🇪🇸 Hundreds of migrants gathered on Ceuta’s Trampolín beach, waving Spanish flags and demanding asylum.

Protesters held banners reading “No return to Morocco” as authorities struggled to process those who remained following July’s mass crossings.

🔗 Europa.com (@europa)

🇪🇸 Cardboard boxes have become an unlikely prized possession among African migrants sleeping rough on Ceuta’s beaches, providing basic shelter from the elements.

Thousands remain in limbo following the recent mass crossings from Morocco.

🔗 Europa.com (@europa)

🇮🇶🇮🇶⚡️ — Head of the Iraqi Security Media Cell Lieutenant General Saad Maan in an interview with Iraqi News Agency reported that Asa'ib Ahl al-Haqq, Kata'ib Imam al-Ali, and Saraya al-Salam have followed through on their agreements to disarm their weapons to the Iraqi state, adding that "a large amount of weapons of various types have been received from these factions".

🎡 🇺🇸 👮‍♂️ Chaos broke out at the Wisconsin State Fair as "teens" began beating anyone in sight.

Multiple police officers were badly beaten, as families with kids were seen running for their lives as "teens" began brawling.

📎 Matt Van Swol

🛢 🇺🇸 📉 Depleted strategic oil reserve nears level that raises concerns about damage to caverns, operations

Damage to the caverns would make it more difficult to respond to future energy emergencies, the experts said. The oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, or SPR, is stored at 60 salt caverns thousands of feet underground at four major sites along the Gulf Coast in Louisiana and Texas.

The SPR has tumbled below 300 million barrels for the first time since it was filled in the early 1980s, according to Department of Energy data released Monday. Inventories are depleting as the U.S. releases 172 million barrels in response to the supply disruption caused by the Iran war. The SPR will sit at around 243 million barrels after the drawdown is finished.

To release oil from the SPR, operators pump water into the bottom of the caverns to displace the crude to the surface and pump it through wells into pipelines.

When the inventory drops below 300 million barrels, the SPR loses its ability to pump oil at rapid speeds to address emergencies, Misra said. The system's pipes and pumps could also get damaged as the oil layer thins at the top and sludge rises toward the extraction intake at the cavern ceiling, he said.

Fresh water is often pumped into the caverns during rapid drawdowns, which dissolves the salt walls, Misra said. This "creates flatter, less stable roof and severely thins the critical salt pillars that separate adjacent caverns, greatly increasing the geological risk of a structural cave-in," he said.

The SPR was originally designed for five full drawdowns. Instead, it has executed dozens of large and small releases over the past 40 years, Misra said.

"Because the system was not designed for this many cycles, the repeated injection of water and extraction of oil have caused severe cavern deformation, accelerated the rate of massive salt falls from the ceilings, and significantly weakened the overall structural integrity of the aging reserve," he said.

Energy Department officials told the GAO that they are "holding the SPR infrastructure together with 'Band-Aids,' and that it is uncertain how long they will hold." More than a quarter of the SPR inventory was "not available for drawdown due to a combination of construction outages and cavern outages" as of December 2025, the GAO found.

Analysts at Rapidan Energy, for their part, estimated the SPR has a "soft-ish floor" of around 170 million barrels, below which "cavern integrity and pumping infrastructure limitations argue against further draws.

Hochstein said a hurricane in Florida or Louisiana could put the U.S. in a tough position at current SPR levels. "Below 300 million, which is where we are now, it is not that we can't do it, but it slows the flow and puts us in danger," he said.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/15/strategic-petroleum-reserve-spr-oil-iran-war-caverns.html

📈 🇺🇸 💵 U.S. 30-Year Treasury Yield hits 5.30% for the first time since the run-up to the Global Financial Crisis

📎 Barchart

💰 🌐 🏦 Central Bank Gold Holdings Near Bretton Woods Era Levels

Central banks now hold more than 36,000 tonnes of gold, approaching the historical peak of around 38,000 tonnes recorded during the Bretton Woods era in the mid-1960s.

The ECB links the rise in official gold holdings to persistent geopolitical tensions and reserve diversification. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, central banks have increasingly viewed gold as a reserve asset with no direct sovereign counterparty risk.

The more accurate interpretation is that reserve portfolios are becoming more diversified. Central banks are not replacing the dollar overnight, but they are increasing the role of gold and other assets as part of a broader risk management strategy.

Gold offers several advantages for central banks. It has no credit risk, no direct issuer risk and a long history as a store of value. It can also perform well during periods of geopolitical stress, inflation uncertainty or loss of confidence in fiat assets.

The rise of gold in official reserves reflects a more fragmented and risk-conscious international monetary system. Central banks are adjusting to a world of higher geopolitical uncertainty, sanctions risk, volatile capital flows and questions over the future structure of global payments.

The main takeaway is that global reserve management is becoming more diversified and more geopolitically aware. Gold is playing a larger role in official portfolios, while the US dollar remains dominant across the broader reserve and payments system. The shift is not a sudden replacement of the dollar, but it is a clear sign that central banks are building more resilient reserve structures in an increasingly uncertain global environment.

https://edgeconsultancykw.com/gold-overtakes-us-treasuries-central-banks-reserve-portfolios/

🇺🇸⚡️ — President Trump’s approval rating has fallen to 33% in the latest Economist/YouGov poll, the lowest recorded across either of his presidential terms, while 62% disapprove of his performance and 50% strongly disapprove.

Only 22% of Americans rate the economy positively, while 65% believe the country is on the wrong track.

The Iran war and gas prices are the main drivers of the disapproval.

🇺🇸⚡️ — AI-generated legislative drafts are flooding the U.S. House, leaving congressional lawyers to fix proposals riddled with legal errors, incorrect citations, and vague or unnecessarily complicated language, POLITICO reports.

The House Office of Legislative Counsel is spending more time repairing some AI-written bills than it would take to draft them from scratch, adding to an already heavy workload.

The errors slipping through could delay legislation, lead to lawsuits or create unclear laws that courts and federal agencies struggle to interpret, as congressional staff and outside groups increasingly turn to tools such as ChatGPT and Claude to generate legislative language.

🇺🇸 Families of US sailors denounce Trump and Hegseth for ‘dismissing their experiences and calling them liars’

The Guardian has talked to three naval families who have been following the physical and mental stresses bearing down on their relatives with mounting alarm. The families, with loved ones onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Tripoli, all spoke anonymously for fear of retribution against their active-duty relatives.

They spoke of insufficient nourishment that has led to close relatives losing 20-30lb in weight since they were sent to the Middle East five months ago, leaving one sailor “emaciated”, according to his mother. They spoke also of low-quality drinking water and scarce mental health counseling and support despite the intense burden of being at sea for months on end without making land.

🔗 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/16/navy-families-denounce-trump-hegseth