The disconnect between markets and the unfolding global economic crisis

The disconnect between markets and the unfolding global economic crisis

The Washington Post reports: As stocks soared this week and oil prices dropped amid an apparent cooling of tensions between the United States and Iran, it may have left the impression that the energy shock that rattled the world would quickly fade, along with the risk of sending the global economy into recession. The optimism may have been short-lived. On Saturday, Iran’s military announced it would reimpose restrictions on the Strait of Hormuz, throwing the critical waterway’s status into doubt….

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‘You cannot beat geography’: Iran already has a nuclear weapon. ‘It’s called the Strait of Hormuz.’

‘You cannot beat geography’: Iran already has a nuclear weapon. ‘It’s called the Strait of Hormuz.’

The New York Times reports: The United States and Israel launched their war against Iran on the argument that if Iran one day got a nuclear weapon, it would have the ultimate deterrent against future attacks. It turns out that Iran already has a deterrent: its own geography. Iran’s decision to flex its control over shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic choke point through which 20 percent of the world’s oil supply flows, has brought global economic pain…

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Trump is wishing away the war against Iran the way he did Covid. The stock market is buying his lies

Trump is wishing away the war against Iran the way he did Covid. The stock market is buying his lies

Jason Sattler writes: Everyone has finally picked up the pattern. When the stock market is open, Donald Trump is a peacemaker — Mr. Art of the Deal. Then the closing bell rings and the monster awakes. He becomes the sort of bloodthirsty beast who nods along to Pete Hegseth quoting Pulp Fiction as if it’s the Bible. And the march to global war continues. The rally that followed his latest peace headfake made real people real money. The peace was…

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Netanyahu torched U.S. support for Israel for a generation

Netanyahu torched U.S. support for Israel for a generation

Axios reports: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wreaking havoc on Israel’s standing with Americans as the Iran war supercharges a deterioration in relations with the U.S. Why it matters: Israel’s polling collapse among younger Americans is hitting Congress, too. Lawmakers who started out staunchly pro-Israel are becoming increasingly vocal critics. “We need to have a discussion about how to normalize that relationship and what change is necessary; there’s no doubt about that,” Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) told Axios. Zoom in: Every…

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Timothy Snyder & Preet Bharara: Why Viktor Orbán’s fall should worry Trump and MAGA

Timothy Snyder & Preet Bharara: Why Viktor Orbán’s fall should worry Trump and MAGA

  Timothy Snyder on Viktor Orbán’s election loss, Trump, MAGA authoritarianism & lessons for democracy. The historian and “On Tyranny” author joins Preet Bharara to break down what Orbán’s stunning defeat by Peter Magyar means for Trump, MAGA, and the global far-right — and what it reveals about how democracies can fight back. Snyder explains why “democracy” alone doesn’t rally voters and what message Democrats must actually run on, while unpacking his provocative warning that some form of terrorism may…

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Kash Patel’s drinking problem poses a national security danger

Kash Patel’s drinking problem poses a national security danger

Sarah Fitzpatrick writes: On Friday, April 10, as FBI Director Kash Patel was preparing to leave work for the weekend, he struggled to log into an internal computer system. He quickly became convinced that he had been locked out, and he panicked, frantically calling aides and allies to announce that he had been fired by the White House, according to nine people familiar with his outreach. Two of these people described his behavior as a “freak-out.” Patel oversees an agency…

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Evolution before life

Evolution before life

Dyna Rochmyaningsih writes: A story about the origins of life in the cosmos starts at Earth’s equator, where Dian Fiantis, a professor of soil science at Andalas University in Indonesia, investigated how seemingly dead environments come back to life. In 2018, she traveled to Mt. Anak Krakatoa (which emerged after the famous Krakatoa’s eruption) to collect the volcanic ash it ejected two months before. In her lab, she found out that volcanic glass (SiO2), the dominant chemical found in the…

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Trump is now so toxic that even Europe’s far right don’t want to associate with him

Trump is now so toxic that even Europe’s far right don’t want to associate with him

Politico reports: Donald Trump has become so politically toxic in Europe that even his closest ideological allies increasingly view him as a liability. “We need to keep our distance,” France’s Marine Le Pen told her fellow far-right National Rally lawmakers at a meeting Tuesday, according to a senior party official in attendance. Europe’s right-wing populists had been pulling away from the U.S. president even before Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán suffered a bruising loss in Sunday’s parliamentary election. The contest…

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U.S. sailors in Middle East rationing their food supplies, families report

U.S. sailors in Middle East rationing their food supplies, families report

USA Today reports: Dan F. was alarmed when his daughter, a Marine aboard the USS Tripoli, a warship deployed to fight the Iran war, sent him a photo of a meal served on the ship. A lunch tray, two-thirds empty, carried one small scoop of shredded meat and a single folded tortilla. A picture of a mid-April dinner on the USS Abraham Lincoln, shared by a service member with his family, was similarly unappetizing – a small handful of boiled…

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Diplomatic cables show the war against Iran is damaging the U.S. on multiple fronts across the world

Diplomatic cables show the war against Iran is damaging the U.S. on multiple fronts across the world

Politico reports: The Iran war is risking America’s global security ties and damaging its reputation, especially among the world’s Muslims, according to a set of State Department cables obtained by POLITICO. The cables, dated Wednesday, described the fallout of the war for America’s standing in three countries in different parts of the world: Bahrain, Azerbaijan and Indonesia. U.S. diplomats at embassies in the countries’ capitals painted damning portraits of an America under siege in multiple media spheres by pro-Iranian actors…

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MAGA is increasingly convinced the Trump assassination attempt was staged

MAGA is increasingly convinced the Trump assassination attempt was staged

Wired reports: In recent weeks, as criticism of President Donald Trump from his own supporters has reached a fever pitch, a new conspiracy theory has taken hold: Some of the president’s biggest supporters are now claiming, without evidence, that Trump staged the assassination attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania in 2024 and is covering it up. During an open-air campaign rally on July 13, 2024, Trump survived an attempted assassination when a bullet fired by a 20-year-old on a…

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Colonial expansion: Support for settlement of Lebanon goes mainstream in Israel

Colonial expansion: Support for settlement of Lebanon goes mainstream in Israel

Jewish Currents reports: Uri Tzafon’s vision of establishing Israeli settlements in Lebanon has advanced significantly over the last six weeks. What was considered a fringe curiosity in 2024 is transforming into the new Israeli conventional wisdom—backed by an organized movement with broad support from politicians and the media. Even as negotiations could force Israel to halt its bombardment of Lebanon, the next time Israel attacks, Uri Tzafon will be one step closer to building civilian settlements atop the ruins of Lebanese villages….

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Gaza ‘heading towards famine’ as bread shortages deepen amid Israeli curbs

Gaza ‘heading towards famine’ as bread shortages deepen amid Israeli curbs

Middle East Eye reports: Significant shortages of bread and essential supplies, including food and fuel, have returned to the Gaza Strip as Israel continues to tighten restrictions on the entry of goods and aid. In recent days, Palestinians in the enclave have been forced to queue for hours to obtain subsidised bundles of bread from the few bakeries still operating, each costing three shekels (around $1). Free bread distributed by aid groups remains scarce and out of reach for many….

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Ocean voices: Sperm whales’ speech is as subtle and complex as human language, study finds

Ocean voices: Sperm whales’ speech is as subtle and complex as human language, study finds

The Guardian reports: We may appear to have little in common with sperm whales – enormous, ocean-dwelling animals that last shared a common ancestor with humans more than 90 million years ago. But the whales’ vocalized communications are remarkably similar to our own, researchers have discovered. Not only do sperm whale have a form of “alphabet” and form vowels within their vocalizations but the structure of these vowels behaves in the same way as human speech, the new study has…

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