Iran Asserts Control Over Strait of Hormuz

'I See Dead People': Treasury Blocks $99 Million In Federal Payments To Deceased Americans The Treasury Department announced Tuesday morning that it has successfully implemented new safeguards to prevent government payments to dead people in an effort to reduce waste and fraud. The verification system includes screening 885 million federal payments against expanded death records, effectively auditing payments totaling nearly $2.7 trillion. It has already flagged and stopped payments totaling roughly $99 million that had been marked to be sent to dead people. "Treasury has delivered on a key promise of President Trump’s...

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...

Trump Insists Iran Caved On Nuclear Inspections, As Tehran Touts US To Unfreeze $12BN Summary Conflicting Claims Remain: Washington and Tehran continue to dispute whether Iran agreed to extensive IAEA nuclear inspections and the terms of sanctions relief. $12 Billion Asset Release: Iran says $12 billion in frozen assets will be released initially, with total relief potentially reaching $50 billion if a final deal is reached. Battle Over Fund Control: The US says released funds would be restricted to humanitarian purchases, while Iran insists it will decide how to use its own money. Oil...