar Seeker Built From Off-The-Shelf Parts By Michael Scanlon of Defense News Boeing revealed an ultra-low-cost radar seeker Tuesday as this year’s Space and Missile Defense Symposium kicked off in Huntsville, Alabama, pitching it as a way to get missile guidance on more weapons for less money. Installed in the nose of a missile or bomb, the seeker locates the target and guides the weapon toward it. Seekers […]

“We Do Bad Things To Bad People”: Hegseth Unveils New Motto For Counter Cartel Coalition Via The Libertarian Institute  Secretary of War Pete Hegseth declared that the new motto of the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition (ACCC) is “we do bad things to bad people.” “The new motto of the ACCC is ‘we do bad things to bad people.’ That’s the mentality I want to have inside this room,” he said on Wednesday. “Ultimately, we’re […]

Russia To Intensify Attacks On Sources Of Western Support In Ukraine: Lavrov At the end of June, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in an unusual move declared the start of a 40-day intensified pressure campaign against Russia, designed to force Moscow to the negotiating table and agree on terms favorable to Ukraine to end the war. This was an effort seize on the momentum of repeat drone hits on Russian refinery and energy […]

‘I Shot Brian Thompson’: Luigi Mangione Pleads Guilty To Federal Charges In UnitedHealthcare CEO Killing Luigi Mangione, the 28-year-old accused of assassinating UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court on Friday to the federal charges against him – admitting that he went to New York with the intent to kill Thompson. Luigi Mangione attends a pre-trial appearance at Manhattan Criminal Court on […]

“A Big Win Today”: Trump Cheers As Trade Court Upholds Shutdown Of $800 De Minimis Duty Exemption Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times, The U.S. Court of International Trade on Aug. 13 upheld the Trump administration’s authority to end the de minimis exemption that allowed Americans to avoid paying duty on packages worth $800 or less. The court held in a new order that President Donald Trump had legal authority to […]

NATO Jets Shoot Down Drone Over Latvia, Which Blames ‘Russian Electromagnetic Warfare’ NATO jets have shot down another drone which spilled over into Baltic territory from the Ukraine war, Latvia’s defense ministry announced Friday. The fresh incident happened over eastern Latvian airspace on Friday. NATO “fighter jets have successfully shot down a foreign unmanned aerial vehicle that had entered Latvia as a result of Russian […]

JPMorgan Debanks Polymarket Over Regulatory Concerns; Report Authored by Zoltan Vardai via CoinTelegraph.com, JPMorgan Chase ended a banking relationship with Polymarket over regulatory concerns, according to the Financial Times. JPMorgan notified the prediction market platform in October 2025 that it needed to find a new bank, the Financial Times reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. Polymarket now works […]

Influential Wife Of Anthropic CEO Pitched Post-Conviction Epstein On ‘Luxury Porn’ Company, And Claude Has No Idea Anthropic has filed confidentially for what could be the largest public offering in history. Yet, one of the most influential voices shaping its chief executive holds no official position at the company, appears in no regulatory filings, and has been quietly scrubbed from the internet. She also pitched a porn company […]

Tesla’s New Roadster Reportedly Uses SpaceX Cold-Gas Thrusters To Fly Tesla plans to unveil a redesigned Roadster sports car with limited “flying” capabilities later this month, The Information reported Friday morning, citing people familiar with the matter. The report follows this week’s comments from Tesla’s chief vehicle designer, who said the long-delayed Roadster is “coming soon.” The limited-edition Roadster reportedly uses […]

“Bin There, Done That?” Not Quite By Elwin de Groot, head of macro strategy at Rabobank Markets may be suffering from a growing sense of “bin there, done that” fatigue when it comes to geopolitical shocks, but central banks are in no position to throw recent developments into the bin just yet. Take Hormuz. Both sides now claim to firmly control the Strait, President Trump appears to favour squeezing Iran economically (or, in […]

UMich Sentiment Slumps In August As War Re-Escalated, Inflation Fears Tick-Up Following July’s rebound to pre-war levels, the preliminary August University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment index was expected to weaken modestly as the MidEast re-escalated (and with it the price of gas). Sure enough, the headline sentiment index tumbled from 55.2 to 51.0 (55.0 exp) with both Current Conditions (51.8 vs 54.8 prior vs 54.9 exp) and […]

More Than Two-Thirds Of The Power Sought For US Data Centers Will Never Materialize It was almost a year ago, in November 2025, when we first calculated that the AI supercycle was facing a huge problem: namely, a power shortfall of (at least) 44 nuclear power plants, or GW or energy, by 2028. A Huge Problem For The AI Revolution: A Power Shortfall Of 44 Nuclear Power Plants By 2028 https://t.co/2ciiUudp8T — zerohedge […]

Bessent: US Readies Economic Isolation Of Iran “Like The World Has Never Seen Before” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Newsmax Thursday night that the Trump administration will announce unprecedented economic measures against Iran next week, signaling that a sharp escalation in economic warfare is just ahead as negotiations to reopen the Strait of Hormuz remain stalled. The warning comes as Tehran-linked Houthi rebel forces […]

Farage Crushes Clacton By-Election With 63% As Comedy Candidates Dominate Longest Ballot In British History Nigel Farage has romped to victory in the Clacton by-election with 63.3% of the vote, seeing off 33 rivals including Count Binface, who won a quarter of the votes cast, on the longest ballot paper in British electoral history. The Reform UK leader secured victory with 22,239 votes, which was 63.3% of the total vote and an […]

World Cup Hangover Triggers Retail Sales Slump In July, K-Shaped Economy Waning Based on BofA’s almost omniscient analysts, traders should expect a big disappointment this morning from US retail sales as the bank’s data showed a huge drop in online retail (card not present) in July… …because Prime Day and related promotions were pulled forward from July to June this year. Many other retail categories also saw m/m declines, […]

Russia Quickly Rejects Ukraine’s Offer Of Ceasefire On Black Sea Shipping Ukraine has quietly floated a deal through a third-party mediator to halt reciprocal strikes on civilian vessels in the Black Sea, Reuters reports, in what appears to be a calculated bid to unfreeze a critical global commodity corridor and to relieve pressure on Ukraine’s battered wartime economy. The maritime artery remains a vital economic lifeline for both […]

Stocks Set To Post Fresh All Time High As Tech Euphoria Returns Futures are fractionally higher, as they have been much of this supercharged week which pushed stocks to new all tim ehighs, amid quiet news flow this morning. As of 8:00am ET, S&P futures are up 0.1% after the index closed at a record on Thursday. Nasdaq 100 futures advanced 0.2%, with the tech benchmark set for a 1.2% gain in the week. Momentum darling Sandisk […]

Unusual Machines Jumps After Trump Slaps 100% Drone Tariff In “Hard Decoupling” From China Shares of drone makers AeroVironment and Aevex, and “pure-play” drone-parts company Unusual Machines, are higher in premarket trading Thursday after the Trump administration signed a proclamation imposing tariffs of as much as 100% on imported drones and components, part of a broader effort to decouple the nation’s drone supply chain from […]

Saudi Oil Fleet Increasingly Going ‘Dark’ Due To Houthi Blockade Via The Cradle Yemen’s maritime blockade on Saudi shipping has pushed the kingdom’s crude exports off the radar in the Red Sea, with tankers forced to turn off their tracking signals to avoid attack and every recent cargo loaded at Yanbu sailing “dark,” Reuters reported on Wednesday. Saudi export volumes can no longer be independently verified as a result of the […]

Only 3% Of Americans Trust AI “A Great Deal” With Their Money – But One In Five Are Using It Anyway A new Gallup survey finds a wide gap between the financial advice Americans say they trust and the advice they actually take. Just 3% of Americans say they have “a great deal” of confidence in artificial intelligence to help manage their money – while about 30% express “a great deal” or “some” confidence. Moreover, roughly one in […]

English Village Will Have Six Migrant Men To Every Woman Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News, A quiet North Yorkshire village of roughly 600 people is set to be flooded with around 1,200 single adult male asylum seekers at the nearby disused RAF Linton-on-Ouse base. Local women would be outnumbered six to one. Labour MP Rachael Maskell has raised the alarm over the plan, which forms part of the government’s wider push to […]

Is AI Good For The US Labor Market And Bad For Europe’s? France’s unemployment rate has been climbing steadily over the past eighteen months to the highest level in five years, with unemployment increasing across all age groups. The US, by contrast, has stayed essentially flat and near multi-decade lows over the past few years. While there are multiple factors driving both country’s economic progress (or lack of it), Apollo’s […]

The Delusional Premises Of Woke Greens Authored by Edward Ring via American Greatness, While the burgeoning democratic socialist movement is getting a lot of attention in advance of the 2026 midterm elections, a parallel dimension of wokeism quietly continues to advance. For now, the Trump administration has attenuated its most extreme threats, but its institutional support is unwavering, and its slow progress is unrelenting. The […]

“Skies Are Changing”: Northrop Grumman Unveils Chain Gun To Defend Critical Infrastructure From Drone Swarm Attacks Our view of the missing air-defense layer around data centers and other critical infrastructure emerged in late January, roughly one month before the US-Iran conflict, when we published “Explosion in AI Data Center Buildouts Will Demand Next-Gen Counter-Drone Security.” That theme was validated shortly after the war […]