let’s look at the three guided-missile destroyers that are accompanying the USS Abraham Lincoln.

These three destroyers form the core surface escort force, providing air defense, anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, and strike capabilities (via Tomahawk missiles and other weapons in their Mk 41 VLS cells).

The destroyers are equipped with VLS cells. VLS cell stands for Vertical Launching System cell, a modular compartment in naval missile launchers like the Mk 41 VLS that houses one or more pre-loaded missiles vertically below deck. As noted in the last bullet, these cells are also used to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles, which is likely to be one of the weapons fired at Iran. These means that the air defense capability of the USN destroyers will be reduced in order to accommodate the Tomahawks.

If Iran decides to fire 300 drones in a swarm attack on the carrier strike force, and each destroyer fires at least two air defense missiles at those drones, that would require 600 air defense missiles. And there is the problem… If each destroyer is carrying a load of Tomahawks, then they are only carrying a maximum of 100 interceptors. Not only will the destroyers not have enough interceptors to fend-off the attacking Iranian drones, they will deplete their missile stock.

The only way to reload these cells is that each destroyer must sail to a port equipped with cranes that are capable of reloading the VLS cells.The closest port — I am assuming that the port in Bahrain is not available because Iran will have closed the Strait of Hormuz — is in Diego Garcia, which is 3 to 4 days away if each USN ship is traveling at 25 knots.

Iran has five classes of drones that can fly at least 1,000 kilometers, which means that the US carrier strike group will face an increased risk of drone attacks if it sails closer than 1,000 kilometers from Iran’s southern shore. If it stays outside the 1,000 kilometer range, the US carrier task force capability to hit critical targets in Iran will be very limited because the maximum range of a US Tomahawk cruise missile is 1,600 kilometers. In short, if Iran fires hundreds of missiles and drones at the US carrier task force the the US will not be able to sustain combat operations for more than a couple of days.

Mette-Marit apologises for ‘poor judgment’ as documents reportedly include scores of email exchanges with child sex offender

Norway’s crown princess has become embroiled in another scandal after newly unsealed files appeared to show her years of extensive contact with the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The latest tranche of Epstein files, released on Friday by the US justice department, appear to include nearly 1,000 mentions of the crown princess, Mette-Marit.

The files include scores of emails traded between the two, suggesting they were in contact from 2011 to 2014, the Norwegian daily VG reported. Mette-Marit married the future king of Norway in 2001.

The revelations come at a sensitive time for the royal family. The trial of Mette-Marit’s son, Marius Borg Høiby forremoved is due to begin on Tuesday. He was born from a relationship before she married Crown Prince Haakon

Høiby is facing 38 charges, including the allegedremoved of four women as well as alleged assault and drug offences. If convicted he could face up to 16 years in prison. Høiby has denied the most serious charges, including those of sexual abuse.

On Saturday, Mette-Marit addressed her relationship with Epstein, who killed himself in jail in 2019 as he awaited trial for sex crimes against minors.

“I showed poor judgment and I deeply regret having had any contact with Epstein. It is simply embarrassing,” she said in a statement issued by the royal palace.

The Norwegian media’s attention was this weekend focused on the many emails that the princess exchanged with Epstein, years after he pleaded guilty to charges that included soliciting prostitution from a minor in Florida.

The emails contained in the files suggested the two were close, with Mette-Marit telling Epstein that “you tickle my brain” in one message and calling him “soft hearted” and “such a sweetheart” in others.

In 2012, Mette-Marit told Epstein he was “very charming” and asked if it was “inappropriate for a mother to suggest two naked women carrying a surfboard for my 15 yr old sons wallpaper?”

Weeks earlier she and Epstein had traded emails about him being on a “wife hunt” in Paris. She replied that the French capital was “good for adultery” and added that “Scandis (are) better wife material”.

In another, she thanked Epstein for flowers he had sent when she was feeling unwell, signing off with “Love, Mm.”

The exchanges regularly made mention of plans to get together, while files indicate she also stayed at his house in Palm Beach, Florida, for four days in 2013 when Epstein was not there.

Inclusion in the files does not imply wrongdoing.

In her statement on Saturday, Mette-Marit, 52, expressed her “deep sympathy and solidarity” with Epstein’s victims and said she was responsible “for not having checked Epstein’s background more closely and not understanding quickly enough what kind of person he was”.

The files, however, include a 2011 exchange in which Mette-Marit told Epstein that she had “Googled” him, adding “it didn’t look too good” along with a smiling emoji. The email did not specify what she had found during her online search.

The palace said Mette-Marit had ended written contact with Epstein in 2014 as she felt he was “trying to use his relationship with the crown princess as leverage with other people”.

As the seven-week trial of her son gets under way in Oslo, the royal couple are not expected to attend. Haakon has told reporters that Mette-Marit would be away on a private trip during that period.

Høiby does not have a royal title and is outside the line of royal succession. Earlier this year, the Norwegian royal court addressed the trial in a statement, saying: “It is for the courts to consider this matter and reach a decision. We have no further comment.”

From hedge funds to homemakers, the leverage-loving Chinese traders behind gold’s record rally are now nursing big losses after one of the fastest market reversals in years.

For Merry Chen, a 42-year-old homemaker in Hangzhou, the foray into precious metals lasted less than a week. With no prior experience in derivatives, Chen opened a futures account last Monday on the advice of friends.

The initial results were promising: she gained 60% on her 1 million yuan ($144,000) investment in just 48 hours. But Friday’s sharp drop wiped out those gains and triggered a forced liquidation, leaving her with a 750,000 yuan loss, down 84% from the peak.

“I never imagined it could be this intense,” said Chen, who plans to close her account. “It felt like a trip to a casino in Macau.”

Chen’s losses are emblematic of speculators who had piled into precious metals before the Friday crash triggered widespread losses and forced liquidations of leveraged futures positions. While part of the trigger was the nomination of Kevin Warsh to lead the US Federal Reserve, which sent the dollar higher, many had long warned the metals markets were too overstretched.

Spot gold fell as much as 10% on Monday, and is down almost a fifth from an all-time high. Silver plunged as much as 16%, following a record intraday loss in the previous session…

The sharp reversal gave trend-following commodity trading advisor models at Chinese quantitative hedge funds — which typically hold commodities for 3 to 20 days — scarcely any time to adjust, according to Lv Chengtao, a partner at SHQX Asset Management. That came as non-ferrous and energy futures have also retreated, he said.

As a result, many CTA managers’ net asset values would likely have been under pressure Friday and Monday, he said.

Since such CTA holdings are often spread across a wide array of commodities and their leverage is typically lower than 300%, the drawdowns since Friday have been controllable so far, sparing most of them from forced liquidations, he said.

Still, some such funds suffered drawdowns of more than 10%, according to an executive with a Shanghai-based quantitative fund, whose firm cut most of its precious-metal futures positions last week to limit losses. He asked not be named discussing a private matter.

The decline is coming ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, when CTAs tend to cut positions by 30%-50% to reduce risks because offshore trading continues during the week-long break, and that process of reductions has started already, according to a Shanghai-based quant fund.

Chinese banks also took measures last week to limit risks for retail investors in gold-accumulation products. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. and China Construction Bank Corp. were among those that plan to either raise the minimum deposit amount or implement quota controls.

The gold rally has been building for a number of years as central banks expanded their holdings as an alternative to the dollar. It accelerated in 2025 as global investors piled into the so-called debasement trade. Chinese speculators, including individual investors and large funds venturing into commodities, added more fuel to the gains in recent weeks.

One of China’s most well-know investors exited the trade in December. Shanghai Banxia Investment Management Center, a macro hedge fund managing more than 5 billion yuan, sold all its gold holdings in December, even as the asset is expected to hover at elevated levels rather than falling significantly, according to founder Li Bei.

Central banks including Russia’s have been selling gold, and the metal’s price is overvalued compared to its long-term equilibrium level, she said in an interview with the Securities Times’ Wechat account late last month. The opportunity costs of holding gold are very high, she said, citing a potential bull run of Chinese blue chip stocks.

With concerns over the independence of the Fed and geopolitical unrest from Venezuela to Iran making headlines, the gains in metals had become a symbol of growing distrust among investors in the US dollar.

“There’s a simple logic to it,” said Jeff, a freelance investor from Hangzhou who said his holdings of spot and physical gold accumulated over the years are now worth about $1.5 million. “The world is chaotic, so buy some gold.”

He was cautious enough not to trade leveraged gold futures, and felt even more convinced after his escape before silver’s record plunge on Friday. He invested about $500,000 in silver futures contracts and dumped all at $110 an ounce last week, yielding a 100% return.

Now, he’s looking for an opportunity to buy in for the long run, betting demand for precious metals will be underpinned by prospects of a weaker dollar, the China-US rivalry, as well as developments in artificial intelligence. Beyond Comprehension

Charles Wang, a fund manager in Shanghai, is looking at gold stock exchange-traded funds for buying opportunities. He personally invested about 3 million yuan in gold futures earlier, with three-times leverage, before selling his holding at around $3,500 an ounce and making a 30% return.

“I couldn’t wrap my head around it, so I decided to sell,” Wang said.

He bought some gold stock ETFs on Monday for products he manages, and he can gauge gold miners’ earnings prospects based on average metal prices of the past year rather than fixating on short-term price swings of the commodity.

More are adopting a cautious approach. Lu, who runs a 200 million yuan CTA fund in China, said that before the recent rally in gold, his fund gradually liquidated its positions.

“Anything above $4,800 is beyond my comprehension, hence not money I should earn,” said Lu, who asked that only his last name be used. “I’m in no hurry to jump in the market. It’s still a gambling-driven market right now, not an investment-oriented one.”