💰 🇺🇸 ⚖️ The ex-CIA official caught with $40 million in gold bars pled guilty today to defrauding the federal government.

This is a picture of the gold and cash found in his home:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/06/cia-official-gold-bars-guilty-plea

📎 Ken Silva

🛢 Tanker captains are being paid the equivalent of $100,000 a month, plus a $50,000 bonus per trip, to sail through the Strait of Hormuz, the Financial Times reported, as shipowners push to keep Gulf crude moving despite Iranian attacks striking 2% of all vessels in the third quarter of the year.

Ordinary sailors, who can start at $1,500 a month, earn at least four to six times their usual rate for each transit. Most come from poorer communities in the Philippines, India and Indonesia, as well as Russia, Ukraine and eastern Europe.
Some crew are being pressured rather than paid. Manoj Yadav of the Forward Seamen's Union of India told the FT that owners threaten to replace sailors who refuse, and deduct the cost of sending them home from their wages. "If they won't agree, they may lose their job. If they agree, they may lose their life," he said.

At least 93 ships have been hit and 24 sailors killed since February 28, according to the International Maritime Organization.

🔗 https://www.ft.com/content/0d665e5b-d8c8-4f1e-acf5-bba7193b4e6e?shareType=nongift

🇺🇸⚔️🇮🇷 U.S. Vicepresident, J.D. Vance tells Iran it must "make a meaningful reduction" of its uranium enrichment capability for the U.S. to maybe end the war

Vance has tried to assert himself as the U.S' leading negotiator with Iran but, according to him, the biggest problem he encountered is uncertainty in who makes decisions in Tehran

Vance said the US was in talks with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi. But ​it was unclear how much authority they wield within Iran's power structure, he said, after joint US-Israeli strikes at the start of the war killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

"One ​of the things we picked up on is it's not totally clear how their country makes decisions," Vance said. Separately, Trump said on Tuesday his "biggest problem" is no one knows who is running Iran.

Iran's ‌Foreign Ministry ⁠spokesman said on Sunday that US officials are well aware of who their Iranian counterparts are and how Iran's decision-making system works.

"The problem is actually the opposite: it lies in the contradictory positions and mixed messaging from US officials," Esmaeil Baghaei told a weekly press conference.

Iranian president Pezeshkian and foreign minister Araqchi are well known moderates/reformists, a camp within the Iranian political spectrum infamous for tolerating every insult and humiliation coming from Washington in exchange for American/Western European acknowledgement and the perfidy with which the US directed negotiations with Iran only for the U.S. to still attack Tehran has permanently ruined any political support the reformists/moderates may have had from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Araqchi was hit the other day with a motion to have him dismissed from the Iranian government for "unauthorized meetings" with U.S. officials on the sidelines of the UNGA in New York City. The one that authorizes these meetings is the Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei and the IRGC.

📝: Trump and Vance "don't know" who makes decision in Iran because those people do not want to talk to them and only want one thing: revenge.

🔗 https://www.reuters.com/world/interview-us-vice-president-vance-says-iran-must-cut-enrichment-end-war-2026-10-06/