Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman held a meeting today in Jeddah with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. As Starmer arrives in the Gulf Nation to help further UK interests in the region following the beginning of the shaky ceasefire framework that was put in place in the past 24 hours between Iran and the United States.

According to Reuters, citing government sources, India is expecting the U.S. to extend the waiver to buy Russian oil. The 30-day waiver (shown in the below photo excerpt), announced by the U.S. Treasury Department last month, expires on the 11th of this month, and was put in place in an effort to get a handle on rising oil prices during the Iran War.

According to CNN, citing people with direct knowledge of the situation, a hacker accessed a Chinese supercomputer and was able to acquire a massive amount of data, including renderings of bombs and missiles, advanced simulations, and troves of other data belonging to defense agencies and aviation corporations. The group that the hacker belongs to reportedly accessed the data with the intention of selling it for cryptocurrency, according to cyber experts who have viewed previews of the data and spoke to CNN.

Courtney Williams, a U.S. Army veteran and former U.S. government civilian employee working with the U.S. Army's 'Delta Force' under U.S. Special Operations Command, was arrested and charged with 1 count of "communicating and transmitting information related to the national defense classified as SECRET//NOFORN [No Foreign Dissemination]" to journalist Seth Harp from 2022 to 2025. The information Williams provided was used by Harp in an article and subsequent book published in August 2025 titled “The Fort Bragg Cartel.”

After U.S. President Donald J. Trump met with NATO General Secretary Mark Rutte earlier today, he made a post on TruthSocial, lambasting NATO, saying that “NATO wasn’t there when we needed them, and they won’t be there if we need them again.”

Following the meeting at the White House today between NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and U.S. President Donald J. Trump, NATO Spokesperson Allison Hart released a statement, saying that the two decision-makers spoke about a range of issues related to the transatlantic defense alliance and that Secretary General Rutte stressed the importance of member states continuing to contribute to a strong alliance in the Northern Atlantic.

In a notable development, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is set to visit North Korea to hold talks with his North Korean counterpart, Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui, between April 9-10. The visit is notable, as the last publicly known visit by China’s foreign minister was in 2019 and high-level meetings and cooperation between the two East Asian nations has waned in the years since.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has published a statement announcing alternative routes for commercial vessels traveling through the Strait of Hormuz, in order to avoid sea mines deployed during the war with Israel and the United States. “All ships intending to transit the Strait of Hormuz are hereby notified that in order to comply with the principles of maritime safety and to be protected from possible collisions with sea mines...they should take alternative routes for traffic in the Strait of Hormuz,” the statement said, providing instructions for an alternative entry and exit route for ships transiting the Hormuz Strait.

U.S. President Donald J. Trump has announced via a post on TruthSocial that, “All U.S. Ships, Aircraft, and Military Personnel, with additional Ammunition, Weaponry, and anything else that is appropriate and necessary for the lethal prosecution and destruction of an already substantially degraded Enemy, will remain in place in, and around, Iran, until such time as the REAL AGREEMENT reached is fully complied with. If for any reason it is not, which is highly unlikely, then the ‘Shootin' Starts,’ bigger, and better, and stronger than anyone has ever seen before.”

In the last 24 hours, since the start of the two-week long ceasefire between Iran and the United States, not a single oil or natural gas tanker has transited the Strait of Hormuz, with a total of four bulk cargo vessels transiting the strait on Wednesday, the lowest number of daily crossings so far in April, according to data provided to The New York Times by the global ship-tracking firm Kpler.

This is despite several claims by the White House that there had been an “increase in traffic” today through the Hormuz Strait, while Iranian state-run media channels once again threaten to “fully close” the strait due to continued and intensified strikes by Israel against the Hezbollah terrorist group and civil infrastructure in Lebanon, which Wednesday alone killed over a dozen residents in Southern and Central Lebanon.

Iran is demanding that oil tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz make toll payments in the form of cryptocurrency, including Bitcoin and stablecoins such as Tether’s USDT or the Trump family’s USD1. Vessels have been told to email Iranian authorities prior to passage through the area with details regarding their cargo, which authorities will then respond with a quote for passage through the toll to be paid in digital currency, reportedly set at $1 per barrel of oil, according to the Financial Times.