Aggregator

Claus was previously investigated by his home country due to an inquiry on match-fixing and sports betting.

Spain finally looked like the tournament favorite it's supposed to be on Thursday.

The New York Knicks’ historic championship run injected new life into the city's nightlife economy, turning slow weekdays into weekend-level fetes and yielding unparalleled profits, according to a new survey released by the New York Hospitality Alliance.

Tesla has launched its brand new SUV that is big on both EV range and size, not to mention the price tag as well, when compared to the previous Model Y.

Japan's Biggest LNG Buyer Creates Standalone Trading Arm

Authored by Michael Kern via OilPrice.com,

Japan's JERA is creating a wholly-owned subsidiary to develop and manage its LNG, upstream, low-carbon fuels, and shipping businesses, the biggest Japanese LNG importer and largest power producer said on Wednesday.

The new company, JERA Global Energy Solutions (JERA GES), will be the Japanese utility giant's response to increasingly volatile and complex energy markets. JERA GES will be a vertically integrated LNG company which can quickly respond to the market needs while maintaining security of supply for Japan as its highest priority, the company said.

JERA GES, which will be headquartered in Singapore, will focus on "developing a stable and diversified long-term LNG portfolio that balances supply sources with market opportunities, while advancing lower-carbon fuels such as ammonia and hydrogen," JERA said, adding that they will maintain close coordination with JERA's power generation and domestic energy market functions as Japan's biggest utility will look to enhance the country's energy security.

GES will gradually take over JERA's existing long-term LNG and lower-carbon fuel business activities according to a planned transfer schedule to keep continuity for existing business relationships.

Amid the current volatility and disarray in global LNG markets, JERA last month signed a contract for the supply of liquefied natural gas with Malaysia's state major Petronas for a period of 20 years, starting in 2028.

Japan is one of the most energy import-dependent countries in the world, with a lot of its oil and gas previously coming from the Middle East. The war-related disruption in export flows has prompted Japan to rush to secure alternative supplies.

The Petronas deal is for 2 million tons of liquefied gas annually, adding to earlier supply deals agreed by JERA. The company, which is the largest buyer of liquefied natural gas in the world, last year presented plans to triple its purchases from the United States alone to as much as 5.5 million tons annually. That would have been a 10% increase on its current imports from the U.S., making up a third of its total LNG purchases.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/02/2026 - 17:40

She's even ditching foundation for the on-sale beauty buy.

She's even ditching foundation for the on-sale beauty buy.

What, like it's hard?

What, like it's hard?

The next chapter in Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s love story in beginning! Despite trying to keep wedding details on the down low, sources are getting the inside scoop on the major event. Insiders are telling Page Six everything there is to know about the celebration including the guest list, menu, schedule and more. Even...

The next chapter in Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s love story in beginning! Despite trying to keep wedding details on the down low, sources are getting the inside scoop on the major event. Insiders are telling Page Six everything there is to know about the celebration including the guest list, menu, schedule and more. Even...

NatGas, Nuclear, Coal Keep Nation's Largest Grid From Buckling Under Heat Dome

Summary:

• NatGas, Nuclear, Coal Power Generation Keep PJM Alive 
• First Day of Heat Dome Across Mid-Atlantic; Last Through Weekend 
• "Set Your AC To 78F": NYC Socialist Pleads With Residents As Fragile Grid Faces Blackout Risk

GridStatus' website shows the PJM Interconnection under severe peak-demand stress as heat-driven cooling loads surge across the Mid-Atlantic and eastern U.S.

PJM load is near 158 GW, net load is around 142 GW, and real-time power prices are sharply rising to about $929/MWh.

The fuel-mix chart shows the grid is heavily reliant on natural gas and coal, which together account for about 64.2% of all power, with nuclear at 20.6%. In total, gas, coal, and nuclear account for about 84.8% of the power being generated, while solar and wind remain in the high single digits.

Peak power prices across PJM are expected at around 6 p.m. local time.

The grid is operating near record load and relying heavily on gas-fired generation to prevent rolling blackouts.

Do not let climate-crisis socialists pretend otherwise: policies that reduce dispatchable fossil-fuel power leave grids extremely fragile and prone to failure when demand spikes.

Meanwhile, President Trump and the Energy Department are moving to keep fossil-fuel power generation online to preserve grid stability.

Why Democrats pushed for a power grid increasingly dependent on unreliable wind and solar, while stripping away the stable baseload capacity needed during peak demand, is no longer just an energy-policy question; it is a national security question.

"Set Your AC To 78F": NYC Socialist Pleads With Residents As Fragile Grid Faces Blackout Risk

"Set your AC to 78 degrees, turn off lights/electronics you're not using, and unplug what you can," New York City Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani wrote on X late Wednesday.

New Yorkers are now getting a real-world lesson in what Mamdani's recent "warmth of collectivism" comments actually mean: shared sacrifice, including being told to dial back air conditioning during blistering heat as the risk of power blackouts rises.

New York: it's hot out there, and the power grid is working overtime to keep us cool.

Set your AC to 78 degrees, turn off lights/electronics you're not using, and unplug what you can.

Our City is doing its part too: maintaining the 78 degrees rule in our buildings,…

— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) July 1, 2026

The deeper issue here is that years of left-wing climate policies and poor grid management have left the metro area and the broader region increasingly vulnerable during peak-demand hours.

Temperatures are forecast to top 100F across NYC and large parts of the Mid-Atlantic and East Coast beginning today. The extreme weather is set to sharply drive up cooling demand, just as power grids are already under pressure from failed climate-change policies colliding with the era of data centers.

On Tuesday, the Energy Department issued emergency orders allowing PJM Interconnection power plants to bypass certain environmental limits to keep electricity flowing. Backup generators have been placed on standby on the grid serving 67 million people across 13 states.

New York City power prices climbed above $1,100 per megawatt-hour by late Wednesday afternoon. PJM expects to break its all-time peak load record of 165.5 gigawatts later today.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/02/2026 - 17:34

The UN's blood libels against Israel are fueling the propaganda efforts of pro-Hamas activists around the world, including in the United States.

This is the second OC restaurant to be stripped of a star in a year.

Marshawn Lynch participated in the Ice Bucket Challenge as a show of support for former NFL running back Chris Johnson, who recently revealed his battle with ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease). Lynch did the challenge outside Allegiant Stadium in a video posted to his Instagram. Chris Johnson revealed he is battling ALS earlier...

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has also accused intelligence agencies of "obstructing the Inspector General’s honest efforts to perform a thorough investigation.”

Despite blips in rapes and hate crimes, the Big Apple is now safer than it's ever been, new NYPD statistics show

Terrion Arnold may not be a free agent for long. At least his attorney doesn't think so.

World's Largest Data Center Project On Verge Of Collapse After Blackstone Unexpectedly Pulls Out

Up until now, when it comes to real estate, Blackstone was best known in recent years for dumping many of its trophy office properties - which in the aftermath of work from home never recovered their projected cash flow potential - at a huge discount. Now, it may be pulling a page from its old, pre-Lehman playbook  by calling the top in yet another commercial real estate segment: data centers. 

Two days ago we reported that Blackstone was selling its stakes in a trio of data centers across Northern Virginia for $3.5 billion, cashing out of part of a bet it made less than three years ago. According to Bloomberg, Digital Realty Trust would pay $1.2 billion of cash and offer $2.3 billion of its shares (which the PE giant has largely cashed in by now) to Blackstone funds; in exchange, the data center company will acquire Blackstone’s 80% interest in two 96-megawatt data centers in Manassas, Virginia, and a 50% interest in a 96-megawatt center in nearby Sterling.

We said that "the question is why did Blackstone decide to pull the cord now, just as fresh doubts are creeping whether the Mag 7s will continue funding the AI expansion with virtually unlimited capex."

Two days later we have an answer. 

The digital ink is barely dry on its Virginia data center sales, and we learn that Blackstone’s QTS (QTS Realty Trust) is again quietly fading its AI exposure by walking away from plans to build its portion (which at this point is the only portion left after its partner already pulled out days ago) of a 2,100-acre data center campus in Virginia - also known as Prince William Digital Gateway which would house as many as 37 data-center buildings - handing a win to residents who fought for years to topple the project. 

QTS's proposed facility at 9400 Godwin Drive in Manassas

The data center developer had planned to transform more than 800 acres in Northern Virginia’s Prince William County, a project that would have spanned 22 million square feet, making it the largest data center campus in the world. Located on the edge of an historic Civil War battlefield and on what used to be land protected from development, the project ignited strong pushback from homeowners and has been stalled by lawsuits.

As part of Wall Street’s broader push into data centers, investment has poured into Northern Virginia, which is considered the country’s largest data center market, and is better known as "Data Center Alley" 

But in a strategic U-turn, in recent days QTS executives decided that it isn’t worth pressing forward in court, the Bloomberg sources said. The firm’s attorneys plan to inform the court of their decision as soon as this week, the people said, asking not to be named discussing non-public information.

QTS’s rapid growth has made it a poster child of how private equity has fueled the data center industry’s breakneck expansion. Those ambitions are colliding with public anxiety over strains to electricity grids and home prices from AI data centers.

The retreat may be the final blow to Virginia’s “Digital Gateway” project, a mega site roughly twice the size of New York’s Central Park with city-sized power needs. The initiative was supposed to bring in some $100 billion in spending and create one of the world’s largest technology corridors. Not any more. 

The project had sparked contentious, drawn-out public hearings. A clerical blunder related to a key zoning meeting created setbacks for developers. Already, Brookfield-backed Compass Datacenters, which was supposed to build on more than 800 acres at the site, had pulled out in May. 

The U-turns by both firms, Bloomberg writes, amount to one of the most dramatic retreats by developers from a data center project.

It’s a reminder of how tech firms’ race for the computing infrastructure to support AI advances is increasingly facing the same bottlenecks, from power shortages to supply crunches, we have been warning about for the past two years and which Citadel Securities warned about just yesterday.

Organized opposition is mounting, forcing firms and developers to be more deliberate about where they choose to build. This is precisely what we warned one year ago would happen as more grassroots organizations pushed back against the relentless data center rollout. At least we haven't gotten to the arson stage (yet).

between exploding electricity bills and lack of jobs for grads, a new luddite revolution is coming - they will be burning down data centers within a year

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 25, 2025

To account for the costs of such build outs, Virginia recently passed a budget with an energy consumption tax on data centers, and more states are threatening moratoriums on new development. Data centers - and how their costs and benefits are shared - are now emerging a major swing issue in the lead up to the US midterm elections. These hurdles raise questions for investors over whether the AI build out can keep going at this pace. 

For community organizers and residents that spent the last five years opposing the Digital Gateway, QTS’s pullout will now validate a playbook that involved pressure campaigns on local politicians and legal attacks. It will also unleash even more powerful blowback nationwide against these unwanted developments.

As Bloomberg recalls, hundreds of proponents and critics showed up at a 27-hour zoning hearing in 2023 to lobby authorities on the project. After county officials narrowly voted to approve the conversion of agricultural and semi-rural land for data centers, community organizers and residents pursued lawsuits.

The outcome of the meeting - and whether the county properly advertised the event - was at the center of legal challenges. The lawsuits hinged on one detail: The first two newspaper notices publicizing the hearing weren’t separated by at least six days, as state and local codes required at that time. While it is unclear if Blackstone agents had tried to "grease" the zoning board's palms to quietly fast-track the data center, in the end the outcome was catastrophic to the builders. 

In March, Virginia courts upheld an earlier ruling that the zoning approvals were invalid because the public notices for the meeting fell short of rules.

Opponents of the Digital Gateway data center project rallies at Manassas Battlefield Park.

“While we still believe this project offered significant benefits for the region and our neighbors, recent legal actions and compounding regulatory hurdles have effectively closed a viable path forward,” Compass Datacenters President AJ Byers said in a statement following the ruling.

After Compass bailed on the project, that left QTS as the lone developer. It was the only party that petitioned for an appeal of the case in Virginia’s Supreme Court.

Originally, the firm’s executives were concerned about the prospect of setting a legal precedent on the back of an administrative oversight. After Compass’s retreat, QTS lost a partner who would share the costs of upgrading various utilities needed for the massive developments, said one of the people familiar with the matter. QTS decided it was not worth proceeding with the project.

Blackstone, which acquired QTS in 2021, is a major financier of data centers, with a portfolio of more than $150 billion of such assets around the world. 

The increasingly bitter political and grassroots pushback against new data center construction explains why Blackstone has been getting cold feet just as the AI bubble is peaking, first selling existing data centers and now walking away from upcoming projects.  A recent Gallup poll found that 7 in 10 Americans oppose constructing data centers for artificial intelligence in their local area, including nearly half, 48%, who are strongly opposed. Barely a quarter favor these projects, with 7% strongly in favor.

Half of opponents mention data centers’ excessive use of resources, including 18% each mentioning their use of water and energy. Sixteen percent mention a related environmental concern of pollution, including noise pollution and air and water pollution.

About one in five opponents are concerned with the impact on local quality of life, including increased population, increased traffic and preferring that the land be used for other purposes. A similar share mention potentially negative economic consequences, including higher utility bills, cost-of-living increases, and the cost of building the data centers (which could involve the use of taxpayer funds).

Most of the remaining opposition stems from general or specific concerns about artificial intelligence.

Blackstone, which manages more than $1.3 trillion, bills itself as the largest global provider of data centers, and also owns some of the utilities that power them. It acquired QTS in 2021 and bought Australian computing provider AirTrunk in 2024. In May, the firm held an initial public offering for Blackstone Digital Infrastructure Trust Inc., its data center acquisition vehicle, which aims to buy already built and leased properties benefiting from the artificial intelligence boom.

And now that the protest movement knows how to push back against uninvited Wall Street occupants, thanks to the BlackStone capitulation, expect an exponential increase in legal (and other) attempts to hinder the rollout of data centers across the US, assuring that the AI supercycle, which is already years behind schedule with just half of the data centers meant to be built in progress and on time, will expect to see an avalanche of delays and cancellations assuring that the return on debt-funded capex will be even less as eventual launch dates gradually move ever further into the unknown future. 

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/02/2026 - 17:20

US Nuclear Regulator Proposes Changes To Nuclear Safety Standards

Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times,

A U.S. nuclear regulatory agency proposed sweeping reforms July 1 to modernize nuclear reactor licensing and safety practices, shifting away from a global radiation measurement standard after 50 years.

The cooling towers for units 4 (L) and 3 (R) are seen at Plant Vogtle, operated by Georgia Power Co., in east Georgia's Burke County near Waynesboro, Ga., on May 29, 2024. Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, File

The regulatory changes are expected to make it faster and easier to build more nuclear reactors to meet increased energy demands.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), an independent federal agency that oversees licensing and regulation of nuclear energy and radioactive materials, expects the changes will streamline regulations without lowering safety standards.

"NRC's regulations have not kept pace with new technologies and our energy needs," Chairman Ho Nieh said in a July 1 statement. "This proposed rule strips out rigid frameworks and unnecessary conservatism to accelerate the safe deployment of new reactors and expand existing capacity across America."

The effort is part of President Donald Trump's executive order, "Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission," signed May 23, 2025, calling for his administration to reform the agency's regulations and operations to achieve dominance in the global nuclear energy market.

The order also sets out goals to quadruple American nuclear energy capacity from about 100 gigawatts in 2024 to 400 gigawatts in 2050.

To get there, the order calls for adopting science-based radiation limits and reconsidering reliance on the decades-old framework of the linear no-threshold model for radiation exposure and the "as low as reasonably achievable" (ALARA) standard.

"Those models are flawed," Trump's order stated.

The agency was directed to consider adopting determinate radiation limits and consult with the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Changing the model would represent the first major shift in U.S. nuclear policy in half a century.

Critics say that the deregulation could prioritize economic growth over public health.

Changing the radiation model has drawn criticism from nuclear safety expert Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Last year, Lyman told the agency in July 2025 there was "absolutely no technical or practical basis" for changing the agency's use of the ALARA principles in its radiation protection regulations.

A report last year by the Conservative Coalition for Climate Solutions found the change would be a step in the right direction for nuclear energy.

Using ALARA standards is enormously costly, raising the price of building and operating nuclear plants by billions of dollars, the 2025 report found. The standards have also created public phobia and misinformation that "any radiation is harmful," according to the report by the coalition's Nick Loris and Prasanna Pydipalli.

Other countries - France and South Korea - are shifting toward threshold-based models using data collected from worksites but haven't yet made the change, the report found.

The coalition concluded that adopting the new threshold standard for radiation would unleash the potential of nuclear innovation.

"By moving from outdated fear-based models to proportionate, risk-informed regulation, the U.S. can lead the next era of safe, reliable, clean, and globally competitive nuclear energy," Loris and Pydipalli wrote.

The commission issued proposed rules to modernize reactor oversight and radiation protection, and issued draft text to reshape its environmental review process under the National Environmental Policy Act.

The agency's proposed changes would give nuclear power plant operators more flexibility in evaluating radiation doses to workers and the public using more up-to-date methods.

Jay Timmons, president of the National Association of Manufacturers representing 13 million workers, commented on the announcement.

"Building more nuclear reactors here at home is how we secure America's energy future and unleash American energy dominance," Timmons posted on X on July 1.

The U.S. Department of Energy's "Reactor Pilot Program shows what is possible when policymakers embrace innovation instead of standing in its way," Timmons said.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the budget request for the Energy Department on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 13, 2026. Manuel Balce Ceneta, File/AP Photo Tyler Durden Thu, 07/02/2026 - 17:00