Mario Nawfal

🇺🇸 Diesel refining margins hit $115 a barrel. Normal is $20 to $30. Rory Johnston, founder of Commodity Context, has the prompt diesel contract sitting around $220 a barrel equivalent while Brent trades at $105, and physical crude delivered today commands a $25 premium over the same barrel two months out. Five or six times normal, on a market already running hot since 2022. Every refinery in America is maxed out, so the only thing that closes this gap is demand breaking first, which nobody wants to say out loud. @Rory_Johnston

🚨🇺🇸🇸🇦 U.S. intelligence warns China could steal F-35 secrets through the $24 billion jet sale to Saudi Arabia... A Defense Intelligence Agency report circulating through agencies and congressional offices flags Chinese military access to Saudi bases, Chinese gear inside Saudi telecom infrastructure, and doubts that the two countries can keep the jets' radar and surveillance technology secure. Analysts ask whether Riyadh would limit contact with Chinese military personnel at all, and whether it would strip Huawei and ZTE equipment out of its networks and defense sites. The administration is preparing to formally submit the package of 48 jets to Congress soon. Beijing is already helping the Saudis build ballistic missiles. Washington killed the identical deal with the UAE in 2021 for exactly these reasons. What happens next is the real test. If lawmakers balk, Rubio can invoke the same emergency powers he has used repeatedly for Israel and push it through anyway, and the Senate is already demanding the classified annexes on the Saudi nuclear deal. Two of the most sensitive transfers in American history, the stealth fighter and the reactor, are moving together toward a partner whose air force cannot stop Houthi drones and whose phone system runs on Chinese hardware. Source: The New York Times / Writer: Daniel

🇺🇸 Diddy hasn't spoken to his own lawyers in 4 months, and he's in prison with nothing but time. They filed to quit this week. The reasons given in court: more than 6 months of unpaid bills and "a total breakdown in cooperation and communication." His spokesperson says it went the other way, that he fired them for running up charges he never approved. The firm says that's false and that they worked efficiently under hard conditions. The case they were handling is his own $100 million defamation suit, now sitting there with nobody to argue it. Source: NBC News / Writer: Daniyal

🇺🇸 Jeffrey Epstein may have discovered that $500 could buy something far more valuable than consulting work: a place inside attorney-client privilege. Major law firms used so-called Kovel arrangements to bring Epstein in as an outside consultant, even though he wasn’t a lawyer and often wasn’t the client. In one 2012 deal tied to billionaire Leon Black, Epstein was retained for just $500, with the arrangement itself meant to remain confidential. And it wasn’t a one-off. The Epstein files include roughly 10 draft or signed consulting agreements built around similar privilege structures, while Black ultimately paid Epstein nearly $160 million for tax and estate advice. The wildest part is what we still can’t see: DOJ says about 200,000 pages were withheld or redacted on privilege grounds. For someone whose entire world ran on secrets, getting himself inside legally protected conversations was a hell of a place to be. Source: Bloomberg / Writer: Sol

🇬🇪🇺🇸 Topuria is medically cleared and suddenly Gaethje's gloves are the reason he lost Three months after the White House stoppage that left him with a broken face and foot, Topuria says next time officials should check Justin's gloves "so he doesn't put anything weird on them." Gaethje already addressed this on Rogan and treated it as flattery, saying people accusing him of bricks in his gloves were paying him a compliment. I guess two broken orbitals will make any man look for answers🤣 Writer: Daniel t.co/jurRzeunBa

🇺🇸🇮🇷 A barrel of oil delivered today costs $131 while the screen says $105, and the White House is weighing a diesel export ban that could push diesel to $300 Twelve million barrels a day are moving through Hormuz again, sixty percent of the old flow, and prices haven't budged. Rory Johnston explains the gap with one number. Futures for Brent sit near $105, but a physical barrel delivered this week closed at $131, a $25 premium for oil right now. That is what scarcity looks like on a screen. Diesel is worse. Refiners' margins are five times normal, Russia's exports are gone, and America is shipping out 1.5 million barrels a day to fill the hole while its own stocks sink. Which is why the talk in Washington has turned to banning those exports. It would drop pump prices in weeks. It would also do this: "the global diesel market would just break" Three hundred dollar diesel, refiners cutting runs, and a world running on fumes to buy one calm month at home. @Rory_Johnston

🇮🇱🇲🇦 Israel and Morocco are opening full embassies six years after the Abraham Accords Gideon Saar and Nasser Bourita met in New York with U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz and agreed to raise their missions to embassy level, name ambassadors, expand flights, and finish deals on trade and investment. Morocco signed in 2020 alongside the UAE, Bahrain and Sudan, and this is the first real upgrade since. Rabat has spent the year collecting. The 2020 deal came with American recognition of its claim to Western Sahara, and in April a House Appropriations report used language friendly to Morocco's position on Ceuta and Melilla, the two Spanish enclaves on its northern coast. Morocco already showed in 2021 that it will open the border and let thousands walk into Ceuta when it wants leverage from Madrid. Full embassies with Israel while Washington nudges the Ceuta file is a country cashing in on both. Watch what this does to Riyadh. Trump says the Saudi nuclear deal takes effect only when Saudi Arabia recognizes Israel, and Morocco has just shown what recognition buys. Source: Reuters / Writer: Daniel

🇮🇱 🇵🇸 The map used in Palestinian schools doesn't have Israel on it. Yaakov Katz, former editor of the Jerusalem Post, rejects the idea that occupation and poverty explain October 7th on their own, and points at decades of Muslim Brotherhood ideology, mosque sermons and a curriculum built around erasure. "These are people who have nothing in common with you or me when it comes to our value system." @yaakovkatz

🇫🇷 A YouTuber filmed men on the edge of Lyon, France, firing a Kalashnikov into the air in Vénissieux... like totally normal. That is how comfortable some drug crews have gotten. One guy on camera talks like a hired shooter... another fires a pistol in the air. Bikes waiting like it is a shift change. That's a suburb of France’s second city, war guns on camera. But hey, don't miss the point. The only real problem in Europe is the far right 🤡 Writer: Lucas t.co/SZcmgw5OBb

🇺🇸 Veteran NBC4 reporter fighting back tears at the scene last night after NewsChopper 4 went down in Chatsworth. He was already on the ground covering a deadly Metro bus crash when the station’s own helicopter crashed nearby. The crash killed 2 of his colleagues, an aerial journalist and the pilot, along with a pedestrian. You can see how close this hit. These crews work together every day. Rest in peace to all three. Writer: Daniyal t.co/ofFCLVzQOa

🇮🇱 🇵🇸 Temporary housing for Gaza is sitting in Egypt because Netanyahu doesn't want to look weak before an election. Israel won't sign off until Hamas starts disarming. Yaakov Katz doesn't defend the calculation: "Leadership is also about leading your people, even if it's against what the sentiment of the people are. I don't think it looks weak. I think it's called being strong." Asked why 60% of aid is still blocked, he said he doesn't have a good answer. Nobody campaigning in Israel right now is going to find one either, which means the caravans likely wait until the ballots are counted. @yaakovkatz

🇺🇸🇵🇸 Macklemore said 'Free Palestine' on Ed Sheeran’s stage and the crowd answered. Days later he was off the tour. The billionaire who owns the New England Patriots and Gillette Stadium, took credit. Robert Kraft called it "hate speech." Sheeran says the promoter and the venues made the call. Other openers walked in solidarity. Kraft is one of Israel’s loudest American backers. A stadium owner threatened dates unless the opening act shut up about Gaza. That is a rich man deciding which words get a microphone. Writer: Sol t.co/Twy1i1fuTN

🇺🇸🇾🇪 Washington met the Houthis face to face in Oman and cut a deal that leaves only Saudi ships as targets, the same day the Houthis shot down a Saudi F-15 Reuters says American officials sat across from the Houthis in Oman and came out with terms. The Houthis won't touch any ship except Saudi ones, not even Israeli, and in return Washington won't bomb them. Within hours, a Saudi F-15 was in pieces on the ground, downed by a Yemeni-made air defense system. Riyadh signed a defense pact with Pakistan and Turkey this summer. Larry Johnson has advice for its lawyers: "they should have read the fine print, get better lawyers" The arithmetic behind Washington's choice is brutal. One night over Jordan cost around 80 Patriot and THAAD interceptors, about what a week of the war consumed at its peak, and nobody can build them faster than two years. America can't shield Saudi Arabia because it can barely shield itself. @NewSonof

🇺🇲 Macklemore is donating $1 MILLION to Palestinian relief groups and challenging Robert Kraft to MATCH HIM. The rapper announced today that he’s giving all of his earnings from the shows he performed on Ed Sheeran’s “LOOP" tour to 6 organizations supporting Palestinians. "Whatever we disagree about, perhaps we can agree on this: Palestinian lives are worth protecting." Patriots owner and AIPAC donor Kraft pressured Sheeran and other stadium owners to drop Macklemore from the tour.  Kraft confirmed he didn't want the rapper performing at Gillette Stadium, which he owns. Now the stage is set for Kraft to make a move... Source: TMZ / Writer: Marie t.co/SRv3UqP9P5

🇸🇾 Syria’s president told a Dubai media summit that news has to be independent, credible, and seen from more than one side. Wild message from the former Jolani. Same man who once ran Nusra, hid his face, and used the camera as part of the fight. Now he is in a suit, asking journalists to stay honest. Brutal shift. Writer: Lucas t.co/KyZr83KIHF

🇺🇸 For every woman who just heard the word cancer and assumed everything else was over, here's the other version. Susie Wiles, the first woman ever to serve as White House chief of staff, was diagnosed with breast cancer in March. She said at the time that roughly 1 in 8 women face this, and that they keep raising families, going to work and serving their communities anyway. She meant it about herself too. She ran the White House straight through treatment and stayed on the job. The procedure was at the Mayo Clinic this week. And the good news? SHE IS CANCER FREE. That's what a scan in time and a woman who won't quit gets you. Source:@SusieWiles47 / Writer: Daniyal

🇷🇺🇺🇸 Russian spy network caught running covert murder for hire operations in the U.S!! The DOJ has charged five people working for Russian intelligence with plotting assassinations and sabotage against Ukraine's allies in the U.S and Europe. Federal prosecutors say the Kremlin tried to recruit everyday residents to track and ASSASSINATE dissidents. In one instance, Russia recruited an American in Lithuania and offered $25,000 to execute the target via firebombing or stabbing! Source: NPR / Writer: Bri

🇺🇸 GOP Rep. Thomas Massie is using a word few in his party have been willing to use about Gaza: “I think it’s a genocide” Source: @RepThomasMassie / Writer: Lynn t.co/jvsPX1n7sk

🇺🇸 Trump wants rates at 1% hours after his own Fed chairman voted to raise them "Interest Rates in the United States should be 1%, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World — BY FAR. Our Country is BOOMING with new Investment! If we stopped Trading with every country that we have a Deficit with, which is most of them, we would make, at least, 1.5 Trillion Dollars a year. The word 'Deficit' is nothing more than a fancy word for LOSS. We are 'carrying' almost every country in the World, and that cannot go on any longer. LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST!" The post lands as Kevin Warsh, hired to deliver cuts, joined a unanimous vote to hike. Cheap money with diesel at record highs is how you turn an energy spike into permanent inflation, which is the exact thing the committee moved to prevent. The pressure campaign will keep coming, and it will keep failing, because the Fed has already shown it will take the political hit. What it can't do is bring rates down while a war keeps oil above $100. The unfortunate truth for Trump: The path to 1% runs through the Strait of Hormuz. Writer: Daniel

🇺🇸 Patrick Clancy is about to speak publicly for the first time since the mistrial in the case against his ex-wife, Lindsay Clancy, over the deaths of their three children. The interview will cover his grief, memories of Cora, Dawson and Callan, and the conspiracy theories that have followed him online since the trial. Writer: Sol t.co/KaZhaafiTf

🇺🇸🇷🇺 Moscow allegedly had everything it needed to kill a man in Washington except somebody to do it. The target was a Kremlin critic living in the capital. In late August, Russian intelligence operatives allegedly recruited a Venezuelan man living in the U.S. to film 2 locations tied to him. The instructions were precise. Phone in airplane mode, start recording before entering the neighbourhood, slow down passing the house, delete the messages afterwards. They called the killing "construction" and the surveillance "measuring a plot of land." He did the filming. Then they offered him $40,000 to carry out the murder, and he refused. So the network went looking for other U.S.-based recruits, and noted it also had "people in Mexico" available. It had failed once already. The same network allegedly offered an American in Lithuania around $25,000 to watch a different Kremlin critic, got refused, and switched to paying people to hit substations and warehouses in countries backing Ukraine. 5 men are charged, including a former Russian colonel and his son, an FSB officer. Every one of them is still at large. Source: Fox News / Writer: Daniyal

🇨🇴 Colombia’s guerrilla conflict is getting a modern upgrade. An FPV drone operated by FARC dissidents reportedly struck a Colombian civil aviation radar in Candelaria, Cauca. Guerrillas with FPV drones targeting aviation infrastructure is a very different security problem than Colombia was dealing with a decade ago. Source: @TabzLIVE on TG / Writer: Lynn

🇮🇱 Israel's spies found a runaway mother on a bus in Argentina, so why can't they find 200 settlers burning Palestinian homes Yaakov Katz asked the question of his own government, and he ran the Jerusalem Post. The same services that stole Iran's nuclear archive and tracked a missing Israeli family to a bus seat in South America say they can't stop a few hundred men terrorizing villages. He doesn't buy it: "I have no problem recognizing that there is a form of Jewish terrorism" He also rejects the phrase settler violence. Six hundred thousand Israelis live over the Green Line, and treating them all as arsonists is like calling every Chicagoan a murderer. The reason nothing happens, he says, is plain arithmetic. Arresting these men means arresting your own voters, and nobody in this coalition will do it. The danger is that one mass-casualty attack turns Palestinian police who share those roads into gunmen, and the West Bank into Gaza. @yaakovkatz

🇺🇸 An ER nurse tried to protect a colleague from a violent patient and ended up getting punched in the head three times and slammed to the floor. Yanira Eguileor says the attack happened after she stepped in at Jackson Memorial Hospital, and she’s now suing the hospital, alleging security measures failed to protect staff. The hospital says its ER has four public safety specialists on duty around the clock, plus two off-duty sheriff’s deputies on campus. Writer: Sol t.co/r08zAngh5V

Why is there a whole audience in your bedroom? 😂 Writer: Sol t.co/nHLYhHeDar

🇮🇱 Netanyahu pitches Israel as the last safe home for Christians in the Middle East, and tells them they are defending Israel too. "The State of Israel is the only place where the Christian community is flourishing and growing, the only place in the Middle East. Everywhere else, they are persecuted, they emigrate, or they are slaughtered. We are not only protecting Christians. Christians are defending us." That last sentence is the actual message, and It's likely aimed at American evangelicals. It's the one bloc still holding firm while young Republicans drift, and the one Netanyahu really cannot afford to lose. Writer: Daniel t.co/LQlw2wBus0

🇮🇱 Netanyahu says Israel is under a worldwide assault on its reputation, and calls the IDF the most moral army on earth. "We are facing a global attack on the State of Israel and on the Israel Defense Forces. They portray Israel's soldiers as perpetrators of war crimes, which is the greatest absurdity imaginable to say about the most moral army in the world. The State of Israel is like an island of progress, an island of tolerance, an island of security." Somewhere in the reputational damage assessment there ought to be a line item for the footage Israel's own operations produced... Writer: Daniel t.co/tXip8r5yKJ

🇾🇪 Houthi fighters are openly taunting Saudi Arabia after claiming to have shot down one of their F-15s over Yemen: “This will be the fate of Al Saud: submission and humiliation in Yemen” According to some reports online, the footage is from 2020 However, this appears to be due to the Persian calendar having different years from the Gregorian calendar Plus, the Houthis didn't shoot down any Saudi F-15s in 2020 Whatever the year, Riyadh's having a bad one Writers: Lynn, Ian t.co/ipMnwTS3vm

🇺🇸 Twenty-seven devices, years of digging, and the FBI says it still found no evidence Thomas Crooks was coordinating with anyone else. Kash Patel says investigators pulled data from the devices and looked for connections inside the U.S. and overseas, but found no evidence Crooks was even communicating with anyone beyond his parents. That lines up with the FBI’s earlier conclusion that it had found no credible evidence of a co-conspirator, while Crooks’ motive still remains unresolved. Writer: Sol t.co/rPmK1kLBCY

🇺🇸🇮🇷 Is America draining the arsenal it needs to project power abroad? Brandon Weichert says the strain is already severe, arguing that key missile systems are being burned through faster than they can be replaced. He warns the damage could last “at least a generation,” even if the war ended immediately. The U.S. is burning through the interceptors and missile-defense systems it relies on to sustain military operations overseas. @WeTheBrandon