Greetings! Happy World Diabetes Day to those celebrating.

Let’s get into today’s top stories.

🇮🇷 Iran seizes tanker in the Strait of Hormuz. A senior American official said Iranian forces boarded and took control of a commercial tanker near the chokepoint that carries roughly 20% of the world’s seaborne oil. Ship-tracking firms logged abrupt course changes as nearby vessels widened distance and insurers recalculated war-risk premia. Naval commanders elevated surveillance and escort postures while legal teams parsed flag-state protections under the Law of the Sea. Energy desks modeled $2–$5 per barrel upside risk if transits slow more than 48 hours. Ports on the Arabian Peninsula pre-positioned tugs and pilots to keep lanes moving if convoys bottleneck. Diplomats are probing backchannels to prevent tit-for-tat seizures that historically spiral. In maritime crises, confidence travels at the speed of AIS pings.

🚨 Washington labels four left-wing European networks as terrorist organizations. The administration announced designations against four European groups it says meet statutory thresholds for foreign terrorist organizations, citing plots, training, and cross-border financing. European governments privately warned that blacklists can complicate evidence-sharing and prosecutions already underway. Civil liberties advocates argued the move risks politicizing threat definitions at a time of rising far-right and far-left violence. Banks will freeze accounts and flag counterparties while social platforms purge affiliated channels under existing moderation rules. Interior ministries will face protests and litigation as members challenge listings in domestic courts. Intelligence committees asked for declassified summaries to sustain public trust in opaque processes. Designations are easy to announce and hard to unwind.

💊 Purdue-Sackler opioid deal nears an endgame. A proposed settlement tied to OxyContin could resolve years of litigation by channeling billions into abatement while granting the Sackler family broad civil immunity. State attorneys general split over whether the payout, structure, and accountability mechanisms match the damage curve. Families want plain-English timelines for when treatment dollars arrive in counties where overdoses soared. Public-health planners stress that evidence-based spending on medication-assisted treatment and naloxone saves more lives per dollar than punitive programs. Bankruptcy law, corporate separations, and indemnities form the thicket judges must navigate. The moral ledger cannot be balanced by wiring instructions, but budgets still require them. Accountability is policy plus calendars.

🏛️ New prosecutor takes over Georgia election case. A fresh lead attorney stepped into the sprawling Georgia prosecution involving the former president and allies, inheriting a file thick with motions, discovery disputes, and calendar fights. Defense teams will test any vulnerability in charging theories and venue choices while pushing severance and delay. The court will referee speech rights, privilege claims, and jury-pool contamination in a state saturated with coverage. Prosecutors must convert headlines into elements, counts, and proof that survives appeal. Security plans, witness coordination, and evidence logistics add non-legal weight to every hearing date. Political timelines are noisy; criminal ones are unforgiving. Trials run on rules, not polls.

🏠 Fannie Mae firings ignite a whistleblower storm. Senior officials at the mortgage giant were ousted after warning about sharing confidential housing-market data, raising alarms over governance at a backbone of American finance. The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) now faces questions about oversight and data-handling protocols under conservatorship. Lenders and homebuilders watch because pricing models rely on clean inputs and predictable rulebooks. Lawmakers will seek timelines, emails, and audit trails to separate process lapses from policy disputes. Inside the enterprise, morale and retention hinge on whether dissent is protected or punished. Markets dislike ambiguity even more than bad news. In housing, trust is liquidity.

📧 Epstein emails map proximity to power post-conviction. Newly surfaced correspondence shows the financier remained in contact with prominent figures despite his status as a registered sex offender, underscoring how influence networks persist. The documents detail meeting requests, introductions, and favors that now raise reputational and legal questions for recipients. Universities and charities are reviewing past donations and naming rights with fresh scrutiny. Defense attorneys warn that association is not culpability, but compliance offices are revisiting conflict and gift policies. For the public, the pattern is the story: access is a currency that buys more access. For institutions, the test is whether guardrails were real or decorative. Sunlight widens the blast radius before it heals it.

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That’s all for today!

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See you tomorrow!