Coming Up This Week

• Today is the start of the holy month of Ramadan in Saudi Arabia and several Gulf countries; while Iranians, Jordanians, and many Asian-Pacific Muslims will begin their month of fasting tomorrow (the official start depends on when religious leaders see the crescent moon that marks the onset of Ramadan).
• Thursday is my favorite holiday, Pi Day.
• Russia votes in the first round of its presidential election this Friday through Sunday. Pres. Putin is expected to win a fifth term without a runoff...which is unsurprising, given that he's banned, jailed, or killed all credible opposition candidates bold enough to consider running against him. Despite an assured victory, the Kremlin has reportedly spent about €1 billion ($1.1 billion) on pro-Putin propaganda ahead of this election to ensure he wins by a comfortable margin.
• Sunday is St. Patrick's Day - which was apparently a somber dry religious holiday that Irish families celebrated at home until 1970, when it became a boozy national holiday instead.

• Aluminum: $2,240/ton
• Antimony (ingot min. 99.65% fob China): $13,550/ton
• Cobalt: $28,550/ton
• Copper: $8,580/ton
• Gold: $2,177/toz
• Lead: $2,105/ton
• Natural Gas (Nymex): $1.80/MMbtu
• WTI Crude Oil (Nymex): $77.83/barrel
• Zinc: $2,528/ton

• Ramadan began in Gaza today with no imminent prospect of a ceasefire deal that negotiators hoped would close before the start of the holy month.
• An aid vessel was due to leave Cypress for Gaza over the weekend, but it was delayed due to "technical difficulties."
• Indeed, there are many technical difficulties with marine aid deliveries to Gaza right now, including challenges distributing aid within the strip and a lack of landing facilities (the U.S. still plans to build a floating dock to land aid shipments by sea, but it will take weeks to months to construct).

• Haitian gangs assaulted several government buildings in Port-au-Prince, including the presidential palace (PM Henry was not home since he's currently stranded in Puerto Rico and being blocked from returning to Haiti).
• The gangs want Henry to step down, and he lacks meaningful support both among Haitian elite and abroad. He'll struggle to return home to Haiti, and the gangs are capitalizing on his absence to grab even more power as the country devolves further into chaos.
• Caribbean leaders will meet in Jamaica today to discuss the situation and a way forward. So far, no good options have gained traction.

• Former UK PM Boris Johnson reportedly secretly flew to Venezuela last month for unofficial private meetings with Pres. Nicolás Maduro to "emphasise the need for Venezuela to embrace a proper democratic process," whatever that means.
• Johnson is now a private citizen of a country with tense diplomatic relations with Venezuela, so it's unclear what exactly he sought to accomplish there.

• A new poll found that support for South Africa's ruling ANC party dipped below 40% for the first time - in part because ex-ANC president Jacob Zuma's new MKP party (founded in Dec. 2023) attracted 13% of respondents in last month's poll. The longstanding Democratic Alliance trailed the ANC but beat the MKP in this poll, with 27% support. Elections are in three months.

• A U.S. court convicted former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández of drug trafficking for taking bribes from cartels in exchange for protecting U.S.-bound drug shipments as they transited Honduras. He faces a minimum sentence of 40 years in U.S. prison.
• The Pentagon issued a 63-page report rejecting conspiracy theories that the U.S. government has been hiding evidence of extraterrestrial life: it said it has confirmed precisely zero alien sightings to date.