Music: Shakti — ‘La Danse Du Bonheur’
Iran attacks wipe out 17% of Qatar’s LNG capacity for up to five years, QatarEnergy CEO says
Reuters reports: Iranian attacks have knocked out 17% of Qatar’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity, causing an estimated $20 billion in lost annual revenue and threatening supplies to Europe and Asia, QatarEnergy’s CEO and state minister for energy affairs told Reuters on Thursday. Saad al-Kaabi said two of Qatar’s 14 LNG trains and one of its two gas-to-liquids (GTL) facilities were damaged in the unprecedented strikes. The repairs will sideline 12.8 million tons per year of LNG for three…
West Point analysis warns that Strait of Hormuz blockade will strangle U.S. defense industry
The Guardian reports: The closure of the strait of Hormuz is causing a “paralyzing, real-time problem” for any prospective manufacturing surge in the US defense industrial base, and even for the repair of defense equipment damaged by Iranian attacks, according to analysis published by West Point’s Modern War Institute. In particular sulphur, a vital upstream input in the extraction of critical minerals including copper and cobalt, has seen a “near total” disruption of seaborne trade in the straits, which makes…
How the rest of the world is struggling with the economic crisis that Trump and Netanyahu triggered
The Washington Post reports: As the United States wages war with no clear endgame, large swaths of the globe are suffering worse than Americans from the economic fallout, weathering gasoline shortages, falling currencies and more severe energy shocks. Iran’s retaliatory attacks have largely blocked the Strait of Hormuz, turning the transit point for one-fifth of the world’s crude into a trial by fire for cargo ships and sending oil prices soaring. That is triggering hikes at the pump — on…
Israel’s role in instigating war on Iran
Michelle Goldberg writes: Some Jewish leaders, alarmed by the backlash to the war, are trying to rule any discussion of Israel’s role in instigating it out of bounds. In a speech on Monday, Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, denounced those who “pointed fingers at the Israelis who — they claimed — whispered a few too many times in President Trump’s ear.” Greenblatt’s heavy-handed attempt to police the discourse is bound to fail, because it’s asking people to…
Some DHS contractors told White House officials they were asked to pay Corey Lewandowski
NBC News reports: More than a year ago, The GEO Group founder George Zoley asked for a meeting with Corey Lewandowski, a close ally of President Donald Trump who had just started a powerful position as a top adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. As a titan of the private prison industry, GEO Group stood to benefit from Trump’s mass deportation agenda, which would require the federal government to spend tens of billions of dollars to transport, detain, monitor…
Twin Cities residents to receive Profile in Courage Award from John F. Kennedy Library Foundation
MPR News reports: The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation announced Thursday that it’s awarding one of its 2026 Profile in Courage Awards to the “people of the Twin Cities of Minnesota” for their actions during the federal immigration enforcement surge. The foundation said it chose to honor Twin Cities residents “for risking their lives to protect their neighbors and immigrant community members from an unprecedented federal law enforcement operation, peacefully defending the human rights and values that serve as the…
Dopamine: How neuroscience is rethinking the ‘feel-good’ chemical
Nature reports: When neuroscientists gather in the Spanish city of Seville in May for the annual Dopamine Society meeting, one discussion could be unusually lively. Session 31 will feature a debate between researchers who fundamentally disagree about the role dopamine has in the brain. Dopamine is one of the most extensively studied neurotransmitters, chemicals that convey signals from cell to cell. It’s the one with the highest profile outside neuroscience: often known as the ‘pleasure chemical’, it’s depicted as the…
Music: Shakti — ‘Lady L’
Major escalation: Israel strikes Iran natural gas facility in coordination with U.S.
Axios reports: The Israeli Air Force struck a natural gas processing facility in southwestern Iran, two senior Israeli officials said. Why it matters: This is the first time Israel has struck natural gas facilities in Iran, which are key to Iran’s economy. The Israeli officials said the strike was coordinated with and approved by the Trump administration. A U.S. Defense official confirmed that. The semi-official Tasnim News Agency reported that several facilities in the South Pars gas field near Bushehr were targeted. According to the report, emergency teams…
Germany’s foreign minister warns Iran war could plunge ‘entire world into major crisis’
Politico reports: German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul on Wednesday warned of a dangerous spiral of unintended consequences if the Middle East war escalates further. “There is a real risk of escalation, which could plunge not only this region but the entire world into a major crisis,” Wadephul said during a joint press conference with his French counterpart, Jean-Noël Barrot, in Berlin. The German government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz was initially far more supportive of the U.S. and Israeli attacks on…
U.S. intelligence saw no change in Iran’s missile capabilities before war
The New York Times reports: Two top intelligence officials directly contradicted one of the Trump administration’s justifications for going to war with Iran, repeating on Wednesday the intelligence community’s conclusion that Iran was years away from developing missiles capable of hitting the United States. Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, and John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, would not say whether the intelligence community had determined that Iran would be able to launch such…
Avi Shlaim: ‘Trump is Netanyahu’s poodle, he plays him like a fiddle’
One of Israel’s most highly regarded and world-renowned professors of history and international relations, Avi Shlaim, says that Donald Trump is “Netanyahu’s poodle”, adding that Netanyahu “plays him like a fiddle”. Prof. Shlaim says that Donald Trump is the only American President who is gullible enough to become part of Netanyahu’s plan for regime change in Iran. However, Prof. Shlaim believes that regime change is almost impossible to achieve from the air and what is far more likely is…
How Silicon Valley became part of the military-industrial complex
The New York Times reports: As the war in the Middle East enters its third week, intelligence gathered by the Pentagon is being analyzed by technology from the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, on a system run by the data analytics firm Palantir. Drones created by defense tech start-up in Arizona have emerged as a key piece of the U.S. war arsenal. And anti-drone systems made by a California start-up have been deployed to protect U.S. forces in the region. Silicon…
The founder of Anthropic claims he wants to protect humanity from AI. Just don’t ask how
Joe Hagan writes: It’s a cold night in January and I’ve got trouble on my mind. I call up Tobey. “Tobey, how’s it going?” “Hi, Joe, just chilling. What’s up?” We’d just spent a disorienting week in San Francisco, asking tech workers what the future holds and how Tobey and I fit into it. “We definitely had an adventure,” Tobey recalls. “Especially with that delayed flight. But we made it. Still feeling the weight of it all? Those conversations were…
What happens to your brain in nature? The neuroscience explained
Yoho National Park, Field, Canada. (Unsplash/Hendrik Cornelissen) By Mar Estarellas, McGill University Have you ever felt calmer almost as soon as you step into the woods? Or maybe noticed your busy mind soften as you look out at the sea? We have known for some time, and many of us sense it intuitively, that spending time in nature is good for us. Neuroscience is now enabling us to understand why, and what the brain is actually doing in those moments….