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On Friday the President signed an executive order waiving the new Russia sanctions package, setting aside the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, a statute he had signed into law himself in September, and with it the sanctions on Russian government and military officials, on major banks, and on vessels in the shadow fleet, together with duties on Russian goods and on goods from nations that still buy Russian oil and gas. In return, Russia is to supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel to the American and global market immediately, 500,000 tons in November, and larger volumes after that. The tonnages were announced by the President himself, on Truth Social. Moscow’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev called the pause “a significant and truly historic moment” and said the package it suspends could have “brought economic cooperation between Russia and the US to a complete standstill.” Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in Brussels, said Ukraine “can’t accept diesel deals, because gas deals will come next,” and warned that relief would spread to banking, to individuals, and to chemicals. Within the same twenty-four hours a supertanker burned in the Strait of Hormuz, and front-month crude closed at $101.84, up 3.95 percent. ...

The breach between Washington and Kyiv became public on Thursday, and Europe answered it in Brussels on Friday morning. In an interview with Newsmax aired Thursday, the President called Ukraine’s renewed strikes on Russian oil refineries “a disgrace,” said that “all he’s doing is making the world oil price higher,” and said of Volodymyr Zelenskyy: “I think I find Zelenskyy to be more difficult to deal with than Putin.” Zelenskyy had paused the strikes for three days at the President’s request, then resumed them on Thursday on the ground that Moscow had never stopped hitting Ukraine’s grid. He arrived at a European Union summit in Brussels flanked by Ursula von der Leyen and António Costa, where von der Leyen said the EU had supported the energy ceasefire “but we have seen that Russia did not respect it, not a single minute,” promised a twenty-second round of sanctions, and added: “We will not lift any sanctions unless Russia stops the war.” Russian drones killed several people in Kharkiv overnight and left some 270,000 households without power in the western Volyn region, according to the local governors. ...

On July 31 I argued that the danger in the artificial intelligence buildout lay less in whether the technology works than in how the capital behind it is arranged: hardware that depreciates faster than the debt secured against it, revenue that arrives slower than the projections promise, and a downside diffused onto private-credit funds, pension holders, and index investors who never chose the bet. On October 14, that argument acquired a price. ...

The energy ceasefire announced at the weekend is over, and it ended where it began: over oil. Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine attempted a large-scale attack on a refinery at Ryazan, about 180 kilometres south of Moscow, and that a “fire broke out after drone debris fell onto the refinery site.” Regional officials told the Guardian the plant had been targeted by 69 drones and four Flamingo cruise missiles, and images from the site showed flames. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told the Financial Times that strikes on Russian refineries would resume, and Al Jazeera reports he had said Kyiv was “done” with an arrangement he first learned about from the news. Moscow answered with what the Guardian calls a record overnight swarm of drones over central Ukraine and with hypersonic and ballistic missiles aimed at power plants, leaving cities including Kyiv without power and water for hours. ...

President Trump established a committee of inquiry to investigate whether Federal Reserve Governor Lisa D. Cook made false statements “in connection with one or more mortgage instruments,” and to tell him whether there is cause to remove her from the Board of Governors. The memorandum, signed October 7 and published this morning at 91 FR 65435, rests on the President’s Article II power to see that the laws are faithfully executed, “including by firing subordinates who cannot be trusted to tell the truth and follow the law,” and asks the committee to report whether cause exists “within the meaning of 12 U.S.C. 242, as construed in Trump v. Cook, 146 S. Ct. 2234 (2026).” The committee will hold a closed, transcribed hearing at the White House on November 5 and last no more than four hours. Cook is to appear and be examined by the committee, its representatives, and Justice Department personnel, may submit a written position statement three days before, and may file a post-hearing statement by November 10. Its members are the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, the Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Director of the Office of Government Ethics. The 10-year Treasury note yielded 5.204 percent at 7:00 a.m. Eastern this morning, and the Treasury’s own curve put the 30-year at 5.56 percent on October 13. ...

President Trump announced on Sunday that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to an “energy ceasefire,” effective immediately, and by Tuesday the announcement had bought less than two days of quiet. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said Russia struck six Ukrainian energy facilities in the hours after the truce was declared, injuring 33 people, and he told Fox News the timing was “Putin’s answer to President Trump.” On Monday evening a drone hit a 25-story residential building in Kyiv’s Darnytskyi district, killing one person and injuring 11, the capital’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said Ukraine does not deserve the “respite” a ceasefire would bring. The same day, drones struck two merchant ships off Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast, one of them sinking with 11 crew members missing, and Bulgaria, a NATO member, summoned Russia’s ambassador. Oil fell on the news: West Texas Intermediate traded at $91.83 a barrel, down 2.04 percent, as of 6:50 a.m. Eastern. ...

Monday is Columbus Day, a federal holiday, and the American government has gone quiet for it: the Federal Register published nothing across the window this report reads, Sunday and Monday together, and the federal courts filed nothing either. The movement was abroad. The Houthi campaign against Saudi Arabia reached a pitch the war has not shown before. By Anadolu’s tally of official statements, ten strikes hit five Saudi airports between October 5 and October 11, killing 20 people and wounding hundreds. Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport took the worst of it. A missile strike there on Saturday killed 13 and wounded 309, which the Associated Press called the deadliest attack in a Gulf Arab nation since the war began; the civil aviation authority first counted 12 dead, and the toll rose when an injured Indian national died of his wounds on Sunday. The same field was struck again, and the Saudi-led coalition said air defenses intercepted a cruise missile near the airport, a ballistic missile aimed at Khamis Mushait, and a drone in the Eastern Province. Riyadh’s schools moved to distance learning for the week, and the oil market noticed: West Texas Intermediate traded at $92.76 a barrel, up about a percent, before the American cash session opened. ...

On Saturday an American fighter struck the stern of a Panama-flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman with a precision munition, disabling its propulsion after, by Central Command’s account, the crew ignored repeated warnings and tried to run the blockade of Iran’s ports. The command’s statement on Sunday also totaled the campaign: since the blockade resumed on July 14, four commercial vessels have been put out of action, 135 ships have been turned back, and ten tankers tied to the Revolutionary Guard’s shadow oil network have been destroyed. The ship, the Ocean Molica, also sails as the Arika Sun, and nobody aboard was hurt. The operation drew criticism from at least one senator, Chris Murphy, a Democrat, who questioned what purpose the campaign serves. Everything else in the American government was quiet. The Federal Register published nothing across the two days, the courts filed nothing, and a five-day deadline the President set on October 5 for relief from the diesel excise tax passed on Saturday with no determination that this report can find. ...

On Friday the Revolutionary Guard claimed responsibility for striking a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz and setting its engine room alight, and said it had taken control of the administration of the strait. It warned that vessels it deems in violation would be pursued and punished anywhere in the region, not only inside the strait. American Central Command answered with its own account, that the main shipping lanes had been cleared, mines had been lifted from the key transit routes, and the lanes stood open to vessels that respect American sanctions. The two accounts cannot both be true, and the count of incidents is the one measure that neither claim governs: ship reports collected by UKMTO counted twelve attacks, attempted attacks, or harassment incidents against oil and gas carriers in the strait between September 28 and October 5, the highest weekly total since the war began on February 28. What has not moved is the American role. The President’s pledge that the United States will not attack Iran before the midterm elections still holds, and the prediction markets price the standoff around it, a ceasefire continuing through Monday at 95.4 percent against an American announcement ending the blockade by October 15 at 5.5 percent. ...

The Federal Register published this morning an executive order that defers the federal excise tax on diesel fuel for the rest of the year. Executive Order 14435, signed October 5 and filed for publication on Thursday, directs the Secretary of the Treasury to determine within five days whether relief is authorized under 26 U.S.C. 7508A and, if it is, to defer payment of the diesel taxes incurred between October 5 and December 31, 2026, without penalty, interest, or addition to the tax. The order states its own reason in the first paragraph: “Restricted global diesel supply has led to rising prices, and these key industries have been particularly hard hit.” It further directs the Secretary to “explore avenues, including legislation, to eliminate the obligation to pay the amounts deferred,” which is the difference between a delay and a forgiveness. The remainder reaches the fuel itself: the Internal Revenue Service is to announce that it will not penalize the highway use of dyed diesel during the same period, and the Secretary of Agriculture is to coordinate with cooperatives and rural distributors to keep dyed diesel moving into high-demand areas. A tax deferred into the first quarter of a new year is a bill the same farmers and truckers will meet again. ...