Cartel Problem Is ‘Spilling Over To The United States’: Texas Senator Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times, The cartel problem in Mexico has spilled over into the United States, harming Americans and requiring Washington to take action on the matter, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said in a Feb. 23 interview with Fox News. “[Mexicans are] very particular about their sovereignty. And I get that. But if they’re not […]

PayPal Shares Jump Again After “Large Rival” Suitor Revealed As Stripe Update (1558ET): Bloomberg reports that payment processor Stripe has expressed interest in PayPal, a day after the outlet first reported that a “large rival” suitor was exploring a takeover of the payments platform. Bloomberg: STRIPE IS CONSIDERING AN ACQUISITION OF ALL OR PARTS OF PAYPAL STRIPE HAS EXPRESSED PRELIMINARY INTEREST: SOURCES Before the […]

Iran Strikes Covert Missile Deal With Moscow In Backchannel Rearmament Iran is squarely in the Trump administration’s crosshairs, and both Russia and China are to some degree coming to Tehran’s aid with some significant arms deals meant to potentially stave off future attack. Most significantly, the Financial Times is reporting that Russia will supply the Iranians with thousands of advanced shoulder-fired missiles in a deal […]

Judge In Kirk Murder Case Refuses To Disqualify Prosecutors Authored by Stacy Robinson via The Epoch Times, A judge ruled on Feb. 24 that a Utah deputy attorney general could continue prosecuting the man accused of murdering Charlie Kirk. Defense attorneys for Tyler Robinson, the accused shooter, had asked the judge in January to disqualify that member of the prosecution team—along with his entire office—after it was […]

Panama Seizes China-Linked Ports Amid Trump-Beijing Dispute Panama published a Supreme Court decision, issued in late January, that voided key port operations held by Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison. The Balboa and Cristobal terminals have become entangled in a legal dispute involving Washington and Beijing. The timing is important, as it comes about a month before President Trump’s planned late-March trip to China. On Monday, the […]

Winter Is Not Over The Northeast is digging out from a historic winter storm that buried Newark Liberty International Airport under nearly 30 inches of snow and left New York City with almost two feet. Socialist NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani said the blizzard could rank among the city’s 10 worst storms in 150 years, setting up an early test for his army of snow shovelers now tasked with clearing sidewalks and city streets. They […]

FedEx Seeks Tariff Refund With Lawsuit Against US Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times, FedEx is suing the United States Feb. 23, seeking a full refund on President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled his use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) lacked authorization. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Court of International Trade, seeks to recoup all duties paid by […]

Tonight’s State Of The Union: Here’s What To Watch As Trump Plans Two, Possibly Three Hour Speech  Update (1555ET): Tonight’s speech is expected to be over two hours, possibly approaching three, PBS News reports.  He’s also expected to call for a new form of personal and corporate tax cuts, Fox News reports, citing comments Trump made at the White House luncheon. *  *  * President Trump is set to deliver his first State […]

As Epstein Brokered Rothschild Bank Deals, DEA Ran Secret Probe Into $50M Laundering Scheme A newly uncovered DEA document from the DOJ’s Jeffrey Epstein files release reveals that Epstein was the subject of a secret, 5-year investigation by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) on suspicions of laundering approximately $50 million through a web of illicit drug and prostitution networks – yet federal prosecutors pursuing his 2019 […]

AI Is An ‘Orchestration’ Layer, Not ‘Displacement’: Anthropic Event Leaves Deutsche Doubting Software’s Imminent Demise After watching Anthropic’s Enterprise Agents briefing event, Deutsche Bank’s Software research team have even greater conviction that model providers are unlikely to displace software incumbents and are instead positioning themselves and their agents to be an orchestration layer on top of existing and incumbent […]

Huge Number Of US Allied Forces Exit Erbil Airbase, Fearing Iran Retaliation Via Middle East Eye A few days ago, amidst heightened US-Iran tensions, a military helicopter landed at the Erbil airport in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Although Western troops are rarely seen on the city’s streets, Erbil Air Base is heavily staffed with soldiers, and military helicopters fly overhead every day. Now, this airport could potentially […]

USS Gerald Ford Carrier Hit By ‘Sewage Crisis’ As Record Deployment Endures The USS Gerald R. Ford carrier is traversing the Mediterranean, reportedly set to dock in Israel’s port of Haifa next, following a prior stop in Crete early this week, after having been ordered from the Caribbean to the Middle East area as the US threatens Iran. Coming off Venezuela operations and being ordered to the Central Command (CENTCOM) has meant […]

Home Depot Posts Biggest EPS Beat In 16 Quarters As Big Remodeling Projects Sidelined Shares of Home Depot are up 3.5% in early U.S. trading after the home-improvement retailer reported what Goldman consumer expert Scott Feiler called the “biggest EPS beat in 16 quarters.” Feiler explained: We had positioning marked as just a 3 out of 10 in our pre-EPS positioning scorecard. That compared to LOW at a 5. Historically, we rarely […]

Iran ‘Ready’ For ‘Any Step’ To Achieve US Deal, Oil Slides Ahead Of Trump SOTU Tonight, when President Donald Trump will step into the House chamber to deliver his State of the Union address, it will undoubtedly be overshadowed by the prospect of coming conflict with Iran.  Tehran will be up late (or early), carefully scrutinizing every word of the US leader, anticipating the what’s next at a moment of massive Pentagon build-up […]

Yen Tumbles After Japan’s PM Voices Concerns About Further Rate Hikes To BOJ The yen was already sliding on Monday after Nikkei Asia reported that the sharp swing we saw in USDJPY in January was initiated by FX intervention from US Treasury Secretary Bessent not Tokyo, even if Washington, D.C. is open to coordinated forex moves if requested by Japan. FX traders took this as evidence that, contrary to previous conventional wisdom, […]

After Four Years Of War, Zelensky Wants All Land Back Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com, Tuesday marks four years since Russia first launched its invasion of Ukraine, and, despite President Trump promising to end the war quickly, there’s no end in sight to the conflict as Russian and Ukrainian leadership haven’t budged on their core demands for a peace deal. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reaffirmed in an interview […]

Former Norway PM Attempts Suicide After Epstein-Linked Raid, Corruption Charges: Report Norway’s former Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland was hospitalized a week ago after a failed suicide attempt, days after he was charged with “gross corruption” after a police probe into his ties with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, local outlet iNyheter reports.  Thorbjorn Jagland, a former prime minister of Norway, in Oslo February […]

1, 2, 3, 4, 5 And 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 By Michael Every of Rabobank Depressingly, today marks the start of the fifth year of the Ukraine War: a battered Ukraine is still standing against a bruised Russia; the US is still aiming for a peace deal so it can pivot to Asia; and Europe –even as it knows it has to look after both Ukraine and its own conventional defenses after decades of having this provided for it– is still trying to get its […]

Despite Crazy Revisions, Consumer Confidence Rebounds From January’s Doom After Boomers and Gen X dragged The Conference Board Confidence measure down to eight month lows to end 2025, expectations were for a rebound to start 2026. Instead, January was a bloodbath with all the cohorts tumbling. Today sees February’s data released with expectations for a rebound, particularly in expectations… and the consensus was right. The […]

Moscow Claims NATO Nuke Smuggling Plot Into Ukraine – UK Denounces ‘Heinous’ Charge It’s hard to know what’s true amid the fog of war, but when Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) comes out with whatever new accusation it lodges against Ukraine it usually ‘goes big’. That’s true of the latest statement Tuesday, which happens to mark the fourth anniversary of the full-scale Ukraine invasion of 2022. The SVR is newly […]

Rogue AI Just Yeeted $250,000 Into the Void Solana’s memecoin casino has seen its fair share of rug pulls, pump-and-dumps, and surrealist performance art. But this weekend, it got something new: an AI agent that appears to have fumbled a quarter-million dollars in tokens while trying to tip a stranger 4 SOL. The agent, dubbed Lobstar Wilde, was built by Nik Pash – an OpenAI employee and former head of AI at the coding agent […]

Novo Nordisk Extends Slide After Announcing Price-Cuts For Blockbuster Obesity Drugs Novo Nordisk shares in Copenhagen can’t catch a bid. The liquidation is accelerating again after a Bloomberg headline on Tuesday morning: the Danish drugmaker will slash U.S. list prices for Wegovy and Ozempic next year. The move suggests that the new CEO is pursuing market share amid intensifying competition in the GLP-1 space. Jamey Millar, […]

Despite Rise In December, US Home Prices Saw Weakest Full-Year Gain Since 2011 For the fifth straight month, US home prices across its 20 largest cities rose in December (according to the admittedly lagged and smoothed Case-Shiller data released today). The 0.47% MoM rise is down very mopdestly from the upwardly revised +0.53% MoM in November Source: Bloomberg However, “national home prices grew just 1.3% for the year – the […]

Female British Cop Defends Freedom Of Speech In “Muslim Area” Of London Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news, The Metropolitan Police has so far not commented on the viral video of a female police officer defending freedom of speech surrounded by a crowd of angry Muslim men in Whitechapel but it has questions to answer. The Mail ran the video yesterday. This is fundamentally a Christian country. We will not […]

Jittery Futures Erase Gains Amid AI Doomsday Fears A short rebound in stocks fizzled after Monday’s drop, as worries about the disruptive impact of artificial intelligence continued to unsettle markets which digested yesterday’s AI scare, and await today’s Claude / Anthropic presentation, while preparing for tonight’s State of the Union address (“SOTU”). Some have suggested that Trump may attack power generation risks […]