Baltic
Dry Index. 2567 +44
Brent Crude 95.48
Spot Gold 4813 Spot Silver 80.01
US 2 Year Yield 3.71 -0.07
US Federal Debt. 39.140 trillion
US GDP 31.342 trillion.
"The tragic lesson of guilty men walking free in this country has not been lost on the criminal community."
Richard M. Nixon, 37th President of the United States.
8:30 AM Update. Approx. 15 minutes.
US Opens Fire, Disables & Seizes an Iranian
Ship Attempting to Break the Blockade | 19 April 2026
US Opens Fire, Disables & Seizes an Iranian Ship Attempting to Break the Blockade | 19 April 2026
This morning’s big news is the US Navy firing on an Iranian blockade runner and seizing the damaged commercial ship.
Needless to say, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed.
Iran hasn’t yet retaliated for the seizure but has threatened to do so.
Asian markets have reacted calmly so far, but the trading week is off to a nervous start.
Elsewhere, rapidly rising concern on northern hemisphere food production.
Asia markets mostly rise as U.S.-Iran tensions
escalate after ship seizure
Published Sun, Apr 19 2026 7:48 PM EDT
Asia-Pacific markets were mostly higher
Monday, as investors continue to keep a cautious eye on developments in the
Middle East amid renewed tensions between Iran and the U.S.
President Donald Trump said Sunday
that a U.S
Navy guided missile destroyer had fired on and disabled an Iranian-flagged cargo
ship in the Gulf of Oman before Marines boarded and seized the vessel.
The seizure is an escalation of the
blockade and comes after Iran fired upon commercial vessels attempting to
transit the Strait of Hormuz earlier Sunday. The strait is between the Persian
Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.
Since last week, the U.S. has been
operating a naval blockade of ships entering and exiting Iranian ports. Iran
views the ongoing blockade as a breach of the ceasefire reached by the U.S. and
Iran, and cites this as one of its reasons for calling
off the expected negotiations on Monday in Islamabad.
Trump warned on Sunday he would “knock out every single
Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran” if Tehran did not agree to
Washington’s terms to end the conflict.
West Texas Intermediate futures
added 6.20% to $89.05 per barrel as of 11:45 p.m. ET. Brent crude rose 5.40%
higher to $95.26 per barrel.
South Korea’s Kospi was 1.03% higher while
the small-cap Kosdaq advanced 0.71%. SK Hynix was among the best
performers on the Kospi Index, rising over 3% following news that it has
started mass production of next-gen AI server memory designed for Nvidia’s Vera Rubin platform.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 1.03%, while
the Topix gained 0.65%. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was little changed.
Mainland China’s CSI 300 index gained
0.54%, while Hong Kong’s Hang
Seng index was 0.89% higher.
China held its benchmark lending
rates unchanged
for an 11th straight month, as escalating Middle East tensions drove energy
prices higher and weighed on the growth outlook.
The decision came after the world’s second-largest
economy grew 5% in the first quarter, accelerating from 4.5% in the
prior quarter, and at the top end of its full-year target range. Beijing
lowered its growth target for 2026 to a range of
4.5% to 5%, the least ambitious goal on record since
the 1990s.
India’s Nifty 50 was marginally lower,
down 0.1%.
Overnight on Wall Street, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures shed
425 points, or 0.9%. S&P
500 futures lost 0.8%, while Nasdaq-100 futures fell
0.65%.
During Friday’s regular session, the S&P 500 jumped 1.2% to
close at 7,126.06, crossing the 7,100 threshold for the first time. The Nasdaq Composite gained
1.52% and settled at 24,468.48 for its 13th consecutive winning day and its
longest positive streak since 1992. Both indexes posted fresh intraday and
closing records.
Asia
markets mostly rise as U.S.-Iran tensions escalate after ship seizure
Oil prices jump after Iran and U.S. attack
commercial ships as tensions escalate over Strait of Hormuz
Published Sun, Apr 19 2026 6:07 PM EDT
Crude oil prices surged Sunday, as the
U.S. and Iran teetered on the brink of a renewed war after attacks on
commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
West Texas Intermediate futures
for May delivery rose about 7% to $89.74 per barrel by 6:45 p.m. ET.
International benchmark Brent for
June delivery advanced nearly 5.8% to $95.59.
The U.S. Navy on Sunday fired on an
Iranian container ship in the Gulf of Oman, and the Marines later took custody
of the ship, President Donald
Trump said. The ship had tried to get past the U.S. naval blockade of
Iran’s ports, Trump said in a Truth Social post.
The U.S. seizure
of the ship came after Iran attacked
a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday. Revolutionary Guard
gunboats fired on the tanker and a container ship was hit by an unknown
projectile, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Operations Centre.
Trump on Sunday threatened again to blow
up every power plant and bridge in Iran if its leaders do not accept a deal
with the U.S. The ceasefire agreement between the U.S. and Iran will expire
this week. Trump called Iran’s weekend attacks on ships a “total violation” of
the truce.
It is unclear whether the U.S. and Iran
will meet for a second round of peace negotiations in Pakistan.
Trump said the U.S. and Iran would hold
talks in Islamabad on Monday. But Iran said it would not attend due to the
ongoing U.S. naval blockade, among other grievances, according to state news
agency IRNA.
The sudden escalation in tensions over the
weekend came after the U.S. and Iran appeared to be nearing an agreement at the
end of last week.
Oil prices tumbled on Friday after Iran
suddenly declared the strait completely open to commercial traffic in response
to the U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement in Lebanon. But it quickly became
clear that Tehran was imposing the same conditions for transit through the
strait as before.
Trump, meanwhile, refused to lift the U.S.
naval blockade of Iran. Tehran reversed course and said the strait would remain
closed until the blockade is lifted.
Oil
surges after Iran and U.S. attack ships as tensions escalate over Hormuz
Dow futures fall over 350 points as Iranian war
tensions escalate: Live updates
Updated Mon, Apr 20 2026 12:01 AM EDT
Stock futures fell early Monday as
tensions between the U.S. and Iran escalated over the weekend with the seizure
of an Iranian-flagged cargo ship.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures shed
358 points, or 0.72%. S&P
500 futures lost 0.58%, while Nasdaq-100 futures pulled
back by 0.53%.
President Donald Trump on Sunday said the
U.S. had fired
on and seized an Iranian-flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman. This
comes after Iran
declined to join another round of peace talks in Pakistan planned by
the U.S.
The Iranian ship “is under U.S. Treasury
Sanctions because of their prior history of illegal activity. We have full
custody of the ship, and are seeing what’s on board,” Trump said in Truth
Social post.
Trump also threatened to blow up all power
plants and bridges in Iran if the country didn’t agree to a deal with the U.S.
A ceasefire between the two countries will expire this week.
Crude prices surged in early trading. West
Texas Intermediate futures popped 8% to $90.54 per barrel. International Brent
advanced 6% to $96.50.
Wall Street is coming off a winning week,
with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite climbing to all-time highs following
a ceasefire between Iran and Lebanon. At the time, Iran had declared that the
Strait of Hormuz was reopened, though by Saturday vessel traffic through that
key shipping lane was restricted again, with state media saying the U.S. “did
not fulfill their obligations.”
Trump has reiterated that the U.S.
blockade of the strait would remain in place until Iran agreed to U.S. demands,
despite the Iranian declarations.
More
Stock
market today: Live updates
Next, is the market rigged? Well yes, but
haven’t we been here before.
Traders placed over $1bn in perfectly timed bets
on the Iran war. What is going on?
Sat 18 Apr 2026 12.00 BST
Sixteen bets made $100,000 each accurately
predicting the timing of the US airstrikes against Iran on 27 February. Later,
a single user would make over $550,000 after betting that Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei would topple, just moments before his assassination by Israeli forces.
On 7 April, right before Donald Trump announced a temporary ceasefire with
Iran, traders bet $950m that oil prices would come down. They did.
These bets and other well-timed wagers
accurately predicted the precise timing of major developments in the US-Israel
war with Iran, creating huge windfalls and raising concerns among lawmakers and
experts over potential insider trading.
Betting – once largely siloed to sporting
events – has now spread to include contracts on news events where insider
information could give some traders an advantage.
The proliferation of online betting
markets like Polymarket and Kalshi has allowed bets on virtually any news
event. It’s also easier than ever to buy commodity derivatives like oil
futures, where traders gamble on what the price of oil will be in the future.
Leaders of some US federal agencies and
some members of Congress said they want to crack down on suspicious trading
taking place across different marketplaces, but it’s unclear how much headway
regulators will make.
“Is the problem that we don’t have
legislation or that we don’t have enforcement capabilities?” said Joshua Mitts,
a law professor at Columbia University. “To have a law that can’t really be
enforced effectively given the technological limitations, it’s sort of putting
the cart before the horse.”
Perfect timing
On the night of 27 February, the day
before the US and Israel would carry out strikes on Iran, an unusual influx of
about 150 accounts on Polymarket placed bets that the US would strike Iran the
next day. A New York Times analysis found the bets totaled $855,000, with 16
accounts pocketing more than $100,000 each.
Soon after, a single anonymous Polymarket
user, under an account named “Magamyman”, made over $553,000 after betting that
Khamenei would be “removed” from power just moments before he was killed by an
Israeli airstrike, according to a complaint filed to the Commodity Futures
Trading Commission (CFTC), the federal agency that regulates futures markets,
by Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group. The complaint also cites a
crypto-analytics firm that identified six “suspected insiders” who made a total
of $1.2m on Polymarket after Khamenei was killed.
The well-timed surge of wagers were seen
again on 7 April, when at least 50 Polymarket accounts placed bets that the US
and Iran would reach a ceasefire hours before Trump would announce it in a
Truth Social post. Earlier, the president had said “a whole civilization will
die tonight” if Iran did not open the strait of Hormuz.
But traders weren’t just active on
Polymarket: there were similar surges of oil futures trading activity just
hours before Trump announced updates to the conflict that would lower oil
prices.
On 23 March, traders placed $580m in bets on the oil
futures market just 15 minutes before Trump said on social media that the US
was having “productive” talks with Iran, according to the Financial Times. The
traders made a windfall after Trump’s comments triggered a sell-off in the oil
markets that made oil prices plummet.
The same thing happened again on 7 April,
this time when traders spent $950m on oil
futures, betting that the price of oil would fall just hours before the
ceasefire with Iran was announced.
More
Onion Futures Act
The Onion Futures Act is
a United
States law banning the trading of futures contracts on onions as well as
"motion picture box office receipts".[1]
In 1955, two onion traders, Sam Siegel
and Vincent
Kosuga, cornered the onion
futures market on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The resulting
regulatory actions led to the passing of the act on August 28, 1958. As of
May 2025, it remains in effect.[1]
The law was
amended in 2010 to
add motion picture box
office futures to
the list of banned futures contracts, in response to lobbying efforts by
the Motion Picture Association of America.[2]
Onion trading
Onion futures trading began on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in the
mid-1940s as an attempt to replace the income lost when the butter futures
contract ceased.[3] By the
mid-1950s, onion futures contracts were the most traded product on the Chicago
Mercantile Exchange. In 1955, they accounted for 20% of its trades.[4]
Market manipulation
In the fall of 1955, Siegel and Kosuga
bought so many onions and onion futures that they controlled 99.3% of the
available onions in Chicago.[5] Millions
of pounds (thousands
of metric
tons)
of onions were shipped to Chicago to cover their purchases. By late 1955, they
had stored 30 million pounds (14,000 t) of onions in Chicago.[6] They soon
changed course and convinced onion growers to begin purchasing their inventory
by threatening to flood the market with onions if they did not.[6] Siegel and
Kosuga told the growers that they would hold the rest of their inventory in
order to support the price of onions
As the growers began buying onions, Siegel
and Kosuga accumulated short positions on a large
number of onion contracts.[6] They also
arranged to have their stores of onions reconditioned because they had started
to spoil. They shipped them outside of Chicago to have them cleaned and then
repackaged and re-shipped back to Chicago. The "new" shipments of
onions caused many futures traders to think that there was an excess of onions
and further drove down onion prices in Chicago. By the end of the onion season
in March 1956, Siegel and Kosuga had flooded the markets with their onions and
driven the price of 50 pounds (23 kg) of onions down to 10 cents a bag.[6] In August
1955, the same quantity of "Odorous Onions" had been priced at $2.75
a bag.[7] So many
onions were shipped to Chicago in order to depress prices that there were onion
shortages in other parts of the United States.[8]
Siegel and Kosuga made millions of dollars
on the transaction due to their short position on onion futures.[5] At one
point, however, 50 pounds (23 kg) of onions were selling in Chicago for
less than the bags that held them (effectively, for a negative price). This drove many
onion farmers into bankruptcy.[5] A public
outcry ensued among onion farmers who were left with large amounts of worthless
inventory.[9] Many of the
farmers had to pay to dispose of the large amounts of onions that they had
purchased and grown.[10]
More
In other news.
Record US drought sparks worries about fires,
water supply and food prices
Sat, April 18, 2026 at 1:58 PM GMT+1
Drought in the contiguous United States
has reached record levels for this time of year, weather data shows.
Meteorologists said it's a bad sign for the upcoming wildfire season, food
prices and western water issues.
More than 61% of the Lower 48 states is in
moderate to exceptional drought — including 97% of the Southeast and two-thirds
of the West — according to the U.S. Drought
Monitor.
It's the highest levels for this time of year since the drought monitor began
in 2000.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration's comprehensive Palmer
Drought Severity Index not only hit its highest level for March since
records started in 1895, but last month was the third-driest month recorded
regardless of time of year. It trailed only the famed Dust Bowl months of July
and August 1934.
Because of record
heat,
much of the West has had exceptionally
low levels of snow in
the first few months of the year, which is usually how the region stores water
for the summer. A different drought — connected to the jet stream keeping
storms further north — has put the South from Texas all the way to the East
Coast into a separate drought that just happens to coincide with what's going
on in the West, said Brian Fuchs, a climatologist with the National Drought
Mitigation Center.
It would take 19 inches of rain in one
month to break the drought in eastern Texas and more than a foot of rain to
solve the deficit for most of the Southeast, NOAA
calculated.
“Right now 61% of the country is in
drought and that’s steadily been going up for the calendar year,” Fuchs said.
“We just haven’t seen too many springs where this amount of the country has
been in this kind of shape.”
Sticking out like a sore thumb is a highly
technical but crucial measurement of “the sponginess'' of the atmosphere — or
how much moisture the hot, dry air is sucking up from the land it's baking.
It's called vapor pressure deficit. It's 77% above normal and more than 25%
higher than the previous record for January through March in the West, said
UCLA hydroclimatologist Park Williams.
That level of moisture-sucking from the
ground “wouldn't have appeared possible” before now, Williams said.
Drought usually peaks in summer, not
spring, and that's what worries meteorologists.
More
Record US drought
sparks worries about fires, water supply and food prices
US renews Russian oil waiver after pressure from
countries dealing with Iran war price shocks
WASHINGTON, April 17 (Reuters) - The Trump
administration on Friday renewed a waiver allowing countries to buy sanctioned
Russian oil at sea for about a month, even as lawmakers accused the government of
going easy on Moscow as its war on Ukraine grinds on.
The Treasury Department's waiver lets
countries purchase Russian oil and petroleum products loaded on vessels as of
Friday through May 16. It replaces a 30-day waiver that expired
on April 11 and excludes transactions involving Iran, Cuba and North Korea.
The move is part of the administration's
effort to control global energy prices that have shot higher during the
U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. It came
after countries in Asia, suffering from the global energy shock, pressed
Washington to allow alternative supplies to reach markets.
REVERSAL BY TREASURY
"As negotiations (with Iran)
accelerate, Treasury wants to ensure oil is available to those who need
it," a Treasury Department spokesperson said.
Just two days earlier, Treasury Secretary
Scott Bessent said Washington would not be renewing the waiver
for Russian oil and another for Iranian oil, which is set to expire on Sunday.
More
Russian billionaire says drone attacks affect
nitrogen fertiliser trade
MOSCOW, April 17 - Drone attacks in recent
months are having a significant impact on the Russian nitrogen fertiliser
industry, billionaire Andrei Melnichenko, founder of fertiliser producer
EuroChem, told reporters on Friday.
Shortages and rising prices due to the
blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, conduit for about a third of global
fertiliser trade, are a major concern in terms of global food security.
Russia accounts for about one-fifth of the
global trade, but limited capacity, domestic export caps and recent Ukrainian
attacks on major plants all constrain its ability to ramp up fertiliser output.
"Well-known events occurring on our
country's territory are leading to increased drone attacks on Russian
(fertiliser) enterprises," Melnichenko told reporters on the sidelines of
a conference in Moscow, adding that the impact was "significant
enough".
"Well-known events occurring on our
country's territory are leading to increased drone attacks on Russian
(fertiliser) enterprises," Melnichenko told reporters on the sidelines of
a conference in Moscow, adding that the impact was "significant
enough".
A Ukrainian drone attack on Dorogobuzh,
one of Russia's largest fertiliser plants, owned by major producer Acron, on
February 25 killed seven people and has temporarily knocked out about 5% of
the country's overall production capacity.
Dorogobuzh accounts for 11% of Russia's
ammonium nitrate output and 9% of its NPK fertiliser production, a mixture of
nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. The plant is expected to be operational
again in May.
EuroChem is building a major new
production plant with a capacity of 1.1 million tons of ammonia and 1.4
million tons of urea in the Leningrad region, which has been a frequent target
of drone attacks in recent months.
Melnichenko said that although prices for
all three major types of fertilisers had risen, in his view the effective
closure of the Strait of Hormuz has had no impact on the trade in potash, while
disruption to phosphate trading was temporary as Middle East producers switch
to ports outside the Gulf.
More
Russian
billionaire says drone attacks affect nitrogen fertiliser trade
As fuel prices rise, a new technique of gas theft
is spreading
Fri, April 17, 2026 at 8:03 PM GMT+1
Tasi Malala was driving with his
girlfriend to grab some breakfast outside Scottsdale, Arizona, last month when
he noticed that his Toyota pickup was very low on gas and quickly getting
lower. He pulled into a station and started to fill up with premium. That’s
when he spotted the leak.
“I looked under my truck, and it’s
literally gas just pouring out the bottom,” said Malala, 31. “It’s pouring out
like crazy. I was freaking out.”
It turned out he had been a target of a
newly popular way to steal gas: just drilling a hole. All the thief would have
required was a few minutes alone with a handheld electric drill and a gas can -
or even some milk jugs. Malala was left with a perfectly round hole in his tank
and a nearly $3,000 repair bill. His truck was in the shop for about a week.
This sort of drilling-and-draining
thievery appears to be increasingly common as the war with Iran has pushed
gasoline prices to their highest level in four years, and as older - and
less-destructive - methods of stealing fuel have gotten harder to pull off.
In Los Angeles, where gas prices are among
the nation’s highest at about $6 a gallon for regular, service adviser Lupes
Armas said his repair shop is fixing a drilled-out gas tank about once a week
these days. It used to be a couple times a year at most.
“It’s definitely a problem,” Armas said.
Insurers are starting to see more damage
claims, too, although at this point, just weeks into the war and spiking gas
prices, the reports are mostly anecdotal, according to the National Association
of Mutual Insurance Companies. It will take time to see how bad it gets.
“Let’s hope this is a short-lived
phenomena,” said Brett Odom, policy vice president at the insurance group.
The repairs are covered by comprehensive
auto policies, experts say.
The drilled-out gas tanks are similar to
the occasional waves of stolen catalytic converters, which can be removed from
vehicles with a power saw and then sold for the precious metals inside, said
Bob Passmore, vice president of personal lines for the American Property
Casualty Insurance Association.
----The shift to drilling holes in fuel
tanks comes as an old method of stealing gas has faded: siphoning.
In the 1970s, the country’s chronic gas
shortages led to a surge in people dropping plastic tubing - even garden hoses
- into the gas tanks of parked cars to drain their fuel. The image of someone
sucking on the end of a hose to initiate the suction (and spitting out the gas
when it reached their lips) became a pop culture trope.
The ploy was annoying, but it didn’t cause
permanent damage.
Car owners responded by buying locking gas
caps and keeping a watchful eye on their parked vehicles.
Car owners responded by buying locking gas
caps and keeping a watchful eye on their parked vehicles.
Malala said he definitely would’ve
preferred that the thief who struck his pickup had gone with the older method.
“I wish they would’ve just siphoned it,”
he said.
But siphoning today is much harder than it
used to be.
Most newer vehicles have narrow, curved
filler necks leading to the gas tank, making it difficult to force a tube
inside. Some vehicles also have internal flappers or baffles to thwart
siphoning. And anti-pollution regulations mean fuel systems are often better
sealed.
More
As fuel prices
rise, a new technique of gas theft is spreading
Global Inflation/Stagflation/Recession
Watch.
Given
our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians.
More companies go bust in March as fears mount over Iran war impact
17 April 2026
Company failures have jumped higher again in March due to a surge in firms
collapsing into administration as experts warned more may go bust as the Iran war and soaring
wage bills send costs surging.
Latest data from the
Insolvency Service shows the number of company insolvencies rose 7%
month-on-month in March to 2,022.
Company administrations
surged 52% between February and March to 235, and were 82% higher when compared
with March 2025, while compulsory liquidations jumped 18%.
Company voluntary
arrangements (CVAs) doubled during the month to 20, the figures showed.
Fuel and energy costs have been jumping higher due to the Iran war,
which has hit some sectors hard already, such as manufacturing.
Renowned ceramics
manufacturer Denby called in administrators late last month after struggling
with rising costs, with sky-high energy prices said to be a key factor.
The Insolvency Service
said administration figures were partly skewed by a one-off event, with more
than 100 connected companies in the real estate sector collapsing last month.
But experts warned the
underlying picture is worrying for businesses as cost pressures bite.
Tom Russell, president of
restructuring professionals trade group R3, said: “While it may be too early to
see the full impact of the worsening economic situation in the formal
insolvency statistics, energy and fuel costs have risen significantly, and for
many businesses this has come at the same time as customers are becoming more
cautious with their spending.
“That combination is
extremely challenging, particularly for businesses with limited financial
headroom.”
Fuel and transport costs
are also seen as a financial threat for many, coming on top of big increases in
wage bills, according to Kroll.
Sarah Rayment, co-head of
global restructuring at Kroll, said: “As we saw after the beginning of the
Ukrainian conflict, when fuel prices surged, there was a direct impact on
logistics, haulage and delivery businesses.
“There are already big
companies saying that they will have no choice but to pass costs on to
customers.
“It’s a lot more
challenging for small and mid-sized companies and may sadly push many to the
edge.”
More companies go bust in March as fears mount over Iran war impact
A world going broke: IMF says America’s $39 trillion national debt is
actually a global problem—and AI may be the only rescue
Updated Thu, April
16, 2026 at 8:48 PM GMT+1
America’s $39 trillion
national debt has become a familiar political football—batted around in budget
negotiations, invoked at congressional hearings, and largely ignored between
elections. But what the International Monetary Fund laid out Wednesday is something
more unsettling: The U.S. isn’t an outlier. It’s just the most visible symptom
of a global disease.
At the spring launch of
its biannual Fiscal Monitor, IMF Fiscal Affairs Director Rodrigo Valdés opened with a stark framing: “The world economy is being tested again with the consequences of the
war in the Middle East—and this is a world that has less degrees of freedom as
public finances are more stretched in many, many countries.”
The fund projected global
public debt will hit 99% of world GDP by 2028, breaching the 100% threshold
sooner than previously forecast. Under stress scenarios representing the 95th
percentile of plausible outcomes, that figure could spike to 121% within three
years.
America’s tab keeps growing
The U.S. remains the
marquee case study in fiscal dysfunction. Washington’s deficit narrowed
slightly last year—from close to 8% to below 7% of GDP—partly boosted by tariff
revenues flowing into federal coffers, but the improvement was fleeting. “Our
forecast is that this deficit goes back to around 7.5% and stays there for the
near future,” Valdés told reporters, with U.S. debt now on track to exceed 125% of GDP
this year and potentially 142% by 2031.
The adjustment needed to
simply stabilize—not reduce—that trajectory would require fiscal tightening of
roughly 4 percentage points of GDP. “That is not minor, of course,” Valdés said. It would rank among the largest peacetime fiscal adjustments
in modern American history. Already, warning signals are flickering in bond
markets. The premium U.S. Treasuries once commanded over other advanced-economy
debt is narrowing. “These are signs that markets are not as sanguine—as
forgiving—as they were in the past,” Valdés said. “The more time passes, the
more pressure you could face down the road.”
His message to Congress
was direct: “This cannot wait forever.”
More
Technology
Update.
With events happening fast in the
development of solar power and graphene, among other things, I’ve added this
section Updates as they get reported.
New government rules to track e-bike and e-scooter fires after
deadly surge
E-bike and e-scooter fires reached a record high in 2025
16 April 2026
Fire brigades across Britain will now be
required to record incidents involving batteries from e-bikes and e-scooters, the government has announced.
Fire Minister Samantha Dixon said that
the existing data platform would be updated to include a specific section
for lithium-ion batteries, also covering
other electric vehicles.
This move comes amid growing safety
concerns over lithium-ion power sources, which can spread rapidly and emit
toxic fumes, and a surge in related blazes.
Lesley Rudd, chief executive of
Electrical Safety First, welcomed the move.
She said that “substandard” e-bikes and
e-scooters were “flooding the market”, making it “imperative” that fires
involving them were recorded.
”For years, the fire reporting system
has desperately needed modernising, so we are encouraged to see the Government
will now capture battery fires, which will allow us to better understand the
scale of the problem,” she said.
The urgency of the situation was
highlighted in 2025 by the death of Eden Abera Siem, 30, after a fire likely
caused by a charging e-bike battery at her north London home.
A recent investigation revealed a
significant increase in such incidents, with e-bike and e-scooter fires
reaching new highs in 2025, recording 432 and 147 respectively, based on data
from 37 out of 49 UK fire brigades.
In response to a parliamentary question
from shadow transport secretary Richard Holden, Ms Dixon said that the Fire and
Rescue Data Platform, launched last November, would be enhanced to identify
“whether the source of ignition was a battery and, where relevant, whether that
battery was on charge at the time of the incident”.
She added: “These additions will ensure
such information is collected and reported consistently across services.”
However, Mr Holden expressed concerns
about the current data deficit.
“Battery fires can be more complex for
emergency services to deal with, so the fact the system currently doesn’t
properly record whether vehicle fires involve batteries means policy is being
shaped by part of, rather than the full, picture,” he said.
New government rules to track e-bike and e-scooter fires after deadly
surge | The Independent
Perth's Battery Recycling Fire: 80 Tons of Lithium-ion Batteries
Perth's Battery Recycling Fire: 80 Tons of Lithium-ion Batteries -
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world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt Clocks
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"When a President does it, that means that it is not
illegal."
Richard M. Nixon, 37th President of the United States.
