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The unlikely pair set the internet ablaze back in April when they were photographed on a date night.

A horde of Hollywood's A-list will descend on London in July for the world premiere of Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey," as well as Serena and Venus Williams' return to Wimbledon, according to insider buzz.

Hollywood has a long history of one-time “friendly rivalries” that turned bitter: Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis; Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner; and, more recently Netflix and Paramount/Skydance. Pixar and Illumination, which, to be honest, play uncharacteristically nicely — at least by Hollywood standards — could be poised for a similar trajectory. For the ninth time in the...

It's New York or nowhere!

They're going tote-ally nuts.

Ashley Phillips, 30, vanished after she went on a hiking trail while a devastating storm struck.

The New York Knicks are NBA Champions! Join the New York Post and NY Post Sports for exclusive, behind-the-scenes live coverage from City Hall as NYC celebrates the Knicks’ historic championship parade. After a 53-year wait, the Knicks are marching up the Canyon of Heroes to receive the Key to the City! We are bringing...

"The Impact was Devastating": Chicago's Cross-Burning Was Set By Liberal, Anti-Trump Protester

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

After the Southern Poverty Law Center scandal of actually funding and encouraging racist protests, it appears that at least one individual has created his own orchestrated racist incident.

In Chicago (where Jussie Smollett committed his infamous racist hoax), a burning cross was denounced by Mayor Brandon Johnson as a sign of the racism in society.

Johnson, however, refused to address the fact that the cross burning was actually the work of an anti-Trump liberal student.

University of Illinois senior Merlin Lu said it was never intended as a racist symbol, but the question is whether it could still be charged as a hate crime.

In posting a reward for the culprit soon after the incident, Rev. Michael Pfleger declared that “this bold rise of racism must be condemned by every race, faith community, and Chicagoan as was done with the swastika and treated as a hate crime.”

It turns out that this was not evidence of the rise of racism but another possible hoax.

Lu bizarrely claimed that he was unaware that a burning cross had racist connotations and insisted that there was no racist message intended.

Others suspected that this was a type of false-flag effort to outrage the left.

Johnson later denounced the incident as a “symbol of hatred is one that we must continue to reject, and I wholeheartedly reject it. I can’t speak to anyone’s motives; I can only speak to the impact, and the impact was devastating.”

It seems curious that Johnson would not “speak to motives” when he knows that this was set by a leftist radical.

The question is whether it is still a hate crime under Illinois law. Under Section 12-7.1, the law states:

(a) A person commits hate crime when, by reason of the actual or perceived race, color, creed, religion, ancestry, gender, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, citizenship, immigration status, or national origin of another individual or group of individuals, regardless of the existence of any other motivating factor or factors, he or she commits assault, battery, aggravated assault, intimidation, stalking, cyberstalking, misdemeanor theft, criminal trespass to residence, misdemeanor criminal damage to property, criminal trespass to vehicle, criminal trespass to real property, mob action, disorderly conduct, transmission of obscene messages, harassment by telephone, or harassment through electronic communications as these crimes are defined in Sections 12-1, 12-2, 12-3(a), 12-7.3, 12-7.5, 16-1, 19-4, 21-1, 21-2, 21-3, 25-1, 26-1, 26.5-1, 26.5-2, paragraphs (a)(1), (a)(2), and (a)(3) of Section 12-6, and paragraphs (a)(2) and (a)(5) of Section 26.5-3 of this Code, respectively.

The notable language is “regardless of the existence of any other motivating factor or factors.” The inclusion of property damage could allow a charge to be brought.

The case could rekindle the debate over intent for threats. Many professors and pundits on the left have long argued that the standard should be how a message is received rather than how it is intended. That issue arose in the decision in Counterman v. Colorado, 600 U.S. 66 (2023), concerning the standard for the “true threats” exception to the First Amendment. In an opinion written by Justice Elena Kagan, the Court reversed the conviction. While rejecting an “objective” standard, the Court declared that such cases had to be based on evidence of the defendant’s state of mind under a “subjective standard.” Accordingly, the government must prove recklessness, but not necessarily intent: “The State must show that the defendant consciously disregarded a substantial risk that his communications would be viewed as threatening violence.”

Recklessness would be a dangerous standard for the defense of Merlin Liu. He insists that he was entirely clueless about what a burning cross represents in our culture. Yet, if Chicago does not bring a hate crime charge, it could be cited in future cases in suggesting that intent or “motivating factors” do matter in such cases.

I have favored stronger scienter or intent standards in true threat cases. It seems like a hate crime should, at a minimum, also be based on an intent to cause such alarm or fear. That does not mean that Liu’s defense of ignorance will work. However, in my view, prosecutors should have to show more than how others perceive a protest.

Unlike Johnson, the prosecutors and the Court will have to “speak to motivations” before this case is concluded.

Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”

Tyler Durden Thu, 06/18/2026 - 09:20

The newly-single singer detailed the health scare — which involved his tourmate Post Malone — in a TikTok video.

The newly-single singer detailed the health scare — which involved his tourmate Post Malone — in a TikTok video.

Trey Yesavage will rebound and have a good start to help lead the visiting Blue Jays past the Red Sox on Thursday afternoon, Stitches predicts.

Energy Cliff, Supply Chain Shock: The Toxic Cocktail Behind The Urgent Push For An Iran Deal

The U.S.-Iran interim peace deal has been signed, and the normalization of the Strait of Hormuz is now beginning. Tanker traffic through the critical waterway is slowly resuming, though a full return to pre-war or near-pre-war energy flows could take months.

But behind the urgency to get the memorandum of understanding deal across the finish line were two uncomfortable realities.

First, President Trump recently met with oil and gas executives, who likely informed the administration that the conflict and the shuttered Hormuz maritime chokepoint were leading to an energy cliff that would materialize by mid-summer.

On Wednesday at the G7 Summit in France, Trump acknowledged the uncomfortable truth that SPRs used to offset lost Gulf energy production were being drained at an alarming rate.

"We run out of reserves in about four weeks," Trump told reporters.

Trump said the world would have run out of oil reserves in 4 weeks, put pressure for a peace agreement.

Says it would have been "bedlam" pic.twitter.com/k45MTI8sNs

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) June 17, 2026

The latest Department of Energy data showed Cushing, Oklahoma, stockpiles declined for the eighth straight week, taking inventories to just above 20 million barrels. That's the lowest inventories have been at the storage hub since October 2014, and takes us to what are considered essentially 'tank-bottoms', the point at which the hub is unable to fully operate.

*Trump Says `We Run Out of Reserves in About Four Weeks'

we know, but maybe not the smartest thing to admit https://t.co/N28eXJih5e

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 17, 2026

Second, the physical disruption in global supply chains had begun spreading beyond energy flows and into shipping costs, threatening to transmit the Hormuz crisis into broader goods inflation.

Last month, UBS analyst Pierre Lafourcade warned, "Supply chain stress is rising at its fastest pace since the early pandemic." This prompted Lafourcade to re-launch the Global Supply Chain Stress Index.

Earlier this morning, Lafourcade warned in a new note that "supply chain stress spreads to shipping cost" and that "continues to rise."

He continued:

Our Global Supply Chain Stress Index has continued to deteriorate, despite the recent decline in energy prices. In our update mid-May (here), we noted that the index had worsened by roughly 1.2 standard deviations since the onset of the Middle East conflict. Figure 1 below shows the latest June reading, based on weekly data up to last Friday (with missing observations proxied by the prior month's values). The median of the 23 component series (blue line) now stands at 2.9 standard deviations—an increase of around 2½ standard deviations since the conflict began—and marks the highest level since May 2022. This reading predates the geopolitical developments of the past few days and so may well end up being a high watermark. But we suspect a sustained improvement across many indicators will likely require a tangible normalization in the flow of global energy shipments, not just a decline in prices driven by expectations of resolution alone.

Our Global Supply Chain Stress Index has After a slow reaction to the conflict, shipping costs are now accelerating The indicator is constructed as the cross‑sectional average of z-scored series—a first-order approximation to the data's first principal component. Figure 2 overleaf shows the contributions over the past four months. The indicator most directly capturing the supply-shock nature of the Hormuz bottleneck is our measure of seaborne oil and gas flows (shown on the right of the figure, with the sign flipped to indicate rising stress). All other components reflect the shock more indirectly. Oil and gas shipping volumes have dropped even more from the immediate post-closure lows, while the volume of other cargo shipping has bounced back somewhat from earlier lows (see here for our latest read on global tracking). Delivery times and air-freight costs deteriorated primarily in March and April, with little additional movement since. Initially, supply chain stress appeared relatively contained and concentrated in these indicators. However, shipping costs now seem to be responding with a lag: after little change in March and April, prices have ramped up noticeably in May and June to date, across all major reporters (Baltic, Harper Petersen, Drewry, and Freightos).ntinued to deteriorate, despite the recent decline in energy prices. In our update mid-May (here), we noted that the index had worsened by roughly 1.2 standard deviations since the onset of the Middle East conflict. Figure 1 below shows the latest June reading, based on weekly data up to last Friday (with missing observations proxied by the prior month's values). The median of the 23 component series (blue line) now stands at 2.9 standard deviations—an increase of around 2½ standard deviations since the conflict began—and marks the highest level since May 2022.

This reading predates the geopolitical developments of the past few days and so may well end up being a high watermark. But we suspect a sustained improvement across many indicators will likely require a tangible normalization in the flow of global energy shipments, not just a decline in prices driven by expectations of resolution alone.

If SPRs are drained and supply chain stress keeps rising, the global economy moves from a manageable disruption to a stagflationary shock. That would send energy prices higher, create weaker fuel demand, lead to margin compression for companies, and eventually risk a recession.

The sequence of disasters that could've unfolded:

1. Energy prices reprice violently higher

2. Shipping costs feed into goods inflation

3. Corporate margins get squeezed

4. Consumers get hit

5. Central banks face the stagflation trap

6. Emerging markets falter

7. Global equities shift into recession pricing

These two pressures help explain why the Trump administration moved urgently to secure an MoU with Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The immediate goal was to normalize tanker flows and avert an energy cliff as SPR buffers came under pressure. The second objective is to stop the Hormuz disruption from spilling deeper into global supply chains, where rising shipping costs, longer transit times, and tighter effective vessel capacity were beginning to transmit the shock beyond energy markets and into the broader global economy.

Professional subscribers can read more about the global supply chain and the Strait of Hormuz on our new Marketdesk.ai portal. 

Tyler Durden Thu, 06/18/2026 - 09:00

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell defended the department’s transparency after an officer fatally shot a family dog in Canoga Park.

Bet $10, get $365 in bonus bets win or lose for South Africa vs. Czechia with bet365.

At best, they're just herbal extracts that won't do much of anything for you. At worst, it's a totally unknown dose of a controlled medication like Viagra that could cause heart issues.

“Shame on The Cut for running this,” Kelly said during Wednesday's episode of SiriusXM’s “The Megyn Kelly Show.”

Continuing Jobless Claims Hit 3-Month-Highs

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits for the first time fell from 230k (4 month highs) to 226k (vs 225k exp) last week - elevated but still within the range of the last four years...

Source: Bloomberg

Pennsylvania and Oregon saw the largest rise in initial claims last week while Ohio and Illinois saw the biggest decline...

Meanwhile, continuing jobless claims rose back above 1.8 million Americans - the highest print in 3 months - but still well off cycle highs near 2 million in Q4 2025...

Source: Bloomberg

The bottom line is that while initial claims are rising, they remain low by historical standards and continue to run below year-ago levels, reinforcing the more hawkish 'labor market is resilient' framework introduced yesterday.

Tyler Durden Thu, 06/18/2026 - 08:36

Other celebrities who will appear on the upcoming season include "Summer House" star Ciara Miller and "Love Island" alum Maura Higgins.

Other celebrities who will appear on the upcoming season include "Summer House" star Ciara Miller and "Love Island" alum Maura Higgins.

"I’m happy for every actor who continues to get to do their craft."