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Pirates appear to be taking advantage of international naval strength being diverted to Middle EastThree vessels have been hijacked off the coast of Somalia in the past week, raising fears of a resurgence in piracy around the Horn of Africa, and adding to the woes of the global shipping industry.The merchant vessel Sward was taken over on 26 April, a day after a dhow was seized. These followed the 21 April hijacking of Honour 25, a motor tanker carrying 18,000 barrels of oil, according to the Maritime Security Centre Indian Ocean (MSCIO), the tracking service of the EU’s naval force. Continue reading...

Customs officials say group allegedly hid 5kg of ‘kush’ in false walls of bags on return from Bangkok holidayTwenty-two Buddhist monks are in Sri Lankan police custody after customs officials found 110kg of high-grade cannabis concealed in their luggage, the largest ever drug bust at Colombo’s main international airport.The group, mostly junior monks in training from temples across Sri Lanka, were alleged to have “carried about five kilos of the narcotic concealed within false walls in their luggage”, according to a Sri Lanka customs spokesperson. Continue reading...

“There’s a day of reckoning coming.”That is the opinion of a prominent oil industry executive who is predicting a major surge in prices at the gas pump as Donald Trump’s war on Iran, and the accompanying closure of the Strait of Hormuz, drags on.As oil prices surge and supply dwindles globally, energy experts predict a catastrophic price shock that could decimate Republican chances in the midterms, reports Politico's Scott Waldman and Eli Stoklos.According to Dan Pickering, chief investment officer at Pickering Energy Partners, when summer driving season begins, gas prices will deliver a shock that "hits people in the face." "It will be painful because I can tell you that the stock market's ignoring this," he said.The timing will likely be politically toxic, the report notes, with another spike in prices predicted around Memorial Day potentially dealing a fatal blow to Republican chances for holding onto the House next year, as Americans' confidence in the economy continues to drop.A senior administration official dismissed expert warnings about the looming crisis, telling Politico: "Everyone feels like we can hopefully get back to even lower prices at the gas pump. That's always the goal. So everyone is very sober about the uptick in gas prices, but everyone feels confident that we can get it down before the end of the year." Rosemary Kelanic, director of the Middle East Program at the Defense Priorities think tank, isn't buying the White House spin, and suggested Trump's optimistic messaging is backfiring. "By talking down the market so effectively, when the price spike becomes inevitable, it's going to hurt way worse because we'll have lost weeks or even months of time where producers could have been ramping up output," she told Politico.There are also oil industry complaints about Trump's optimistic spin on the crisis.Oil and gas executives are openly frustrated with Trump's market-manipulating rhetoric," the report notes with one insider complaining that the president "sends conflicting signals to operators who cannot plan rigs and capital budgets when prices swing wildly based on tweets." "Our hypothesis is [that] the paper market is being manipulated. This will likely lead to an even worse supply and demand imbalance and higher prices in the medium term (next 12 months)," the executive added.

Pakistan officials dismiss Afghan media reports and official statements about strikes on university in Kunar province as ‘blatant lie’Mortars and missiles fired from Pakistan on Monday struck a university and civilian homes in north-eastern Afghanistan, killing seven people and wounding at least 85, Afghan officials said.Pakistan denied the accusation of targeting a university. Continue reading...

Donald Trump was accused of making a "catastrophic mistake" after a New York Times report revealed how experts say Iran's nuclear powers grew under the current president.William J. Broad and David E. Sanger, who advertise that that they have written about the Iranian nuclear program for more than two decades, wrote on Saturday:"Today, international inspectors say, Iran has a total of 11 tons of uranium, at various enrichment levels. With further purification, that is enough to build up to 100 nuclear weapons — more than the estimated size of Israel’s arsenal. Virtually all of that cache accumulated in the years after Mr. Trump abandoned the Obama-era deal. That is because Tehran lived up to its pledge to ship to Russia 12.5 tons of its overall stockpile, about 97 percent. Iran’s weapon designers were left with too little nuclear fuel to build a single bomb."That story spurred alarm online, with a former Obama National Security Council staffer Tommy Vietor, saying, "Pulling out of the Iran nuclear was a catastrophic mistake."Pod Save The World's Ben Rhodes added, "It's obvious that pulling out of the Iran Deal was a catastrophic decision by Trump. Yet that decision got far less media and political scrutiny than the Deal itself."Public school teacher Justin Parmenter joked, "Art of the Deal."

New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg described how there is something more troubling behind right-wing podcaster and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson's recent apology for misleading people in his support of President Donald Trump.In a column published on Friday, Goldberg described how the conversation between Tucker and his brother, Buckley, a former Trump speechwriter, exposed much more of their message — a false narrative."I'm all for embracing converts to the anti-Trump cause," Goldberg wrote. "But if you listen to the dialogue between Tucker and his brother, it's clear that rather than honestly reckoning with their role in America's derangement, they're developing a new conspiracy theory to explain it away."Conservatives have mainly stood by Trump over the last 10 years, Goldberg argued, but only recently has MAGA shown a growing understanding that Trump could be unfit to lead as commander-in-chief.The brothers have argued that the president's recent decisions show he has been influenced by foreign actors."Trump, they strongly imply, has been compromised — maybe even blackmailed and physically threatened — by Zionist or globalist forces seeking the deliberate destruction of the United States," Goldberg wrote. "On Tucker's podcast, Buckley described a systematic undermining of America through the George Floyd protests, mass migration and now the war with Iran.""I don't want to minimize the malign role Israel has played in persuading Trump to launch his catastrophic war on Iran," Goldberg explained. "As former Secretary of State John Kerry has said, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel tried to persuade previous American presidents to strike the Islamic Republic, but only Trump was vain and gullible enough to agree. America's hand-in-glove relationship with Israel has become a liability, and we should end it.""But it wasn't Israel or Zionist donors or some shadowy internationalist cabal that made Trump a buffoonish maniac who glories in threats of violence," Goldberg wrote. "If the second Trump administration is worse than the first, it's largely because the establishment figures once demonized by Carlson as deep-state subversives are all gone. Trump is who he always was. He's just more politically unfettered than before."Now, Tucker and Buckley Carlson are pushing more disinformation, and "some former Trump acolytes are defaulting to an older conspiracy theory: The ones in control are the Jews." That aspect is most concerning, according to Goldberg."This need that some MAGA apostates feel to rationalize their previous poor judgment can be harmless, if irritating. It's dangerous only when they insist on creating a scapegoat," Goldberg added.Trump has fired back at Carlson, calling him a "Low IQ person" on Truth Social, as the feud between the two continues to escalate.

The White House took swift action after Australian flags were placed on the streets of Washington, D.C., to mark the arrival of King Charles III of Britain.On Friday, Photos shared on social media showed Australian flags lining 17th Street. Freelance reporter Andrew Leyden shared several of the photos on X."After a short lunch break (and geography lesson) DC public work crews have decided to replace the Australian flags with the British flag around the White House," Leyden explained several hours later.

President Donald Trump has sent envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Islamabad, Pakistan, this weekend for continued negotiations with Iran — but Vice President JD Vance did not plan to attend — something a CNN analyst said was telling in a report on Friday. Vance, who previously attended marathon talks with the Iranians earlier this month, will be on standby and available to join by phone or travel if need be, CNN reported. Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran's Speaker of the Parliament, who the White House views as Vance's counterpart and head of the Iranian delegation, will not attend either.The timeline for the ongoing war has remained uncertain, with Trump telling reporters on Thursday "Don't rush me."CNN special correspondent Jamie Gangel signaled that the Iran strategy has appeared to shift within the White House. "Let's be hopeful. Let's be optimistic. It's moving in in the right direction," Gangel said. "I think everyone would like this war to end," she added. "But we've seen a roller coaster here. And in when dealing with the Iranians, I've been told over and over by intelligence experts, they're really good at talking. And they will talk and talk until the cows come home. But getting to substantive negotiations is a whole other matter. So let's see where this goes. I do think it's interesting that Vice President Vance is not going. I think it says something about where we think this is at the moment."Members of Vance's team were reportedly already in Pakistan for the talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Iranians have not yet confirmed if they will meet with the American delegation.