Fearing Iranian Escalation In Red Sea, Saudis Push Trump To Call Off Hormuz Blockade

Gulf Energy Shock Spreads To Global Plastics As War Sparks Force Majeure Wave Building on our earlier "Global Demand Destruction" note, which mapped how the Gulf energy shock is spreading globally and the immediate effects of rationing, price controls, and fuel shortages, another second-order disruption is quickly emerging: supply chain disruptions in critical plastic feedstocks. Plastics are core to the modern economy, and a troubling new Bloomberg report indicates that several producers of monoethylene glycol (MEG) and purified terephthalic acid (PTA) have declared force majeure, as tanker flows through the Strait...

From ISIS To Finance Bro: Syria's Sharaa To Attend G7 Summit In France Syria continues stepping out of the geopolitical wilderness, now apparently onto the highest-stakes stage in international finance. Or rather, the reality is that Washington's post-Assad Al Qaeda in suits makeover of 'former' terror leader Ahmed al-Sharaa has reached its peak. According to a Reuters report on Thursday, self-appointed Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa (Jolani) is set to lead a national delegation to the G7 summit in France next month. HTS leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa, now self-declared President, also known as Abu Mohammed...

Lebanon Hosts The World's Highest Concentration Of Refugees, US Ranks 82nd The countries carrying the world’s largest refugee burden are often not the ones most people expect. Using data from the UNHCR via Our World in Data, this graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld, ranks countries by the number of refugees hosted per 1,000 residents in 2024. The results reveal how proximity to conflict frequently matters more than economic size. Many of the countries at the top of the ranking border active war zones and have absorbed large refugee populations relative to their...