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Kennedy Center Votes To Put Trump's Name On Building, Close For Renovations Authored by Jackson Richman via The Epoch Times, The John F. Kennedy Center's board voted on Aug. 13 to close the venue for renovations and place President Donald Trump's name on the building. “In its meeting today, the board voted to change the front of the ​building's facade to read 'The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated ⁠By President Donald J. Trump,' and renamed the physical site 'the President Donald J. Trump Plaza,'” said Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), an ex ​officio member on the iconic performing arts center's board. The final decision, however, will be up to U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper. While the board voted to close the main building for renovations, the REACH, a separate building on the campus, will stay open for limited programming. It is unclear how long the renovations will take. The Epoch Times has reached out to the Kennedy Cen...

US Lost 25% Of Its Reaper Drones In Iran War, Officials Estimate Amid a recent avalanche of media headlines warning of significantly depleted US weapons stockpiles, The Washington Post is out with another fresh report Thursday which sounds the alarm, this time over advanced drones. The US military lost at least 45 MQ-9 Reaper drones during the Iran war, American defense officials were quoted as saying. The same officials estimate that this constitutes roughly 25% of the Pentagon's fleet. 2024 image of American MQ-9 Reaper UAV brought down in Yemen's Marib. ClashReport/X If these were the type of small, cheap drones which have been prevalent in the Russia-Ukraine war, no one would see this as much of a problem, but Reapers are highly advanced surveillance systems and also hunter-killer aircraft, capable of flying for 27+ hours straight, and with some variants able to push past 40 hours.  Made by General Atomics, each drone costs between $30 million to $50 million. With 45 drones wiped out...

Forget CDOs, Meet CCOs: This Isn't A Tech Cycle... It's 2008 With Silicon In July, the appropriately-named 'Groundbreaker' website laid out a structural diagnosis that most of the market still refuses to confront: the AI boom is not a technology cycle. It is a credit-driven real-estate-like cycle whose financing architecture depends on the second derivative. Levels (backlogs, gigawatts, revenue, token usage) and the first derivative (growth rates) remain the only numbers anyone watches. The second derivative - the acceleration of that growth - is where regime change actually lives. Structures built on the assumption of perpetual acceleration do not require a collapse in demand or a decline in absolute spending to break. They break when growth merely stops accelerating. That is the 2008 mechanic, not the 2000 one. And the collateral of this particular cycle is not houses. It is compute. Six weeks later, Nvidia has made the thesis explicit. With the $1.8 trillion off-balance-sheet time-b...

"A Big Win Today": Trump Cheers As Trade Court Upholds Shutdown Of $800 De Minimis Duty Exemption Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times, The U.S. Court of International Trade on Aug. 13 upheld the Trump administration's authority to end the de minimis exemption that allowed Americans to avoid paying duty on packages worth $800 or less. The court held in a new order that President Donald Trump had legal authority to close the exemption, which he previously said was a legal loophole that benefited foreign vendors and criminals. A company had sued over the administration's policy, claiming the president didn't have the power to end the exemption. The policy change, which took effect on Aug. 29, 2025, meant that all global parcel imports going forward would be subject to standard U.S. customs duties regardless of value or origin. Gifts worth less than $100 sent by individuals remained exempt. Congress eliminated the de minimis exemption in an omnibus tax-and-spending bill in 2...

'I Shot Brian Thompson': Luigi Mangione Pleads Guilty To Federal Charges In UnitedHealthcare CEO Killing Luigi Mangione, the 28-year-old accused of assassinating UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court on Friday to the federal charges against him - admitting that he went to New York with the intent to kill Thompson. Luigi Mangione attends a pre-trial appearance at Manhattan Criminal Court on August 11, 2026 in New York City. David Dee Delgado/Pool/Getty Images The plea came during an 11 a.m. hearing before U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett, added to the calendar at the last minute this week at the joint request of prosecutors and Mangione's defense team. "I shot Brian Thompson," he told Garnett. Members of Brian Thompson's family were present in the courtroom. Outside, a crowd of Mangione supporters gathered - a fixture of his court appearances since his arrest. Abril Rios, a self-proclaimed "Mangionistas" waits for the hearin...

Russia To Intensify Attacks On Sources Of Western Support In Ukraine: Lavrov At the end of June, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in an unusual move declared the start of a 40-day intensified pressure campaign against Russia, designed to force Moscow to the negotiating table and agree on terms favorable to Ukraine to end the war. This was an effort seize on the momentum of repeat drone hits on Russian refinery and energy infrastructure - a reality Russia has suffered over many months, leading to an ongoing fuel crisis spanning dozens of cities and regions, and especially Crimea, which earlier in the summer had to temporarily halt fuel sales to common citizens for a time. In mid-June, Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov proclaimed  "Hell is beginning," for Russia and its military. "Logistics are being cut off. Crimea is being isolated," he said at the time. From there, drone attacks across the Moscow region greatly intensified. But Russia in turn responde...

"We Do Bad Things To Bad People": Hegseth Unveils New Motto For Counter Cartel Coalition Via The Libertarian Institute  Secretary of War Pete Hegseth declared that the new motto of the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition (ACCC) is "we do bad things to bad people." "The new motto of the ACCC is 'we do bad things to bad people.' That's the mentality I want to have inside this room," he said on Wednesday. "Ultimately, we're dealing with bad people that have done a lot of bad things to a lot of good people for a very long time. And they're about to meet a new sheriff in town in the ACCC." Under President Donald Trump and Hegseth, the Department of War has significantly expanded military operations in South America. The US has bombed dozens of vessels it claims are operated by cartels. Additionally, the US has attacked Venezuela and kidnapped the country's president, and Trump is threatening that Cuba is next.  The ACCC is an American-led coalition t...

Boeing Unveils Cheap Radar Seeker Built From Off-The-Shelf Parts By Michael Scanlon of Defense News Boeing revealed an ultra-low-cost radar seeker Tuesday as this year's Space and Missile Defense Symposium kicked off in Huntsville, Alabama, pitching it as a way to get missile guidance on more weapons for less money. Installed in the nose of a missile or bomb, the seeker locates the target and guides the weapon toward it. Seekers are among the most expensive parts of a guided weapon, and Boeing's argument is that their cost is what limits how many the military can buy. Boeing's Ultra Low-Cost Seeker, or ULCS, is an active seeker, meaning it emits its own radar signal rather than relying on one from an aircraft or a ground station. Boeing built it largely from commercial parts adapted for military use, and it is still in development. The company said it is looking at using the ULCS in its air and missile defense interceptors, its guided bombs and its cruise missiles, because its design allows...

Panama Canal Fees Hit Record As El Nino, Hormuz Crisis Choke Global Shipping Panama Canal transit auction prices have surged to record highs this summer as an intensifying El Niño and disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz upend global shipping routes.  A Bloomberg report Friday morning said a supertanker paid a record $4.6 million at auction to bypass the growing queue and secure an earlier transit slot next week. The spike in canal fees and vessel wait times threatens to further raise freight costs, reinforcing growing concerns about inflationary pressures across global supply chains. Daily auctions for August passage through the canal's busiest locks have averaged about $1.1 million, more than 16 times the average during the same period last year, according to the Financial Times, citing Argus Media. Recent auctions for the larger locks averaged a record $2.5 million.  Bloomberg said that the liquefied petroleum gas supertanker G. Arete paid a staggering $4.6 million to skip the line, topp...

JPMorgan Debanks Polymarket Over Regulatory Concerns; Report Authored by Zoltan Vardai via CoinTelegraph.com, JPMorgan Chase ended a banking relationship with Polymarket over regulatory concerns, according to the Financial Times. JPMorgan notified the prediction market platform in October 2025 that it needed to find a new bank, the Financial Times reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. Polymarket now works with an unidentified lender. Still, JPMorgan has maintained other ties with Polymarket. The bank is allegedly keen on a potential underwriting role should Polymarket attempt to go public. Polymarket reportedly said that it continues to have a “close, active relationship” with JPMorgan. Cointelegraph has approached JPMorgan and Polymarket for comment. Prediction markets are facing increasing regulatory scrutiny in the US and abroad.  More than a dozen US states have taken legal action against Polymarket, Kalshi or both over sports event contracts, while authorities ...

NATO Jets Shoot Down Drone Over Latvia, Which Blames 'Russian Electromagnetic Warfare' NATO jets have shot down another drone which spilled over into Baltic territory from the Ukraine war, Latvia's defense ministry announced Friday. The fresh incident happened over eastern Latvian airspace on Friday. NATO "fighter jets have successfully shot down a foreign unmanned aerial vehicle that had entered Latvia as a result of Russian electromagnetic warfare," the ministry stated on X.  via AFP "The drone was destroyed over the Balvi region by aircraft taking part in NATO's Baltic Air patrol mission," CNBC wrote based on the military statement. Further, "Latvia said airspace alerts were issued across several eastern and southern regions and lifted at 4:50 a.m. local time." It was only described as "a foreign unmanned aerial vehicle" that had "flown into Latvia as a result of Russian electromagnetic warfare," the translated statement said.  The ...

More Than Two-Thirds Of The Power Sought For US Data Centers Will Never Materialize It was almost a year ago, in November 2025, when we first calculated that the AI supercycle was facing a huge problem: namely, a power shortfall of (at least) 44 nuclear power plants, or GW or energy, by 2028. A Huge Problem For The AI Revolution: A Power Shortfall Of 44 Nuclear Power Plants By 2028 https://t.co/2ciiUudp8T — zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 12, 2025 Fast forward to last week when we made another stunning discovery: the reason why Texas Gov Abbott froze the rollout of new data centers in his state is because the number of interconnection requests facing ERCOT had risen to a mindblowing 474 GW (of which 90% were data centers), when the state's highest ever power demand just hit 91GW. Needless to say, this will never happen in (maybe) a hundred years, but it does prompt the question we have been asking for years: where will the energy come from. How mathematically impossible is the energy math ...

UMich Sentiment Slumps In August As War Re-Escalated, Inflation Fears Tick-Up Following July's rebound to pre-war levels, the preliminary August University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment index was expected to weaken modestly as the MidEast re-escalated (and with it the price of gas). Sure enough, the headline sentiment index tumbled from 55.2 to 51.0 (55.0 exp) with both Current Conditions (51.8 vs 54.8 prior vs 54.9 exp) and Expectations (50.6 vs 55.4 prior vs 55.2 exp) also both tumbling... Decreases in sentiment were seen across the political spectrum, with Republicans exhibiting the strongest month-to-month decline in August. Sentiment among Republicans is now 19% below readings just prior to the Iran conflict and the lowest since the 2024 election. Although the early-month weakening in sentiment was pervasive across various demographic groups, notably large reductions were seen among older consumers, lower-income consumers, and those without a college degree. As Surveys of Consumers Dire...

"Bin There, Done That?" Not Quite By Elwin de Groot, head of macro strategy at Rabobank Markets may be suffering from a growing sense of "bin there, done that" fatigue when it comes to geopolitical shocks, but central banks are in no position to throw recent developments into the bin just yet. Take Hormuz. Both sides now claim to firmly control the Strait, President Trump appears to favour squeezing Iran economically (or, in Bessent's words, “economic isolation like the world has never seen before”) rather than militarily (whilst Iran's thinking may be pretty similar!), and reports of renewed US-Iran talks continue to circulate. On the surface, the situation looks calmer than it did a few weeks ago. Yet it remains as opaque as ever. Despite investors becoming more accustomed to these episodes, the net result has still been a gradual rise in crude oil prices and a renewed climb in European gas benchmarks towards this year's highs. That is important because this week'...

Influential Wife Of Anthropic CEO Pitched Post-Conviction Epstein On 'Luxury Porn' Company, And Claude Has No Idea Anthropic has filed confidentially for what could be the largest public offering in history. Yet, one of the most influential voices shaping its chief executive holds no official position at the company, appears in no regulatory filings, and has been quietly scrubbed from the internet. She also pitched a porn company to Jeffrey Epstein - less than two years after he got out of prison for sex trafficking minors. Her name is Cami Clark, wife of CEO Dario Amodei. According to a Wall Street Journal investigation published Thursday, she has spent five years operating as a strategic adviser to the head of a company now seeking public capital at a valuation north of $2 trillion - all without a title, a salary, or formal disclosure. Cami Clark and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei at a summit in New Delhi in February. Ludovic Marin/AFP/Getty Images Her marriage to Amodei has been scrubbed fr...

Tesla's New Roadster Reportedly Uses SpaceX Cold-Gas Thrusters To Fly Tesla plans to unveil a redesigned Roadster sports car with limited "flying" capabilities later this month, The Information reported Friday morning, citing people familiar with the matter. The report follows this week's comments from Tesla's chief vehicle designer, who said the long-delayed Roadster is "coming soon." The limited-edition Roadster reportedly uses SpaceX cold-gas thrusters to hover and will be remotely operated during the unveiling event, scheduled for later this month at the rocket company's testing site in McGregor, Texas. "Between Elon Musk's promises of supernimble robots and interstellar colonization, the billionaire has spent plenty of time over the last decade hyping up another ambitious effort: the next version of the Roadster, the sporty electric vehicle that first put Tesla on the map. At first, he said he wanted the vehicle to be the fastest production car in the world. ...

Russia Quickly Rejects Ukraine's Offer Of Ceasefire On Black Sea Shipping Ukraine has quietly floated a deal through a third-party mediator to halt reciprocal strikes on civilian vessels in the Black Sea, Reuters reports, in what appears to be a calculated bid to unfreeze a critical global commodity corridor and to relieve pressure on Ukraine's battered wartime economy. The maritime artery remains a vital economic lifeline for both nations, channeling massive volumes of grain and agricultural supplies to world markets - especially the Middle East and Africa - but there's now been weekly and almost daily tit-for-tat attacks.  via Reuters With roughly 90% of Ukrainian grain and sunflower shipments departing from the primary port cluster of Odesa, Chornomorsk, and Pivdenne, the fallout on Ukraine's agricultural sector has been severe. Kyiv Post cites that as a result grain exports have fallen 76% year-on-year so far in August. But the publication notes that the pressure is longer one-sided,...

World Cup Hangover Triggers Retail Sales Slump In July, K-Shaped Economy Waning Based on BofA's almost omniscient analysts, traders should expect a big disappointment this morning from US retail sales as the bank's data showed a huge drop in online retail (card not present) in July... ...because Prime Day and related promotions were pulled forward from July to June this year. Many other retail categories also saw m/m declines, including clothing, gas (due to lower prices) and furniture. Other factors driving the weakness in July likely included the heat wave around July 4 weekend and a modest post-World-Cup hangover effect. And once again, BofA was right... US Retail Sales plunged 0.6% MoM in July (+0.1% MoM exp) - the biggest MoM drop since May 2025. This drop slowed the annual rise in retail sales to +5.0% YoY (still solid)... Interestingly, unadjusted retail sales rose in July... Both headline and core sales growth slowed YoY... Most importantly, the 'Control Group' - which plugs dire...

Farage Crushes Clacton By-Election With 63% As Comedy Candidates Dominate Longest Ballot In British History Nigel Farage has romped to victory in the Clacton by-election with 63.3% of the vote, seeing off 33 rivals including Count Binface, who won a quarter of the votes cast, on the longest ballot paper in British electoral history. The Reform UK leader secured victory with 22,239 votes, which was 63.3% of the total vote and an increase on the 21,225 votes he secured when he was elected to the Essex seat at the 2024 General Election. Count Binface, a comedian standing as a 5,900-year-old space warrior whose key policy was to freeze the price of ice cream in Clacton at 99p, was second with 9,455 votes, 26.9% of the total vote. Mr Farage had triggered the poll and cast it as a 'people vs the Establishment' contest amid mounting questions over a £5 million donation from cryptocurrency tycoon Christopher Harborne. However, a parliamentary inquiry into Mr Harborne's donation has yet to conclude...

Bessent: US Readies Economic Isolation Of Iran "Like The World Has Never Seen Before" Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Newsmax Thursday night that the Trump administration will announce unprecedented economic measures against Iran next week, signaling that a sharp escalation in economic warfare is just ahead as negotiations to reopen the Strait of Hormuz remain stalled. The warning comes as Tehran-linked Houthi rebel forces resume attacks on Saudi Aramco energy infrastructure, raising concerns that the conflict is spreading geographically and pushing Brent crude futures higher. Bessent told Rob Schmitt of Newsmax: And, you know, at the president's orders, we have raised the level even again, and watch this space for more announcements coming next week because we are going to apply measures like have never been seen in the history of economic isolation on a country. And I think the reason we are succeeding is because it is a one-two punch. People say, well, you know, Cuba laste...