United States

Via Erico Matias Tavares of Sinclair & Co.,

China as a Superpower – An Interview with Prof. Toshi Yoshihara

Dr. Toshi Yoshihara is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining CSBA, he held the John A. van Beuren Chair of Asia-Pacific Studies and was an affiliate member of the China Maritime Studies Institute at the Naval War College, where he taught strategy for ten years.

Via Daniel Mitchell of The Foundation for Economic Education,

When I warn about the fiscal and economic consequences of America’s poorly designed entitlement programs (as well as the impact of demographic changes), I regularly suggest that the United States is on a path to become Greece.

Because of Greece’s horrible economy, this link has obvious rhetorical appeal.

President Trump is deploying nuclear bombers to the North Korean border amid fears that an all-out war will break out between the U.S. and North Korea soon. Trump has ordered military chiefs to send B-1 and B-52 bombers, equipped with nuclear weapons, to the Korean peninsula, following Kim Jong-un’s series of missile launches recently. It is thought that Pyongyang’s most recent launch of four ballistic missiles into the seas near Japan this week prompted the decision to take military action against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

All it took for OPEC to panic, was the sharpest drop in oil prices since last summer, sending WTI not only back under $50, but also wiping out all gains since the November Vienna "supply cut" deal.

As tensions between the U.S. and Iran continue to mount, the semi-official news agency Tasnim is reporting that Iran's Revolutionary Guard has successfully conducted yet another ballistic missile test, this time from a navy vessel.  Called the Hormuz 2, these latest missiles are designed to destroy moving targets at sea at ranges up to 300 km (180 miles).

Reports on the latest test quotes Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the IRGC's Aerospace Force, who confirmed that "the naval ballistic missile called Hormuz 2 successfully destroyed a target which was 250 km away."