(Headline USA) Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, apologized to the state’s Jewish Democratic Caucus on Saturday for comments he made after an attack on a synagogue in March, which he tied to Israel’s actions in the Middle East.
“My comments may have been misconstrued to justify something I did not mean to justify,” El-Sayed told reporters after he addressed the caucus at a party convention in Lansing. “To anyone who feels like my comments might have been hurtful, I’m really sorry. That was not my intention.”
El-Sayed’s apology was his latest attempt to unify Democrats after a bitter primary where he defeated U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens. He’s eager to push past a series of controversies involving allegations of antisemitism, including his association with controversial leftist commentator Hasan Piker. He faces Republican nominee Mike Rogers in a race that will help determine control of the Senate.
In March, a man attacked Temple Israel synagogue in a Detroit suburb, ramming his car into the building and opening fire on a security guard before dying by suicide. The man, Ayman Mohammad Ghazali, had lost four relatives in an Israeli airstrike on Lebanon the week prior.
In a video response at the time, El-Sayed condemned the attack and added that “hurt people hurt people,” a reference to what happened to Ghazali’s family. Critics accused El-Sayed of justifying Ghazali’s actions.
“What I was trying to do was offer context for why it happened, but it wasn’t the time for context,” El-Sayed said on Saturday, “and you don’t ever want to trample somebody’s pain.”
(Headline USA) A South Carolina police officer died and a second was injured in a “gunfight” Saturday in a park, following a call about a domestic dispute, Columbia police Chief W.H. “Skip” Holbrook said.
The suspect, a 33-year-old man with a lengthy criminal record, also died, Holbrook said at a news conference in the capital city.
The deceased officer, 29-year-old Christopher DeLong, had been with the police department for two years and leaves behind a wife and two young children, Holbrook said.
“Our hearts are broken this evening,” he said, appearing choked up at times.
DeLong’s wife, in a social media post, praised her husband as the “best dad to our babies” and said she was “living a nightmare.”
Columbia just lost a 29-year-old officer – a young dad – at the hands of a career criminal. WHERE'S THE MEDIA OUTRAGE???
Officer Christopher DeLong of the Columbia Police Department in South Carolina was sh*t and k*lled in the line of duty Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026, near… pic.twitter.com/FHINos9e3P
After a Saturday night news conference, Holbrook and other law enforcement officials joined in a procession from the hospital. The second officer, David Dymock, was in stable condition, the chief said.
“I hope that our officers know that they’re not alone in this. We will lean on each other in this tragic time,” Holbrook said. “Let’s pray for this department.”
The shooting unfolded after a woman called police around 9:30 a.m. Saturday saying a man who she had a restraining order against was destroying property at her home.
DeLong quickly arrived on scene and learned the suspect had left the residence. The woman gave DeLong a description of the suspect and vehicle description, the chief said.
Around 10:30 a.m. DeLong left the home, but just minutes later he initiated a call about a suspicious person after seeing a man near a vehicle that matched the woman’s description, Holbrook said.
Dymock arrived as backup and minutes later radioed that officers “were hit and a suspect was down,” the chief said.
The suspect was Adam Tyler Dowdy, a man with a history of arrests across at least four states who had faced charges including disorderly conduct, contempt of court, public intoxication, possession of a controlled substance and probation violations, the chief said.
Holbrook, who did not take questions at the news conference, said the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division would investigate the shooting. A spokesperson for that agency said in an email that the investigation was ongoing.
SpaceX has pulled off its biggest salvage operation yet, recovering its most recently launched Starship from the Indian Ocean.
Elon Musk’s company is now in the process of shipping Starship back to its home base in Texas, a trip expected to take several months. SpaceX shared pictures of the recovery effort near Christmas Island late this week.
Starship — the biggest and most powerful rocket in the world — blasted off July 24 from Starbase, Texas. It was the 13th test flight of a full-up Starship, but unlike all the others, it survived the hourlong space-skimming flight and remained floating and intact.
“Congratulations to the entire SpaceX Recovery team for battling through challenging conditions to give our engineers access to a wealth of data to continue rapidly developing Starship,” the company said via X.
Starship is how Musk intends to get people and equipment to Mars, where he hopes to build a city. First up, though, is the moon. NASA is counting on Starship as well as Jeff Bezos’ Blue Moon lander to return astronauts to the lunar surface as early as 2028.
President Donald Trump endorsed both destinations during a visit to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Friday. He presented the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to each of the four Artemis II astronauts who flew around the moon in April.
(Headline USA) Citing the importance of the First Amendment, a federal judge in California says the U.S. government is unconstitutionally silencing critics of Israel’s war in Gaza and others as part of the Trump administration’s quest to deport noncitizens who it says disrupted college campuses while expressing their views.
Judge Noël Wise, in a ruling Friday, delivered a victory for The Stanford Daily, the student newspaper at Stanford University, which has said some international students were afraid to speak out because of the deportation threat.
“Freedom of speech is illusory if we are only ‘free’ to express complementary views about the government and its leaders,” the judge wrote.
The decision largely piggybacks on findings from nearly a year ago by a U.S. district judge in Boston, who ruled that the Trump administration violated the Constitution when it targeted people who are not citizens for deportation solely for supporting Palestinians and criticizing Israel.
Wise wrote that the freedoms of speech and the press are “foundational to America’s enduring democracy.” The judge cited free-speech and vagueness flaws that violate the First Amendment and Fifth Amendment as she struck down portions of the provisions that the federal government follows regarding deportations.
Wise cited retaliation in March 2025 by U.S. immigration authorities against people who engaged in speech supporting the Palestinians and against Israel’s actions — which a growing number of experts, including those commissioned by a U.N. body, have said amount to genocide. The judge also cited retaliation against people who were critical of Charlie Kirk after the Turning Point USA co-founder was assassinated last September.
“Tomorrow, or perhaps even today, targets may include anyone in the United States who exercises their freedom of speech to simply express opinions the government does not like,” the judge in San Jose said.
The Justice Department did not respond Saturday to a message seeking comment on the decision.
George Porteous, the editor-in-chief of The Stanford Daily, responded to the ruling by saying on X: “The reporters in our newsroom shouldn’t have to fear that writing a story will result in their deportation. Today’s victory means they won’t have to.”
Conor Fitzpatrick, an attorney with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which brought the lawsuit, praised the ruling.
“In America, free speech doesn’t just belong to the people who say things the government agrees with,” Fitzpatrick said in a release.
In her decision, Wise said it was clear that the government’s tactics has had an effect on college campuses.
“The government has offered a chilling message regarding protected speech — speak out against Israel or in support of Palestinians and we will revoke your visa and deport you. Behave. Noncitizen students heard the warning and heeded. And, as the idiom goes, the silence is deafening,” the judge wrote.
At The Stanford Daily, lawfully present noncitizens at the paper have quit, withheld articles, refused assignments, requested articles be taken down, and asked for anonymity due to fear of adverse immigration consequences, Wise noted.
She said noncitizens have the same First Amendment rights as citizens and yet were left to guess what the U.S. foreign policy was at any given moment and on any given subject.
“This is an incomprehensible standard,” she said. “While the Court understands that the government has been granted considerable discretion on foreign policy and immigration matters, that discretion must nevertheless still ensure that ordinary people can understand what the law permits and prohibits.”
Wise added: “Our Constitutional right to freedom of speech guarantees people the right to express — through their words, actions, or assembly — opinions that may be repugnant, views that run counter to prevailing political norms, or beliefs that otherwise challenge the country’s domestic or foreign policy, military engagement, or war.”
(Sarah Roderick-Fitch, The Center Square) All mines have been cleared from the Strait of Hormuz as the U.S. continues to enforce a full naval blockade on Iran.
U.S. Central Command Commander Bradley Cooper said the U.S. military has “successfully cleared sea mines” in the Strait of Hormuz, within the international shipping lanes that “were laid months ago by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Friday that in the past 14 days, 130 million barrels of oil have transited through the vital waterway. That’s still down from its pre-war levels of approximately 20 million barrels a day, according to the International Energy Agency.
Cooper said in a video message that ships are once again using “long-standing lanes international shipping has historically used to transit the Strait of Hormuz.”
“Over the past several months, U.S. forces have assisted nearly 1,500 commercial vessels in transiting the strait by providing coordinated protection,” Cooper added. “Those ships were carrying nearly 750 million barrels of crude oil destined for global energy markets.”
The admiral underscored that since the U.S. reinstated a full naval blockade on Iranian ports, zero oil has been exported from Iran.
The Trump administration has estimated the full naval blockade is costing the Iranian economy between $400 million and $500 million a day in economic losses, now coupled with crushing economic sanctions the U.S. has implemented on the Islamic Republic.
“Our objective is to sever every economic lifeline that sustains this tyrannical regime until Tehran stands alone,” Bessent said Monday. “Any entity that facilitates money laundering on behalf of Iran, will be removed from the U.S. dollar system.”
Bessent added that the new sanctions will be applied to any person or entity that assists the regime in accessing digital assets, technology, gold, aviation, or shipping to help keep Iran’s economy afloat and fund its military operations.
President Donald Trump told reporters Thursday that Iran is unable to pay its troops and is suffering major economic losses.
As part of the mission, Cooper said that more than 20 U.S. warships and “hundreds of aircraft” have aided in the clearing of the strait, while enforcing the blockade, turning around 75 vessels “attempting to run the blockade and disabling three vessels that did not comply.”
The Pentagon says it has spent nearly $40 billion on military operations in Iran, though many independent analyses estimate the true amount is at least double.
(Headline USA) British far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos has been deported back to the United Kingdom after his arrest by American immigration authorities, U.S. officials said Saturday.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Yiannopoulos was returned to his home country on Friday after being accused of overstaying after entering the U.S. legally in May 2019. A immigration judge had issued a final order of removal on July 22 after he failed to show up for an immigration hearing, a Homeland Security spokesperson said.
Yiannopoulos was arrested Thursday at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Louisiana and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“He chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation’s laws,” a Homeland Security spokesperson said in a statement.
Yiannopoulos and his representatives did not respond to requests for comment. He has not posted on his X social media account since Thursday.
Yiannopoulos is a well-known champion of conservative causes and has frequently taken provocative public positions criticizing feminism, Islam and immigrants. He has been especially supportive of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
“Zero immigration for the next 20 years. No ifs, no buts,” Yiannopoulos wrote on X last year.
The British national has most recently worked for the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, who performed in New Orleans on Friday evening.
Yiannopoulos rose to fame in the early 2010s as an incendiary writer for the conservative website Breitbart News. He resigned from the company in 2017 after a video of him endorsing pedophilia resurfaced online. He later apologized for the remarks and said he himself was a victim of sexual assault as a minor.
Yiannopoulos’ arrest on Thursday comes amid a nationwide uptick in detentions as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Far-right conservative activist Laura Loomer swiftly took to social media to applaud Yiannopoulos’ arrest after years of public feuding between the two personalities.
“I was the first person to report on the fact that Milo was in the US illegally where he incited violence against President Trump and worked for Marjorie Traitor Greene,” Loomer wrote on X.
BREAKING:
Illegal alien Milo Yiannopoulos has been detained by ICE.
I was the first person to report on the fact that Milo was in the US illegally where he incited violence against President Trump and worked for Marjorie Traitor Greene.
Controversy around Yiannopoulos ballooned in 2017 when he carried out what he called his “Troll Academy Tour” across college campuses nationwide. Fights broke out when some students protested Yiannopoulos’ appearances and accused him of hate speech, while others celebrated him as a champion of free speech. Around that time, Buzzfeed reported on Yiannopoulos’ cozy relationships with self-proclaimed white nationalists.
In recent years, Yiannopoulos continued to work in the orbit of conservative activism. In 2022, he was an intern for former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, according to the Washington Post. He subsequently ran the short-lived 2024 presidential campaign for Ye.
Most recently, Yiannopoulos has worked as a spokesperson for Ye, who has been beset by controversy of his own following antisemitic comments that the rapper has since apologized for.
(Headline USA) Colombian security forces captured a suspected senior leader of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, the U.S. Southern Command announced on Friday, hailing the arrest as a result of stronger military cooperation between the historically close allies.
The capture on Thursday of Luis Saúl Pérez Nieto, who Colombian authorities described as having coordinated the gang’s weapons and drug-trafficking networks across the region, offers an early sign of how rapidly the two countries have intensified their joint efforts against organized crime under Colombia’s new conservative president, Abelardo de la Espriella.
An admirer of U.S. President Donald Trump, de la Espriella came to power earlier this month promising to crush his country’s powerful drug traffickers with help from Washington. His government has named Medellín, Colombia’s second-largest city, as the hub of Trump’s new regional anti-cartel alliance and welcomed joint operations with the U.S. military on Colombian soil in a sharp break from his progressive predecessor.
“Narco-terrorists have no safe haven in our hemisphere,” the U.S. Southern Command said in its statement on Friday announcing the capture of Pérez Nieto. “We stand united with our partners to dismantle these criminal networks and protect our homeland.”
Arrest in Colombia
Pérez Nieto, known by the aliases “Páez” and “Nairobi,” was captured in an operation that also involved the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Colombian police said, without elaborating.
Colombian police accused Pérez Nieto of leading the expansion of Tren de Aragua in Peru while coordinating drug and arms trafficking across the continent, helping transform what began as a prison gang operating from Venezuela’s Tocorón penitentiary into a transnational criminal syndicate.
NEW: TOP TREN DE ARAGUA LEADER CAPTURED IN COLOMBIA: Colombian authorities say Luis Saúl Pérez Nieto, alias “Nairobi” or “Luis Páez,” was arrested in Bogotá following a seven-month investigation.
Colombia’s president identifies him as a transnational Tren de Aragua leader who… pic.twitter.com/R3eg72bmF5
In 2023, Pérez Nieto escaped from that prison along with his close confidant, the gang’s leader, Héctor “Niño Guerrero” Guerrero Flores, Colombian police added. Guerrero Flores was killed in a U.S. military strike in a rare collaboration with Venezuela earlier this year.
The Trump administration last year designated Tren de Aragua a foreign terrorist organization, part of its effort to treat Latin American cartels as national security threats rather than conventional criminal groups.
“Congratulations to President Abelardo de la Espriella and the Colombian National Police on the capture of Luis Páez Nieto, a senior Tren de Aragua leader,” DEA Administrator Terry Cole said.
Colombian and Peruvian authorities said the U.S. had requested Pérez Nieto’s arrest and extradition on charges of terrorism, money laundering, drug trafficking and criminal conspiracy. The Trump administration has not publicly detailed the case against him. The DEA did not respond to questions about the charges against Pérez Nieto in the U.S. or its role in the operation.
Increased cooperation at the Colombian-Ecuadorian border
Earlier this week, U.S. Southern Command chief Gen. Francis Donovan met Colombia’s defense minister and military leaders in the port city of Tumaco before traveling to Ecuador for regional security talks focused on the volatile border between the two countries, rife with drug smuggling, illegal mining and human trafficking.
During his visit, Donovan said that U.S., Ecuadorian and Colombian officials had agreed on a strategy to “hunt cartel leadership, shatter their logistics and permanently deny them safe haven.”
“The border between Colombia and Ecuador is a geographic chokepoint that violent cartels have long exploited,” he said. “Today, we are changing the game.”
Colombia and Ecuador are among the few regional governments that have agreed to allow joint operations with U.S. forces against criminal groups on their territory, part of the Trump administration’s efforts to extend its lethal campaign against suspected drug smuggling boats to land.
Chile celebrates Tren de Aragua extradition as security success
It comes as South American voters increasingly elect Trump-aligned conservative leaders who have called for far-reaching security crackdowns.
Among them is Chilean President José Antonio Kast, whose government has struggled to deliver on its sweeping promises to curb crime and carry out and mass deportations.
But on Friday, Chilean officials celebrated a victory as they announced the arrival of two alleged Tren de Aragua leaders extradited from the U.S. and Colombia to face charges in Chile related to the abduction and killing of former Venezuelan army Lt. Ronald Ojeda in 2024. The body of the Venezuelan dissident, who had sought political asylum in Chile, was found inside a suitcase buried beneath a cement slab in Santiago, the capital.
Chilean authorities have charged Rafael Enrique Gámez Salas, the alleged leader of Los Piratas, the main branch of Tren de Aragua in Chile, with kidnapping, extortion and criminal association, among other offenses.
The other suspect, Alfredo Camilo Carrillo Ortiz, alias “El Gocho,” was extradited from Colombia. Chilean prosecutors accuse him of helping plan and carry out the killing and running the informal settlement where Ojeda’s body was buried.
Chile’s undersecretary for public security, María del Pilar Giannini, called the extraditions “a concrete demonstration” of the Kast government’s crusade against organized crime. “We are going to pursue them to the very end,” she said.
U.S. officials praised Gámez’s extradition from California, where he was serving a federal prison sentence for illegally reentering the country. Attorney General Todd Blanche called it “evidence of the strong cooperation with our Chilean partners to combat transnational crime, dismantle foreign terrorist organizations like Tren de Aragua and hold members accountable for their heinous criminal acts.”
(Headline USA) Jurors ended a second day of deliberations on Friday without a verdict in the case of the Massachusetts woman charged with killing her three children in 2023.
Clancy doesn’t deny strangling her children, but her lawyer said she did it because she had lost her grip on reality due to postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness that can follow childbirth. In the months before the killings, Clancy sought treatment for her worsening mental health, including a stay in a psychiatric hospital.
Prosecutors said Clancy knew what she was doing. They say she strangled the children because she was depressed and tired of living, and made a conscious choice to kill them before attempting suicide.
The jury began deliberating Thursday afternoon and met again Friday, asking at one point to take a look at a knife that Clancy used to cut herself and bags with empty prescription pill bottles found in her house.
Jurors are expected to return to the courthouse Monday. Members of the panel could find her guilty of murder or the lesser crime of manslaughter, or acquit her if they decide she wasn’t in control of herself due to her psychiatric problems.
Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility. She did not testify during the trial, but jurors heard at length from medical professionals who treated her, as well as from friends and relatives she had told about her mental health problems.
Jurors also heard from medical experts called by prosecutors and the defense who disagreed about her likely state of mind when she killed Cora, Dawson and Callan Clancy, ages 5, 3 and 8 months, at their Massachusetts home.
The killings happened less than three weeks after Clancy was discharged from a psychiatric hospital. She cut herself before jumping from a second-floor window after strangling the children. She remains paralyzed from the waist down.
(Headline USA) A former White House teleprompter operator accused of using inside knowledge to make bets on the prediction market Kalshi has been ordered to turn over more than $100,000 in profits and pay a $65,000 fine as part of a settlement with federal authorities.
The settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, announced Friday, also dealt Gabriel Perez a three-year trading ban. Perez was placed on unpaid leave from his job at the White House after reports emerged that he used his position to make bets on what President Donald Trump would say in speeches.
The White House did not immediately comment on the settlement. A White House official said in July that Perez was no longer in his position but did not say if he had been fired or resigned.
The commission found that Perez made $107,500 on prediction markets by betting on words and phrases that would appear in Trump’s speeches between December 2025 and February 2026.
“In his position, Perez had access to presidential speeches prior to those speeches being delivered and Perez misappropriated that information — in breach of his duty of trust and confidence,” according to a release from the commission.
Perez was ordered to repay his profits in full, along with the $65,000 civil penalty, which the commission said was a reduction because of his “exemplary cooperation.”
As details emerged July 16, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said it was “unfortunate” and “a disgrace.”
(Money Metals News Service) Silver has decisively broken above the once-formidable $50 barrier, but Peter Krauth believes the bull market still has room to run.
During a recent Money Metals podcast interview with host Mike Maharrey, Krauth argued that strong investment demand, industrial consumption, depleted exchange inventories, and emerging technologies continue to support higher silver prices.
Krauth is the editor behind the Silver Stock Investor newsletter and the author of The Great Silver Bull. Maharrey described the book as one of the best overall guides to the silver market.
(Interview Starts Around 8:36 Mark)
Silver’s Next Stop Could Be $80 to $85
Silver traded just below $70 as Maharrey and Krauth recorded the interview. Krauth characterized the metal as moderately underpriced at that level.
He expects silver to reach approximately $80 to $85 before the end of 2026. He stopped short of calling for an immediate move to $90 or $100, describing his forecast as a more realistic reflection of current market conditions.
Silver’s strength comes from its hybrid nature. Roughly half of its demand is tied to monetary and investment uses, while the other half comes from industry. Krauth said both sides of that market are currently providing strong support.
The move above $50 represents a historic change. Only a year ago, silver remained around $40 and had not broken through the price ceiling that had held for roughly 45 years.
Krauth now views $50 as silver’s new floor. The metal repeatedly tested approximately $55 during the summer without returning to its previous all-time high.
That resilience is a bullish signal. Barring a major “black swan” event, Krauth does not expect silver to trade below $50 again.
Krauth said the answer can be found in the large stockpiles accumulated during earlier years of oversupply. Surplus metal flowed into exchanges and trading hubs such as the COMEX, the London Bullion Market Association, and Shanghai.
When annual deficits began emerging around 2020 or 2021, industrial users and other large buyers did not necessarily need miners to produce additional silver. They could purchase metal already stored in exchange inventories at prevailing prices.
If silver traded at $20, for example, buyers could acquire existing inventory for approximately $20 without placing immediate pressure on mine production. This allowed deficits to persist while muting their effect on the market price.
That inventory buffer has since eroded. Krauth said exchange stockpiles began falling dramatically in early 2021.
COMEX inventories increased near the end of 2025, but silver’s subsequent “mania phase” produced another major drawdown. Inventories have now returned to lows seen during the last several years.
With less above-ground silver readily available, persistent deficits are becoming more consequential. Krauth believes depleted inventories are helping keep prices elevated.
Do Official Deficit Figures Understate Demand?
The Silver Institute releases its annual market survey each April. According to Krauth, its figures showed a deficit of approximately 150 million ounces in one recent year, followed by about 50 million ounces in 2025. The organization forecast a deficit of roughly 55 million ounces for 2026.
Those figures do not include silver flowing into exchange-traded funds. ETF purchases appear as a separate category because the metal is not physically consumed and could eventually return to the market.
Krauth questions that methodology. Physical investment products such as silver coins and bars are included in deficit calculations even though they are also held rather than consumed. Dealers can repurchase those products and resell them to other investors.
Silver purchased by an ETF is likewise removed from readily available supplies. It must be acquired and stored to support the fund’s shares.
When Krauth added ETF inflows to the calculation, he found that the 2025 silver deficit exceeded 300 million ounces. By that measure, it was the largest single annual silver deficit on record.
ETF metal can theoretically reenter the market, but Krauth described silver ETF holdings as historically “sticky.” Investors frequently buy these positions and hold them for extended periods.
With ETF inventories building again, he believes conventional deficit estimates may significantly understate total silver demand.
Solar Power Remains a Major Source of Consumption
Industrial demand for silver continues to expand, particularly in solar energy. Maharrey cited an estimate that solar-panel adoption in Africa would rise 45 percent in 2026.
Krauth compared Africa’s solar expansion with the earlier spread of cellular service across developing countries. Mobile networks reduced the need to install physical cables everywhere. Solar panels similarly allow communities to generate electricity without first connecting every home to a large centralized grid.
Research from the energy group Ember illustrates solar power’s improving economics. Krauth described a scenario in which $100 million could purchase enough natural gas to generate 1.5 terawatts of energy for one year.
The same $100 million could provide 1.5 terawatts through solar energy. Unlike natural gas, however, the solar panels could continue producing electricity for approximately 25 years.
Existing natural-gas plants still represent major capital investments. But utilities, governments, households, and data-center operators planning new capacity have strong financial incentives to consider solar.
Will Copper Replace Silver in Solar Panels?
Some manufacturers are exploring copper as a substitute for silver in photovoltaic cells. Krauth acknowledged the risk but believes concerns about substitution remain overstated.
Copper is less efficient than silver and is vulnerable to corrosion. Manufacturers would also need to make large capital investments, retool production facilities, and potentially suspend operations for months to change technologies.
Durability matters to solar customers. Buyers expect panels to operate for 10 or 20 years, not merely three to five years.
Meanwhile, some newer and more efficient photovoltaic technologies require more silver rather than less. Krauth wants to see evidence of substitution occurring on a large commercial scale before concluding it will materially reduce demand.
Recent energy disruptions have also accelerated interest in alternatives. Krauth said the loss of 20 percent of the world’s oil supply following the conflict with Iran affected gasoline, heating oil, chemicals, and other petroleum derivatives.
Octopus Energy, the United Kingdom’s largest electricity provider, reportedly saw its solar-panel sales jump 50 percent in February and March 2026. China’s silver imports reached a record in March, approximately doubling the previous monthly high.
That same month, 50 countries purchased record quantities of solar panels from China.
Energy insecurity can support silver even when countries continue using oil. Businesses and governments may pay premiums for dependable supplies, sign longer contracts, or move production closer to home. Those actions raise costs and increase inflationary pressure, strengthening silver’s monetary appeal.
AI, Electric Vehicles, and Medicine Add New Demand
Even if solar demand eventually plateaus, Krauth expects electric vehicles, artificial intelligence, and data centers to absorb more silver.
Silver is the most conductive metal for both electricity and heat. It is used in processors, switching equipment, servers, and other components where reliability is essential. Data-center failures are extremely expensive, making silver’s superior performance particularly valuable.
Krauth is also fascinated by silver’s medical uses. Silver is a biocide capable of killing germs and bacteria without losing effectiveness as microorganisms adapt.
Silver nanoparticles can be incorporated into medical products such as corneal replacements to reduce infection risks. Operating rooms and other medical environments also rely on the metal’s antimicrobial properties.
With applications spanning energy, transportation, computing, and healthcare, Krauth sees little reason to worry about overall industrial demand.
Krauth Announces a New Vancouver Investment Summit
Krauth directs investors to TheGoldAdvisor.com, where he works with analyst Jeff Clark. The site features their research and newsletters covering precious metals and mining investments.
Krauth’s book, The Great Silver Bull, provides an introduction to physical silver and silver-mining stocks. Maharrey praised it as a practical handbook suitable for both new investors and experienced fund managers.
Peter Krauth also announced the inaugural Gold Advisor Investor Summit, scheduled for November 5, 2026, in Vancouver. The free, one-day event will feature several dozen companies and cover gold, silver, copper, lithium, uranium, and the broader mining sector.
His central message was clear. Silver has already overcome the $50 barrier that skeptics once considered nearly insurmountable, but the combination of investment demand, depleted inventories, industrial growth, and monetary uncertainty suggests the bull market is not finished.
