We know what’s coming and we are prepared.
🇫🇷 French farmers threaten 'chaos' over EU trade deal with South America's Mercosur
French farmers launched new protests Tuesday against a proposed deal between the EU and the four South American countries of the Mercosur trade bloc. The French government is strongly opposed to the deal but protesters want French President Emmanuel Macron to do more to help amid rising discontent over foreign competition.
The French government is leading resistance against ratification of the trade agreement with the Mercosur bloc of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay that would create the world's largest free-trade zone.
The new wave of action comes after farmers across Europe, including France, mounted rolling protests last winter over a long list of burdens they say are squeezing revenue.
Dozens of farmers backed by Coordination Rurale (CR), a hard-line farming union, set up a roadblock on the A9 motorway at the southern town of Le Boulou, close to the border with Spain, blocking lorries but allowing cars through, an AFP journalist saw.
"We're going to block the A9, as well as fuel depots, ports and purchasing centres," said Serge Bousquet-Cassagne, a CR representative in the southwest.
"We want to cause chaos and food shortages," he said, adding that the blockade could last several days, pointing to "a river of fruit and vegetables arriving from Spain".
Farmers fear any agreement would open European Union markets to cheaper meat and produce from South American competitors, who are not forced to adhere to strict EU rules on pesticides, hormones, land use and environmental measures.
He said the agreement had been in the works for several decades and was "based on preconditions that are now obsolete".
📝: The EU has made agriculture very expensive with taxes on carbon emissions, on fuel, on diesel, it has encumbered farmers across the continent with strict rules on pesticides, hormones, GMOs, land use, waste management and more to ensure that groceries are of a high quality, nutritious and don't get people sick.
The adverse side effect of this is that groceries are very expensive compared to non-EU countries. When the EU liberalised trade with Ukraine, hundreds of thousand of farmers across the EU came out to protest unfair competition from Ukraine in the biggest mass unrest Europe has seen. If the Mercosur deal goes through, the farmers might just topple the EU as a whole.
At the same time, the EU must find a way to keep the prices of groceries low, while also doubling down on climate insanity and keep farmers and other unions calm.
Ukrainian forces have begun training and testing exoskeletons for battlefield use. Soldiers from the 147th Separate Artillery Brigade are using them in the Pokrovsk sector for both logistics and frontline operations. The goal is to reduce physical strain, especially when loading heavy artillery shells into howitzers without automatic loaders. Artillery crews can handle up to 1200 kg of ammunition per day, and early tests show that exoskeletons help them work faster and with less fatigue Above all, by improving the conditions for those soldiers on the front lines who handle such heavy loads, plus the stress of work. Seeking to reduce overall fatigue in the troops
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🇮🇷🇮🇱 - 14 wounded in Iranian missile strike in central Israel, according to Israeli media.
🇬🇧🇮🇶 - A drone struck British Castrol oil warehouses in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, causing extensive damage.
🇮🇷🇮🇱 - Iran launched 9 missiles towards Israel this morning alone, with at least 3 of them being cluster missiles.
🇱🇧🇮🇱 - Over the past 12 hours, Hezbollah launched counterattacks in Khiam and Qantara, in the Nabatieh direction, southeast Lebanon. Hezbollah recaptured northern Khiam, with fighting ongoing for the south of the town. Hezbollah units also re-entered Qantara; frontline sources reported clashes in the center of the town last night.
🇱🇧🇮🇱 - 48 IDF soldiers have been wounded in clashes with Hezbollah over the last 24 hours in southern Lebanon, according to the Israeli Army.
🇱🇧🇮🇱 - "The Israeli army is barely catching its breath in southern Lebanon, and its resources are less than in the previous round of fighting," - Haaretz....
🇺🇸 Blue Owl Capital just disclosed that investors tried to pull 40.7% of one fund and 21.9% of another in a single quarter, and both funds gave the same answer, you can only have 5% back, and everyone else waits in line.
This is a bank run, not a normal withdrawal.
Wall Street spent the last decade selling millions of investors on something called semi-liquid private credit, higher yields, steady income and the promise you could get your money back every quarter if you needed it. What they buried in the fine print was what happens when too many people try to leave at the same time.
Analysts who have covered private credit for decades say nothing on this scale has ever been reported before at any major private credit manager.
These funds do not hold stocks you can sell on a Tuesday afternoon, they hold private loans to mid sized companies that cannot be liquidated quickly without destroying the price for every investor still trapped inside.
This product was originally designed for ...
🇺🇸 President Trump wants to switch to war economy in 2027 with massive increase in military spending and massive cuts to healthcare and other domestic agencies
Once a deficit hawk — he said in 2016 that he thought he could balance the budget in five years — Trump ended his first term with $7.8 trillion in added debt. His 2027 proposal is expected to give an update on 10-year deficit projections currently estimated at around $16 trillion.
The GOP's message for the Midterms will be focused on the "need" for a massive defense build up while the Democrats' message will be focused on affordability.
The fiscal 2027 budget will be the first time Trump puts his second-term governing agenda into one comprehensive document — with the numbers to back it up. The budget he released last year lacked detailed line-by-line spending targets and the economic assumptions necessary to project the long-term cost of his proposals.
Investors in US Treasuries will be looking to see if the debt and ...
