Armed police guarding London Mayor Sadiq Khan left a bag of guns outside his home which was found by a member of the public, it was reported. Scaffolder Jordan Griffiths told The Sun that his pregnant girlfriend found the bag in south London on Tuesday evening. Inside the bag was an MP5 semi-automatic Heckler & Koch carbine, a Glock pistol, taser and ammunition, the newspaper reported. “My partner...
Armed police guarding London Mayor Sadiq Khan left a bag of guns outside his home which was found by a member of the public, it was reported. Scaffolder Jordan Griffiths told The Sun that his pregnant girlfriend found the bag in south London on Tuesday evening. Inside the bag was an MP5 semi-automatic Heckler & Koch carbine, a Glock pistol, taser and ammunition, the newspaper reported. “My partner saw the bag sitting in the road by the kerbside and became suspicious. She went over to it and...
Luis Alvarez/DigitalVision via Getty Images By Emily Balsamo A shift in national food and nutrition is underway, fueled in part by the recently redesigned food pyramid released by the U.S. Departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS), coupled with a rising percentage of the population now taking GLP-1 medication. These factors put demand front and center, marking a change ...
Luis Alvarez/DigitalVision via Getty Images By Emily Balsamo A shift in national food and nutrition is underway, fueled in part by the recently redesigned food pyramid released by the U.S. Departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS), coupled with a rising percentage of the population now taking GLP-1 medication. These factors put demand front and center, marking a change from recent decades where agricultural markets were dominated by supply-side forces. A Dietary Shift as GLP-1s Sweep the Nation The Food Movement stalwart Michael Pollan summarized his dietary philosophy in his 2008 book In Defense of Food as follows: “eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” Now 18 years later, Pollan skeptically summarizes the latest nutritional guidelines from the USDA and HHS with an ironic spin on his mantra: “ eat food, (probably) not too much, mostly meat .” Many of the USDA and HHS recommendations bear similarity to those of the old Food Movement of Pollan and coastal chefs, like Alice Waters and Mollie Katzen, including portion control and prioritizing whole, minimally processed foods. However, the new pyramid promotes animal protein – in particular via bovine products like beef, dairy and even tallow – like never before. While the new nutritional guidelines outline the importance of eating fresh, whole fruits and vegetables each day, that recommendation comes below an emphasis on animal protein. Today’s new guidelines have emerged in conjunction with another massive force in the national dietary landscape: the increasing use of GLP-1 medications. According to Gallup polling, over 12% of Americans have taken GLP-1 medication, a class of drugs known to effectively assist in weight loss through increased satiety and, thus, less caloric consumption as of late 2025. People taking GLP-1 medications report shifting their dietary priorities away from sugar and starches toward more nutritionally dense, higher protein foods. Researchers postulate that this c...
Has Concern Over Hormuz Made Us Forget The Red Sea? Authored by Gregory Copley via The Epoch Times, Wartime concerns about the security of maritime energy traffic through the Strait of Hormuz—connecting the Indian Ocean/Gulf of Oman with the Persian Gulf—have overshadowed the fact that the related issue of Red Sea security is far from resolved and is, in fact, becoming more dynamic. The Red Sea–Su...
Has Concern Over Hormuz Made Us Forget The Red Sea? Authored by Gregory Copley via The Epoch Times, Wartime concerns about the security of maritime energy traffic through the Strait of Hormuz—connecting the Indian Ocean/Gulf of Oman with the Persian Gulf—have overshadowed the fact that the related issue of Red Sea security is far from resolved and is, in fact, becoming more dynamic. The Red Sea–Suez link between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean is of equal strategic importance to global trade as the Hormuz choke point and is, through geography and common players, intrinsically linked with the Persian Gulf conflict. But it is Ethiopia’s civil war, brewing with different factions and with varying intensity since the coup against Emperor Haile Selassie I in 1974, which is again moving in ways that could prove decisive. Always, in the background, is the reality that Ethiopia could revive its historical influence over the Red Sea–Suez sea line of communication (SLOC). Inside Ethiopia, the conflicts that have been raging since 1974 between different governments and different factions are at a new level. The four different Fano opposition militia groups, representing different areas of the Amhara heartland, have been fighting against the central government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali for several years. In early 2026, they came together with a united manifesto of their intentions. This has revived the momentum of the threat to Abiy’s Prosperity Party government. A statement issued by a united Fano on Jan. 17, 2026 (Tir 9, 2018, in the Ethiopian calendar) noted: “So that the Amhara struggle may become one, the leaders of the Amhara Fano National Force and the Amhara Fano People’s Organization, through a historic decision that demanded courage, open-heartedness, decisiveness, and trust in the people, have been able to make Fano unity a reality. ... We have designated one leader, one organization.” Significantly, the leadership of the united Fano all titled themselv...
artisteer/iStock via Getty Images I believe the FlexShares US Quality Low Volatility Index Fund ETF ( QLV ) will more likely underperform the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF ( IVV ) this year and beyond, unless the Iran war spirals into a protracted conflict inflicting severe economic damage and triggering interest rate hikes and a bear market, a worst-case scenario I consider unlikely to materialize at ...
artisteer/iStock via Getty Images I believe the FlexShares US Quality Low Volatility Index Fund ETF ( QLV ) will more likely underperform the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF ( IVV ) this year and beyond, unless the Iran war spirals into a protracted conflict inflicting severe economic damage and triggering interest rate hikes and a bear market, a worst-case scenario I consider unlikely to materialize at this point. At the same time, QLV does offer a few advantages, including the high quality of its portfolio and the possibility to minimize downside capture (though at the expense of the ability to match the market's pace during a recovery) thanks to the low beta holdings and a value tilt. I suppose it is also possible for QLV to outperform IVV on a risk-adjusted basis this year (i.e., eke out higher Sharpe and Sortino ratios even despite having a weaker total return). In this regard, I initiate coverage with the Hold rating. QLV Strategy And Portfolio As we know from the FlexShares website , the Northern Trust Quality Low Volatility Index is the cornerstone of QLV's strategy. As described in the summary prospectus, components are selected from the Northern Trust 1250 Index using quality and low volatility screening. More specifically, in the first step, ...the index provider (the “Index Provider”) ranks all con stituents of the Parent Index using a Northern Trust pro prietary quality factor. This factor is a quantitative ranking based on: (a) management efficiency (e.g., corporate finance activities); (b) profitability (e.g., reliability and sustainability of financial performance); and (c) cash flow (e.g., cash flow generation). After that, "the lowest quintile of constituents ranked accord ing to the quality factor" is filtered out, and " an optimization process to select and weight eligible securities in order to (a) seek to reduce overall portfolio volatility and (b) maximize the overall quality factor relative to the Parent Index" is applied. Also, during the optimizat...
matdesign24/iStock via Getty Images Thesis Angel Oak Capital Advisors somehow nabbed the MBS ticker on the Nasdaq exchange and have assigned it to their Angel Oak Mortgage-Backed Securities ETF ( MBS ). The ticker is very appropriate because it is the shorthand for mortgage-backed securities, a type of mortgage-based debt. MBS as an ETF focuses on mortgage-backed securities and is a growing fund f...
matdesign24/iStock via Getty Images Thesis Angel Oak Capital Advisors somehow nabbed the MBS ticker on the Nasdaq exchange and have assigned it to their Angel Oak Mortgage-Backed Securities ETF ( MBS ). The ticker is very appropriate because it is the shorthand for mortgage-backed securities, a type of mortgage-based debt. MBS as an ETF focuses on mortgage-backed securities and is a growing fund from Angel Oak. In today's article, we are going to explore MBS in depth and compare it to other mortgage offerings in the market as well as a different mortgage focused ETF from the same manager. Composition - Just MBS Securities Let us start with the fund objective as stated on their website: The Angel Oak Mortgage-Backed Securities ETF is an actively managed, pure-play residential mortgage credit ETF that seeks to deliver the best risk-adjusted opportunities in fixed income, offering the potential for both stable income and price appreciation. The Fund provides exposure to residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), primarily investing in both agency and non-agency RMBS. The fund is an active one, and thus does not follow a particular index, although it does consider the Bloomberg U.S. Mortgage-Backed Securities Index as a benchmark for its net performance. The fund contains the following: Non-Agency MBS: 51.5% Agency MBS: 42.5% Cash: 6% The ratings breakdown is as follows: Investment grade: 97.6% Below Investment grade: 1.5% Unrated: residual We have written in the past extensively regarding the Angel Oak Income ETF ( CARY ), a multi-sector fixed income ETF that we own. CARY contains other asset classes, although it is overweight in mortgages: Non-Agency MBS: 29.8% Agency MBS: 16.4% ABS: 13.6% Corporate credit: 12.6% CLO: 10.7% CMBS: 3.7% Cash: 13.2% CARY also contains a fair amount of below-investment-grade credits: Investment grade: 60.3% Below Investment grade: 32.5% Unrated: residual We are going to compare MBS with CARY throughout the article because MBS comes wi...