Free Republic

Defying Iran and heading through the Strait of Hormuz is a gamble. But like all the best gambles, it is a lucrative one, so crews are inclined to fancy their odds. To counter the high insurance costs for buyers, countries such as Iraq and Qatar have been offering crude oil at steep discounts. “People just assume one ship in 12 or one ship in 15 is going to get hit by an Iranian drone, but you make enough money on the rest of them,” said Rory Johnston, founder of the market research firm Commodity Context.

Will Yellowstone erupt or are we blowing things out of proportion? We may have underestimated Yellowstone’s potential to blow its stack in the future. Chinese scientists have made a disconcerting find regarding the mechanism behind the caldera’s eruption, sparking concerns that it could belch lava sooner than we’d hoped, per an explosive study in the journal Science. A study on the mechanism behind the Yellowstone supervolcano’s magma flow has sparked concerns that an eruption could be on the horizon. Contrary to prior scholarship, which suggested that the magma originates in large deep chambers, the new study suggests that it could...

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán conceded defeat Sunday in the country’s parliamentary election, calling the result "clear" and "painful" as partial vote counts showed a decisive win for opposition leader Péter Magyar.