Tag: finance

Months after Ukraine was shaken by a sweeping corruption probe into state nuclear giant Energoatom, and subject of international embarrassment given it even touched Zelensky’s office, former Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko has now been formally charged – after authorities detained him while he was allegedly attempting to leave the country.

Halushchenko had been suspended by Zelensky in mid-November, when news of the scandal first hit global headlines. On Monday, Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) announced that Halushchenko faces formal charges of money laundering and participation in a criminal organization tied to what investigators call the Midas case or Operation Midas.

“The former minister of energy (2021–2025) has been exposed for money laundering and participation in a criminal organization,” the joint statement said, adding that investigators have “expanded the circle of suspects.”

The investigation is focused on members of the alleged network which established an investment fund in Anguilla (the British Overseas Territory in the Eastern Caribbean) in February 2021. The vehicle was marketed as raising roughly €118 million in “investments” – with Halushchenko’s family listed among the contributors – after which millions flowed directly into accounts controlled by the family. 

For example, authorities claim part of the funds paid for the education of Halushchenko’s children at elite Swiss institutions, while other sums were deposited into his ex-wife’s accounts, also with a big portion of the money allegedly invested further, “earning extra income for the family’s personal use.”

Halushchenko was energy minister from 2021 to 2025 before being appointed justice minister in July 2025. In November, NABU agents conducted raided offices and properties connected to him as the investigation intensified.

Western mainstream media had almost immediately launched into damage control in the wake of the massive energy scandal, with one op-ed in Bloomberg having tried its best to say it’s not at all Ukraine’s fault, but is actually somehow… the Kremlin behind it(!). Here’s how it began:

There are at least two legitimate responses to allegations that a group of highly placed Ukrainian officials have skimmed $100 million from contracts to repair and protect their nation’s critical energy infrastructure, even as Russian attacks plunge the nation into darkness and cold. One is to despair, the other to celebrate. The second, strange as it may sound, is more logical.

This episode goes to the heart of why Ukrainians are fighting at all. The war began in 2014, after then President Viktor Yanukovych was toppled by mass protests against the epic scale of his corruption and the captivity to Moscow this created. Graft was the glue with which the Kremlin had held…

So even with high officials in Zelensky’s government are caught red-handed by a Ukrainian internal investigation, the ultimate fault lies in Moscow, according to some MSM accounts.

It must be remembered that earlier last year, Zelensky himself found himself at the center of EU pushback and controversy when he attempted to eliminate NABU’s independence, sparking outrage in Brussels some sectors of the Ukrainian populace.

Ukrainians, currently enduring a harsh winter in subzero temperatures and with rolling power outages due to the war, are outraged. But Americans might also need to wake up and take note of how billions in US funds are going into the coffers of a deeply corrupt Ukrainian system.

Authored by Luis Cornelio via Headline USA,

Detroit Police Chief Todd Bettison said Thursday that officers purportedly collaborating with federal immigration agents will be held “accountable,” as the city defends its so-called “welcoming” status.

Bettison made the comments during a hearing with the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners regarding two incidents, one on Dec. 16 and another on Feb. 9, according to the Detroit Free Press.

“Of our officers, 98-99 percent do it the right way each and every day,” Bettison claimed.

“But I do have one or two percent that decide to violate our rules, our policies and our procedures, and to those officers, I will hold them accountable.”

A “welcoming city” refers to jurisdictions that do not require officers to investigate a person’s immigration status during routine investigations.

By contrast, sanctuary cities refuse to honor ICE detainers and actively decline to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

In the first incident, a Detroit sergeant reportedly called Border Patrol after an officer requested a translation during a traffic stop of a non-English-speaking individual.

Bettison said that Border Patrol determined the person was not a U.S. citizen and detained the individual as a result.

In the second incident, a Detroit officer allegedly contacted Border Patrol while investigating an individual on a felony warrant.

“Border Patrol did respond, and Border Patrol ultimately took this individual,” Bettison said, citing body-worn camera footage reviewed by the DPD.

The commission is set to decide whether to suspend the officers involved ahead of a Feb. 19 hearing.

US natural gas futures tumbled to a four-month low early Monday as weather models indicate the Lower 48 is exiting the peak of the Northern Hemisphere winter and entering a much-needed warmup. For the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, which experienced some of the coldest weather in decades, the next few weeks are expected to feel more like spring.

March contracts fell 7.5% to about $3 per mmBtu, the lowest level since October 17 and a roughly four-month low.

Weather forecasts for the Lower 48 show above-normal temperatures through the end of the month, particularly in the central and southern regions.

NatGas prices have been extremely volatile this winter. Multiple cold blasts sparked freeze-offs and production disruptions across gas infrastructure that sent spot NatGas prices sharply higher. At the same time, tightening power markets, especially across the Mid-Atlantic area, sent power prices soaring.

Readers may recall we identified peak Northern Hemisphere winter in early February, as 30-year average temperature trends point to warmer conditions across the Lower 48.

Now the Trump administration can point to last month’s cold snap as a real-world stress test: fossil fuel generation helped keep much of the eastern U.S. grid from collapsing under peak demand. Read the note, titled “Sleep Tight, America. We Got This”: NatGas And Coal Power Plants Prevented Grid Collapse During Historic Winter Blast.

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

The European Union has lost its place in the global race for artificial intelligence. In a single tweet on platform X, France’s President Emmanuel Macron inadvertently outlined the convoluted situation while simultaneously revealing his personal emotional fragility.

The leading representatives of the European Union like to present themselves as emotionless technocrats. Maintaining the greatest possible distance from citizens, they execute their agenda of societal transformation toward what they understand as a net-zero transformation economy. 

This ostentatious distance from the citizenry acts as a simulacrum of power, which, in politicians like Emmanuel Macron, often veers into the caricatural.

Macron’s striking presence in foreign affairs—whether regarding the Ukraine war or recurring provocations toward the United States—correlates with his aggressive censorship policy toward his own population. A president without a people, steering his minority government through a budgetary crisis that brings France ever closer to the fiscal abyss.

In Macron’s persona, the European misstep is condensed: economically failed, deeply unpopular among his own people, geopolitically essentially irrelevant—and yet imbued with lofty, messianic plans. 

This performative play of power, coupled with hardly disguised impotence and incompetence, inevitably produces an effect that can be described as clownish. It is the expression of a political style that can no longer reconcile claim with reality—and thus delivers less leadership than a tragicomic performance.

A Touch of Emotion

Politicians like the French president are indeed aware of the growing public anger over their policies and, behind the technocratic façade, very much experience emotional states—Macron revealed this for a brief moment on February 7 on the platform “X,” which he otherwise fights.

This moment of exposure was triggered by a reaction to Israeli AI investor Dr. Eli David. The entrepreneur had ridiculed the French government’s plan to initiate an AI revolution with a mere initial investment of €30 million, publicly calling the president a “clown.” 

“This clown wants to make France an AI leader with €30M.”

€30 million → to attract and support around forty top-tier international researchers. They chose France for its values and its commitment to science.

Sometimes it’s too slow…… pic.twitter.com/UHlSpIIaI9

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) February 7, 2026

Macron responded in classic social media fashion: fast, unconsidered, emotional. And this was precisely the real revelation. His message not only displayed personal fragility but simultaneously exposed Europe’s fatal economic strategy in the field of artificial intelligence.

Macron directly addressed David’s criticism and slid into a rhetorical trap, writing: Yes, exactly this “clown,” meaning himself, would trigger an investment boom with €30 million, eventually mobilizing over €100 billion in private funds. Macron plans a French Silicon Valley south of Paris and intends to catapult his country to the Olympus of artificial intelligence—with €30 million of state money, initially benefiting those who provide the technological framework for the upcoming rollout of digital IDs.

“This clown wants to make France an AI leader with €30M.”

€30 million → to attract and support around forty top-tier international researchers. They chose France for its values and its commitment to science.

Sometimes it’s too slow…… pic.twitter.com/UHlSpIIaI9

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) February 7, 2026

In this sentence, Europe’s dilemma crystallized: self-assurance and denial, the familiar pathos of EU Europeans combined with an astonishing detachment from reality—and a political style that reveals more about Europe’s position in the global AI race than any sober analysis could.

Those familiar with the codes, memes, and recurring keywords of digital platforms understand the significance of this label. When “clown world” or “clown politics” is mentioned, it refers precisely to the comedy we witness daily: the routine evasion of European top politicians from the consequences of their centrally controlled policies—be it economic and industrial policy, migration, or the grotesquely perceived energy policy.

The clown meme condenses the cynically self-ironic perception of the viewer of this comedy—a viewer aware that they are not only the target of these policies but will ultimately bear their consequences.

Clown politics takes many forms. These include the countless crisis or innovation summits in which politicians stage themselves retroactively as initiators of the new, attempting to position themselves at the forefront of developments they have ignored or actively obstructed for decades. 

These summits are a particularly pernicious form of masking incompetence: political self-validation rituals simulating activity while merely covering up structural stagnation.

Another Lost Year

It has been almost exactly one year since Emmanuel Macron, at the AI conference Choose France, presented his megalomaniac-seeming investment initiative. Over €100 billion in private investment pledges were said to have been mobilized, with asset manager Brookfield promising more than €20 billion, and the UAE sovereign wealth fund with €50 billion, to participate in Macron’s Silicon Valley. To this day—nothing has happened.

As elsewhere in the EU, a Kafkaesque thicket of regulation seriously blocks private-sector engagement. At least France could score points thanks to nuclear power: stable, cheap, ideal for energy-hungry data centers. And Germany? Its locational advantage has been squandered in green delusions. Yet France remains trapped in paralyzing stagnation—announcements fade, visions fizzle, and the digital Silicon Valley appears like an illusion from the bureaucratic dream factory.

The contrast with the United States could hardly be starker. There, around $400 billion in private investments in artificial intelligence and data centers were mobilized last year alone. The infrastructure of the data economy of the future is being built in the United States, where President Donald Trump deregulates markets, cuts taxes, and promotes the comeback of nuclear energy.

Notably, major US data center operators—from Meta to Google—have already begun investing in their own energy sources. This not only stabilizes their business models but also the American energy grid. It is an impressive counterpoint from the private sector to Brussels’ statist economic model, where technological ignorance seems almost cultivated.

Europe’s idea of state seed funding and centrally planned market regulation is the real problem. 

European society has drifted too far from the principles of market economy, personal responsibility, and a general culture of initiative in business. Bureaucracy, green socialism, and the decades-long cultural struggle against bourgeois values and roots now bear their rotten fruits. The spirit of EU bureaucracy has warped the perception of economic reality for citizens, entrepreneurs, and the political class alike.

New technologies and innovations are no longer understood as opportunities but as reasons to defensively secure the status quo. This psychopolitical consequence of European bureaucratization weighs like lead on the prosperity and productivity of European economies—with consequences that even French presidents in combative cynic mode on “X” cannot hide.

* * * 

About the author: Thomas Kolbe, a German graduate economist, has worked for over 25 years as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

Days ahead of another round of talks with US negotiators — and on the heels of more saber-rattling by the Trump administration — Iran is touting the potential mutual economic benefits of a deal that would terminate the West’s long-running sanctions regime against the second-largest and second-most-populous country in the Middle East.  

“For the sake of an agreement’s durability, it is essential that the U.S. also benefits in areas with high and quick economic returns,” said Iranian Deputy Director for Economic Diplomacy Hamid Ghanbari on Sunday, according to Iran’s FARS news agency. He said that, during negotiations, there had been discussion of what FARS called “shared interests in the fields of oil, gas, mining and even aircraft purchases.” 

Sanctions have long thwarted Iran’s need to update the country’s passenger jet fleets. After the 2015 nuclear deal was reached and sanctions eased, Iran raced to put in orders for new aircraft from Western suppliers. When President Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal — despite Iran’s full compliance with it — Boeing instantly lost $20 billion worth of business.  

Oil prices were flat in early-Monday global trading. “With both sides expected to hold firm on their core ​red ​lines, expectations are low that a deal can be ​reached and this is likely to be the ‌calm before the storm,” IG analyst Tony Sycamore told Yahoo. 

Oman is set to mediate talks in Geneva this week. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is leading the Iranian delegation, while the US delegation will be headed by Steve Witkoff and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner. Ahead of the talks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made his sixth US meeting with Trump in just the last year. Netanyahu continues to push for terms that guarantee Iranian refusals and thus set the stage for more war.

Those poison-pill demands include Iran ceasing all uranium enrichment and — preposterously — dismantling the conventional, ballistic missile program that proved so effective in responding to Israel’s initiation of war last June. Trump reportedly told Netanyahu in December that he’d back Israeli strikes on Iran’s ballistic missiles program if a new deal isn’t reached.  

In May 2018, Trump withdrew the United States from the nuclear deal that had been negotiated between Iran and various Western governments and signed in 2015. Under that deal — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — Iran agreed to a wide array of nuclear safeguards. They included eliminating its medium-enriched uranium, reducing its low-enriched uranium inventory by 98%, capping future enrichment at 3.67%, slashing its number of centrifuges, submitting to enhanced external monitoring, and rendering its heavy-water reactor unusable by pouring concrete in it. 

At the time of Trump’s withdrawal, Iran was in full compliance, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. In response to the re-imposition of US sanctions, Iran began straying from its own commitments under the deal, seemingly pushing the only lever it had to bring the deal back and get out from under sanctions that have sapped Iran’s economy and inflicted a harsh toll on innocent Iranian citizens. 

On Friday, Reuters reported that the Pentagon is preparing for a “sustained, weeks-long military campaign” against Iran if President Trump gives the green light. That news came as a second American aircraft carrier was making its way to the region. The USS Gerald Ford — the world’s largest — will join the USS Abraham Lincoln, which is already on station. Before receiving its new orders, the Ford had been operating in the Caribbean after being abruptly redeployed from the Mediterranean — part of an earlier show of force tied to posturing against Venezuela.    

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

As social glue and as a bond tying the individual to a higher purpose of existence, patriotism has acquired a dubious reputation in Germany after decades of culture war. The United Left has succeeded in amalgamating this binding and integrating cultural ferment with the historical catastrophes of National Socialism, imperialism, and chauvinism, ultimately banishing it from the nation’s self-understanding.

Today, the patriot is regarded as a social outsider, a contrarian, an intolerant antagonist of humanistic values.

The mills of that socialist cultural revolution set in motion in the late 1960s have ground with care. A cartel of radical ideologues, opportunistic politicians, a proliferating academic establishment, and the media sector has managed to inject a sufficient dose of poison into the root system of tradition, religion, family, and the bourgeois order. The modern patriot renders himself deeply suspect if he rejects the blessings of cultural relativism and the woke nihilism of our age.

And yet conservatives are the true heroes of stability and continuity, who—like human breakwaters in today’s social storms—attempt to fend off the worst flowing toward us from the murky sources of cultural Marxism. It was not least the work of German politicians to carry out this civilizational turn: away from the Social Market Economy and a bourgeois-centered society toward a green climate socialism.

Nowhere does the anti-bourgeois reflex flourish more luxuriantly than in Germany’s NGO complex and in the shrill academic flank warfare surrounding Cancel Culture, Wokeism, and the cleansing of language—precisely targeting those terms that would open the door to a culture-affirming, tradition-confirming education.

How beautiful words like “fatherland,” “patriotism,” and “love of homeland” now sound.

Naturally, a significant portion of the political class would vehemently disagree. It has built a business model from the ingredients of contempt for the nation, globalist moralism, and climate-apocalyptic transformation logic—and founded its political existence upon it. Contempt for everything conservative is the linguistic soil in which this form of political power thrives, stabilizing and reinforcing itself within its own moral echo chamber.

That, in this self-inflicted crisis, German politicians now invoke the once-poisoned term of “location patriotism” in their defensive struggle against economic reality appears grotesque—and to those who have lost their livelihoods in the breakers of green bureaucratism, presumptuous and offensive.

Germany’s environment minister, Carsten Schneider, concluded his recent interview marathon with a talk at the Frankfurter Rundschau. The man has nerve. After a series of very public attacks by his camp against entrepreneurs, it now seems time to change tone. Moral minor key is on Berlin’s agenda. Automakers, Schneider suggests, should increasingly source raw materials from Germany. Raw materials—from Germany?

He calls for a “lead market” for green steel—stretching reality to its limits, as green steel currently vanishes from product lines because it is neither profitable nor marketable, despite heavy subsidies.

A little more location patriotism can surely be expected from German CEOs, Schneider argues—closely echoing the tone of his party leader and finance minister, Lars Klingbeil.

Klingbeil struck a similar chord at a union congress of IG BCE in Hanover last October. More location patriotism—more daring for Germany? After all, the state has provided tax relief and subsidies to strengthen the location and its companies. Is the state to play King Lear in this drama? The destroyer of capital, tax collector, and regulator par excellence?

It is a cynical media game the political class is playing with a population already in fragile spirits. When things deteriorate and policymakers hit a wall, strategies merge: patriotic appeals now oscillate with resentment and envy debates—emotional triggers designed to activate the image of the greedy, rootless entrepreneur, allowing politicians to step out of the line of fire. Outrage becomes a mobilization strategy; moral pressure, a media placebo.

The chancellor himself now regularly reaches for this blunt instrument, driven by poor poll numbers and looming political turbulence. “I am proud of our country,” declares Friedrich Merz, rebranding a culturally eroded and economically bleeding Germany into a communal experience infused with the rhetoric of renewal and freedom.

One can only speculate about the emotional stirrings of the chancellor as he strides through the opulent halls of the Federal Chancellery. Aware that Germany’s governing apparatus—its bureaucratized parliamentarianism and the self-representation of the executive—slowly but steadily approaches, at least in scale and architectural self-staging, dimensions reminiscent of Chinese conditions, the repeated echo of his own voice in endless corridors may well generate a certain well-tempered pride in career achievement.

In starkest contrast to the modest chancellery of the old Bonn Republic, today’s Federal Chancellery symbolizes statism, distance, and elevation.

Media maneuvers such as demanding corporate location patriotism are performative acts of ostentatious helplessness. They aim to channel public mood, deflect the question of responsibility away from policymakers, and stabilize the coalition ahead of crucial state elections.

Yet Berlin’s spin doctors may be mistaken. Friedrich Merz and his colleagues will learn that patriotism cannot be activated by chancellery decree. They may also discover that few Germans, without external pressure, will answer a call to defend a political system that—after years of mass migration, cultural erosion, and ideological restructuring—now asks its citizens to support further ideologically charged projects.

As for entrepreneurs, there seem to be few who still trust politics to resolve an ideologically distorted situation rationally. Patriotism, once the final convincing anchor tying companies to their homeland, has been driven out of Germans in a decades-long purgatory of progressive self-righteousness. Something better than a German insolvency death can now be found almost anywhere.

* * * 

About the author: Thomas Kolbe, a German graduate economist, has worked for over 25 years as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

As gold prices surged more than 230% since 2020, central banks around the world launched one of the largest gold-buying waves in modern history.

For many countries, bullion became more than just a hedge—it became a strategic reserve asset amid rising geopolitical tensions, currency volatility, and growing efforts to diversify away from the U.S. dollar.

Yet not every nation followed the same playbook: some were accumulating gold aggressively, while others were trimming reserves.

This chart, via Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte, ranks the countries that made the biggest net additions and the largest reductions in gold reserves over the past five years.

The data comes from the World Gold Council.

China and Eastern Europe Lead Gold Buying

Together, the top 15 buyers added nearly 2,000 net tonnes of gold to their reserves over the period, underscoring a broad shift in official sector strategy.

China recorded the largest increase in gold reserves over the period, adding more than 350 tonnes. This move aligns with Beijing’s long-running push to diversify reserves away from the U.S. dollar and reduce exposure to Western financial systems, reinforcing gold’s role as a politically neutral anchor within global reserves.

Poland followed China closely in the ranking, increasing its gold holdings by over 300 tonnes as part of a long-term push to bolster monetary security.

Türkiye and India also ranked among the top buyers. Both countries face persistent inflation pressures and currency volatility, making gold an attractive hedge within official reserves.

Emerging Markets Step Up Accumulation

Beyond the largest buyers, several emerging markets made notable additions. Brazil added more than 100 tonnes, while Azerbaijan’s increase came through its sovereign wealth fund, the State Oil Fund of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

Japan, Thailand, Hungary, and Singapore also expanded reserves, signaling broader global interest in gold as a stabilizing asset during periods of economic uncertainty.

Who Reduced Gold Holdings?

While many central banks were building gold stockpiles, a smaller group reduced exposure, highlighting sharply different reserve priorities.

The Philippines recorded the largest reduction, cutting reserves by more than 65 tonnes. Kazakhstan and Sri Lanka also posted significant declines, often reflecting domestic liquidity pressures or active reserve rebalancing during periods of economic stress.

Several European countries, including Germany and Finland, posted modest reductions. Switzerland’s change was minimal, underscoring its generally stable approach to gold management compared with more active buyers elsewhere.

Taken together, the data shows how gold has reasserted itself as a cornerstone of global reserves, even as countries take sharply different paths in preparing for an uncertain monetary future.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out The Rise of Major Currencies Against the USD in 2025 on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Authored by Andrew Korybko,

A new US license is being interpreted as prohibiting Venezuelan energy companies from transactions with China among other countries, which if true, could lead to India purchasing the 642,000 barrels of oil per day that China imported on average last year and thus halving its import of Russian oil.

RT drew attention on social media to the Department of the Treasury’s newly issued “Venezuela General License 48” allowing US companies to provide “goods, technology, software, or services for the exploration, development, or production of oil or gas in Venezuela” with two strings attached.

The first one is that any contract that their partners enter into will be governed under the laws of the US, which segues into the second one prohibiting any transactions with Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and China.

It’s for this reason that RT interpreted the abovementioned license in their tweet as the “US Ban[ning] Venezuelan Oil Producers From Doing Business With Russia & China”.

That’s reasonable since it was explained here that the Trump Doctrine is shaped by Elbridge Colby’s “Strategy of Denial”, which in its simplest form, seeks to deny strategic resources to US rivals such as the previously described countries.

This is especially the case as regards China, the US’ systemic rival, but Trump earlier sent mixed signals.

He recently welcomed Chinese investment in Venezuela’s energy industry, but in retrospect, that might have just been for the sake of managing the Sino-US rivalry amidst their ongoing trade talks.

Trump wants a deal with Xi, which might become much more difficult for his counterpart to agree to if he openly declares his intent for the US to deny China continued access to Venezuela’s strategic resources. It therefore makes sense for the US to quietly implement this policy through its new license instead.

Even prior to its promulgation, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov complained that “our companies are being openly forced out of Venezuela”, so this policy was already being informally implemented by Delcy Rodriguez’s government under US pressure. Apart from Cuba, none of the countries that the US’ new license prohibits transactions with are dependent on Venezuelan energy, but cutting them out of this industry serves another purpose arguably even more strategic than denying them its resources.

Trump boasted earlier this month that India agreed to stop purchasing Russian oil as part of the terms of its trade deal with the US and replace its imports with American and possibly Venezuelan oil instead. It was hitherto assessed prior to the US’ new license that “India Is Expected To Only Slowly Reduce Its Import Of Russian Oil” in no small part due to the Venezuelan Ambassador to China confirming his country’s interest in continuing exports to it and Trump welcoming Chinese investment in this industry.

If RT’s interpretation of the license is correct, and Lavrov believes so after complaining about the US’ new prohibition on Venezuelan energy transactions with Russia during his latest appearance at the Duma, then India could purchase the 642,000 barrels per day of oil (bpd) that China imported on average last year.

That’s more than half of the 1 million bpd that India imported from Russia last month, which could lead to a sharp reduction in the budgetary revenue that Russia expected to receive from such sales.

The US is actively monitoring India’s direct and indirect import of Russian oil per the condition under which it recently lifted last summer’s punitive 25% tariff that was imposed because of these dealings.

Therefore, by cutting China out of the Venezuelan energy industry and consequently enabling India to replace its import of that country’s oil, the US is facilitating India’s rapid reduction of Russian oil imports and might even zero it out if this policy is soon replicated with respect to Iran’s oil exports to China.

What happens when spending $70,000 to signal virtue with your fancy EV goes wrong? FIRE! 

Mercedes-Benz USA has announced a recall of 11,895 electric vehicles due to potentially faulty cells in the automobiles’ high-voltage battery packs that could lead to a fire, like what happened in front of a MBZ dealer in Malaysia in 2024 – though that one was in the middle of charging, while this recall says they can ‘spontaneously catch fire’ either while parked or while driving. 

The move comes after the NHTSA issued a safety recall notice posted on X on Feb. 12 announcing that it affected 1,708 Mercedes-Benz EQB 350 4Matic battery-powered SUVs model years 2022-2024. On top of that, 3,674 Mercedes-Benz EQB 250+ hybrid compact SUVs model years 2023-2024 and 6,513 2022-2024 EQB 300 4Matic vehicles were recalled. 

According to the agency, the vehicles could spontaneously catch fire either while parked or while driving due to an internal short circuit in the automobile’s high-voltage battery power supply. The issue stems from variations in the battery manufacturing process, the notice stated.

“Certain battery cells in the high-voltage battery, from an early production period, are considered to be less robust against different stress factors potentially occurring during the life of the vehicle,” Mercedes-Benz said.

“If a thermal incident were to occur during driving, the driver would be made aware of the issue by a high-voltage battery warning malfunction message in the instrument cluster. Should the thermal incident occur while the vehicle is parked, the driver would not receive a warning.”

In early 2024, an EQB caught fire while charging outside a MBZ dealership in Jahor Bahru. 

As the Epoch Times notes further, the lithium-ion batteries were manufactured by China-based Farasis Energy.

Mercedes-Benz said that after being made aware of vehicles catching fire it issued a software update to remedy the problem. However, in November 2025, two vehicles located in Europe combusted after receiving the software update, triggering an in-depth analysis of the efficacy of the software remedy in markets outside of China.

In December 2025 and January 2026, Mercedes-Benz began working with the battery supplier to tear down and test battery packs and cells. It also conducted an on-site inspection of production methods at Farasis Energy’s manufacturing facilities in Ganzhou in southeastern China.

“MBAG concluded that the effectiveness of the current software update to sufficiently reduce the risk of thermal incidents cannot be fully confirmed for all affected vehicles,” the NHTSA recall notice said.

To date, Mercedes-Benz has received reports of two vehicle fires in the United States that were attributable to faulty battery cells. The company said it would replace battery packs in the recalled vehicles at licensed Mercedes-Benz dealerships at no cost to owners.

Owners of recalled vehicles are advised to only charge their vehicles to 80 percent until they can get their battery packs replaced.

“Out of an abundance of caution, customers are additionally advised to park their vehicles outside,” the recall notice said.

MBAG said a change in production procedures eliminates the issue with faulty cells for vehicles produced after July 31, 2024. Owners will be notified of the recall campaign beginning on Feb. 27. The NHTSA recall number is 26V073.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Major unrest looms as political leaders kick the can down the road on immigration and integration failures, according to a seasoned military expert.

Retired Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, has issued a stark warning about the trajectory of social cohesion in Europe and Britain. Speaking to Israeli broadcaster i24News, Kemp highlighted how integration breakdowns have worsened over the past two decades, paving the way for inevitable conflict.

“Things have been getting worse, getting bad, for many years, and they are only going to get worse,” Kemp stated, pointing to the reluctance of governments to confront the issues head-on.

Kemp, who also served in counter-insurgency operations in Northern Ireland and held intelligence roles in Westminster and the Cabinet Office, emphasized the lack of political will to address what he termed the “Islamification” of the UK. 

“No government, the government now or any prospective government of the UK, has the guts to stop it,” he said. “If they want to take strong action to prevent the Islamification of the UK, it’s going to mean big trouble for them. They don’t want trouble, they look four years ahead, they will kick the can down the road to someone else.”

This political shortsightedness, according to Kemp, is fueling the risk of “civil war in Europe.” He described a potential scenario resembling Northern Ireland but on a far more intense scale, where “you have the indigenous British and some of the immigrant population and the British government all on three different sides fighting against each other.”

The officer attributed the slim chances of maintaining social order to democratic dysfunction and a lack of real choice for voters. 

“The big problem that British people have is they don’t have political choice. We don’t really live in a democracy,” Kemp asserted. “Whatever party you vote for, you get the same policies. That applies also to immigration and to the way in which the Islamic population is allowed to grow in numbers and dominance.”

Kemp also noted the rise of Islamist politics in the UK, with Gaza-focused candidates winning seats in high-migration areas. “We’re going to see much more of that in the next election,” he predicted, referencing concerns within the Labour Party, including Health Minister Wes Streeting’s private message: “I fear we’re in big trouble here – and I am toast at the next election. We just lost our safest ward in Redbridge (51% Muslim, Ilford S) to a Gaza independent. At this rate, I don’t think we’ll hold either of the two Ilford seats.”

This isn’t the first time Kemp has raised the alarm. As we highlighted last year, he previously warned of growing unrest over mass migration and allegations of child sexual abuse by new arrivals, stating: “There’s only so much that I think people can take of that, and they’ve been very quiet up until now, the people in the UK have not really raised their voices against this, or in a very limited way only. But the more it develops, and it is going to develop more and more, the more unrest we are going to see.”

In that earlier commentary, Kemp went further: “And they have no option. I’m not encouraging or supporting this, but I think the people will feel they have no option than to take action into their own hand rather than rely on political leaders who are doing nothing, in their eyes. I think there is every likelihood, I don’t know what the timeframe is, but I would go so far as to not just predict civil unrest, but civil war in the UK in the coming years if this situation continues which I believe it will.”

Kemp’s views align with broader expert analyses on Europe’s fracturing societies. King’s College London Professor David Betz has warned that countries like the UK, France, and Sweden are already in a “pre civil war” state, with “dire social instability,” “economic decline,” and “elite pusillanimity” as key precursors. 

Betz stated: “We’re already past the tipping point, is my estimation… we are past the point at which there is a political offramp. We are past the point at which normal politics is able to solve the problem… almost every plausible way forward from here involves some kind of violence in my view.”

Betz further urged: “I would probably avoid big cities. I would suggest you reduce your exposure to big cities if you are able,” and concluded: “Things are bad now, but they are going to get very much worse. Hopefully after they will get better, but you will have to go through the period of very much worse before you get there.”

Echoing these concerns, academic Michael Rainsborough described Britain’s path as intentional rather than accidental, rooted in elite strategies of division. 

He referenced historical policies under Tony Blair aimed “to rub the Right’s nose in diversity,” and warned of a “descent into what we termed dirty war,” involving internal repression and low-intensity strife.

Rainsborough highlighted the erosion of national sentiment, noting public spaces filled with “Pride flags, Palestinian flags, Ukrainian flags — anything, it seems, but the Cross of St George.” 

He cautioned that such dynamics could lead to “Balkanisation — or, in the local idiom, Ulsterisation,” drawing parallels to Northern Ireland’s troubles.

These repeated warnings from military and academic figures underscore a pattern: unchecked mass migration, elite detachment from public will, and a refusal to enforce borders are eroding the fabric of Western societies. 

As globalist policies prioritize appeasement over security, the pushback from ordinary citizens grows—demanding leaders who put their own people first, before the powder keg ignites.

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