Read Online  |  May 7, 2026  |  E-Paper  | 🎧 Listen

“Leave this world a little better than you found it.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

Ivan Pentchoukov
National Editor

Good morning. It’s Thursday. Here are today’s top stories:

• With oil storage running low due to the U.S. maritime blockade, Iran faces the prospect of having to shut down its wells and cause a long-term loss of capacity. Some analysts believe storage is already maxed, others say time is running out.
• President Donald Trump said he has had good talks over the last 24 hours with Iran and it was “very possible” the two countries would make a deal to end the war.
• The U.S. private sector added more jobs than expected last month, signaling renewed strength in the labor market as the economy wrestles with war-driven price pressures. Private payrolls rose by 109,000 in April, up from 61,000 in the previous month.
• The FBI raided the office of Virginia state Senate Leader L. Louise Lucas in Portsmouth, Virginia.
• 🍵 Health: When to stop a medication and how to do it safely.

Iran’s Oil Storage Clock Is About to Run Out

Tehran’s “storage clock” is ticking as tankers that used to export 3.2 million barrels of crude oil every day remain blockaded in Iranian ports by the U.S. Navy.

The blockade in the Gulf of Oman is a pressure-point tactic, part of a global strategy to deny Iran $13 billion in monthly revenues and paralyze its petroleum industry by forcing it to shut down when it runs out of space to store the oil it can’t ship.

Since U.S. President Donald Trump imposed the blockade on April 13, at least 1.5 million barrels of Iranian oil have been stored every day because there’s no place to move it.

Those barrels are starting to pile up. According to consensus industry estimates, including by UK-based Energy Aspects, up to 68 million barrels of Iran’s 122-million-barrel maximum storage were full in late April, and there was space for 20 million to 30 million barrels more.

The squeeze is rattling Islamic Republic leaders, Trump said in an April 28 Truth Social post. “Iran has just informed us that they are in a ‘State of Collapse,’“ the president wrote. “They want us to ‘Open the Hormuz Strait,’ as soon as possible, as they try to figure out their leadership situation.”

The president has expressed confidence that Iran will soon meet his demands to terminate nuclear weapons development, end support for terrorist groups, and withdraw its territorial claim—and control—of the strait.

To calculate when these “state of collapse” concessions will manifest, time and space become coefficients in a pencil-and-napkin math equation. The answer is a so-called storage clock. It has one fulcrum constant: More time equals less space.

Kpler and JP Morgan analysts were among those in late April doing storage clock math, projecting that Iran would run out of time and space within 15 to 22 days—mid- to late May—if it can’t ship oil. (More)

POLITICS

• Tennessee Republicans revealed a new U.S. congressional map during a special session aimed at redistricting the state on May 6. The controversial proposal unveiled on Wednesday would divide the Democratic stronghold of Memphis into three U.S. congressional seats as opposed to one, which is currently held by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.). The split would likely result in all of Tennessee’s nine congressional districts leaning Republican, which could eliminate the only Democratic voice representing the Volunteer State in the midterms.
• A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the government can retain thousands of 2020 election ballots from Georgia’s Fulton County that the FBI seized from a warehouse near Atlanta.
• President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump honored military mothers during a Mother’s Day event at the White House on May 6.
• A federal investigation into the University of California at Los Angeles found its medical school allegedly used race intentionally as a factor in its student application process.

LATEST NEWS

• CNN founder Ted Turner has died after a long battle with Lewy body dementia.
• A California jury found a Chinese national guilty on all counts on May 6 for selling more than 1 million faulty COVID-19 tests and obtaining nearly $4 million from customers across the United States. The verdict concluded a years-long investigation into Jia Bei Zhu’s scheme, which involved lying to the Food and Drug Administration and importing faulty COVID-19 tests from China. Zhu’s alleged involvement in a suspected biolab in Las Vegas has yet to be resolved.
• Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is out of the intensive care unit, but will stay back in the hospital for recovery.

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A pumpjack stands idle in the Huntington Beach oil field, with port cranes visible in the distance, in Huntington Beach, Calif., on April 23, 2026. America benefits not only from domestic supply but also from substantial imports from Canada. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

WORLD

• Global oil reserves plunged at a record rate in April, as the ongoing Iran war and ensuing closure of the Strait of Hormuz strained supplies, according to estimates by S&P Global Energy reported on Wednesday.
• A U.S. fighter jet fired upon and disabled an Iranian-flagged oil tanker that violated a U.S.-imposed blockade in the Gulf of Oman.
• A group of 30 House Democrats has sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio pressing the State Department to end its decades-long policy of “official ambiguity” on Israel’s nuclear weapons capabilities.
• The European Union and Armenia have signed a joint declaration bringing them closer and supporting the former Soviet republic’s “sovereignty, resilience, and comprehensive reform agenda.” The declaration, along with the signing of a connectivity partnership, is another sign of Armenia slipping out of Russia’s orbit.

 

OPINION

• The AI in Your Pocket and the AI in the Kill Chain: How Different Are They?—by Kay Rubacek (Read)
• Platforming Farmers—by Mollie Engelhart (Read)
• How Liberation Became Surveillance—by Jeffrey A. Tucker (Read)
• Shen Yun’s Return to Toronto a Triumph Over the CCP’s Intimidation Tactics—by Sheng Xue (Read)

A man repaints a fishing boat as vessels remain docked ashore at a port in Juwana, Central Java on May 6, 2026. Local fishermen have not gone out to sea since May 4 following a roughly 75 percent rise in non-subsidised diesel fuel prices to 30,000 Indonesian rupiah (1.85 USD) per litre amid supply disruptions linked to tensions in the Strait of Hormuz. (Devi Rahman/ AFP via Getty Images)

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MUSIC

(Left) A portrait of Felix Mendelssohn, 1846, by German painter Eduard Magnus. (Berlin State Library) (Right) The first page of the manuscript of Mendelssohn’s String Octet. 

Tune in Today: Mendelssohn’s Exuberant String Octet in E-flat Major 

Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) was one of the great composers of the early Romantic period. From his “Midsummer Night’s Dream” to his “Hebrides” Overture, Mendelssohn’s music is characterized by elegance and lyricism. An accomplished conductor, he notably led the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and championed the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Most remarkably, Mendelssohn accomplished all these feats before his mid-20s. Music critic Charles Rosen in “The Romantic Generation” called him “the greatest child prodigy after Mozart.” By the age of 13, Mendelssohn had already published his first work, a piano quartet. By 15, he’d written his first symphony.

Yet nowhere is the essence of Mendelssohn’s youth better captured than in his String Octet in E-flat major, a masterpiece that defines his early style. Written for eight string players—essentially a doubled string quartet—the work reimagines the possibilities of chamber music. Blending the boundaries of chamber and orchestral music, the work is strikingly original, balancing richness in texture with transparent part writing.

Today’s recording of the first movement, Allegro moderato ma con fuoco, of Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-flat major is by the Emerson String Quartet. What makes this recording unique is that instead of employing eight separate players, the Emerson Quartet performs all eight parts through overdubbing. What’s more, the parts were performed with a mix of both Stradivarius instruments and modern instruments.

In the film “Recording Mendelssohn: The Octet,” the players recorded one full take of the piece, listened to the recording, then played the other four parts, all while carefully matching the dynamics and articulations of the first take. The documentary raises questions about the nature of chamber music, and provides an interesting perspective on the nature of live collaboration in a recording setting. (More)

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Thanks for reading 🙏

Have a wonderful day!

—Ivan Pentchoukov, Madalina Hubert, and Kenzi Li.

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