The Source of Inner Joy – His Holiness the Dalai Lama shares his fundamental belief — that whether you are a believer or non-believer, remaining truthful and honest is the real source of inner joy. When we live with honesty, anxiety is reduced, fear is reduced, and distrust fades… pic.twitter.com/PHpME7IuWN
"Trump was winning everything up until he allowed himself to be dragged into this war by Netanyahu, and now he's going to lose everything." – @yanisvaroufakis
Oil prices are popping after President Trump failed to offer a clear plan for reopening the Strait of Hormuz during his Iran speech last night.
Trump called on other countries to “take the lead in protecting the oil that they so desperately depend on.
“Officials from more than 40 countries — though not the U.S. — are meeting today to discuss opening Hormuz.
Oil could surge to an unprecedented $200/barrel if Hormuz stays closed, Axios’ Amy Harder reports.
Brent crude futures are at about $107/barrel as of midafternoon, up 6.7% from yesterday.Data: Financial Modeling Prep; Chart: Erin Davis/Axios
Analysts at Macquarie, a financial services company, say oil could reach $200 if the Iran war drags into June.
Trumpsaid last night that the U.S. campaign will last another two to three weeks. He said after the war, oil will start “flowing and the gas prices will rapidly come back down. Stock prices will rapidly go back up.
“Jason Bordoff, founding executive director of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, tells Axios: “There is no policy option to prevent oil prices from marching up toward $200 a barrel if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed.”
$200 oil could be catastrophic for our globalized economy:
Gas and jet fuel prices would skyrocket, prompting painful changes in global energy consumption. Some countries are already rationing fuel or imposing price controls.
Food prices would rocket up as fertilizer gets more expensive.
Prices for foreign-made consumer goods — electronics, clothing, anything else imported — would also climb.Go deeper.
Army Gen. Randy George, the 41st Chief of Staff of the Army, addresses attendees at the 146th National Guard Association of the United States General Conference, Detroit, Michigan, Aug. 24, 2024. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Sgt. 1st Class Zach Sheely)
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has removed the US Army’s 41st Chief of Staff, Gen. Randy George.
The news was first reported by CBS News. A Defense Department official confirmed the report to Breaking Defense, but would not provide further information.
After publication, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said on X that “General Randy A. George will be retiring from his position as the 41st Chief of Staff of the Army effective immediately. The Department of War is grateful for General George’s decades of service to our nation. We wish him well in his retirement.”
It is not immediately clear who will replace George, but it is suspected that Lt. Gen. Christopher LaNeve, who was recently sworn in as the service’s new vice chief of staff, will replace him. LaNeve, a former 82nd Airborne Division commander, replaced Gen. James Mingus, who retired a full two years earlier than expected. (With George’s exit being “effective immediately,” LaNeve will likely slot in as the acting chief until a full confirmation process can be arranged.)
Notably, LaNeve served as a military aide to Hegseth. The secretary posted a congratulatory message after LaNeve was confirmed, calling him a “generational leader” who “will help ensure the Army revives the warrior ethos, rebuilds for the modern battlefield, and deters our enemies around the world.”
George is exiting the role nearly a year-and-a-half earlier than expected for the traditionally four-year role. He took office in fall of 2023.
Despite his abbreviated time at the helm, George had plenty on his plate: he helped the service navigate through a recruiting crisis, attempted to spiral new technology into the force at a quicker pace under the “Transformation in Contact” initiative, terminated a host of weapon development programs and oversaw a massive overhaul of the service’s acquisition workforce.
And for the past year, George worked closely on the breadth of those changes with Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, the service’s 26th civilian leader who has been reportedly at odds with Hegseth. As a result of the internal dynamics between Driscoll and Hegseth, there have been rumors that George could be fired for months.
After graduating from West Point, George commissioned as an infantry officer in 1988 before deploying to Desert Shield/Desert Storm with the 101st Airborne Division. Over the next three-and-a-half decades, he also served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and deployed to Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. His firing comes as the US is once again embroiled in a conflict in the Middle East, this time with Iran.
Ahead of his ascent to the service’s top military officer post, he also served as the senior military assistant to then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin before eventually becoming Army’s vice-chief of staff.
Latest In A String Of Firings
While Hegseth did not detail why he was asking George to leave, he has promised to purge the Pentagon of “woke” generals supporting diversity and those who carried out orders related to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. General officers with ties to Austin and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley have also been viewed as vulnerable targets, according to sources.
Over the course of the year, the ax fell first on Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. CQ Brown, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James Slife, Defense Intelligence Agency head Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse, National Security Agency and Cyber Command head Gen. Timothy Haugh and others.
The dismissal of top brass became a major political talking point in Washington last year with five former secretaries of defense — Lloyd Austin, William Perry, Chuck Hagel, Leon Panetta and Trump’s first defense secretary, Jim Mattis — issuing an open letter to lawmakers, saying they are “alarmed” by the dismissals.
“We write to urge the US Congress to hold Mr. Trump to account for these reckless actions and to exercise fully its Constitutional oversight responsibilities,” they wrote, noting that the president has not provided a justification for the firings.
“Mr. Trump’s dismissals raise troubling questions about the administration’s desire to politicize the military and to remove legal constraints on the President’s power,” the former defense secretaries later added. “We, like many Americans — including many troops — are therefore left to conclude that these leaders are being fired for purely partisan reasons.”
Left unchecked, they warned that potential recruits may shy away from serving in the military and those already in uniform may shy away from “speaking truth to power” for fear of retribution.
UPDATED 4/2/2026 AT 5:10 ET to include information regarding Gen. George’s background and context related to recent firings within the Defense Department.
Despite five weeks of war, last night's prime-time address from the White House failed to provide clarity or a defined strategy regarding its progress https://t.co/RK0TnGGWsmpic.twitter.com/sZB5EAASuj
A U.S. Air Force F-35A Lightning II aircraft assigned to the 495th Fighter Squadron maneuvers through the Mach Loop valleys, Wales, May 8, 2025 (US Air Force).
BELFAST — Switzerland is deliberating over whether to cancel a long-delayed Patriot air defense system order, while saying that it will extend a payment freeze for the in-demand platform unless the US communicates a firm timeline for deliveries — the latest development in a high-dollar diplomatic spat between the two countries.
“We’ve informed them [the Swiss Federal Council] about this [Patriot termination] option today and we’re also making this option public today,” Switzerland’s defense minister Martin Pfister said at a press conference, according to an official translation.
“We are still assuming today that we will receive these systems; we don’t know when, and we are currently in the process of negotiating all possible options with the US,” he added. “This also includes a complete termination.”
Pfister conceded that the conditions for a cancellation are unclear.
Last July Washington decided to reshuffle Switzerland’s Patriot deliveries to support urgently needed supplies to Ukraine, with Breaking Defense reporting earlier this month that Swiss delays could run up to five years. Even that window is in doubt however, likely because demand for the platform has grown markedly since the outbreak of the US-Israeli war with Iran. On Tuesday, Poland reportedly turned down an informal US request to send its Patriots to the Middle East.
In the meantime, Switzerland has grown increasingly impatient about the delay, publicly acknowledging today that it halted payments for the Patriots in the fall of 2025. The Swiss Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sport (DDPS) said that Washington’s “reprioritization” of deliveries “significantly alters the contractual basis” of the acquisition.
The Swiss government says the Patriot order is linked to other Foreign Military Sale agreements, like a $7.5 billion order for F-35A fighter jets as well as spare parts for Swiss F/A-18 fighters. Bern says the US has pulled Swiss payments for those programs to fund Patriot production, which the European government warned risked timely delivery for the aircraft as well.
“For Switzerland’s security and defense, it is crucial that the delivery of spare parts for the F/A-18 and the procurement of the F-35A are not jeopardized by decisions concerning the Patriot system,” according to an online translation of the DDPS statement. The State Department had not responded to a request for information at press time.
The European nation signed off on an order for five Patriot systems in 2022 with deliveries originally set to take place between this year and 2028. Based on spiralling costs and an estimate from Urs Loher, director of national armaments at Switzerland’s defense procurement office, local media reported last month that the total price of the procurement could increase by 50 percent to reach CHF3 billion ($3.8 billion).
Near term, the troubling situation facing Switzerland threatens to get worse. Should the US’ Swiss FMS based fund’s liquidity dip below a “critical threshold, projects can be suspended and, if it falls further, terminated,” according to Bern. “This could affect not only the Patriot procurement but the entire Swiss Foreign Military Sales (FMS) portfolio with the USA.”
In March, Switzerland decided to cut its F-35 order by six aircraft, down to a fleet of 30 jets, after a contract dispute over increased pricing with the US government.
The Swiss defense procurement office has previously stated that terminating the stealth fighter contract “would have significant consequences,” rendering it incapable of guaranteeing the security of national air space from 2032 as the timeline coincides with F/A-18 aircraft retiring.
Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images
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Forget gas prices and fertilizer. One of the biggest casualties of the US war on Iran could be your favorite AI chatbot.
As the hare-brained conflict enters its fifth week, the tech industry is raising alarm about a growing shortage of helium, the odorless gas that makes birthday balloons lighter than air — and which, it turns out, is silently undergirding the AI boom.
Per the Wall Street Journal, when the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps effectively shut off travel through the Strait of Hormuz in response to US and Israeli aggression, they also cut off nearly a third of the world’s helium supply.
That’s because Qatar, the gulf state laying claim to the largest natural gas field on the planet, is responsible for 30 to 35 percent of the world’s helium production. Qatar, host of the US’s Al Udeid Air Base, is effectively a belligerent of Iran, meaning that until hostilities cease, that helium isn’t getting through.
That’s bad news for anybody buildingdata centers right now. Per the WSJ, helium is a crucial component for cooling the machines responsible for building AI chips. With a tightening bottleneck on the critical gas, it’s likely that chip manufacturers will have to curb production as they ration their remaining gas. As the helium industry typically operates via long-term contracts, chip producers have scrambled to secure short-term suppliers, exacerbating the effects of the shortage with an all-out-bidding-war.
“The helium shock highlights a deeper vulnerability in the AI build‑out: extreme dependence on a small number of geopolitically exposed nodes,” Ralf Gubler, research director at S&P Global Energy told the WSJ.
Even when the Straight of Hormuz eventually opens, relief will take months, if not years. As Qatar’s mining facilities have taken hits from Iran, state-owned petrochemical giant QatarEnergy estimates its overall helium exports will drop by 17 percent, Al Jazeera reported. Even assuming hostilities cease today, it would still take three to five years to repair this capacity.
“The first victims are party balloons: you can quite easily allocate less there and deal with a few angry parents,” Anish Kapadia, founder of energy consulting firm AKAP Energy told the WSJ. “But clearly when you take a third of global supply off the market overnight, there’s going to be a significant impact across the board.”
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Jerome Powell (right) with David Laibson.Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Christina Pazzanese
Harvard Staff Writer
April 1, 2026 4 min read
Current trends ‘not sustainable,’ says Fed chair, whose conversation with Harvard undergrads also touched on inflation, impact of war, independent decision-making
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell expressed confidence in the “resilience” of the U.S. financial system during a visit to Harvard on Monday and said that the Fed will take a “wait-and-see” approach to the economic impact of the Iran war.
Powell spoke at Sanders Theatre with undergraduates in “Principles of Economics,” a macroeconomics course co-taught by Jason Furman, Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy at the Kennedy School and in the Department of Economics, and David Laibson, Robert I. Goldman Professor of Economics. Laibson moderated the talk.
Powell said that the Fed remains committed to its target inflation rate of 2 percent even against headwinds created by U.S.-imposed tariffs and the conflict in Iran. The Federal Open Market Committee thought the goal was within reach in late 2024 when U.S. growth was at 2.5 percent, 12-month inflation was just above 2 percent, and the labor market was essentially at full employment. These data followed a period of serious recession worries among many economists.
“I would call that a soft landing,” Powell said.
Nominated to serve as Fed chair by President Trump in late 2017, Powell was nominated a second time by President Biden in 2021. His term officially ends in May, but he has said that he will remain as chair until his successor has been approved by the Senate.
Historically, the Fed tends not to react when oil and gas prices rise because energy supply shocks are often short-lived, so the central bank will “wait and see” how Iran-related oil prices affect the broader economy and will monitor inflation expectations “very, very carefully” before making any policy adjustments, Powell said.
He expressed deeper concerns about the nation’s balance sheet. Our $39 trillion debt is not the real problem, he said; it’s that the current path Congress is on — spending more than the U.S. is taking in — is “not sustainable.”
“The country has to get back to ensuring that the economy is growing fast enough to keep pace with spending,” he said.
“It will not end well if we don’t do something fairly soon,” Powell warned.
On emerging threats, Powell said that the Fed has taken significant measures to fortify the U.S. financial system against outsized risks and credit losses like those that fueled the 2008 global financial crisis.
“We have a hugely resilient financial system,” he said.
With the financial sector constantly evolving, what the country needs from the Fed is “vigilance,”not the elimination of all risk, Powell said. “You just need to always know that there’s another thing coming.”
The Federal Open Market Committee is monitoring private credit markets “super carefully,” he said, but at the moment sees no systemic threat to the nation’s financial stability.
Asked by a student about the Fed’s view of employment, Powell acknowledged a tough labor market for younger people.But given U.S. dynamism and growth since World War II, he urged students to be optimistic about the medium- and longer-term economic outlook and to become comfortable and proficient with AI.
Though Powell did not comment on Trump’s nominee for Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, he did make a case for the importance of Fed independence and rejected the idea of partisan motives in the central bank’s policymaking.
“We’re not trying to work against any politician or any administration, but we have to be careful to stick to what we’re doing,” he said, adding: “The Fed is not a perfect institution. What we do is very challenging, highly uncertain, but it’s a great American institution and I’m very proud to work with the people I work with.”
Many observers have warned that any effort to interfere with the Fed’s traditional independence from politics would threaten significant harm to the financial system and to the country. “It’s very hard to build great democratic institutions and much easier to bring them down,” Powell said.
CNBC says investors have “nowhere to hide.” But one exclusive platform just posted a 22.9% net return. Here’s how to get in.
Despite an exciting bull run, gold fell 25% from its January peak.
Bloomberg’s Marcus Ashworth said it this week: “No more reliable safe havens.”
But Masterworks has been offering fractional investments well outside the norm. Typically those exclusive to the ultra-wealthy.
One of those was an Elizabeth Peyton painting. Total net return to hundreds of their members: 22.9%. Typically 3-10 years, this rare turnaround took just a few weeks.
That’s sale number 27. Net annualized returns on sales like 14.6%, 17.6%, 17.8%.
So, despite macro turmoil, the art market has been trending up.
U.S. auction sales jumped 23.1% last year. The $1mm-$5mm segment grew 40.8% in value.
Few people know this. But postwar and contemporary art grew 10.2% annually with near-zero correlation with the S&P 500 over the last 30 years.*
Masterworks lets you invest in shares of works featuring Banksy, Basquiat, Picasso, and more.
*According to Masterworks data. Investing involves risk. Past performance not indicative of future returns. See important disclosures at masterworks.com/cd.
Illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios
Data: 
canisgallicus 