🏹 🇺🇦 🇷🇺 At least 3124 Ukrainian drones have been used over Russia over the past week, according to Russian media. The above in the number that have been shot down, more have reached their targets.

📎 Woofers

🇺🇸🪫🇨🇳 While Detroit blinked on EVs, the Iran war has handed Chinese automakers the opportunity of a lifetime

Just as American automakers started pulling back on EVs, the Iran war has sent gas prices skyrocketing, opening up a crucial opportunity for Chinese car companies to seize the moment.

In December, Ford took one of the biggest write-downs in history with a $19.5 billion charge on its EV business. As part of the move, the company killed its all-electric F-150 pickup truck and will retool it as an extended-range hybrid amid a broader shift away from EVs. General Motors, for its part, announced total EV-related charges of $7.6 billion, abandoning plans to build EVs at a Michigan factory that will now make gas-powered SUVs and pickups.

“We can’t allocate money for things that will not make money,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said in December when commenting on the EV pullback to Reuters. “As much as I love those products, the customers in the U.S. were not going to pay for ‌them. And that was the end of that.”

American automakers’ calculations initially seemed well-founded. EV sales collapsed by 36% year over year in the fourth quarter, just after President Donald Trump ended the EV tax credit, according to data from Cox Automotive. With inflation back on the rise and the labor market softening, U.S. consumers seemed hesitant to fork over $55,000 on average for a new EV without the tax credit.

Yet the Iran war, initiated by the U.S. and Israel in February, has complicated that reasoning. The national average for gas prices stood at $4.51 as of Sunday, according to AAA, up 50% from late February. Globally, the average gas price was even higher at about $5.34 per gallon.

This price shock, while inconvenient for U.S. automakers that have recently pivoted away from EVs, has handed Chinese carmakers like BYD the opportunity of a lifetime, experts say.

“As tragic as it is—war is tragic for anyone involved—it is probably one of the best things that could have happened to the Chinese EV makers,” Tu Le, the founder and managing director of Sino Auto Insights, told Fortune.

Chinese automakers have spent decades preparing for such an opportunity, said Joern Buss, a partner at consulting firm Arthur D. Little and head of the Americas for its automotive and manufacturing group. Dating back to the early 2000s, when China was a non-player in the auto industry, automakers in the country were hiring consultants such as Buss to learn how to compete with the legacy players.

The strategy has been a major success. After years of dominance by Western companies like Volkswagen in China, domestic car companies trumped them in sales for the first time in 2023. China is now the world’s largest exporter and has increased its influence in Europe and Latin America in recent years. In Europe, one out of every 10 vehicles is now made by a Chinese company, according to research platform DataForce.

Part of this increase is thanks to the affordability of Chinese vehicles. Ford’s cheapest vehicle, the hybrid Maverick XL pickup, starts at $28,000. BYD’s cheapest vehicle, a compact hatchback dubbed the Seagull, sells for $10,300 in China, though it’s higher in markets like Europe and Latin America.

🔗 https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/while-detroit-blinked-evs-iran-060000254.html

🇨🇳🇺🇸 China has agreed to address US concerns over rare earth shortages, says White House but not confirmed by Beijing

China will address U.S. concerns about shortages ‌of certain specialty rare earths caused by Beijing's ‌export controls, the White House said on Sunday in a factsheet ​outlining the major deals agreed during a summit last week.

China's rare earth export controls - introduced in April 2025 in retaliation for U.S. President Donald Trump's Liberation Day tariffs - ‌continue to tightly restrict ⁠exports of some rare earths despite a deal last October in which the White ⁠House says China agreed to allow shipments to freely flow.

Beijing's grip has been tightest over specialty rare earths such as ​yttrium and ​scandium, used in defence, ​aerospace and chipmaking, both ‌of which were highlighted in the factsheet.

China's Ministry of Commerce did not mention ‌rare earths in its own ​summary released on Saturday.

China refines ​over 90% of the world's rare earths and has dominated the industry for decades. Its expertise and ​technology are, ‌however, tightly guarded and generally unavailable to foreign ​companies.

🔗 https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/china-agreed-address-us-concerns-022346890.html

🇨🇳⛽️📉 Chinese Refiners Slash Crude Runs to Lowest Level Since 2022

Chinese refiners slashed their crude runs to the lowest level since August 2022 as China has reduced refinery utilization and slashed crude imports as oil prices soar amid the Iran war.

Crude throughput at Chinese refineries slumped by 5.8% in April from a year earlier, to about 13.3 million barrels per day (bpd), according to official data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics published on Monday.

That’s the lowest oil throughput since August 2022, when China was still under severe Covid-related lockdowns. 

The average refinery utilization rate slumped to 63.59%, down by 4.7 percentage points from a year earlier, and down by 5.13 percentage points compared to March, per data from Chinese consultancy Oilchem cited by Reuters.

Demand destruction from higher oil prices and export restrictions in March and April meant that China didn’t draw on its quite large crude inventories, and stocks of gasoline and diesel actually rose, analysts tell Reuters.

China has slashed crude oil imports to the lowest since 2022, also easing the upward pressure on physical crude prices. Many refiners decided to undergo spring maintenance a bit earlier than planned. Others are in scheduled maintenance, preparing for the peak summer season.

China’s buying behavior in recent weeks suggests that the world’s top crude oil importer is slashing imports, and refiners with smaller stock buffers have slashed run rates.

🔗 https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Chinese-Refiners-Slash-Crude-Runs-to-Lowest-Level-Since-2022.html

🛢 The world is running out of oil. Implausible three months ago, the likelihood of a crude shortage on a global scale is becoming increasingly realistic with each day that the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked.

Analysts are no longer modeling for a swift end to the war between the United States, Israel, and Iran. They are now also allowing for an extended period of severe energy flow disruptions—and it is not looking good.

Kpler reported earlier this month the cumulative loss of oil supply in the Middle East since February 28 had hit 782 million barrels as of May 8 and was on track to expand to 1 billion barrels by the end of the month. In daily output terms, the picture looks no better. Saudi Arabia is losing over 3 million barrels daily, Iraq is producing 2.88 million barrels daily less, and Iran is at 1.69 million barrels daily lower output, while Kuwait has suffered a decline of 1.75 million barrels daily.

With so much production offline, the most sensible thing to do is tap reserves. Estimated at record highs, the world’s oil stocks were cited as a big reason for predictions of a severe glut that could exceed demand by almost 4 million barrels daily, according to the International Energy. But that was before the war began. Now, the IEA is warning that demand for oil will exceed supply this year.

In its latest monthly report, the IEA said it expected global oil supply to fall by some 3.9 million barrels daily over the current year—which is a lot less than what the actual current supply loss is from the Middle East. The IEA estimates that loss at 10.5 million barrels daily. Yet while supply falls by 3.9 million barrels daily—which may turn out to be an optimistic scenario—demand would only fall by 420,000 barrels daily, according to the international authority on energy.

“You can only decrease consumption so much, and when inventories run out, they are going to run out,” Ellen Wald, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center, told the Wall Street Journal this week. “At some point the market is going to collide and prices are going to shoot up.”

This echoes the warning that Aramco’s chief executive issued earlier in the month, saying global onshore inventories of fuels were depleting at record speed. These inventories are “the only buffer that is available today”, Amin Nasser said, as quoted by the Financial Times, but they are “materially depleted”.

“Our conclusion is that one way or another the strait reopens in June,” JP Morgan’s Natasha Kaneva said, as an end to the war would be the only way the world avoids the shortage scenario. If that does not happen, “The next phase of this shock may look less like a traditional crude spike and more like a refining and end-user fuel crisis,” the bank’s head of global commodities strategy said, noting that only a “clear, credible announcement, ratified and confirmed by both sides” would calm markets.

Adding to the pessimism, Aramco’s Nasser pointed out in his recent comments that traders may be overestimating the availability of oil in storage. Not all of the barrels that are counted as being in storage are actually accessible, he said. In fact, only a fraction of it is accessible. “The rest is locked up in pipeline fill, minimum tank levels and other day-to-day operational constraints.” There are also limits to how much oil one can draw from storage on a daily basis. “In Europe and the US, the maximum you can pull out from there is 2mn barrels a day,” Aramco’s chief executive said.

🔗 https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Oil-Shortage-Scenario-Looms-Large.html

🇮🇱❌🇵🇸 Israel Approves Seizure of 15-20 Historic Palestinian Properties Adjacent to Al-Aqsa Mosque

Israeli occupation authorities approved a plan Sunday to seize between 15-20 historic Palestinian properties in the Bab al-Silsila neighborhood adjacent to Al-Aqsa Mosque in Occupied Jerusalem, implementing a confiscation order dating to 1968, according to The Palestinian Information Center.

The targeted properties — belonging to Jerusalemite families and including Islamic endowments from the Ayyubid, Mamluk, and Ottoman eras — will be handed to the Jerusalem Jewish Quarter Development Company.

The Jerusalem Governorate called it part of a systematic policy to empty the area surrounding Al-Aqsa of Palestinian residents and urged the UN and UNESCO to intervene.

🔗 DropSite

🇺🇸🇮🇱⚔️🇮🇷 U.S. president, Donald Trump, may decide to restart the aerial bombing campaign against Iran following the failure to convince China to pressure Iran into capitulating — Al Jazeera

Mohamad Elmasry, professor of media studies at the Doha Institute of Graduate Studies, believes that the bombing of Iran may resume as soon as Wednesday because " Trump has got a lot of different people in his ear”, including Netanyahu and “very hawkish people” within his own administration"

“He hasn’t gotten the kind of capitulation that he’s wanted from the Iranians, and he expected from the Iranians,” said Elmasry, adding that Trump also “expected negotiations to go differently” and had high expectations during his recent summit in China with President Xi Jinping.

Elmasry said it would be wise for Trump to end the war at this point, given that it has been “a real disaster for him” and for the US from a political and economic standpoint.

However, he is unlikely to do so “because Trump cannot go back at this point to the American people with a convincing victory declaration”.

🔗 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2026/5/18/iran-war-live-trump-warns-clock-ticking-saudi-uae-report-drone-attacks?update=4581668

🇺🇸 Pentagon quietly shut legally required program to prevent civilian deaths by military, watchdog finds

Trump administration accused of cutting military’s civilian harm program in light of US strike on girls school in Iran

A report released by the department’s inspector general concluded the US military no longer has the people, tools or infrastructure needed to comply with two federal statutes requiring it to maintain a functioning civilian casualty policy, and operate a Civilian Protection Center of Excellence (CP CoE).

Donald Trump’s administration has been accused of making deep cuts to the Pentagon’s civilian harm mitigation and response (CHMR) program, designed to handle training and procedures critical in limiting civilian harm in theaters of war.

While the program has not been officially canceled, the inspector general’s report said that funding had ended for a data management platform; committee meetings had halted; and many dedicated personnel had been lost or reassigned.

“As a result, the DoW may not comply with its civilian casualties and harm policy,” the report read. “A policy required by federal law.”

The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.

The program was created by Lloyd Austin, then defense secretary, in January 2022, under Joe Biden, following years of deadly US bombing campaigns in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Airwars, a civilian harm monitor, estimated that US drone and airstrikes killed at least 22,000 civilians – and perhaps as many as 48,000 – in the 20 years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001.

Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon chief, has recently come under fire over deadly attacks on Iran, including a US strike in Minab that killed at least 175 people, a majority of them children, at an all-girls school.

Limiting casualties has not been a top priority under Hegseth’s tenure at the Department of War, rebranded on his watch from Department of Defense last September. When pressed on civilian casualties in Iran, he has pivoted to blame the country’s regime for placing rocket launchers in civilian areas, and also claimed no nation in history had taken more precautions than the US to avoid civilian deaths.

The inspector general’s report, and people familiar with the office, tell a different story.

“My assessment is that they’ve left a semblance of the department because Hegseth was taking heat for illegal operations,” said Wes J Bryant, an air force combat veteran who was the chief of civilian harm assessments on the CP CoE program.

He described a stream of forced resignations and halted investigations since Hegseth assumed his post, saying there are only seven people left reporting to the program, and that they are “locked out of all operations” and have been relegated to “a closet office” in Virginia.

🔗 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/15/pentagon-civilian-death-program?CMP=GTUS_email

🇺🇸🇮🇱🇮🇷⚡️ — The U.S. and Israel are carrying out their most intensive preparations since the ceasefire took effect amid the possibility of renewed strikes on Iran as early as this week, according to NYT.

➡️ The Pentagon is also preparing for a potential restart of Operation Epic Fury.

🇺🇸🇩🇰🇬🇱⚡️ — The U.S., Greenland, and Denmark have been holding closed-door talks in Washington over Greenland’s future following threats by Trump to seize the island, with negotiators said to have met around five times since January, NYT reports.

➡️ Washington is seeking expanded military access in Greenland, including arrangements that would allow American forces to remain indefinitely even if Greenland eventually becomes independent.

➡️ U.S. officials are also pushing for influence over major foreign investment deals and deeper cooperation on Greenland’s vast reserves of oil, uranium, rare earth minerals, and other strategic resources.

➡️ Greenlandic officials fear the proposals would significantly undermine the island’s sovereignty for generations, with some politicians warning that the demands could make true independence impossible.

➡️ The Pentagon is accelerating plans for a military expansion in Greenland and recently sent a U.S. Marine Corps officer to Narsarsuaq in southern Greenland to inspect the World War II-era airport, harbor facilities, and potential housing locations for American troops.

🔼 🇺🇸 🕯 Trump made over 3,700 stock trades in quarter one of 2026, totaling tens of millions of dollars.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/15/trump-palantir-stock-truth-social.html

📎 AF Post

🧑‍🎓 🇬🇧 🏫 Primary schoolchildren in parts of the UK are being taught to be mindful of their “white privilege” under an anti-racism education programme.

Lesson plans used by a coalition of Sheffield schools tell pupils as young as 7 that white people are more likely to benefit from “privilege” because they are less likely to experience racism.

Older students are also taught that while black people can hold prejudice against white people, racism involves “cultural power” and is therefore different.

📎 Europa

🇺🇸⚡️ — President Trump once again attacks Republican Congressman Thomas Massie, calling him an "obstructionist and a fool," ahead of the Kentucky primary tomorrow.