🔼 🇺🇸 🖥 The S&P 500 closes at its highest level on record, now up +14.5% since the March 30th bottom.

That's +$8.3 TRILLION in market cap in 24 trading days.

📎 KobeissiLetter

🔼 🇻🇪 🛢 Venezuela's oil exports are actually taller than Iran's for the first time in six years.

Venezuela's oil exports rose 14% to 1.23 million bpd in April, the highest in more than seven years, fueled by more sales to the United States, India and Europe.

📎 Tanker Trackers

🔋 📈 🪨 In 2025, renewable electricity generated more than coal for the first time in over 100 years.

Driven by record solar, renewable share surpassed a third of global power generation.

📎 Ember Energy

🇺🇸🇩🇪⚠️ — The US is withdrawing 5,000 troops from Germany, the Pentagon announced on Friday.

The withdrawal is expected to be completed over the next six to twelve months.

Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell tells FOX:

“The Secretary of War has ordered the withdrawal of approximately 5,000 troops from Germany.

This decision follows a thorough review of the Department’s force posture in Europe and is in recognition of theater requirements and conditions on the ground.

We expect the withdrawal to be completed over the next six to twelve months.”

🇺🇸🤝🇺🇸 📝 LouisWordGenius: My sources in congress are saying the great majority of democrats have been brought on board for more war with Iran. Staffers are in revolt but even some of the holdouts have broken. The Trump Administration has made promises about “certain votes post midterms”.

📎 Louis Brain Genius OSINT

@CIG_telegram

🇺🇸🇨🇳 A USAF C-17 cargo transport aircraft was seen by Chinese observers landing in Beijing.

The C-17 left Joint Base Andrews and flew with transponders switched off, meaning it couldn't be seen on sites like Flightradar24.

The callsign (RCH4150), contains 4 digits which suggests a "high level mission".

The aircraft is likely carrying cars for president Trump's motorcade as he should have visited China earlier this March but the outbreak of the 3rd Gulf War postponed his visit.

@CIG_telegram

🇨🇳🇮🇷🇺🇸 China’s ambassador to the United Nations Fu Cong:

🔹“Iran needs to lift its restrictions on the Strait of Hormuz, and the US needs to lift its naval blockade.”

🔹 “The most urgent issue is to keep the ceasefire. And the ceasefire needs to last, and there has to be a good-faith negotiation between the two sides.”

🔹 “I think the international community should be mobilized and raise our voices against the resumption of fighting.”

🔹 Ambassador Cong also rejected allegations about military cooperation between China and Iran as “false.”

🔗 DropSite

🇭🇺🇭🇺🥷 At the inaugural opening of the new Hungarian Parliament besides the national anthem of Hungary, the anthem of Székely Land (a region in Romania) and the anthem of Hungarian Gypsies will be sung.

Hungary's new prime-minister, Péter Magyar, invited a Gypsy children's orchestra to perform the Gypsy anthem.

🔗 https://nepszava.hu/3320950_cigany-himnusz-parlament-alakulo-ules-sugo-tamburazenekar-sukosdi-gyermekcsoport

🇮🇱 Israel just quadrupled its PR budget to $730M. Experts say it won’t work.

Spending on image should be “like investing in jets, bombs and missile interceptors,” Israel’s foreign minister says

Lawmakers in Jerusalem approved a 2026 national budget last month that includes roughly $730 million for public diplomacy — the broad category known in Hebrew as hasbara — more than four times the $150 million they allocated the year before. That earlier sum was itself about 20 times what Israel had spent on such efforts before the war in Gaza broke out in 2023.

The unprecedented expenditure comes as survey after survey show declining support for Israel in the United States, its most important ally. A Pew Research Center poll released earlier this month found 60% of Americans now view Israel unfavorably, up seven points in a single year, with only 37% viewing it favorably.

Most striking for a country long accustomed to bipartisan American support: 57% of Republicans under 50 hold negative views of Israel. Support has cratered among the religiously unaffiliated, Black Protestants and Catholics. Among American Jews, support has slipped below two-thirds.

On social media, the Hebrew word “hasbara” has become a dismissive shorthand for pro-Israel advocacy, indicating how widely known Israel’s uphill efforts to shape its image have become.

Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, says the country is engaged in a global war for hearts and minds and it must spend accordingly.

“We had a major breakthrough this year, but we must as a country invest much much more,” Sa’ar said in December as the government entered budget deliberations. “It should be like investing in jets, bombs and missile interceptors. In the face of what’s arrayed against us and what’s invested against us, it’s far from enough. This is an existential issue.”

A $50 million international social-media ad buy was split across Google, YouTube, X and Outbrain. Roughly $40 million went to hosting 400 foreign delegations — lawmakers, pastors, influencers, university presidents. A “media war room” was erected to monitor 250 outlets and 10,000 daily Israel-related items.

The Foreign Ministry also signed a $1.5-million-a-month contract with former Trump campaign strategist Brad Parscale’s firm to deploy AI tools against antisemitism online, a $4.1 million campaign aimed at evangelical churches, and the “Esther Project,” a paid influencer network running up to $900,000 through a PR firm called Bridges Partners.

🔗 https://forward.com/fast-forward/821680/israel-just-quadrupled-its-pr-budget-to-730m-experts-say-it-wont-work/