MIDDLE EAST - UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia continue to face Iranian missile and drone attacks, targeting energy and infrastructure sites despite growing defenses. The desalination and energy infrastructure in the Gulf continues to be a vulnerable spot for the region. This is because these large sites must be protected at all times, and damage to one small area can sometimes affect the entire site. This is one reason these countries have all sought to avoid a kind of “tit-for-tat” escalation with Iran regarding key infrastructure.

MIDDLE EAST - Regional instability stemming from the Iran war, and the threat of Iranian missile and drone strikes, disrupted Christian observance of Holy Week across the Middle East, with churches in Iraq, Israel, and the UAE canceling or scaling back Palm Sunday and Easter celebrations. The decisions were driven primarily by security concerns, as Iranian projectiles had struck or threatened areas near major Christian population centers, including Erbil and Dubai’s Jebel Ali district.

USA - Warren Buffett just said live on CNBC: "The current market drop is nothing. A larger decline is ahead." He definitely knows something bad is coming... Buffett did not say "a larger decline is ahead"; he called the current drop "nothing" compared to past declines over 50%... Buffett on private credit contagion: "I don't think I know." So he holds cash and T-bills. No money market funds. No commercial paper. No long bonds. Just one thing that's legal tender, and the Treasury has to sell it every Monday.

USA - Most of the pre-packaged garbage that we are being sold in our local grocery stores is “Frankenstein food”, but even though this is widely known, most of the general population just keeps gobbling it down anyway. The major food companies fully understand that they are destroying our health, and they are going to keep on doing it because nobody is going to stop them. We are talking about a crime against humanity of epic proportions, and they are totally getting away with it. It isn’t just a coincidence that cancer, heart disease and diabetes are exploding in our society today. What we are eating is making us sick, and those responsible are raking in billions of dollars.

UK - Ed Miliband is reportedly set to back the North Sea oil and gasfield project despite insisting that Net Zero is a 'central mission' of the Labour government. The Net Zero secretary has been under increasing pressure to reverse a ban on exploration in the North Sea amid the Iran war's impact on energy supplies. Miliband had been stalling over a decision on the Jackdaw gasfield - 150 miles off the coast of Aberdeen - for around two years, but Whitehall officials have now suggested he is inclined to approve the project. The 51-year-old no longer sees the gasfield as incompatible with the government's carbon reduction commitments, according to The Times, after Rachel Reeves announced she is 'happy' to see drilling in the North Sea. If approved, the Jackdaw project could supply gas to more than a million British homes and produce the equivalent of six per cent of the country's overall supply.

USA - Donald Trump was considering firing additional members of his Cabinet on Thursday night, following the ouster of Attorney General Pam Bondi, a report has said. His restlessness comes amid a growing chorus of criticism at home and abroad for his handling of the Iran war, which continues to rile global markets with no definitive end in sight. The President has been unhappy with the work of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, according to Politico. 'He’s very angry and he’s going to be moving people,' an administration official told the outlet.

UK - Britain has become the embodiment of Western failure, an almost perfect encapsulation of every pathology, every delusion, every intellectual and moral miscalculation gnawing away at our civilisation. The rest of the world is moving on, and yet Labour is doubling down on its extreme geopolitical naïveté, its cod-pacifism, its wokery. It is unrelenting in its quasi-religious obsession with net zero (as if the enemy cares about the CO2 impact of its missiles), its unfathomable prioritisation of welfare over defence. It is sickeningly unable to grasp what surging anti-Semitism tells us about the future of multicultural Britain.

UK - In her memoirs 'The Downing Street Years', Margaret Thatcher recalls the meeting she held with ministers and military leaders to discuss the imminent invasion of the Falklands by Argentina in April 1982. She asked Sir Henry Leach, chief of the naval staff, what could be done. “I can put together a task force of destroyers, frigates, landing craft and support vessels,” he said. “It will be led by the aircraft carriers HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible. It can be ready to leave in 48 hours.” Two days later, the armada was on its way south. Contrast that with now, when only a single destroyer was belatedly despatched to the eastern Mediterranean to protect British sovereign bases in Cyprus.

UK - It would be the biggest divorce in history. For eight decades, NATO has weathered internal disputes, enemy plots and shooting wars in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. But if Donald Trump acts on his threat to finally leave, having told The Telegraph he is strongly considering pulling out after allies failed to join his war on Iran, the transatlantic family will be torn asunder. At which point, the club that calls itself the most successful alliance in history may as well close its doors. And the pain could match that of the most acrimonious breakups.

MIDDLE EAST - Donald Trump has threatened to destroy Iran’s water infrastructure – an act experts say would constitute a war crime that could plunge tens of millions of people into crisis. If the Strait of Hormuz is not opened “immediately,” the United States “will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island – and possibly all desalination plants,” the president wrote on Truth Social on Monday.

USA - US war secretary Pete Hegseth was today branded a 'blustering anchorman' as he sparked a backlash by mocking the 'big, bad Royal Navy'. In the latest American blast at Britain over the Iran war, the former Fox News host demanded the UK and other countries 'step up' to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. In response to US and Israeli attacks, which began at the end of last month, Iran has effectively closed the crucial sea passage and sent global fuel prices soaring. Mr Hegseth suggested it was 'not just the US Navy' who should be responsible for getting tankers moving through the waterway again, as he backed up earlier comments by Donald Trump. In a vicious social media post, the US President dramatically washed his hands of the Middle East crisis and told Keir Starmer to 'go get your own oil' as Europe's supplies dry up. Mr Trump added he had done 'the hard part' by launching the war on Iran, insisting countries like the UK would have to reopen the blocked Strait.

MIDDLE EAST - US Gulf allies, including Saudi Arabia, UAE and other Gulf allies urge President Trump to continue war on Iran. The US allies privately warned President Trump that Tehran has not been weakened enough. The US Allies say four weeks of bombings has not been enough to destroy the barbaric Iranian regime. Alma research and education center published a map of the Iranian regime’s targets since the war started. So it is understandable that Iran’s Middle East neighbors are tired of the Iranian threat after 40 years of the theocratic regime.

USA - President Trump on Tuesday suggested that he will withdraw troops from the Middle East and force Europe, Asia, and the Gulf nations to deal with Iran’s blockade on the Strait of Hormuz after they refused his calls for help. President Trump previously asked NATO and Asia for help securing the Strait, but they refused. “The USA won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us,” Trump said in a statement on Monday, offering to supply oil from the United States if the countries cannot “build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just TAKE IT.” He added. “Iran has been, essentially, decimated. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil!” This comes amid reporting that Trump is ready to end the war regardless of security in the waterway. His plan would then be to leave it for Europe and the Gulf states, who are heavily dependent on the flow of oil through the Strait, unlike the US, to deal with it.

USA - Bloomberg: "The energy industry is warning that the crisis is only beginning. In conversations with more than three dozen oil and gas traders, executives, brokers, shippers and advisers over the last week, one message was repeated over and over: The world still hasn’t grasped the severity of the situation... If the strait stays closed, the world will have to significantly reduce its oil and gas consumption — but not before prices spike to a level that forces consumers and businesses to fly, drive and spend much less."

USA - Western media reports indicated the fire raged on board for some 30 hours before being extinguished – longer than the devastating 1967 USS Forrestal carrier fire, which burned for about 24 hours. If true, it raises questions about the state of supposedly sophisticated firefighting systems on the Ford, particularly given that the Forrestal fire was aggravated by explosions of munitions stored on the flight deck and burning fuel seeping into compartments. More than 600 out of nearly 4,500 sailors, tech personnel, and pilots lost their bunks in the fire, ending up forced to sleep on tables and floors, the New York Times reported, citing anonymous crewmembers. Moreover, the crew has been unable to do laundry since the fire, which reportedly ended up being airlifted to other ships for washing.