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Oil price falls back as flow of crude through Strait of Hormuz unaffected

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Oil price falls back as flow of crude through Strait of Hormuz unaffected

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Oil markets have shrugged off Israel’s threat to topple the Iranian regime, with crude exports from the Middle East so far unaffected by the escalating conflict.

Financial Times analysis of ship-tracking data shows there has been no significant impact on the movement of vessels through the critical Strait of Hormuz. Homayoun Falakshahi, head of crude oil at energy analytics firm Kpler, said their systems also showed no drop in the number of oil tankers transiting the strait.

About 21mn barrels of oil from Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates pass daily through the narrow waterway separating the Islamic republic from the Gulf states, representing about one-third of the world’s seaborne oil supplies.

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“The market is reassured by the fact that we have seen attacks on energy infrastructure but they were constrained to the domestic energy systems in both countries,” Falakshahi said.

Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, rose as much as 5.5 per cent early on Monday to more than $78 a barrel, before giving up all of those gains to trade down 4.1 per cent just above $71.17. It has increased less than 4 per cent since the fighting began last week.

Over the weekend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that regime change could “certainly be the result” of Israel’s attacks on the Islamic Republic after he launched strikes against at least two Iranian gas processing plants and two fuel depots in Tehran. In response, Iran hit pipelines and transmission lines serving Israel’s largest refinery.

However, Israel has not targeted Iran’s key oil export terminals on Kharg Island and Tehran has not sought to disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

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“I think the goal from Israel is to make internal logistics more difficult for Iran, rather than to rattle international markets,” Falakshahi said.

Line chart of Brent crude ($/barrel) showing Oil prices have steadied after last week's surge

He added that fewer tankers than normal appeared to be heading to Iran’s Kharg Island to load oil but that this is likely to be a temporary, precautionary measure, as had happened after Israel and Iran traded air strikes in October last year. One tanker loaded over the weekend but others appeared to have slowed their approach to the facility, which is responsible for 90 per cent of Iran’s oil exports, he said.

Iran currently produces about 3.2mn barrels of oil a day and exports just over half, almost exclusively to China.

While the Iranian regime has historically threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz in the event that the country is attacked, traders are betting that Tehran is less likely to seek to disrupt shipping given improved relations with Saudi Arabia and the need to keep its own exports flowing.

Tehran targeted vessels in the strait during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and more recently was accused of attacks on tankers near the strait in 2019. However, it has never been able to completely block traffic. Saudi Arabia restored diplomatic ties with Iran in 2023.

“Although there is concern that a broader conflict could cause the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz to close, [we] consider this risk as very low given it has never occurred in history,” JPMorgan’s commodities team wrote in a note.

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The UK’s Maritime Trade Office on Monday said there had been a slight decrease in the number of large cargo ships transiting the strait over the past week but added that it identified no information pointing towards a blockade or closure.

Janiv Shah, an oil analyst at consultancy Rystad Energy, said a blockade would push markets into “uncharted territory”, but that this was an unlikely outcome.

Rather than shutting the strait, an alternative Iranian response could lead to Tehran seeking to strike oilfields in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, which are within the reach of its drones, say analysts.

In 2019 Iran was widely believed to be behind a drone attack on Saudi Arabia’s largest oil processing facility that temporarily cut the kingdom’s crude production by more than half and briefly pushed up global oil prices by as much as 20 per cent.

However, traders are betting that any such action will come into play only as a very last resort, according to Falakshahi.

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“Currently no actor in the region, especially the two currently involved in the conflict, sees a benefit in hitting critical energy infrastructure,” he said.

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the Reagan Library on Sept. 9, 2025, in Simi Valley, Calif. Barrett discussed and signed copies of her new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.

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Even as the Supreme Court was handing down one legal thunderbolt after another last week, the justices were quietly releasing their annual financial reports. Justice Samuel Alito was the only sitting justice to request an extension, which he has done for 15 years. The disclosures do not give a complete account of the justices’ total income and wealth, but they give insights into their concertgoing, guest professorships and even their involvement in youth sports.

In addition to their salaries, much of the justices’ reported income came from their book deals. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson led the pack earning more than $1.1 million last year for a total of roughly $4 million since her memoir, Lovely One, was published in 2024.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy also reported income from published books. Earnings from their books ranged from $849,000 for Barrett, to $300,000 for Gorsuch and $88,000 for Sotomayor, whose books include her 2013 autobiography and five children’s books. Justice Clarence Thomas, who previously earned $1.5 million for his 2007 memoir, listed no publisher payments last year, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of 13 co-authors of a 2016 legal treatise, also received no payments last year. Kavanaugh is said to be working on a memoir but he listed no payments for the anticipated book. Alito does have a book coming out in the fall, but with his financial report still outstanding, there is no data on how much he was paid for the work in 2025.

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The only two sitting justices who have not written books are Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan.

Many justices also earned income from teaching at law schools. Roberts reported income from New England Law, located in Boston, and Gorsuch reported teaching income from George Mason University in Virginia. Thomas taught classes at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and Barrett and Kavanaugh taught at Notre Dame Law School. Barrett graduated from the school and began teaching there 23 years ago; Kavanaugh has family connections to Notre Dame.

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.

A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.

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City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”

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Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.

Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.

“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.

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Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.

Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.

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“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.

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The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.

Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.

“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.

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Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”

He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.

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Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.

On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

The Justice Department sent letters warning election officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia that they could face criminal prosecution over noncitizen voting, a spokesperson for the Justice Department confirmed Tuesday.

The letters, signed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads up the department’s Civil Rights Division, give states five days to explain how they will comply with federal voter eligibility laws and how they will maintain “clean voter lists.”

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“The Department sent these letters to all 50 states and the District of Columbia, asking for voluntary compliance in a timely manner with their obligations under federal law to ensure only citizens vote in federal elections,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.

Noncitizen voting in federal elections is extremely rare, but Trump and his administration have falsely portrayed it as a widespread issue.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar and Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson are among those who said they received the letters from the Justice Department.

The letters say state election officers “could be criminally prosecuted for aiding and abetting” noncitizen voting. They further specify that any election officer who knowingly retains noncitizens on a statewide voting registration list or who facilitates noncitizens’ receiving and casting ballots could be subject to criminal liability.

“An intentional act that is aimed at diluting the votes of citizens could also constitute a violation” of federal law, the letters said.

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Henderson wrote on social media that the threats constitute “truly bizarre behavior.”

“Got another love letter this morning from the DOJ sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution,” she wrote. “I’m sure I’m not the only chief election officer of a state who is being targeted for following state and federal laws by resisting DOJ’s demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts.”

The letters are the latest move in the Justice Department’s campaign to assert more federal control over state elections.

While some states have complied with the administration’s demands that they hand over voter roll data, the Justice Department has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., for resisting. So far, 11 different federal courts have dismissed the Justice Department’s efforts to seize voter rolls.

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