Before Khamenei Killing, CIA Assessed He Would Likely Be Replaced by More Hardline Elements of the IRGC

Trump Gets Diplomatic Win In Ukraine War, 3-Day Ceasefire Declared For Russia's V-Day President Trump announced Friday that the leaders of Russia and Ukraine have agreed to his request for a three-day ceasefire and a major prisoner swap. He hailed in a Truth Social post that this could be the "beginning of the end" of the long war between them. He specified that the ceasefire would run Saturday through Monday - with Saturday being Victory Day celebrations in Russia. The Kremlin has been increasingly concerned that the major national holiday which commemorates its victory...

'Still So Early On This Journey': Morgan Stanley Launches Lower-Cost Crypto Trading Just a week after Amy Oldenburg, Morgan Stanley’s head of digital assets, spent the better part of an hour making a case for bitcoin that few clients have heard in full (a gap she says is the industry’s most urgent problem), the bank announces the launch of crypto trading on E*Trade, charging 50bps in a pilot that undercuts rivals like Coinbase, Robinhood, and Charles Schwab. CoinDesk reports that Morgan Stanley’s Head of Wealth Management, Jed Finn, said the initiative goes beyond...

Massive Oil Slick Spotted Off Iran's Kharg Island, Cause Unknown  An apparent large oil spill spanning dozens of square miles of sea has been spotted off of Iran's main oil hub of Kharg Island, according to open source satellite imagery and reporting in both the NY Times and Reuters on Friday. The reports cite images from Copernicus's Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, and Sentinel-3 satellites taken from monitoring May 6 through 8 which show a huge grey-and-white slick extending out to the west of Kharg Island. Image source: Soar "The slick appears visually consistent with oil," said Leon Moreland,...