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Sebastian Gorka: The counterterrorism czar without a counterterrorism plan

Sebastian Gorka: The counterterrorism czar without a counterterrorism plan

By Hannah Allam This story was originally published by ProPublica March unfolded like a stress test for U.S. counterterrorism authorities. The month opened with a gunman in an Iranian-flag shirt killing three people at a bar in Texas. Then, an attack with homemade explosives outside the mayor’s mansion in New York City. Next came a deadly shooting March 12 on a Virginia college campus and, the same afternoon, a car-ramming at a Michigan synagogue. Days later, agents arrested a man…

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Escape route from Iran energy shock leads to China, U.S. allies find

Escape route from Iran energy shock leads to China, U.S. allies find

Politico reports: America’s allies, stung by soaring energy costs due to Washington’s attacks on Iran, are confronting an uncomfortable truth: The escape route from fossil fuel shocks leads straight into China’s arms. From the European Union and the United Kingdom to South Korea and the Philippines, numerous countries have responded to the war-driven spike in oil and gas prices with calls to accelerate electrification and the rollout of clean energy infrastructure. While that doesn’t offer an immediate fix to higher…

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China’s energy fortress was built to withstand just this type of oil shock

China’s energy fortress was built to withstand just this type of oil shock

CNN reports: For more than a decade, leader Xi Jinping has overseen a transformation within the Chinese economy with one aim: making it energy-secure. Under that vision, China has unleashed a renewable energy revolution of wind, solar and hydropower, drilled ever deeper into oilfields offshore and on, and forged pacts with partners for more supply – all in a bid to cut the country’s reliance on imported fuel and insulate it against “external shocks.” Now, the historic oil crisis triggered…

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Global growth in solar ‘the largest ever observed for any source’

Global growth in solar ‘the largest ever observed for any source’

Ars Technica reports: On Monday, the International Energy Agency released its analysis of the energy trends of 2025, covering the entire globe. It confirms and extends the primary conclusion of a more limited analysis by the International Renewable Energy Agency: 2025 was the first year of solar’s dominance. Increased solar production was a key reason the growth of carbon-free energy sources outpaced rising demand. Coupled with a massive growth in battery storage and relatively stagnant fossil fuel use, the year…

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The forces of scarcity hitting Asia may soon spread across the world

The forces of scarcity hitting Asia may soon spread across the world

Damien Cave writes: When the war in Iran started on Feb. 28, Asia expected to see serious, gradual impacts from losing access to a huge portion of the world’s oil and gas. But the conflict’s economic and social impacts have hit the region harder and faster than officials and experts expected. Many countries across the Asia-Pacific are experiencing sudden jolts of disruption that they are struggling to manage, with some comparing the crisis’s breakdowns and scope to the Covid pandemic….

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Distrust, dishonesty and Trump’s elusive Iran deal

Distrust, dishonesty and Trump’s elusive Iran deal

Axios reports: President Trump told reporters to expect a peace deal with Iran by Monday, and said Monday morning that Vice President Vance was heading to Islamabad for talks. But Vance was actually still in Washington, waiting for a signal from Tehran before boarding his plane — a sign of the deep uncertainty over what will happen next. The big picture: Trump wants the war to end, now, on his terms. But there’s only one day left before the ceasefire expires, Iran still controls the…

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Ukraine: For the first time in years, outright victory seems possible

Ukraine: For the first time in years, outright victory seems possible

Brynn Tannehill writes: The end of 2024 looked grim for Ukraine: President Trump was promising no further aid, and Hungary under Viktor Orbán was vowing to block any further European Union financial support. Seeing an opportunity, Russia poured all the manpower possible into collapsing Ukrainian front lines, hoping to convince Trump that Russia’s victory and Ukraine’s defeat were inevitable, so that he would pressure Ukraine into a peace treaty favorable to Putin. Instead, Ukraine dug in. They continued to innovate,…

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Samuel Samson: The 27-year-old diplomat waging Trump’s cultural war with Europe

Samuel Samson: The 27-year-old diplomat waging Trump’s cultural war with Europe

The New York Times reports: When Samuel Samson, a senior adviser at the State Department, sat down privately with far-right German lawmakers in an office just steps from the White House, he was breaking with history. For eight decades after World War II, America’s foreign policy establishment had usually steered clear of Germany’s hard-right parties, seeking to ensure that they never seized power again. That changed under President Trump, leading last September to Mr. Samson’s meeting with Beatrix von Storch…

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What I learned about billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s private retreat

What I learned about billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s private retreat

Noah Hawley writes: Bezos was everywhere that weekend—in a tight T-shirt, laughing too loudly, arms thrown around his teenage sons. He had recently become the world’s second centibillionaire, his net worth hovering somewhere around $112 billion, about half of what it is today. That number, previously unimaginable, had made him unique on a planet of 8 billion people, and you could feel it in the room. Even the richest and most famous among us were drawn to the energy of…

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Critical Atlantic current significantly more likely to collapse than thought

Critical Atlantic current significantly more likely to collapse than thought

The Guardian reports: The critical Atlantic current system appears significantly more likely to collapse than previously thought after new research found that climate models predicting the biggest slowdown are the most realistic. Scientists called the new finding “very concerning” as a collapse would have catastrophic consequences for Europe, Africa and the Americas. The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc) is a major part of the global climate system and was already known to be at its weakest for 1,600 years as…

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How understanding bioenergetics can help our brain health

How understanding bioenergetics can help our brain health

Hannah Critchlow writes: About 2 billion years ago, evolution performed an improbable experiment. A larger ancestral cell engulfed a smaller bacterium. It should have been a meal. Instead, it became a merger. The bacterium survived inside its host, and together they forged one of the most consequential partnerships in the history of life. The host offered shelter and access to oxygen. The bacterium supplied something revolutionary: a vastly more efficient way to generate energy. From this intimate alliance emerged the…

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UAE in talks with Trump administration about possible financial lifeline

UAE in talks with Trump administration about possible financial lifeline

The Wall Street Journal reports: The United Arab Emirates has opened talks with the U.S. about obtaining a financial backstop in case the Iran war plunges the oil-rich Persian Gulf state into a deeper crisis, U.S. officials said. U.A.E. Central Bank Governor Khaled Mohamed Balama raised the idea of a currency-swap line with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Treasury and Federal Reserve officials in meetings in Washington last week, the officials said. The Emiratis emphasized that they had so far…

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UAE minister: More than 90% of Iran’s targets were civilian infrastructure

UAE minister: More than 90% of Iran’s targets were civilian infrastructure

Politico reports: The United Arab Emirates’ minister of state said Sunday the country had been hit with over 2,800 missiles and drones in the first 40 days of the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran, adding that more than 90% of the targets were civilian infrastructure. Reem Al Hashimy, the UAE’s minister of state for international cooperation, said during a Sunday morning appearance on ABC’s “This Week” that Iran was seeking to destroy the UAE’s “model of prosperity and tolerance….

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Why the ceasefire in Lebanon won’t stop Israel’s expansionist ambitions

Why the ceasefire in Lebanon won’t stop Israel’s expansionist ambitions

Dimi Reider writes: No other Israeli border has been as consistently restive for so long, and no outside actor has inflicted devastation on Lebanon as routinely or as dramatically as Israel: from cross-border raids in the first decades of statehood, to full-scale invasion in 1982, to the current war — the most lethal conflict in Lebanon since the devastating civil war of 1975-1990. Lebanon has also been the unwilling setting for a more definitive strain of Israeli wars — those…

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