HowRu68

Russian oil is now selling at either no discount or even a premium as governments scramble to replace energy supplies lost after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said Thursday.

“Today, when there’s a deficit in the market, our oil and petroleum products are in high demand,” Novak told reporters, according to the Interfax news agency.

“We’ve moved from a discount to either no discount or, in some cases, even a partial premium,” he said.

Reuters estimates that Russia’s oil and gas revenues could jump by around 70% in April from March amid the rise in global prices, reaching their highest monthly level since October 2025.

mediabias credibility: HIGH

The European Parliament has backed legislation to implement an EU-US trade deal, following months of uncertainty over President Donald Trump's tariff threats.

On Thursday, lawmakers moved to strengthen its safeguards, including a provision to suspend the agreement if the US imposes additional tariffs above 15% or introduces new duties on EU goods. Another would halt the deal if the US threatened the EU's territorial sovereignty.

MEPs also included a "sunrise clause" that means EU tariff reductions will only take effect if the US upholds its side of the bargain - including lowering tariffs to 15% on EU products that contain less than 50% steel and aluminium.

When the framework agreement was announced last summer, Trump said the 50% US tariff on global steel and aluminium would still apply to the EU.

KYIV, March 25 (Reuters) - The U.S. is making its offer of security guarantees for a peace deal in Ukraine conditional on Kyiv ceding all of the country's eastern region of ‌Donbas to Russia, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told Reuters in an interview. With the U.S. focused on its own conflict with Iran, President Donald Trump is applying pressure to Ukraine in an effort to bring a quick end to the four-year war triggered by Russia's 2022 invasion, Zelenskiy said.

KYIV, March 25 (Reuters) - The U.S. is making its offer of security guarantees for a peace deal in Ukraine conditional on Kyiv ceding all of the country's eastern region of ‌Donbas to Russia, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told Reuters in an interview.

With the U.S. focused on its own conflict with Iran, President Donald Trump is applying pressure to Ukraine in an effort to bring a quick end to the four-year war triggered by Russia's 2022 invasion, Zelenskiy said.

More than 350 years after the death of legendary French musketeer d'Artagnan, his remains may well have been found under the floor of a Dutch church.

Jos Valke, who is deacon at St Peter and Paul Church in Maastricht, helped unearth the skeleton and is 99% certain that the remains belong to Charles de Batz de Castelmore, a close aide to France's Sun King Louis XIV who was known as Count d'Artagnan.

D'Artagnan was killed during the Siege of Maastricht in 1673, but later immortalised in the adventure stories of Alexandre Dumas as a friend of the Three Musketeers.

(..) former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. According to NATO's ( former) Secretary General, Europe is entering a decisive strategic rupture, one that forces a long-delayed reckoning with its own dependency structures and security assumptions. The erosion of American commitment to European defence is not a hypothetical risk but an unfolding reality, exposing the fragility of a model built on external guarantees and internal complacency.

Russia has launched a huge wave of nearly 1,000 drones at Ukraine, killing at least seven people, as Moscow appears to be stepping up a spring offensive intended to break Ukrainian resistance along the front.

The geopolitical situation has become more complicated due to the war against Iran, and unfortunately, this is emboldening Russia.”

The well-sourced outlet Ukrainska Pravda reported that the US had put pressure on Ukraine to withdraw its troops from the Donetsk region during the Florida talks, saying Washington could step back from peace negotiations and shift its focus further to the military operation in Iran.

17-03-2026

"The extension of the voluntary monitoring of private communication on the internet by online platforms in the EU has failed. Negotiators from EU states and the parliament could not agree on a compromise, as a spokeswoman for the Cypriot Council Presidency announced on Monday.

note# since it seems on the agenda again and most links don't share any updates on the complicated legislation. Here's a recent & imo reliable update.

Russian intelligence operatives proposed staging an assassination attempt on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to reshape the country’s election campaign, according to The Washington Post on March 21.

The newspaper reported that the proposal appeared in an internal document from Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, which was obtained and authenticated by a European intelligence service.

Justice minister David van Weel has said there are strong indications that the four teenagers arrested after an arson attack on a synagogue in Rotterdam were recruited to carry out the crime, and that a possible link with Iran is also being investigated.

Context:

"Drawing on the author’s dataset of Iranian external operations, which are depicted in the Iranian External Operations interactive map and timeline, of the 218 plots in the overall dataset covering 1979 to today, 102 plots occurred in Europe. "

#Note: Am not in agreement with the current relentless bombing by US & Israel, but I won't condone terrorism by Iran either.

Canada is pushing for a collective G7 and Middle East approach to de-escalating the Iran war, including off ramps that could bring an end to the conflict, the Canadian foreign minister, Anita Anand, has said.

In London to meet the UK foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, after talks with the her Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, Anand told the Guardian she hoped a G7 meeting chaired by France, this year’s president of the group, might start to build a broader collective approach to the crisis.

A small French town has won instant internet fame because its mayor – running for re-election in Sunday's municipal elections – goes by the name of Hittler.

Not just that. One of his two opponents is called Zielinski.

#note: reallife, but a bit eurotrash story.