When Will This Sh*t Stop?

Qatar Tried Secret Deal-Making With Iran To Protect World's Largest Gas Complex By the middle of March during Trump's Operation Epic Fury, Iran was flexing its retaliatory might, and the Gulf region was shocked to see the largest natural-gas production facility in the world, Qatar's North Field, badly damaged - with a key section forced offline and severely damaged. The Washington Post has just provided some new information which has come to light, writing that "There was an additional, hidden consequence. The strike also dashed secret efforts by Qatar to keep...

China Plans Planetary Defense Test By Slamming Mach 26 Spacecraft Into Asteroid A new paper under peer review by the Chinese-language Journal of Deep Space Exploration lays out an ambitious plan to crash a spacecraft at Mach 26, or 20,000 mph, into a near-Earth asteroid to test new planetary defenses. The South China Morning Post reports that a team led by Li Mingtao, chief scientist for planetary defense at the China National Space Administration, is planning a mission even more ambitious than NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). That mission would...

Kuwait, Qatar Ramp Up Hormuz Oil Flows As Oman-Iran Talks Ease Supply Fears Brent crude futures fell to an intraday low of $86.22 a barrel early Thursday before recovering above $88 by 0630 ET. The benchmark is down 6.3% this week as traders unwind part of the war-risk premium amid growing optimism that renewed diplomatic efforts involving Iran, Oman and Qatar could reduce the threat of drone attacks on tankers in the critical waterway. Bloomberg reported earlier that Kuwait and Qatar are restoring crude exports through the highly contested maritime chokepoint....