That Christianity gives joy and breadth is also a thread that runs through my whole life. Ultimately someone who is always only in opposition could not endure life at all.
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Site: Steyn OnlineProgramming note: Tomorrow, Wednesday, at 3pm North American Eastern (8pm British Summer Time), I hope to be here for the annual birthday edition of our Clubland Q&A, taking questions from Mark Steyn Club listeners around the world. Hope you can swing by
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Site: Zero HedgeSecond Night Of Moscow Drone Raids Halt Flights Ahead Of Major Military ParadeTyler Durden Tue, 05/06/2025 - 09:50
For the second straight day, Ukrainian drones targeted the capital of Moscow overnight, just as Russia is preparing to celebrate he 80th anniversary of the victory of the Soviet Union and its allies over Nazi Germany in World War Two, or Victory Day. The Kremlin has said it is expecting to host 29 world leaders for the May 9th parade.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced that the newest attack involved at least 19 drones being intercepted while they were inbound to Moscow "from different directions." The assault, coming the day after several drones halted air traffic at a major Moscow international airport, resulted in no destruction or casualties.
Illustrative: Damage from a July 2023 drone attack on Moscow, Moskva News Agency
The overnight Tuesday attack disrupted even more flight traffic, resulting in stoppages of all flights at four airports in the Russian capital and nine others further outside the city.
In total some 105 Ukrainian drones were intercepted across Russia overnight, according to Russia’s defense ministry. Despite these attacks, the Kremlin says that President Putin's May 8-10 ceasefire is still on the table.
"There will be no hostilities. However, if there is no reciprocity from the Kiev regime and they continue to attack our positions or facilities, we will retaliate," Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
It's a sensitive moment given the major military parade through Red Square will be attended by various heads of state, including China’s Xi Jinping. Obviously safety of the skies is paramount, also as planes bring foreign officials into Russia.
The Kremlin earlier this week accused Ukraine's President Zelensky of threatening Victory Day Events. At least one European leader who is expected in attendance has agreed with this assessment:
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico confirmed he will attend Russia’s 80th anniversary Victory Day celebrations in Moscow on May 9, describing Zelensky’s warnings about security risks as “ridiculous,” the Magyar Nemzet newspaper reported.
Earlier this week, Zelensky asked foreign leaders to avoid the Victory Day parade in Moscow on May 9, citing security risks. However, Fico stated that threats from Kyiv would not deter him from attending the ceremony. “As a sovereign country, I will not allow anyone to tell me where I can travel,” he said, calling Zelensky’s threats “an intimidation campaign.”
“In my opinion, this is ridiculous. I reject such threats,” Fico said at a press conference on Sunday, reiterating that he will be in Moscow for Victory Day.
"If Zelensky believes that his statements can prevent the participation of foreign delegations, he is making a huge mistake," the Slovak prime minister said further to a press briefing, adding that "ensuring the safety of the participants is the responsibility of the Russian Federation." However there are reports that health issues could prevent or delay Fico's traveling to Moscow next week.
On Tuesday, Zelensky described targeting Russian "pressure points" in what Moscow is taking as a direct threat on Victory Day events. "They are now concerned that their parade is in jeopardy and rightly so," Zelensky had stated. "What they should worry about is that this war continues."
Below: Reports of an errant anti-air missile launched by Russia becoming lodged in a high-rise apartment in suburban Podolsk.
Lately there's been assassination bombings targeting top Russian generals, as well as long-range drone attacks which have reached the outskirts of Moscow. This suggests that either Ukrainian or its allied Western intelligence services have assets on the ground in Russia.
Likely the Russian defense and security services will bulk up anti-air systems in an around Moscow for Victory Day events. Officials from various countries and especially Russia-friendly nations are expected to be present.
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Site: RT - News
The EU and NATO are promoting Russophobia in the style of Goebbels’ propaganda, Sergey Shoigu has said
Moscow must crush Nazism, which has resurfaced in the West in recent years, Russian Security Council Secretary Sergey Shoigu has said.
On Tuesday, ahead of the 80th anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic War – Russia’s term for the 1941-1945 Soviet war against Nazi Germany – Shoigu emphasized the “enormous price” paid by the USSR in defeating Nazi Germany.
“The multinational people of Russia have learned well the lessons of the Great Patriotic War against fascism,” Shoigu wrote in Rossiyskaya Gazeta. The secretary served as defense minister from 2012 to 2024. He mentioned nearly 27 million combat deaths and 6.5 million additional deaths from starvation and disease during the war against the Nazis.
“Today we are obliged to do everything to defeat the resurrected Nazism,” Shoigu stressed. This imperative has “determined one of the main goals” of Moscow’s Ukraine campaign.
Read more
Western memory of WWII is basically fan fiction
“The European elites, who are being incited and patronized by London and Paris, continue to make loud statements about inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia... NATO and the EU have launched programs aimed at preparing the collective West for a direct military conflict with Russia,” he said.
Those “aggressive steps” by the West “are being justified by Russophobic fabrications – in the best traditions of Goebbels’ propaganda,” the security chief stressed, referring to Joseph Goebbels, who was Nazi Germany’s propaganda minister from 1933 to 1945.
“In order to avoid a repetition of the horrors of the war years, there is an urgent necessity to protect the country from a variety of external and internal threats” by further boosting the military, developing the economy and investing in science and education, he said.
READ MORE: ‘Real de-Nazification’ would include all Europe – Medvedev
In late April, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who now serves as deputy chairman of the Security Council, also insisted that “a real de-Nazification is required. Nazism needs to be rooted out not only in Ukraine, but in all of Europe.”
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Site: Catholic Herald
I find myself back in Rome. More than three years have passed since my last visit, but the place seems barely to have changed: steadfast; grandiose; eternal. Its monumental magnificence and gentle decay are disturbed only by its ubiquitous, quotidian chaos.
The city’s mood hovers between anticipation and indifference. Italians are not yet so visible in St Peter’s Square, which remains a haven for gawping tourists and youth groups on jubilee jaunts. Yet on Wednesday afternoon the cardinal electors will make their solemn way into the Sistine Chapel to take their oaths. The splendidly named Cardinal Cantalamessa will preach to them about their responsibilities. Then the sacred spectacle will begin.
The mood amongst Romans may be relaxed but amongst journalists it is febrile. “Have you heard the latest about Pietro Parolin?” one asks me. “How many supporters do you think Erdo has? What about Tagle?” These are exciting times for those with newly acquired, amateur interests in ecclesiastical politics.
Pierbattista Pizzaballa’s star has waxed and waned. The consensus seems to be that he is hugely impressive and has the gravitas to be a great pontiff, but it is not yet his time. The Vatican rumour mill now churns furiously towards Robert Prevost. An American from Chicago, this urbane cardinal ought to have no chance at all in the Vatican’s brave old world. After all, Donald Trump has called for an American pope, which is surely the kiss of death.
The cardinals are a reflexively anti-American electorate at the best of times. And yet Prevost has some surprising attractions to his peers. Yes, he is American – but he is also half-Latino and has spent half his life in Latin America. He’s the ecclesiastical equivalent of a dual passport holder – an outsider-insider who has run a Peruvian diocese and now heads the Dicastery for Bishops. At 69 he is about the right age; he has the right friends and moderate credentials.
The cardinals may finally recognise the value of having a native English speaker as pope. English, a global language as Latin once was, is the bedrock of modern communication. Imagine a rhetorically-inspired pope with fluency in Anglo-cultural politics and a true feeling for our language’s expressive potential. Such a pope could be authoritative and inspirational.
The feeling was that Cardinal Tagle could be such a man, but that has been subsiding. Like Pope Francis, his skill is not the word but the gesture. Is that enough for the complicated arguments and negotiations that must follow this election? His karaoke performance of John Lennon’s “Imagine”, currently doing the rounds, is also surprisingly awkward. A pope who sings “imagine there’s no heaven” is not exactly on message.
Meanwhile, Parolin staggers on, weighed down by a thousand enmities and grubby deals. Too many do not trust him. They point to his lack of charisma and to the fine line between the consummate bureaucrat and the man who believes in nothing except process. China is also a problem for him. Did he sell the Church out to the Communists? What was the basis of Francis’s decision to do so – and was it practical or just hopelessly naïve?
If Parolin sinks or swims on wider assessments of Francis’s record he will struggle with the conservative cardinals. This faction is said to be the most organised going into the days ahead. But it would have to be, given that they conspicuously lack the numbers to control the narrative.
Officially, their aim is to secure the election for the Hungarian Peter Erdo. In practice, however, it is hard to see the constellation of events which gets Erdo to even half of the eighty-nine votes required to be chosen. More likely, his supporters want to show their power as a voting block and use that to influence which moderate candidate emerges when Parolin and Tagle fall back.
The German Cardinal Müller has already sounded off about the “gay lobby”, trying to make this election about “culture war” issues rather than questions of Church governance per se. That reminds Catholics of what divides rather than unites them and may be unwise. It also draws attention to one of the more curious hypocrisies on the part of some African cardinals at this conclave. They now reject such openness as a Western colonial value. But if it is a Western colonial construct, alien to Africans, then what is Christianity itself?
The historian in me wants to point out some obvious truths, but the other cardinals must be more conciliatory than I would be. After all, each of them has to work together for the good of the Church after the new Pope ascends his (these days somewhat proverbial) throne.
Having listened to all the gossip and the arguments, do I have any idea who will emerge on that holy balcony in, presumably, somewhat less than seven days’ time? Not really, and I’m sure it should be that way. An analogy I’ve deployed for media work all week is that the conclave is sort of like a magic trick.
A hundred-and-thirty-odd men in red cram into a wooden box together, there’s a puff of smoke, and one alone from amongst them emerges in white. It’s important that no one sees the wires.
Photo: A cross and a cardinals cassock is seen for sale in a shop near the vatican on May 05, 2025 in Rome, Italy. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
The post In Rome’s shadows, smoke and speculation: the conclave’s political ballet begins first appeared on Catholic Herald.
The post In Rome’s shadows, smoke and speculation: the conclave’s political ballet begins appeared first on Catholic Herald.
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Site: Ron Paul Institute - Featured Articles
The foreign policy of the United States is in the hands of the least capable, most uninformed, and most reckless morons the American education system has yet produced, and their successors, if any, will be worse.
American aggression toward the world is hidden under a euphemism: “national defense.” In past years before euphemisms took over from reality, the Secretary of Defense was known as the Secretary of War.
Washington conducted wars against Mexico. Against the Confederate States of America. Against the native American Indians. Against Spain from whom Washington seized Cuba and the Philippines. Against varied Central and South American countries–remember US Marine Commander Smedley Butler, twice decorated with America’s highest honor, who said that he and his US Marines were the enforcement squad in Latin America for the United Fruit Company and the New York Banks who were exploiting Latin America to the hilt, backed up by the bayonets of the US Marine Corps.
The name of the War Department changed, but we went on to wars in Korea, Vietnam, the Caribbean, overthrowing various countries in central and South America. Then in Africa where leaders and governments were overthrown. Then in Yugoslavia. Then in the Middle East where Washington eliminated Israel’s opponents for Israel. Then in South Ossetia against Russia. Then in Ukraine again against Russia. And now the US has wars pending against Iran and China, while continuing the one against Russia by shifting the burden to Europe.
In no way is this “national defense.”
We are witnessing the continuation of Washington’s policy of hegemony. Washington negotiates with Russia, China, Iran, for one purpose only. To present them with “peace agreements” that they cannot possibly accept in order for Washington to say it tried for peace, but Russia, China, and Iran refused the peace offers.
The “peace offers” amount to the surrender of sovereignty of Russia, China, and Iran. They have to conform their policies to Washington’s instructions. Iran has to dismantle its national defense and destroy its conventional missiles. Iran can’t sell any oil to China or anyone else. Iran can’t enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. Russia can’t have all of its conquests of the Russian territories in Ukraine. Ukraine won’t be demilitarized. Russia will be punished with more sanctions if Putin doesn’t agree to a ceasefire before he knows what the deal is. Ukraine can have de facto NATO membership with a mutual security clause with the West. China can’t continue succeeding economically more than America. Far from renouncing the Paul Wolfowitz Doctrine of American Hegemony, President Trump espouses it.
America is not as strong as Washington thinks it is. Actually, America is very weak, as is every Western country, not merely militarily, but also emotionally, spiritually. Generations of denunciation of Western Civilization by Western universities have created populations unsure of who they are. The damage universities have done to the belief system is extensive. In America’s coming wars with China, Iran, and Russia, what are the American youths dying for except Israel and the profits of the armaments industries?
Why should Americans die for Ukraine and Israel and the profits of armaments industries? No one asks or answers this question.
…
How can an American believe in himself when he is endlessly told that he is the source of all evil, all oppression? The indoctrination of white kids against their race begins in early education with critical race theory and aversive racism. Can Washington’s war propagandists create larger monsters out of Putin, Xi, and Iran than Western Universities have created out of white people?
So, here is the situation: On the one hand the neoconservatives and the America First Liberals tell Americans that they are ordained for rule. On the other hand the Democrats and the left tell Americans that they are hopeless racists who have to be displaced.
The Trump regime is creating a war scenario that America cannot win. Let’s just consider one of the many possible developments. Washington withdraws from the war in Ukraine, leaving it to Europe, but before Washington can engage China, Netanyahu sics his American puppet on Iran. Iran, unlike Putin, decides to fight. There go the American aircraft carriers in the region. There go the American bases in the Middle East. Iran’s Russian supplied air defense systems eliminates a large percentage of the American Air Force. America is handed a resounding military defeat. Out come the nuclear weapons.
Putin’s inability to make decisions is aiding and abetting Washington’s self destruction. Putin says that Russia stands alone against the West which is attempting to finish off Russia by breaking the Federation into a number of smaller countries, as Washington did to the Soviet Union, creating Ukraine for the first time in its history as an independent state, one now only 30 years old, a Washington creation.
Does Putin understand that the peace negotiations are a fraud intentionally designed to fail? What is actually going on is that America’s intended wars with Russia and China are being sequenced, because the US lacks the strength to take on all its chosen opponents simultaneously.
Washington’s war against Russia in Ukraine is being turned over to Europe under the pretense of a US/EU split. As neither Zelensky nor Putin can accept Trump’s terms, Trump can extract America from the conflict by walking away, leaving the continuation of the conflict to the EU. The American establishment will continue to make money from this conflict by selling the weapons to the Europeans and make more money by ramping up war with China.
The conditions Trump requires of Iran are so unrealistic as to indicate a total lack of seriousness. They amount to stripping Iran of all possibility of existence as a sovereign nation. Trumps’ announcement of US sanctions on every country that buys oil from Iran is mindless. Washington is trying to cut China off from oil like FDR did Japan, thus leading to the war that FDR wanted. Trump has either made a deal with the American establishment or his government has.
Look at the picture with a clear eye.
What and how is Russia endangering the West that justifies war to suppress the threat? Russia has threatened no Western country and has done nothing but to plead for a mutual security agreement with the West, which the West has refused.
What actions have Iran taken against the West? None. Iran is in the crosshairs because Iran supports Israel’s last remaining enemies, the small group of Houthis in small Yemen and the decapitated Hezbollah militia in small Lebanon. Washington eliminated for Israel at the cost of American lives and money Israel’s enemies in Iraq, Libya, and Syria. The Arab world is no more. America wiped it out for Israel.
As Norman Podhoretz made clear in the Jewish journal Commentary, the purpose of America’s 21st century’s wars in the Middle East is to overthrow Arab states in the way of Greater Israel. And Washington complied. Today the only remaining Arab state is Saudi Arabia, and not long ago an Israeli minister added half of Saudi Arabia to the map of Greater Israel. Israel now occupies part of Syria and says it is there to stay. This week Israel announced that the total conquest of Palestine was under way.
The first quarter of the 21st Century has been Israel’s. Israel’s American puppet has destroyed for Israel, at the expense of American lives and money, Israel’s Arab enemies. Now Netanyahu is going to sic his dumbshit puppets in Washington on Iran.
Reprinted with permission from PaulCraigRoberts.org.
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Site: Zero HedgeFord Shares Slide After Net Income Plunge, Suspended GuidanceTyler Durden Tue, 05/06/2025 - 09:25
Ford Motor's first-quarter net income plunged to $471 million from $1.3 billion a year earlier, as EV losses and production halts took a toll, the company said Monday.
Revenue dropped to $40.7 billion from $42.8 billion, and wholesale deliveries fell 7% to 971,000 due to slower output of some models, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The electric-vehicle division lost $800 million, down from $1.3 billion, helped by lower material costs and stronger pricing. Adjusted pretax income fell to $1 billion from $2.8 billion, still beating Ford’s and analysts’ zero-dollar forecast in February.
Ford also suspended full-year guidance, citing uncertainty over President Trump’s tariffs, which it said could cost $1.5 billion. “It’s a pretty dynamic situation. I think this is all really new for all of us,” said CEO Jim Farley. He added the financial impact remains “huge numbers,” though lower than for many rivals.
The WSJ report says to limit losses, Ford paused imports of China-made Lincoln Nautilus and halted U.S. exports to China. CFO Sherry House noted Ford is better insulated than competitors, with 80% of its U.S. sales assembled domestically and most parts untaxed.
Still, Trump’s tariffs derailed Ford’s forecast for lower vehicle prices and steadier demand. The company now expects prices to rise and sales to slow by summer. Carmakers, including GM and Tesla, are reassessing outlooks amid the trade upheaval.
“We are focused on managing what we control,” House said.
We noted after the company's Q1 report that CEO Farley faces continuing challenges, including overhauling the company’s EV strategy to curb losses and cutting high warranty repair expenses. The automaker lost a record $5.1 billion on EVs last year and expects that deficit to widen to as much as $5.5 billion in 2024.
While Farley is pushing for more affordable, longer-range models, those won’t hit the market until 2027. Meanwhile, the pressure on Ford shares continues, with the stock falling nearly 19% last year, in contrast to General Motors’ 48% surge.
Farley has emphasized the need to close Ford’s $7 billion to $8 billion cost disadvantage against competitors, largely driven by warranty costs. He has tied executive bonuses to improving quality and efficiency, with the company targeting $1 billion in cost cuts this year.
“In 2025, we expect to make significantly more progress on our two biggest areas of opportunity – quality and cost,” Farley said. “We control those key profit drivers, and I am confident that we are on the right path.”
Looks like the company still has work to do...
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Site: LifeNews
The Planned Parenthood clinic of Omaha, Nebraska, is experiencing a staffing crisis that abortion advocates claim is the result of corporate executives’ indifference, a Nebraska newsroom reported May 1.
The Flatwater Free Press reported that the clinic’s recent struggles have included burnout, insufficient training, unionization of Planned Parenthood North Central States employees, and high turnover. Training challenges led to a stay on rapid tests for two sexually transmitted diseases, according to the news outlet. All the factors have led to breaks with standard procedures while abortions are performed. The last licensed nurse trained to assist with abortions resigned from the clinic in April.
The Omaha clinic is also under major construction at the moment, resulting in chaos and requests to temporarily close the clinic or limit abortions and other services. However, management ignored the requests, prompting more employees to quit.
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Melissa Forsyth, who formerly served as the senior director of health centers for Planned Parenthood North Central States, said that while construction and turnover are factors in the staffing crisis, the issue runs deeper.
“… I think when it all comes down to it … I don’t think they [employees] felt heard. I don’t think they felt respected in their work,” she said, according to the Flatwater Free Press. “And you do that for so long that you eventually just decide to move on.”
The Flatwater Free Press added that Planned Parenthood’s management claims employees were never pressured to break protocol, arguing that Nebraska’s systemic health care challenges caused the staffing shortage.
Management is also blaming the state’s pro-life legislation. Nebraska currently protects life in most cases after 12 weeks of pregnancy. State legislators are also considering a bill that would require abortion facilities to cremate or bury the bodies of aborted babies.
“We are working within and against these trends to build structures that will expand care long term,” Planned Parenthood North Central States spokesperson Erin Heisler Wagner stated, according to the Flatwater Free Press. “It is not easy work, and we will experience ups and downs, but we are committed to providing care to our patients and doing whatever it takes to make that happen.”
However, the issues aren’t isolated to Nebraska, the Flatwater Free Press reported. Planned Parenthood facilities across the nation are struggling to retain employees. The New York Times recently found that most of the abortion giant’s funds are used for paying legal and political expenses.
Nonetheless, a shortage of abortion employees means more unborn lives saved. According to the Flatwater Free Press, employees at the Omaha facility said at the beginning of May that only three abortions had been performed since mid-March, down from multiple abortions per week in January.
LifeNews Note: Hannah Hiester writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.
The post Nebraska Planned Parenthood is Falling Apart, Babies Saved From Abortion appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: RT - News
The two countries may face each other later this year, Brazilian media have reported, citing the national football confederation
Brazil has agreed in principle to play a soccer friendly against Russia this autumn, local media reported Monday. Russia is currently barred from official FIFA and UEFA tournaments due to the Ukraine conflict.
Journalist Galvao Bueno of the Band.com.br news outlet revealed a letter from the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) dated August 2024, confirming that it had accepted an invitation from the Russian Football Union (RFU) to play a match in Moscow in 2025.
The confederation has reportedly informed Russian officials that the Brazilian national team would be available during the FIFA international match windows from October 6 to 14 and November 10 to 18.
“We believe that collaboration between the Brazilian Football Confederation and the Russian Football Union will be fundamental to strengthening ties and further enhancing the global football ecosystem,” the CBF reportedly wrote.
“The national team board will be mobilized to work towards holding the aforementioned game,” it added.
Read more
UEFA members want Russian return – Independent
The correspondence signals Brazil’s willingness to schedule the match, although no official agreement has been reached. Details including dates, venues, and logistical arrangements reportedly remain under discussion.
Both federations are expected to continue negotiations in the coming months. If confirmed, the match would mark a rare meeting between the two national teams outside of official tournaments. The last time the two teams played each other was in March 2018 ahead of the World Cup in Russia, when Brazil recorded a 3-0 win at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium.
CNN Brazil later reported that it had contacted an unnamed representative of the CBF who denied the organization having any plans to hold a match against Russia in football or any other sport.
The Russian national football team has maintained an unbeaten record since its suspension from international competitions in February 2022. In the past three years, Russia has played a series of friendly matches, securing victories against countries such as Cuba (8–0), Serbia (4–0), Belarus (4–0), Vietnam (3–0), Brunei (11–0), Syria (4–0), Grenada (5–0), and Zambia (5–0).
Despite Russia’s ban from official competitions, FIFA has continued to award ranking points for the friendly matches, contributing to Russia’s climb to 34th in the world rankings.
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Site: Fr. Z's BlogSpolier: The Postcommunion is fantastic. And, forgive typos. I did this fast. This morning I said Mass with the formula of the Votive Mass Pro Eligendo Summo Pontifice… for the Election of a Supreme Pontiff. It is the very first … Read More →
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Site: Mises InstituteOne of Trump's more bizarre claims recently is that gasoline now costs less than $2 per gallon. As every casual observer knows, the price is closer to $3.
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Site: Mises InstituteUnlike the US, Canada (at least on paper) recognizes a legal right to secession. Alberta gov't now says it may vote on secession next year.
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Site: LifeNews
The Trump administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a motion Monday seeking to dismiss a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for failing to properly regulate the abortion pill mifepristone—an increasingly controversial drug linked to serious harm.
CatholicVote Vice President Joshua Mercer reacted to the move by reiterating his organization’s call for the administration to better regulate mifepristone, but also pointed out that the DOJ’s motion could be calculated to better position pro-life cases.
“The Trump administration’s commitments and actions on the pro-life front suggest to me that this move by the DOJ could be a procedural strategy, hedging against ceding an executive agency’s power to take meaningful and lasting action on mifepristone,” Mercer said.
“But both Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and President Trump have signaled their concern about the Biden administration’s FDA failing to regulate this harmful drug,” Mercer added, “and we will continue to urgently call on them to address it. Despite the procedural questions raised by this case, the Trump administration must do all it can to protect women from the manifest harms associated with mifepristone.”
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The case was first filed in 2022 by a coalition of pro-life doctors called the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. The group challenged the FDA’s removal of key safety protocols surrounding mifepristone, including the requirement for in-person doctor visits before dispensing the drug.
The Supreme Court dismissed the case last year, ruling that the original plaintiffs lacked standing.
In response, the states of Idaho, Missouri, and Kansas moved to intervene, arguing that the FDA’s loose standards force their state Medicaid programs to cover the cost of treating women who suffer complications from the drug.
The DOJ now contends that those states lack standing to sue in the Northern District of Texas.
“Aside from this litigation, the States do not dispute that their claims have no connection to the Northern District of Texas,” federal attorneys wrote. “The states cannot keep alive a lawsuit in which the original plaintiffs were held to lack standing, those plaintiffs have now voluntarily dismissed their claims, and the States’ own claims have no connection to this District.”
The DOJ also argued that several state claims—including objections to the FDA’s 2016 decision to expand the approved usage window from seven to ten weeks—fall outside the statute of limitations.
Although the FDA continues to call mifepristone “safe and effective,” recent evidence increasingly contradicts the claim.
A new study revealed that nearly 11% of women experienced severe or life-threatening complications after taking the drug, sparking growing concern among medical professionals and lawmakers.
In one widely reported case, a Texas woman discovered her husband had secretly laced her drinks with abortion pills in an attempt to kill their unborn child. He was later charged with felony assault and sentenced to prison.
Though the DOJ is seeking to end the current lawsuit, it acknowledged that the states can still pursue legal action in other courts.
“The States are free to pursue their claims in a District where venue is proper,” the DOJ stated.
Earlier this year, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said President Donald Trump asked him to review the drug’s safety profile.
“President Trump has made it clear to me that… he wants me to look at safety issues,” Kennedy said during his January confirmation, adding that he would direct relevant federal agencies to evaluate the matter.
LifeNews Note: Elise DeGeeter writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.
The post Pro-Life Group Calls on Trump to Limit Abortion Pill to Protect Women, Save Babies appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: Zero HedgeMilken Crowd Signals Support For Trump's Tariffs While Slamming All The ChaosTyler Durden Tue, 05/06/2025 - 08:55
At Monday's Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, Bloomberg reported that attendees were "warming up" to President Trump's tariff war, recognizing a growing urgency to reset trade relationships with key partners after decades of disastrous industrial policies that hollowed out America's core. Still, top investors and financial executives voiced concern over prolonged trade volatility and uncertainty.
The Milken conference, hosted by former junk-bond king Michael Milken, featured US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent discussing how the Trump administration's tariff war with top trading partners encourages re-industrialization.
Bessent said that tariffs, tax cuts, and deregulation are "interlocking parts of an engine" to boost America's economy, telling the audience: "I hope you can see the bigger picture now."
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says the Trump administration's tariffs will lead to better terms of trade and stronger trading relationships during a conversation with Michael Milken at The Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California… pic.twitter.com/5NP1kHjnob
— Bloomberg TV (@BloombergTV) May 5, 2025Bloomberg provided a consensus snapshot of attendees' sentiments about trade policies: "Investing titans and financial leaders at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills lined up to say they can live with tariffs and a reworking of trade—just get it settled soon."
For instance, Apollo CEO Marc Rowan told Bloomberg TV, "What the administration wants to do is not wrong." However, he warned that the tariffs create "uncertainty" and could lead to "two quarters of negative growth" if that uncertainty isn't resolved.
Apollo CEO Marc Rowan sides with President Donald Trump on tariffs, and says uncertainty around tariffs could be harmful to the economy https://t.co/HDQlkcvjKQ pic.twitter.com/lk679Jv66Q
— Bloomberg TV (@BloombergTV) May 5, 2025Here's more from Rowan, once a top contender for Bessent's spot at the Treasury:
"The issues that separate us from Mexico are not existential to Mexico. As one leading Mexican industrialist said to me, if it takes tariffs to make Mexico great again, so be it," says Apollo CEO Marc Rowan https://t.co/ghwmNLoJQA pic.twitter.com/ZCGvrOvNwP
— Bloomberg TV (@BloombergTV) May 5, 2025Michael Goosay, chief investment officer for fixed income at Principal Asset Management, said in an interview at Milken that while tariff uncertainty has cast a dark cloud over the macroeconomic outlook, growth could rebound strongly once a trade resolution is reached.
"If we get through this without a lot of additional friction, we think we are in an environment where you can actually see a reacceleration of growth in the latter part of the year and into 2026," Goosay said.
Several money managers told Bloomberg it would be helpful if the Trump administration could announce a few deals with trading partners to get a rough framework of the future. They noted that trade resolutions would unleash long-term capital into revitalizing America's industrial base and fund infrastructure.
KKR co-founder George Roberts told the audience: "Stay calm and carry on."
Roberts said trade deals are being made out of necessity, and the administration has already dialed back some of its more restrictive trade policies.
Separate from the conference, Goldman published a note last week featuring a chart suggesting that uncertainty around trade peaked.
Trump is a dealmaker. It's only a matter of time before trade deal resolutions begin hitting the wires.
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Site: Zero HedgeTariff-Frontrunning Sparks Record Trade Deficit In MarchTyler Durden Tue, 05/06/2025 - 08:45
The US trade deficit widened to a record in March as companies rushed to import products as the Trump administration readied sweeping tariffs.
The goods and services trade gap grew 14% from the prior month to $140.5 billion (notably higher than the median estimate of a $137.2 billion deficit)
The value of imports jumped 4.4% to a record $419 billion, while exports edged up just 0.2% as firms scrambled to get ahead of President Trump's 'Liberation Day' tariffs....
As a reminder, the figures aren’t adjusted for inflation.
Both Goods and Services deficits increased. Imports of consumer goods climbed by the most on record, while inbound shipments of capital equipment and motor vehicles also increased.
Oil & Gas exports topped import by a record in March while imports of Chemicals relative to exports exploded to a record high...
Interestingly, while the trade deficit with Canada and Mexico shrank, Mexico's trade deficit surged to a record high. The gap with Ireland surged to $29.3 billion as Goods imports from the EU surged amid a likely pull-forward in imports of pharmaceutical goods from the region.
Imports from transshipment hubs surged, likely as some imports from China were diverted to third countries. Imports from Vietnam and Thailand rose well above the 75th percentile of their year-to-date pace.
Of course, the gold arbitrage that we have discussed in detail also has some impact on this data but has fallen significantly in the last month...
As a reminder, GDP fell an annualized 0.3% in the January-March period, with net exports subtracting nearly 5 percentage points - the most on record.
But as Goldman Sachs pointed out, this tariff-front running surge in imports as American firms stocked up on inventory, will reverse in Q2 (Bloomberg Economics sees the import surge from tariff front-running easing, based on a drop in container shipping from China to the US since April 16)...
... prompting a resurgence in the headline GDP data.
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Site: RT - News
The US president has claimed that America won both World Wars, prompting a backlash from Russia
US President Donald Trump has announced plans to designate days commemorating America’s victory in the First World War and Second World War as national holidays.
The proposal, first floated last week, is part of Trump’s call to “start celebrating our victories again,” although Russia dismissed his claim that the US won WWII as “nonsense.”
In a post on Truth Social on Monday, Trump claimed that America “won two World Wars, but we never took credit for it,” unlike other Allied nations around the world, which are celebrating “the Victory we had in World War II.”
He went on to reiterate that “the Victory was only accomplished because of us,” adding that “without the United States, the War would have been won by other Countries, and what a different World it would be.”
Trump stated that he would establish a national holiday “in celebration of the victories of World War I, marked by the Armistice on November 11, 1918, and World War II, with Victory Day on May 8, 1945.”
Last week Trump asserted that the US “did more than any other country, by far” to win World War II, claiming “nobody was close to us in strength, bravery, or military brilliance” in either war.
Read more
Trump’s WWII claim is ‘pompous nonsense’ – Medvedev
Trump’s claims that America played the leading role in defeating Nazi Germany sparked controversy. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who is now deputy chairman of his country’s Security Council, dismissed the remarks as “pretentious nonsense,” emphasizing the Soviet Union’s sacrifice of 27 million lives in the war.
General Lord Dannatt, former chief of the UK General Staff, called Trump’s remarks “extraordinary” and accused him of “rewriting history.”
Nazi Germany officially surrendered to the Allies on May 8, 1945, after Soviet forces captured Berlin. The surrender took effect after midnight Moscow time. While the US observes May 8 as Victory in Europe Day, Russia commemorates the occasion on May 9.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged Russia’s gratitude for US support during World War II but maintained that the Soviet Union would have defeated Nazi Germany without it. He noted that the Lend-Lease program provided valuable aid, such as vehicles, aircraft, ammunition, and tanks, which helped make a difficult task more manageable.
The Lend-Lease program was a US initiative that supplied Allied nations with military equipment, food, and raw materials. According to Peskov, the Soviet Union received aid valued at around $200 billion in today’s terms. However, the support wasn’t free. Russia, as the USSR’s successor, only completed repayment in 2006.
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Site: AsiaNews.itFrom Bergamo, 60-year-old Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa brings the 'Mother Church' back among the electors of a Pope for the first time in centuries. Living in Jerusalem for the past 35 years, the Franciscan friar has long been engaged in dialogue with both Judaism and Islam. He served for 12 years as Custos of the Holy Land. ...
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Site: RT - News
A Paris court has ordered suspended prison terms and fines for the cyberbullying of Thomas Jolly, who staged the infamous Last Supper parody
Seven people have been sentenced in France for the cyberbullying of Thomas Jolly – the artistic director of the LGBTQ-themed opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Last year’s games opened with a controversial spectacle that included what was perceived as a recreation of Leonardo DaVinci’s ‘Last Supper’ featuring drag queens, homosexuals, transsexuals and a pro-obesity activist in the role of Christ.
The show was condemned by Christians across the world, as well as Muslims, many of whom expressed their frustration on social media. Several days after the event, the production company behind the ceremony, Paname 2024, complained that its employees were getting harassed online and had received death threats.
Jolly, who has insisted that the scene was not inspired by the ‘Last Supper’, also filed a complaint claiming was the target of “homophobic and anti-semitic threats and insults.”
In October, French authorities arrested seven people, including one woman, who were accused of writing hateful messages targeting Jolly that included posts like “degenerate Jew,” “slut,” “God will not forget you” and “you will pay for having disrespected our Lord Jesus Christ.”
On Monday, the Paris Criminal Court found the seven individuals guilty of “repeated death threats, cyberbullying and aggravated insults based on sexual orientation or real or supposed religious affiliation” against Jolly.
The court imposed suspended fines of €2,000 to €3,000 ($2,260-$3,395) and suspended prison sentences of two to four months and ordered the defendants to pay one euro in damages to the artistic director.
Read more
Russia’s rival to Eurovision will be free of ‘perversion’ – Lavrov
The seven defendants, aged between 22 and 79, will also have to complete a five-day citizenship course, the court ruled. The X accounts of two of the accused individuals will also be suspended for six months.
Their posts came amid a wave of backlash to the Olympic opening ceremony from the Christian world, with the Bishops’ Conference of France claiming that it “mocked and ridiculed” the faith. The Vatican also said it was “saddened” by the ceremony and that it offended many Christians and believers of other religions.
The Russian Orthodox Church stated at the time that the performance represented a “counterculture of godlessness” that has emerged in the center of Europe. The head of the church, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, also said it was evidence of the “de-cultivation” of moral values and the “downward trajectory of the spiritual-cultural component of Western civilization.”
The outcry over the event ultimately forced the International Olympic Committee to apologize and delete the video of the opening ceremony from online streaming platforms.
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Site: RT - News
A Paris court has ordered suspended prison terms and fines for the cyberbullying of Thomas Jolly, who staged the infamous Last Supper parody
Seven people have been sentenced in France for the cyberbullying of Thomas Jolly – the artistic director of the LGBTQ-themed opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Last year’s games opened with a controversial spectacle that included what was perceived as a recreation of Leonardo DaVinci’s ‘Last Supper’ featuring drag queens, homosexuals, transsexuals and a pro-obesity activist in the role of Christ.
The show was condemned by Christians across the world, as well as Muslims, many of whom expressed their frustration on social media. Several days after the event, the production company behind the ceremony, Paname 2024, complained that its employees were getting harassed online and had received death threats.
Jolly, who has insisted that the scene was not inspired by the ‘Last Supper’, also filed a complaint claiming was the target of “homophobic and anti-semitic threats and insults.”
In October, French authorities arrested seven people, including one woman, who were accused of writing hateful messages targeting Jolly that included posts like “degenerate Jew,” “slut,” “God will not forget you” and “you will pay for having disrespected our Lord Jesus Christ.”
On Monday, the Paris Criminal Court found the seven individuals guilty of “repeated death threats, cyberbullying and aggravated insults based on sexual orientation or real or supposed religious affiliation” against Jolly.
The court imposed suspended fines of €2,000 to €3,000 ($2,260-$3,395) and suspended prison sentences of two to four months and ordered the defendants to pay one euro in damages to the artistic director.
Read more
Russia’s rival to Eurovision will be free of ‘perversion’ – Lavrov
The seven defendants, aged between 22 and 79, will also have to complete a five-day citizenship course, the court ruled. The X accounts of two of the accused individuals will also be suspended for six months.
Their posts came amid a wave of backlash to the Olympic opening ceremony from the Christian world, with the Bishops’ Conference of France claiming that it “mocked and ridiculed” the faith. The Vatican also said it was “saddened” by the ceremony and that it offended many Christians and believers of other religions.
The Russian Orthodox Church stated at the time that the performance represented a “counterculture of godlessness” that has emerged in the center of Europe. The head of the church, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, also said it was evidence of the “de-cultivation” of moral values and the “downward trajectory of the spiritual-cultural component of Western civilization.”
The outcry over the event ultimately forced the International Olympic Committee to apologize and delete the video of the opening ceremony from online streaming platforms.
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Site: Zero HedgeFutures Slide On Latest Batch Of Disappointing EarningsTyler Durden Tue, 05/06/2025 - 08:31
US equity futures slumped for the second day, dragged down by earnings and a lack of positive news on trade negotiations. As of 8:00am, S&P 500 futures dropped 0.9% as risk is pared into tomorrow's Fed announcement and the index failed to breach through technical resistance; Ford slumped after suspending its guidance and warned tariffs will reduce 2025 adjusted EBIT by about $1.5 billion; Nasdaq futures 100 dropped 1.1%, with all Mag7 stocks lower as Tesla and Meta led declines. Palantir tumbled 8% after the software firm’s results failed to meet investors’ expectations, while Ford slipped 3% after the carmaker pulled its financial guidance and flagged a tariff impact of about $2.5 billion on 2025 earnings. German stocks tumbled Estoxx 50 after incoming German chancellor Friedrich Merz suffered a shock setback when he fell short of a majority in an initial vote in the lower house of parliament to confirm him as Germany’s next chancellor. The yield curve is twisting steeper as USD comes for sale. Commodities are higher with WTI crude oil futures rebounding more than 2% from Monday’s YTD low close and gold is marching back to its ATHs. Trade Balance data is the macro data focus.
In premarket trading, Ford slips 2% as the automaker suspended its full-year financial guidance and said President Trump’s tariffs will take a toll on profit, joining rivals stung by volatile global trade policies. Palantir Technologies dropped 7% after the data-analysis software company posted financial results failed to meet investors’ expectations. Magnificent Seven stocks were all in the red: Tesla slips 1.6% as sales kept sliding across Europe’s biggest electric-car markets in April, despite the company rolling out an updated version of its most popular vehicle (Amazon -0.9%, Nvidia -1.4%, Meta -1.2%, Microsoft -0.7%, Apple -0.4%, Alphabet -0.8%). Here are the other notable premarket movers:
- Celsius Holdings (CELH) falls about 4% after the energy-drink maker reported first-quarter revenue and adjusted EPS that trailed Wall Street expectations.
- Constellation Energy (CEG) drops 6% after the power producer reported adjusted profit and Ebitda for the first quarter that fell short of expectations.
- Datadog (DDOG) climbs 2% as the software company forecast revenue for the second quarter, guidance that beat the average analyst estimate.
- DoorDash (DASH) falls 3% as the company is buying SevenRooms for $1.2 billion and Deliveroo for $3.9 billion, expanding its global reach and services.
- Fabrinet (FN) drops 6% as the maker of optical communications products posted a sequential decline in datacom revenue.
- Hims & Hers Health (HIMS) slumps 6% after the telehealth company gave guidance for second-quarter revenue that fell short of expectations. The firm also maintained its full-year sales outlook and Piper Sandler sees a lack of upside in the guidance.
- Ichor (ICHR) drops 15% after the maker of fluid delivery subsystems for semiconductor capital equipment posted disappointing gross margins.
- SolarEdge (SEDG) rises 13% after the solar equipment maker forecast revenue for the 2Q that beat the average analyst estimate.
- Vertex Pharmaceuticals (VRTX) falls 5% after the company reported adjusted earnings per share for the first quarter that missed expectations.
- WeRide Inc.’s US-listed shares (WRD) rise 12% after news that Uber Technologies is expanding its autonomous-vehicle partnership with the China-based firm to 15 more cities globally, including in Europe.
In Europe, the Stoxx 600 benchmark snapped a 10-day run of gains to drop 0.6%, its losses accelerating after incoming German chancellor Friedrich Merz failed suffered a shock setback when he fell short of a majority in a parliamentary vote to confirm him as Germany’s next chancellor, preventing his swearing in on Tuesday and pitching Europe’s biggest economy into uncharted territory. While the conservative leader is still expected to take charge of a ruling coalition of his CDU/CSU bloc and the Social Democrats, it was the first time since World War II that an incoming chancellor failed to secure backing from lawmakers in the first round of voting in the Bundestag and triggered chaos in Berlin’s government quarter. Meanwhile, European companies such as Royal Philips NV and Vestas Wind Systems A/S warned of uncertainty fueled by President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs; mining and industrial goods shares leading declines, while food beverage and energy stocks are the biggest outperformers. Here are the biggest movers Tuesday:
- Fresenius Medical Care shares gain as much as 6%, to the highest since July 2023, after the kidney dialysis company reported results for the first quarter which some analysts said were better than expected
- Vestas shares gain as much as 8.3% on Tuesday after it reported a first quarter orders beat and maintained guidance amid tariff uncertainty, which analysts welcomed
- ALK-Abello shares advance as much as 5.7%, to the highest since Nov. 14, after the Danish allergy drugmaker reported better-than-expected revenue for the first quarter
- Continental shares rise as much as 4.7% after the German firm more than doubled earnings in the first quarter as its car-parts unit slashed costs and tire sales bounced back from weaker levels last year
- Hugo Boss’s shares rise as much as 10% after the suit maker’s earnings beat estimates, which analysts said was a relief, especially against a tough backdrop
- Redcare Pharmacy shares fall as much as 9% after first-quarter results from the German online pharmacy provided little in the way of fresh catalysts to sustain a four-day winning streak
- Castellum shares slumped as much as 8.6%, the worst performing stock on the Stoxx 600 Real Estate Index, after the Swedish landlord reported 1Q revenue that missed the average analyst estimate
- Coloplast shares fall as much as 6.2%, to the lowest since February 2019, after the medical-products maker said CEO Kristian Villumsen stepped down from his role on May 5, with Lars Rasmussen becoming interim CEO
- Elis drops as much as 5% despite maintaining its full-year guidance, with analysts expecting little change to current consensus. The French cleaning services group said tariffs aren’t expected to have any direct impact
- Philips shares slip as much as 4% in early trading after the Dutch medical-technology firm cut its profitability outlook for the year, to take into account the estimated impact of tariffs
- TeamViewer shares slide as much as 10% after reporting results that included various accounting adjustments as well as new acquisition 1E
- Evotec shares fall as much as 9.6% as analysts point out the pharmaceutical firm’s results contained a miss in the research and development division and an increase in net debt
The slide in futures suggest that a recent burst of optimism fueled by some US trade concessions may already be fading. On Monday, the S&P 500 halted a nine-day rally that was its longest in about 20 years. While Ford’s warning served as a reminder that damage from the tariff war will become evident over the coming months, a run of firm economic data in recent days has caused traders to dial back bets on Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts.
“For us, it’s not the moment to add on risk,” said Nicolas Sopel, a strategist at Quintet Private Bank. “Even if there are successful negotiations between the US and China, tariffs will most likely be a lot higher than they were before Trump came into power. We will need time to see how deeply these increases impact the US economy,” according to Sopel, who has reduced US equity exposure.
Meanwhile, investors are coming around to the view that the Fed won’t cut interest rates as early or as deeply as earlier anticipated. While it’s expected to leave interest rates on hold this week, money markets have pushed back the timing of the first reduction to July and see three cuts by year-end, rather than the four they had expected a week ago.
“Recent comments from Fed Chair Powell suggest that the Fed will remain in wait-and-see mode over the near term,” Michael Krautzberger, AllianzGI’s chief investment office for fixed income, told clients. He also sees headwinds to the US dollar, and maintains “a short dollar footprint” in portfolios, he added.
Financial leaders at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills said they can live with tariffs and a reworking of trade, but want progress and an end to the chaos soon.
Meanwhile, the Bank of England is set to cut rates this week and may even pave the way for a series of back-to-back reductions in response to the trade war. The European Central Bank will also cut rates further, Governing Council member Yannis Stournaras, said.
Earlier in the session, Asian stocks advanced, as mainland Chinese shares rose on resilient holiday spending data and signs of easing trade tensions with the US. The MSCI Asia Pacific Ex-Japan Index gained as much as 0.7% before paring earlier gains. Communication services and consumer discretionary were among the best performing sectors.
Chinese stocks outperformed in the region, as investors’ mood was lifted by strong retail sales and robust airline traffic results during the Labor Day holiday in early May. Traders also dialed up bets on easing tensions after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US could see “substantial progress in the coming weeks” in trade talks with China. The benchmark CSI 300 Index gained 1% on Tuesday. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index rose 0.7In FX, the Bloomberg’s dollar index steadied after two days of losses, as the news on Merz weighed on the euro. However, the greenback is down nearly 7% this year and data shows traders have been adding to bearish bets. The fallout is being felt worldwide, with wild swings in recent days across Asian currencies, while Hong Kong has ramped up sales of its local currency to protect its foreign-exchange peg. China’s central bank kept the yuan’s daily reference rate little changed at 7.2008 per dollar as local markets reopened on Tuesday; the Taiwan dollar fell after gaining for six straight sessions
In rates, treasuries are mixed, with outperformance at the shorter-end of the curve. US 10-year yields rise 2 bps to 4.36% while two-year yields fall 1 bp; the front-end outperformance has 2s10s spread about 2bp wider on the day, off session highs reached during London morning. Bunds and gilts lag by 1bp and 2.5bp in the sector. The Treasury auction cycle continues with $42 billion 10-year new issue, following good demand for Monday’s 3-year note sale; WI 10-year yield near 4.355% is ~8bp richer than last month’s, which stopped through by 3bp; a $25b 30-year new issue Thursday will complete the cycle
In commodities, oil prices jump, with WTI rising 2.9% to $58.80 a barrel. Spot gold rises $40 to around $3,375/oz. Bitcoin is flat just above $94,000.
Looking at the US calendar, data releases will include US March trade balance data, the final April services and composite PMIs in the Eurozone, as well as March Eurozone PPI and France industrial production. The ECB’s Panetta is due to speak, while earnings releases include AMD, Arista Networks, Ferrari, Constellation Energy and Rivian.
Market Snapshot
- S&P 500 mini -0.8%
- Nasdaq 100 mini -1.1%
- Russell 2000 mini -1.1%
- Stoxx Europe 600 -0.9%
- DAX -2%
- CAC 40 -0.8%
- 10-year Treasury yield +1 basis point at 4.35%
- VIX +1 points at 24.67
- Bloomberg Dollar Index little changed at 1220.76
- euro +0.2% at $1.1337
- WTI crude +1.9% at $58.19/barrel
Top Overnight News
- Friedrich Merz fell short of a majority in an initial vote in parliament to confirm him as Germany’s next chancellor, delaying his swearing-in for at least one day and prompting the anti-immigrant AfD to call for new elections. German bunds pared a decline. BBG
- President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order to incentivize prescription drug manufacturing in the U.S., streamlining the path for pharmaceutical companies to build new production sites stateside as potential tariffs on imported medicines loom. CNBC
- The Trump administration blocked Harvard from new research grants from the federal government. Access to the funding, worth over $1 billion a year, won’t be possible until the university shows “responsible management,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said. BBG
- US House Speaker Johnson said House Republicans remained on pace to pass the Trump agenda by Memorial Day or shortly thereafter and stated the Trump agenda is not facing a setback in the US House.
- US Defense Secretary Hegseth ordered a reduction in 4-star positions in the military, according to a US official.
- China’s Caixin services PMI came in a bit below expectations at 50.7 (vs. the Street 51.8) and per capita consumer spending over the May Day holiday was muted. RTRS
- Chinese manufacturers are attempting to avoid the Trump administrations tariffs by fraudulently undervaluing cargo sent to the US, exploiting a system the American authorities have struggled to police. FT
- Taiwanese central bank says 80% of FX reserves are US bonds. Taiwan Central Bank FX official says they feel the market has returned to a more stable situation today.
- Hong Kong's de-facto central bank said it sold HK$46.54 billion ($6 billion) into the market on Saturday to prevent the local currency from strengthening beyond its official peg to the U.S. dollar, the first such intervention in more than four years. RTRS
- HKMA says has been lowering its duration in US treasury holdings; exchange fund has been diversifying into non-US assets Has been diversifying currency exposure in its investment portfolio to manage risks.
- The PBOC set the daily yuan reference rate only marginally stronger than on Thursday, sidestepping the offshore yuan’s sizable appreciation during the long weekend. That effectively forces the offshore currency to give up recent gains, MLIV wrote. BBG
- Spain’s blackout resulted in a €400 million loss to the economy. BBG
- The US trade deficit probably widened in March as firms boosted imports again to front-load products ahead of tariffs. BBG
A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newsquawk
APAC stocks were mostly higher as Chinese participants returned from the Labor Day holiday but with the gains capped following disappointing Chinese Caixin Services PMI data and as markets in Japan and South Korea remained closed. ASX 200 traded little changed as strength in the commodity-related sectors were predominantly offset by underperformance in financials and defensives, while the larger-than-expected contraction in building approvals clouded over risk appetite. Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp gained on return from the extended weekend and took their opportunity to react to the recent China tariff rhetoric from US President Trump who said that he is willing to lower tariffs on China at some point, while the miss on Caixin Services PMI data did little to derail the positive sentiment in China.
Top Asian News
- Chinese President Xi is prepared to work with EU leaders to expand mutual openness and properly handle frictions and differences, according to Xinhua Calls on the EU and China to safeguard fairness and justice.
- China said 314mln domestic trips were made during the May holiday which was up 6.4% Y/Y and travel expenditure of domestic tourists rose 8% Y/Y to 180.3bln, according to CCTV.
- US House intensified its legislative push against Beijing on Monday in which it advanced a slate of China-related bills targeting industrial espionage, export controls, national security threats and alleged human rights abuses.
- Fast fashion platforms Shein and Temu boosted digital advertising in Europe with the most growth seen in France and the UK, while they see increased app downloads in France and the UK as US tariffs hit and Shein also boosted advertising in Brazil where it manufactures goods for Latin America.
- HKMA intervened in which it bought USD 7.8bln against the HKD at 7.7500 after the HKD hit the strong end of the trading range.
European bourses (STOXX 600 -0.6%) opened mostly firmer/flat and traded tentatively on either side of the unchanged mark. Thereafter, the risk tone soon slipped after the HKMA said it says has been lowering its duration in US treasury holdings and as Germany's Merz failed to secure enough votes to become Chancellor; DAX 40 -1.8%. The HKMA update sparked some modest pressure in US equity futures (ES -0.9%, NQ -1%); ahead of a handful of earnings and meetings between the US and Canadian Presidents. As for sectors, its a mixed picture in Europe. Food Beverage & Tobacco takes the top spot, joined closely by Utilities. To the downside, Basic Resources sits right at the foot of the pile – losses largely driven by Anglo American after Peabody said it may terminate its deal for its coal mine assets. For the Pharma industry; US President Trump said he will announce pharmaceutical tariffs over the next two weeks, while he signed an order to reduce regulatory barriers to domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing and will have an announcement next week related to the cost of medicines.
Top European News
- Germany's CDU leader Merz falls short of a majority needed to become Chancellor in first round of voting in parliament; secured 310 Bundestag votes, 316/630 required. On the second round of voting for German Chancellor Merz, Handelsblatt citing sources reports "The second round of voting could be postponed until Friday because the approval of the AfD is necessary for an immediate ballot". There will not be a second vote on Merz becoming German Chancellor today, via Handelsblatt citing numerous reports and the CDU Secretary General.
- EU is set to make it easier for UK professionals to work in the bloc, according to FT.
- SNB Chairman Schlegel says is committed to its price stability mandate; biggest challenge at present is uncertainty. Ready to intervene in the FX market as necessary. Swiss inflation is expected to come down. Not ruled out negative rates. Nobody likes negative rates but if have to, are prepared to do it again.
FX
- After an attempted recovery last week, the USD has continued to ebb lower after DXY failed to sustain a move above the 100 mark, despite a solid showing for US ISM services. HKMA said it has been lowering its duration in US treasury holdings and has been diversifying into non-US assets. DXY is currently towards the lower end of Monday's 99.46-100.05 range.
- EUR is firmer vs. the broadly weaker USD as Eurozone-specific newsflow remains on the light side. ECB-dove Stournaras noted he does not see inflation if the EU tariff reaction is selective and it seems the ECB will continue with rate cuts. EUR/USD has gained a firmer footing on a 1.13 handle but is yet to approach Monday's high at 1.1364 with some of the upward momentum for the currency stalled in recent trade after Germany's CDU leader Merz fell short of a majority needed to become Chancellor in the first round of voting in parliament.
- USD/JPY traded indecisively overnight and failed to sustain a brief return to the 144.00 level with price action largely driven by the dollar amid the continued absence of Japanese participants. In European trade, downside was seen for the pair as global equity futures ebbed lower. USD/JPY has delved as low as 142.91 with the next target coming via the 1st May low at 142.88.
- GBP is mildly firmer vs. the USD as UK participants return to market. UK newsflow remains light with markets looking ahead to Thursday's BoE policy announcement. Cable has ventured as high as 1.3333 but is yet to test yesterday's 1.3336 peak.
- Diverging fortunes for the antipodeans with AUD towards the bottom-end of the G10 leaderboard. Overnight trade saw a larger-than-expected contraction in Australian building approvals and a disappointing Chinese services PMI. However, the cause for underperformance vs. NZD is otherwise unclear.
- PBoC set USD/CNY mid-point at 7.2008 vs exp. 7.2518 (Prev. 7.2014).
Fixed Income
- USTs are holding around the unchanged mark in a 110-27+ to 111-03 band. Came under modest pressure overnight on the return of China and generally supportive tone, despite weak Chinese PMI; though, once again, Japan was on holiday and as such conditions were thinner than normal with no cash trade. Into the European morning, USTs began to pick up alongside fixed income generally amidst commentary from the HKMA that they are diversifying into non-US assets. The update had more of an impact on US equity futures and the DXY than it did on Treasuries. Ahead, supply is the main scheduled event stateside in the form of a 10yr tap. Follows Monday’s 3yr sale which was much better than the prior.
- Bunds were initially under pressure in-fitting with the bias from USTs overnight. Thereafter, the benchmark began to lift off lows and was largely unaffected by modest upward revisions to Final PMIs for April. More recently, Bunds jumped by almost 30 ticks to breach the 131.00 mark as Germany's CDU/CSU leader Merz fell just six votes short of a Bundestag majority in the vote to appoint him as Chancellor. Upside in Bunds comes as Merz not securing a majority presents risks to his Chancellorship, the CDU/CSU-SPD coalition and possibly the implementation of recent fiscal reform. The upside has now almost entirely been pared, from 131.08 to current 130.88, potentially as traders await clarity on the timing of the next vote; as it stands, it looks unlikely to occur today, but could be as soon as Wednesday.
- Gilts are the clear underperformer in catch-up play from Monday’s UK Bank Holiday. Gapped lower by 29 ticks at 92.88, the session high, before slipping to a 92.32 base in short order. Currently holding just off that low but in close proximity to it. PMIs for April were subject to modest upward revisions, but in-fitting with EGBs spurred no real reaction in the benchmark.
- Germany sells EUR 3.48bln vs exp. EUR 4.5bln 2.40% 2030 Bobl: b/c 1.2x (prev. 1.40x), average yield 2.07% (prev. 2.06%) & retention 22.67% (prev. 21.1%).
Commodities
- Firm gains across the crude complex, with prices rebounding from the earlier OPEC-induced downside, with most of Asia also returning to the market from the long weekend. The upside could be at least partially attributed to the geopolitical developments yesterday, in which Israel expanded its Gaza operation and suggested that it plans to occupy the territory, marking a major escalation from its initial plans of destroying Hamas and its capabilities. WTI resides in a USD 57.03-58.52/bbl range while Brent sits in a USD 60.18-61.64/bbl parameter.
- Precious metals are higher across the board amid a softer Dollar, the return of APAC players, ongoing tariff woes, and escalating geopolitics. Spot gold has almost reversed the losses seen during the final week of April with the yellow metal current in a USD 3,322.75-3,387.02/oz parameter as it eyes USD 3,400/oz to the upside.
- The base metals complex ekes mild gains with the aid of a softer Dollar and alongside the return of some demand as most APAC markets returned from their long weekend. 3M LME copper has waned off best levels but resides around the middle of a USD 9,366.50-9,487.53/t intraday band.
- European Commission is to make a legal proposal to ban Russian gas and LNG imports by end-2027 and ban new Russian gas deals and existing spot contracts by end-2025; plans will be announced on Tuesday, legal proposals due in June, via an EU official.
- EU Commission will present a legal proposal in June to ban all imports under Russian gas deals and existing spot contracts by end-2025, via Reuters citing a Commission document In June, will present trade measures aimed at making imports of Russian enriched Uranium economically less viable.
Geopolitics: Middle East
- Palestinian media reported that the Israeli army blew up residential buildings east of Gaza City.
- "Israeli army: Our forces are deployed in southern Syria and are in a state of readiness to prevent the entry of any hostile forces into the area or to Druze villages", according to Sky News Arabia.
- "Hamas: The Israeli occupation's approval of plans to expand its operation in the Gaza Strip is an explicit decision to sacrifice Israeli prisoners", according to Al Jazeera.
- Israeli National Unity chairman Benny Gantz says "We must be ready and have the ability to attack Iran's nuclear facilities", via Sky News Arabia
Geopolitics: Ukraine
- Ukraine attack damaged a power substation in Russia's Kursk region, according to the regional governor.
- Russian defence units destroyed five Ukrainian drones flying towards Moscow and Russia's aviation watchdog announced flights were halted at Moscow's major airports following reports of drones, but later announced that airports reopened.
US Event Calendar
- 8:30 am: Mar Trade Balance $140.5b, est. -137.15b, prior -122.66b
DB's Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap
As those of us in the UK were enjoying a wet, cold and windy bank holiday yesterday, just 4 days after record temperatures, the strong market recovery of the past two weeks ran out of steam, with the S&P 500 (-0.64%) declining for the first time in ten sessions, while 30yr Treasury yields (+4.5bps) rose for a fourth session running. These moves came amid a more cautious tone on the trade risks that Peter Sidorov had mentioned here yesterday, while still solid US economic data saw investors pare back expectations of near-term Fed cuts ahead of Wednesday’s FOMC meeting.
A sense that the tariff relief trade was losing momentum came amid little concrete progress on trade talks as well as Trump’s post late on Sunday calling for 100% tariffs on movies produced outside the US. While there are no details yet on how the latter plan would be implemented, it marked the administration’s first foray into tariffs on services. Later on Monday, Trump also said that pharma tariffs would be announced over the next two weeks.This backdrop saw the S&P 500 (-0.64%) end its longest winning run since 2004 that had seen the index rise by +10.25% over the previous nine sessions to end last week above its pre-Liberation Day levels. Underperformance by tech stocks saw the Mag-7 decline by -0.99%, while Netflix fell -1.94% after Trump’s movie tariff comments. After the close, the latest earnings releases saw Ford suspend its full-year financial guidance as it warned that auto tariffs will weigh on profits. And Palantir, which has been strongest advancer in the S&P 500 so far this year, saw its shares fell more than -9% in after-market trading as the software platform maker’s projected revenue growth fell shy of very lofty expectations. S&P 500 (-0.25%) and NASDAQ 100 (-0.45%) futures are edging lower as I type.
Yesterday’s reversal in equities came despite a decent ISM services release for April that pointed to a still resilient US economy and followed a solid payrolls print last Friday. The headline index unexpectedly rose from 50.8 to 51.6 (vs. 50.2 expected), with new orders rising to a 4-month high of 52.3. The ISM survey also pointed to elevated price pressures, with the prices paid index rising to 65.1, its highest level since January 2023.
The stronger data saw markets pare back their expectations of near-term Fed rate cuts. Notably, only 23bps of cuts are now priced by the July meeting, which is the first time since late February that the next cut is less than fully priced by July. The amount of cuts priced by year-end fell by -4.0bps to 76bps. Treasury yields moved higher, especially at the long end, with the 10yr up +3.5bps to 4.345% and the 30yr up +4.6bps to 4.835%. An +18.2bps rise in 10yr yields over the past three sessions may place some extra attention on today’s 10yr auction. There has been no trading overnight due to a Japanese holiday.
Those moves come ahead of tomorrow’s Fed decision, where our US economists expect the FOMC to keep rates steady and avoid explicit forward guidance about the policy path ahead. They continue to see the next rate cut coming in December and while risks are tilted towards earlier easing, in their view this would require a clear weakening of the labour market. See our economists’ full preview here. Central banks will also be in focus in Europe this week, with policy decisions from the UK, Norway and Sweden all due on Thursday. Our UK economist expects the BoE to deliver a 25bp cut (see preview here), while Norges and Riksbank are expected to keep rates on hold.
In Europe, while the UK was off for the May bank holiday, it was a more positive session, with the STOXX 600 (+0.16%) posting a tenth consecutive advance, the longest such run since 2021. The DAX (+1.12%) outperformed, moving to within half a percent of its all-time closing high on March 6. Italy’s FTSEMIB (+0.39%) and Spain’s IBEX (+0.55%) also gained but France’s CAC fell back (-0.55%).
European bonds saw muted moves, with the yields on 10yr bunds (-1.6bps), OATs (-1.3bps) and BTPs (-3.4bps) all seeing modest declines. The ECB’s Stournaras said “it seems we will continue” with rate cuts, but that amid the high uncertainty “you don’t take big steps or make big promises”.
In the commodity space, oil prices fell to their lowest level in four years following the OPEC+ agreement over the weekend to deliver another sizeable production increase in June which added to concerns of an oversupplied market. Brent crude fell by -1.73% to $60.23/bbl, its sixth consecutive daily decline of more than 1%, though it partially recovered after opening as low as $58.50/bbl in Asia yesterday. Meanwhile, gold rebounded by +2.89% on Monday to $3,334/oz, erasing last week’s -2.39% decline.
Asian equity markets are gaining this morning in thin trading with markets in Japan and South Korea remaining shut for public holidays. Chinese markets are ticking higher after resuming trading following the Labour-day holidays on signs of renewed momentum in trade negotiations between the world’s two largest economies. As I type, the CSI (+0.95%), Shanghai Composite (+0.94%), and the Hang Seng (+0.69%) are leading the way while the S&P/ASX 200 (+0.11%) is lagging a touch.
In FX, the Taiwanese dollar is retreating a touch this morning following an epic two-day rally that saw it at a near three-year high of 29.606 on Monday. The currency's appreciation was influenced, in part, by speculation surrounding a possible US trade deal that could necessitate Taiwan strengthening its currency. However, both Taiwan's central bank and the Cabinet's Office of Trade Negotiations have denied that the US has requested currency appreciation or that the issue is even part of trade talks.
Coming back to China, services sector growth slowed significantly in April, reaching a seven-month low. The Caixin services PMI dropped to 50.7 from 51.9 in March, and 51.8 expected, reflecting weaker new orders and uncertainty stemming from US tariffs.
To the day ahead, data releases will include US March trade balance data, the final April services and composite PMIs in the Eurozone, as well as March Eurozone PPI and France industrial production. The ECB’s Panetta is due to speak, while earnings releases include AMD, Arista Networks, Ferrari, Constellation Energy and Rivian.
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Site: AsiaNews.itThe interim government commission led by Yunus is drafting laws to promote 'equal opportunities' in inheritance, labor, and family matters. For fundamentalists, these proposals 'hurt religious sentiments.' The fight for rights continues among political parties and civil society, against the backdrop of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's return to the country.
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Site: The Remnant Newspaper
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Site: southern orders
Ed Condon at the Pillar writes about a dark-horse candidate for the papacy, Cardinal Mamberti. When I saw him celebrating the last Mass of mourning for Pope Francis on Sunday, I thought he looked very popish but not in the Pope Francis tradition, thanks be to God.Condon also says that those who have been top runners seem to have their rising dismissed by setting.
Read Condon’s take on Mamberti and those who are losing favor by pressing the Pillar title below.
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Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
Will America Survive?
Paul Craig Roberts
The foreign policy of the United States is in the hands of the least capable, most uninformed, and most reckless morons the American education system has yet produced, and their successors, if any, will be worse.
American aggression toward the world is hidden under a euphemism: “national defense.” In past years before euphemisms took over from reality, the Secretary of Defense was known as the Secretary of War.
Washington conducted wars against Mexico. Against the Confederate States of America. Against the native American Indians. Against Spain from whom Washington seized Cuba and the Philippines. Against varied Central and South American countries–remember US Marine Commander Smedley Butler, twice decorated with America’s highest honor, who said that he and his US Marines were the enforcement squad in Latin America for the United Fruit Company and the New York Banks who were exploiting Latin America to the hilt, backed up by the bayonets of the US Marine Corps.
The name of the War Department changed, but we went on to wars in Korea, Vietnam, the Caribbean, overthrowing various countries in central and South America. Then in Africa where leaders and governments were overthrown. Then in Yugoslavia. Then in the Middle East where Washington eliminated Israel’s opponents for Israel. Then in South Ossetia against Russia. Then in Ukraine again against Russia. And now the US has wars pending against Iran and China, while continuing the one against Russia by shifting the burden to Europe.
In no way is this “national defense.”
We are witnessing the continuation of Washington’s policy of hegemony. Washington negotiates with Russia, China, Iran, for one purpose only. To present them with “peace agreements” that they cannot possibly accept in order for Washington to say it tried for peace, but Russia, China, and Iran refused the peace offers.
The “peace offers” amount to the surrender of sovereignty of Russia, China, and Iran. They have to conform their policies to Washington’s instructions. Iran has to dismantle its national defense and destroy its conventional missiles. Iran can’t sell any oil to China or anyone else. Iran can’t enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. Russia can’t have all of its conquests of the Russian territories in Ukraine. Ukraine won’t be demilitarized. Russia will be punished with more sanctions if Putin doesn’t agree to a ceasefire before he knows what the deal is. Ukraine can have de facto NATO membership with a mutual security clause with the West. China can’t continue succeeding economically more than America. Far from renouncing the Paul Wolfowitz Doctrine of American Hegemony, President Trump espouses it.
America is not as strong as Washington thinks it is. Actually, America is very weak, as is every Western country, not merely militarily, but also emotionally, spiritually. Generations of denunciation of Western Civilization by Western universities have created populations unsure of who they are. The damage universities have done to the belief system is extensive. In America’s coming wars with China, Iran, and Russia, what are the American youths dying for except Israel and the profits of the armaments industries?
Why should Americans die for Ukraine and Israel and the profits of armaments industries? No one asks or answers this question.
The relationship between men and women and between ethnic citizens and their tyrannical Western governments are severed perhaps beyond repair. The belief system throughout the Western World has been dismantled by decades of White Liberal and Jewish propaganda that the West, all of it, is racist, misogynist, homophobic, and anti-semitic and must make amends by accepting second class citizenship for oppressive white heterosexuals–the “Trump Deplorables,” an ethnic and gender class that in Jean Raspail’s novel, The Camp of the Saints, is eliminated from the earth by its own loss of belief in itself.
How can an American believe in himself when he is endlessly told that he is the source of all evil, all oppression? The indoctrination of white kids against their race begins in early education with critical race theory and aversive racism. Can Washington’s war propagandists create larger monsters out of Putin, Xi, and Iran than Western Universities have created out of white people?
So, here is the situation: On the one hand the neoconservatives and the America First Liberals tell Americans that they are ordained for rule. On the other hand the Democrats and the left tell Americans that they are hopeless racists who have to be displaced.
The Trump regime is creating a war scenario that America cannot win. Let’s just consider one of the many possible developments. Washington withdraws from the war in Ukraine, leaving it to Europe, but before Washington can engage China, Netanyahu sics his American puppet on Iran. Iran, unlike Putin, decides to fight. There go the American aircraft carriers in the region. There go the American bases in the Middle East. Iran’s Russian supplied air defense systems eliminates a large percentage of the American Air Force. America is handed a resounding military defeat. Out come the nuclear weapons.
Putin’s inability to make decisions is aiding and abetting Washington’s self destruction. Putin says that Russia stands alone against the West which is attempting to finish off Russia by breaking the Federation into a number of smaller countries, as Washington did to the Soviet Union, creating Ukraine for the first time in its history as an independent state, one now only 30 years old, a Washington creation.
Does Putin understand that the peace negotiations are a fraud intentionally designed to fail? What is actually going on is that America’s intended wars with Russia and China are being sequenced, because the US lacks the strength to take on all its chosen opponents simultaneously.
Washington’s war against Russia in Ukraine is being turned over to Europe under the pretense of a US/EU split. As neither Zelensky nor Putin can accept Trump’s terms, Trump can extract America from the conflict by walking away, leaving the continuation of the conflict to the EU. The American establishment will continue to make money from this conflict by selling the weapons to the Europeans and make more money by ramping up war with China.
The conditions Trump requires of Iran are so unrealistic as to indicate a total lack of seriousness. They amount to stripping Iran of all possibility of existence as a sovereignty nation. Trumps’ announcement of US sanctions on every country that buys oil from Iran is mindless. Washington is trying to cut China off from oil like FDR did Japan, thus leading to the war that FDR wanted. Trump has either made a deal with the American establishment or his government has.
Look at the picture with a clear eye.
What and how is Russia endangering the West that justifies war to suppress the threat? Russia has threatened no Western country and has done nothing but to plead for a mutual security agreement with the West, which the West has refused.
What actions have Iran taken against the West? None. Iran is in the crosshairs because Iran supports Israel’s last remaining enemies, the small group of Houthis in small Yemen and the decapitated Hezbollah militia in small Lebanon. Washington eliminated for Israel at the cost of American lives and money Israel’s enemies in Iraq, Libya, and Syria. The Arab world is no more. America wiped it out for Israel.
As Norman Podhoretz made clear in the Jewish journal Commentary, the purpose of America’s 21st century’s wars in the Middle East is to overthrow Arab states in the way of Greater Israel. And Washington complied. Today the only remaining Arab state is Saudi Arabia, and not long ago an Israeli minister added half of Saudi Arabia to the map of Greater Israel. Israel now occupies part of Syria and says it is there to stay. This week Israel announced that the total conquest of Palestine was under way.
The first quarter of the 21st Century has been Israel’s. Israel’s American puppet has destroyed for Israel, at the expense of American lives and money, Israel’s Arab enemies. Now Netanyahu is going to sic his dumbshit puppets in Washington on Iran.
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Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
PCR and Larry Sparano Discuss the Collapse of Journalism and Law Schools into Anti-Americanism
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Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
The Death of Palestine
Israel approves full ‘conquest’ of Gaza
The reported plan includes the forced relocation of Palestinians and occupation of the territory
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Site: AsiaNews.itThe leader of the Nation Power Party was one of the few critical voices still free, opposed to the Hun clan, which has ruled Cambodia of 40 years. The court found him guilty of "incitement". His "crime" was that of defending peasants from land grabs and of criticising government policies.
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Site: Catholic Herald
Each day between now and the May 7 conclave to elect a successor to Pope Francis, John Allen is offering a profile of a different papabile, the Italian term for a man who could be pope. There’s no scientific way to identity these contenders; it’s mostly a matter of weighing reputations, positions held and influence wielded over the years. There’s also certainly no guarantee one of these candidates will emerge wearing white; as an old bit of Roman wisdom has it, “He who enters a conclave as a pope exits as a cardinal.” These are, however, the leading names drawing buzz in Rome right now, at least ensuring they will get a look. Knowing who these men are also suggests issues and qualities other cardinals see as desirable heading into the election.
ROME – At times there can be an odd dynamic to a papal election, almost like a tape delay, according to which candidates get their real bite at the apple in the conclave after the one in which they attracted the most attention.
Such was the case for Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, who was a hot pick in 2005 and the runner-up in that conclave, yet he didn’t get elected until eight years later following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI.
The reason for the tape delay is often simple: age. When a candidate first bursts into prominence, they’re often judged too young, in the sense that their papacy would be too long. By the time another few years have passed they’re often right in the wheelhouse, with the ironic result that their chances go up even as conventional wisdom says their moment has already passed.
If there’s a potential contender for whom the same tape delay dynamic might play out today, it could well be 79-year-old Cardinal Fernando Filoni, who was widely mentioned as a possibility in 2013 but has somewhat flown below radar this time around.
Should his fellow cardinals decide to dust off Filoni’s résumé, they’d be reminded of a major selling point that came up twelve years ago: “The pope who didn’t blink when bombs fell on Baghdad.”
The reference is to April 2003, when Filoni was serving as the papal ambassador in Iraq. At a time when other diplomats fled for safety, as well as U.N. officials and journalists, Filoni refused to leave, saying he couldn’t abandon the local Catholic community and other suffering Iraqis.
“If a pastor flees in moments of difficulty,” he said later, “the sheep are lost.”
Filoni remained in the country for the aftermath of the war, as Christians found themselves primary targets amid rising chaos. He refused to adopt special security measures, wanting to face the same risks as locals who didn’t have access to guards and armored vehicles. He said his aim was to be seen “as an Iraqi, by the Iraqis”. To this day, the pectoral cross he wears is a gift given to him by the Iraqi Muslim community for not abandoning them in their darkest hour.
That choice almost cost him dearly in February 2006, when a car bomb went off outside the nunciature, demolishing a garden wall and smashing window panes, but luckily leaving no one hurt. Afterward, a Muslim contractor showed up with 30 workers to repair the damage out of respect for the solidarity Filoni had shown.
Born in Taranto, Italy, in 1946, Filoni’s seminary studies coincided with the period of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), and his episcopal motto is Lumen gentium Christus, recalling the council’s dogmatic constitution on the Church.
In a 2012 interview, Filoni said one of the ways he survived the upheaval of the 1970s, when he was doing graduate study, was by living in a parish rather than a college. As a result, he said, he kept contact with the practical concerns of real people instead of getting caught up in ideological debates.
Filoni earned doctorates in both philosophy and canon law from the Pontifical Lateran University. He also has a degree from Rome’s Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali, a prestigious secular institution, where he studied “techniques of public opinion”, specialising in journalism.
He entered the Vatican’s diplomatic service and was posted to a series of increasingly challenging assignments. He served in Sri Lanka from 1982 to 1983; Iran from 1983 to 1985, shortly after the Khomeini revolution; Brazil from 1989 to 1992; Hong Kong from 1992 to 2001, where he opened a “study mission” on mainland China; Jordan and Iraq from 2001 to 2006; and the Philippines from 2006 to 2007.
These were hardly pleasure cruises. Filoni was in Tehran during the bloodiest period of the Iran/Iraq war and in China for the upheaval caused by the reforms of Deng Xiaoping.
Filoni is especially well-versed on China, given his decade in Hong Kong and his fascination with the country and its people, though he doesn’t carry any of the baggage for the controversial deal with China regarding the appointment of bishops struck under Pope Francis.
From June 2007 to May 2011, Filoni held the all-important job of sostituto, or “substitute”, effectively the pope’s chief of staff. That aspect of his background is a mixed blessing because it means Filoni was on the scene for a couple of the more spectacular implosions of Benedict’s papacy, including the cause célèbre surrounding a Holocaust-denying traditionalist bishop in 2009 and the surreal Boffo affair in early 2010. On the other hand, most people blame Benedict’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, for those miscues, and give Filoni credit for trying to ameliorate them as best he could.
From 2011 to 2019, Filoni headed the Vatican’s Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, giving him a broad sense of the situation of the Church in the developing world. Since 2019 he’s served as the Grand Master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem, putting him once again in touch with the Church in the Middle East. In 2021, Filoni accompanied Pope Francis on his pastoral visit to Iraq.
The case for Filoni?
Many cardinals have said they want a pope with global vision, especially someone who can embrace the two-thirds of the 1.2 billion Catholics in the world today who live outside the West. Arguably, nobody among the 133 electors has broader life experience and understanding of the diverse situations around the world than Filoni.
In addition, his long Vatican experience creates a reasonable hope that he knows where the bodies are buried and could get its operations in order. At the very least, he wouldn’t require much on-the-job training in terms of how the place works.
In an era of deep geopolitical uncertainty, Filoni may strike many cardinals as a safe pair of hands, someone with the diplomatic background and personal experience to be able to play on the world stage and not be out of his depth.
In general, Filoni could strike electors as a choice for broad continuity with the geopolitical and social agenda of the Francis papacy, but greater personal stability and reserve – which, frankly, might be a very attractive option.
The case against?
The mere fact of being a diplomat might count against Filoni with some electors, motivated by the motto “less diplomacy and more doctrine”. Concerns in this camp may be augmented by the fact that on most of the contested issues in internal Catholic life, from the blessing of persons in same-sex unions to women deacons and beyond, Filoni really doesn’t have a clear track record.
It’s also true that aside from a few brief stints in parishes as a young priest, he has little pastoral experience and has never run a diocese. Some cardinals regard such in-the-trenches seasoning as a prerequisite, on the assumption that it’s hard to understand today’s pastoral realities if you’ve never actually served as a pastor.
Perhaps most basically, while no one questions Filoni’s courage or integrity, there are reservations about his charisma. Some see him as a relatively grey figure, better suited to a behind-the-scenes roles than being the front man. Sceptics wonder if he would really have the capacity to inspire and to move people that’s obviously desirable in an Evangelist-in-Chief.
For all those reasons, Filoni probably has to be considered a long shot. But every now and then, long shots do come through … and for a man who once braved American bombs, very little at this point probably would rattle him much.
Photo: Cardinal Fernando Filoni, Pope Francis’ special envoy to Iraq, leads a mass for Easter celebrations, attended by Iraqi Christians who fled the violence in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, on April 4, 2015 in Arbil, the capital of the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq. (Photo by Safin HAMID / AFP)
The post ‘Papabile’ of the Day: Cardinal Fernando Filoni, the diplomat who braved Baghdad first appeared on Catholic Herald.
The post ‘Papabile’ of the Day: Cardinal Fernando Filoni, the diplomat who braved Baghdad appeared first on Catholic Herald.
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Site: PeakProsperityWe’ve got a fat Fat Pipe today, so let’s dive in. Peak Oil Has Arrived To The U.S. And Almost Nobody Is Ready For It I beat the oil drum loudly because it’s so difficult to overstate just how vitally important it is for our future prosperity that not just the volumes of oil continue...
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Site: OnePeterFive
While the sede of St. Peter remains officially vacante for the next couple of days at least, it’s a unique moment to reflect very frankly on the painful pontificate of Francis without fear of being labeled a sedevacantist. In a recent op-ed for OnePeterFive, Danielle Heckenkamp urged Catholics not to “focus on the confusion and the errors of the past twelve years” and to instead marvel that God’s…
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Site: Zero HedgeAmerican's Crypto Renaissance Is Already Failing; But We Can Fix ItTyler Durden Tue, 05/06/2025 - 08:05
Authored by Shane Molidor via CoinTelegraph.com,
For years, launching a crypto project in the United States has been a maze of uncertainty. Legal ambiguity and a hostile regulatory environment have driven founders offshore, turning places like Switzerland and the Cayman Islands into global hubs for blockchain innovation.
With Trump’s election, things finally started to change, with a US administration openly declaring its intention to be crypto-friendly. Yet, despite the rhetoric, nothing concrete has changed so far.
Launching a crypto project in the US is just as difficult as ever. US regulatory agencies continue to offer nothing but vague threats and “regulation by enforcement” lawsuits. America wants to be a leader in crypto, but, even under the Trump administration, it isn’t taking action to create the conditions that would make that happen.
Killing crypto in America
Every crypto project faces the same fundamental problem: Achieving decentralization is critical to avoid regulatory scrutiny, but until a project launches its token, a degree of centralization is unavoidable.
The SEC’s outdated Howey test ensures that nearly every legitimate crypto project gets classified as a security. The logic is self-defeating. Projects can’t decentralize without launching a token, but launching a token in the US instantly puts them in the SEC’s crosshairs.
This isn’t just a theoretical issue; it has real consequences. Liquidity providers, essential for all new token launches, won’t engage with US-based projects because they assume their tokens will be classified as securities. Centralized exchanges refuse to list tokens issued from US entities for the same reason. Even decentralized exchanges face pressure from their legal teams to avoid actively seeding liquidity for American projects. The result? US founders are boxed out of the global crypto economy before they even get started.
Offshore jurisdictions are winning
This regulatory failure has spawned an entire cottage industry of offshore legal firms specializing in setting up token-issuing entities. With its FINMA no-action letter system, Switzerland has become a hotbed for crypto projects because it offers one of the few structured ways to get legal clarity on a token’s classification. The Cayman Islands and British Virgin Islands have also established themselves as crypto safe havens, providing flexible corporate structures that allow projects to operate with far less regulatory risk.
The absurdity is that the actual work — the development, the hiring, the innovation — still happens in the US. The token issuance gets pushed offshore via “Associations” and “Foundations,” which serve non-profits operating independently of US-based development shops. American founders are forced to funnel money into unnecessary legal fees, overseas operators, and shell foundations to avoid the inevitable crackdown from US regulators. This isn’t just bad for crypto; it’s bad for America. Until it can be solved, the US will continue to hemorrhage talent, investment, and influence to less myopic jurisdictions.
Make America crypto-friendly
The US has spent years fumbling crypto policy, and now, even with an administration that claims to be pro-crypto, it’s still failing to deliver real change. The solution isn’t to promise capital gains tax exemptions on crypto, as some have suggested. That does little to ameliorate the punishing regulatory landscape US-based projects are forced to navigate. If the US truly wants to lead in crypto, it also must take the lead in providing regulatory clarity.
That means finally recognizing that the same regulations that have governed traditional financial markets can’t always be applied to crypto. The Howey test doesn’t work. Instead, the government must provide a new and functional legal framework for the crypto industry.
It’s time for US legislators and regulators to acknowledge that crypto tokens can’t achieve decentralization instantaneously and almost always require the efforts of a team of core contributors to bootstrap initial growth and development. The federal government must devise a version of the Howey test that does not automatically classify every new crypto token as a security but instead allows tokens a grace period to decentralize. In conjunction with this, the US must establish new protections to ensure insiders aren’t unduly benefiting from crypto projects while they scale.
In addition to swiftly ending the “regulation by enforcement” approach employed under Gary Gensler’s SEC, a tactic seemingly designed to gradually smother crypto activity in the US, the government must provide clear guidelines. It needs to be feasible for market makers to evaluate whether US tokens are commodities or securities with a degree of stability and predictability. This is the only way to end the blanket bans market makers have placed on US tokens and bring crypto development back to America.
America’s window of opportunity is closing
Crypto founders aren’t waiting for Washington to figure it out. Every day, without clear regulations, more crypto projects are incorporated offshore. The US doesn’t even need to “embrace” crypto. It just needs to stop actively driving it away.
If this administration truly wants to make the US the leader in crypto, it needs to move beyond campaign slogans and start fixing the fundamental problems that forced this industry offshore in the first place. And it needs to act fast.
Shane Molidor, Founder, Forgd.
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Site: Mises Institute
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Site: Mises InstituteThe government loads $328 billion of your tax care money on the EBT cards for SNAP recipients, and they go into the stores and they buy Coca Cola products, Frito Lay products, Pepsi products.
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Site: Novus Motus LiturgicusClear Creek Abbey in northwest Oklahoma (diocese of Tulsa: located at 5804 W Monastery Road in Hulbert) will once again be hosting a week-long instruction in Gregorian chant, based on the course called Laus in Ecclesia, from Monday, July 14, to Friday, July 18. The course will be offered at three different levels of instruction:1) Gregorian initiation (Laus in Ecclesia level 1), taking the Gregory DiPippohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13295638279418781125noreply@blogger.com0
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Site: Zero HedgeGamergate Wins: Leftist Video Game Journalists Face Buyouts And Mass LayoffsTyler Durden Tue, 05/06/2025 - 07:45
Beyond those conservatives and libertarians in the alternative media that were warning about the invasion of woke ideology for many years, the very first group of "normies" to recognize the progressive threat to their subculture was gamers. And, to their credit, they brought attention to the issue in a more effective way than the alternative media ever did.
The conservative sphere has always dismissed video games, movies, and the hobby game world as "stuff for kids" and this was a fatal error. Instead of standing guard and keeping leftists away from the kids, the cultural Marxists were allowed to run rampant throughout the media industry. They effectively blitzed the space and within a five year period they took over almost everything the west sees and hears from movies to games to comics and commercials.
They did have extensive help, though. Through ESG programs, government agencies,NGOs and international conglomerates used vast amounts of cash to manipulate every aspect of media and incentivize the spread of woke ideology. The meaning of ESG (Economic, Social, Governance) is meaningless and doesn't explain at all what it actually does. At bottom, ESG was about progressive dominance of the cultural conversation.
Their strategy was to saturate media with leftist talking point to create the perception of false consensus. To make the majority of people believe that most people are in support of far-left politics, and that there's something wrong with you if you're not also onboard. Even some feminists called out the campaign as malicious.
In terms of video gaming, the industry is far larger and far more pervasive than movies and television. It's not surprising that leftists sought to target games first with feminist propaganda, anti-masculinity propaganda, anti-west propaganda, DEI, CRT, etc. Gamers were not enthusiastic and they took to social media to expose the takeover.
First and foremost, Gamergate called out gaming journalists and their extreme bias in favor of woke ideology, not to mention their open disdain for young men and the male-centric foundation of gaming in general. Gaming journalists lorded over a tiny niche market of news and commentary but they exploited associations with the wider corporate media to spread disinformation. They used this influence in tandem with leftist activists to attack any game company that was not conforming to the woke message. This was the beginning of "cancel culture" - It largely started within the games business.
Gamers also called out the ideological hijacking of games in general, including forced diversity standards, the "uglyfication" of female characters and the addition of obesity activism, the incessant use of gay and trans propaganda and the injection of leftist messaging within storylines often aimed at young children, etc.
Gamergate was attacked relentlessly for simply telling the truth: That gaming was being colonized by progressive activists who hate games, who hate gamers, and who only wanted to use gaming as a vehicle to deliver DEI brainwashing to the masses. At first, the media claimed that this was a conspiracy theory and there was no leftist agenda. Then, when they were fully exposed, they admitted there was an agenda but claimed it's a "good agenda" and anyone who opposes it is a sexist, racist fascist.
Most of the culture war simply involved making the public aware of the leftist intrusion and the money behind it. Once that became widely known fact, the activists were fighting a losing battle. Today, Gamergate has officially won the culture war as gaming journalists face mass layoffs in the midst of industry buyouts.
Polygon, a media company founded in 2012 that is notorious for its leftist crusades against gamers, has been sold to Valnet, owner of Game Rant and a host of other publication. The company has subsequently been gutted. Most of the journalists involved along with the editor-in-chief are departing or they are being fired.
This follows a series of layoffs within the industry of some of the most vile feminist journalists ever to pretend to play games. Many have taken to social media to e-beg for cash from followers, beg for work from other outlets, and complain about how they will now have to get real jobs in retail and service. It's hard to imagine a more fitting end for a group that tried to ruin the lives of so many for the sake of political supremacy.
It should be noted that the surge in media layoffs in recent months follows the shutdown of funds flowing from government agencies like USAID. It's hard to say if there's a connection, but if DOGE delivered the finishing death blow it's only because these organizations already lost millions of readers through through their own arrogance.
And yet, to this day most of the activists involved in the bloodletting still refuse to acknowledge the real reasons why they are so despised. They blame the economic climate, though, there are numerous gaming advocates on YouTube and elsewhere that are wildly successful. The market is there, it just doesn't want Polygon and its peers.
Other activist journalists blame a climate of "racism and sexism" for the death of their platforms. They still haven't learned; this is the attitude of zealotry that put them in the crosshairs of gamers to begin with. At bottom, leftists in the gaming world tried to fight and defeat the free market, and they lost.
The culture war is now nearing an end. The death of woke is ringing like funeral bells. Gamers should be applauded for enduring years of slander and playing a key role in winning the fight.
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Site: southern orders
Cardinal Joseph Coutts, the retired bishop of Karachi, Pakistan, speaks to reporters outside the Vatican May 5, 2025. (CNS/Pablo Esparza)
This photo of Joseph Cardinal Coutts of Pakistan and yours truly was taken last fall after a dinner with the good Cardinal at the rectory of Saint Gregory the Great in Bluffton, South Carolina. I asked him about the upcoming conclave, given Pope Francis’ advanced age and many serious health problems. He was soon to turn 80 and wouldn’t be in the conclave once he turned 80.
Evidently, His Eminence is in the Conclave still 79 but not for long!
But he said, the cardinals don’t know each other because of Pope Francis.
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Site: Catholic Herald
One of Pope Francis’ popemobiles is to be transformed into a mobile clinic for children in Gaza.
Not long before his death, Pope Francis donated one of his popemobiles to be converted into a mobile clinic for children in the war-torn region.
The popemobile in question was reportedly the one Pope Francis used when visiting Bethlehem in May 2014, during his historic visit to the Holy Land. The vehicle has since remained on display in a public square in Bethlehem.
“The popemobile has been refurbished and upgraded to fulfil a new and hopeful mission: to provide medical assistance to injured and malnourished children who currently have no access to any type of health care,” Peter Brune, secretary-general of Caritas Sweden explained.
The former popemobile, which has been named “Vehicle of Hope”, will contain basic medical equipment including rapid diagnostic kits, vaccines, syringes, oxygen, suture materials, medication and other vital supplies.
Pope Francis himself, in his final months, asked Caritas Jerusalem to enact the initiative in response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of children are living without access for food, clean water or medical care. The vehicle will be operated by medics and drivers from Caritas.
About a million Palestinian children have been displaced as a result of fighting between Hamas and Israeli forces.
Pope Francis’s concern for the plight of the Palestinians antagonised the Israeli government during his papacy.
In November, the Pope said the international community should examine if the Israeli military actions in Gaza amounted to genocide. He described the humanitarian situation inside the enclave as “shameful”.
Francis had a particular concern for Gaza and made regular phone calls to a priest who runs the only Catholic church in the enclave.
Vatican News, the Holy See’s official news outlet, said: “Pope Francis’s legacy of peace continues to shine in our conflict-ridden world.
“The closeness he showed to the most vulnerable during his earthly mission is radiating even after his death, and this most recent surprise is no exception: his popemobile, the very vehicle from which he waved and was close to millions of faithful all around the world, is being transformed into a mobile health unit for the children of Gaza.”
The mobile clinic will be deployed in the Palestinian territory as soon as humanitarian access is restored, with the mission of “providing basic care in the most isolated areas and reminding the world that children’s rights and dignity must always be protected”, Brune explained.
“It is not just a medical tool but a symbol that the world has not forgotten the children of Gaza,” Brune added.
Photo: A man holds up a phone for Father Gabriel Romanelli, Parish Priest of the Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Family, to have a video conference call with Pope Francis as the latter blesses the congregation during Christmas Eve mass at the church in the Zaytoun neighbourhood of Gaza City on December 24. (Photo by OMAR AL-QATTAA / AFP)
The post Pope Francis’s popemobile transformed into mobile clinic for Gaza children first appeared on Catholic Herald.
The post Pope Francis’s popemobile transformed into mobile clinic for Gaza children appeared first on Catholic Herald.
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Site: southern orders
Are there any papal candidates amongst the College of Cardinals that combine the best of both Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis?By this I mean a candidate that has intellectual and academic chops like Benedict which Francis did not have.
By this I mean a candidate that has doctrinal and moral clarity in the presentation of the Deposit of Faith, like Benedict which Francis did not.
By this I mean a man of manly elegance, embracing the trappings of the papacy, along with its majestic monarchical beauty, like Benedict which Francis did not?
By this I mean a candidate who also has the common touch, speaks some street language easy to understand and loves prison ministry and smelling like filth which Francis did but Benedict did not.
Is this too much to ask? Is there a Pope Francis Benedict out there????? Time will tell.
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Site: Catholic Herald
As the cardinals of the Catholic Church prepare to gather in conclave for the election of a successor to Pope Francis, various issues facing the Vatican are on their minds, one of which is likely to be the Holy See’s present frosty relations with Israel.
Relations with the State of Israel are at their lowest level since diplomatic relations were established just over 30 years ago, a chill that followed the Oct. 7, 2023 surprise attack by Gaza-based Hamas militants that left 1,200 Israelis dead and more than 250 taken as hostages, and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza.
Of the roughly 100 hostages who remain in Gaza, a third are believed to be dead, according to Israeli Defense Forces.
Israel immediately launched a retaliatory offensive in Gaza to oust Hamas from leadership, with the subsequent conflict resulting in the deaths of over 60,000 people in Gaza, according to Palestinian estimates.
Immediately after the October 2023 attack by Hamas, Christian leaders in the Holy Land issued a statement calling “for the cessation of all violent and military activities that bring harm to both Palestinian and Israeli civilians”.
The Israeli embassy to the Holy See accused that statement of reflecting “immoral linguistic ambiguity”.
RELATED: Israeli and Catholic leaders clash over whether Gaza is a ‘just war’
In February 2024, Vatican Secretary of State Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin told reporters that it was time for Israel to change its strategy in Gaza, explaining “other paths have to be found to resolve the problem of Gaza, the problem of Palestine”.
Israel’s Embassy to the Holy See responded to Parolin’s remarks, calling it “a deplorable declaration”.
Pope Francis also drew criticism from Israel for his own remarks.
“According to some experts,” Pope Francis said in a book released last year, “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide”, calling for an investigation to see if “it fits into the technical definition formulated by jurists and international bodies”.
Also in the book, Francis said he was “thinking above all of those who leave Gaza in the midst of the famine that has struck their Palestinian brothers and sisters given the difficulty of getting food and aid into their territory”.
In his last public appearance at Easter, Francis’s statement said the Holy Land was “wounded by conflict” and home to an “endless outburst of violence”.
His message gave particular attention to the people of Gaza and to the Christian community in the enclave where “the terrible conflict continues to cause death and destruction and to create a dramatic and deplorable humanitarian situation”.
Francis made calls to the Christians in Gaza almost daily during the entirety of the Hamas-Israel war. Even after his death, the pope showed his support by donating his popemobile to the Gaza medical efforts.
All of these actions tried Israel’s patience with the Vatican.
After the death of Pope Francis, the official Israeli account on X shared a photo of the pontiff at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, captioned: “May his memory be a blessing.”
The was quickly deleted by the Israeli government, and an official statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came four days later: “The State of Israel expresses its deepest condolences to the Catholic Church and the Catholic community worldwide at the passing of Pope Francis. May he rest in peace.”
Why is the deteriorating relationship a major concern facing the next pope, especially given its proximate cause?
Most of the world – the United States being a notable exception – has condemned the Israeli action in Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of people, most of them civilians.
One reason may be the effect it is having on Catholic-Jewish relations.
The Holy See was late in establishing diplomatic relations with Israel, and the “Fundamental Agreement Between the Holy See and the State of Israel” signed in 1993 specifically tied the relationship between the two states to the “unique nature of the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people, and of the historic process of reconciliation and growth in mutual understanding and friendship between Catholics and Jews.”
Another reason is the deteriorating relationship between Israel and the Palestinians, which will affect the place of Christians in the Holy Land.
Trump himself has been able to throw gasoline on the conflict by calling for the depopulation of Gaza, and putting it under U.S. rule, pledging he could make it the “Riviera of the Middle East”.
Although most of the world thinks this is absurd, around 70 per cent of the people of Gaza are technically refugees and therefore do not have a right to permanent status in their current residence (most of them claim a “right to return” to Israel, which the Israeli government will never give them).
If Trump somehow gets to go through with his plan – which involves resettling Palestinians from Gaza, many of whom are displaced even in the Strip, in other Arab nations – this will affect the West Bank, where over 25 per cent of the Palestinians are technically refugees. If they were removed, the Israeli population in the West Bank would increase to around 25 per cent.
This would make the Two-State Solution impossible, and also destroy any possibility of any form of an international protectorate over Jerusalem—a proposal the Holy See has supported since shortly after the UN advanced the idea of treating Jerusalem as a corpus separatum in the late 1940s.
More broadly, the persistent instability and intense violence in the Holy Land adversely affects the small – and shrinking – Christian population, as well as the places considered sacred by the world’s Churches.
It could be the new pope will need to be closely involved with the homeland of Jesus Christ.
Follow Charles Collins on X: @CharlesinRome
Photo: Father Gabriel Romanelli, Parish Priest of the Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Family, prays as he reads the bible above the altar by a figurine depicting the baby Jesus (outside the frame) during Christmas Eve mass at the church in the Zaytoun neighbourhood of Gaza City on December 24, 2024, amid the ongoing war in the besieged Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas. (Photo by OMAR AL-QATTAA / AFP)
The post Holy Land tensions cast shadow over papal conclave first appeared on Catholic Herald.
The post Holy Land tensions cast shadow over papal conclave appeared first on Catholic Herald.
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Site: southern orders
But thank God, they placed a faux altar in front of it to allow for Mass facing the entrance doors, so that the Mass is closer to the people:
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Site: Mises InstituteThe Trump White House has enacted tariffs in the belief that other countries are “cheating” by enacting tariffs against US goods and “manipulating” their currencies. However, with the US dollar being the world's reserve currency, the US has engaged in dollar manipulation through inflation.
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Site: Zero HedgeOpenAI Blinks: Scraps For-Profit Plan After Outside PressureTyler Durden Tue, 05/06/2025 - 06:55
In a blog post overnight, the OpenAI Board revealed that its nonprofit arm would retain control of the chatbot company following backlash over its attempt to restructure into a for-profit business.
"We made the decision for the nonprofit to retain control of OpenAI after hearing from civic leaders and engaging in constructive dialogue with the offices of the Attorney General of Delaware and the Attorney General of California," the OpenAI Board wrote in a blog post.
Last fall, OpenAI's Sam Altman was preparing to overhaul the company's structure and transition to a for-profit business—an effort that sparked a heated legal battle with co-founder Elon Musk, who sought to keep OpenAI 'open'.
The board provided new details about OpenAI's evolving structure:
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OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit, and is today overseen and controlled by that nonprofit. Going forward, it will continue to be overseen and controlled by that nonprofit.
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Our for-profit LLC, which has been under the nonprofit since 2019, will transition to a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC)–a purpose-driven company structure that has to consider the interests of both shareholders and the mission.
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The nonprofit will control and also be a large shareholder of the PBC, giving the nonprofit better resources to support many benefits.
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Our mission remains the same, and the PBC will have the same mission.
"We want our nonprofit to be the largest and most effective nonprofit in history that will be focused on using AI to enable the highest-leverage outcomes for people," Altman wrote in a letter to employees.
He also provided details about OpenAI's evolving structure:
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OpenAI's nonprofit will remain in control of the organization after discussions with civic leaders and attorneys general from California and Delaware.
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The for-profit LLC will convert to a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC)—a mission-aligned model also used by other AI labs like Anthropic and X.ai.
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This move replaces the old capped-profit structure with a simpler equity-based model, but does not represent a sale.
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The nonprofit will retain oversight and become a major shareholder in the PBC, giving it more resources to advance AI for broad societal benefit.
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A new nonprofit commission will help guide efforts to ensure AI supports public good in areas like health, education, science, and public services.
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OpenAI says this new structure will enable it to make faster and safer progress toward its mission of democratizing AGI.
Meanwhile, Marc Toberoff, lead counsel for Elon Musk in the ongoing lawsuit against OpenAI, told Bloomberg via email that Altman's decision to scale back for-profit plans "changes nothing."
"OpenAI's announcement is a transparent dodge that fails to address the core issues: charitable assets have been and still will be transferred for the benefit of private persons, including Altman, his investors and Microsoft," Toberoff said.
In March, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers blocked Musk's request to stop Altman from restructuring OpenAI into a for-profit company. This led the judge to expedite a trial for this fall.
Given "the public interest at stake and potential for harm if a conversion contrary to law occurred," Rogers said, adding that an expedited trial later this year would be on "core" claim that OpenAI's structure conversion plan is unlawful and "potentially the interrelated contract-based claims."
Earlier this year, a Musk-led group offered to purchase OpenAI for around $100 billion, a bid that was quickly rejected.
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Site: non veni pacem
TLDR: On 14 Feb 1130, a small number of Cardinals assembled a Conclave in secret and elected Innocent II. Later that day, the full college assembled and elected (antipope) Anacletus II. While the first Conclave was obviously illicit and non-canonical, it yet produced a valid pope, backed by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Doctor of the Church. Perhaps this is an option today, but they better hurry.
Above: St. Bernard supported the controversial conclave.
The Non-Canonical Conclave that Worked
Catholics need to face some hard facts concerning the election of the next Roman Pontiff. Of the 133 cardinals eligible to vote in the upcoming conclave, 110 have been created by Jorge Bergoglio—and only 89 votes are needed to secure election as Pope. Furthermore, among the “papabile,” only Cardinals Burke, Sarah, Muller and Ranjith are reliably orthodox. Under the circumstances, without some form of divine intervention, the next Pope will certainly be “left” of Joseph Ratzinger—and possibly, more left than Jorge Bergoglio.As Bishop Joseph Strickland has warned the cardinal-electors:
If a public heretic, or a man who is reasonably suspected of being a public heretic, receives sufficient votes, faithful cardinals have an obligation to refuse to accept the validity of his election…
Your Eminence, if a false pontiff is presented to the world as the pope, I fear that many more souls will be lost. All those cardinals who consent to his invalid election will share that responsibility with him.
In the face of such an imminent danger, is there truly nothing that can be done except to bemoan and bewail after the fait accompli?
I believe there is.
I believe that Church history provides us a solution—perhaps the only solution—to this desperate situation.
In the early hours of February 14, 1130, Pope Honorius died. A handful of cardinals fearing the election of a particular candidate who might sully the Bride of Christ, dispensed with canon law and elected one of their own as Pope without even informing the rest of the college that the current Pontiff was dead. The new Pope was consecrated in the Lateran Basilica and took the name “Innocent II.”
When the rest of the cardinals learned about these early morning machinations, they immediately held their own conclave that afternoon, electing and consecrating “Pope Anacletus II.” Anacletus received the support of the majority of cardinals, clergy and lay people of Rome and after fighting in the streets between supporters of both claimants, Innocent fled Rome. Anacletus, on the other hand ruled from Rome for eight years, excommunicating Innocent and his supporters. But Innocent found a powerful protector in St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the greatest figure of twelfth-century Europe. The Cistercian abbot was a one-man dynamo in the cause of restoring Innocent to the Chair of Peter. The saint coaxed and cajoled the King of France, the King of England, and the Holy Roman Emperor in Germany along with scores of bishops and abbots into supporting Innocent as the rightful Pope until, in the end, only the Norman King of Sicily maintained his allegiance to Anacletus.
In 1138, Anacletus died, and St. Bernard then managed to convince his Roman successor to step down in favor of Innocent. Innocent then proceeded to convoke an ecumenical council of the Church, the Second Lateran Council in which he declared Anacletus an antipope and annulled all his actions.
How can this long forgotten episode in Church history provide a solution to our own impending disaster? Simply this. If the secret conclave in violation of canon law which produced Innocent II was subsequently validated and approved—why can’t the good cardinals of the Church do the same thing today? Why shouldn’t Cardinals Burke, Sarah, Muller et al not hold their own preemptive conclave and announce one of their own as the new Pope “Pius XIII” in order to avert an apostate from becoming “Francis II”? Possession is 9/10 of the law. Will all the heterodox bishops and the fake news media cry “schism”? Of course they will. But if world leaders like President Trump, Xavier Milei of Argentina and Giorgia Meloni of Italy, as well as faithful media backed the Traditional Pope (as did the Kings of Christendom 900 years ago) all that would matter is that he ultimately prevails even if the struggle took years as it did in Innocent’s case. As doctor of the Church, St. Alphonsus Ligouri teaches:
It makes no difference that in past ages some Pope was illegitimately elected or fraudulently usurped the Pontificate. It is sufficient that he be afterwards accepted by the whole Church, for by such acceptance, he is made the true and legitimate Pontiff.[1]
[1] St. Alphonsus Ligouri, Verita Della Fede, Part III, Ch. VIII
https://onepeterfive.com/the-non-canonical-conclave-that-worked/
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Site: Zero HedgeThe EU Zombie Uses Trump As Cover To Further Feed On CitizensTyler Durden Tue, 05/06/2025 - 06:30
Authored by Conor Gallagher via NakedCapitalism.com,
Donald Trump is the gift that keeps on giving for the western misleadership class. Any anti-democratic swindle on the EU wish list is now being sold as a remedy to the Orange Man. (And if it’s not Trump, it’s Russia).
The US is no longer a reliable defense partner, they say.
We must give more power to Brussels and send untold billions to weapons companies.
The US is no longer a reliable economic partner, they say.
We must increase competitiveness by weakening labor and empowering finance.
The UK voters may have opted for Brexit, but London and Brussels are “defying Trump” with a “free and open trade” declaration that includes negotiations ‘on defense and security, fishing and energy, as well as a “common understanding” of which topics will be covered by intensive Brexit reset negotiations this year.’
The strange thing about these plans, however, is that they include reliance on US weapons and energy and alignment with US geopolitical and geoeconomic goals.
Let’s focus here on how the EU is pressing ahead with plans to dramatically increase defense spending due to Trump Abandonment Syndrome.
The EU Jazz Band
Recent commentary by Rosa Balfour, director of Carnegie Europe, perfectly sums up these arguments. In a piece titled “Europe Tried to Trump-Proof Itself. Now It’s Crafting a Plan B” she explains why the EU has no choice but to redirect social spending towards the arms industry.
Balfour’s romantic version of recent history starts on February 28. That’s when “the televised humiliation of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky” took place, and “Europe realized it could no longer rely on its longtime ally, the United States.” And here she is on the jazzy wreckage:
The shocking depth and breadth of this realization cannot be overemphasized. Political leaders in European states, the European Union, and NATO displayed composure and coordination, but behind the scenes, the soundtrack was a frantic free jazz jam session with dramatic thuds and a long pause—the silence at the realization that the European comfort zone was over.
And now, what are these composed and coordinated “political leaders” doing? They announce that Ukraine is Europe’s first line of defense, make grand plans for a “coalition of the willing,” and declare that Ukraine will become a “steel porcupine”
The coalition of the willing has fallen apart. The steel porcupine was ridiculed. And while those in the Kremlin likely aren’t losing any sleep, Europeans should be. That’s because, as Balfour writes, the European Commission “can play supporting roles by mobilizing financial resources and handling complicated in-house horse trading.”
That’s one way of putting it.
The Commission is inching its way towards invoking emergency powers to push through parts of its rearmament slush fund. It’s getting pushback from the European Parliament, but the fact is Ursula can do it anyways with minimal support from EU governments. She’s likely just waiting for the right moment. Let’s look at the status of the European militarization billions.
On March 19, the Commission introduced a 150 billion euro proposal — a first installment of what’s to be at least $900 billion— for establishing the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) through the reinforcement of European defence industry Instrument.
It wants to move forward with it under Article 122 emergency powers which need only a qualified majority in the Council —as opposed to the usual consensus— which allows Ursula and friends to get around pesky vetoes from member countries. The procedure for 122 is as follows:
1) the Commission proposes a Council measure; following which 2) the Council adopts the measure in line with [qualified majority voting]. No additional elements or participants are envisaged.
This article allows the proposal to bypass parliamentary negotiations and go straight to the Council for negotiation and adoption. The Parliament’s role is reduced to submitting suggestions and requesting debates.
How’s that for your democratic rules-based order?
In an April 23 secret vote, the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affair unanimously backed a legal opinion rejecting the Commission’s attempt to bypass it on a 150 billion euro rearmament fund.
While it is a non-binding vote, it does signal opposition to Ursula’s plan, but it’s not some principled stand for the will of the people or any romantic notion like that.
No, it’s more about dividing up slices of the pie as European weapons industry lobbyists are increasingly active in Brussels and are trying to make sure their clients are rewarded. And so much of the feeble opposition is over getting a stronger “buy European” clause in SAFE (it currently requires 65 percent of war consumables and complex systems to come from within the EU, Ukraine, or EEA/EFTA states, which includes Turkiye and Norway.
Why must Ursula’s commission sideline the Parliament and some member states in order to spend 900 billion on military purchases? They lay it out in their proposal. There’s the usual nonsense about Russia:
The EU and its Member States now face an intensifying Russian aggression against Ukraine and a growing security threat from Russia. It is also now clear that this threat will persist in the foreseeable future, considering that Russia has shifted to a war-time economy enabling a rapid scaleup of its military capabilities and replenishment of its stocks. The European Council therefore underlined, in its conclusions of 6 March 2025, that “Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and its repercussions for European and global security in a changing environment constitute an existential challenge for the European Union”.
There’s also the Trump abandonment syndrome:
At the same time, the United States, traditionally a strong ally, is clear that it believes it is over-committed in Europe and needs to rebalance, reducing its historical role as a primary security guarantor.
One itching question is what happens to this latter selling point now that the Trump administration has tied itself to Ukraine through the so-called minerals deal, but surely if the European powers have made it this far on manufactured crises, they’ll be able to overcome that hurdle by pointing to Trump’s insistence on what they call an unjust peace for Ukraine.
And so “rearmament” by supranational emergency decree it must be—with Balfour from Carnegie and all the other plutocrat court jesters at the transatlantic think tanks cheering this on as a victory against the autocratic hordes outside the garden walls. Here’s Balfour again summarizing the mood among this crowd:
…a trajectory of change has been charted, and it has transformative potential—not just for the European continent, but also for the global reordering of post-American international relations. The jazz band has picked up rhythm, even if the melody is not fully harmonic.
I’m not sure if that’s music Balfour is listening to or the jangle of gold and silver. While it can be difficult to hear anything over the din coming from the elite ‘Spirit of 1914,’ there’s always one chord missing from the militarization genre. Surely Balfour, the jazz aficionado, must know that curiosity was considered one of the essential ingredients to the music. If we apply that to her extended jazz metaphor we might start asking some questions like:
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Why does the EU need to perform this whole militarization song and dance routine at all?
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Why can’t there be peace with Russia?
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Why did European nations help sabotage past Kiev-Moscow peace negotiations?
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Why did the EU help the US overthrow the government of Ukraine and use the country as a battering ram against Russia?
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Why does the EU elite so crave war with Russia?
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Is the EU not more secure and prosperous through friendly ties and trade with Russia?
And why must the EU, which collectively already ranks second in the world in defense expenditures, spend boatloads more? How much will make it safe, competitive, and independent?
These questions are never addressed. It’s simply treated as the natural order of things that Russia is the EU’s enemy and it must get big expensive weapons because Trump bad. The sad thing is, this relentless messaging pumped out of European media is working — at least according to the EU’s own polls. That wouldn’t be entirely surprising considering this message is endlessly pumped out of EU media.
Either way, European governments are running with it. Sixteen countries are asking the EU for fiscal leeway to spend big on defense — requests that are never made during the endless social austerity.
Yes, the citizens of the bloc will continue to see their standard of living fall, but don’t worry, EU enlargement and spending more on militarization will lead to more “competitiveness.” Can’t you feel it already:
Profit margins for Weapon and Ammunition at Rheinmetall went up from 23% to 28.5% from 2023 to 2024. Of every Euro in public money spent on weapons from Rheinmetall, the company makes 28.5% return on sales, quite spectacular even compared to other Rheinmetall business. pic.twitter.com/SvKmjNcB30
— Isabella M Weber (@IsabellaMWeber) April 28, 2025Despite considerable hurdles for the European defense industry (and a brief cooling off period due to tariff shock), their stock prices are going through the roof as investors expect Brussels to come through with endless support.
About those hurdles…
Research by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) shows that Europe increased its imports of weapons two-and-a-half times over in the past five years compared with the previous five years with two-thirds coming from the US.
Even others at Carnegie Europe have doubts about the EU scheme. Here’s Judy Dempsey, nonresident senior fellow at Carnegie Europe:
Tell Poland. It is rapidly building up its defense infrastructure by purchasing American kits. When Warsaw wanted to shop elsewhere, like in South Korea, it came under huge pressure from Washington not to do so. This is an important point. The United States wants Europe to take more responsibility for its defense but not at America’s military industrial expense. It is a major military supplier of components to many European countries. Making that break would take time and a political will for Europe to build up a common defense and procurement strategy.
Beyond the considerable political pressure, there’s also the fact that lead times when it comes to defense capabilities are long. So part of the EU’s strategy is to send billions more to Ukraine so it can build up its defense industry. The rationale is that it is a far cheaper place to manufacture weapons than Western Europe, and it already has a defense manufacturing sector up and running. Okay, then.
But are there some chinks in that logic?
For one, Ukraine is now the world’s biggest arms importer, absorbing 8.8 percent of global transfers. Two, Russian Kinzhals might have a say in the output from Ukrainian weapons manufacturers.
It’s hard to see what this all does for European competitiveness, let alone the average Josef, Jose, or Giusseppe. Here’s Balfour on this should be sold to the proles:
Politically, to ensure public support for rearming Europe and to offset the inevitable costs, defense efforts ought to be part of a broader strategy of economic and technological innovation. Indeed, these efforts could boost Europe’s stagnant economy. At the EU level, the recipes are available in recent recommendations addressing competitiveness, productivity, and technological innovation.
Indeed, Trump’s first 100 days are pushing the EU to put some momentum behind projects that have been underway for years. Tying these objectives with the enlargement of the EU to include Ukraine, Moldova, and the Western Balkans adds a new perspective to upscaling the single market. Expanding the EU and deepening the relationship with other European countries—like the UK, Switzerland, and Norway—would counter the fragmentation that great power competition and political disruption at home are inflicting on the continent.
It’s scary for its rote, simplistic confidence. Nowhere in this hopeful Powerpoint is there an appearance of the considerable downsides, which at the more disastrous end of the spectrum happen to include the complete destruction of Europe.
Perhaps the best hope is that these fools’ plans for EU rearmament plans are just a giant racket. But one could say the same about the US military industrial complex, and look at what that has unfurled: endless death and destruction and numerous lost wars. One key difference between the transatlantic militarization schemes, however, is that the US is isolated between two oceans. The EU borders not only Russia, but also a collapsing neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine, making its embrace of a military-industrial complex a far riskier proposition.
Rackets have a way of taking on a life of their own. Indeed, one could argue the EU’s current trajectory is that of a zombie driven along by its Russophobia — and redistributing money upwards in the name of that hatred. Problem is that life expectancy isn’t long for zombies and those around them.
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Site: Zero Hedge"We Are At A Tipping Point": Shale Giant Diamonback Says US Oil Output Has Peaked, Slashes CapEx Amid OPEC Price WarTyler Durden Tue, 05/06/2025 - 06:15
The OPEC price war has made landfall in the US.
Following our report earlier that Saudi Arabia has declared a new price war on OPEC+ quota-busters such as Kazakhstan, and non OPEC+ members such as US shale producers, today after the close Diamondback Energy, the largest independent oil producer in the Permian Basin, made a historic pronouncement today when it said that production has likely peaked in America’s prolific shale fields (something we also mentioned earlier in the day) and will decline in the months and years ahead after crude prices plummeted.
Separately, the Texas company trimmed its own full-year production forecast Monday, and said that it expects onshore oil rigs across the entire US industry to drop by almost 10% by the end of the second quarter and fall further in the months after.
“This will have a meaningful impact on our industry and our country,” Diamondback Chief Executive Officer Travis Stice wrote. “We believe we are at a tipping point for U.S. oil production.”
The outlook from Diamondback, one of the industry’s most prominent producers, marks a key shift for expectations within the sector. Before oil prices started plunging last month, most banks and research firms had forecast US shale production would grow this year and next before plateauing later in the decade. The Permian, they said, was apt to peak in the late 2020s or early 2030s depending on prices.
Not any more.
As Bloomberg notes, the US shale fields have been the engine behind the surge in US crude output over the past 15 years, making the country the world’s top producer and largely energy independent, much to the horror of OPEC. The ability of companies like Diamondback to quickly bring new wells online using hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, has bedeviled OPEC. But the prospect that shale may now have reached its peak and is facing years of painful decline, poses a huge threat to US President Donald Trump’s goal to turbocharge fossil fuel production.
While analysts and pundits have long said repeatedly that US shale is poised to peak, the industry had managed to prove them wrong by innovating and driving output to fresh records year after year.
So the assertion by Diamondback that the moment has finally come is extremely noteworthy.
“Today, geologic headwinds outweigh the tailwinds provided by improvements in technology and operational efficiency,” said Stice, who will step down as CEO at the company’s annual shareholder meeting later this month.
US oil futures, pricing in a global demand recession, have dropped about 20% since the start of April when Trump announced wide-ranging tariffs that triggered a global trade war. At the same time, OPEC and its allies have surprised markets with plans to increase oil supplies more than expected later this year in response to internal bickering, and particularly the unwillingness of some members such as Kazakhstan to comply with set production quotas.
It’s led to frustration spilling out both privately and in public comments from America’s oil bosses. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright sought to reassure the industry during a visit to Oklahoma last month, saying turmoil from the president’s trade war is likely to be fleeting.
“We can’t help but wonder if the last ‘letter to stockholders’ written by outgoing CEO Travis Stice was intended as much for government leaders in Washington, DC as it was for FANG shareholders,” Tim Rezvan, an analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets wrote in a note to clients.
Diamondback said the number of crews fracking wells, which it estimates has fallen 15% this year, will continue to shrink as shale operators dial back amid unprofitable oil prices.
The company now expects to produce about 488,000 barrels of oil per day this year, when taken at the midpoint of its new guidance released Monday. That’s less than 1% lower than the roughly 492,000 barrels-per-day view it gave three months ago.
The driller is the latest US operator to announce cutbacks in recent months. EOG Resources and Matador Resources are also dialing back activity, while Nabors Industries said that shale producers plan to cut 4% of their drilling rigs by the end of the year, citing a survey of nearly half the industry.
For the immediate future, Diamondback is cutting three drilling rigs and one of its frack crews, leading to a total of $400 million slashed from its budget this year, Stice said, the clearest indication that US output is about to fall off a cliff, because if the most efficient and lowest cost producers have no choice but to throttle output what does that leave for the smaller, less efficient frackers?
“We are taking our foot off the accelerator as we approach a red light,” Stice said. “If the light turns green before we get to the stoplight, we will hit the gas again, but we are also prepared to brake if needed.”
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Site: Mises InstituteIndia claims it is attacking "terrorist infrastructure." Both countries have nuclear weapons.
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Site: Real Investment Advice
An email from a reader of ours led with the title "PCE is quite confusing." He asked if we would explain the difference between the monthly PCE prices index and the quarterly PCE prices, i.e., the GDP deflator, accompanying the GDP report. Given the importance of monthly PCE prices to the Fed and their meeting tomorrow, it's worth answering the question publicly.
Last week, we learned that the quarterly PCE price deflator was up 3.7% on an annualized basis. However, monthly PCE prices were flat. While the two inflation measures share the same name, PCE (personal consumption expenditures), they measure different things. Monthly PCE prices, the Fed’s favored inflation gauge, track price changes in consumer goods and services. The quarterly PCE price gauge is an index designed to subtract the impact of inflation from the GDP figure to arrive at real GDP. Accordingly, the deflator uses a broader measure of goods and services, including items not directly tied to household spending.
Of additional consideration, the quarterly PCE is more prone to large revisions than the monthly data. Thus, the monthly reading is more reliable. The graph below shows that the two inflation gauges track each other well on an annualized basis. However, there is a slight gap at the moment between them. While month PCE prices fell by 0.04% last month, they were up .44% and .30% in the prior two months. Thus, its quarterly annualized change is approximately 3.1%, not as much of a divergence as the recent PCE data portends.
What To Watch Today
Earnings
Economy
Market Trading Update
Yesterday, we noted the recent technical setup suggests a near-term correction after a sharp rally from the "Liberation Day" woes. Despite the short-term overbought conditions, corrections will likely remain contained above recent support levels for a couple of reasons. The first, as noted on "X," the share repurchase (stock buybacks) window has now reopened, and the sharp rise in buybacks has provided the necessary support for the recent rally. Those buybacks will continue through May.
Secondly, the breadth of the market has improved markedly. As shown, market breadth has improved significantly with the number of stocks trading above their 50 and 200-DMA rising sharply, and the NYSE Advance-Decline line testing previous highs.
This data suggests that while corrections are likely, they should be well contained to previous broken-resistance levels, turning them into support. The weekly sell signal in the bottom panel is one thing to watch closely. When that signal reverts to a buy, it will be time to return equity exposure to target weights. For now, while a correction back to recent lows is possible, the higher probability is that any correction that reverts the market toward 5500 or 5300 will likely find buyers willing to step in.
However, with that stated, it is certainly possible that later this summer, as the impact of tariffs is fully recognized, the economy slows, and earnings are revised lower, the market will likely encounter another volatility spat. As I noted in yesterday's blog on "Resistance Is Futile:"
If you want my best guess, here it is:
- We’ve likely seen the market lows for this year.
- We’ve likely seen the highs as well.
Navigating a market trapped between support and resistance becomes emotionally challenging. Investors face sharp rallies into resistance — and retracements back to support — wearing down sentiment until mistakes happen.
Therefore, this is how we are positioned in this current and uncertain market environment.
- Primarily long equities, as the market structure remains bullish.
- Increased cash levels to manage policy and growth uncertainty.
- Short S&P 500 index to hedge downside risk.
We also recommend a healthy portfolio and risk management regimen.
- Tighten up stop-loss levels to current support levels for each position.
- Hedge portfolios against more significant market declines.
- Take profits in positions that have been big winners.
- Sell laggards and losers.
- Raise cash and rebalance portfolios to target weightings.
Here’s the hard truth: you can’t measure risk in advance.
Sectors Rotate Down And To The Right
Within the first SimpleVisor screenshot below, the graph to the right of the sector absolute and relative analysis charts the movement of each sector score over the last two weeks. Interestingly, we notice that many sectors' paths have moved down and to the right. Consequently, the absolute scores are increasing for those moving in that direction, while the relative scores generally decrease. In other words, most sectors are seeing their technicals improve but are underperforming the market.
The second graphic shows that despite the decent rally over the last few weeks, many absolute and relative scores remain near fair value. Typically, we would expect to see higher absolute scores. This is a sign the market remains cautious. However, if the market continues to rally, there remains a decent amount of upside before sectors and factors become overbought on an absolute or relative analysis.
The second graphic shows that the Momentum ETF is very overbought versus the S&P 500. The third graphic breaks down its holdings. As you can see, some of its largest holdings are decently overbought on an absolute and relative analysis.
Resistance Is Futile For Bulls And Bears
“Resistance is futile” was a sentence that struck fear in the hearts of Trekkie fans during “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” specifically in both of the “Best Of Worlds” and “First Contact” episodes. In those episodes, the “Starship Enterprise” crew encountered a species called the “Borg.” The Borg’s primary purpose was to achieve “perfection” by assimilating other beings and technologies into their “hive mind,” known as the “Collective.” They viewed assimilation as a means to expand their collective knowledge, power, and ultimately, their vision of a perfect and harmonious existence. The reason “resistance was futile” was that the centralized control, driven by the Borg Queen, allowed for swift and coordinated actions across vast distances. At the same time, the assimilation process threatened to erase individuality and homogenize the galaxy.
I could go on, but you are asking yourself two questions. First, is Lance a total sci-fi geek? Second, what does this have to do with the markets and investing? The answer to the first question is “yes,” as I grew up with William Shatner as James T. Kirk in the original Gene Roddenberry “Star Trek.”
However, let’s dig deeper into the second question. READ MORE...
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The post PCE Is Quite Confusing appeared first on RIA.
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Site: Catholic Herald
May, the month of Our Lady, invites us to deepen our Marian devotion. While the rosary and scapular are familiar to many, one ancient practice, the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, has mostly faded from common use.
This devotion, a compact, Marian-focused office, small enough to fit in your pocket, follows the same daily “hours” as the traditional Divine Office (e.g. Matins, Lauds, Vespers etc) with fixed prayers and psalms, offering a rhythmic, meditative way to honour Our Blessed Mother.
The Little Office boasts remarkable antiquity, particularly in England, where it was cherished for centuries. Its brevity and daily familiarity made it accessible to the laity. Historical accounts describe mothers, little children and schoolboys chanting this office as they go about their daily duties.
Like many ancient devotions, its origin is shrouded in mystery, but by the 8th Century we have examples of offices devoted to the Blessed Virgin in both the East and the West. The Little Office entered the Benedictine tradition through the reforms of Benedict of Aniane, who added additional offices before and after the Divine Office, including that of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Thanks to the Benedictine revival in England in the 10th Century, many churches and cathedrals adopted the customs of monasteries of the continent which included these additional offices. England’s fervent Marian piety, evident in its title as “Our Lady’s Dowry”, was the perfect kindling for the Little Office to spread.
By the 11th century, Pope Urban II mandated it as an obligatory addition to the Divine Office for clerics universally, a decree announced at the 1095 Council of Clermont alongside his call for the First Crusade. This elevated the Little Office’s status across the West, cementing its place in liturgical life.
The faithful of 13th century Paris, were said to have been drawn to the daily reciting of the Little Office in Notre Dame, finding solace in its repetitive prayers and chants, which, as one observer noted, offered “great comfort to all present”.
By the 15th century, King Henry VI, a devotee, included in the founding statutes of Eton College that the boys, upon rising and making their beds, should say the Matins of the Blessed Lady. A 1496 report by a Venetian ambassador described English women carrying rosaries and “the Office of Our Lady”, while St. John Fisher, in his funeral sermon for Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, shared that she would rise every morning to say the Matins of Our Lady.
Whilst the Council of Trent lifted the clergy’s obligation to pray the Little Office on top of their breviary, “on account of the various businesses of this life”, it was the laity and some religious orders that kept the tradition alive. In England, it became a cornerstone of the primer, a vernacular prayer book for lay people. During the Reformation, these primers sustained persecuted Catholics, who clung to the Little Office as a lifeline of faith. Its prayers, often in English, offered solace amid suppression.
The Little Office experienced a revival following the 1850 restoration of the Catholic hierarchy. James Burns’ 1860 translation made it widely accessible, and Pius X’s 1911 reforms standardised the version used today.
Following the liturgical reforms after the Second Vatican Council, however, many switched to the more streamlined ‘Liturgy of the Hours’, which removed the need for a shorter office, nearly extinguishing this noble devotion by the end of the century.
It wasn’t until Pope Benedict XVI’s 2007 motu proprio, Summorum Pontificum, which permitted a wider use of the traditional Roman Breviary, that this devotion started to be revived once again. Today, the Little Office is available from publishers like Baronius Press, whose edition includes Gregorian chant notations. Online resources, including YouTube tutorials, teach the chants, making it easier than ever to learn, and a perfect entry point for liturgical chant.
The daily repetition, far from monotonous, fosters a meditative rhythm. As Blessed Ildefonso Schuster wrote, it draws us into “the endless land where the Church, militant and pilgrim, passes, walking towards the promised fatherland”.
For Catholics today, the Little Office offers a unique bridge between personal devotion and the Church’s ancient liturgy. The Little Office immerses us in psalms and hymns that exalt Mary’s role in salvation history. Its structure can be adapted to busy schedules, with many praying only morning Lauds or evening Vespers.
The Little Office has survived near extinction before; through persecution, reform and neglect. A revival in England, Our Lady’s Dowry, would be especially fitting. May is the perfect time to draw close to Mary and it is now easier than ever to pick up this treasure of the Church, one that offers a timeless path to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Photo: O Mary, Conceived Without Sin, Pray for Us Who Have Recourse to Thee (2 January 1915)
The post The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary: England’s forgotten devotion first appeared on Catholic Herald.
The post The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary: England’s forgotten devotion appeared first on Catholic Herald.
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Site: Real Investment Advice
Rising interest rates are a powerful force in the financial world, capable of reshaping markets and shifting investment dynamics. As the Federal Reserve raises rates to combat inflation or stabilize economic growth, the ripple effect is felt across stocks, bonds, and real estate. While these rate hikes may be out of investors’ control, adapting your investment strategy can help you manage risks and even uncover new opportunities.
How Rising Interest Rates Affect Different Asset Classes
Stocks
Interest rate increases typically lead to higher borrowing costs for companies, which can reduce profit margins and curb growth. This especially impacts growth stocks—like tech companies—that rely on borrowing for expansion. On the other hand, sectors like financials (banks, insurance companies) may benefit, as they tend to profit from higher lending rates.
Rising rates can also dampen investor sentiment and reduce stock valuations, as future earnings are discounted more heavily. This can result in short-term volatility, even if long-term fundamentals remain strong.
Bonds
The bond market is perhaps the most directly affected by rising rates. When interest rates rise, bond prices generally fall. That’s because newly issued bonds pay higher interest, making existing bonds with lower rates less attractive.
Long-duration bonds are especially vulnerable. However, this doesn’t mean investors should avoid bonds altogether—shorter-term bonds or bond laddering strategies can help mitigate interest rate risk while still providing income.
Real Estate
Rising interest rates often lead to higher mortgage rates, which can reduce demand for housing and slow price appreciation. For investors in real estate investment trusts (REITs), rising rates may lead to declining property values and increased costs for leveraged properties.
However, not all real estate reacts the same way. Commercial real estate with strong lease structures or properties in high-demand areas may remain resilient. Additionally, real estate can still serve as an inflation hedge, especially if rental income keeps pace with rising prices.
Strategies for Adapting Your Investment Portfolio
To weather rising interest rates, investors may need to adjust their approach and rebalance their portfolios with long-term resilience in mind.
Adjust Asset Allocation
A diversified portfolio is always a good foundation, but rising rates may prompt a closer look at your current asset mix. Reducing exposure to long-duration bonds, rebalancing stock holdings, and considering rate-sensitive sectors (like financials or energy) can help offset interest rate risks.
Explore Short-Term and Floating Rate Bonds
Shorter-duration bonds or floating-rate bond funds offer more protection in a rising rate environment. These bonds mature sooner or have rates that adjust periodically, making them less sensitive to rate hikes.
Look for Dividend-Paying Stocks
Dividend-paying stocks—particularly those from companies with strong balance sheets—can offer a buffer during volatile periods. These companies often have pricing power, allowing them to maintain profitability and continue returning value to shareholders.
Reassess Real Estate Holdings
If your portfolio includes real estate investments, review the debt structures and geographic markets of your holdings. Consider diversifying into REITs with shorter lease durations or sectors like industrial or healthcare, which may show greater resilience.
Maintain Liquidity and Flexibility
Keeping a portion of your portfolio in liquid, low-risk investments allows you to take advantage of opportunities as they arise. Higher interest rates may bring volatility, but also the chance to buy quality assets at more attractive prices.
Turning a Challenge Into Opportunity
While rising interest rates can pose challenges, they also create new opportunities for informed investors. By reassessing risk exposure and considering alternative income strategies, it’s possible to protect your portfolio while positioning for growth.
Higher interest rates don’t have to derail your financial goals. With a proactive, diversified, and disciplined investment strategy, you can confidently navigate the shifting landscape.
Looking to adapt your investment strategy for a changing rate environment?
Contact RIA Advisors today to schedule a consultation. Our fiduciary team will help you build a portfolio designed to manage risk, preserve capital, and uncover opportunities—no matter what the market brings.
FAQs
How do rising interest rates affect bond investments?
Rising rates generally cause bond prices to fall, especially for long-duration bonds. Short-term or floating-rate bonds can help mitigate this risk.
Are stocks still a good investment during rising interest rates?
Yes, but certain sectors may perform better than others. Financials and dividend-paying stocks often fare well, while high-growth tech stocks may be more vulnerable.
Should I change my real estate investments when rates go up?
It’s worth reviewing your real estate holdings. Properties with shorter lease durations and REITs in resilient sectors may offer better stability.
What is the best fixed-income strategy for rising rates?
Short-duration bonds, bond ladders, and floating-rate bond funds can offer income with lower interest rate risk.
Can rising interest rates create investment opportunities?
Yes. While volatility may increase, rising rates can improve yields on new bonds and create value in previously overvalued sectors.
The post The Impact of Rising Interest Rates on Investments and How to Adapt appeared first on RIA.
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Site: Crisis Magazine
Many who have written on the needed characteristics of the next pope have said such things as “The next pope needs to call the bishops to proclaim the faith boldly; to restore respect for the sacraments; to unify the polarized elements of the Church.” Few pundits note that purging the Church of the Lavender Mafia, of the homosexual priests and bishops who run the Church, is arguably the most…
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Site: RT - News
Germany’s main political parties have failed to elect an agreed candidate as chancellor in a historic moment for the EU nation’s politics
A proposed coalition of Germany’s liberal and conservative parties has failed to elect a chancellor in a German parliament first round vote.
Frederich Merz, the Christian Democratic candidate who was also backed by the liberal SPD, garnered 310 votes on Tuesday, falling six short of the 316 needed for an absolute majority. The session was adjourned for consultations among political groups regarding their next steps.
According to German media, the vote failure marks the first time in Germany’s post-war history that a chancellor candidate has been thwarted in such a manner.
Merz’s proposed coalition, comprising his CSU/CDU bloc and the German Social Democrats (SPD), holds 328 seats in the Bundestag.
Should Merz – or potentially another candidate – fall short in a second round held within two weeks, the procedure would go to a simple majority vote, after which the German president must appoint the winner as chancellor or dissolve the legislature.
READ MORE: Labeling the AfD ‘extremist’ will backfire terribly
Germany’s previous three-way ruling coalition led by the SPD collapsed last November due to disagreements over spending. The new proposed coalition has pledged to continue key elements of former Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s agenda, including support for Ukraine and unlocking a constitutional debt brake in militarization.
Last week, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, designated the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as “extremist.” The right-wing, anti-migrant movement is currently polling on par with the Christian Democrats for voter preference in a potential federal election. The AfD’s leaders have claimed that the “extremist” designation was politically motivated and aims to undermine the party’s rising popularity.
Illustrative: Damage from a July 2023 drone attack on Moscow, Moskva News Agency
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