Rob1855

Twelve tons of KitKat stolen. The perps may soon be behind bars. dw.com/en/nestle-prai…

French national anthem “La Marseillaise” sung in the hangar bay of the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, currently off the coast of Crete, after President Macron’s speech on the deployment of the French Navy in the Middle East. via @Le_Figaro

🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Ex-NFLer Robert Nkemdiche was busted for allegedly smuggling groceries. Full details: tmz.me/ZRpYVXe

This is potentially the biggest Iran story nobody is talking about: the global insurance market may be heading toward a systemic crisis. Here’s why… Most people don’t realize London isn’t just a financial center it’s THE center of global insurance. Lloyd’s underwrites ~40% of the world’s marine cargo. Ship sinks, port gets bombed, canal gets blocked the bill lands in London. This is why the UK punches above its weight. Not the Royal Navy. Not diplomacy. Insurance. Control insurance, control trade. And London doesn’t just control the 90% of global trade that moves by sea. Lloyd’s and the London market are major insurers of almost everything skyscrapers, factories, ports, satellites, entire supply chains. You can’t participate in public markets or raise large amounts of capital without insurance. Now, the normal playbook for war risk is repricing, not cancellation. Canceling coverage entirely is a massive escalation in underwriting posture. It signals something beyond risk, it signals uncertainty so deep the underwriter can’t even price it. The question everyone should be asking: why? Why not just jack up premiums and make a fortune off the crisis like they did in the Black Sea off Ukraine? To answer that, you have to understand WHY London has maintained a stranglehold on global insurance while losing nearly submarket related to ships. The answer: better intelligence. It is no coincidence that MI6 headquarters sits directly across the Thames from the @IMOHQ, the world’s maritime regulator & a short distance from Lloyd’s itself. I have no proof of a direct pipeline, but it has long been speculated in the industry that intelligence flows from MI6 to Lloyd’s. Having the best intel in the world would be the single greatest competitive advantage any insurer could possess: the ability to price risk that competitors can only guess at. Here’s the problem: the majority of MI6’s intel doesn’t come from its own agents. It comes from Five Eyes the alliance comprising the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. And within 5Eyes, the dominant partner is obvious. The CIA, NSA, NRO, etc generate the lion’s share of intel. So if Lloyd’s pricing advantage flows from MI6, and MI6’s best intelligence flows from the US… what happens when that data pipeline gets throttled? All indications are that @Keir_Starmer was blindsided by the size and scope of the US/Israel strikes on Iran this weekend. That alone tells you something about the current state of transatlantic intelligence sharing. And we know there has been serious anger in Washington over the UK’s decision to sell Diego Garcia, home to America’s most strategically important base in the Indian Ocean, to Mauritius. It is not a huge leap to conclude that the submarine cables linking Langley to London have gone dark, or at minimum have been significantly throttled. What this means for UK national security is a question for the Brits. But what it means for EVERY company globally that’s insured through the London market has massive implications for the entire financial system. Because most large insurers worldwide don’t do independent intelligence work. They index off Lloyd’s rates. If you’re insuring a skyscraper in Tokyo, a semiconductor fab in Taiwan, or a port in Argentina you get a Lloyd’s quote, then shop that price around. Other insurers see Lloyd’s number and assume the diligence was done. They price accordingly. This means if London is suddenly flying blind it’s not just Lloyd’s policyholders at risk. It’s the entire global reinsurance chain. The cancellation of war risk coverage on ships isn’t the crisis. It’s the canary. If this hypothesis is correct, we could be looking at a systemic repricing event across global insurance markets…. the kind of cascading uncertainty that defined 2008 and COVID. Watch Lloyd’s. Watch reinsurance spreads. What Five Eyes. That’s where this story, and possibly Wall Street, breaks. CC @BillAckman

(Reuters) - The Trump administration plans to meet with executives from the biggest U.S. defense contractors at the White House on Friday to discuss accelerating weapons production, as the Pentagon works to replenish supplies after strikes on Iran and several other recent military efforts, five people familiar with the plan told @MichaelStone Companies including Lockheed Martin LMT.N and Raytheon parent RTX RTX.N, along with other key suppliers, have been invited to attend the meeting, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the discussions are private. The meeting underscores the urgency felt in Washington to shore up weapons stocks after the Iran operation drew heavily on munitions. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and Israel began military operations in Gaza, the U.S. has drawn down billions of dollars' worth of weapons stockpiles, including artillery systems, ammunition and anti-tank missiles. The conflict in Iran has consumed longer-range missiles than those furnished to Kyiv. At least one of the people said the gathering was expected to center on pressing weapons makers to move faster to boost output. Lockheed, the Pentagon and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. RTX declined to comment. In a social media post Monday, Trump said there was a "virtually unlimited supply" of U.S. munitions and that "wars can be fought "forever," and very successfully, using just these supplies." The White House meeting comes as Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg has been leading Pentagon work in recent days on a supplemental budget request of around $50 billion that could be released as soon as Friday, one of the people said. The new money would pay for replacing the weapons used in recent conflicts including those in the Middle East. The figure is preliminary and could change. The push to boost production has intensified following U.S. military strikes on Iran, where the U.S. deployed Tomahawk cruise missiles, F-35 stealth fighters and low-cost one-way attack drones on Saturday. Tomahawk missile maker Raytheon has a new agreement with the Pentagon to eventually ramp production to 1,000 units annually. The Pentagon currently plans to buy 57 of the missiles in 2026 at an average cost of $1.3 million each. The administration has been steadily ratcheting up pressure on defense contractors to prioritize production over shareholder payouts. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January to identify contractors deemed to be underperforming on contracts while distributing profits to shareholders. The Pentagon is expected to release a list of underperforming contractors. Companies named will have 15 days to submit board-approved plans to correct the situation. If those plans are judged insufficient, the Pentagon can pursue enforcement actions, including contract terminations.

BREAKING: Atlanta Braves designated hitter Jurickson Profar is facing a 162-game suspension after testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug for the second time, sources told ESPN. News free at ESPN: espn.com/mlb/story/_/id…