European cars are now tasked with more than just moving people from one locale to another. A new safety regulation that applies to the 27 countries in the European Union (E.U.) requires automobiles to spy on their passengers too.
As of July 7, all new passenger vehicles sold in the E.U. had to come equipped with “advanced driver distraction warning” systems that watch for signs of “distraction” and, upon detecting them, issue a visual and an audio or tactile warning. Cars will warn drivers whose gaze drifts for more than three to six seconds, depending on their speed.
To comply with this mandate, cars will have to fix cameras on drivers’ faces at all times, turning private motor vehicles into efficient surveillance systems. The equipment is supposed to operate as a “closed-loop system,” meaning it “shall only continuously record and retain data necessary for the system to function and operate.” But it is not clear how that rule will be enforced.
Beyond privacy concerns, some critics worry that the system itself will become a dangerous distraction, issuing warnings every time a driver changes the radio station or glances at a passenger. Others have complained that the requirement will increase auto costs.
Car manufacturers can allow drivers to temporarily disable either the monitoring system or its warnings, although they must come back on every time the car is restarted. For now, the systems are required only to warn drivers who are deemed distracted, not to take over the car and stop it from moving.
Similar systems could be coming to U.S. cars next—with a twist. Once implemented, a mandate included in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will require that cars come equipped with a kill switch, and it is unlikely that drivers will be allowed to disable it.
That law requires automakers to equip all new motor vehicles sold in the U.S. with “advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology.” These systems, it says, should “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired” and/or “passively and accurately detect” excessive blood alcohol content (BAC), then “prevent or limit motor vehicle operation” by those deemed impaired.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was supposed to develop specific rules for such systems by 2024, but it has not done so yet, perhaps because no one seems sure how “passive and accurate” BAC-detection technology would work. The agency now aims to finalize the rules by 2027, after which automakers would have some time to implement the new technology.
In June, the NHTSA sought public comment on a proposal to conduct “a single, one-time experimental research study” aimed at developing and evaluating a “prototype” driver monitoring system. The goal, it said, is a system that “fuses data gathered from driver attention (e.g., gaze location), physiological state (e.g., heart rate variability), vehicle kinematics (e.g., lateral lane position) and environmental sensors (e.g., time to collision).”
European cars are now tasked with more than just moving people from one locale to another. A new safety regulation that applies to the 27 countries in the European Union (E.U.) requires automobiles to spy on their passengers too.
As of July 7, all new passenger vehicles sold in the E.U. had to come equipped with “advanced driver distraction warning” systems that watch for signs of “distraction” and, upon detecting them, issue a visual and an audio or tactile warning. Cars will warn drivers whose gaze drifts for more than three to six seconds, depending on their speed.
To comply with this mandate, cars will have to fix cameras on drivers’ faces at all times, turning private motor vehicles into efficient surveillance systems. The equipment is supposed to operate as a “closed-loop system,” meaning it “shall only continuously record and retain data necessary for the system to function and operate.” But it is not clear how that rule will be enforced.
Beyond privacy concerns, some critics worry that the system itself will become a dangerous distraction, issuing warnings every time a driver changes the radio station or glances at a passenger. Others have complained that the requirement will increase auto costs.
Car manufacturers can allow drivers to temporarily disable either the monitoring system or its warnings, although they must come back on every time the car is restarted. For now, the systems are required only to warn drivers who are deemed distracted, not to take over the car and stop it from moving.
Similar systems could be coming to U.S. cars next—with a twist. Once implemented, a mandate included in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will require that cars come equipped with a kill switch, and it is unlikely that drivers will be allowed to disable it.
That law requires automakers to equip all new motor vehicles sold in the U.S. with “advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology.” These systems, it says, should “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired” and/or “passively and accurately detect” excessive blood alcohol content (BAC), then “prevent or limit motor vehicle operation” by those deemed impaired.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was supposed to develop specific rules for such systems by 2024, but it has not done so yet, perhaps because no one seems sure how “passive and accurate” BAC-detection technology would work. The agency now aims to finalize the rules by 2027, after which automakers would have some time to implement the new technology.
In June, the NHTSA sought public comment on a proposal to conduct “a single, one-time experimental research study” aimed at developing and evaluating a “prototype” driver monitoring system. The goal, it said, is a system that “fuses data gathered from driver attention (e.g., gaze location), physiological state (e.g., heart rate variability), vehicle kinematics (e.g., lateral lane position) and environmental sensors (e.g., time to collision).”
Ammar al-Baluchi remembers the cold most of all. Held nearly naked in a cell lit around the clock by fluorescent bulbs, he referred to his detention “as if I was living in a refrigerator”.
The nephew of self-declared 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Baluchi was one of six to a dozen men believed to be held and tortured in a secret CIA prison in Bucharest between 2003 and 2005. The treatment of detainees at the facility, formally known as “Detention Site Black”, is described in detail in Guantanamo court filings.
Solitary confinement under lights that never switched off, sleep deprivation that at times meant being forced to stand shackled for days, repeated dousing with icy water, and forced shaving and physical handling that interrogators euphemistically logged as “attention grasps” and “facial holds” were common practice.
A photo released by Baluchi’s lawyers to the press in 2024 shows him stripped naked and photographed. It is believed to be the first published image – of tens of thousands – of a “war on terror” detainee in a CIA black site.
“We know they were tortured horrifically,” Ben Keith, a British barrister representing Baluchi outside the US, told Middle East Eye. “It’s not always possible to say which bit of torture took place because they were tortured for days and weeks, but you don’t detain somebody in a black site with the purpose of just talking to them.”
A quarter-century after the 9/11 attacks, which triggered the so-called “war on terror” and devastating US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that directly killed at least 940,000 people, a US military judge has finally set a trial date for Baluchi: 5 June 2028.
Lieutenant Colonel Michael Schrama ruled this month that the case against Mohammed, Baluchi, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi will begin on that date.
Schrama is the fifth military judge to preside over a case that has been trapped for more than a decade in disputes over evidence, national security secrecy and, above all, whether confessions obtained under torture before the men ever reached Guantanamo can be used at trial.
That question runs directly through a basement in Bucharest, where the accused are believed to have been detained and tortured.
In April 2025, a Guantanamo military judge ruled that statements Baluchi gave the FBI in 2007 were involuntary and inadmissible, tainted by what the court called torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment inflicted on him in CIA custody, including in Romania.
The judge found that Guantanamo’s “modestly changed confinement circumstances” had not been enough to remove the “lingering taint” of what happened before he arrived there.
A gesture of courtesy
The Romanian site was part of a network of secret prisons the CIA ran across three continents in the years after 9/11 – in Thailand, Poland, Lithuania and Romania – as part of a rendition, detention and interrogation program that was formally shut down in 2009.
Romania’s site opened in the autumn of 2003, according to court documents and NGO reports reviewed by MEE. According to a 2019 report by the Rendition Project, the CIA struck its agreement with Romanian authorities to host a black site in mid-October 2002.
By January 2003, the CIA’s Bucharest station was already discussing how to show Romania that “we deeply appreciate the cooperation and support”.
That appreciation had a price: $8m, followed by “millions more”, according to the same Rendition Project report. By autumn, the first batch of five prisoners had arrived.
The late Romanian president Ion Iliescu confirmed the outlines of the arrangement in a 2015 interview with Der Spiegel, describing a request that came “around the turn of the year 2002, 2003” from “our US allies” who asked Romania “for a site”.
He said he approved it in principle as “a gesture of courtesy ahead of our accession to Nato”, and that he deliberately did not ask for details. “We did not interfere with the activities of the USA on this site,” he said. “This request seemed like a minor issue to me as the head of state.”
The details, Iliescu said, were handled by Ioan Talpes, his national security adviser then. Talpes could not be reached for comment but gave a candid account to Der Spiegel in a 2014 interview, saying he discussed “a more intense cooperation” with the CIA from 2003 and understood that it involved detaining people at “one or two locations in Romania”.
He admitted to personally approving the leasing of a government building to the American intelligence agency. Talpes put it more bluntly in Romanian media, saying his country “did not have the interest to know what the Americans were doing” at the site it provided, to prove to Washington that Romania could be trusted.
Crofton Black, a former investigator with the Rendition Project who spent close to a decade tracing the CIA’s rendition network through flight logs and declassified documents, told MEE that he thinks Romania “made the decision [to host the black site] because it was in their interest, and thought the US would cover for them”.
‘The highest state authorities were aware’
Swiss Senator Dick Marty, whose 2007 report to the Council of Europe was one of the earliest and most detailed independent reconstructions of the CIA’s black-site network, concluded that while “very few people” in the countries involved likely knew the centers existed, “the highest state authorities were aware of the CIA’s illegal activities on their territories”.
His report named Romania and Poland specifically as having hosted secret CIA detention facilities. The Council of Europe’s list of Romanians who knew, according to Marty and later research by the Rendition Project, extends beyond Iliescu and Talpeş to a few other officials, including Traian Basescu, who succeeded Iliescu as president in 2004.
MEE reached out to Basescu for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication. The 2019 report adds a detail Marty did not fully spell out.
After September 2004, Romanian officials were formally briefed by the US ambassador and the CIA’s Bucharest station chief on the program, in a presentation that “clearly described” the use of torture.
“It’s definitively the case – the allegations of torture, the money, the people who were held there – it’s definitively the case that that’s Romania in the court files,” said Black, who co-authored the Rendition Project report.
Unlike the black sites in Lithuania and Poland, which are believed to have been in more remote locations, Romania’s site is believed to have been located in central Bucharest.
An AP and ARD Panorama investigation in 2011 narrowed down the location of the site in Bucharest to the government building of the country’s National Registry Office for Classified Information, also known as Orniss, on a quiet, leafy street in northern Bucharest close to a set of train tracks.
Orniss “categorically denied” speculation that there had been a CIA prison on the premises, telling MEE that it rejected any association between the institution and “the so-called CIA detention centers”.
While the site’s location is disputed, concurring testimonies in court records reveal details of the conditions inside it. The site consisted of six prefabricated cells painted white and tiled with impact-resistant glass, while the cells themselves were mounted on springs, engineered to keep detainees slightly off balance and disoriented.
The site is sometimes referred to as “Bright Light” because of the fluorescent, continuous light inside.
Another detainee held there was Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, accused of being the mastermind of the October 12, 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. He is believed to have been held in Romania between April 2004 and November 2005.
His case reached the European Court of Human Rights, which later found in a landmark 2018 ruling that his detention in Romania involved an “extremely harsh” regime, including blindfolding, total isolation, exposure to loud noise and unbroken light, and leg shackles during every movement. The Court and related records also document sleep deprivation, painful stress positions, slapping and, at one point, forced rectal feeding.
A 2014 US Senate Intelligence Committee report found that the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” program in the black sites did not produce unique, life-saving intelligence that could not have been obtained by other means.
A US Senate report on CIA torture revealed that the CIA held at least 119 detainees in its secret detention program, with at least 39 of them subjected to the agency’s “enhanced interrogation techniques,” often without proper authorization.
The CIA also misled oversight bodies and the public about the program’s brutality, while there was little accountability for the abuses.
Continued denial
For two decades, Romania’s official position has been one of denial. The country’s foreign intelligence service replied to an MEE inquiry that “the matters had already been thoroughly examined by the competent judicial authorities, both nationally and within international bodies” and that it could not comment further.
Despite that, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2018 that Romania had violated Nashiri’s rights, including by allowing his torture, both through what happened to him and through the state’s failure to properly investigate it.
The Court found that a secret detention center had operated in Romania and that Romanian authorities had “cooperated in the preparation and execution” of the CIA’s rendition and detention programme, fully aware of its nature and purpose even if they were not privy to everything that happened inside.
It took me many years and a lengthy #FOIA lawsuit against the CIA to uncover exactly what happened at the Salt Pit, one of the CIA’s black site prisons in Afghanistan where detainees were tortured. CIA just destroyed part of it, according to NYT
Romania responded by closing the domestic criminal investigation. A case opened in 2012 after a complaint from Nashiri’s lawyers, represented by the Open Society Justice Initiative, had by 2014 been formally classified as an inquiry into unlawful deprivation of liberty and torture.
Lawyers who represented Nashiri in Strasbourg and Romania did not agree to interview requests before publication. But according to a Romanian parliamentary question answered by the foreign ministry in 2018, the Open Society complaint originally filed sought far more than charges of torture and unlawful detention. It asked prosecutors to investigate complicity in murder, unlawful arrest, abuse of office, and failure to report a crime, among other allegations.
Prosecutors narrowed that down in 2014 to two counts: unlawful deprivation of liberty and torture. The investigation went nowhere. In any case, by 2016, the statute of limitations on the alleged crimes had already expired because no investigative steps had been taken that would have suspended the clock, and no suspect had ever been formally identified.
Romania’s public prosecutor’s office told MEE in an official response that the file was closed in March 2021, with the perpetrator classified as “unknown” despite what it described as the use of international cooperation mechanisms to gather evidence.
The same year, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers expressed “profound regret” that Romania could not show it had used all possible means to establish the facts, three years after the Strasbourg ruling required it to.
Keith, Baluchi’s counsel, said senior Romanian officials acted with direct intent in 2003 and 2004 to allow the CIA to detain, torture and later transfer Baluchi to Lithuania. “We know from the ruling in al-Nashiri the Romanians knew about it; they might have not known exactly what was happening, but they facilitated the CIA to create a black site to torture these men,” Keith said.
“Our contention is that Romania not only facilitated the CIA black site but knew they were being used to torture individuals.”
MEE reached out to Romania’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Justice for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication. Romania’s domestic intelligence service, SRI, also declined to comment, telling MEE that it lacked legal standing to address claims “circulating in the public space”.
With a trial date now set for June 2028, the confessions extracted under torture at CIA “black sites” – including the facility in Bucharest – have become central to the 9/11 case. So, too, has the role of the governments that allowed the CIA to operate these secret detention and interrogation sites on their territory.
Romania, for its part, is still refusing to talk about what happened in its basement, despite the body of evidence that has emerged. “There’s been years of compelling evidence that Romania hosted a black sit, and the more it has grown, the government continued to deny it was involved,” said Black. “It’s ridiculous, it’s nonsense.”
Florida’s Attorney General Sues Netflix For Allegedly Harvesting, Selling Children’s Data
Florida’s attorney general sued Netflix on Sept. 9 claiming the streaming giant collected data on its youngest viewers and added addictive features to the platform after promising not to.
Attorney General James Uthmeier is seeking billions in damages from the company and asked the judge to order Netflix to stop its alleged deceptive practices.
“Parents were told kids’ profiles were a child’s own space – safe, separate, great for kids,” Uthmeier said in a news conference Wednesday.
“Families believed them. But behind the brand, Netflix built something different.”
In the lawsuit, Jill McLaughlin reporets for The Epoch Times,that Uthmeier claims Netflix offered an ad-free service that promised not to collect or sell data but began to track children and their profiles when it launched an advertising business in 2022.
The streaming service offers an under-12 profile option for children which promotes a non-advertising space, according to the state.
Uthmeier alleges Netflix violated the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act and the state’s Digital Bill of Rights, including by selling sensitive personal data collected from known children without prior consent.
He seeks a permanent injunction, an order requiring Netflix to purge any deceptively collected data from Floridians, and an end to addictive designs that keep children watching on the platform, in addition to billions of dollars in civil and other monetary relief, he said.
“Parents, not streaming corporations, need to direct the upbringing of children,” Uthmeier said.
In the complaint, Uthmeier stated Netflix’s executive officer Reed Hastings told investors during a Jan. 22, 2020, earnings call the company’s model was not based on using customer data.
“We don’t collect anything, we’re really focused on just making our members happy and we’re not tied up on all that controversy around advertising,” Hastings said.
Hastings also said Netflix wasn’t interested in tracking customers’ locations or other things they were doing. “We want to be the safer spy where you can explore, you can get stimulated, have fun, enjoy, relax, and have none of the controversy around exploiting users with advertising,” Hastings said during the call.
The Netflix executive compared the company to Google, Facebook, and Amazon’s advertising models that used consumer data collection and targeting information, saying Netflix was “not controversial that way.”
Uthmeier’s complaint alleges Hastings’ comments represented to customers that buying Netflix subscriptions bought an escape from tech surveillance, but in fact generated years of “lucrative behavioral data” for the company.
Hastings stepped down as Netflix’s chairman of the board of directors in June.
Uthmeier claims that, behind the scenes, the company accumulated years of consumer data and surveillance and used it when Netflix deployed its advertising business in November 2022.
The lawsuit alleges the streamer uses dark patterns, or subtle designs, to manipulate users to take actions the company wants them to take. The autoplay feature is one of these designs, the complaint alleges.
An attorney listed for Netflix didn’t respond to a request for comment about the lawsuit.
Florida is the second state to sue the streaming giant. Texas filed a lawsuit in May alleging similar violations of the law arising from the collection of users’ data without their knowledge or consent.
What we call “globalism” has been on the march for eighty years. A system that embraces centralized markets, bureaucratic regulation, international institutions, and so-called non-governmental organizations (predominantly funded by governments), globalism places significant power in the hands of a small collection of wealthy and powerful stakeholders from the planet’s top investment houses, corporations, law firms, universities, central banks, and government bodies.
Globalism speaks in the language of “democracy” while ignoring – or even criminalizing – the will of the people. Across the West, citizens have opposed open border policies that have flooded their nations with unassimilable, foreign immigrants. Globalists have categorized this dissent as “hate speech,” censoring – and even prosecuting – citizens for their social media posts and public speech. Globalists insist that there must be limits on free speech. They seek to punish “thought crimes.” They label opposing points of view “disinformation” or “misinformation.” In practice, globalists protect governments and institutions from public criticism.
Globalism also speaks in the language of “free markets” while heavily regulating industrial production, encumbering the use of private property, and manipulating currency valuation, stock markets, and trade. By effectively “printing money” and intervening in markets, central banks steal from citizens who save their cash earnings, inflate the prices of essential household goods, and protect privileged companies or industries deemed “too big to fail.” By ginning up “global warming” fears among the public, lawmakers, bankers, and bureaucrats have justified the imposition of “carbon controls” that regulate energy use, economic production, and human activity. By expanding public welfare programs while weakening protections for property ownership, globalists tax citizens at increasingly higher rates, redistribute earned income and savings, confiscate real property, and even permit squatters (often foreign migrants) to occupy private residences.
Globalism falsely clothes itself in principle and tradition. Its proponents speak of “Western values,” while encouraging non-Westerners to migrate to and radically change the culture and demographics of Western nations. Its propagandists claim to represent “the people,” while doing the bidding of multinational corporations and investment banks. Its defenders pretend to respect public opinion, while mandating slavish devotion to “expertise.” Globalism seeks to end the nation state while demanding that citizens sacrifice themselves for government bureaucracies. It wages war against Christians who refuse to worship government institutions as the highest authorities on “truth.” Globalists divide societies into “victims” and “oppressors,” so that citizens remain too busy fighting each other to notice the surveillance prison being built around them. Globalists criticize opponents by saying things such as, “That’s not who we are,” while taking a sledgehammer and blowtorch to Western identities.
In defiance of globalism’s steady advance since WWII, a revolution has been brewing. Although its messengers have appeared all over the world – including Pat Buchanan in the United States, Shinzo Abe and Sanae Takaichi in Japan, Marine Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Javier Milei in Argentina, Alice Weidel in Germany, and Nigel Farage in the United Kingdom – President Donald J. Trump is the unofficial leader of the rebellion. What these men and women have in common is a strong sense of duty to their respective nations, a firm belief that culture matters, a preference for common sense, and a commitment to their countrymen over the international institutions, multinational corporations, and globalist NGOs (such as the World Economic Forum) that seek to eliminate national borders and condemn citizens to lives as disposable serfs.
President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement has spawned similar campaigns around the world. Whether in El Salvador or Nigeria, Spain or Australia, Canada or India, there are locals who have appropriated that slogan as part of an effort to make their own nations great. While globalism diminishes the importance of culture and celebrates amorphous “multiculturalism” as an inscrutable ideal, nation-builders around the world know better: Culture is the lifeblood of every society. It is the glue that binds a people together, fosters cooperation, and turns dreams of the future into reality. Just as members of a family help each other to succeed, members of a shared culture ensure their nation’s success.
People who climb mountains do not plant flags from the United Nations, European Union, the World Economic Forum, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; they fly their national flags at the top. Because no matter how much globalists lecture us about the evils of nationalism and the moral equivalence of all cultures, human beings know better. Our families, traditions, religious convictions, and historical memories matter. And when we ascend the icy peaks that few people have reached, we mark the moment, not as an achievement for “multiculturalism,” but rather as a testament to the inherent greatness of the places we call home.
For decades, globalism has been promoted as a “free market” ideal that would generate economic growth and foster international peace. But how has it operated in practice? Powerful corporations and lobbying groups have worked with governments to construct elaborate trade agreements that benefit the bottom line of political and financial elites. Rarely are the interests of the common man considered, except in the context of labor unions, standards bodies, or trade groups that purport to represent the average worker. Instead, complex legal documents such as the North American Free Trade Agreement have assisted in the creation of large industry monopolies while squeezing out small businesses. After the creation of NAFTA and similar “free trade deals,” American corporations and investment firms became multinational conglomerates, while Main Street mom-and-pop shops disappeared.
Globalism’s preferred winners became entities “too big to fail.” Why were they “too big to fail”? Because their trillion-dollar operations stretched like a circulatory system around the globe. Their drive for “efficiencies of scale” pushed them into every local bank, industry, and consumer market that could be secured as a beachhead for future profit. But in the endless expansion of it all – the mergers, acquisitions, and amalgamated monopolies – globalism’s circulatory system resembled that of a morbidly obese man only one meal away from a massive heart attack. A system so interconnected that it cannot survive the loss of any part makes the whole thing vulnerable to a few drops of poison.
Globalism’s rise has been debilitating for national self-sufficiency. In their unending quest for returns on investment, the globalists have built a world in which slave labor is used in communist China, India, and most of the African continent (while corporate news media ignore the story). Natural resources are extracted from third-world countries where environmental protection laws do not exist (while corporate news media ignore the story). Companies exploit both illegal immigration flows and legal work visas to drive down wages and drive up demand for (and therefore the prices of) food, fuel, rents, household necessities, and homes (while corporate news media ignore the story).
In treating individual nations as stolen cars being stripped and sold for parts, globalists have taken what is most valuable from each country while depriving those countries of the resources to build resilient economies of their own. From the slave mines of Africa to the sweatshops of China, globalism profits from blood. From the American Rust Belt to Germany’s decommissioned nuclear plants and the U.K.’s abandoned oil and gas fields, globalism sacrifices the wealth of nations, so that multinational investment banks can suck just a little more profit from the husks of countries with one foot already in the grave.
Why is it that patriotic love for one’s nation is making a comeback? Because globalism’s hatred for nations has left a trail of social conflict, government dependence, drug and alcohol addiction, deteriorating public health, environmental degradation, and cultural decline in every land it drains of life. What President Trump and his fellow rebels understand is this: Nations and their people matter. You cannot make the world great, while letting great nations die.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.
West Virginia Joins Nuclear Campus Race With Waste Storage In Focus
West Virginia’s Governor Patrick Morrisey announced that the state had signed a memorandum of understanding with the DOE, joining Idaho, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Utah as the sixth contender for a Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus (NLIC).
West Virginia’s energy future will cover all the bases! 🔌
“You’ve heard me talk a lot about coal. You’ve heard we talk a lot about gas. And I said, just you wait, nuclear is coming.” —Gov. @MorriseyWVpic.twitter.com/J4LkLT8wmW
The state was not included on July’s initial shortlist, which postured itself as the final roster that the DOE would downselect from. Morrisey’s took to “working the phones” to emphasize their abundance of skilled workers and industrial capabilities, but the state’s willingness to accommodate spent nuclear fuel is likely all it took for the DOE to open the door to further discussions.
Marla Morales, the acting deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and high-level waste disposition at the DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, recently made it explicitly clear what we had already come to the conclusion on in our previous coverage of the NLIC program: it’s all about handling the used nuclear fuel.
At the NECX conference, Morales stated, “One of the things we knew from the beginning of this was that we had to be open and transparent with what we were talking about. We had to make sure that everyone understood: You can want all the fancy reactors you want; you’re going to have waste at the end of this. It has to go somewhere. So, by the fact that we started the conversation with waste, it really helped frame our narrative to begin with.”
Clearly, any state that started getting uncomfortable when the DOE started asking about what they intend to do with all the used nuclear fuel that would be produced by their programs, was simply asked to stop pretending and please leave. This brings to a close the suspicions for why states like Texas and New Mexico are not included.
The DOE’s initial selection followed 28 applications from 26 states. NLICs would combine enrichment, fuel fabrication, recycling and waste disposition, potentially alongside reactors, manufacturing and data centers.
An individual campus could attract up to $50 billion in investment and create nearly 25,000 jobs.
The expanding NLIC list stands alongside an expanding Nuclear Energy Launch Pad (NELP) program. The NELP is one of the many other programs under the DOE intended to speed up nuclear development. The program recently saw a dramatic expansion from an initial four projects to now over 15 projects across over a dozen companies
The US military has reduced the daily window in which it offers air defense to commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the Financial Times (FT) reports on Saturday.
Since May, Washington has sought to break Iran’s control of Hormuz by providing air defense for vessels sailing through the strategic strait along a southern route hugging the coast of Oman.
Iran imposed a blockade on the strait shortly after the US and Israel launched an unprovoked war on the Islamic Republic on February 28.
However, the US began limiting the time slots in which vessels can receive protection from US aircraft as of the start of this month, FT reported.
The move comes in response to stepped-up Iranian attacks on ships transiting Hormuz, particularly at night. Ships are reportedly advised but not required to sail during the air defense time slots.
To receive protection, shipowners must apply to a US naval coordination center known as the Naval Cooperation and Guidance for Shipping (NCAGS).
Upon approval, the vessels received coordinates to follow during a broad time window. However, that window was “reduced to two specific time slots daily around the start of September,” FT wrote, citing emails NCAGS sent to maritime advisors.
Vessels are now being told to begin their journey at specified times, such as 9:00 am, to receive air defense.
“We are now providing recommended transit times that vary by day. Your vessel is not required to go during these times, but it is encouraged to receive the best support,” one NCAGS email said.
“Transiting during a period of darkness has not proven to be the most secure time of day,” stated another email, highlighting the increased threat of Iranian attacks at night.
Iranian forces have attacked dozens of vessels attempting to pass through the strait since the beginning of the war, greatly limiting the oil exports of Washington’s Gulf allies.
The US responded by imposing a naval blockade on Iranian ports in a bid to block Tehran’s own oil exports. Before the war, at least 20 percent of world oil exports passed through Hormuz.
Not only security but also cost considerations may have influenced the US decision to reduce the protected transit window.
Joshua Tallis, a researcher at the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA), stated that it costs the US Navy $25,000 to $75,000 an hour to operate its advanced aircraft.
Both Iran and the US stepped up their attacks on commercial vessels in the region earlier this week. Iran targeted two vessels and eight oil tankers in Hormuz in response to US strikes on five Iranian tankers. The US launched the strikes following an attack by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on a US warship days earlier.
“These waters aren’t safe,” stated Michelle Wiese Bockmann, an analyst at maritime intelligence firm Windward. Bockmann estimated that oil exports from Gulf countries other than Iran in August stood at about two-thirds of prewar levels, largely because of exports rerouted through pipelines to bypass Hormuz.
‘Reached final stage’ – Iran says agreement with Oman close on ‘temporary secure passage in Strait of Hormuz’ pic.twitter.com/UHFoKlfW5Q
Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei announced on Saturday that foreign ministers from several Gulf states will meet in Oman on Monday to exchange views on regional issues, including talks between Iran and Oman on designating safe routes for transiting the strait.
Baghaei added he hoped the meeting would improve understanding among regional countries and contribute to joint regional security.
China aims to have electric and hybrid vehicles account for as much as 70% of all passenger car sales by 2030, in a massive transport shift set to further dent oil demand for road fuels.
As of the end of last year, the share of the so-called new energy vehicles was 54% of all passenger vehicle sales.
In the new five-year plan for the automotive industry compiled by nearly a dozen Chinese government agencies, China also targets to have 40% of new commercial vehicle sales be electric by 2030.
The 70% target by 2030 could even be achieved earlier than planned, analysts say, as this year’s oil and fuel price shock is accelerating the shift to electric vehicles.
EVs and hybrids accounted for 65% of China’s total passenger car sales in August, according to data by the local Passenger Car Association (PCA) cited by Bloomberg.
The ambitious EV targets are expected to continue eroding road fuel demand in China, which has been falling for the second year in a row. This year, the decline has been steeper amid the energy price shock following the start of the war in Iran.
Chinese state refiners expect continued declines and prepare for the future of plateauing and falling road fuel demand.
For example, China’s Sinopec, the world’s top refiner by capacity, expects Chinese oil demand to drop by 8.9% in 2026 from a year earlier amid demand destruction from higher oil prices and the acceleration of electric vehicle adoption. Gasoline demand is set for an 8.7% decline, while diesel consumption is expected to crash by 11.4%, Sinopec Economics & Development Research Institute says.
The high oil prices destroyed some demand and sped up the adoption of EVs, which has been growing anyway in recent years, suppressing total oil demand even without blocked crude supplies in the Middle East.
