Former Marine Gen. James Mattis keeps being mentioned as a possible nominee for Secretary of Defense:
The clearest consensus inside the transition team is for Gen. Mattis, a former war commander who has long voiced concerns about the security threat posed by Iran.
With the Trumpflation euphoria easing back slightly overnight, leading to a modest paring in the USD index and US Treasury yields, Asian and European stocks rose, while US equity futures rebounded to just shy of new all time highs, as crude jumped on renewed optimism that OPEC will agree to cut output; Italian equities underperformed ahead of the Italian referendum; metals rebounded from last week’s losses as yields dropped and the dollar halted its longest winning streak versus the euro.
A professional Iranian footballer has been banned from domestic competition for six months after wearing bright yellow SpongeBob trousers in public. The morality committee of Iran’s football association suspended Sosha Makani after seeing a picture of him wearing what appears to be a pair of SpongeBob SquarePants on social media. Vice Sports reports: The federation’s morality committee was responsible for handing down the ban, after deeming Sosha Makani’s trousers inappropriate.
Back in mid-April, when Iran was desperate to start exporting the millions of barrels it was pumping each day out of the ground, it found it has an unexpected problem: not only did it not have enough spare tankers, but few if any shipping companies were willing to move the cargo.
There were two key reasons for this.
Submitted by Rakesh Upadhyay via OilPrice.com,
Traditional rivals, Saudi Arabia and Iran, continue to fight to prove their supremacy in OPEC. Neither gives up an opportunity to hurt the other, whenever and wherever they can, and oil seems to be their favourite playground.
With Saudi Arabia scuttling any chances of a production freeze in Doha in April, Iran has followed suit by thwarting attempts by Saudi Arabia to introduce a production ceiling on OPEC production in Thursday’s meeting held in Vienna.