USA - A confidential CIA analysis delivered to administration policymakers this week concludes that Iran can survive the US naval blockade for at least three to four months before facing more severe economic hardship, four people familiar with the document said, a finding that appears to raise new questions about President Donald Trump’s optimism on ending the war. The analysis by the US intelligence community, whose secret assessments on Iran have often been more sober than the administration’s public statements, also found that Tehran retains significant ballistic missile capabilities despite weeks of intense US and Israeli bombardment, three of the people familiar with it said. Iran retains about 75 percent of its prewar inventories of mobile launchers and about 70 percent of its prewar stockpiles of missiles, a US official said. The official said there is evidence that the regime has been able to recover and reopen almost all of its underground storage facilities, repair some damaged missiles and even assemble some new missiles that were nearly complete when the war began.

MIDDLE EAST - Evidence of the damage inflicted to US military facilities in the Gulf during the war with Iran continues to emerge. While the latest media figures say that at least 16 American bases in the region were struck, the Pentagon is apparently doing its best to conceal the destruction. Within hours of the US launching ‘Operation Epic Fury’ on February 28, Iran unleashed retaliatory strikes against American military bases across the Middle East, with some facilities being targeted multiple times. Behind a veil of censorship, it’s increasingly clear that the damage may be far more severe than the Pentagon has admitted. Some bases, such as the home of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, were left “virtually unusable” after suffering “rapid, targeted strikes using advanced technology,” a source told the network. Gulf states have threatened anyone sharing footage of damage with lengthy jail terms, and the US has pressed American commercial satellite operators to withhold footage from the public.

USA - Scientists have revealed an ominous sign that a 'super' El Niño is inching closer. El Niño years form part of a natural cycle known as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, and are marked by sustained warm temperatures across the Pacific Ocean. Where this ocean surface warming exceeds 2°C (3.6°F), the event is often referred to as a 'super El Niño'. Now, the Copernicus Climate Change Service has revealed that April 2026 saw the second highest sea surface temperatures on record. Measurements last month show that the daily average over the extra–polar regions inched toward the record values seen in 2024. According to the experts, this suggests super El Niño conditions could be here in the 'coming months'.

USA - Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson predicted that government files on UFOs and unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) “will be anticlimactic.” “The impending release of US government files on aliens and UFOs is a good thing, even if it feels like a distraction from other important files we’ve all been waiting to be disclosed. I expect the alien files will be anticlimactic,” Tyson said in an op-ed published Wednesday by The New York Times. “After a parade of alien insiders and whistle-blowers testified under oath to Congress in 2023, 2024 and 2025, what’s left to learn? Personally, I’d be delighted if the files were accompanied by an actual alien. Alive or dead or undead. Preferably alive. Is that too much to ask for?” Last month, President Trump teased at a Turning Point USA event in Phoenix that he would order Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to release government files on UFOs and UAPs.

USA - Steven Spielberg just made a brand-new sci-fi movie. That’s right: arguably the greatest director of our lifetime – the man who gave us Jaws, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List and more – just returned to the genre he perfected back in 1982 with ET: The Extra Terrestrial. Disclosure Day is an all-original story, with a script penned by industry legend and original Jurassic Park writer David Koepp. No wonder that CBR’s George Chrysostomou, for one, is confident it will raise the bar for the entire sci-fi genre. “Disclosure Day, much like ET before it, could usher in a new era of completely original science-fiction narratives. Fantasy has gone through a recent renaissance, and perhaps Spielberg is the one to show the true range of the genre.” Strictly speaking, no aliens – or at least, no little green men – are sighted in the Disclosure Day trailer. But the recent Super Bowl trailer showed a flying saucer and Universal’s official synopsis definitely leaves us looking up: “If you found out we weren’t alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you? This summer, the truth belongs to seven billion people…”

MIDDLE EAST - A new nuclear umbrella rises over the Gulf as confidence in the US fades. The Saudi-Pakistan defense pact could give Riyadh a nuclear-backed deterrent as Iran, Israel and US reshape Gulf security calculations. The rapidly evolving security landscape in the Middle East is prompting Saudi Arabia to rethink its national defense strategies. With no reliable guarantees of American protection, Riyadh is looking to establish an alternative framework for reliable defense – and surprisingly, Pakistan is becoming its key component.

MIDDLE EAST - The fragile ceasefire between the United States and Iran teetered on the brink on Thursday night after both sides exchanged missile fire in the Strait of Hormuz. US central command (Centcom) announced late Thursday it had carried out “self-defence strikes” on Iranian military targets after three destroyers came under missile attack while transiting the shipping lane. “Iranian forces launched multiple missiles, drones and small boats as USS Truxtun (DDG 103), USS Rafael Peralta (DDG 115), and USS Mason (DDG 87) transited the international sea passage,” it said in a statement, adding that none of the vessels were struck. Donald Trump said the US fired back, sending Iran’s boats “to the bottom of the sea” and knocking down its missiles and drones. The reported attack came shortly after Saudi Arabia and Kuwait removed limits on the US’s use of their bases and airbases, according to The Wall Street Journal.

USA - January, February and March were insanely dry. In fact, in all of US history conditions have never been so dry during the first three months of the year. Just think about that for a moment. Not even during the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s were conditions this dry. Many were hoping that 2026 would be the year when our multi-year drought would finally break. Needless to say, that hasn’t happened. Scientists are telling us that the southwestern US is in the midst of the worst multi-year drought in at least 1,200 years. We really are experiencing a “megadrought”, and this is something that experts such as Steve Quayle and Dane Wigington have been talking about for a long time.

UNITED NATIONS - "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just published the next generation of climate scenarios," Science policy analyst Roger Pielke Jr wrote, calling it "big news" that "eliminated the most extreme scenarios that have dominated climate research over much of the past several decades." The conclusion was unambiguous. "The IPCC and broader research community has now admitted that the scenarios that have dominated climate research, assessment and policy during the past two cycles of the IPCC assessment process are implausible. They describe impossible futures."

EUROPE - Europe can become militarily independent of the United States by the end of the decade if its leaders have the political courage to do so, leading German defence figures have said. The influential group said “autonomy” could be achieved within five to 10 years at a cost of €500 billion (£432 billion), a 10 per cent increase on existing spending plans by NATO’s European allies. But money alone will not fix the imbalances, according to the German defence experts. Their paper sets out the need to rip up red tape, boost industrial cooperation and end decades of fragmentation across defence industries. It calls for a system styled on the Manhattan Project – bringing together a historic level of cooperation between European allies to break the reliance on the US. They concluded: “If we build the central capabilities at the right pace, Europe can protect itself against aggressors and generate credible deterrence.”