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The Talbot Fire has grown across 75 acres near French Meadows Reservoir, putting nearby residents on alert as crews battle the blaze.

A Massachusetts federal judge tossed the Justice Department's lawsuit against Harvard University for having “turned a blind eye to antisemitism and discrimination against Jews and Israelis” on campus.

It features fan favorites of the country's top diplomat dressed as an Iranian ayatollah and a "Star Wars" rebel on the ice planet Hoth.

Diesel Crack Spread Explodes To Record As Wall Street Warns Of Refined-Products "Perfect Storm"

Wall Street Warns About "Perfect Storm" Diesel Crunch: 

• Goldman's Daan Struyven Shows Global Diesel Exports Crashing
• Citi's Anthony Yuen Warns: Global Diesel Inventories "Below 5YR Minimum"
• BofA's Francisco Blanch Warns: "Diesel's Perfect Summer Storm" Unfolding 
• Jefferies' Sam Burwell Warns: Hormuz Shock "Manifesting Itself In Cracks, Not Crude" 

Brent crude remains hostage to daily geopolitical developments in the Gulf region more than five months into the conflict, with muted traffic through the Strait of Hormuz (read the latest US-Iran wrap) constraining tanker flows and driving refined-product markets to new, dire extremes as they become the focal point of the energy crisis.

Brent briefly fell below $80 a barrel last week as prospects improved for an Iran-Oman deal to reopen the maritime chokepoint, before rebounding toward $90 as negotiations stalled this week.

Hormuz traffic has stabilized at about 10 crossings a day, down from 30 to 40 before the latest escalation. Liquids flows are averaging roughly 4 million barrels a day, well below public estimates of 9 million, according to HSBC analysts.

We earlier cited Jefferies analyst Sam Burwell, who warned clients:

"What this all shows is that global oil-market tightness is manifesting itself in cracks, not crude, at least for now. Wide cracks suggest refining runs should remain strong, however, which is positive for crude. 

By lunchtime Thursday, the front-month US diesel crack spread (HOCL1 on the Terminal) had exceeded the $97 level reached in mid-March, when the US-Iran conflict was just three weeks old, and was closing in on $100. That signals extreme tightness in diesel.

Diesel crack spread hits record high, just shy of $100 https://t.co/pxNKK1OUeR pic.twitter.com/uAciv62yPk

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 13, 2026

Francisco Blanch, head of commodities at Bank of America, warned clients in a note earlier titled "Diesel's Perfect Summer Storm" that the industrial fuel is "materially disrupted in 3 of 4 major regions" around the world.

As we recently warned (see report: The crude reality of oil markets), supply disruptions are amplifying the squeeze on petroleum markets.

Three of the world's four major refining hubs remain impaired for one reason or another.

First, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and adjacent military activity has reduced Middle East fuel exports, with the recent Houthi strike on Saudi Arabia's Jazan refinery being the latest example.

Second, record Russian refining disruptions following Ukrainian strikes have removed significant volumes from the global diesel pool. 

Third, fearful of potential domestic shortages, China has yet to restart petroleum product exports to the Asia region. As such, Europe has increasingly relied on record US exports to fill the gap.

Yet those flows are drawing down already tight US inventories, the only major hub open for business, creating a global competition for fuel that is pushing diesel cracks back toward record seasonal highs.

Beyond Ukraine drone-striking Russian energy assets, Moscow has decided to ban diesel exports; yet again, more evidence of dwindling global supplies: 

• Russia Bans Diesel Exports, Assuring Even Higher Prices

One month later, Diesel spreads hit all time high https://t.co/3GROS40xsr

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 13, 2026

Separately, Anthony Yuen, managing director and head of energy strategy at Citi Research, warned clients that global observed diesel inventories are "below the five-year minimum and not substantially lower than this," adding, "The last time inventories were at a similar level was in 2022, when gasoil cracks globally were about $20/bbl lower than currently observed, and they were meaningfully lower in 2018."

Goldman's commodities expert Daan Struyven told clients earlier today:

Since the Iran war began, we have viewed the Hormuz shock as more disruptive for refined products, especially diesel, than for crude.

Near-record prompt diesel margins have already triggered a strong supply response from refiners with spare capacity, including higher utilization and a shift in yields toward diesel. As a result, outright diesel shortages still look unlikely this year.

Struyven showed that global diesel exports are crashing.

Kpler data suggest that Persian Gulf flows are down 80% year over year for diesel, versus 48% for crude.

BofA's Blanch noted, "In short, absent a meaningful supply recovery, the diesel market appears poised to stay tight, volatile, and expensive well into next year."

The clearest signal of how far the energy crisis has spread, even as Brent and WTI remain relatively calm, is now visible in refined-product markets, particularly diesel, where the blowout in crack spreads signals a severe global supply squeeze.

Hormuz Shock "Manifesting Itself In Cracks, Not Crude," Jefferies Says

Brent crude futures held near recent highs of $90 a barrel before fading to around $87 early Thursday morning, as traders awaited progress toward reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Stalled US-Iran negotiations and tightening global fuel supplies continued to support prices and concern some top energy experts, who warn of a looming supply shock. 

US-Iran talks remain deadlocked to end the week as the Trump administration maintains its blockade of Iranian ports and Tehran demands compensation for war-related damage. Pakistan, which has served as a mediator, said the broader peace talks had stalled.

Late Wednesday, President Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that the USA has "total control" over the Strait of Hormuz and "I think we will keep it." It's also yet more confirmation that he's opting for economic siege warfare while the US military campaign is on hold. 

Polymarket odds for "US-Iran 60-day negotiation period extended?" currently stand at around 25%, down from 80% one week ago.

//--> //--> US-Iran 60 day negotiation period extended?
Yes 25% · No 76%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

So far, Brent crude is headed for a weekly advance of nearly 5% as a near-term resolution to the US-Iran conflict remains murky and Ukrainian and Russian attacks on energy infrastructure tighten oil and, more critically, diesel markets.

Last week, our note titled "Winter Is Coming" for Europe outlined how the energy-stricken continent faces a twin diesel and natural gas crunch.

Samantha Dart, co-head of global commodities research at Goldman Sachs, told Bloomberg TV early last week that the global diesel-supply crunch is "what keeps her up at night."

Saxo Markets strategist Charu Chanana said volatility will remain elevated until Hormuz reopens and the outlook for production becomes clearer.

Making matters worse, the International Energy Agency released a report on Wednesday that forecast a 1.8 million-barrel-a-day deficit this quarter, more than double its previous estimate. The agency also warned that elevated prices are beginning to crush demand and projected the widest annual supply shortfall in five years.

Offsetting higher prices was bearish US inventory data showing that crude stockpiles surged by 17.4 million barrels last week, the largest increase since January 2023, as exports weakened and imports from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela increased.

Jefferies analyst Sam Burwell, who specializes in oil, gas and energy infrastructure equities, wrote in a note Wednesday that showed oil-market extremes in three charts:

Three Pictures Worth 1,900 Characters - Oil Market Extremes

We return from an earnings hiatus (and step outside Canada) to show some current extremes in global oil markets. Chinese crude imports bounced a bit in July but remain far below the prior run rate. While crude is well off its highs and never made a historic spike, diesel cracks are far above prior all-time highs (gasoline is strong, too). China remains the wild card, but we think this setup is constructive for crude (and, by extension, the Canadian energy complex).

Chart #1 shows monthly Chinese crude imports. The massive ~5 mmbpd downshift in imports following the Hormuz closure demonstrated the extent of China's demand elasticity. July did see a ~1 mmbpd m/m increase from June's low. With somewhat higher crude prices and fewer vessels moving through Hormuz more recently, we'll see what August and beyond bring. However, we note that a return to the ~11 mmbpd five-year average would imply ~3 mmbpd of incremental demand.

Chart #3 shows that while diesel and gasoline prices are, of course, elevated, they are much closer to, or within, prior historical highs. Notably, clean-product prices in 2008 were similar to today's on a nominal basis (and therefore higher in real terms).

What this all shows is that global oil-market tightness is manifesting itself in cracks, not crude, at least for now. Wide cracks suggest refining runs should remain strong, however, which is positive for crude. While US refinery utilization dipped w/w, it remains near 20-year seasonal highs.

China is the crude-demand wild card, but with such wide cracks, one wonders how long it will be before the Chinese begin importing more crude to export more refined products (or simply replenish their own product/petchem stocks). Imports in the coming months will be telling as to how elastic China's buying remains.

In short, unless the Strait of Hormuz reopens soon and fuel supplies recover meaningfully, the focus will remain on refined-product markets, particularly diesel. The critical industrial fuel is being squeezed globally, and as Bank of America's commodities team warned, "the diesel market appears poised to stay tight, volatile, and expensive well into next year."

Professional subscribers can read a lot more energy content at our new Marketdesk.ai portal. 

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 12:50

Robert Shageev, a former Ukrainian submarine commander who defected to Russia, was killed on Thursday when a Russian woman acting on Kyiv's behalf blew him up with a bomb hidden inside a trash bin, officials said.

“For $58 you can have your very own floss up you’re a—hole," she joked.

“For $58 you can have your very own floss up you’re a—hole," she joked.

The billionaire said he believes the firms' earnings are poised for strong growth, which he views as the greatest driver of investment value over time.

A 17-year-old high school football player died late Wednesday after suffering a medical emergency during practice.

The Blink-182 drummer recounted a "huge blowout" fight that ended his first marriage in his new Hulu documentary.

The Blink-182 drummer recounted a "huge blowout" fight that ended his first marriage in his new Hulu documentary.

The fisherman desperately tried to peel off the octopus as it spread around his face — at one point covering his mouth with is powerful suckers and refusing to budge.

Treasury Department Ends Ownership Reporting For US Small Businesses

Authored by Owen Evans via The Epoch Times,

The Treasury Department on Tuesday finalized a rule permanently exempting U.S. companies and individuals from reporting beneficial ownership information to authorities, rolling back Biden-era Corporate Transparency Act requirements.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent testifies before the Senate Committee on Appropriations in Washington on June 3, 2026. Madalina Kilroy /The Epoch Times

"Today's action is a victory for common sense and American small businesses," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement on Aug. 11.

"President [Donald] Trump promised to cut red tape, and this final rule delivers. Treasury is eliminating a burdensome reporting requirement for millions of law-abiding business owners without compromising our national security."

The original rules, implemented under the Biden administration, had applied to tens of millions of mostly small businesses.

The Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) is the 2021 law requiring shell companies to disclose owners, and the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is the enforcer.

The new policy means that U.S. companies and U.S individuals no longer have to tell FinCEN who owns them.

However, foreign reporting companies will have to disclose beneficial ownership information for foreign individuals, the department said in a statement.

The Treasury Department said that FinCEN will also delete previously reported information by Americans from the government's beneficial ownership information database.

FinCEN had previously implemented rules requiring certain companies to report beneficial ownership data as part of anti-corruption and anti-money laundering efforts backed by lawmakers and the Treasury Department under former President Joe Biden.

The latest move adopts the exemptions set out in the interim final rule issued in March 2025, part of a broader push by the Trump administration. At the time, the Treasury announced that it would not enforce the CTA against "U.S. citizens, domestic reporting companies, or their beneficial owners."

Under the beneficial ownership information scheme, small businesses had to submit personal information about their beneficial owners, including name, address, birth date, and other information from a piece of identification such as a driver's license.

"Having a centralized database of beneficial ownership information will eliminate critical vulnerabilities in our financial system and allow us to tackle the scourge of illicit finance enabled by opaque corporate structures," then-Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement about it in 2024.

Estimates suggested that the reporting requirement would have applied to approximately 32 million businesses, including corporations and limited liability companies.

Failure to comply would have come with sizable penalties.

Businesses and their owners faced civil penalties of up to $591 for each day they did not file. They could have also endured $10,000 in criminal fines and faced up to two years in prison if regulators found that businesses submitted false information or willfully did not file, correct, or update beneficial ownership information reports.

In May, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report that recommended that the Treasury identify potential actions to address the risks posed by the domestic reporting company and U.S. person exemptions.

"Illicit actors frequently use corporate structures such as shell companies to launder criminal proceeds. These structures can be exploited because they allow the identities of people who benefit from or control them to be hidden from law enforcement," it said.

It also said that Congress and law enforcement should be provided with "highly useful information that addresses these risks."

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, said rolling back the reporting requirements increased the risk of organized criminal activity.

"This is a gift to cartels, criminals, and U.S. adversaries that exploit shell companies to move millions through our financial system," she said in an Aug. 11 post on X.

"Secretary Bessent should testify in front of Congress to explain his decision to put our national security at risk."

Andrew Moran and Reuters contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 12:40

When it comes to maintaining brain health, daily brain games like Sudoku and crosswords aren't enough to protect the mind as you age.

"I'm not gonna get into exactly what I saw. It's dark. It's real dark."

Refsnyder had the chance to sign with a division leader.

Multiple warnings have been issued for popular beaches across Los Angeles on Wednesday due to a silent killer.

LIS Technologies' New $6.2M Oak Ridge Building Is The Missing Link In Nano's Fuel-To-Reactor Stack

LIS Technologies just bought the building that makes the Nano Nuclear vertical-integration story look more like a fuel cycle, instead of a slide deck.

The check for $6.2 million purchased K-1580, a 37,803-square-foot, three-story, newly renovated facility at 150 Americus Way on the historic K-25 Enrichment Site of East Tennessee's Technology Park Heritage Center in Oak Ridge, best known as the birth place of the Manhattan Project. It sits next to LIST’s leased K-1330 test-demonstration hall and complements the 206-acre “LIST Island” parcel where the company plans a $1.4 billion commercial laser-enrichment plant.

Jay Yu, Executive Chairman and CEO of LIST as well as Founder and Chairman of the publicly traded Nano Nuclear Energy, called Oak Ridge "the Silicon Valley of Nuclear." For once the geography matches the org chart.

The stack Nano and LIST have been drawing looks like this:

Feedstock → laser enrichment → deconversion → fabrication → reactors → transport → space.

K-1580 is where the middle of that chain is supposed to live.

Christo Liebenberg, LIST president and co-founder, said the building will host a pilot plant for the company’s SMILE program (Stable and Medical Isotope Laser Enrichment), office space for more than 100 additional employees, industrialization of critical laser-enrichment components, and a UF6 deconversion pilot.

COO Lloyd Jollay was more specific about why deconversion is the point:

“The facility also offers dedicated laboratory space for investigating UF6 deconversion processes. Integrating deconversion capabilities with uranium enrichment will create a more comprehensive fuel cycle solution and address key needs expressed by a number of advanced reactor developers.”

Those reactor developers are not hypothetical, they sit in the same building.

Nano’s lineup is KRONOS (stationary high-temperature gas-cooled MMR, now in NRC construction-permit territory via the University of Illinois deployment), ZEUS (solid-core battery reactor), and LOKI (portable, being prepped for space). Nano bought Kronos and Loki out of Ultra Safe Nuclear’s bankruptcy at the end of 2024, then hired Ameresco to engineer them toward commercialization. The fuel those machines need is LEU for the existing US fleet and HALEU for the SMRs. That is exactly what LIST’s CRISLA-3G laser process is being built to make.

The two companies already have the contract language. Nano invested in LIST in 2024 with an enriched-uranium supply agreement. Under the collaboration, Nano is supposed to develop the upstream capabilities to feed LIST UF6, then take LIST’s enriched UF6 into an integrated fuel-manufacturing process so the same molecules can land in Nano’s cores, or be sold into the wider industry. Nano is also a key subcontractor on LIST’s DOE award: LIST was one of six names on the up-to-$3.4 billion LEU Enrichment Acquisition IDIQ, with Nano bringing the licensing and advanced-reactor paperwork. They are related parties through overlapping ownership and officers. Yu is the overlap that matters.

Put K-1580 into that map and the campus reads left-to-right:

1. K-1330 (leased demo) - LIST’s test loop. Tennessee already issued a radioactive-material license so they can bring in UF6 and run the laser. NRC engagement for classified-handling procedures is underway on the demo.
2. K-1580 (just bought) - SMILE medical/stable isotopes, UF6 deconversion pilot, Phase II enrichment in a prototypical environment, component manufacturing, 100 desks. The deconversion step is what turns enriched hexafluoride into something a fabricator, or a KRONOS, can actually use.
3. LIST Island (206 acres, former Duct Island) - the commercial LEU-3 / Project F.U.E.L. hall. Groundbreaking still targeted for 2026, subject to licensing, permitting, and a final investment decision. Commercial operations still “before 2030.”
4. Nano’s other pillars - fuel fabrication (still the stated intent, no site announced), Secured Transportation Services for moving the material, and NANO Nuclear Space, which wants ZEUS and LOKI in cis-lunar power and eventually propulsion.

Medical isotopes are not a distraction in this narrative. Hospitals need precursor stable and enriched isotopes; quantum and advanced electronics want the same separation physics. SMILE lets the laser earn its keep on non-weapons-grade product while the uranium line walks up the TRL ladder. LIST says CRISLA-3G is at TRL-4, about 75% of the way to TRL-5, and moving toward TRL-6. Phase 2 of the pilot is still the gate before anyone should pretend they have commercial enrichment economics. That is their language, not ours.

What this week’s check actually does is nail a street address onto the middle of the stack. Enrichment at K-1330, deconversion and isotopes at K-1580, commercial plant on LIST Island, reactors at Nano, logistics at STS, space at NNS. One chairman, one Oak Ridge campus, and a fuel molecule that is supposed to never leave the family.

Whether the NRC, DOE, and the fabricator that does not yet have a building cooperate is the next chapter, but at least the org chart is no longer the bottleneck. The physical campus is starting to look like the chart.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 12:20

Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport will install Islamic foot wash stations inside bathrooms at the facility, according to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation.

An unabashed, unapologetic Peter Pan super fan is “harassing" the Disneyland actors portraying the beloved leader of Neverland, social media fears.