Pentagon unveils new deal with Boeing, Lockheed Martin

 The United States Department of Defense announced on Wednesday that it made a new framework agreement with the Boeing Company and Lockheed Martin Corporation to triple the output of seekers for the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) as part of US President Donald Trump and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's plans to build the "Arsenal of Freedom."

The new deal will build on the US government's seven-year agreement with Boeing, which supplies the PAC-3 missiles, and it represents an application of the Pentagon's Acquisition Transformation Strategy.

"This agreement with Boeing is a direct reflection that speed, volume, and a resilient supply chain are paramount. We are moving beyond the old model and forging direct partnerships with critical suppliers to ensure the entire defense industrial base is postured to expand production and deliver the decisive capabilities our warfighters need at speed and scale," US Under Secretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment Michael Duffey said.

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Pentagon-unveils-new-deal-with-Boeing-Lockheed-Martin/65996819

Trump: Iran can have ceasefire when Hormuz opens

 United States President Donald Trump claimed on Wednesday that Iran has asked him for a ceasefire, stressing he would be willing to agree to one after Tehran opens the Strait of Hormuz.

"Iran's New Regime President, much less Radicalized and far more intelligent than his predecessors, has just asked the United States of America for a CEASEFIRE! We will consider when Hormuz Strait is open, free, and clear. Until then, we are blasting Iran into oblivion or, as they say, back to the Stone Ages!!!" Trump stated in a post on Truth Social.

It is unclear which Iranian leader the US president referred to, President Masoud Pezeshkian, who has been in power since 2024, the country's newly appointed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei or someone else.

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Trump:-Iran-can-have-ceasefire-when-Hormuz-opens/65997591

Palantir Develops IRS Tool To Flag "Highest Value" Audits, Are Crypto Bros Next?

 Crypto bros and those of you with 'creative' accountants, heads up - the IRS is beefing up its ability to flag accounts for audits. Not only is this the first year that major US-based custodial crypto brokers are reporting gross proceeds to the agency, the IRS is getting aggressive elsewhere. Last year they paid Palantir $1.8 million to identify cases for audits, collections, and potential criminal investigations with a high probability of success. The contract was the latest in over $200 million the IRS has paid Palantir since 2014. 

According to documents obtained by WIRED, the new tool - called the Selection and Analytic Platform (SNAP) - is designed to help IRS staff analyze unstructured data from the agency's existing internal databases. The goal is to more efficiently identify "high-value" targets amid the IRS's fragmented legacy systems, which include over 100 business systems and 700 case-selection methods built up over decades.

The pilot is currently focused on areas like Residential Clean Energy Credits, disaster-zone tax relief claims, and gift tax returns. It also helps extract key details from supporting documents, such as contracts, vendors, and related records, to flag potential fraud or underreporting more efficiently. Importantly, SNAP works only with the IRS’s existing internal data - it doesn’t (yet) pull in fresh external feeds like social media or third-party apps.

Those who may get SNAPped up for an audit include;

• People or businesses with big clean energy credit claims (especially if documentation is weak, inflated, or mismatched with other IRS records)
• Individuals who filed disaster relief deductions/credits that appear suspicious
• High-net-worth individuals making large gifts that may trigger gift tax issues

In broader terms, anyone whose filings show high potential recovery value (big underreported income, large credits/deductions, or patterns the IRS flags as risky) could be surfaced faster once SNAP is fully operational. The tool aims to replace inefficient, fragmented manual processes with smarter, data-driven selection.

So why should crypto holders care?

Wired casually mentions that the IRS has experimented in the past with “contracting with companies like Coinbase to analyze information about crypto transactions” as one of several methods to improve audit targeting.

And look at this; they're looking at mining social media posts.

Neuman has studied other methods the IRS has experimented with to improve its case selection process, including contracting with companies like Coinbase to analyze information about crypto transactions, and mining public social media posts for clues that an individual or business may be underreporting their income. 

Meanwhile, Gemini, Kraken, Binance, Coinbase, Robinhood, Crypto.com, PayPal, and Cash App are all reporting 2025 gross proceeds to the IRS starting this year via 1099-DA. 

And while this isn't tied to this Palantir/SNAP project - the broader picture is clear: the IRS is aggressively upgrading its ability to spot underreporting and fraud. Crypto remains a high-priority area for the agency. Between the new 1099-DA reporting forms that Coinbase and other platforms are already sending to the IRS, ongoing blockchain analytics tools, and now a deeper partnership with Palantir’s data-crunching tech, the net is getting tighter and more sophisticated.

Bottom line for crypto users:

• Accurate record-keeping and proper tax reporting have never been more important.
• “It’s on-chain so they’ll never find it” is not a strategy anymore.
• The IRS is investing serious money in tools designed to surface the biggest potential recoveries — and crypto has long been on their radar.

In other words, get your house in order.  If you’ve been sloppy with cost basis, mixing personal and business wallets, or treating crypto like the Wild West, the combination of better data analytics and old-fashioned enforcement could make for a very expensive wake-up call.

https://www.zerohedge.com/ai/palantir-develops-irs-tool-flag-highest-value-audits-are-crypto-bros-next

"Resilient" US Manufacturing Sector Surges In Face Of War, Prices Paid Up

 Amid the fog of war and fading 'hard' data, the final March S&P Global Manufacturing PMI printed 52.3 (a small drop from the flash 52.4 print), higher than the 51.8 print for February.

“Faster growth of output in March points to encouraging resilience for US manufacturing in the face of the outbreak of war in the Middle East," according to Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence.

The ISM Manufacturing PMI also rose from 52.4 to 52.7 - the highest since August 2022...

Source: Bloomberg

Under the hood, Prices Paid continued to rise dramatically while New Orders and Employment dipped...

Business confidence regarding output in the year ahead has also so far held up well, if one follows the S&P Global report.

"This sustained resilience in part reflects reduced concerns over government policies such as tariffs, but also indicates that producers anticipate only a short-term and modest impact from the war, which is clearly uncertain.

It remains early days in terms of the impact of the conflict, and a sharp rise in prices and delivery delays has cast a cloud over the outlook, threatening to drive inflation higher, dampen demand and throttle supply chains, warns S&P Global's Williamson.

Factory input costs have already jumped higher on the back of surging oil prices and supplier delays have become more widespread than at any time since October 2022, linked to the war exacerbating existing shipping, haulage and port delays.

“Some manufacturers are hence reporting stock building as a precaution against future price rises or supply shortages, and hiring has almost stalled in order to reduce staffing costs, underscoring the growing concern about how the war might cause problems for factories in the coming weeks."

Obviously, if price pressures and supply delays persist, demand, employment and production capabilities will inevitably start to be more seriously affected.

https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/resilient-us-manufacturing-sector-surges-face-war-prices-paid

WTI Dips After Big Crude Inventory Build, US Production Slows

 Oil prices are down overnight but playing headline roulette with every word that comes out of any leaders' (or non-leaders') mouth as ceasefire chatter (now denied) has WTI riding a roller-coaster (but below $100 once again as we write).

“Flows and actions matter more than words,” said Giovanni Staunovo, a commodity analyst at UBS Group AG.

And while inventory data may not be the market-moving event in this new regime, it is useful to see signs of stockpiling or demand.

DOE

• Crude +5.45mm (+10.3mm API, +2mm exp)

• Cushing +520k

• Gasoline -586k

• Distillates -2.11mm

A sizable crude build (the sixth weekly rise in total US crude stocks in a row) was mirrored by the seventh weekly drawdown in gasoline stocks...

Stockpiles at Cushing, Oklahoma, also rose for the sixth consecutive week.

A 520,000-barre- build takes inventories at the storage hub to the highest level since July 2024. Stockpiles at Cushing are now firmly above 30 million barrels. 

Stocks for all transport fuels in the US dropped this week with diesel falling 2 million barrels to the lowest level since mid-March.

That fuel, alongside jet, is in the spotlight as the Iran war has had an outsized impact on the price of those fuels compared with gasoline. 

Interestingly, US crude production slipped lower again last week. Refinery crude runs fell for the first time in five weeks. Despite the drop, they remain at a multi-year seasonal high. 

Oil prices dipped after the data...

The surge in market volatility has made intraday trading choppier, with many traders having to curb position sizes.

https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/wti-dips-after-big-crude-build-production-slows

Oric chases Pfizer into phase 3 hailing prostate cancer edge, but investors send stock down

 Oric Pharmaceuticals has picked the phase 3 dose for its prostate cancer prospect, barreling into the pivotal program while outlining a claimed edge over Pfizer’s rival candidate. But investors sent the stock down as they digested Oric’s phase 1b data and choice of pivotal treatment regimen.

The phase 3 trial, which will start in the first half of the year, will test 400-mg, once-daily doses of Oric’s PRC2 inhibitor rinzimetostat in combination with Bayer’s Nubeqa in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer patients previously treated with abiraterone. At an interim phase 1b analysis, 33% of patients on the regimen had at least a 50% decline in prostate-specific antigen (PSA). Oric reported a 40% rate of PSA50 across all doses in November. 

California-based Oric posted an 84% radiographic progression-free survival (rPFS) rate after five months. The company said the rPFS results were consistent with Pfizer’s rival EZH2 inhibitor, mevrometostat, and better than standard-of-care therapies including Novartis’ Pluvicto.

On a call with investors to discuss the results, Oric Chief Medical Officer Pratik Multani, M.D., said the biotech chose 400 mg, not 600 mg, for the phase 3 dose after seeing no statistical relationship between exposure and efficacy. The 400-mg dose performed numerically better than the 600-mg dose on some measures, Multani said, and the confidence intervals overlapped. 

While the efficacy data suggested the doses are comparable, the safety and tolerability results pointed to a clear advantage for 400 mg. Oric saw more toxicity and dose modifications at the 600-mg dose, leading it to advance the lower dose into phase 3. Citi analysts called the choice of dose “logical” in a note to investors.

Safety and tolerability are key to Oric’s plans. Pfizer has taken mevrometostat into phase 3 based on data that suggest it matches rinzimetostat’s efficacy. Lagging behind its rival, Oric sees mevrometostat’s rates of gastrointestinal and hematological adverse events, plus cases of dysgeusia and alopecia, as areas to gain an edge. Oric CEO Jacob Chacko told investors rinzimetostat’s safety profile “looks markedly better.”

Another analyst asked about Nubeqa's selection as a phase 3 combination drug. Oric also studied its candidate with Johnson & Johnson’s Erleada. Like Nubeqa, Erleada is an androgen re­cep­tor in­hibitor. Chacko said Oric chose Nubeqa to avoid the drug-drug interactions associated with Erleada, adding that the company could combine rinzimetostat with J&J’s product in future phase 3 studies. 

Oric shares were trading down 24% to $9.60 in the first hour of trading Wednesday compared to a Tuesday closing price of $12.67. Citi analysts said the stock drop could reflect confusion about the choice of the 400-mg dose or “possibly misguided expectations of greater efficacy” compared to mevrometostat. 

While Pfizer’s candidate is leading the race, the analysts said the safety data support Oric’s belief that rinzimetostat can claim a substantial share of the post-abiraterone market.  

https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/oric-chases-pfizer-phase-3-hailing-prostate-cancer-edge-investors-send-stock-down

Cyclerion to merge with Korsana Biosciences in all-stock deal

 

 shareholders to own about 1.5% of combined company

• Transaction supported by approximately $380 million in new investor commitments to the combined company.
• Combined company will be renamed Korsana Biosciences and is expected to trade on Nasdaq under ticker “KRSA.”

https://finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=CYCN&p=d