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Kash Patel’s Alcohol Habit & This AI Plays Ping-Pong

So Is The Strait Of Hormuz Actually Closed?

Author

Marcus Gee-Lim
April 23, 2026

Hi readers, happy Thursday! Today we’re covering the Strait of Hormuz closure, pipeline drama in Europe, a U.S.-South Korea diplomatic spat, an inquiry into Kash Patel’s alcohol habits, Trump’s grim polling numbers, and a ping-pong-playing robot.

“The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.” ― Henry James

No Deal (But An Extension)

“Commercial Cargo Ships on the Open Sea” by Regan Dsouza via Pexels

On Tuesday, diplomats from Iran and the U.S. were scheduled to fly to Islamabad, Pakistan and participate in another round of peace talks. Unfortunately, those planes never landed. No, they weren’t shot out of the sky or anything like that – both negotiation teams decided to stay home that night, leaving Pakistan’s mediators (and the rest of the world) scratching their heads.

Although we didn’t come out of Tuesday with a long-term peace deal hammered out in bilateral peace talks, we did get a ceasefire extension. Late Tuesday night, just a day before the previous two-week ceasefire was set to expire, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he would be extending the U.S.-Iran ceasefire “until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal.”

He claimed that the government of Iran was “seriously fractured,” adding, “I have therefore directed our Military to continue the Blockade and, in all other respects, remain ready and able, and will therefore extend the Ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.” A top Iranian diplomat called the move “a ploy to buy time for a surprise strike,” and said that “the time for Iran to take the initiative has come.”

The next day, Iran did just that. As a handful of ships tried to pass through the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, Iran’s military attacked three cargo vessels. The targeted ships were identified as the MSC Francesca, the Euphoria, and the Epaminondas. According to the company that owns the Epaminondas, the ship “was approached and fired upon by a manned gunboat” as it tried to leave the strait. Luckily no crewmembers were injured in the incident, but the boat never made it out of the area – Iran claims it has seized both the MSC Francesca and the Epaminondas, though the Euphoria and a few other ships were apparently allowed to pass through the strait.

While the U.S. military says it’s keeping multiple AH-64 Apache helicopters hovering over the strait in order to allow ships to move through the area freely, it’s become increasingly clear that Washington is currently unwilling to escalate things in the strait. “It’s not going to reassure anybody to start up shipping again through Hormuz if the U.S. Navy itself refuses to operate in Hormuz,” said one analyst.

The Oil Must Flow

“Industrial Pipe System Under Dramatic Sky” by Ray Bran via Pexels

  • Over the past few months, the E.U. has been caught in the middle of a diplomatic clash over an oil pipeline. The pipeline in question is the Druzhba pipeline, which brings oil from Eastern Russia to many countries in Eastern Europe, including Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia. Part of the pipeline located in Ukraine was damaged by a Russian airstrike in January, halting the flow of Russian oil to much of Eastern Europe. 

  • The pipeline is an important source of oil for both Hungary and Slovakia, but especially the latter. Slovakia’s sole oil refinery is specifically configured for Russian crude oil, and the complete cessation of oil through the Druzhba pipeline forced the country to declare a national state of emergency in the oil sector in February. Since then, both Hungary and Slovakia have claimed that Ukraine is keeping the pipeline shut in order to stop Russia from making money off of its oil – which is all well and good unless you’re a Slovakian citizen suffering because of that decision.

  • In retaliation for Kyiv’s alleged decision to keep the pipeline closed, Hungary and Slovakia have been blocking approval for a €90 billion ($105.79 billion) E.U. loan to Ukraine. But yesterday, after months of back-and-forth, oil finally began flowing down the pipeline – soon after, E.U. diplomats unanimously approved the loan, providing Kyiv with much-needed cash to fund its war with Russia. All’s well that ends well!

Hey, That’s A Secret! (I Think)

  • The U.S. has partly restricted its intelligence-sharing program with South Korea (one of its biggest military allies in Asia) after Seoul’s unification minister publicly announced that North Korea might have a working uranium enrichment facility. The offending incident took place in March, when unification minister Chung Dong-young told lawmakers that North Korea had an operational nuclear facility located in Kusong, one of the country’s northwestern provinces.

  • According to a senior U.S. defense official, the Pentagon decided to stop sharing satellite-gathered intel about North Korean technology with South Korea as a result of Chung’s comments, though the U.S. will still share information about North Korea’s missile programs with Seoul.

  • This all makes sense at first glance, but South Korea’s government is contesting the U.S.’s decision. Why? According to Seoul, information about the Kusong nuclear facility has been publicly available for years at this point – Chung has pointed to a 2016 report written by a U.S.-based thinktank and multiple stories in the South Korean press as proof. He’s also said that he even mentioned the Kusong facility during his own public confirmation hearing last year, which the U.S. took no issue with. President Lee Jae Myung has even weighed in, writing that it’s a “clear fact” that the Kusong facility is public information. No part of the U.S. government has responded to Seoul’s claims.

Additional World News

They’re Calling Him J. Edgar Boozer (Not Us Though)

  • House Judiciary Committee Democrats are calling on FBI Director Kash Patel to fill out a screening test that’s used to identify “harmful patterns of alcohol consumption” and “hazardous drinking behaviors” under penalty of perjury. The request is a response to a recent article published in the Atlantic – citing more than two dozen anonymous sources, the publication claims that Patel has displayed patterns of “conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences” during his time at the FBI.

  • “It is no surprise that your purported drinking habits and erratic schedule have had demonstrably disastrous effects on your performance of duties as FBI Director,” wrote Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, adding, “Your inability to control your impulses has reportedly undermined high-stakes criminal investigations.” Patel has already filed a lawsuit against the Atlantic over the article, but other stories about his alleged alcoholism are still swirling. In 2001, he was arrested on charges of misdemeanor public intoxication during a college basketball game, and just a few months ago the podcaster-turned-FBI-chief was spotted on camera guzzling a beer with the men’s U.S. hockey team at the Winter Olympics.

The Polling Ain’t Pretty

  • According to new polling, Donald Trump’s approval rating on the economy has been on a downward slide for the past few months. Just 38% of Americans approved of his economic policy in March, and that number shrunk to 30% in April, as inflation remains up and the war with Iran drags on. Speaking of that, Trump’s approval rating in regards to the Iran war remained stable at 32% between March and April.

  • “I feel disgusted with myself, I feel betrayed, like he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” said one Trump voter, a 60 year-old retired Air Force captain. “It’s like high school class president: ‘I’m gonna promise we are going to get pizza every single day. Then as soon as they get elected they are like, ‘Oh, I lied.’” Trump’s overall approval rating dipped from 38% in March to 33% in April – not a good sign as the GOP is trying to hold on to its slim Congressional majorities in the upcoming midterm elections. 

Additional USA News

 

This Computer Paddles People

  • After making waves in the worlds of chess and go, it looks like AI is now coming for table tennis. Yesterday, researchers from Sony AI published a paper in the journal Nature outlining how they trained an AI-powered robot to beat elite ping pong players. 

  • The robot, named Ace, is essentially an arm attached to a track system that lets it move forward, backwards, and sideways – it can “see” through a system of nine cameras that can see the table from all angles. Ace was able to beat 3 out of 5 “elite” table tennis players (competitive athletes with more than 10 years of intensive training), and researchers claim it was competitive in its matches against 2 table tennis professionals.

  • “We played stronger and stronger players and we beat stronger and stronger players,” said Ace’s project leader. Ace’s success shows that current AI models are able to make impressive split-second, real world decisions – the robot was even able to make a shot that left one expert player (who played table tennis at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics) impressed. “No one else would have been able to do that. I didn’t think it was possible,” he said, adding that the robot demonstrating the shot “means that there is a possibility that a human could do it too.”

Additional Reads

Peanut For Your Thoughts

Here’s a video of the ping pong robot in action. It’s kind of freaky to watch — not in like a disturbing way, but I’d be scared of playing against it because it looks like it could chop someone’s head off with a ping pong paddle.

Editor + Writer: Marcus Gee-Lim

Designer: Joe Stella