Source: Reuters
“Bitcoin bounced from a 16-month low on Friday after testing the key $60,000 level, as a global rout in technology stocks that washed out risky bets across asset classes showed tentative signs of easing. The world’s largest cryptocurrency was last up 3.3% to $65,198.20, clawing back its losses after having slid 5% to hit a low of $60,008.52 earlier in the session. Still, bitcoin remains pinned near its weakest level since October 2024, a month before Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election, having signalled his intention to support crypto on the campaign trail.” (02/06/26)
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/bitcoin-cusp-60000-investors-flee-risky-bets-2026-02-06/
Source: Persuasion
by Pratap B Mehta
“There are, of course, outstanding issues in the Epstein files that need to be addressed — people who committed crimes in legal terms, people who engaged in morally reprehensible behavior, and people who themselves are not individually guilty but who condoned what was happening. The Epstein files are not about individual guilt or innocence; they are about the nature of collective power. And when, within that collectivity, elites abused sexual, financial, legal, political, and even intellectual power without shame and with impunity, one has to wonder whether the Roman historians were onto something: They envisioned empires collapsing when elites could no longer restrain themselves in any aspect of their lives. An elite so needy, greedy, and now so vulnerable can hardly be trusted to exercise good judgment.” (02/05/26)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-epstein-files-indict-an-entire
Source: Jake Porter’s Analysis & Investigations
“A recording from Jake Porter’s live video.” (02/05/26)
https://jakeporter.substack.com/p/the-moral-cowardice-at-the-heart
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“A senior Russian military official has been hospitalised after being shot several times in Moscow, according to state media quoting Russian officials. An unknown assailant carried out a gun attack on Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseyev, deputy chief of Russian military intelligence, in a residential building, Svetlana Petrenko, spokesperson for the Russian Investigative Committee (ICR), said on Friday. Alekseyev is deputy chief of the Main Directorate of the General Staff at the Defence Ministry. Several senior Russian officers have been assassinated since the start of the war in Ukraine four years ago, with Moscow blaming the attacks on Kyiv.” (02/06/26)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/6/senior-russian-officer-shot-in-moscow-in-apparent-assassination-attempt
Source: Independent Institute
by Allen Gindler
“Trump’s recent Wall Street Journal piece is not just a defense of tariffs. It is a claim of intellectual discovery in economics. He argues, in effect, that the vast majority of experts have been looking at tariffs backward, and that his critics keep repeating a superstition: tariffs are a tax on Americans. In his telling, tariffs are a way to make foreigners pay, raise revenue, boost domestic production, and still keep inflation tame. If Trump remains fixated on the Nobel Peace Prize, he is aiming at the wrong category. His real ambition, at least on the page, is the science of economics. Even though he did not explicitly state his discoveries, we can infer the economic laws he implied and name them in his honor.” (02/05/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/02/05/was-trump-correct-tariffs/
Source: ABC News
“The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits jumped last week but remains in the same historically low range of the past few years. Applications for jobless aid for the week ending Jan. 31 rose by 22,000 to 231,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s significantly more than the 211,000 new applications that analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet had forecast. Applications for unemployment benefits are seen as representative of U.S. layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market. A number of high-profile companies have announced job cuts in the past year, including UPS, Amazon and Dow just last week.” (02/05/26)
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/us-applications-jobless-benefits-jump-22000-231000-week-129880470
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s attacks against U.S. Senator Mark Kelly constitute a fascinating and very revealing insight into the national-security-state way of life. Hegseth is upset with Kelly, along with five other members of Congress, for participating in a video that reminded U.S. soldiers of their duty to refuse to obey illegal orders. … Kelly and the others did not say to U.S. soldiers: ‘You have the right to disobey orders.’ If he had said that, I could easily understand why Hegseth would be upset. But that’s not what they said. They said that U.S. soldiers have the right — and the duty — to refuse to obey illegal orders. The difference between those two admonitions is day and night. What Kelly and the others stated is the absolute truth.” (02/05/26)
https://www.fff.org/2026/02/05/should-soldiers-obey-orders-to-commit-crimes/
Source: WION [India]
“Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) seized two oil tankers with their foreign crews in Gulf waters for allegedly smuggling fuel, reported by Iranian media. ‘”More than one million liters of smuggled fuel were found on board of the two vessels,’ Tasnim reported, and a total of ’15 foreign crew members were referred to the judiciary.’ … Iranian forces regularly target tankers that Tehran has accused of being part of the illicit trade in the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. It is a key chokepoint for global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments. The seizure is the latest in a series of similar incidents in recent months.” (02/05/26)
https://www.wionews.com/world/irgc-seizes-2-oil-tankers-with-foreign-crew-for-smuggling-fuel-1770293234125
Source: Orange County Register
by Veronique de Rugy
“When government grows to dominate ever-larger shares of the economy, and when politicians refuse to be responsible about what they spend, there’s a predictable next move: Insist that the problem is ‘the rich’ not paying enough. Never mind that high earners already shoulder a disproportionate share of the tax burden. Never mind that relying on a small and mobile group of people for the bulk of your revenue makes public finances more volatile, not more stable. No, once spending is treated as untouchable and restraint as politically impossible, it’s only a matter of time before politics demands more, more, more. More taxes and more distortion. This helps explain why wild new forms of wealth taxes are popping up.” (02/05/26)
https://archive.is/g1BKq
Source: Fox News
“A federal judge on Wednesday barred the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from carrying out warrantless immigration arrests in Oregon without individualized assessments of flight risk, finding that federal agents likely violated the law through a pattern of unlawful arrests. U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai granted a preliminary injunction in a proposed class-action lawsuit against DHS and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as the case moves forward. The court concluded that agents routinely arrested people for alleged immigration violations without warrants and without determining whether they were likely to flee before a warrant could be obtained.” (02/05/26)
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/federal-judge-rules-against-dhs-warrantless-immigration-arrests-oregon
