There are fears that a period of elevated oil and gas prices could trigger a damaging wave of global inflation.
Oil prices have risen more than 5 percent following an Israeli strike on Iran’s South Pars gasfield as the United States-Israeli war on the country continues to escalate.
Brent crude, the international standard, rose 5 percent to $108.66 a barrel on Wednesday, while US West Texas Intermediate crude CLc1, the price barometer for US oil, gained 2.5 percent to $98.65, widening its discount to Brent to the largest since May 2019 on fears of a prolonged conflict.
Another West Coast, Messed Coast™ city has voted to destroy the traditional Western family. And if, after reading this, you don’t believe it, then you’ve failed the test of pattern recognition.
The Washington state capital, Olympia’s, city council voted recently to put a few more shovel-fulls of dirt on the grave of the traditional nuclear family in the name of equity.
To say it’s not an effort to do so is a lie to yourself about the intentions of the left. And it pushes the idea that men with three or four wives, men living with teenage boys, and “non-normative,” loving relationships are just like a family with the Western, Biblically-based trad home of a mom and dad.
US Intelligence Chief Tulsi Gabbard, presenting the intelligence community’s 2026 Annual Threat Assessment, said that Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and Pakistan are the most significant nuclear threats to the United States.
While testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, Gabbard said, “The intelligence community assesses that Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan have been researching and developing an array of novel, advanced, or traditional missile delivery systems, with nuclear and conventional payloads, that put our homeland within range.”
Gabbard said that China and Russia are developing advanced delivery systems that are capable of penetrating or bypassing US missile defences.
“North Korea’s ICBMs can already reach US soil, and it is committed to expanding its nuclear arsenal,” she added.
A sharp clash has erupted after a senior counterterrorism official stepped down and issued a resignation letter criticizing U.S. involvement in Iran, prompting a forceful rebuke from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
McConnell Condemns Kent’s Resignation Letter
Mitch McConnell blasted the resignation of Joe Kent, arguing the contents of Kent’s letter crossed a serious line.
On the evening of March 17, the last Wednesday of the year before Nowruz, Iranians in various cities celebrated the long-standing tradition of Chaharshanbe Suri by jumping over fires and enjoying festivities, despite the war and the painful memory of the January massacres fresh in their minds.
from www.euronews.com
With AI becoming increasingly present in everyday life, the race to build AI infrastructure is only speeding up. At the center of that race is the rapid creation of data centers, with new ones opening on a nearly weekly basis in America. But as more data centers begin to integrate AI infrastructure, the amount of electricity required to operate them is growing at an alarming rate. Data centers are now expected to account for roughly 40 percent of US power demand growth in 2026, and the gap between what we need and what we can build is widening fast.
On today’s episode of Explain to Shane, I am joined by Lynne Kiesling, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she leads the Electricity Technology, Regulation, and Market Design Working Group. Kiesling also directs the Institute for Regulatory Law and Economics at the Northwestern University Center on Law, Business, and Economics, and is a member of the US Department of Energy’s Electricity Advisory Committee. I am also joined by Steve DelBianco, president and CEO of NetChoice and a seasoned expert on internet governance. Their combined expertise on this issue can help us understand how we can power the AI revolution.
The US president has warned of an attack on the South Pars area if Iran targets Qatar in response to Israeli strikes
The US will “massively blow up” the South Pars gas field – the world’s largest – if Iran continues to strike Qatari energy facilities, President Donald Trump has warned.
Israel launched strikes on Wednesday on Iran’s facilities in the South Pars gas field in the Gulf, which it shares with Qatar. The South Pars spans almost 10,000 sq km and hosts an estimated 1,800 trillion cubic feet of gas. In response, Iran attacked a Qatari LNG facility and has threatened counterstrikes on key energy infrastructure across the Gulf region.
US President Donald Trump says Israel was solely responsible for Wednesday’s attacks on Iran and the world’s largest gas field, the South Pars, but has vowed to “entirely blow up” the facility if Tehran continues to target Qatari LNG facilities again. Follow our live blog.
from www.euronews.com
Democrats’ refusal to fund the Department of Homeland Security has exceeded any hypothesis of good faith. It is an unpatriotic attack on America’s frontline of defense during a time of war and potential Iranian sleeper cells, and an inexcusable burden on the department’s employees.
Last week, all Senate Democrats, except John Fetterman, again voted to block funding for DHS.
Financed in part by malign foreign powers who seek to defeat the United States, radical left activists have co-opted the Democratic Party. Rep. Brad Schneider of Illinois, head of the supposedly centrist New Democrat Coalition, typifies the illogic. “My concern about DHS is their absolute disregard of the Constitution and American citizens’ civil rights,” he said, adding, “So until we see officers who abuse citizens’ civil rights held to full account, until we restore full congressional oversight, I’m not giving another penny to ICE and CBP.”
On Wednesday night, the Washington Post reported that “U.S. officials detected unidentified drones above the Washington Army base where Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth live” and that those officials have not yet determined where they came from.
Joe Kent, former director of President Donald Trump’s National Counterterrorism Center, said Wednesday that information on Iran originating from Israeli officials and amplified through U.S. media and policy circles played a central role in shaping the president’s decision to carry out military action.
Kent, speaking on the Tucker Carlson Show following his resignation on Tuesday, argued that there was no U.S. intelligence showing Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States and suggested U.S. action was influenced by “an ecosystem of information” tied to Israeli interests and bogus intelligence.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel lashed out after U.S. President Donald Trump said he could do “whatever he wants” with the Caribbean island and that Washington could take “imminent action” against it.
Díaz-Canel said on X that the Trump administration “publicly threatens” Cuba’s government almost daily with overthrowing it, and any act of aggression “will clash with an impregnable resistance.”
The comments came after new threats by Trump and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said Cuba’s socialist economic model needs to “change dramatically.” The same day, another Latin American country denounced Díaz-Canel’s government and said it would close its embassy.
Election experts from around the country are sounding alarms that the SAVE Act (full name: SAVE Trump’s Ass From The Epstein Files Act) would cause mayhem and set up the elections and the country for failure. In large part, this is because many of the act’s requirements are unfunded.
The so-called SAVE America Act, which President Donald Trump is relentlessly pushing, would create chaos for state and local elections administrators by immediately imposing several new requirements without adding funding, former North Carolina elections chief Karen Brinson Bell said on a press call Tuesday organized by Washington U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell.
“I cannot emphasize enough the Herculean effort that the SAVE America Act would present for election officials across this country,” Brinson Bell, who now advises election officials as a co-founder of the group Advance Elections, said. “Please do not set our country or these public servants up for failure. Bring us to the table. Develop this legislation properly and provide adequate funding and resources so we can all succeed.”
China is making a big push for widespread adoption of artificial intelligence, and the nation’s tech powerhouses are holding public events to help everyday people get OpenClaw, the viral personal digital assistant.
“It seems everyone around me – my colleagues and friends — has it,” new user Gong Sheng said as he waited to get set up. “I don’t want to be left behind.”
At a gathering in Beijing hosted on Tuesday by internet giant Baidu, Gong was one of hundreds of people lined up to get OpenClaw installed onto their laptops and phones.
Joe Kent, Director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, has resigned from the Trump administration.
Kent said he “cannot in good conscience” back Trump’s war in Iran.
Iran “posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent posted on social media Tuesday.
Kent is a former political candidate with connections to right-wing extremists who was confirmed to his post last July on a 52-44 vote.
Take a look:
After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today.
I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this… pic.twitter.com/prtu86DpEr
After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today.
I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.
I support the values and the foreign policies that you campaigned on in 2016, 2020, 2024, which you enacted in your first term. Until June of 2025, you understood that the wars in the Middle East were a trap that robbed America of the precious lives of our patriots and depleted the wealth and prosperity of our nation.
In your first administration, you understood better than any modern President how to decisively apply military power without getting us drawn into never-ending wars. You demonstrated this by killing Qasam Solamani and by defeating ISIS.
Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran. This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that should you strike now, there was a clear path to a swift victory. This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women. We cannot make this mistake again.
As a veteran who deployed to combat 11 times and as a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel, I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives.
I pray that you will reflect upon what we are doing in Iran, and who we are doing it for. The time for bold action is now. You can reverse course and chart a new path for our nation, or you can allow us to slip further toward decline and chaos. You hold the cards.
It was an honor to serve in your administration and to serve our great nation.
About 3,800 workers are on strike at Swift Beef Company, one of the largest beef processing plants in the United States. Workers at the plant, who belong to the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7, overwhelmingly voted to strike after negotiations with the facility’s parent company, JBS USA, stalled. The strike draws immediate national attention because the Greeley plant represents a major part of the American beef supply chain.
Like nearly all job disputes, there are two sides to the argument: JBS USA leaders said the company offered competitive pay and benefits, while the union members were concerned about wages, workplace safety, and job conditions inside the plant.
JBS USA operates as the American division of the global meat company JBS S.A., which runs one of the largest beef processing operations in the world. This disagreement now places one of the country’s largest slaughter facilities in the middle of a labor standoff.
Most ranchers can still get cattle to market because the national herd is smaller, and that could give JBS some leverage in negotiations, since other slaughterhouses can absorb the Greeley plant’s work, Greiman said.
Feedlots hold clues to consumer costs
Yet an extended strike at Greeley could disrupt the industry, particularly in Colorado and neighboring states, said Jennifer Martin at Colorado State University’s animal sciences department.
“The feedlots, the people who have the cattle right now — the longer they sit kind of in a holding pattern, the more expensive they become to feed,” said Martin. “For consumers, it means that prices will likely go up.”
Training versions of AI models on classified data is expected to make them more accurate and effective in certain tasks, according to a US defense official who spoke on background with MIT Technology Review. The news comes as demand for more powerful models is high: The Pentagon has reached agreements with OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI to operate their models in classified settings and is implementing a new agenda to become an “an ‘AI-first’ warfighting force” as the conflict with Iran escalates. (The Pentagon did not comment on its AI training plans as of publication time.)
Training would be done in a secure data center that’s accredited to host classified government projects, and where a copy of an AI model is paired with classified data, according to two people familiar with how such operations work. Though the Department of Defense would remain the owner of the data, personnel from AI companies might in rare cases access the data if they have appropriate security clearance, the official said.
Diesel fuel, the lifeblood of U.S. industry, crossed an alarming and historic benchmark Tuesday.
Amid the Iran War and the Strait of Hormuz crisis, the U.S. average retail diesel prices have crossed $5 a gallon, the highest since December 2022.
This marks only the second time diesel prices have hit the historic 5-dollar benchmark, according to Reuters. Tuesday’s new average of $5.04 is now a record high, according to analysts at GasBuddy.
Meanwhile, gas prices across the country have surged 74 cents a gallon. This reportedly marks nearly a 30% increase over the past month, the highest monthly spike since Hurricane Katrina.
“The problem is, is we’re so strained financially coming into this issue,” explained Littleton, a third-generation farmer from Gibson County in the state’s northwest.
“We have had a couple of record losses over the last couple of years, so everyone’s kind of grabbing at straws anyway, and then to have input prices increase yet again, it just really couldn’t happen at a worse time.”
Littleton, who cultivates corn, soybeans, and wheat, is one of thousands of farmers nationwide who will pay significantly more this spring for the essential nutrients their crops require.
Nitrogen-based fertilizer is particularly crucial for corn, typically the largest crop in the U.S., which feeds the nation’s livestock and is converted into fuel for most U.S. vehicles.
This action has caused a significant slowdown in shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical choke point for 20 per cent of the world’s oil and natural gas.
Cesar Chavez has been lauded by Mexican-Americans as an iconic labor leader who fought for farmworkers’ rights in the 1960s, but his legacy may be marred by growing allegations of “profoundly shocking” behavior.
Several celebrations of Cesar Chavez Day, which is observed March 31, have been canceled across the country by the United Farm Workers, an organization Chavez co-founded.
‘These allegations have been profoundly shocking. We need some time to get this right, including to ensure robust, trauma-informed services are available to those who may need it.’
The union said in a letter Tuesday that the claims against Chavez were “incompatible” with the organization’s values.
A shooting at a U.S. Air Force base in New Mexico on Tuesday left one person dead and another wounded, according to military officials.
from www.washingtontimes.com
