Aggregator

"When you have an addiction, there's not a lot of things that are more powerful than that drug," Paul said of Mortensen.

"When you have an addiction, there's not a lot of things that are more powerful than that drug," Paul said of Mortensen.

Aaron Rodgers went deep Thursday, bringing up old stories including his engagement to actress Shailene Woodley.

The Tory Burch co-founder has listed his renovated Water Mill estate for $39.5 million after buying it for a reported $28 million in 2021.

Copper Stocks Hammered As White House Tariff Doubts Rattle Metals Trade

Copper future and related stocks plunged on Thursday morning after a Reuters report said that the White House's "copper tariff plan stalls amid affordability concerns." 

The Trump administration has yet to decide whether to impose tariffs on refined copper, sending copper prices around the world to record highs this summer as physical copper flooded US warehouses. 

The report from the outlet:

The White House has not yet made a decision on refined copper tariffs as officials juggle concerns that higher prices for the red metal could raise manufacturing costs against ‌the potential benefits of encouraging more domestic mining, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The hesitation comes as the administration is increasingly focused on affordability ahead of November's midterm elections, with President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers facing pressure to demonstrate that their economic policies are lowering — rather than raising — costs for American consumers and businesses.

The report is unwinding the tariff trade risk premium, with US copper prices sinking 4.6%. 

Freeport-McMoRan fell 8%, Southern Copper dropped 7% and Teck Resources slid 7.9%. Ero Copper declined 8.6%, Capstone Copper lost 8.2% and First Quantum Minerals retreated 6.4%.

"Today's news should further close the CME-LME arbitrage which has previously benefited companies that sell US copper, including Freeport (~1/3 US copper sales), and is also negative for the LME copper price," Crittenden wrote in a note to clients. 

Goldman commodity specialist James McGeoch told clients:

China has the Rare Earth, increasingly US has the Copper. The affordability issue is subjective. Inflation driven majority by Energy not metals (See Hot China CPI/PPI this week was majority energy). Onshoring manufacturing requires reliable supply chains. Cost inflation has driven  incentive prices higher and a big chunk of the copper move is mine supply issues, scrap tightness. Look at the supply story - Ali at $3,300, Zinc at $4k, all supply stories, Copper is the same.. We all watch Copper TC's, take a look at Zinc and LEad, also at unprecedented record highs. This is a Supply story.

Think about it like this....If you're worried about US manufacturing, US steel prices run at 2.5x Asian prices. Copper trades at a more modest 10-15% premium......Copper is an issue for the build out of electrification. The administration clearly cares about

First impulse is to sell US leaders like FCX.US, SCCO.US have multiple asks on buying the dip here in AAL.LN and GLEN.LN . GLEN is a Copper stock with an energy put and a marketing tailwind (and Zinc and all the others, dont forget freight!). ... Commodity desk mostly seen buying vol, 18v on Monday, to 20v (Tue ATH) to bid on 22v just now....I DO NOT PERSONALLY BELIEVE ANYTHING HAS CHANGED AND I AM NOT ADJUSTING MY POSITIONS. I AM LONG. We know there is accumulated length, we also know this mkt loves to utterly punish anyone that shows the slightest sign of weakness/nervousness.

Three charts...Copper arb (in below1st arb approx $150 live or like 1% implied, has halved this am), Physical inventory positions, and investor (Managed money) positions.

As of 10 a.m. ET, Goldman's US Metals basket was down nearly 3%. The copper tariffs report spread weakness into the broader metals trade. 

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/10/2026 - 11:35

Big Dom could be in big trouble.

"There Is No Day After Tomorrow"; Bessent Warns Of Consequences To Losing AI Arms Race To China

Authored by Arthur Zhang via The Epoch Times,

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the United States cannot afford to fall behind China in artificial intelligence, warning that a Chinese lead would outweigh other U.S. advantages.

"Beating China - there is no day after tomorrow if China wins at this," Bessent said on Sept. 9 at Breitbart News's "State of the Economy" event in Washington.

"If they were to pull ahead of us on AI, then nothing else matters."

Bessent made the remarks while answering a question about opposition to data centers and the need to expand the infrastructure required for AI development.

On the same day, the National Security Agency, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and FBI issued a joint advisory accusing six China-based AI companies of conducting industrial-scale campaigns to extract capabilities from U.S. frontier AI models.

The agencies named DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun, and Z.AI, saying the companies had extracted billions of tokens through millions of requests to frontier models including Claude, GPT, Gemini, and Grok since at least late 2024.

Agencies Detail Model Distillation

Knowledge distillation is a machine learning technique in which one model is trained using the outputs of another. The technique is commonly used legitimately, including to develop smaller or less expensive models.

The advisory alleged, however, that the six companies engaged in "aggressive, malicious, and targeted" distillation at an industrial scale to extract restricted proprietary functions and capabilities from U.S. models. The NSA said the companies were systematically extracting U.S. model capabilities to train their own systems.

According to the advisory, the companies distributed their activity across model providers, cloud platforms, and other infrastructure to avoid detection. Some used third-party services to relay requests to U.S. models, allowing them to bypass geographic restrictions and other safeguards, the agencies said.

The agencies assessed that the alleged activity took place "likely with Chinese government awareness." The advisory did not state that Chinese authorities directed the individual campaigns.

It said DeepSeek had allegedly conducted an organized campaign since at least late 2024 to obtain reasoning capabilities, specialized optimizations, and other functions for use in its R1 and V3 models. The agencies also attributed large-scale distillation activity to Alibaba's Qwen models and to models developed by the other four companies.

The agencies said such activity could allow Chinese AI developers to narrow the technology gap while avoiding some of the computing power, electricity, foundational research, and other costs required to independently develop frontier models. The advisory stated that advances in Chinese AI models could also expand military and cyber capabilities.

Beijing rejected the allegations on Sept. 9. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said China's AI development came from domestic technological development and international cooperation.

The Sept. 8 advisory urged American AI companies and infrastructure providers to improve detection of suspicious activity and strengthen coordination across model developers, cloud providers, and application programming interface providers to counter large-scale distillation campaigns.

Earlier Warnings From US AI Companies

The federal advisory follows earlier accusations by American AI developers.

Anthropic said in February that it had identified industrial-scale campaigns by DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax involving more than 16 million exchanges with Claude through approximately 24,000 fraudulent accounts.

The accounts violated its terms of service and regional access restrictions, Anthropic said. It also said that while distillation is a legitimate training method, competitors can misuse it to acquire capabilities developed by other companies without bearing comparable development costs.

OpenAI separately told the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party in February that it had observed activity indicating continued attempts by DeepSeek to distill capabilities from OpenAI and other U.S. frontier models, including through increasingly obfuscated methods intended to make the activity harder to detect.

Data Centers and the AI Race

Bessent tied the competition with China to the U.S. buildout of data centers and other infrastructure needed for AI.

He said the United States currently has the lead because of its technology companies, advanced chips, financing, and startup ecosystem, but argued that development could not be paused.

"We can't pause," Bessent said. "You can't, because the Chinese won't pause."

He criticized technology companies for failing to engage adequately with communities affected by new data-center construction.

Bessent also alleged that some opposition to data-center development involved Chinese "agitprop." He did not identify specific examples for that assertion during the discussion.

He gave data-center developers, hyperscalers, and major AI companies a "D-minus" for community outreach and said they needed to do a better job explaining their projects and potential benefits to residents.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/10/2026 - 11:05

Houthis Seize Yemeni Port Of Mocha, Gaining Greater Leverage Over Bab Al Mandab Strait

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi militants (Ansar Allah) have scored a major victory against Saudi-backed government forces, after the war was fiercely reinvigorated this month, having seized a historic Red Sea port on Thursday which effectively givens the Houthis even greater leverage over the Bab Al Mandab Strait.

The port of Mocha - also spelled Mokha or Al Makha - once stood at the center of the global coffee trade and is a common household name internationally, but now is also the place from where Iranian proxies could further squeeze global energy markets.

According to the latest on the fluid battle lines via Reuters, "The group [Ansar Allah] has launched attacks on the strategic Red Sea islands of Hanish, pushing government forces and their allies south to Dhubab, which sits directly on the strait across from the island of Perim, the Yemeni sources told Reuters on Thursday." And more: "Control of Dhubab and the island is key to gaining hold of the strait, they said."

Earlier in Washington's Operation Epic Fury, the Houthis essentially joined what emerged as a regional conflict in support of Tehran, also announcing a 'siege for siege' on all Saudi exports and shipping. The group had already long opened a war on Israeli and any Tel Aviv-linked ships.

The renewed fight with Saudi Arabia, which has seen Saudi jets bomb 'rebel' locations across Yemen (a return to the much bigger but failed campaign of the last decade which raged since 2015), was the result of recent Houthi ballistic missile and drone attacks on Saudi Aramco facilities, which has caused major operational stoppages.

The Houthis have also at times taken aim at Saudi airports, and multiple cities in the kingdom. Earlier this summer the Saudi air force tried to prevent an Iranian passenger plane from flying to and from Houthi controlled Yemen, an event which also served as a catalyst to the current fighting.

It seems the Houthis are seeking to control the whole western coastline, which would greatly expand their reach in terms of targeting international shipping. Al Jazeera provides the following analysis of the significance of the group's recent gains:

The Ansar Allah Houthis having control of the port of Mocha means they also control the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. This gives the Houthis the eyes, the ears and the pressure to monitor international trade. Bab al-Mandeb is responsible for 10-12 percent of global trade.

Secondly, this also gives them the ability to block any Saudi military reinforcements to the internationally recognized Yemeni government that come through the southern port of Hodeidah.

Thirdly, this also means they will be able to cut off the three main supply lines to government forces stationed in the south of the country and in the central provinces of al-Bayda and al-Dhale.

Fresh unconfirmed reports Thursday say that the Houthis have now actually reached the Red Sea islands of Hanish. If true this would be a further strategic advantage for taking more coastline.

Yemen: The Houthis captured the Red Sea port of Mocha early Thursday after government forces pulled out. Control of the coast lets them threaten Bab el-Mandeb shipping and raises the threat to Saudi Arabia. pic.twitter.com/oDxQdseJbY

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) September 10, 2026

The forces of the internationally recognized Aden-based government have at this point reportedly abandoned their military positions west of Taiz and south of Mocha.

Saudi allies, especially Pakistan, have been warning of some kind of intervention on Riyadh's behalf, based on the Mecca Defense Pact. The pact between Riyadh, Islamabad, and Ankara has been likened to NATO Article 5, where an attack on one is an 'attack on all'. These countries' own officials have in many cases advanced this interpretation. However, so far there's been no such action in response to the Houthis, deemed by many to be a 'non-state actor'.

*  *  *

Interesting on the ground coverage from just hours before Mocha's capture. Can the Houthis now hold it?

Exclusive access to Island that may soon fall to Iran's powerful proxy the Houthis - overnight they appear closer to control of vital Yemen Island that could drive price of oil even higher.. pic.twitter.com/63ShDPSZmD

— Nic Robertson (@NicRobertsonCNN) September 10, 2026 Tyler Durden Thu, 09/10/2026 - 10:45

Sad diners said they were "sick" over the abrupt closure — and the staff who lost their jobs so swiftly.

A catastrophic crash involving an Amazon truck and three other vehicles in the Norwalk area early Thursday morning complicated Southern Californians' morning commute.

Personalized listening for less.

New traders can sign up with the Polymarket promo code NYPMAX1 to deposit $10 for a $50 trading bonus on Rams vs. 49ers.

It's Andrew Garfield vs. King Richard II in this historical action drama.

A California man was sentenced to 30 years in prison for a massive Medi-Cal fraud scheme that submitted nearly $270 million in bogus claims.

The two measles-related deaths in Pennsylvania last month involved infants, and the virus itself caused one of the deaths, a Pennsylvania coroner confirmed Wednesday.

A cargo ship docked for repairs in a Chinese port caught fire, killing 25 people, Chinese state media reported Thursday.

The Crypto torture bro strikes again in season 2, episode 11 of “Next Gen NYC” with a “dupe” that only God can judge. Our “Virtual Realit-Tea” co-hosts, Danny Murphy and Evan Real, recap all the twists and turns that had viewers gagging in the finale. Ariana Biermann claims Charlie Zakkour played her after professing his...

The Crypto torture bro strikes again in season 2, episode 11 of “Next Gen NYC” with a “dupe” that only God can judge. Our “Virtual Realit-Tea” co-hosts, Danny Murphy and Evan Real, recap all the twists and turns that had viewers gagging in the finale. Ariana Biermann claims Charlie Zakkour played her after professing his...

Betting Against The House?

By Bas van Geffen, Senior Market Strategist at Rabobank

Brent futures broke through $100 per barrel after a series of attacks in the Middle East raise concerns that the conflict could intensify again. Iran said that it is ready to escalate its counterstrikes if the US continues to attack its territory and infrastructure. Parliament speaker Ghalibaf warned that Iran’s next targets are US oil and gas company assets in the region. The Houthis already struck energy facilities in Saudi Arabia in a direct response to the US attacking several Iranian oil tankers.

Adding to the energy price pressures, the European gas benchmark briefly surpassed €80/MWh. Ukrainian drones forced closures at Russian ports. Moreover, Russia’s TASS news agency reported a fire at the Yamal energy site. TTF futures receded to €79 on reports that the LNG terminal was not damaged in the strikes.

Nonetheless, the fact that Ukraine is now targeting gas facilities deep inside Russia’s territory creates substantial risks for the European energy outlook. The Yamal facility is a major LNG production and liquification plant, and a key supplier to Europe. It shipped almost 10 million tons of LNG to the EU in the first half of the year.

These renewed energy price pressures add to the inflation concerns that have been weighing down global fixed income. The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.83% and the 30-year bond touched 5.30%, testing Treasury Secretary Bessent’s pain threshold ahead of a bond auction today. When the 30-year yield surpassed 5.30% in August, Bessent announced an expansion of the Treasury buyback operations, which effectively changes a liquidity management tool into a potential instrument for market interventions.

However, this week’s operation disappointed. Yesterday, the US Treasury announced that it will buy back $6 billion in longer-dated Treasury notes today. Although that is three times the normal size, the operation is at the lower end of the $5-8 billion that the market had expected. So, Bessent may have warned yen traders that “he is the house now […] and you can bet against me if you want,” but fixed income traders are still testing how deep the house’s pockets are, and if he is willing to spend it all.

The White House, meanwhile, seems more than willing to spend. President Trump promised a $5,000 “dividend” to every adult US citizen if the Republican party retains control of both houses of Congress. The plan emphasises the pressure that Trump –who denies voters face an affordability crisis– is under ahead of the midterm elections.

Based on Census Bureau population estimates, this promise would cost upwards of $1 trillion. Not only would that add to the $40 trillion in existing debt, but it could also exhaust all the room left until the US hits the debt ceiling – adding to the default risks. However, Congress would have to approve Trump’s plan and his previous “tariff dividend” also failed to gain support on Capitol Hill. 

Indeed, Republican senators are already trying to modify Trump’s plan.

So, investors largely shrugged off Trump’s idea as unlikely to happen. Yet, the uncertainty may still add to US term premia at the margin, at a time when markets are already testing the Treasury Secretary’s resolve.

Rising yields are forcing difficult decisions everywhere, as governments face higher interest bills and deteriorating public finances. Choices can be politically expensive, but not making any choices will cost hard currency.

UK Prime Minister Burnham told said that “national security cannot come at the expense of social security.” Yet, it must be paid for somehow. The prime minister suggested he would get the welfare costs down “the Labour way,” that is, by reforming and changing the system instead of simply cutting benefits.

Burnham promised to present a sound plan, but the added fiscal uncertainty weighed on Gilt yields, at a time when global yields are already rising. This is not quite a Liz Truss moment, but the 30-year yield rose 7 basis points on the day.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/10/2026 - 10:25

In fact, in the past year alone, multiple lawsuits have been brought against colleges and universities over the potential for poisoning inside students' own dorms — and experts tell The Post it's getting worse.