UK news: HS2 could cost up to £102.7bn and may not open until 2039 (BBC)
This is Chongqing railway station rebuild in China. It cost £16.5bn and took only around 3 1/2 years to complete.
Their high speed rail (350km/hr) cost just £5.9bn and took 6 years
The last time an El Niño this strong hit, it killed 50 million people. That was 3 to 4% of the entire world population. Scale that to today and you're looking at 250 million equivalent.
The 1877 Super El Niño triggered simultaneous droughts across India, China, Brazil, and East Africa. Crops failed on four continents at the same time. The famine lasted three years. Researchers have called it "arguably the worst environmental disaster to ever befall humanity."
NOAA's latest update gives a two-in-three chance this one reaches strong or very strong by fall. European models are even more aggressive. Sea surface temperatures need to exceed 2°C above normal to qualify as "super." The trajectory is pointing directly at that threshold.
Here's what makes 2026 structurally different from every previous Super El Niño: there are two independent supply shocks converging on the same crop cycle.
The Iran war has shut down roughly a third of the world's seaborne fertilizer trade through the Strait of Hormuz. US fertilizer supply was at 75% of normal in mid-March, right when the Corn Belt needed it most. Fertilizer prices hit their highest level since 2022. That input shortage is already baked into the 2026 growing season.
The El Niño yield shock operates on a 6 to 12 month lag. India is forecasting below-normal monsoons for the first time in three years. Indonesia and Malaysia carry 90% of global palm oil, and El Niño production declines in those countries take 6 to 24 months to peak. Every strong El Niño in the past 55 years has reduced global cocoa production.
So the fertilizer shortage weakens the crops El Niño is about to stress, and the El Niño yield collapse hits in 2027 on fields that were already under-fertilized in 2026. Two shocks with nearly identical lag structures, converging on the same harvest window.
The difference between 1877 and 2026: we can see this one coming six months out. The commodity futures curve is barely pricing either shock. Whether that's rational discounting or willful denial depends entirely on what the Pacific Ocean does between now and October.
This is the first time I've seen a performance of 'You'll Never Walk Alone' in which every member of the band is playing and singing in a different key.
That VAR audio is criminal.
Firstly you can hear them saying “is that enough contact” then they agree there are fouls from Trossard on Pablo and Rice on Mavropanos but show the ref the wrong angle who tells them to hurry up. The ref was absolutely desperate to disallow. Criminal
*Adam Curtis Voiceover*
In 1994, a group of men made a decision. They believed that if they could just make people *feel* that things were a little bit better, no one would notice that nothing had changed.
They called it modernisation.
Thirty years later, a lawyer from Holborn looked at the wreckage of that project and decided to try it again.
But it was a fantasy.
And when the world began to fall apart, it was revealed that that once again, nothing has really changed, and the lawyer from Holborn also believed in nothing.
Trump is now describing in some detail the Montreal Cognitive Test, which doctors use to spot the early signs of dementia, and which he proudly declared his doctors have made him take three times. He thinks it’s an intelligence test.
Keir Starmer thinks a retweet should disqualify someone from leading a political party, but that appointing the best ‘pal’ of the world’s most notorious paedophile, as Ambassador to Washington, shouldn’t.
Be serious!
You can really tell America is winning this war when the president panic posts “open the fuckin’ strait, you crazy bastards” at 5 am on Easter Sunday along with an extension on their deadline
Israel's parliament has passed a law today authorising the death penalty - exclusively for Palestinians.
There are over 9,300 Palestinians in Israeli detention.
The executions will be carried out by hanging.
Does @Keir_Starmer still consider Israel an ally?
#BREAKING
Italy’s Defense Minister Guido Crosetto on Iran War:
I am forced to know things that no longer let me sleep.
For what could happen in the coming weeks, for the effects it will have on the economy and on our daily lives.
‼️‼️ NEW: HEGSETH BLOWS $93 BILLION IN 1 MONTH— BIGGEST MONTHLY EXPENSE SINCE 2008.
$225M Furniture
$15.1M Ribeyes
$5.3M Apple Devices
$6.9M lobster
$2M Crab Legs
$98K Grand Piano for staffer’s Home
$12K Fruit Basket Stands
$140K Doughnuts
$124k Ice Cream Machines