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'Low Hire, Ho Fire' Economy Confirmed By Latest Jobless Claims Data

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits for the first time remains near multi-decade lows at 206k last week in line with expectations and flat to the prior month...

Continuing jobless claims ticked up modestly but remain near two-year lows, below the 1.8mm Maginot line...

However, surveys (Conference Board) remain sure it is 'hard to get a job' in this labor market...

But, the official data (BLS) shows that the American workforce is growing...

So, today's data reinforces the 'low hire, no fire' economy - hardly a regime that warrants rate-hikes as it seems CEOs are on tenterhooks for what comes next and tightening financial conditions doesn't seem like a positive path... in fact it could be the straw that breaks the camel's back for many firms.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 08:33

Futures Flat As Yields Ignore Oil Meltup

Futures are flats with Tech in line and small caps lagging even as bond yields dip 1bp across the curve, ignoring the continued rise in oil. In a quiet session ahead of tomorrow's jobs report, Japan remains the standout, with the yen strengthening on more hawkish BOJ repricing and intervention speculation, pressuring exporters.  Risk is modestly bid after yesterday’s reprieve in energy and rates (although Korean memory has faded again and only buybacks prop up the Korean market with retail now puking daily). As of 8:00am ET, S&P futures are unchanged, while Nasdaq futures down 0.1% with memory lagging with both Mag7 and Software (SNOW surging) higher. Cyclicals are higher led by Indus / Materials but there are also bids to HC / Staples. The Dollar is weaker, too, giving a sense of the return to the Debasement trade as US stocks lag EU and DM bonds are outperforming US. Crude prices are up but fuel prices are lower. Metals are bid led by Iron and Precious as Ags are under pressure. Today's US economic data calendar includes July trade balance, 2Q final productivity and unit labor costs and weekly jobless claims (8:30am), August final S&P Global US services PMI (9:45am) and August ISM services (10am), Fed speaker slate includes Waller (8:30am), Hammack (3pm) and Goolsbee (3:55pm). The risk comes from inflation (Prices Paid index) as investors consider a Fed rate hike with market-implied odds of a hike ~64%.

In premarket trading, Mag 7 stocks are mostly higher: Meta released its most powerful artificial intelligence model yet. Shares are up about 0.7%; elsewhere Tesla +1.2%, Alphabet +0.3%, Amazon +0.2%, Microsoft +0.5%, Nvidia -0.4%, Apple -0.2%

• Advasa (ADBT) falls 11% after the Japan-based financial technology company, which is listed in the US, said CFO Katharyn Field had resigned.
• Argan (AGX) rises 6% after the construction company reported revenue for the second quarter that beat the average analyst estimate.
• Broadcom (AVGO) falls 3% after the chipmaker’s results and forecast were seen as underwhelming. The company predicted a boom in artificial intelligence chip sales over the next two years.
• Campbell’s (CPB) falls 5% after the food company cut its dividend and provided disappointing guidance.
• Ciena (CIEN) rises 1% after the maker of equipment used by telecom companies posted third quarter results.
• Envista (NVST) climbs 2% after JPMorgan upgraded the dental company to overweight, saying the firm is entering its investor day event later this month from a position of improved execution.
• Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) falls 4% after reporting increasing sales that didn’t meet high expectations from investors.
• NetApp (NTAP) is down 8%, even after the data storage and management company raised its full-year forecast. The stock has been a strong performer this year, up nearly 70% as of its last close.
• Snowflake (SNOW) jumps 24% after the software company’s second-quarter results beat expectations and the company raised its full-year forecast for product revenue. Analysts note another quarter of product revenue acceleration driven by AI demand.
• Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical (RARE) plunges 44% after the biotech’s experimental drug aimed at treating a rare genetic disorder failed to meet its primary endpoint in a study. The disappointment prompted several brokerages to downgrade their ratings on the stock.
• Victoria’s Secret (VSXY) falls 18% after the company boosted guidance but showed a slower pace of growth.

In other corporate news Elliott has built a stake in Deutsche Telekom and indicated the company should ditch a potential merger with T-Mobile US. A unit of Jefferies won a worldwide freezing order against Radiant World and its founder Pinkesh Nahar. Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical plunged in premarket trading after the biotech said apazunersen (GTX-102), its experimental drug to treat a rare genetic disorder, failed to meet its primary endpoint.

Stocks are headed for a flat open despite resumption in oil’s advance, which will not calm the inflation angst that’s been driving yields higher. There was some reassurance for AI bulls as Broadcom predicts a boom in demand for its chips that support the technology, although how the company has visibility into 2028 (like Nvidia) remains a mystery. Anyway, all is fair to get that last marginal bid we suppose. Volumes remain light in equity trading, as does volatility. The latter might be set to change, with VIX reactivity likely in closer focus over coming weeks given a seasonally elevated period and as investors once again assess the value of convex hedges.

As Bloomberg notes, Thursday’s nervy moves come after a cautious start to September, when global bond yields soared as renewed fighting in Iran drove oil higher, fueling inflation concerns and bets on a Federal Reserve interest-rate hike this month. With earnings season largely over, attention is shifting to Friday’s jobs report for clues on the US economy and the policy outlook.

“There’s no structural trend in the direction of travel and the market typically follows short-term moves on oil,” said Nadege Dufosse, head of multi-asset at Candriam. “It’s a market which is complicated to navigate.”

Broadcom said it expects AI chip revenue will double to about $115 billion in fiscal 2027 and soar to $230 billion the following year. CEO Hock Tan’s discussion of customer mix is noteworthy, with Google expected to move down the pecking order. Anthropic is projected to become the biggest customer for custom chips in 2027, with OpenAI emerging as the second biggest. Broadcom needs to allow its customers to grow into product deliveries, while Nvidia “has the ability to pull demand forward since it offers financing along with the sale,” notes JonesTrading chief strategist Mike O’Rourke.

Speaking of AI, 80% of enterprise revenues at OpenAI and Anthropic come from 1% of their customers, a level of concentration risk unseen in any other software category according to Ramp data. Snowflake touted rapid adoption of its AI-assisted coding tool, suggesting AI-driven consumption trends are coming through. Positioning, according to Goldman Sachs’s Prime Desk, paints a picture of short and hedge positions being added faster than longs. Today’s Taking Stock explores how the setup leaves the market primed for a potential to melt-up, regardless of volatility.

In other assets, a month of gradual decline in the yen has reversed sharply over the past 24 hours as intervention risk weighs on the minds of traders. And, sift through the filings of pension funds and insurers around the world and one thing stands out — some of the biggest holders of US assets have little protection against a weaker dollar. In geopolitics, G20 members agreed to adopt guidelines proposed by the US that call for a lighter touch toward governing AI and other emerging technologies. A disagreement between Chinese and US officials at the G20 meeting revolved around the phrase “non-market” in a sentence addressing trade imbalances.

Attention turned again on the yen, which was on track for its best day since Tokyo and Washington entered the market to prop up the currency just over a month ago. Investors have turned their focus on factors supporting the currency, after weeks of questioning the long-term effectiveness of intervention to support it. Speculation that the nation’s biggest pension fund may boost its allocation to Japanese bonds also supported gains. The yen briefly pared its advance after Bloomberg News reported that BOJ officials are leaning toward raising the benchmark rate by a quarter point this month, cooling bets on a bigger hike.

“Any sustainable turn lower in USD/JPY now probably requires a much more hawkish Bank of Japan and some new initiatives to encourage domestic investment in Japan,” said Chris Turner, head of foreign exchange strategy at ING Bank.

 

European stocks gain slightly in early Thursday trading as oil and bond markets stabilized,  as the Stoxx 600 rises 0.3% to 647.58. Deutsche Telekom advances on news that activist investor Elliott Investment Management has built a sizeable stake. Here are the biggest movers:

 

• Soitec surges as much as 15%, the most since July 23, as the French chip material company lifted its revenue guidance, citing accelerating Photonics-SOI demand
• Deutsche Telekom shares rise as much as 2.3%, with analysts saying a move into the stock by Elliott Investment Management could reduce the chances of a T-Mobile US merger and boost shareholder payouts
• Publicis shares in Paris rise as much as 3.8%, most since Aug. 14, following gains in its US-listed shares, after beverage giant PepsiCo announced it’s shifting its $1.7 billion global media account to the advertising agency
• Clas Ohlson gains as much as 7.2%, the most since March, after the Swedish retail group’s latest earnings, which DNB Carnegie described as impressive, noting strong Ebit growth and better-than-expected gross margins
• Hilton Food Group rises as much as 14%, the most since January 2023, as Peel Hunt says the meat producer’s first-half results and guidance upgrade demonstrate improved visibility
• Transgene surges as much as 23% after the French biotech company published a report showing that all 16 patients treated with TG4050 remained disease-free at three years in a Phase 1 trial in head and neck cancer
• CD Projekt Red rises as much as 4.7% in early trading in Warsaw following strong 2Q earnings, supported by a new IP licensing revenue stream and an upbeat outlook for The Witcher 3 expansion
• Jet2 shares rise as much as 4.1%, the most in five weeks after the budget airline said it hopes to move its shares to the main market of the London Stock Exchange before the end of the fiscal year
• Fuchs advances as much as 3.3%, to the highest since October 2025, as Kepler Cheuvreux removes the only negative analyst rating on the German manufacturer of automotive and industrial lubricants, moving to hold from reduce
• Dunelm Group shares rise as much as 4.7%, rebounding from a seven-week low, after Deutsche Bank upgraded the homeware retailer, saying it has received “little credit” for earnings upside potential from faster store openings
• Crest Nicholson plunges as much as 14% and hit a new all-time low after the UK housebuilder said it now expects to report an Ebit loss this year and warned of some “slippage” in the timetable of refinancing talks with lenders
• Voltalia shares sink as much as 21%, to the lowest since Feb. 2014, after the electricity generator said it now expects to record a net loss in 2026, with Morgan Stanley noting Voltalia expects a net loss in 2H as well
• Intercos shares drop as much as 8.4% after CP7 Beauty Luxco Sarl, a shareholder in the Italian cosmetics manufacturer, placed shares at a discount

Asian stocks rose in line with overnight gains in the US market, led by advances in financials as wagers on interest-rate hikes grew. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index climbed as much as 1.2% before paring some of those gains, with Mitsubishi UFJ Financial, TSMC and Mitsubishi Corp. among the biggest contributors. An Asian financial stocks gauge rallied to a record on expectations that rising rates would boost bank margins. The technology sector lost momentum during the session with Korea’s Kospi erasing almost all of its gains. The move in financials came after Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda hinted Wednesday that an interest-rate hike is likely when the board meets later this month.  Boomberg News reported on Thursday that the BOJ is leaning toward raising its benchmark rate by a quarter point this month. Bank stocks in the US rallied Wednesday, sending KBW Bank Index up the most since early July. Asian equity markets also rebounded as concerns over developed-market government bond yields eased and risk appetite returned, said Song Zhe, senior investment specialist at BNP Paribas Asset Management. Most markets in the region edged higher, led by Jakarta’s 1.1% in Indonesia. Taiwan and Hong Kong fell.

In FX, the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index falls 0.3%. The Japanese yen continued its ascent, rising 1.4% against the greenback and dragging USD/JPY below 157 for the first time in around four weeks, a more than 1% gain. It did trim gains briefly after Bloomberg reported the Bank of Japan is leaning toward raising its benchmark interest rate by a quarter point this month. The Swiss franc is the other notable mover, rising 0.5% after Swiss inflation surprised to the upside.

In rates, treasuries are little changed after erasing gains, lagging European bonds despite higher oil prices. US yields are back within a basis point of Wednesday’s closing levels after erasing declines, trailing European bonds despite oil benchmarks having risen at least 2% toward early-June levels. US 10-year yields are around 4.77%, with curve spreads steady, 2s10s around 41bp, 5s30s around 72bp. IG dollar issuance slate includes one deal so far. Two names priced just over $1 billion on Wednesday, leaving this week on track to be the slowest two-week period of the year. Other focal points of Thursday’s US session include weekly jobless claims data and ISM services gauge and three Fed officials scheduled to speak.

In commodities, Brent crude futures are higher rising above $97 a barrel having erased an earlier fall. Precious metals advance as does Bitcoin. Meanwhile, natural gas futures in Europe gained for a fourth day to head for the highest close since early 2023. US retail diesel prices hit the highest since mid-2022, topping a peak seen during the early stages of the Iran war to approach a record. The national average pump price climbed to $5.783 a gallon on Wednesday. Base metals prices also advanced, with copper in London trading less than $300 a ton below the record set in January. Gold rose 1% to about $4,427 an ounce.

Today's US economic data calendar includes July trade balance, 2Q final productivity and unit labor costs and weekly jobless claims (8:30am), August final S&P Global US services PMI (9:45am) and August ISM services (10am), Fed speaker slate includes Waller (8:30am), Hammack (3pm) and Goolsbee (3:55pm)

Market Snapshot

Top Overnight news

• US Secretary of War Hegseth will extend troop deployments in the Middle East through 2027, increasing strain on US forces: WSJ.
• The US and Iran have intensified tit-for-tat military strikes, with Iran hitting merchant vessels and the US striking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps sites: BBG
• Trump aides seek 'quiet' in Iran war but say attacks may intensify after November elections: RTRS
• Putin cites chance of peace deal, Ukraine sees 'new dynamic': RTRS
• The Bank of Japan is leaning toward raising its benchmark interest rate by a quarter point this month in response to upward price risks: BBG
• Nvidia Corp. has agreed to acquire artificial intelligence startup Hugging Face in a transaction valued at about $13 billion.
• A lender alleged in a filing to Singapore's High Court that iron ore trader Radiant World used Glencore invoices that had already been paid, supported by fake contracts, to raise $31.7 million: BBG
• Norway seizes Russian ship to enforce $4.2 billion claim by Ukrainian energy firm: RTRS
• Chinese Warships Are Cruising Too Close for Comfort Off Japan’s Shores: WSJ
• A US judge blocked the Trump administration from enforcing the executive order restricting birthright citizenship.
• UK Business Secretary Reynolds seeks to quell fears of an exit tax on companies spun out from UK universities that move abroad: FT.
• Kennedy asked to remove Pennsylvania measles death from CDC tally: RTRS
• White House confirmed that US President Trump signed a stopgap funding bill into law, funding the government to December 11th.
• Hundreds of Colleges Are Sending Acceptance Letters to Kids Who Didn’t Even Apply: WSJ

A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Nesquawk

APAC stocks eventually traded mixed after initially posting gains. The stocks lost steam heading into the European open despite a lack of newsflow at the time. ASX 200 was led by outperformance in the top-weighted financial sector and miners, but with further gains capped amid quiet newsflow and mixed trade data. Nikkei 225 initially traded with cautious gains before faltering amid recent currency moves and hawkish BoJ rate hike bets following the recent commentary from BoJ Governor Ueda and hawkish dissenter Takata. KOSPI outperformed early in the session with some tech and energy names among the notable gainers. The index fell into red later in the session. Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp were mixed with some encouragement from stronger-than-expected Chinese RatingDog Services PMI data, although the PBoC's open market operations amount remained at zero. Both indices then traded in the red.

Top Asian News

• Japan's GPIF’s unusual August management committee meeting has fuelled speculation it may raise its 25% domestic bond allocation target, Bloomberg reported.
• Japan's government is reportedly looking to convene an extraordinary Diet session in early October, Asahi reported, with the focus expected to be on consumption tax cuts and a reduction in the number of seats.
• BoJ accounts show there was no large-scale yen intervention on Wednesday.
• Japan's Top Currency Diplomat Mimura said they continue to stand ready on FX but declined to comment on if rate checks were conducted.
• Japanese Finance Minister Katayama said no direct requests to do anything has been given from US Treasury Secretary Bessent.
• Japan Chief Secretary Kihara said there has been no change to PM Takaichi government policies about attaining a strong economy and fiscal sustainability
• BoJ will hold a meeting on market operations scheduled for October 14th 2026.
• China Prelim Retail Passenger Vehicle Sales (Aug) +11% M/M (prev. -8.8%); -4% Y/Y (prev. -20.9%) .

European bourses hold a slight positive tilt. Spain's IBEX 35 outperforms while the AEX is modestly lower. Updates on the Middle East conflict have been light thus far, however, Reuters reported that Iran threatened the US with a large-scale attack if Israel launches an attack on the Ali al-Taher ridge in southern Lebanon. The more pronounced move came following comments by Russian President Putin, in which he said there is an opportunity to reach a peace agreement with Ukraine and that contacts with the US continue. Sectors point slightly higher. Media tops the sector pile, with Telecoms and Basic Resources completing the sector outperformers. To the downside lies Consumer Products & Services, followed by Energy and Utilities. US equity futures are mixed, but ultimately trade on either side of the unchanged mark. Focus after-hours was on Broadcom (-2.1% pre-market) earnings, in which they reported Q3 metrics that beat estimates, however its Q4 revenue and margin outlooks came in below expectations.

Top European News

• UK Business Secretary Reynolds seeks to quell fears of an exit tax on companies spun out from UK universities that move abroad, according to FT.
• Germany's IFW lifted its 2026 GDP forecast to 1.3% (prev. saw 0.8%) and leaves 2027 GDP at 1%, citing acceleration in economic activity and improving business confidence.
• German Ifo raised its 2026 growth forecast to 1.4% (prev. 0.8%) and 1.2% in 2027 (prev. 0.8%).

FX

• Further Yen strength which has led to the Buck underperforming against all G10 peers.
• JPY sees outperformance vs USD with the pair halted just short of 156.00 from a peak above 160 on Wednesday. The move comes absent of a headline driver, but there are several factors which weigh on the pair at the moment. Some suggest potential intervention/rate checks, however price action is more gradual, therefore not consistent with previous bouts, while others say the GPIF’s meeting has fuelled speculation it may raise domestic allocation targets. Other factors which have weighed in the past weeks are the clearer US influence on Japanese policy after Bessent met with various Japanese officials, this hawkish intent also evident in Ueda and Takata's remarks, the latter more so. This morning however, Bloomberg sources said the BoJ is set to favour a 25bps hike and a "flexible" future pace in policy; a report which sparked a dead cat bounce in USD/JPY which lifted back above 157.00.
• DXY (-0.3%) is being driven by JPY moves today with the index falling to a 99.16 trough before paring some of the move after the aforementioned Bloomberg sources. Some of that pressure can also be attributed to falling domestic yields.
• CHF is the second best performer, after hotter than expected GDP and CPI data. Following the inflation print, USD/CHF moved lower by 15 pips within a minute then extended the move to c. 25 pips within ten minutes at a 0.8083 low following the release. GDP also indicated a hot Swiss economy in Q2, albeit caveated by the chemical and pharma metrics which surged +10.5% during the period.

Fixed Income

• Global fixed income benchmarks are firmer this morning, rebounding from recent losses as the yield situation attempts to improve.
• USTs (+3+ ticks) are stronger this morning, holding at the top end of a 107-15+ to 107-21 range. Elsewhere, Bunds (+20 ticks) and Gilts (+51 ticks) benefit from cooling energy prices. The geopolitical situation remains tense; however, focus has been on comments from President Trump. He stated that their renewed campaign against Iran will not continue for too long. Separately, the WSJ reported that Trump is said to be having discussions with senior aides regarding whether to call the Iran war over – the piece suggests he is favouring the idea. US yields have moved off their multi-year peaks, with the 10yr (4.77%) holding off the 4.81% high made on Wednesday.
• JGBs (+40 ticks) are firmer this morning, with an accumulation of factors helping sentiment for the region. As mentioned earlier, oil prices are helping global yields lower; focus has also been on a surprise GPIF management committee, which Bloomberg opined has helped raise speculation that it may raise its 25% domestic bond allocation target. Elsewhere, a 30-year auction overnight was relatively well received, further boding well for the benchmark. On the monetary policy front, money markets have continued to up their bets of a BoJ rate hike this month. This was further corroborated by a Bloomberg sources piece earlier, which highlighted that the Bank is favouring a 25bps hike and a flexible future pace.
• Bunds and Gilts follow the bullish bias, benefiting from lower oil prices. Most recently, constructive comments from Russian President Putin spurred another bout of pressure in the oil complex – which in turn helped to lift the fixed income space. He stated that there is an opportunity to reach a peace agreement with Ukraine, adding that there are contacts with them. Bunds (U26) jumped c. 10 ticks to make a fresh peak at 122.95.
• France sells EUR 13.497bln vs exp. EUR 11.5-13.5bln 1.25% 2036, 3.70% 2036, 0.50% 2040 and 4.10% 2046 OAT.
• Spain sells EUR 5.634bln vs exp. EUR 5-6bln 2.35% 2029, 2.60% 2031 and 3.30% 2036 Bono and EUR 0.639bln vs exp. EUR 0.25-0.75bln 2.05% 2039 I/L Bono.
• UK sells GBP 900mln 1.875% I/L Gilt: b/c 3.58x (prev. 3.20x), real yield 2.496% (prev. 2.165%).
• Japan sells JPY 456.2bln 30-yr JGBs; b/c 3.79x (prev. 3.86x), average yield 4.079% (prev. 3.952%), Tail in price 0.28 vs prev. 0.21.

Commodities

• Crude futures have pulled back from extremes following a three-day rally and amid a lack of military action overnight. On Wednesday, President Trump said renewed Iran strikes would likely be brief, and officials pointed towards steady Strait of Hormuz flows. That being said, Trump added the US was prepared to conduct another attack on Iran. Meanwhile, US Treasury Secretary Bessent said Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy assets and the Iran conflict are driving a global energy shock and higher prices. Meanwhile, some weakness was seen across the crude complex after Russian President Putin struck a more conciliatory tone as he suggested Russia and Ukraine should agree first and that there is an opportunity to reach a peace agreement. Brent Nov trades in a USD 94.03-96.20/bbl range (vs yesterday’s 93.52-97.04/bbl range) while WTI Oct resides in a USD 89.57-91.53/bbl parameter (vs yesterday’s 88.97-92.29/bbl band).
• Dutch TTF prices are also on a softer footing but off worst levels, with the front-month contract remaining elevated above EUR 72.50/MWh where the support was found before moving north of EUR 73/MWh. Analysts at ING suggested in yesterday’s note “Escalation in the Persian Gulf pushes back hopes of any recovery in LNG exports from the region. This remains a concern for Europe, given lower-than-usual storage levels. LNG netbacks favour sending spot LNG to Europe over Asia. But as we move closer to the Northern Hemisphere winter, competition between the two regions is likely to pick up, particularly if Qatari LNG remains largely absent from the market through year-end”.
• Metals are mixed, with precious metals cheering the pullback in the USD as they attempt to trim recent losses. Spot gold resides in a USD 4,381-4,443/oz range after topping its 100 DMA (USD 4,358/oz) yesterday. Spot silver resides in a relatively narrow USD 65.21-66.25/oz range, still under Tuesday’s USD 67.08/oz high and below the 100 DMA (USD 67.64/oz). Base metals fail to benefit from the USD pullback as elevated energy prices weigh on the growth picture, whilst hawkish central banks also cap gains for the complex. 3M LME copper trades in a tight USD 14,208.88- 14,278.00/t range at the time of writing.
• Kazakhstan’s August oil and gas condensate production rose 11% M/M, according to sources.
• Russian Deputy PM Novak said OPEC's role in the market remains important and will continue to exert significant influence on the oil market because of its high output. Novak added that Russia is to slightly lower oil output in 2026.

Trade/Tariffs

• US House Republicans pressed USTR Greer on Wednesday on Capitol Hill about the harm a trade war with Canada could do to their local economies, according to Politico citing sources.
• US Commerce Secretary Lutnick said a further easing of US export curbs is not on the table and that relaxing tech export controls for China is not necessary.
• India's Trade Minister said a final trade agreement between US and India will be published as soon as the US can provide India with tariff advantages.

Central banks

• BoJ is reportedly favouring 25bps hike and a flexible future pace, sources suggest.
• RBNZ Governor Breman said a gradual removal of monetary stimulus is appropriate to return inflation to target while still supporting growth and employment. Breman said she sees risk of more indirect inflation from fuel and stated there is real risk that unless we respond in monetary policy, inflation expectations will get out of hand.

Geopolitics: Middle East

• US President Trump said regarding Iran that the US is winning that one very big and controls the Hormuz Strait.
• US Secretary of State Rubio instructed all US embassies around the world earlier this week to send an official diplomatic demarche about Operation Economic Outcast to the most senior level of their host governments, according to Axios citing US officials.
• US Ambassador to NATO Whitaker said Iran is a bankrupt country and will not be able to pay anyone in its military, civil service or government, nor subsidise its society. He stated the people of Iran will not be happy with the current state of affairs and should blame their government and regime, adding that they should ask for change and a different way forward.
• US Envoy Witkoff met last weekend with the UAE's national security adviser to discuss next steps on Iran, according to Axios. The report added that "One of the officials said a special message was sent to U.S. diplomatic posts in Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Hong Kong, Doha, London, Berlin and several Central Asian capitals. The missive instructed them to demand that their host governments shut down all branches of Iran's Melli and Saderat banks that are affiliated with the IRGC."
• Iran reportedly threatened the US with a large-scale attack if Israel launches an attack on the Ali al-Taher ridge in southern Lebanon, Reuters reported citing sources.
• Iranian Chairman of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission said the Strait of Hormuz cannot be opened without Iran’s will, IRIB reported.
• Kuwait Army said it was repelling missile and hostile drone attacks, while local news outlets were attributing the attacks to Iranian aggression and Arab sources said the US base in Kuwait was hit by a strike with smoke reported.
• A senior Yemeni official said Yemen’s armed forces are conducting new military drills in the Red Sea to prepare for a possible confrontation with Israel and the US, IRNA reported.
• Military sources said clashes broke out between Yemeni government forces and Houthis in the Al-Kadha area west of Taizz, Yemen.

Geopolitics: Ukraine

• Russian President Putin said that Russia and Ukraine should agree first and noted that there is an opportunity to reach a peace agreement. Putin added that contacts with the US continue, adding that Russia is in favour of restoration of relations with the US. He said US President Trump is ready for positive and constructive works and that there are contacts with Ukraine.
• Russian President Putin said attacks on three oil refineries have been repelled, adding that Russia must respond in kind.
• US Ambassador to NATO Whitaker said Russia’s aggressive actions, invasion of Ukraine and prior annexation of Crimea lead the US to believe that Russia can be unpredictable and could be willing to take action against a NATO country. Furthermore, he said recent statements by Russian President Putin do not leave him optimistic, while he added that Ukraine needs to be able to defend itself as long as it takes until the war can be brought to an end.

US Event Calendar

• 8:30 am: Jul Trade Balance, est. -90.2b, prior -73.3b
• 8:30 am: Aug 29 Initial Jobless Claims, est. 205k, prior 203k
• 8:30 am: Aug 22 Continuing Claims, est. 1783.5k, prior 1778k
• 9:45 am: Aug F S&P Global US Services PMI, est. 56.8, prior 56.8
• 9:45 am: Aug F S&P Global US Composite PMI, est. 56.05, prior 56
• 10:00 am: Aug ISM Services Index, est. 54.05, prior 54.1

Central bank speakers 

• 8:30 am: Fed’s Waller in Moderated Conversation
• 3:00 pm: Fed’s Hammack Gives Opening Remarks
• 3:55 pm: Fed’s Goolsbee Gives Closing Remarks

DB's Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

If you listen carefully enough at around 8:30am this morning you may hear my wife let out an almighty cheer as the kids go back to school after 2 months of screaming, fighting, incessant talking and general all-round chaos. The odd, pleasant memory can be interspersed with the above. What won't be remembered well is 3 separate outbreaks of headlice that the whole family suffered from apart from me (bald) and the dog. This must be the most powerful strain in history as we've spent a fortune on three separate shampoos treatments with the associated painstaking application process. As I mentioned before hols it even involved my wife being blinded for a few days after accidentally getting some in her eye. So that was scary. So hopefully that's one summer visitor that's gone for good now.  

Apologies if you're now itching on the way to work. To distract you, markets put in a divergent performance yesterday, with a sharp contrast on either side of the Atlantic. In the US it was actually a decent session, with Treasury yields coming down a bit from their Tuesday highs, whilst the S&P 500 (+0.46%) stabilised after three consecutive declines. But for Europe it was a very different story, as the continent’s exposure to natural gas prices meant bonds and equities took a fresh hit. Indeed, yields climbed to fresh records across the board, with the 10yr bund yield (+3.2bps) at another post-2011 high of 3.37%, whilst France’s 10yr OAT yield (+4.4bps) hit a post-2008 high of 4.25%.   

We’ll start with Europe, where the relentless rise in natural gas prices showed no sign of easing. In fact, yesterday saw the front-month future (+1.96%) close at €73.60/MWh, which is its highest level since January 2023. And that was echoed further out the futures curve too, with the 6-month future (+2.54%) up to €67.43/MWh, also its highest level since 2023. So with investors pricing in a protracted period of high gas prices, that had knock-on effects for assets across Europe, which faces much higher natural gas prices than the US. The recent flareup between the US and Iran has led to fresh scepticism that energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz will normalise anytime soon. And that comes as Northern European countries are struggling to refill their gas reserves in time for the heating season after they had fallen to historically low levels following the cold winter last year.

For now, the situation remains a long way from what happened in 2022, back when gas prices spent the entirety of Q3 above €150/MWh. But prices are now more than double their levels of a year ago. And with both headline and core inflation still lingering above target, that’s raised fears about a more forceful ECB response. So yesterday saw markets fully price in 3 more ECB hikes by the time of the June 2027 meeting, which if realised would take their deposit rate back up to 3% again.  

That backdrop was very problematic for European sovereign bonds, with yields hitting multi-year highs across the continent. In Germany for example, the 10yr yield (+3.2bps) was up to 3.37%, and the 30yr yield (+1.9bps) reached 3.83%, which was the highest since 2011 for both. And it was a similar story for real yields too, with Germany’s 10yr real yield (+1.7bps) at a post-2011 high of 0.99%, suggesting this wasn’t just a story of high inflation expectations. Then in France, the 10yr yield (+4.4bps) hit a post-2008 high of 4.25%, whilst the 30yr yield (+3.2bps) even moved above 5% on an intraday basis, before closing slightly beneath that at a post-2008 high of 4.98%.  

As all that was going on, the geopolitical situation remained volatile in the Middle East, with no sign of the US or Iran de-escalating. Indeed, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the US would continue targeting Iran over its shipping attacks. But there were no major new developments, while Trump said he didn’t think the renewed strikes against Iran would last too long.  Initially, oil prices had moved sharply higher after the previous night’s attacks, with Brent crude peaking above $97/bbl in the small hours of yesterday. However, they then came down through the session, but ultimately still settled +1.04% higher at $95.63/bbl. This morning we're -0.39% lower at $95.29/bbl.  

The turnaround from the highs in oil was sufficient for US Treasuries to finally stabilise yesterday. The 10yr yield was down -0.9bps by the close at 4.77% while the 2yr was -0.4bps at 4.37%. The pullback in yields was helped by a softer ADP release of private payrolls, which rose by +38k in August (vs. +47k expected), leading to questions about whether tomorrow’s jobs report might also come in on the softer side. So that led to a bit more doubt about whether the Fed might hike in a couple of weeks’ time, with market pricing for a September hike down on the day from 68% to 63%. In addition, we also heard some more dovish comments from NY Fed President Williams, who said “I am actually seeing the trend in inflation moving slowly down as some of the effects of the tariffs move into the rearview mirror.”  
With that in mind, US equities finally stabilised yesterday, with the S&P 500 (+0.46%) recovering after 3 consecutive declines. That was lifted by a decent rally for the Mag 7 (+0.76%) which in turn were lifted by Nvidia (+3.21%) and Meta (+2.47%). But it was a different story in Europe, where the STOXX 600 (-0.24%) hit a five-week low, alongside declines for the DAX (-0.50%), the CAC 40 (-0.26%) and the FTSE 100 (-0.30%).  

In Asia, sentiment is more positive with the KOSPI (+1.52%) leading gains, with technology names benefiting from the positive read-through from Broadcom’s aggressive outlook for chip sales overnight. This offset a slightly tepid current quarter for the US chipmaker. Meanwhile, the Nikkei (+0.34%), CSI 300 (+0.48%), Shanghai Composite (+0.42%), and S&P/ASX 200 (+0.43%) are all edging higher. US and European futures are all up less than a tenth of a percent.
In terms of overnight data, Japan's services sector expanded at its fastest pace in five months in August, adding to evidence of resilient domestic activity and potentially strengthening the case for further BOJ policy tightening.

This and intervention fears is bleeding through into the Japanese yen, which is up +0.55% against the US Dollar this morning following a sharp +0.93% jump yesterday. It first rose yesterday after the BoJ’s Takata had suggested there could be a bigger hike than usual, saying that a 25bp hike “is not necessarily set in stone”. Then later in the session, there was a fresh surge that led to questions about whether there’d been some kind of intervention or rate check. Nothing has materialised but now the market is on watch with chatter that intervention could occur around the thin trading conditions of the "Silver Week" holidays that see markets closed for three days immediately after the BoJ meeting concludes on Friday September 18th. The narrative has helped 10-year JGB yields ease about -4bps to 2.97% this morning, after briefly crossing the 3% threshold earlier this week for the first time since 1996.

Other early morning data showed that China's services sector expanded faster than expected in August, supported by stronger business activity and new orders, while employment increased for a fourth consecutive month, signaling a modest improvement in domestic demand. The RatingDog Services PMI rose to 51.4 in August from 50.4 in July, surpassing market expectations of 50.6. However, the reading remained the second-lowest level in the past 14 months, highlighting that the pace of expansion is still relatively moderate. Meanwhile, the Composite PMI increased to 52.1 from 50.8, pointing to an acceleration in overall private-sector activity.
Elsewhere, Australia’s trade surplus came in above expectations in July, although the surplus narrowed from the previous month as exports fell more sharply than imports. The country posted a trade surplus of A$1.92 billion, above the consensus forecast of A$1.50 billion, but down from a revised surplus of A$2.34 billion in June. Exports fell -3.3% m/m, reversing June’s +9.6% increase, while imports decreased -2.5%, following a 0.7% decline in the prior month. These will be followed later today by the services PMIs across Europe and the US, as well as the ISM reading in the latter.   

In yesterday’s other news, the Bank of Canada kept their policy rate at 2.25%, in line with expectations. However, the decision was received hawkishly, as their statement said that “the upside risks to inflation have increased”, and investors dialled up their expectations for a rate hike later this year. So that helped the Canadian dollar strengthen +0.39% against the US Dollar, whilst the 10yr yield surged +4.8bps yesterday to 3.79%. That was a bigger increase than 10yr yields saw in other G7 countries yesterday, and left the level of yields at its highest since April 2024.  

Looking at the day ahead, US data releases include the ISM services index for August, the weekly initial jobless claims, and the July trade balance. Otherwise, we’ll get the final services and composite PMIs for August from the US and Europe, along with the Euro Area PPI reading for July. From central banks, we’ll hear from the Fed’s Waller, Hammack and Goolsbee.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 08:30

Yen Suddenly Surges To Bessent Intervention Highs... No One Knows Who/Why...

Yesterday we noted the sudden spike in JPY which prompted numerous desks to speculate on an intervention.

It wasn't large - which made many suggest it wasn't or that it was a tester for liquidity.

Today, we are seeing something different - a steady bid for the Japanese currency lifting it to post-Bessent/BoJ highs...

The slope (not entirely vertical) made some reject the idea of an intervention...

“I don’t think the move was an intervention or rate check, but there is a lot of caution around the 160 level,” said Marito Ueda, president of SBI FX Trade.

But maybe they have a new method of intervention rather than just dump a few billion dollars all at once and rip through all the stops.

The move “shows how sensitive positioning has become,” said Nathan Thooft at Manulife Investment Management.

“The market got the message that the authorities want a stronger yen.”

The yen began strengthening earlier on Wednesday, after a BOJ board member raised the possibility of outsize or back-to-back interest-rate hikes.

Overnight index swaps are now more than fully pricing in a standard 25 basis point rate hike at the BOJ’s September meeting. Pricing suggests only a very low likelihood of a 50 basis point move.

“The yen’s gains followed comments from reliably hawkish BOJ board member Takata,” said Tony Sycamore, an analyst at IG Australia.

“It’s possible we saw some pre-positioning going through for a weak nonfarm payrolls report tomorrow night,” said Sycamore.

“I am skeptical based on the size of the move,” said Andrew Hazlett, a foreign-exchange trader at Monex Inc., referring to the possibility of intervention on Wednesday.

There is no official comment from either the US Treasury of Bank of Japan.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 08:27

Record 89% Of Americans Say Government Corruption Widespread

A record 89% of US adults say government corruption is widespread - which is up 10% from last year, and far above the average 72%-79% between 2010 and 2025, according to a new Gallup poll. 

Unsurprisingly, Democrats' perceptions of government corruption spiked the most since 2024 - going from 57% to 91% this year, while independents also feel this way at 90%. Republicans at 83% are up 12 points since 2024. 

According to Gallup, the reasons are different between Republicans and Democrats - with Dems' perceptions appearing closely linked with whatever party is in power, while Republicans have much greater consistency on the topic - which "suggests a more underlying view of government corruption that depends less on the party in power."

Gallup also notes that before the recent increase, the US already outranked other advanced economies in corruption perceptions. Continued:

The U.S. has increasingly diverged from other advanced economies in perceptions of government corruption, based on Gallup polling across the 38 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The median level of perceived corruption among OECD countries has fallen from 69% in 2009 to below 60% since 2022.

Full data collection for 2026 is not yet complete in all countries, so the closest comparison across the OECD is from 2025, when a median of 59% said corruption is widespread in their government.

In the early years of this trend, countries such as Greece, Hungary and the Czech Republic all saw scores above 90%. But over time, the highest levels of perceived corruption across the bloc have gradually fallen, reaching 79% in 2025 — placing the U.S. atop the OECD rankings for the first time, even before the additional 10-point increase within the past year.

By 2024, there was already a 15-point gap between the U.S. and OECD countries on this metric, but that rose to 20 points in 2025 as U.S. perceptions of corruption increased six points to 79%, compared with 59% across the OECD. The gap between the U.S. and the OECD median could potentially be even wider this year.

Since 2023, only four countries out of the 132 in which Gallup has posed this question annually have scored nominally above the 89% recorded in the U.S. this year: Lebanon in 2024 (92%), Peru in 2025 (92%), and Ghana and Nigeria in 2024 (both 90%).

Perceptions of Corruption in Government Outstrip Those in Businesses

Each year, Gallup asks the world about corruption in two contexts: government and business. The two are typically strongly related. If people think corruption is widespread in their national government, it is likely that they think the same about businesses in their country. But the U.S. increasingly bucks this trend.

Americans’ perceptions of business corruption have also increased this year, by eight points to 71%. That is 18 points lower than perceptions of corruption in government, the largest gap between the two types of corruption seen in the U.S. trend. By contrast, between 2006 and 2025, perceptions of government corruption averaged 11 points higher than business corruption. Across Gallup’s trend since 2006, few countries have recorded larger gaps than the current U.S. gap in relative perceptions of government versus business corruption.

Bottom Line

Perceptions of government corruption are now higher in the U.S. than at any point in the past two decades and outpace most other countries, including advanced economies. While perceptions of corruption in business are also elevated, government corruption is seen as significantly more widespread.

In a country where many are polarized across a wide range of issues, this is one case where bipartisanship reflects shared alarm as much as shared consensus. In fact, it is the near convergence of U.S. partisans on the issue — with Democrats’ concern about government corruption now only marginally higher than Republicans’ — that has lifted the U.S. figure to its record high.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 08:05

President's Party Up Against Poor Odds In The Midterms

The Republican Party is controlling the House, the Senate and the presidency at the moment, but the midterm elections coming up at in November have the power to change this Status Quo.

Congressional and presidential approval are near all-time lows as the Trump administration's wars are proving unpopular, but the party is also up against a historical precedent at the same time: The president's party rarely does well in the midterms.

As Statista's Katharina Buchholz reports, using data by The American Presidency Project, there are only two presidents of the modern age who could expand their party's showing in both chambers in the midterms or at least not lose ground: Bill Clinton during his second term and George W. Bush during his first, when he managed to flip the Senate in his favor while holding on to the House just one year after 9/11. Against these few success stories stands a long line of defeats.

You will find more infographics at Statista

President Donald Trump himself is no stranger to this. During his first term from 2017 to 2020, the Republican Party lost 41 House seats in the midterms, among the top 5 highest midterms losses since the 1960s. This lost the party control of the chamber, while it gained two seats in the Senate, holding on to it. Trump's predecessor and successor, Joe Biden, fared similar in 2022. The Democrats lost only 9 House seats then, but with the same outcome (they also kept the Senate).

Similarly, back in 2010, Barack Obama lost control of the House just two years into his eight-year term and suffered another major setback in his second midterms when he lost the Senate as well. Bill Clinton in 1994 lost control of both chambers of Congress by the middle of his first term and never won them back in the six years that followed despite the gains he made in his second midterm election. After George W. Bush's successful first midterms, debacle followed four years later as he lost both chambers in 2006 amid fall-out from Hurricane Katrina and the war in Iraq.

While the proof of midterm losses for sitting presidents is resounding, the reasons behind them are more muddled.

Nobody really knows why the midterms are so hard for incumbents irrespective of the political climate. Depending on how a president is perceived by his voters, he could be hit by either apathy or disappointment.

Other than 9/11, which helped George W. Bush succeed, other national crises have not proven a good predictor for midterms success, which leave two more possible culprits: presidential approval and the state of the economy. Both will likely not work in Trump's favor come November.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 06:55

Ukraine's Drone Warfare Devouring 4% Of Global Germanium Demand As China Chokes Supplies

Our coverage of rare earths dates back to President Trump's first trade war, when we warned that "Rare Earths Are China's Most Potent Weapon In A Trade War."

What followed was predictable. During the 2025 trade war, Beijing steadily tightened its control over exports of gallium, germanium, antimony, tungsten and a growing list of other critical industrial metals to the West and its allies. These restrictions represent another weapon in Beijing's economic-warfare toolkit, aimed squarely at the most vulnerable chokepoints in Western defense, semiconductor and advanced-manufacturing supply chains.

The latest signals suggest that bilateral tensions are once again deteriorating. China was the sole G20 holdout on language addressing trade imbalances and an unsustainable export-oriented economic model, while Treasury has widened its Iran sanctions campaign to include Chinese entities, refiners and shipping networks.

The response from the Trump administration and other Western governments has been to accelerate efforts to restart dormant mines, expand processing capacity and build critical minerals supply chains outside Beijing's control.

Our coverage of this trade began with an April 2024 note titled "Next Big Mineral Trade Revealed By Morgan Stanley," which identified MP Materials as one of the miners best positioned to benefit from the Trump-era push to restore domestic critical material supply chains.

By early July 2025, we again highlighted MP Materials as one of the clearest stocks for positioning around this decoupling theme. Just weeks later, shares of the rare earth miner surged from around $30 toward triple-digit territory.

Wall Street may not fully recognize the decoupling theme until regulatory restrictions translate into physical shortages. Some analysts are beginning to understand the grim outlook facing the West. But Beijing does not need to announce a formal trade embargo to shock markets into a crisis. Slowing export approvals, restricting volumes, or denying shipments to select end users have already made it clear that the West must rebuild critical supply chains outside China, either domestically or through friend-shoring.

Another indication that Western critical material supply chains could become a major decoupling theme for Wall Street is the emerging global rearmament cycle.

BMO analyst George Heppel noted that the Russia-Ukraine war is expected to account for more than 4% of global germanium demand this year, with an estimated 15 million drones set to be deployed in an environment where China has weaponized critical materials supply chains, given its control of much of the space. 

"With a staggering 15 million drones estimated to be deployed in the Russia-Ukraine war this year, it is safe to say that the world has entered the era of mass drone warfare," Heppel said.

Heppel explained: "Our analysis suggests that gallium, germanium and NdFeB magnets are the most important enablers of drone warfare, with gallium and germanium (alongside heavy rare earths) also being vital components required for counterdrone systems."

"Consequently, we expect gallium, germanium and rare earth supply security to continue to be a major priority in the West in the face of this growing threat," he added.

Heppel said the massive deployment of drones has opened a new front in the global scramble for germanium, gallium and rare earth magnets. These critical materials are used throughout the drone and counter-drone parts ecosystem, including in systems designed to detect, track, jam and destroy one-way attack drones.

The numbers surrounding drone-driven demand for critical materials are staggering:

• Drones now account for more than 80% of enemy targets destroyed by Ukrainian forces.
• Governments and military alliances have pledged roughly $150 billion for drone and counter-drone capabilities since 2025.
• About one-third of that planned spending is directed toward counter-drone systems.
• Drone warfare could consume 4.3% of global germanium demand this year.

Heppel said this is only the beginning of a "high-volume, high-precision" era of warfare that combines industrial-scale drone production with precision-strike capabilities. The transition in warfare technology is making militaries increasingly dependent on these obscure metals, much of whose production and processing is controlled by China. That represents a major vulnerability for the West.

Heppel estimates that the average FPV drone contains 46 grams of neodymium-iron-boron magnet material, 0.1 gram of gallium and 1 gram of germanium. Across 15 million drones, this translates into annual battlefield demand of roughly:

• 690 metric tons of NdFeB magnets
• 1.5 tons of gallium
• 15 tons of germanium

Global germanium demand was estimated at just 343 tons in 2025, meaning the Russia-Ukraine battlefield could consume more than 4% of worldwide supply this year. That source of demand did not exist before the war. 

The Squeeze On Prices...

Germanium is used in thermal-imaging lenses and in the fiber-optic cables attached to tethered one-way attack drones.

China's grip on germanium supply is becoming increasingly alarming (read here) as the US and allied governments commit an estimated $150 billion to drone and counter-drone capabilities.

Heppel told clients that several publicly traded companies offer exposure to the critical minerals theme:

1. MP Materials (MP-NYSE; $54.75; Outperform rated by Max Yerrill and Raj Ray) stands out for its NdPr magnet materials business, production of strategic rare earths such as samarium and gadolinium, and efforts to support drone manufacturing through Project Swarm.
2. Neo Performance Materials (NEO-TSX; $31.38; Outperform rated) provides downstream exposure through rare earth separation, magnet production and refined gallium products.
3. Energy Fuels (UUUU-NYSE; $14.75; Outperform rated) offers leverage to the redevelopment of a domestic US rare earth supply chain.
4. For gallium, Rio Tinto (RIO-LSE; £76.74; Outperform rated) and Alcoa (AA-NYSE; $49.95; Market Perform rated) are emerging as prospective Western suppliers, although gallium is unlikely to become a major revenue driver for either company.
5. For germanium, Teck Resources (TECK.B-TSX; $94.51; Restricted) remains a key non-Chinese producer and is evaluating a capacity expansion. Ivanhoe Mines (IVN-TSX; $12.11; Outperform rated) provides indirect exposure through the germanium- and gallium-bearing Kipushi deposit and its potential role in future US critical-mineral supply chains.

"As a result, we expect drone and counterdrone technologies to become another important driver of government efforts to secure domestic production, strengthen processing capacity, and reduce dependence on vulnerable foreign supply chains," Heppel explained.

We have already highlighted Piper Sandler's coverage of LightPath Technologies, whose germanium-free infrared materials offer a synthetic alternative for the West as Chinese export restrictions tighten the global germanium market.

Beyond the critical materials covered by Heppel, Jefferies analysts initiated coverage on several critical minerals companies earlier Wednesday, including Almonty Industries. Jefferies assigned Almonty a "Buy" rating, highlighting the miner's direct public-market exposure to Western tungsten supply. 

Jefferies initiates critical mineral companies Almonty, Materion, USA Rare Earth and Neo Performance with Buy; the firms are expected to benefit from increased demand for supply outside of China.

Almonty (buy, PT $26.25)

Sees Almonty offering public exposure to Western tungsten…

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 2, 2026

Read more here.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 05:45

Lindsay Clancy Jury Deadlocked Again; Insane Karen Arrested For 'Aggravated Intimidation' Of Jurors

The jury in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial is once again deadlocked over whether the former mother of three should be given a pass due to hysteria and hormones. 

The indecision followed five days of deliberations and two notes from jurors saying they could not agree. On Wednesday, Judge William Sullivan gave the panel a Tuey-Rodriguez instruction, Massachusetts' last-resort charge telling a deadlocked jury to reach a verdict or else it's an automatic mistrial.

Clancy, 36, a former labor-and-delivery nurse, was charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the January 24, 2023, deaths of her children - Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months - at the family's home in Duxbury. She has not disputed that she killed them. The question for the jury of nine women and three men was whether she was criminally responsible.

The killings

Evidence at trial showed Clancy spent part of that morning on ordinary errands of motherhood, including a pediatrician visit for Cora and playing in the snow. She then asked her husband, Patrick Clancy, to leave for takeout and a pharmacy run. While he was gone, she strangled the three children with exercise bands in the basement. She cut her wrists and neck and jumped from a second-story window. The fall left her paralyzed from the waist down; she has appeared in court in a wheelchair.

Patrick found her injured in the yard, then found the children. Cora and Dawson were pronounced dead that day. Callan died days later. All three deaths were ruled ligature strangulation. Clancy later said a voice told her it was her last chance: kill the children so she could kill herself.

What the jury was asked to decide

Prosecutors conceded she was mentally ill, but is still responsible for the killings. Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague told jurors Clancy planned the killings, sent her husband out of the house, and checked how long the errands would take. They pointed to her functioning that day as proof she could form intent. Sprague called the killings "a choice." First-degree murder in Massachusetts can rest on deliberate premeditation, extreme atrocity or cruelty, or both. That conviction is life without parole.

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington argued she lacked criminal responsibility because of postpartum psychosis and bipolar illness, worsened by psychiatric medications and missed warning signs. Under Massachusetts law, the Commonwealth has to prove criminal responsibility beyond a reasonable doubt. Clancy had been hospitalized and discharged about three weeks before the killings.

Jurors heard more than 80 witnesses and saw more than 300 exhibits. For each child's death they could choose first-degree murder, second-degree murder, manslaughter, not guilty, or not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility. Second-degree murder is life with the possibility of parole. A lack-of-responsibility finding typically means commitment to a state psychiatric hospital with periodic reviews and no fixed release date. As noted above, a hung jury would be a mistrial.

Lindsay Clancy’s attorney says Clancy would not be able to “emotionally handle” another trial.

— Leading Report (@LeadingReport) September 2, 2026 Arrest outside the courthouse

The deliberations themselves became part of the story. On Tuesday afternoon, as the jury left after reporting it could not agree, Massachusetts State Police arrested Dawn Light, 56, of Sutton, outside the Plymouth courthouse. She was charged with aggravated intimidation of a witness, juror, or person furnishing information in a criminal proceeding, and was arraigned Wednesday in Plymouth District Court, where she pleaded not guilty and was released on personal recognizance. Her attorney, Jennifer White, called the episode a complete misunderstanding and said Light had only wanted to see Clancy. The judge ordered Light to stay away from the courthouse, have no contact with jurors or witnesses, and release no photographs connected to the case.

Dawn Light, the retired nurse who is facing 20 years in prison for allegedly intimidating Clancy jurors, giggles when asked how she feels now that she's a celebrity.

Reporter: How do you feel that you're a celebrity now?

Light: *Giggles*

Zero remorse.pic.twitter.com/vdnvrQvO0R

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 2, 2026

Prosecutors said troopers were told someone may have been filming jurors in the courthouse parking lot. They found Light in a car parked in a restricted area and asked whether she was photographing anyone. "She was adamant she was not," Assistant District Attorney Nicole Piacentini said, according to NBC Boston. "She stated she was waiting to see if Lindsay Clancy would come out of the building." An initial search of Light's phone turned up nothing, investigators said, but the deleted folder held images of people later confirmed to be jurors, taken from her vantage point in the car.

Light told CT Insider she had been trying to record Clancy and lowered her phone when she realized the person on camera was not the defendant. She said a court employee asked for her license and phone; she handed over the license and refused the phone, and troopers were called. "That's the long and the short of it," she said. "I don't know how I intimidated anyone."

BREAKING: The woman accused of filming jurors in the Lindsay Clancy trial is in serious legal trouble.

Prosecutors say 56-year-old Dawn Light filmed jurors outside the courthouse and entered a restricted area despite a court order prohibiting jurors from being photographed or… pic.twitter.com/Pz0yx2sQ22

— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 2, 2026

Light is a retired nurse with no prior criminal history. Before deliberations resumed Wednesday, Sullivan questioned each juror individually at sidebar about whether they had seen or heard anything that would affect their ability to decide the case fairly.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 05:44

UK Government To Fund School Forcing Seven-Year-Olds Into Hijabs

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

A Labour-run London council has put an Islamic primary school that makes girls as young as seven wear the hijab onto the public payroll.

From 1 September, Barnet Hill Academy in West Hendon stops being a fee-paying independent and becomes a voluntary-aided school - almost entirely funded by the taxpayer, legally free to pick every pupil and every teacher by religion, and still listing a white hijab as compulsory from Year 3.

Barnet Council called the uniform "legally compliant" and the school's policies representative of "equality of opportunity." The National Secular Society called it appalling.

An independent Islamic faith school that requires girls as young as seven to wear hijabs is to become state-funded.@rakibehsan: "We have a school that is enforcing that rule – I think many people would find that to be an unacceptable state of affairs."@JuliaHB1 pic.twitter.com/FJyKzaTDeu

— Talk (@TalkTV) September 1, 2026

Barnet Hill Academy has operated as an independent Islamic day school since 2006, but until this week families paid more than £6,500 a year. Those fees will now vanish, as the Dedicated Schools Grant takes over.

Voluntary-aided status is the mechanism. The local authority maintains the school and pays the bills. The governing body keeps the religious character, employs the staff and sets the admissions rules. Faith designation lets a VA school give priority to 100 per cent of places on religious grounds and appoint teachers by faith.

The school's own uniform page is blunt. For girls in Years 3 and 4 a white hijab sits in the same list as the branded pinafore, black shoes and book bag. In Years 5 and 6 the hijab remains, with a jilbab or ankle-length skirt as the alternative lower garment.

Notes on the page state that full uniform is compulsory and the hijab must be "plain white ONLY." Year 3 in English primary schools is seven years old.

Stephen Evans, chief executive of the National Secular Society, wrote to John Anthony, the council's executive director of children's services, stating "It is appalling that taxpayers are being asked to fund a school that forces girls as young as seven to wear the hijab. Women should be free to choose religious dress; young girls should not have it imposed upon them."

"It's appalling that taxpayers are being asked to fund a school that forces girls as young as seven to wear the hijab."

I'm quoted here for @NatSecSoc about plans to bring an Islamic faith school into the state sector:https://t.co/eSWqYwcm5l

— Stephen Evans (@Stephenmevans1) September 1, 2026

He added: "State-funded schools should bring children together, not divide them by faith and, by extension, ethnicity. The council must pause the implementation of this decision and subject this proposal to proper public and democratic scrutiny."

In the same letter he said the society was "deeply concerned both by the substance of this decision and by the procedure through which it was reached."

Barnet's reply is the standard diversity script. A spokesman said the borough prided itself on "the diverse nature of our school landscape" and that the uniform policy was legally compliant. The written judgment claimed there was "a very limited level" of state-funded Islamic primary provision across London, "unevenly spread and primarily concentrated outside of Barnet."

It added that the school's "inclusive policies" support the "elimination of discrimination" and the "advancement of equality of opportunity."

There are already 15 voluntary-aided Church of England schools in the borough. Barnet Hill will be the first VA Muslim school. The 2021 Census counted 47,700 Muslim residents in Barnet - just over 12 per cent.

The council's argument is that Islam was "not represented within the state-funded education sector" and that "Muslim families do not have the same opportunity as those of other faiths to access a school aligned with their religious ethos."

Evans responded that the NSS "failed to understand how a school very likely to be made up entirely of pupils from one religious background and which discriminates against pupils who don't share its faith can be considered 'inclusive'."

Campaigners have said for years that making primary-age girls cover their hair treats childhood as a prelude to sexual availability. The hijab, in the conservative reading the school is enforcing, marks modesty before men. Imposing it at seven is not a fashion choice. It is a theological statement paid for by people who never signed up to that theology.

Some concerning news.

Labour will provide funding to a school that forces seven-year-old girls to wear hijabs...

Why are we now imposing religious garb on children?

This is coercive, cult?like and a breach of parental guidance!

Britain is losing its Christian roots by... pic.twitter.com/7gVYt7hY4h

— Sedd (@SeddSezz) September 1, 2026

This is happening all over. The emancipation of migrant women that comes with better education is no longer happening. Increasingly, girls are being corralled into "faith" schools where religious education is prioritised over academic rigour.

These girls will not be expected to... pic.twitter.com/UPdUugzgSO

— Richard North (@ollieparrot) August 31, 2026

There are Muslim faith schools in other parts of the country, such as Bradford, which are already state funded.

Theoretically open to all faiths, they are the exclusive domain of the Muslims as the dress code for girls included not only hijab but also the abaya (the full length... https://t.co/XLzInYGCv5

— Richard North (@ollieparrot) September 1, 2026

NSS research in 2017 found the hijab compulsory in eight state-funded Islamic schools in England, three of them primaries. The Telegraph reported that a handful of state-funded schools still run the same rule in 2026.

Barnet is not a one-off experiment. It is the latest conversion of a private religious enclosure into a public one, with the dress code intact and the admissions sieve intact.

The classroom numbers around that enclosure have already flipped. A Telegraph analysis of the school census found White British children are now the minority in one in four schools in England. In 72 schools the census recorded no White British pupils at all.

In 454 they were under 2 per cent. In every London borough except Bromley, White British children are a minority; in Newham the figure was 5 per cent, in Harrow 7 per cent.

The same paper has shown White British pupils down to 46 per cent of grammar-school rolls and White students in the minority at 27 universities.

Minorities in their own country.

But remember: it's not happening. pic.twitter.com/ZjY1mtlVMt

— iamyesyouareno (@iamyesyouareno) September 1, 2026

That is the country into which Barnet has just poured a faith-selective, hijab-compulsory primary and told the rest of the borough to call it inclusion.

Meanwhile, in yet another example of the parallel society of the UK now, Cardiff Council has spent more than £2 million of council-tax money over recent years translating and interpreting for people who do not speak English.

Council spends over £2m in taxpayer cash to translate materials for people who cannot speak Englishhttps://t.co/SxUam54Drn

— GB News (@GBNEWS) September 1, 2026

The five-year bill published by GB News came to £2,047,975: £1.14 million on pre-booked interpretation, £506,000 on instant interpretation, £396,000 on document translation, across more than 60 languages. Arabic alone accounted for £314,446.

The 2025/26 year logged 13,000 instances of support. A council spokesman said Cardiff is "a proudly diverse, multicultural and multilingual city" and that translations help residents "access essential council services."

Conservative councillor Calum Davies asked why a city "running out of money under Labour" was "frittering away millions on translation and interpretation, indulging a broken immigration system and failing integration policy." William Yarwood of the TaxPayers' Alliance said ratepayers face record bills "yet councils continue to subsidise foreign families that don't bother to learn the language."

The same state that will not require English will require a seven-year-old girl to cover her hair if she wants a desk in the new VA school. The same state that lectures the native majority about cohesion builds the institutions that make cohesion optional.

The pattern extends to other areas of society. In July the Home Office was shown to have handed Skilled Worker sponsorship powers to Islamic bookshops stocking Sayyid Qutb's Milestones - the text that argues for toppling secular governments by "physical power and jihad" - alongside works flagged for antisemitism and Bilal Philips's The Fundamentals of Tawheed, which UK prison inspectors ordered out of jails in 2016 over wife-beating guidance.

Reform UK's Lee Anderson called it "a perfect illustration of 14 years of Tory failure: rather than doctors and engineers, we brought in staff for Islamic shops selling books on jihad."

In March, Labour-run councils in Leeds, Calderdale, Oldham, Wakefield, Sefton and Tameside circulated "Sharing the Journey" guidance warning schools that children's drawings of human figures or prophets "could be blasphemous" under some Islamic interpretations.

Music, dance, drama and mixed PE were listed as potential flashpoints. The text told staff it was "very important that the school understands this and is also careful not to ask its students to reproduce images of Jesus, the Prophet Mohammed or other figures considered to be prophets in Islam."

The same week Whitehall urged schools to monitor and report "anti-Muslim hostility" under a new non-statutory definition. Communities Secretary Steve Reed said the definition gave "a clear explanation of unacceptable prejudice, discrimination and hatred targeting Muslims, so we can take action to stop it."

Critics including Jonathan Hall KC and the Free Speech Union warned it would chill legitimate criticism of Islamism. An "anti-Muslim hostility tsar" was promised for schools and universities.

The leaked social-cohesion draft that sat behind that drive branded the Union Flag and the St George's Cross as potential "tools of hate" the "extreme right" had tried to turn from "symbols of pride." Reform's Richard Tice called the paper "divisive nonsense that should be consigned to the bin."

By late August the two-tier was no longer a draft. Birmingham City Council sought a High Court injunction against "unauthorised" England and Union flags on lampposts, with breach carrying unlimited fines and up to two years in prison.

Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Palestine flags were confirmed as exempt. Palestinian flags had flown for months after 7 October 2023 without an injunction. Raise the Colours co-founder Ryan Bridge said he would carry on: "If I go to jail for it, so be it." Robert Jenrick called it "blatant two-tier bias against the British people."

The state will now bankroll a school that sorts children by mosque attendance and covers girls at seven. It will translate council forms into sixty languages so nobody has to learn English. It will license bookshops that sell jihad primers to sponsor visas. It will tell teachers a child's drawing might be a blasphemy incident. It will build a snitch channel for "anti-Muslim hostility." And it will treat the national flag as a hate exhibit and leave foreign flags on the lampposts.

If this isn't evidence of a completely hostile cultural takeover, then what on earth is?

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 05:00

EU's Kallas Says No Progress On Zelensky's Cash Infusion For Patriot Missiles

On Wednesday EU leadership revealed that the Zelensky government has formally asked the European Commission to provide several billion euros from the EU’s €90 billion ($105 billion) support loan to purchase US-made Patriot air defense missiles.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced just ahead of a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, "It is worth several billion euros and would cover Ukraine’s air defense needs, including high-end PAC-3 air defense systems."

via EU Council

At the same time, the EU’s top foreign affairs official, Kaja Kallas, is coming off a meeting of the bloc's defense ministers wherein she cited no progress made on the Patriot funding plan.

"There were calls and talks about these missiles but there was, unfortunately, no concrete success today regarding this," the EU top diplomat had spelled out Tuesday. "Patriot missiles about to expire [by Nato standards] should be sent to Ukraine."

Looking back further, the last time that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was in the White House, he pleaded with President Trump for a "winter package" of 300 Patriot missiles. 

Zelensky has long been warning that cities remain largely unprotected against Russia's more advanced ballistic missile arsenal - a problem that only mass supplies of Patriots can remedy.

Ukraine's supply have run dry, with batteries sitting in some locations, unable to be fired.

In mid-August, here's what a CNN team observed on the ground in Ukraine:

CNN was the first media outlet to be given access to a Patriot on Ukrainian territory so Ukrainian officials could reveal one fact: the country has pretty much run out of interceptors. CNN agreed not to reveal details of the Patriot model or its location.

The 16 tubes of the system that CNN saw show signs of regular use, but its chief engineer in Ukraine, who gave only his first name Dmytro for security reasons, said he had not seen a Patriot launcher fire for six weeks. Ukraine has been reluctant to specify exactly how many interceptors, if any, it has left – President Volodymyr Zelensky says the country needs 5% of the US stockpile to survive the winter, but currently only has 1%.

There have notoriously been immense backlogs when it comes to Patriot production, and there's said to be great global demand among US allies, especially given depletions which have come as a result of the Iran war.

Taking it back? Trump earlier talked about giving Ukraine a license to make Patriot systems...

Trump on Ukraine and Patriots:

We have the greatest weapons in the world, and we have to be careful about giving out secrets to the weapons. You can't copy them.

It is like NVIDIA—they have a chip. They say you cannot copy it. pic.twitter.com/BLdJxzqOu2

— Clash Report (@clashreport) July 31, 2026

Trump had announced in July that Washington would give Ukraine "the right to make Patriots" - after Zelensky had for at least six months been relentless in requesting this, framing it as urgent and for the protection of cities and civilians. But such local production would take years to tool and set up, with the reality of a nightly air war making the prospect daunting.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 04:15

COVID-19: The Great Forgetting

Authored by John MacLeod via The Critic,

We have repressed the memories of the pandemic that changed all of our lives...

It is a little drawer in a cabinet by my bedside and I have not opened it in years. I have to steel myself to open it now. And, yes, they are all there yet in every variety - black, chequered, colourful.

The ear-looped face-coverings behind which I spluttered for two long years, tugging on and off as needs be, as we queued obediently outside supermarkets, danced on and off pavements, or chilled if anyone in the vicinity so much as coughed.

Obediently protecting the NHS by, um, not using it. And, for weeks on end in 2020, biddably stood outside our front gates to hail its endeavours each Thursday evening, clapping our hands and banging saucepans.

The initial weeks of panic, when hand-sanitiser, soap and masks were nowhere to be had. An inexplicable run on toilet-rolls. The later, weird scarcities: flour, yeast, eggs.

On all sides the shuttered shops and restaurants, many of which would never reopen. The funerals you could not go to and the weddings that never happened. Untold rings, accordingly, engraved with the wrong date.

I have the sort of bardic, Highland memory that could immediately tell you something interesting that happened in my life in, say, August 1976 or September 2002. I'd struggle to detail much between March 2020 and April 2022.

Those were months without form, and void. Without the usual milestones of big social occasions and family celebration. In hindsight, they have a nightmarish hue.

I was trapped in Edinburgh shielding two elderly parents, one living with cancer. I lurched out on my lonesome for daily needs and the weekly Big Shop, three debit-cards in my wallet.

In the early weeks - I was fifty-four; had a bit of a tummy - I was wholly resigned to catching Covid; darkly confident I would die. Time and again I washed my hands, till they were raw; sometimes I was tempted to wash the groceries - and I know of households where husbands, returning from such an outing, had to strip in the porch before being granted admittance.

Nicola Sturgeon? Gaw, that woman never seemed to be off the box. Nightly my mother tuned in for her latest and-furthermore-I-say-unto-ye lecturettes, screened live on telly by our reverent broadcasters and without the First Minister's political rivals granted any part whatsoever.

In a particularly North Korean moment, STV even broadcast online sickly footage of assorted Scottish children mewling, "Thank you, Nicola, for keeping us all safe," and variants thereof. (It was belatedly pulled, after an outcry.)

I still remember the worst moment. A Saturday evening in October 2020. It had rained all day. Our brief re-opening had ceased after a sustained uptick in infections: the First Minister (who, weeks earlier, had been braying to all Europe how Scotland had eliminated coronavirus) had announced a "16-day re-set" with renewed restrictions.

So successful was the16-day re-set it lasted till the spring of 2022. That October evening - I could not return to my own home; I was totally trapped; my parents had been in particularly foul temper that day - I stood at the kitchen sink and wept.

Weeks later, it was announced that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine had been successfully trialled. Great-grandparents were enjoying their first armfuls by Christmas.

I had my own in March 2021 - for which I had to motor home, at last, to my Hebridean lair, by sleepy streets and through a deserted countryside, past fraying posters for 2020 Highland Games and agricultural shows that had never taken place.

I never caught coronavirus. Nor did my parents, nor either of my brothers. Even in my widest social circle, I only know of four people who died - all of them infected in hospital or care-home settings, and who may well have died with it rather than of it. In a national emergency that bore most brutally on schoolchildren and young adults, the average age of Covid mortality was eighty-two.

The abiding sense that Britain had a particularly awful pandemic under a particularly useless Government is not fair. We were among the first countries to have a reliable test for Covid-19. Humiliated the EU with our rapid development, testing and rollout of an effective vaccine.

Our world-leading research early identified useful treatments. (One, Remdesivir, in October 2020 might well have saved President Trump's life.)

In terms of excess deaths, we fared better than Italy, Spain, Greece, the United States and indeed most of central and eastern Europe. Five European nations did worse than us: eight better.

Britain had three vulnerabilities: considerable population density, especially in England; a high BAME population, many in cultures of extended family in crowded homes; and, in London Heathrow, the world's busiest international airport.

Yet appalling British mistakes were made and Sweden, which refused to lock down, had the lowest excess deaths of all.

Haplessly, back in 2011 and when detailed plans were laid, we had prepared for the wrong pandemic - influenza.

You might think flu and Covid much of a muchness. There are key differences. Flu has a briefer incubation period. It is potentially dangerous to children and in a bad year - our last was 2018 - can carry off over 30,000 people. (In 2020, seven British children of nine or younger died of flu: only three succumbed to Covid-19.)

Bluntly, more children, trapped out of sight in awful family situations, were 'murdered' as a consequence of coronavirus than would die of it.

There had been two fundamental mistakes.

One was that we were rather slow to grasp that many with Covid had no symptoms - after we had blithely decanted thousands of elderly hospital patients into eventide homes.

The other was the belief, in the early months, that Covid-19 was primarily spread by "fomites". Things you touched that infected people had touched.

That's certainly true of maladies like norovirus - the winter vomiting bug - but, in fact, coronavirus is essentially an airborne respiratory infection.

We would have been far better throwing our windows open and did have one great stroke of luck: the spring and summer of 2020 were exceptionally fine.

It took me time, after it was all over, to unlearn some habits, like raising my left hand in me-Tarzan-you-Jane greeting as I was being served in shops - the mask denied staff the dazzle of my disarming smile - or daring to press buttons on cash-machines and at pedestrian-crossings with a naked finger, rather than using the "Covid key" that long dangled from my belt.

Yet by the late summer of 2022, even as normality resumed, the public clamoured for vengeance and the most convenient scapegoat was Boris Johnson

Toppled hastily from power not on account of Covid misjudgements, but revelations as to how life in No 10 - at the height of the pandemic - had become something of a wine-fuelled Lower Sixth disco.

A far more extraordinary aspect of Covid-19 is how comprehensively it has been forgotten.

Most great affairs of moment are immortalised in our culture, and often for many years. Our broadcasters were still making Second World War dramas in the Eighties. John F Kennedy's presidency and murder yet shift books and films. The 1936 Abdication crisis remains a lucrative cottage-industry for authors and screenwriters.

But there are no coronavirus movies. There may be no poems and novels - in stark contrast to the Aids pandemic, wherein more young Americans died than had fallen in Vietnam, and whose notable British casualties alone included everyone from Derek Jarman, to Freddie Mercury, to Bruce Chatwin.

There was much related fiction, drama and cinema, and as recently as 2021 we had Russell T Davies's powerful Channel 4 drama, It's A Sin.

But Aids - and this is in no way to belittle its victims, or those who loved them - tended to endanger a specific demographic. It was precisely because Covid-19 terrified the bejapers out of all of us that it has been collectively repressed as a memory.

Incredibly, given the huge decisions made around it and how these blew up our economy, the pandemic, its handling and those decisions were not even points for discussion at the 2024 general election.

There is an evident reluctance, too, in high places to discuss Covid-19's origins - likely, far more sinister than some random in Wuhan nipping out for bat and chips.

And there is, in fact, a precedent for this strange amnesia.

The so-called Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19, all the worse because it coincided with the last vital months of the Great War and the vast transport of American troops, killed - globally - some thirty million people.

At a conservative estimate, at least 550,000 Americans - 195,000 of them in just thirty-one days. In October 1918 11,000 perished in Philadelphia. The city ran out of coffins: at night, corpses were collected from porches by horse and cart, in scenes straight out of the Black Death.

In my late father's native district on the isle of Lewis, forty people died in just five weeks, with four or five funerals every day. In a village further south, that November, my maternal grandfather lost a beloved sister to "influenzial pneumonia".

That influenza - first noted in Kansas, brought to Europe by sniffling American doughboys and mutating to new horror amidst the filth and decay of the Western Front - was of special dread because it could kill with extraordinary speed and, rather than the very young or the very old, most who died were in their twenties - husky youths and bonny lasses, in the very prime of life.

"If the epidemic continues its mathematical rate of acceleration," physician Victor Vaughan chilled that dreadful autumn, "civilisation could easily disappear from the face of the Earth."

It did not, of course. By 1919 it was already in retreat and by March 1920 had burned itself out: like pandemics everywhere, it simply ran out of people to infect.

But there is no Spanish flu fiction. There was no subsequent cinema. It is remembered within families - earlier this summer, my 94 year-old uncle spoke sorrowfully of that aunt he had never known - but, collectively, and as a society, we wiped that tape.

"It is in the individual memory of a great many of us," author Alfred W Crosby mused in 1998, "but it is not in the collective memory. That for me is the greatest mystery, how we could have forgotten anything so horrendous - so massively horrendous, which killed so many of us.

"Why was our reaction to forget it? So awful, so frightening, people just got rid of the memory. But it always lingers there, as a kind of uneasiness."

Like those masks in my drawer - clung to, still, just in case...

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 03:30

Spain & Greece Have The Best Pension/Salary Replacement Rate In The World

How much of your paycheck would a pension replace in retirement?

Depending on the country, the answer ranges from more than 80% to less than 20%.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld, ranks countries by their projected gross pension replacement rate, based on data from the OECD. The rate compares pension benefits with pre-retirement earnings, with both measured before taxes and contributions.

Estimates are for an average earner entering the workforce at age 22 in 2024 and include mandatory public and private pensions, but exclude voluntary private retirement savings.

Spain Leads the Ranking

Southern European countries dominate the top of the ranking, with Spain, Greece, Portugal, and Italy all placing in the top 10. Spain and Greece stand out at 80.4% and 79.6%, respectively.

Rank Country Pension Replacement Rate 1 🇪🇸 Spain 80.4% 2 🇬🇷 Greece 79.6% 3 🇱🇺 Luxembourg 75.6% 4 🇨🇴 Colombia 74.8% 5 🇳🇱 Netherlands 74.7% 6 🇦🇹 Austria 74.1% 7 🇩🇰 Denmark 72.7% 8 🇵🇹 Portugal 72.4% 9 🇮🇹 Italy 70.6% 10 🇲🇽 Mexico 69.6% 11 🇹🇷 Türkiye 69.1% 12 🇨🇷 Costa Rica 65.7% 13 🇸🇪 Sweden 63.7% 14 🇸🇰 Slovakia 58.0% 15 🇫🇮 Finland 57.8% 16 🇫🇷 France 56.6% 17 🇭🇺 Hungary 51.9% 18 🇨🇱 Chile 49.7% 19 🇳🇴 Norway 46.1% 20 🇸🇮 Slovenia 45.9% 21 🇬🇧 UK 44.7% 22 🇨🇿 Czechia 44.2% 23 🇮🇸 Iceland 43.9% 24 🇧🇪 Belgium 43.5% 25 🇮🇱 Israel 42.8% 26 🇨🇭 Switzerland 42.4% 27 🇩🇪 Germany 42.1% 28 🇦🇺 Australia 40.8% 29 🇺🇸 U.S. 39.7% 30 🇳🇿 New Zealand 39.5% 31 🇱🇻 Latvia 38.7% 32 🇨🇦 Canada 37.1% 33 🇯🇵 Japan 36.5% 34 🇰🇷 S. Korea 33.4% 35 🇪🇪 Estonia 29.3% 36 🇵🇱 Poland 28.6% 37 🇮🇪 Ireland 24.3% 38 🇱🇹 Lithuania 17.4% -- 🌐 OECD Average 52.0%

National prosperity is not a reliable predictor of pension replacement rates. Mexico and Türkiye are both near 70%, while Germany stands at 42.1% and the U.S. at 39.7%, reflecting substantial differences in how national retirement systems are structured.

At the bottom, Lithuania's replacement rate is just 17.4%, less than one-quarter of Spain's 80.4%. South Korea and Japan also rank relatively low, at 33.4% and 36.5%, respectively.

Where Low Pensions Meet High Senior Poverty

A low replacement rate does not automatically mean high senior poverty, but several countries near the bottom of the pension ranking also have elevated old-age poverty rates. In Lithuania, more than 20% of people aged 65 and older live in relative income poverty.

The pattern extends across the Baltics. Old-age poverty exceeds 30% in Estonia and Latvia, compared with an OECD average of 14.8%. In the U.S., the rate is also relatively high at 22.9%.

At the other extreme, the Netherlands combines a 74.7% replacement rate with an old-age poverty rate of just 4.6%. Denmark, Finland, and Norway also have poverty rates at or below 5%.

Replacement rates are only one part of retirement security, but these comparisons show how differently pension systems replace workers' earnings across the OECD.

To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic on the annual cost of retirement by state.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 02:45

'Horrible Violence': Quiet Dutch Village Turns Into A Battlefield

Authored by - Remix News Staff - via Remix News,

A suspected underworld revenge attack linked to fugitive drug trafficker Jos Leijdekkers, known as "Bolle Jos," left a security guard dead and two police officers wounded in the quiet Dutch village of Overasselt in the early hours of Sept. 1, 2026.

Surveillance cameras captured vans full of masked men carrying assault rifles during the attack, which is raising fears that Netherlands is devolving into a narco-state.

🇳🇱🔴 JUST IN: Shocking footage shows 1 security guard murdered and 2 police officers wounded in the Netherlands.

Dozens of armed drug gang members opened fire in the small Dutch town of Overasselt.

Footage shows multiple vans filled with masked men armed with assault rifles.... pic.twitter.com/ShudqYyHFg

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) September 2, 2026

Around 4:00 a.m., two vans pulled up and a large group approached a farmhouse previously tied to a drug lab. The surveillance footage shows the group approaching a parked car with its interior light on. Five shots were then fired, according to the Dutch police report on the incident.

A 51-year-old man from nearby Wijchen, hired as a security guard after an earlier attack on the property, was murdered. Neighbors reported hearing dozens of shots, with one neighbor telling Dutch media he heard 37 shots before police arrived.

The first officers responding to a report of a suspicious situation came under immediate fire. Colleagues dragged the wounded officers to safety while still being shot at. One officer initially suffered life-threatening injuries; both were later reported out of danger.

Police launched a nationwide manhunt involving helicopters, dogs, special intervention units, and roadblocks on the A73 and A76. Warning shots were fired during searches of cornfields, gardens, and other sites. The operation led to the arrest of 34 suspects at multiple locations, including a cornfield near the scene, Nijmegen train station, and highways in Limburg. The suspects included Dutch, Belgian, French, and Algerian nationals. Weapons, vehicles, and data carriers were seized. A large-scale investigation team (TGO) has now been formed, with all detainees remaining in custody.

The incredible violence has sparked reactions all the way from local police officials to the country's justice minister.

Deputy Police Chief of the East Netherlands unit Jolanda Aalbers described the night as "indescribable."

"For colleagues this is a truly intense incident. Colleagues were wounded and they were brought to safety by other colleagues at risk to their own lives. It was a real act of heroism. We are grateful that the wounded colleagues are out of life-threatening condition."

Justice Minister David van Weel condemned "horrible violence" and said "we do not tolerate this," according to Dutch news outlet NOS. He also described the scale of the violence as "unprecedented" for the Netherlands. "The fact that you have hordes of dozens of young people walking through the streets of a village and immediately opening fire on the police is unprecedented and new," he said. He spoke of a suspected criminal settling of accounts involving international drug cartels that operate across borders.

Deputy Chief Prosecutor Monique Vinkesteijn called it a "long-running conflict." She said that suspects face charges including murder or manslaughter, attempted murder, conspiracy, and preparation of a kidnapping. She described ten different crime scenes, underlining the sprawling and complex nature of the crime. She said investigators were working to link each suspect to specific locations.

Mayor Joerie Minses of Heumen municipality, which includes Overasselt, called the violence "un-Dutch," "completely unacceptable," and something that "goes beyond all bounds."

"What happened last night does not fit Overasselt," he stated.

He now says he may want to close the farmhouse entirely, which has a documented history of trouble.

In 2019, a professional drug lab was found in shipping containers near the farmhouse after a fire. In 2024, armed men were found at the gate of the house.

In July 2025, an attacker fired at least 25 rounds from an AK-47-style rifle at the house, resulting in the conviction of a 21-year-old from Amsterdam. Residents then hired private security.

What sparked the latest attack?

There are now questions about what prompted such a large-scale attack from the drug gangs. Dutch media, citing police sources, linked the attack to a dispute over an 812-kilogram cocaine shipment seized on Aug. 29 at the French-Spanish border. The drugs were in a Dutch-registered truck traveling from Africa via Portugal.

The masked gang members may have been seeking a missing portion of the load or confronting an intermediary connected to Leijdekkers' network. Leijdekkers, one of the Netherlands' most-wanted fugitives, has been convicted in both the Netherlands and Belgium, including a 14-year sentence in the Belgian Costa case involving Antwerp port cocaine trafficking. He faces decades in prison for other crimes as well. He is believed to be in West Africa. Police have not officially confirmed the Leijdekkers link.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 02:00

The Two Lineages Of Liberty

Authored by Philippe Lemieux via Mises Institute,

Liberty's history is often presented as a direct consequence of the Enlightenment: inherited authority was subjected to reason, persecution gave way to toleration, monarchy to constitutional government, and privilege to individual rights. In this account, classical liberalism leads naturally to Austrian economics and modern libertarianism. That sequence is useful but incomplete.

Liberty developed through the convergence of two lineages. The first is the modern lineage of Enlightenment criticism, which required political power to justify itself before reason. The second is an older realist tradition, running from Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas through the School of Salamanca, Richard Cantillon, Carl Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Ludwig von Mises, and Murray Rothbard. These thinkers did not form a single school, nor did they agree on every question. What connects them is a shared orientation: reality has an intelligible order, human action has a structure, and political power cannot be abolished either by command.

The relevant difference is not between the Enlightenment as a whole and an older tradition, nor between reason and faith. Important currents within the Enlightenment, especially the Scottish Enlightenment, recognized that custom, law, money, and markets could arise without deliberate design. The deeper conflict is between a constructivist current within modern thought and an older causal-realist approach to social order. Friedrich Hayek identified the pinnacle of this constructivism as the "fatal conceit," the erroneous belief that man is able to shape the world around him according to his wishes. The realist tradition emphasizes the intelligibility and causal structure of social phenomena, while the constructivist tendency places greater confidence in deliberate organization and direction.

The danger appeared when criticism of inherited institutions hardened into confidence in consciously-designed ones. Locke was not Marx, and constitutional government was not socialism. The continuity lies in method: once social order is treated primarily as an artifact of design, political disagreement increasingly turns on the identity of the designer, the objective of the plan, and the permitted range of control. This tendency appears in social planning, price controls, central banking, licensing, regulation, and the administrative management of economic life.

The older lineage begins from a different premise. Aristotle started with beings as they are and the ends toward which they tend. Human beings choose, deliberate, employ means, form households, exchange goods, and enter associations. Thomas Aquinas carried this realism into law and politics. A command does not become just simply because a ruler issues it. Human law derives its normative order from principles that political authority does not itself create.

Many late Scholastics, particularly the Spanish Scholastics associated with Salamanca, extended this framework to property, exchange, money, and political authority. They increasingly identified the just price with common estimation, shaped by utility, scarcity, and market conditions, rather than with an objective measure of production costs. By situating economic phenomena within moral agency and commutative justice, they placed limits on the arbitrary exercise of political authority in economic life. Within this tradition, thinkers such as Juan de Mariana also articulated strong limits on taxation, confiscation, and monetary debasement.

Richard Cantillon advanced this analysis by placing entrepreneurship, uncertainty, production, and market-price formation near the center of economic life. Merchants and retailers bought at known or fixed prices and later sold at prices they could not foresee, while farmers committed themselves to fixed rents without knowing what their output would command. Profit, loss, and bankruptcy therefore arose from judgment under changing conditions of demand, competition, weather, and consumer preference.

Carl Menger marked a decisive transition within the Austrian tradition. Much of British classical economics, especially in the Ricardian tradition, explained long-run exchange value primarily through labor and production costs. Menger instead began with human needs and with the economizing individual's knowledge of, and command over, goods capable of satisfying those needs. Value was not a substance stored inside an object; it arose from the relation between an individual, his needs, and the goods available to him. Market phenomena therefore had to be traced to individual judgments, choices, and exchanges. Prices, money, and other social institutions could emerge from economizing activity even when no one intended the resulting order.

Böhm-Bawerk extended the analysis to capital and time. For him, social or productive capital consists of intermediate goods used in time-consuming processes of production before final consumer goods become available.

Mises generalized the Austrian insight through praxeology, making economics part of a broader science of human action. The starting point was not an aggregate, a class, or a governmental objective; it was the acting individual employing scarce means to attain chosen ends. Exchange, prices, profit, loss, money, capital, and production are intelligible only within this structure of purposeful conduct. Mises presented praxeology as an a priori science grounded in the category of human action, with implications that could be developed through deductive reasoning independently of particular historical experience.

The extent to which this epistemology should be understood as Kantian, however, is contested. Jörg Guido Hülsmann has argued that Mises is better understood as a representative of Aristotelian realism. Although Mises employed the language of the a priori, Hülsmann points to the method of Mises's actual economic analysis, which repeatedly seeks to identify the nature and necessary relations of economic phenomena. Hülsmann therefore places him within the broader Austrian realist tradition of Menger and Böhm-Bawerk, arguing that his affinities with Kant should not be overstated. On this reading, Mises occupies an intermediate position within the lineage developed here: his epistemological vocabulary is partly Kantian, while the substance of his economic analysis retains an important Aristotelian-realist character.

Mises's critique of socialism demonstrated the practical consequences of this method. Socialist calculation does not fail merely because officials are corrupt, uninformed, or unintelligent. It fails because abolishing private ownership in the means of production eliminates genuine exchange in capital goods. Without exchange, there are no market prices through which planners can compare competing uses of resources by means of monetary calculation.

A planning authority may collect technical information, issue targets, and assign accounting figures. Such figures, however, are not exchange ratios generated by transactions among separate owners. A statistical table can describe quantities, but it cannot determine whether steel should be used for bridges, machinery, railways, or buildings in a way that responds to consumer demand and alternative costs. The defect is not located in the personality of the planner; it is built into the institutional structure of the system.

Rothbard brought this lineage to its most systematic political conclusion. He combined Austrian value theory, capital theory, and economic calculation with a broader theory of natural law, natural rights, property, and the state. His philosophical foundation differed from Mises's. Rothbard retained the praxeological method of deduction but interpreted the action axiom from an Aristotelian-Thomistic epistemological standpoint, grounding it in the nature of reality rather than in Mises's neo-Kantian conception of the action axiom as an a priori category of thought.

Rothbard also rejected the convenient story that economics began with Adam Smith and advanced in a straight line toward modern science. In his history of economic thought, he restored the Spanish Scholastics, Cantillon, the French liberal tradition, and other neglected thinkers to a central place, arguing that their contributions had been obscured by the later dominance of British classical economics.

The administrative state shows what happens when the emancipatory language of the Enlightenment is separated from the limits imposed by human action, scarcity, property, and economic calculation. It speaks the language of rights while turning rights into permissions. It recognizes property and permits markets while reserving the power to direct their use through zoning, licensing, taxation, monetary policy, and regulation. It preserves elections while transferring decisions to agencies, central banks, and experts. The system remains liberal in vocabulary and managerial in operation. Failure is treated not as evidence of institutional limits but as proof that the machinery requires another adjustment, a new rule, a larger staff, or a wider jurisdiction.

The history of liberty, therefore, is not the story of one Enlightenment becoming more consistent, but of two converging lineages. One challenged inherited authority; the other emphasized the limits that human action, causality, property, and economic calculation impose on deliberate construction. Austrian economics stands where they meet. Social order emerges through individual action, exchange, calculation, and cooperation under conditions that no central authority can fully command.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/02/2026 - 23:25

Man Accused Of Trying To Set Portland Record Store On Fire After They Wouldn't Buy His Records

A dispute over a record sale escalated into threats and an alleged attempt to set a Portland record shop on fire, according to prosecutors.

Adrian Orange, 40, is accused of confronting the owner of Vinyl Resting Place in St. Johns on Aug. 27 after the store declined to purchase records he brought in, according to KATU ABC. Court documents say Orange threatened the owner, calling him a “dead man.”

Investigators say Orange later returned after the door had been locked, placed newspaper beneath the entrance, poured lighter fluid on it and ignited it.

A woman from a neighboring business intervened and extinguished the flames after Orange walked away. Authorities say he threatened her as well.

The KATU report says about 15 minutes later, Orange allegedly returned and kicked the store’s door while making additional threats, including, “One way or another, I’m getting to you.”

Police later located Orange outside a nearby bar. He acknowledged visiting the record shop earlier to sell records and had a lighter with him when officers found him.

Orange was arraigned on attempted arson, two burglary counts, coercion and menacing. A judge ordered him held without bail pending a preventive detention hearing.

Afterward, the store owner wrote on social media about his frustration with the broader mental health crisis, saying he felt he had exhausted his options for dealing with the problem.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/02/2026 - 23:00

Qatar And UAE Turn To Rare LNG Ship Transfers As Hormuz Crisis Drags On

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

Three LNG carriers loaded from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in the Persian Gulf have transferred their cargoes onto other vessels outside the Strait of Hormuz in the past month, a move that’s highly unusual for LNG cargoes but one that could raise the crippled LNG shipments from the region.

LNG traffic at the Strait of Hormuz nevertheless remains at a standstill, even though oil flows are estimated to have rebounded in recent weeks.

However, unlike crude oil, it’s much more difficult to shuttle-ship LNG through Hormuz and then reload it via a ship-to-ship (STS) transfer as Persian Gulf producers, including Qatar, have been doing in recent months to ship oil to customers.

The UAE and Qatar appear to have done this with three LNG cargoes in August, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing vessel-tracking data from Vortexa and Kpler.

The three LNG carriers in question include Greek-owned GasLog Shanghai, which was involved in an “incident” in the Strait of Hormuz at the end of July, and transferred its cargo onto GasLog Savannah offshore Oman outside the Strait in late August.

Qatar-owned Al Rekayyat, hit by a projectile near the Strait of Hormuz in early July, also conducted an STS transfer with Qatar-owned tanker Tembek in mid-August, according to the data compiled by Reuters.

The cargo on the Tembek was delivered to India on August 31.

ADNOC’s Mraweh LNG carrier also made an STS onto LNG Enugu outside the Strait offshore Oman in the middle of August, and is en route to deliver the cargo to Japan, according to the data.

The lack of meaningful recovery of LNG flows from the Persian Gulf and Qatar’s extended force majeure on deliveries combined with the U.S.-Iran re-escalation to hike Asia’s spot LNG prices to a five-month high and Europe’s benchmark natural gas prices to a three-and-a-half-year high this week.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/02/2026 - 22:35

Xi In Rare Egypt Visit Blasts 'External Interference' In Mideast, As Iran War Drags On

Chinese President Xi Jinping in a rare trip to the Cairo told his Egyptian counterpart on Wednesday that "external interference" in the Middle East should be opposed, Chinese state media reported.

Talks in the Egyptian capital between Xi and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi were a first in a decade. Interestingly, Xi at one point pledged Beijing was willing to help protect maritime shipping - though it's anything but clear what specifics would look like, or what bodies of water he had in mind.

via Reuters

"China stands ready to work with countries in the region to safeguard the security of international shipping lanes, advance development cooperation… and eliminate the breeding grounds for conflict," Xi said as quoted in Xinhua.

Ironically the 'offer' comes months after President Trump urged international powers to do just that, but which was met by resounding silence, even among European leaders. Naturally they don't want to get bogged down in yet another US foreign adventure, especially when there's been lack of strategy coupled with repeat contradictions along the way.

As for his remarks about non-interference, Xi clearly had in mind the still-raging US-Iran war, which has turned into a bit of a quagmire for the US, having hit the six-month mark just this week:

"We must uphold the principle that the people of the Middle East are the masters of their own affairs, oppose external interference [and] support regional countries in strengthening dialogue on peace and security."

The other irony on display is that Egypt's is essentially a military government which is bought and paid for by the United States to the tune of around $2 billion or more in bilateral foreign assistance each year. This goes back to the historic peace with Israel, and the Egyptian 'deep state' has been closely cooperative with US intelligence ever since.

Along with talk of how to advance diplomacy related to the Iran war, the two sides signed a significant Suez Canal investment deal:

The talks covered the six-month US-Iran conflict, with both presidents urging "diplomatic solutions" to reach a "comprehensive agreement to end the war", according to a statement from Sisi's spokesperson.

Sisi's office also said the two BRICS members signed an agreement to launch the third phase of the Egyptian-Chinese industrial zone at the Suez Canal, which officials say already hosts 200 companies and investments worth around $4 billion.

The new investments – for which Egypt has not announced a figure – give Beijing even greater influence in the canal zone, a critical artery of global trade, as conflict in the region chokes other conduits.

Regarding the White House's Economic D-Day sanctions on Iran, Beijing last month rejected cooperation with the policy meant to strangle the Islamic Republic.

Egypt stays committed to 'One China'...

Sisi’s statements are neither a personal opinion nor a passing remark; rather, they represent the official and steadfast stance of the Egyptian state for decades.

​Egypt recognized the People’s Republic of China in 1956, voted in favor of United Nations General Assembly… https://t.co/Nsp8F2dCWv

— khaled mahmoued (@khaledmahmoued1) September 2, 2026

China has been pushing back against Trump administration pressure to be part of the "toughest sanctions in history" which has marked a new phase of conflict focused on extended economic warfare, as a military solution has proven increasingly unrealistic and unlikely.

"Regarding the Iran issue, sanctions and pressure do not help resolve the problem," Reuters quoted a representative of the Chinese Embassy in Washington as saying in late August. The White House's recent plan hinges on on external countries imposing extreme isolation on the Islamic Republic.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/02/2026 - 22:10

ICE Arrests More Than 120 Illegal Immigrants At Memphis Nightclub

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times,

Federal immigration officers arrested 121 illegal immigrants on Aug. 30 at a Memphis nightclub during a targeted multiagency enforcement action, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said.

New Orleans field office for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) led Operation Corral Light at the El Corralon nightclub, in which officers executed federal and state warrants, DHS said in a statement on Sept. 1.

The DHS said that those taken into custody included people with criminal histories involving larceny, drug possession, domestic violence, driving while intoxicated, assault, child endangerment, and prostitution.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin tied the arrests to broader efforts to fight crime in the Tennessee city.

"Thanks to President Trump's leadership, crime in the city of Memphis has plummeted. A big part of that success comes from arresting and deporting illegal aliens in the city," Mullin said.

"Through Operation Corral Light, ICE arrested more than 120 illegal aliens in a single day, including child abusers, drug traffickers, and violent assailants."

Scott Ladwig, acting field office director for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations in New Orleans, described the effort as a priority.

"This criminal enforcement operation to arrest illegal aliens and eliminate drug activity in our community is part of the highest priorities of this administration," Ladwig said.

"Our officers remain committed to enforcing the law professionally, protecting the public, and upholding the trust placed in us by the American people."

Among those arrested were Ricardo N. Rodriguez Arteaga, a Honduran national with a conviction for larceny and an arrest for commercial sex involving homosexual prostitution. Sergio Vieyra Torres, from Mexico, faced prior arrests for child endangerment and driving under the influence of liquor. Maryari Pamela Lopez Urivina, also from Honduras, had an arrest for aggravated assault. Jeronima Giron Cisneros, another Honduran, was arrested for domestic violence. Miguel Galeas Rodriguez, from Honduras, had a conviction for cocaine possession.

The operation fits into ongoing federal work in Memphis, where the Memphis Safe Task Force, established after a presidential memorandum in September 2025, has tackled the city's high violent crime rates.

FBI data for 2024 showed Memphis with the highest per-capita violent crime rate among all major U.S. cities. The task force had reached 10,000 arrests by June, with more than 1,700 illegal firearms recovered. The group's responsibilities include immigration enforcement alongside other public-safety measures.

The city had a violent crime rate roughly six times the national average in 2024.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/02/2026 - 21:45

MIT Student Claims To Make One Of The World’s Deadliest Chemicals, Sparking HAZMAT Response

A potentially dangerous laboratory incident at MIT triggered a hazmat response last week after a graduate student told medical personnel he believed he had created dimethylmercury, a highly toxic mercury compound, according to the NY Post.

The student, who has not been publicly identified, went to a local emergency room and reported the possible synthesis. That claim was serious enough to prompt MIT to close Building 18, part of its chemistry complex, while emergency crews and university officials assessed the situation.

MIT later said the student was not authorized to work with dimethylmercury and that the substance was unrelated to his approved research.

As a precaution, the university also took steps outside the laboratory. Shared spaces in the student’s residence hall were professionally cleaned, while the student’s own room was sealed during the investigation.

The NY Post writes that by Saturday, however, the situation had become less clear. MIT said new information had raised doubts about whether dimethylmercury had actually been produced. The university also said the student’s first blood test showed no evidence of mercury exposure, although the student remained under medical observation.

Testing and investigative work continued through the weekend, with Building 18 remaining closed through Sunday.

Dimethylmercury is considered an exceptionally hazardous substance because even a very small exposure can be deadly. The chemical is perhaps best known for the 1997 death of Dartmouth chemistry professor Karen Wetterhahn, who was exposed when a tiny amount reached her hand despite the gloves she was wearing.

The compound has also surfaced in at least one criminal case. It was reportedly used in the 2012 killing of a German labor union official.

MIT has not yet said definitively whether the student succeeded in making the chemical, leaving the central question of the incident unresolved even after the emergency response and cleanup.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/02/2026 - 21:20

Trump's New Foundry School Aims To Train America's Manufacturing Workers Of The Future

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times,

The Trump administration will launch Foundry School on Thursday, a national training program meant to prepare entrepreneurs, engineers, technicians, and industrial leaders for a rebuilding of U.S. manufacturing.

Vice President JD Vance is set to headline the event, according to a State Department press release. Foundry School falls under Pax Silica, the department's multilateral effort to lock down trusted supply chains for technologies expected to shape the coming decades.

Officials say President Donald Trump's reindustrialization push has already drawn trillions of dollars in investment to American soil. Foundry School's focus will be to convert that capital into actual employment.

American manufacturers will need an estimated 3.8 million skilled workers by 2033 across semiconductors, defense, energy, and related fields, according to the press release. The program is designed to put American workers first by giving them the skills to bring those jobs home and build careers in sectors tied to economic security.

The launch starts at 8:20 a.m. at the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace in Washington. Senior administration officials, university leaders, and industry executives are scheduled to speak.

Foundry School was first announced as a Pax Silica project by Under Secretary Jacob Helberg at the Pax Summit on June 25. It is structured as a workforce partnership with Stanford University, which developed the core advanced manufacturing curriculum for American students.

Keystone lectures will come from seven other universities that collaborated with Stanford. They are Arizona State University, Georgia Tech, Ohio State, Penn State, the University of Cincinnati, the University of Kansas, and Vanderbilt.

Across the eight campuses, the program will run 17 sessions. Founders and CEOs from advanced manufacturing firms will teach. Those leaders will come from the United States and from Pax Silica partner countries such as South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and India.

The sessions are meant to cover everything required to build and run a top-tier manufacturing operation. Officials describe it as a single course aimed at making sure the American workforce shares in the industrial expansion.

"The entire Trump economic agenda is about making it easier to do business in America, to create jobs in America, to hire American workers, and to build your factories here in America, not in China, or any other country," Trump said in April 2025.

Studies have shown a skills shortage in the United States. A 2024 Deloitte study estimated 3.8 million new manufacturing positions would open by 2033, with only about half likely to be filled without major training efforts.

The jobs of the future in the modern manufacturing sector are expected to include highly technical and specialized roles, such as in robotics, artificial intelligence, and 3D printing. Experts say that the young generation of workers lack the skills to perform these tasks.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/02/2026 - 20:55

Take-Two Slides Into Correction As Grand Theft Auto Leak Investigation Intensifies

Take-Two Interactive, whose Rockstar Games studio is developing Grand Theft Auto VI, was hit by a series of leaks last month ahead of the fall release. Bank of America analysts described the leaked footage as "impressive, but unlikely to surprise," while TTWO shares have tumbled into a correction since the leaks surfaced online.

The leaked clips reportedly expose plot details, character scenes, and gameplay mechanics, prompting Rockstar Games to call the leaks "gut-wrenching" and warn that some of the game's surprises may have been spoiled.

According to the Dutch news publication TorrentFreak, TTWO has intensified its search for the person who leaked GTA VI, asking a federal court to seal its latest demand for Discord user data, as the company describes its investigation as "rapidly evolving."

The new filing came Friday, one day after Rockstar Games streamed an extended GTA 6 preview on Netflix and months before the blockbuster title's planned November 19 release.

In mid-August, an account named "Cyberleek" began circulating the leaks. TTWO responded with takedown notices and a series of Digital Millennium Copyright Act subpoenas targeting Discord, Microsoft, X, and YouTube.

Unlike a conventional lawsuit, a DMCA subpoena allows a copyright holder to seek identifying information from an online platform before suing the alleged infringer.

In the new subpoena, filed Friday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, TTWO said its "investigation of the infringement at issue is rapidly evolving and ongoing," adding, "Take-Two has identified one additional Discord user and obtained additional identifying information for a previously identified Discord user, as well as additional information concerning the community servers identified in its prior subpoena for which it now seeks more targeted information."

On Monday, the SDNY granted the subpoena request. Last month, Take-Two requested four subpoenas seeking information from Discord, Microsoft, Google, and X as the GTA VI leaks went viral on social media.

TorrentFreak pointed out that TTWO withdrew its YouTube request after facing pushback from a judge.

US technology publication PCMag reported that the leaker, CyberLeek, "has gone silent after posting what appears to be the prologue to GTA 6."

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/02/2026 - 20:30