By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

China is estimated to have added about 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil to its huge inventories in July as imports rebounded from a decade-low in June and refinery runs remained depressed.

The world’s top crude oil importer, unlike other major oil consumers, started drawing down on stockpiles only in May, the third month of the Middle East crisis, as it had amassed an estimated 1.4 billion barrels of crude oil in commercial and strategic stocks at the start of the Iran war.

The trend of drawdowns in May and June appears to have reversed in July, according to calculations by Reuters columnist Clyde Russell based on officially available Chinese data.

Unlike the United States, China does not report inventories. Analysts are looking at overall supply (domestic production plus imports) and refinery processing rates to estimate how much crude is going into reserves and how much is being processed into fuels.

Using this calculation, Reuters’ Russell has estimated that China had 210,000 bpd of crude available to go to storage in July, considering total crude availability of 12.72 million bpd (8.41 million bpd of imports and 4.3 million bpd of domestic production), and refinery throughput of 12.51 million bpd.

The latest estimates show that China’s massive crude oil stockpile has mostly remained intact at about 1.2 billion barrels, five months after the worst disruption to global oil supply began with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

China slashed its overall crude oil imports amid the Middle East conflict as its refiners cut run rates and authorities restricted fuel exports to protect domestic supply.

Now China has eased some of the fuel export restrictions, which led to a rebound in crude oil imports in July, following a ten-year low seen in June.

The higher crude oil imports in July likely allowed stockpiling again, in a surprise to the market and possibly indicating continued weakness in domestic demand and refining volumes.

A radical Democratic Socialist lawmaker from New York is under fire after declaring that theft driven by “biological need” shouldn’t be treated as a crime, effectively green-lighting shoplifting while slamming big retailers.

Emily Gallagher, a New York State Assembly member and part of the Democratic Socialists of America’s New York State Socialists in Office caucus, sparked outrage this week with comments defending petty theft at a press conference outside Manhattan Criminal Court.

“Most of what we saw were crimes of poverty – people who are stealing things like toothpaste, people who were stealing things like, you know, soap. And that means if you’re stealing those things, you need them. And we are choosing to protect billion-dollar companies, like CVS and Walgreens, over the people who are struggling to get by,” Gallagher said, according to the New York Post.

“So I would say that the true crime is that there is such incredible wealth disparity in this city that there are people who can be thrown in jail simply for having a biological need.“

Gallagher went on to tout her soft-on-crime criminal justice “reforms” while blasting conservative media for opposing the anti-law-and-order policies that have already wreaked havoc on New York City and other Democrat-run cities across the country.

However, everyday New Yorkers aren’t buying it.

The Post quizzed several shoppers at the Food Universal supermarket in the Bronx’s Co-op City, who told the paper that Gallagher’s comments were downright ridiculous.

“It’s foolish to think one should not be punished for stealing. It is a crime,” said one shopper. “Mamdani can implement that in his [city-run grocery] stores, so if you don’t have the necessities, you can go there and get them for free,”

“People are going to feel entitled because they know they can walk in and walk out and nothing will happen,” said another shopper. “Allowing people to shoplift with no consequence is wrong. I’m a single mom and at one time I had four jobs. I would never think of stealing anything.

Anyone still dismissing the DSA as a fringe outfit with no real pull inside the Democrat Party need only look at the growing roster of newly elected socialists popping up nationwide, some already eyeing Congress. DSA-backed candidates toppled 15-term Rep. Diana DeGette in Denver and Rep. Shri Thanedar in Michigan this summer, and captured two safe blue New York House seats outright. Socialists Claire Valdez, Darializa Avila Chevalier, Melat Kiros and Donavan McKinney are now on track to join Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib in Washington come January. Over the weekend, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries even admitted the group is part of the party’s “broad caucus.”

Good luck with that.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

A 26-year-old Ghanaian migrant stalked and attacked women across Oklahoma City over a two-week span in August, getting arrested three times for sexual battery before firefighters witnessed him trying to rape a fourth woman on a public trail and held him for police.

Jeff Kufi (Kofi) Asare was booked on a first-degree rape charge with a $75,000 bond. The Oklahoma County District Attorney’s office is pushing to raise that bond because of the rapid series of alleged assaults.

Court records show at least 19 criminal felony and misdemeanor charges filed against him since August 2023, with more than 20 arrests stretching back to 2022 for larceny, trespass, obstruction, injuring an officer, and breaking and entering.

?DEAR GOD!!!

A migrant from Ghana HUNTED women on the streets of Oklahoma City.

He attacked one. They let him go.
He attacked another. They let him go AGAIN.

Then he tried to R*PE a third woman in BROAD DAYLIGHT, and FIREFIGHTERS tackled him off of her.

He’s been arrested… pic.twitter.com/R4Y6Wmmr8M

— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) August 17, 2026

Why is this guy still in the country?

Jeff Kofi Asare was arrested THREE times in just the past two weeks for allegedly r*ping women in Oklahoma. Nearly 2 dozen arrests since 2022.

WE SHOULDN’T HAVE TO LIVE LIKE THIS pic.twitter.com/PVSIEcB0Ai

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 16, 2026

On August 1 near Northwest 23rd Street and Classen Boulevard, police responded to a possible rape. Asare allegedly pushed a woman against a bus stop window and put his hands down her pants.

The same day a second woman reported he came up behind her on Classen Boulevard, pulled her pants down, and fled when she pushed him away. He was arrested for sexual battery and indecent exposure.

Five days later near Scissortail Park, Asare allegedly walked up behind another woman, grabbed her buttocks multiple times, and began digging in his pants. When she told him to leave he walked away. Police later spotted and arrested him again for sexual battery.

On August 12 on the Lake Hefner Trail, Asare allegedly approached a woman from behind, pulled her down, and attempted to rape her. Local firefighters saw the attack, intervened, and called police. He was arrested on the first-degree rape charge.

Kufi Asare is a migrant in Oklahoma. Here is his criminal record so far:

8/12/26: Rape (1st degree)
8/6/26: Sexual battery in a park
8/1/26: Sexual battery in a park
3/5/26: Breaking and entering
10/3/25: Breaking and entering
2/23/25: Trespass + obstruction
8/27/23: Retail… pic.twitter.com/uOfUK3hNuo

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) August 16, 2026

Judges just kept releasing him.

Asare had previously been released through the TEEM pretrial program by Oklahoma County District Court Judge Cindy Truong after earlier cases. Court records indicate he received an official immigration warning in April after pleading no contest to breaking and entering.

Social media reports have described him as a migrant who is not a U.S. citizen, though ICE has not yet confirmed his immigration status.

Open borders and soft-on-crime judges create the conditions for so many cases like this. When officials treat deportation as optional and pretrial release as the default for serial offenders, the result is predictable. American women end up hunted on sidewalks, in parks, and on trails in the middle of the day.

Policies that enforce immigration law and keep dangerous scumbags locked up, or better still removed, are the only real answer. Judges who keep releasing repeat predators must face accountability. The public should not have to rely on firefighters to prevent rapes.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

Splitting the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine into separate shots could take up to a decade, according to one of the two companies that produce the vaccine for the U.S. market.

“Even under current expedited review pathways, it could take years – potentially as many as 10 – to meet the safety and efficacy requirements to obtain FDA approval and then begin manufacturing and commercialization” of single-disease shots, Merck said in a statement.

Merck, which did not respond to a request for more details, had told Politifact in 2025 – after President Donald Trump floated splitting the MMR vaccine – that it could take more than 10 years to separate the components into three separate vaccines.

Trump said in an Aug. 10 order that he was issuing “gold standard childhood vaccine recommendations,” which “recognize that the combined measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine should be administered in three separate single-disease shots once such products are domestically available.” The order directed agencies to take steps to advance the recommendations.

Before signing the order, Trump said, “You have the MMR, we want it in three separate vaccinations given at separate times. Together there could be a possibility they are quite lethal and separately, it looks like they are not at all lethal but just very effective.” The White House did not respond to a request for citations by the time of publication.

Dr. Robert Malone, a former member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel, said in an Aug. 10 post on X that splitting combination vaccines into separate shots could reduce adverse events without sacrificing protection.

The CDC’s website says, “No published scientific evidence shows any benefit in separating the combination MMR vaccine into three individual shots.” A January update to the childhood vaccine schedule retained recommendations for MMR vaccination, advising that children receive one dose around the age of 1 and a second dose from 4 to 6 years of age.

The MMR vaccine has been available since the 1970s. Merck and GlaxoSmithKline produce it for the United States.

Standalone vaccines were discontinued in the United States in 2008. Merck said in a 2009 letter to health care providers that it was moving forward with the MMR and not the monovalent vaccines because the combination shot “eliminates the need for 3 separate injections and reduces the chance of delays in helping protect against any of these potentially serious diseases.” The standalone vaccines are still available in certain other countries.

Side effects of the MMR vaccine include febrile seizure and severe allergic reactions, according to regulatory labels.

GlaxoSmithKline told news outlets in a statement after Trump signed the order that its vaccines “are clinically proven to provide vital protection against infectious disease, and support public health goals by reducing missed doses, improving immunization coverage, and minimizing the burden on families and healthcare systems.”

Dr. Andrew Racine, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said although it’s possible to separate the MMR vaccine into its constituent components, each component would have to be manufactured and tested.

“They wouldn’t be able to do that probably for another 10 years, and there’s no indication that they have any interest in doing that,” he said.

A White House official told reporters on a call about the order that the administration would work with the private sector to make the option of separate vaccines available to parents, relying on market-based solutions.

“Right now we have a lot of Americans and a lot of American parents who want to see additional options,” the official said.

The Food and Drug Administration did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

Establishing and obtaining regulatory approval for the manufacturing processes for the separate shots could be time-consuming and costly, Jesse Goodman, former chief scientist at the FDA, said.

“They’d be making three times as many vials or vaccines and filling three times as many,” Goodman said. “It’s not like they have facilities sitting around idle – so they might need to either change current facilities or even create additional capacity for them.”

Reuters contributed to this report.

Already US officials have signaled they may just abandon hard-hit bases in the Middle East altogether, in the wake of Iran’s retaliation as a result of Operation Epic Fury, and a conflict that’s dragged on for nearly six months.

On Tuesday The Washington Post reviews the damage control underway, as the Pentagon ‘evaluates’ its future military footprint. All of this is framed as if Washington has a choice and full control over the matter, when it seems that all along the Trump administration was woefully underestimating what an Iranian response would look like.

“The Pentagon is evaluating its military footprint in the Middle East in an early sign of the Iran war’s potential to transform the U.S. presence in the region, according to eight people, including officials and others familiar with the matter,” Washington Post writes.

“One of the key areas the Defense Department is assessing is whether to pull back troops from the Persian Gulf, where America’s large overseas military bases have been battered by months of Iranian strikes, two people familiar with the ongoing analysis said,” it adds, further calling this a “once-in-a-generation” chance for the Pentagon to alter its presence in the region.

The whole thing is being reported as if the ‘smart people’ are in the room and in control, and also as if the US hegemon in the region didn’t already take a massive reputational hit following ‘forever wars’ and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over 20 years after the initial invasions, the Taliban remains in firm control of Kabul and Afghanistan, and Shiite pro-Iranian politicians run Baghdad.

And now a half-year into a war where the response should have been entirely anticipated (having been predicted by years and decades of Persian Gulf war-gaming and intelligence papers), this is where things stand:

“The war really did highlight the vulnerability … of U.S. forces in the region,” said Michael Ratney, a former diplomat who served as the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia and the deputy chief of mission in Qatar.

Moving troops and equipment further west to Jordan, Israel or the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia could help alleviate some of the pressure, he argued, while noting the added distance wasn’t a “perfect solution to this problem.”

Iran has already demonstrated it can strike faraway targets in Jordan and Israel. Last month an Iranian attack on Jordan killed four U.S. service members.

Anyone with eyes to see knows that this is already happening. For months at this point, dozens of US refueling aircraft have clogged up Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport, for just one example.

For smarter and more legitimate analysis, one can turn to Amerikanets, which one month ago was chronicling Tehran’s successful campaign of ‘debasification’:

The broad picture of the Iranian air war in this phase has been a steady wave of concentrated missile and drone strikes sweeping its way across the region. In contrast to the previous hot phase of the war, in which Iran targeted bases across the entire theater simultaneously, this wave started with the targets close to Iranian shores, and has progressed steadily to the Israeli border. After destroying much of the radar network protecting regional US Axis bases in the previous hot phase of the war, Iranian planners have prioritized targeting fuel storage, drone hangers, refueling tankers, and barracks.

The American response has been to pull assets back ever further from Iran, to bases in Israel and Jordan. We’ll call this process debasification. Iran’s debasification strategy takes advantage of the inherent asymmetry between the vastly different force structure and capabilities of Iranian rocket forces and US Axis air forces.

A concluding section predicted the dilemma laid out in WaPo concerning a grand Pentagon evaluation of its force posture in the Middle East:

By all available evidence, the Iranian debasification campaign appears to be working. The US force in the region is likely incapable of generating the same combat power in its air operations against Iran as it could when the war started, and things are trending ever further in a negative direction. Even worse, there’s no clear solution on the horizon. The most obvious lever for American planners to pull is to accept more casualties and losses of personnel and airframes, but this is an unprecedented step the modern incarnation of the US military has never faced.

“The Iranian debasification campaign appears to be working.

The US force in the region is likely incapable of generating the same combat power in its air operations against Iran as it could when the war started, and things are trending ever further in a negative direction.…

— Alex Shams (@alexshams_) July 21, 2026

What’s worse is that the Iranians know all of this full well – and probably earlier than the Western public – and they smell blood in the water. Hence, this week they’ve been strongly signaling a new ‘offensive’ military posture, and have vowed to hit harder in whatever next waves of conflict come.

So will the US rebuild bases battered by Iranian strikes? Well, Tehran is now saying that in essence it won’t let that happen. The WaPo article operates under the illusory assumption that US planners have some big array of options set before them, when increasingly American forces are in obvious retreat and no one can do anything about it. Also, what happened to Pete Hegseth’s rah rah Epic Fury press briefings on all the ‘winning’ and chest-thumping? It’s been a while.

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

A state tax court in Maryland invalidated the nation’s first state tax on digital advertising and directed state officials to refund tax payments already collected from major tech companies.

The legal dispute had been closely watched by other states that are considering taxing online advertisements.

The Annapolis-based Maryland Tax Court ruled on Aug. 14 that the digital advertising gross revenues tax was unconstitutional after it was challenged in three separate lawsuits by Google, Apple, and Peacock TV. Refunds are expected to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The state imposes the levies based on the businesses’ global revenue. Lawmakers previously said the tax could raise $250 million per year. The money raised from the tax was earmarked for a state education program.

The 2021 tax statute specifically targets the revenue large companies earn from digital advertisements shown in Maryland. Companies that take in more than $100 million in annual global gross revenue were taxed at 2.5 percent.

A sliding scale applies to companies with larger revenues, maxing out at 10 percent for those earning more than $15 billion in global gross annual revenues.

The law’s backers argued that Maryland needed to overhaul its tax system to deal with major changes in how businesses advertise. Lawyers representing the affected companies said their clients were targeted unfairly.

The state court said the tax runs afoul of the federal Internet Tax Freedom Act, the First Amendment, and the due process and commerce clauses of the U.S. Constitution.

The court held that regulating interstate commerce was the business of Congress – not the Maryland General Assembly – and that it was inappropriate that the tax law was premised on global revenue rather than revenue that comes from in-state advertising.

The Internet Tax Freedom Act forbids taxation of electronic commerce if similar services are not taxed. The court held that there is no meaningful distinction between digital advertising and print or billboard ads, meaning the federal bar applies.

In August 2025, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit unanimously struck down the disclosure ban in the Maryland law that prevents companies from listing the digital advertising tax on customers’ receipts.

Forbidding the disclosure of the tax on customers’ receipts means that if companies opt to pass on the cost of the tax to their customers, they are not allowed to advise customers why prices have risen, which means Maryland is insulated from political accountability, the appeals court’s written opinion said.

The law “prevents companies from describing the tax in the one setting where the consumer is guaranteed to look: the invoice,” the opinion said.

“Keeping out of hot water with voters is not among the interests that can justify a speech ban.

“Criticizing the government – for taxes or anything else – is important discourse in a democratic society. The First Amendment forbids Maryland to suppress it.“

The Tax Foundation hailed the Maryland Tax Court’s new ruling in an Aug. 14 blog post.

“This is a robust win for the petitioners on all counts,” Jared Walczak, a senior fellow at the foundation, wrote.

Although Utah and Illinois enacted digital ad taxes this year, none followed Maryland’s approach. Lawmakers in other states that are “considering a digital advertising tax should likewise take note of today’s result. It’s a look into their own future if they choose to adopt a similar tax,” he said.

Democratic legislative leaders in Annapolis said the state will appeal the court ruling.

Senate President Bill Ferguson and House Speaker Joseline A. Peña-Melnyk said they “respectfully disagree with today’s ruling and expect the legal process to continue.”

The tax was enacted because the state’s tax system needs to keep pace with a changing economy in which more commerce and advertising have been moving online, they said in an Aug. 14 statement posted on X.

“It was appropriate to modernize our tax code so that large digital advertising companies contributed alongside other businesses operating in our state.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Since last fall, we have repeatedly flagged the private credit sector’s growing vulnerabilities.

Earlier coverage detailed how the asset class ballooned into a $2-3 trillion opaque market after banks retreated from riskier lending, only to face a wave of high-profile defaults (First Brands, Tricolor), surging redemptions that forced gates at major vehicles, rising PIK usage, and AI-related risks to software-heavy portfolios.

In February, the red flag got about as red as it gets…

• Private Credit Rocked By UBS Shock Outlook: Record “Cascading Defaults” And Widespread Contagion

But, as a wave of private-credit providers unleashed their PR teams – and the story slipped off the lips of the TV talking-heads – it remains top of mind for traders, as we most recently noted:

• Private Credit: The New Junk Bond Market

• Private Credit’s Problems Just Got Real 

• 777 Partners and the End of Private Credit, which highlighted insurance-sector contagion risks from PE/private-credit-controlled insurers and the difficulty of raising fresh capital.

Which leads us to a new story this morning from The Financial Times which underscores that the pressure is no longer contained.

“Strain is spreading across private credit portfolios, with some of the largest funds taking writedowns and warning about problem loans as the industry faces its biggest challenge in almost a decade,” the FT reports.

An analysis of Solve data shows that the value of troubled loans held by some of the biggest private debt investors has reached levels last seen in 2017, when the industry was dealing with a hangover from an oil price crash.

Loans placed on non-accrual status by the 20 largest publicly traded business development companies (BDCs) climbed to a median 2.8% of their cost in the second quarter, up from 2% at the end of March.

The non-accrual demarcation signals that borrowers have either stopped making payments or that a fund believes a borrower may soon default.

David Golub, co-chief executive of Golub Capital, told investors earlier this month that there was “elevated credit stress” as the industry grappled with a rise in defaults and problem loans.

“We’re in a credit cycle,” Golub said.

“Others denied it for a while. I don’t think there’s a lot of denial any more.”

Fitch Ratings warned last week that private credit defaults had hit a new record in July.

PitchBook LCD data showed the biggest publicly listed BDCs shrank again in the second quarter as funds were hit with impairments and as sales and repayments of loans outpaced commitments on new deals. Listed vehicles managed by KKR and Blue Owl, as well as Apollo’s MidCap Financial, were among those in which repayments outstripped new lending. FS KKR Capital Corp reported that 7.1 per cent of its loan book was troubled in the second quarter – still far above the industry average.

Much of the pain is concentrated in loans extended between 2020 and 2021, when rates were near zero and private equity valuations were elevated.

Higher borrowing costs have “starved some businesses from investing,” said Bryan High of Barings.

“They are using all the cash they are generating to pay interest to lenders and so growth for some businesses wasn’t as strong as it could be.”

Concrete examples include Blackstone and KKR marking down their loan to software group Medallia (Blackstone’s fund marked it at less than 50 cents on the dollar at end-June, down from 60 cents in March) after Thoma Bravo handed the business to lenders. Ares wrote down its loan to Cornerstone OnDemand, while Blackstone and KKR took over dental services company Affordable Care after default.

Industry titans acknowledge that bankruptcies and restructurings are moving back toward long-term averages.

“We are… conserving our capital, maintaining ourselves in a more defensive and risk-averse posture,” said Armen Panossian of Oaktree’s credit arm.

“We really want to be able to lean into the market on the back of what we think will be more volatility… Beneath the surface, there’s cause for concern.”

Others remain more sanguine.

Craig Packer of Blue Owl said “credit metrics are healthy and the issues we are managing remain isolated.”

Jim Miller of Ares noted that borrowers were in “solid” shape with interest coverage and leverage “generally consistent with our five-year average.”

Yet the FT confirms our ongoing warnings that some of this optimism “belies the complicated picture ahead,” particularly for software companies facing uncertain durability of growth amid the AI shift, and for funds still digesting the 2020–21 vintage.

The sell-off in BDC share prices has been sharp – KKR and BlackRock vehicles down more than 15% over the past year, Apollo’s down 14.5% – leaving some funds “priced for death,” according to Oppenheimer analyst Mitchel Penn.

BlackRock’s TCPC sold a $523 million block of loans and is exploring options that could include winding the vehicle down; KKR’s troubled vehicle has waived some incentive fees.

Penn’s research showed that on average over the past five years, bottom-quartile funds generated returns on equity below the yield on a 10-year Treasury.

“Underwriting wasn’t as good as it should have been,” he said. “They weren’t as picky.”

Taken together with our earlier reporting on redemption pressure, opacity, and early defaults, the FT data shows the credit cycle is firmly underway and the situation continues to deteriorate.

This latest report from The FT update builds on our prior observations: underwriting standards loosened during the boom, higher rates are now “starving” cash-flow coverage for many borrowers, and the liquidity mismatch between semi-liquid vehicles and illiquid loans is amplifying pressure.

The bottom-line is simple: the situation in private credit continues to worsen.

An ongoing federal investigation into billionaire Mark Walter’s business empire is raising alarm bells about Wall Street’s use of insurance capital to finance private credit and other illiquid investments. 

Bloomberg reported that Walter’s TWG Global holding company said in a filing that it will wind down its exposure to affiliated businesses by up to $6.5 billion after the transactions drew scrutiny from federal investigators. This comes after the Department of Justice homed in on loans that should’ve been marked as affiliated transactions. 

Walter’s TWG Global holding company will buy up to $6.5 billion of affiliated assets from Delaware Life Insurance Co. in exchange for an equal amount of unaffiliated investments. Clear Spring Life and Annuity Co., another TWG-controlled insurer, separately reduced related-party transactions by $90 million.

The moves begin unwinding more than $20 billion of loans and investments that the insurers acknowledged should have been classified as affiliated transactions. 

“Tripping over these requirements can constitute fraud,” said Derek Reisfield, co-founder and former chairman of MarketWatch, as well as a former McKinsey consultant, who was quoted by The New York Post. 

Reisfield said that heavy exposure to businesses connected to an insurer’s owner poses a very high risk. 

“The risk is that concentrated loans to related parties go south, and the insurance companies and their policyholders can’t be made whole,” Reisfield said, adding, “It’s bad risk management and leaves the companies vulnerable.”

Last week, Walter agreed to sell the Los Angeles Lakers to Josh Kushner and Bob Iger at a record $12.5 billion valuation, and earlier this week, a report stated that he is mulling over selling his stake in Chelsea Football Club to the majority owner, Clearlake Capital. 

Insurance companies are allowed to do business with related parties, but such dealings must be disclosed and properly labeled to ensure that owners do not put their interests ahead of those of policyholders. 

The investigation into Walter’s empire is a major wake-up call about Wall Street’s use of insurance capital to finance private credit and other illiquid investments. 

Walter was one of the earliest adopters of the strategy of acquiring insurers and investing their long-term policyholder capital in higher-yielding private assets. A number of other asset managers, including Apollo, KKR, and Brookfield, have followed suit by building out insurance operations. Private-capital firms now manage more than $1 trillion of insurance assets.

“We have always acted in good faith, and insinuations that we have in any way attempted to circumvent our obligations are simply false,” a TWG spokesman told The Wall Street Journal. 

More problems: Walter, CEO of Guggenheim Partners, saw a financing entity tied to the investment firm report a sharp decline in second-quarter earnings, driven by the delayed recognition of advisory fees. The disclosure sent the entity’s term loan tumbling below 80 cents on the dollar.

To sum up, the affiliated transactions were not inherently illegal, provided they had regulatory approval. That appears to be where the process broke down in Walter’s case.

Talk about a turn of events. So Walter possibly built his empire by using a majority of capital from the insurance companies he controls. This violates insurance laws as the float is owed back to policy holders in the future. It must be diversified and safe. By using this… https://t.co/UWmFqr74wz

— Ross Gerber (@GerberKawasaki) August 13, 2026

More concerning, however, is that deeper scrutiny has raised questions about the quality of the loans, the underlying borrowers, and the use of shell entities to channel financing into Walter-linked companies.

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed an opening brief on Aug. 17 seeking to reinstate human smuggling charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia after a district court found the prosecution to be vindictive.

U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw Jr. dismissed the charges against Abrego Garcia on May 22, ruling that prosecutors brought the case against him in retaliation for his legal challenge to his wrongful removal to El Salvador last year.

In an Aug. 17 brief, the DOJ asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit to reverse the ruling, saying the prosecution against the Salvadoran national was made “based on the evidence, the law, and [prosecutors’] firm belief that there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that Abrego Garcia committed the crime.

“The government believed that Abrego had committed human smuggling, that he was ‘a member of the gang MS-13, a designated foreign terrorist organization, and that his return to the United States would pose a threat to the public,’” the DOJ said in the brief.

“Although his deportation had removed that threat and supported closing the criminal investigation, the deportation now had to be undone, at least temporarily. So the United States had a clear legitimate interest in prosecuting Abrego upon his return.”

The department said the lower court ruling marked “a dramatic expansion of the power of courts” to dismiss serious criminal charges based on subjective assessments of a prosecutor’s motivations and accused the district court of interfering with the executive branch’s authority and duty to protect the public from potential threat.

The Epoch Times reached out to Abrego Garcia’s legal representative for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

Abrego Garcia, who illegally entered the United States in 2011 and stayed in Maryland, was accused of being a member of a foreign terrorist organization, the MS-13 gang. He was deported to El Salvador in March 2025 alongside other deportees despite a 2019 immigration court having issued a withholding of removal—which legally barred his deportation to his home country—because of concerns for his safety.

The Salvadoran national was subsequently returned to the United States in June 2025 under a Supreme Court order after the DOJ acknowledged an administrative error in his deportation.

He later faced charges of immigrant smuggling stemming from a 2022 traffic stop, to which he has pleaded not guilty. Abrego Garcia has also denied claims that he was a member of MS-13.

Crenshaw ultimately dismissed the human smuggling charges in May, saying that objective evidence has shown that “absent Abrego’s successful lawsuit challenging his removal to El Salvador, the government would not have brought this prosecution.”

The DOJ appealed the dismissal in June.

Ukraine has launched another massive overnight drone wave on Russia. While this is nothing new or unusual, the number of drones concentrated specifically on the Moscow region was much larger than prior attacks.

Over 600 drones were sent on Moscow and the surrounding region overnight into Tuesday morning, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said. It ranks among the single largest assaults on the capital of the war. Regional reports say it’s the largest drone attack on Moscow of the last two years.

At least 180 of the drones were confirmed downed over the Moscow region alone – possibly more – with emergency crews responding to several crash sites, including at another Wildberries warehouse near Moscow.

Authorities cited that at least three people were injured in the assault, including a 10-year old girl. Smoke has been seen rising over residential and construction areas in social media photographs.

At least 5,000 homes or businesses are reported to be without power in the wake of the overnight strikes, regional energy provider Mosoblenergo has said.

The Associated Press has cited at least 800 Ukrainian drones launched across the whole country, as part of the same broader attack. The report further indicated:

The overnight attack started a fire at a warehouse of Wildberries, Russia’s biggest online retailer, in an industrial zone. Ukraine has repeatedly targeted the company, which it says helps supply the Russian military, an allegation Moscow denies.

Wildberries said its facility sustained “insignificant damage.”

The online retailer, widely seen as the ‘Russian Amazon’, has seen its logistics hubs frequently targeted over the past month.

Purported video of military & security outposts desperately trying to repel the inbound drone attack:

It’s crazy in Moscow.
All four airports are currently closed.

It’s also incredibly loud in various districts as Russia’s air defence tries to land a few more drones on its people. pic.twitter.com/qMz1JRadF5

— Tim White (@TWMCLtd) August 18, 2026

EuroNews observes that seven out of ten of the company’s biggest warehouses have been it and suffered serious damage, enough to take them offline: “Seven logistics hubs belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer, have now been struck and knocked out of action since the campaign began in July.”

While none of this has substantially changed Russian forces’ ground momentum along the front lines, the Institute for the Study of War has said that the aerial campaign is effectively pressuring the Kremlin, given the steady economic setbacks and devastation.

“Moscow simply does not have enough air-defense coverage to shield every piece of infrastructure in its rear, even ten of its most valuable commercial sites,” the ISW assessment concluded. However, nothing has indicated that President Putin is ready to change course – instead we are seeing things steadily escalate on both sides.