Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times,

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer declared a state of energy emergency on Oct. 12, citing disruptions to global oil markets from the war in Iran and what she said was the nation’s largest year-over-year rise in average gasoline prices in Michigan.

The order allows certain farm and logging vehicles to use dyed diesel on public roads.

In her emergency order, Whitmer said that Michigan’s farmers and loggers are facing record-high diesel prices, slim margins, and sharp market swings, with some costs passed on to consumers.

“These industries already purchase and maintain substantial supplies of dyed diesel for off-road equipment. Therefore, granting eligible highway-licensed vehicles temporary access to this fuel would provide immediate relief,” she wrote.

Her order suspends specific provisions of the Motor Fuel Tax Act that normally bar such use of dyed diesel.

Global Supply Shrinks

Armed conflicts have tightened crude oil supply, driving up prices for both diesel and regular gasoline.

The hostilities with Iran, which began at the end of February, have slowed shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the point through which about 25 percent of the seaborne oil trade used to flow, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Shortly after the conflict started in March, diesel prices saw their biggest one-week jump on record.

Global diesel markets could remain tight well into next year, with resulting high prices driving inflation and hurting economic growth, as conflicts curb output from the Middle East and Russia, the agency said on Oct. 14.

Combined diesel export losses from the Middle East and Russia totaled 1.3 million barrels per day in September, the agency said.

Pump Prices Bite

The average pump price for a gallon of regular gasoline in the United States was $4.33 per gallon as of Oct. 14, according to the American Automobile Association. Diesel is much higher, at about $6.30 per gallon, reaching a record high of $6.52 at the end of last month.

The emergency order ends when the governor determines the shortage no longer exists, but no later than Dec. 31. Willful interference with the order is a misdemeanor.

Whitmer noted she had issued an earlier order in April that suspended Reid vapor-pressure requirements in gasoline and temporarily lowered consumer prices. She wrote that the federal government created the problem and can fix it.

Whitmer, a Democrat, is term-limited. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, and Rep. John James (R-Mich.) clashed over tariffs on Canada, the war in Iran, and Medicaid in the first debate of the race for Michigan governor on Oct. 6.

Benson blamed the war in Iran for rising fuel prices and said James had voted six times to support the war. Both candidates said they would support suspending Michigan’s gas tax.

Michigan has faced prior fuel-supply disruptions. In 2022, Whitmer declared an energy emergency after a refinery fire in Indiana, temporarily easing certain transport and fuel rules.

Authored by Tom Gantert via The Epoch Times,

The U.S. Department of Justice on Oct. 13 sent letters to California election officials demanding a review within 48 hours of registered voters it suspects are noncitizens and asking officials to set aside their mail ballots until their citizenship status can be determined.

If the prescribed course of action wasn’t followed by Oct. 15 at noon ET, the letter stated the federal government would seek “emergency relief.”

“This should not be controversial, as the criminal statute is clear: Only American citizens may vote in federal elections. It is a federal crime for noncitizens to vote in U.S. elections, and the DOJ is asking California to ensure that is not occurring,” a DOJ spokesperson said in an email to The Epoch Times.

The DOJ claims there are thousands of potential foreign nationals not eligible to vote that have been identified as registered voters in California.

Dean Logan, registrar for Los Angeles County, posted a copy of the DOJ’s letter on the county clerk website.

In the letter to Los Angeles County, the DOJ stated that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin informed the California secretary of state that there are “likely numerous noncitizens” registered to vote in the federal election in California.

“Accompanying this letter is a password-protected thumb drive with a list of names of people the Federal Government believes are likely noncitizens who were sent a vote-by-mail ballot from California to participate in the November election,” the letter stated.

The letter requested that L.A. County review the list within 48 hours. For any individuals the county could not independently verify as citizens, the letter requested election officials be instructed to “segregate – not cancel” those vote-by-mail ballots until their citizenship status could be determined.

If the county didn’t comply with the DOJ request, the letter stated, “the United States will have no choice but to seek emergency relief.”

Logan said his office has not accessed the drive because doing so would conflict with “established data privacy and information security protocols.” He said his office does not consider the device a secure medium and said the letter does not specify the number of individuals involved or describe the information contained in the records.

“Maintaining accurate voter registration records is a fundamental responsibility of our office,” Logan said in a statement. “Federal and state laws are clear on how voter eligibility is established – and any action to remove a voter from eligibility must be based on verifiable information, not assertions of unconfirmed data matching.“

Logan said that with the 2026 general election underway, his department is focused on administering a safe, secure, accurate, and transparent election.

“We will continue following established legal requirements and verification procedures while protecting the rights of every eligible voter,” Logan stated.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office posted Wednesday on X in response to the letter.

“With this letter, the Trump administration is demanding that California election officials voluntarily violate federal law enshrined by Congress. Completely unacceptable and inappropriate for the feds to do – especially with their track record,” the statement said, not specifying what federal law would be violated.

The California Secretary of State also criticized the DOJ’s letter in a response on X.

“The US DOJ’s relentless efforts to unlawfully gain access to states’ protected voter data and purge voter rolls serve only to cause chaos and fuel public distrust in our elections,” the statement said. “California has robust state law requirements that only U.S. citizens can register to vote and that any non-eligible registrants are removed from the State’s voter rolls.”

Authored by AG News Staff via American Greatness,

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Wednesday that the Trump administration has eliminated 189,000 improper government-subsidized health care enrollments, a move expected to save American taxpayers as much as $1.5 billion annually.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) identified duplicate enrollments and coverage associated with deceased individuals across Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

The sweeping cleanup is part of the administration’s broader effort to eliminate wasteful government spending and prevent taxpayer dollars from flowing to insurance companies through improper subsidies.

“In 2026, CMS identified 189,000 subsidized enrollments involving duplicate Medicare, Medicaid, or CHIP coverage on record showing the enrollee has died,” Kennedy said during a news conference.

“CMS acted to remove improper subsidies in all these cases.”

According to Kennedy, the action will save taxpayers approximately $738 million in 2026, with projected annual savings reaching $1.5 billion in subsequent years.

The HHS secretary emphasized that the improper payments benefited insurance companies rather than Americans receiving medical care.

“Each of those figures represents a payment that would otherwise have gone to an insurance company, not to an American citizen,” Kennedy said.

To safeguard against wrongful removal, CMS contacted affected enrollees or their estates and provided a 30-day window to correct potential errors before subsidies were terminated.

Last month, Jason Chen, chairman and CEO of Taiwanese PC maker Acer, offered some relief from the memory shortage, saying chip prices could begin falling in the second half of next year. That outlook challenges the memory cartel, pardon, the Big Three’s claims that prices will keep rising well beyond 2027.

Meanwhile, Chinese memory-chip manufacturer ChangXin Memory Technologies, better known as CXMT, recently said it had begun mass production of advanced memory chips. Goldman analysts are now looking to Samsung’s Oct. 29 earnings report for indications of whether the company expects tight memory-market conditions to persist in 2028.

AI hyperscalers have soaked up the world’s high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for the data center buildout, sending prices soaring and pressuring consumer electronics companies such as Apple, which was forced to raise prices for the new iPhone 18 premium lineup and foldable Duo.

But with CXMT’s supply coming online and major memory giants still warning of tight conditions through next year, we may soon see whether that narrative holds after Samsung’s earnings call. A new source of memory demand could also emerge, this time outside data centers and in physical AI.

Counterpoint Research forecasts that DRAM demand could surge with the coming wave of humanoid robot deliveries, expected to begin next year and continue through the decade.

South Korean newspaper The Chosun Daily first cited Counterpoint’s note, which said DRAM demand for humanoid robots could explode to 172,000 terabits in 2030 from roughly 8,300 terabits this year.

Average DRAM capacity per humanoid robot is set to roughly double, from 19 gigabytes to 39 gigabytes, over the same period.

More sophisticated AI models have increasingly larger and larger memory requirements, and we’re sure those requirements could rise even further. These complex bots process images, video and sound simultaneously and use “world models” to anticipate changes in the surrounding environment, requiring faster processing and greater memory capacity.

Beyond humanoid robotics, memory demand will likely surge for highly autonomous vehicles, which typically require over 200 GB of memory and several terabytes of storage.

Global memory firms are eyeing the robot market. Sanjay Mehrotra, Micron CEO, recently said, “Level 4 or higher autonomous vehicles typically require over 200 GB of memory and several terabytes of storage. Humanoid robots will likely need similar levels of memory and storage.”

On the demand side of humanoid robotics, Eric Sheridan, managing director and internet/e-commerce equity analyst at Goldman, recently raised his base-case forecast to 75,000 humanoid shipments in 2026, 890,000 in 2030, and 6.5 million in 2035, versus previous estimates of 51,000, 256,000, and 1.4 million, respectively.

“We are raising our humanoid robot market forecast. The global market is now projected to reach approximately 890,000 units by 2030 and 6.5 million units by 2035 (representing a $138 billion market opportunity),” Sheridan told clients in late August.

It’s not just data centers that will drive memory demand. Physical AI could become the next major source of demand.

Authored by Zoltan Vardai via CoinTelegraph.com,

Saifedean Ammous, the author of the 2018 academic book “The Bitcoin Standard,” said that Bitcoin already functions as a medium of exchange and that volatility’s effect on that is likely to diminish.

Bitcoin (BTC) can serve as a medium of exchange as it becomes less volatile than gold while surpassing the market capitalization of the largest precious metal, wrote Ammous in a Tuesday X post.

“Holding Bitcoin is using Bitcoin as money, and its lack of widespread use as a method of payment is no evidence against its monetization unfolding,” added Ammous.

The remarks come in response to a passage in Professor Lawrence H. White’s book, “Better Money: Gold, Fiat, or Bitcoin?,” which argued that Bitcoin’s fixed supply makes it too volatile to serve as a medium of exchange.

“With no supply response to demand swings, BTC’s price is too volatile for people who want a reliable medium of exchange,” wrote White in a Monday X post, referencing chapter six of his book.

He added that the lack of supply response was the reason stablecoins have “eaten BTC’s lunch transaction volume.”

Other industry watchers have also predicted that Bitcoin would eventually surpass gold. In May 2025, Bitwise’s head of European research, André Dragosch, told Cointelegraph that their in-house prediction forecasts a $1 million Bitcoin price by 2029, which would make Bitcoin match gold’s market capitalization.

However, Bitcoin’s current $1.6 trillion market capitalization would need to grow by at least 18-fold to surpass Gold’s near $29 trillion market cap to become the leading global asset.

In April 2025, Blockstream CEO Adam Back predicted Bitcoin will start rivaling gold’s use cases as a monetary hedge, due to global financial instability and rising fiat inflation.

Anonymous Trump admin officials are apparently once again ‘leaking’ Iran war military plans to the media. The newest claim is that among potential Pentagon ‘options’ for a new bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic include deploying the “mother of all bombs”.

Prior mainstream media reports suggested President Trump is mulling the resumption of a bombing campaign possibly even before the November midterm elections. But the president’s public statements have indicated otherwise.

There now seems a keen and much-belated awareness at the general unpopularity of this war among the US public on the part of the administration. After all, top White House officials including Trump himself had repeatedly promised at the outset of Operation Epic Fury that it would be a swift and decisive campaign.

Officials like Rubio went from saying it could take ‘days’ to then offering ‘four to six weeks’ or else saying a couple months. But now we are seven months in, and the end-goal or point that might mark a ‘mission accomplished’ exit moment has never really been defined. It all along has seemed like a bombing campaign in search of a strategy.

In the meantime, outlets like CNN are running with headlines of Washington’s next ‘threat’ against a defiant and intransigent Iranian leadership, which is busy attacking shipping in the Strait of Hormuz at levels never seen before:

The US military has developed new strike plans that include potentially using the so-called “mother of all bombs” to target Iranian energy infrastructure and nuclear sites should President Donald Trump give the order to resume combat operations either before or after the midterm elections, according to multiple US officials familiar with the matter.

Using the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb or MOAB, the largest non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal, for the first time in the conflict with Iran would mark a notable escalation, even though there are doubts over how effective it would be in accomplishing any of Trump’s stated strategic objectives or tipping the balance of the war, multiple sources familiar with internal military planning discussions about potentially deploying the weapon said.

CNN does also note that “Trump is facing pressure to bring an end to the deeply unpopular war — as Republicans brace for potential political backlash from voters in the upcoming midterm elections and there is little indication the two countries are close to a negotiated resolution after more than six months of US bombing.”

One wonders what the aim or purpose of such headlines touting the use of the “mother of all bombs” is. The Iranians have not changed their position. Their Ayatollah and many top officials have already been assassinated, and Tehran is signaling readiness for a prolonged war.

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf in a televised speech on Wednesday invoked the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted from 1980 to 1988, when speaking about what his country is ready to endure with the United States.

This suggests Iran is ready to resist for years if necessary, despite the cratering wartime economy amid sweeping Washington sanctions and unprecedented isolation from energy markets.

Technology research firm IDC’s latest report confirms our warning earlier this week of “more pain to come,” with global smartphone shipments plunging in the third quarter as rising memory chip costs squeeze margins, boost handset prices, and make these devices more expensive than ever.

Preliminary data from the advisory firm show worldwide smartphone shipments plunged 22% year over year to 255.3 million units in the third quarter, as the AI-related memory chip shortage sent component costs soaring, forcing manufacturers to raise prices beyond consumers’ comfort zones.

“The sharp downturn the industry has been bracing for finally materialized in the third quarter this year, with shipments declining a record 22% YoY. However, the worst is yet to come,” senior IDC research director Nabila Popal wrote in the report released earlier this morning.

Popal said, “Memory costs have surged approximately 350% since last year and are still rising, creating substantial pressure on vendor margins and shipments. While memory inflation is beginning to slow down, with a low double-digit sequential increase in Q3 compared to roughly 50%-100% sequential growth in prior quarters, costs remain elevated across other critical components as well, compounding the crunch.”

IDC expects handset shipment growth to remain under pressure through 2027, with any recovery pushed to 2028 at the earliest. Manufacturers increasingly view the cost shock as a permanent change in the industry’s economics.

This cost shock has hit Chinese brands hardest, which are highly exposed to budget markets, as soaring chip costs have squeezed margins and price increases now risk driving customers away. Conversely, Apple and Samsung are gaining market share, as their premium handset portfolios and supply advantages help shield them from the downturn.

IDC vice president Francisco Jeronimo wrote in the report, “The third quarter shows the full impact and damage of the memory crisis,” adding, “The pressure is now moving from vendors to consumers. As higher prices reach the shelf, many buyers are keeping their current devices longer. Chinese brands face a particularly difficult moment, as their exposure to low-end smartphones forces them to choose between protecting margins and defending volume just as demand weakens. Volumes will stay under pressure in the coming quarters, while vendors with scale, secure supply and a premium mix keep gaining share in a smaller market.”

IDC’s report was in line with Loop Capital analyst John Donovan’s report earlier this week, which said global smartphone shipments tumbled 22% in the third quarter. Like IDC, Donovan warned that there is a lot “more pain to come.