Authored by Mary Prenon via The Epoch Times,

About 55 percent of Americans surveyed in a 2026 Quinnipiac poll said artificial intelligence (AI) will be more harmful than helpful.

The survey, released on March 30, was conducted in collaboration with the Quinnipiac University School of Computing & Engineering and the Quinnipiac University School of Business.

In April 2025, only 44 percent believed AI would do more harm than good in their daily lives.

In the 2026 poll, 21 percent answered that AI affects their lives a lot, while 29 percent said only somewhat, and 30 percent believed AI impacts are minimal. Only 17 percent said they are not impacted at all.

Regarding education, 64 percent of survey respondents said AI is more harmful, compared with just 27 percent who believe it will help. For health care issues, 45 percent of those surveyed believed AI will do more harm, while 43 percent said AI will be more helpful.

The employment outlook showed the greatest percentage of people worried about the future of AI, as 75 percent said continuous advancements in AI will most likely lead to a decline of job opportunities for people. While 18 percent said AI will not have much of an impact on jobs, only 7 percent said jobs for humans will increase as a result of AI.

In just one year, the fear of possible job losses due to AI increased by nearly 20 points. In April 2025, 56 percent of respondents said AI would be detrimental to human jobs.

All generations surveyed remain pessimistic about the job outlook as a result of AI’s rapid growth, with Gen Z—including ages 18 to 29—exhibiting the highest percentage at 81 percent. For millennials, aged 30 to 45, 71 percent said jobs are likely to decrease as AI grows, and 67 percent of Gen Z, aged 46 to 61, agree. Of the baby boomer generation, aged 62 to 80, 66 percent indicated that human jobs will decline.

“Younger Americans report the highest familiarity with AI tools, but they are also the least optimistic about the labor market,” Tamilla Triantoro, associate professor of business analytics and information systems at Quinnipiac University School of Business, said in the report.

“AI fluency and optimism here are moving in opposite directions.”

Among those currently employed, 30 percent reported being very or somewhat concerned about AI rendering their jobs obsolete, but 69 percent said they are not very worried about it. Compared with last year’s survey, only 21 percent of employed Americans expressed fear of losing their jobs to AI.

“Americans are more worried about what AI may do to the labor market than about what it may do to their own jobs,” Triantoro said.

“People seem more willing to predict a tougher market than to picture themselves on the losing end of that disruption—a pattern worth watching as the technology moves deeper into the workplace.”

An overwhelming 85 percent of Americans said they would be unwilling to work a job where their direct supervisor was an AI program that assigned their tasks and schedules.

When asked how much they trust AI, 76 percent of respondents said that they hardly ever trust it, while just 21 percent admitted they do trust AI. Still, 51 percent said they often use AI for researching topics. Only 20 percent said they relied on AI for medical advice, and just 15 percent for personal advice.

NASA’s Artemis II mission is finally set to launch three Americans and one Canadian atop the Space Launch System rocket on a lunar mission not seen in more than 50 years. 

The Artemis II mission is scheduled for launch at 6:24 p.m. EST on Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The fueling process for the Artemis II rocket has picked up speed. The rocket is now more quickly filling with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.

When the core stage is completely full, it will contain 196,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and 537,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen. pic.twitter.com/wejiCveeNb

— NASA Artemis (@NASAArtemis) April 1, 2026

The crew of four, including NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman (commander), Victor Glover (pilot), and Christina Koch (mission specialist), along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen (mission specialist), will circumnavigate the moon in a 10-day flight aboard the new Orion spacecraft. 

Artemis II is a critical test of the Orion capsule and marks another step toward future lunar landings, which SpaceX is likely to support as early as 2028.

Three hours and 30 minutes after liftoff, if everything goes to plan, the Orion spacecraft and its service module will separate from the second stage of the rocket, perform a manual flight test high in Earth orbit, and prepare for a translunar injection, in other words, a trip to the moon, during which Orion’s service module will fire its engines and catapult the four astronauts to 25,000 mph on a three-day journey into lunar orbit. 

Artemis II will enter the moon’s gravitational field about four days into the mission and then begin its U-turn, enabling a flyby around the far side more than 12 hours later. If today’s launch goes according to plan, that flyby of the moon will take place next Monday. 

“No one has ever seen this full crater on the far side of the moon, and so this would be really neat,” Hansen said. “I’m excited to have a look at it. It’s just enormous, super complex, and you could probably stare at it for hours.”

The flyby will set the astronauts up on a “free-return trajectory” that will essentially slingshot them around the far side and back to Earth without burning additional fuel. 

By April 10, Artemis II is forecast to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere, nine days and one hour after liftoff, and splash down off the coast of Southern California.

A successful mission sets NASA up for a crewed 2028 lunar surface mission. 

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has recently stated that his agency plans to build a nuclear reactor on the moon. 

Authored by Michael Lebowitz via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

When investors want to reduce risk, one commonly used tool is beta. For instance, an investor may sell higher-beta stocks and replace them with lower-beta ones to cushion against an expected market decline. Such a strategy is intuitive and widely used; however, it can be greatly flawed.

We recently received a question from a client about how we use beta to manage our portfolios. Given recent volatility and declining prices, the timing could not be better to explore both the power of beta and its important constraints.  

What Is Beta

In simplistic terms, beta answers one question: when the market moves, how much does a stock tend to move with it? To wit, a stock with a beta of 0.50 should move roughly half as much as the market in either direction. A stock with a beta of 2.0 should move roughly twice as much.

In statistics, beta is the slope of the best-fit line through a scatter plot comparing a stock’s weekly returns to the market’s returns.  The steeper the line, the higher the beta, and vice versa.

To clarify, consider the graph below. Each dot on the scatter chart shows the intersection of the weekly returns of Exxon (XOM) and the S&P 500 over the last five years. The beta of XOM, or the slope, quantifies the angle of the best-fit line (orange line). XOM has a beta of 0.43. Thus, for every 1.00% increase or decrease in the S&P 500, the orange line will rise or fall by 0.43%. The yellow circle shows that an approximate 5.00% increase in the S&P 500 equates to an expected 2.15% (0.43% * 5%) increase in XOM.

If an investor fears a market drawdown, they might want to replace higher-beta stocks with lower-beta ones like XOM. Conversely, they might do the opposite if they think the market will move higher.

If only portfolio management were that easy!

Correlation Matters- Analyzing XOM

Let’s stick with the XOM analysis to demonstrate how misleading beta can be. As noted above, the beta of XOM over the last five years, using weekly data, is 0.43. But that figure doesn’t address how much we should trust it.

To quantify our confidence, we calculate the relationship’s R-squared. R-squared measures how closely the dots cluster around the trend line on a scale of zero to one. A reading near one means beta is highly reliable. A reading near zero means the relationship between the stock and the market is essentially random. The R-squared for the XOM graph we showed above is statistically insignificant at 0.0645, indicating a weak correlation between XOM and the market.

Beyond the R-squared, it’s also important to understand that beta is not static. It changes with new data and with changes to the time frame used to calculate it. As shown in the table below, XOM’s five-year beta differs markedly from the most recent 3 and 6-month calculations.  

Correlation Matters- Nvidia

We shift our focus to Nvidia (NVDA), a stock with a higher beta, to further illustrate why correlation (R-squared) is critical to understanding the efficacy of a stock’s beta. As shown below, NVDA has a five-year beta of 2.07; however, like XOM, it has been declining, with its three-month beta sitting at 1.10. This is not surprising given that Nvidia’s contribution to the S&P 500 has surged from about 1% to nearly 8% over the last five years. Its short-term beta implies that NVDA behaves similarly to the market, not twice the market as its longer-term beta claims.

The graph below shows that NVDA’s best-fit trend line has a steeper slope than XOM’s. Moreover, we can see that the dots are more closely clustered around the trend line than XOM’s are. The relationship between NVDA returns and the market, as measured by R-squared, is 0.4785 compared to XOM’s insignificant 0.0645.

Idiosyncratic Risk

Some describe beta as if it were like a volume control on a stereo, simply tune it up or down, and your risks change accordingly. The dispersion of weekly returns around the trend line indicates that factors beyond market returns drive individual stock returns. While there are many factors driving returns, they can largely be classified as systematic or idiosyncratic.

Beta only helps explain the fraction of a stock’s return attributable to systematic (market) risks. These are market risks that affect all investments simultaneously and include factors such as recessions, interest rate changes, and geopolitical events.

Idiosyncratic risk, on the other hand, is the company-specific risk. It includes unique factors such as management decisions, product sales, and competitive positioning. It also includes non-company-specific factors, such as investor preferences.

Together, systematic and idiosyncratic risks help us fully quantify risk.

As we discussed, XOM had a very low R-squared because many of the data points were randomly scattered across the graph. We can deduce from the low correlation (low R-squared) that changes driven by idiosyncratic factors greatly outweigh those driven by movements in the S&P 500.

Using Beta On A Portfolio

So far, we have only discussed the beta of an individual stock. Given the idiosyncratic risks and low correlation (R-squared) of many stocks, and the fact that beta shifts with the selected time frame, beta can be an inadequate tool.

However, when managing a portfolio, beta’s usefulness as a portfolio management tool increases. In the extreme, think of it this way: if you bought all 500 S&P stocks in the same percentages as the index, the portfolio’s beta would equal one, R-squared would be one, thus you would have zero idiosyncratic risk. The idiosyncratic risks associated with all 500 stocks would cancel each other out. The graph below plots this scenario.

In more realistic terms, the more diversified your portfolio, the more idiosyncratic risk you remove from your portfolio. To highlight this, we created a simple three-stock portfolio containing equal amounts of XOM, NVDA, and Duke Energy (DUK).

As shown below, the beta of our portfolio is 0.9994, and the R-squared is 0.5855. Below the graph is the summary of market and idiosyncratic risks for the three stocks and the portfolio.

Even with three stocks and minimal diversification in our portfolio, we have substantially reduced the idiosyncratic risk relative to that implied by the individual stocks.  

Summary

Beta is useful but imperfect. And, unfortunately, its imperfections tend to matter most when the need to manage risk is most critical. As the age-old saying goes: “In the midst of a crisis, all betas go to one.”  Simply, beta can be a broken compass when you need it most.

For individual stocks with low R-squared values and high idiosyncratic risk, such as XOM, beta can be a poor predictor of actual price behavior, particularly during periods of sector- or company-specific volatility.

For well-diversified portfolios, however, it is considerably more reliable, as idiosyncratic risks of the underlying stocks cancel out and systematic market risk dominates.

SpaceX has confidentially filed for an IPO, potentially setting up a June listing on U.S. stock exchanges that could become the largest public offering ever. The offering could value the rocket, satellite, and AI company at more than $1.75 trillion and raise as much as $75 billion, far exceeding Saudi Aramco’s 2019 IPO record.

Bloomberg states that SpaceX has just submitted a draft IPO registration to the SEC for nonpublic review. That allows SEC staff to review the filing, ask questions, and require any changes before the company reveals all of its financials and offering details to the public.

“The filing puts it on track for a June listing, which would make SpaceX the first of what could be a trio of mega-IPOs, ahead of OpenAI and Anthropic PBC,” the outlet noted.

A listing for SpaceX would raise $75 billion for the rocket company and dwarf Saudi Aramco’s $29 billion debut in 2019. The money raised would be used to fund an “insane flight rate” for the Starship rocket and to push ahead with deploying orbital data centers in low Earth orbit.

Sources familiar with the listing say that SpaceX has lined up Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley for senior roles on the IPO.

A report last week from The Wall Street Journal said that Musk wants to allocate upwards of 30% of the IPO stock to retail investors, far beyond the typical allocation. He is also exploring giving priority access to loyal supporters, such as Tesla shareholders and individuals who have backed his other ventures, reinforcing his pattern of rewarding his existing base.

Last month, Morningstar released a note estimating that SpaceX generated nearly $16 billion in revenue in 2025 and $7.5 billion in EBITDA, driven “almost entirely by explosive subscriber growth” from its Starlink satellite internet unit, which had 10 million active customers as of March. The company forecasts revenue of $150 billion in 2040, with EBITDA of $95 billion.

After the SEC review process for a possible IPO is complete, the question then becomes: What will SpaceX’s ticker symbol be?

Polymarket bets show that “X” is in the running at 44% …

There is no fixed SEC timetable from a confidential IPO filing to an actual public debut. That process can take anywhere from several weeks to several months.

Authored by Luis Cornelio via Headline USA,

Embattled Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., who has long demanded that President Donald Trump release the Epstein files, now faces scrutiny as the FBI prepares to release documents tied to its investigation into his alleged ties to a Chinese intelligence operative.

The scrutiny comes after Swalwell demanded Monday that FBI Director Kash Patel refrain from declassifying the potentially damaging files, which could shed light on his relationship with Christine Fang, the suspected Chinese spy also known as “Fang Fang.”

On X, critics highlighted what they called blatant hypocrisy, pointing to Swalwell’s prior demands that Trump release the Epstein files.

One widely shared X post from July 2025 read, “Trump has the files. Why won’t HE release them,” in reference to the Epstein files.

Wait suddenly you’re against releasing files @RepSwalwell??? What changed https://t.co/AAwu8QRWlf pic.twitter.com/M47vWbRouz

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 31, 2026

On Sept. 25, Swalwell himself replied to a post from Patel, writing, “Blah blah blah. Where are the Epstein Files?”

On Oct. 7, Swalwell again pressed Patel, adding, “Where are the Epstein Files?”

Just 10 days later, Swalwell escalated further, branding House Speaker Mike Johnson the “pro-pedophile Speaker” and again demanding the Epstein files be released.

I refer to Johnson by his more accurate description, the pro-pedophile Speaker.

Release the Epstein Files.
Open the Government. https://t.co/NJRMHf6qoP

— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) October 17, 2025

Swalwell conveyed his opposition in a cease-and-desist letter to Patel, urging that his own FBI files are not released.

“The congressman has never been accused of wrongdoing in that matter and your attempt to release the file is a transparent attempt to smear him and undermine his campaign for governor of California,” the letter said, as quoted by the leftist Washington Post.

It added, “Your actions threaten to expose you, others at the FBI, and the FBI itself to significant legal liability.”

The Post reported over the weekend that Patel had deployed agents to California to review the documents ahead of a potential public release.

The forthcoming release of the files could provide clarity on the FBI’s investigation into Swalwell’s early political career. He joined Congress in 2013 after serving three years on the Dublin City Council.

The probe centered on Fang’s alleged efforts to act as a Chinese intelligence operative by cultivating relationships with up-and-coming politicians.

Swalwell has not definitively denied having a sexual relationship with Fang. He purportedly cut off contact with her after being briefed by the FBI.

What Swalwell knew about Fang, and what he told the FBI, has largely remained speculative, but that could change if the files were released.

* * * Sink your fengs into these

In a blistering exclusive interview with The Telegraph, President Trump has declared he is “strongly considering” pulling the United States out of NATO, branding the 77-year-old alliance a “paper tiger” after European allies – including the UK under Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer – refused to join America’s military campaign against Iran or help reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump told the newspaper the decision was now “beyond reconsideration,” adding: “I was never swayed by Nato. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way.” He singled out Britain, mocking its naval capabilities and Starmer’s green-energy focus: “You don’t even have a navy. You’re too old and had aircraft carriers that didn’t work… All Starmer wants is costly windmills that are driving your energy prices through the roof.”

The row erupted after Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz – through which 20 per cent of the world’s oil flows – in response to US-Israeli strikes launched on February 28. Allies have been reluctant to deploy warships, prompting Trump to accuse NATO of operating a “one-way street.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed the president on Fox News, warning that America would have to “re-examine” its NATO membership once the Iran conflict ends. “If Nato is just about us defending Europe if they’re attacked, but them denying us basing rights when we need them, that’s not a very good arrangement,” Rubio said. Trump later told The Telegraph he was “glad” Rubio had spoken out.

Starmer Fires Back: “This Is Not Our War”

Starmer moved quickly to reaffirm Britain’s commitment to NATO while drawing a firm line on the Iran conflict. “This is not our war, and we’re not going to get dragged into it,” he told The Telegraph, describing the alliance as “the single most effective military alliance the world has ever seen.” He signalled a pivot toward closer European cooperation “whatever the noise” from Washington.

Absolute humiliation for the White House. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer publicly brushes off Donald Trump’s threats to leave NATO. He explicitly states that despite massive pressure from Washington, Britain will never be dragged into this disastrous war on Iran. pic.twitter.com/vkniEBVSW5

— Furkan Gözükara (@FurkanGozukara) April 1, 2026

The UK’s military vulnerabilities have only added fuel to the fire. On Tuesday, the First Sea Lord admitted the Royal Navy was not ready for war. Four of Britain’s six destroyers were out of service at the conflict’s start, forcing London to borrow a German warship to meet NATO obligations in the North Atlantic.

Any formal US withdrawal would require Congressional approval under 2023 legislation co-sponsored by Rubio himself. However, experts note Trump could still gut American participation by pulling troops, bases, and command support – effectively hollowing out the alliance without a full exit.

Trump is expected to deliver a national address on Wednesday evening outlining the Iran war’s status and, according to Reuters sources, to voice further disgust at NATO’s lack of reciprocity.

As oil prices spiral and recession fears mount, the standoff over the Strait of Hormuz has exposed raw fractures in the Western alliance. Whether Trump’s latest broadside is negotiation theatre or the beginning of America’s strategic retreat from Europe remains to be seen — but the “paper tiger” label has already left its mark.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon appeared on Fox & Friends on Tuesday, covering everything from artificial intelligence to the economy to the continuing exodus from radical-left blue states. More notably, he offered his views on the U.S.-Iran war, which this week entered its fifth week and has remained at the center of the news cycle.

Dimon was first asked about the energy shock from the US-Iran conflict and whether surging fuel prices would impact the American economy.

“Look the markets are unpredictable and it’s hard to for me to tell you exactly what,” Dimon said of a potential impact.

“But I think they’re just looking at, is there a chance something can go wrong now? We should all hope nothing goes wrong. We should all hope that … we win this thing and clean up the straits and that Iran is no longer a threat to everybody. The markets will be concerned until it’s over.”

Dimon added, “It’s much more important that this be successfully completed than what the market does.”

He noted, “Yes, I hear people say they were not an imminent threat. But these people have been engaged in violent acts for 47 years, killing people, killing Americans, and funding Hamas. Several Americans were killed on October 7. They have fought proxy wars and threatened people. A ballistic missile can travel 3,000 miles. These are bad people who needed to be stopped. I do not know what the military and the president know, but we have to finish this thing and finish it right.” 

Layered on top of Dimon’s comments yesterday is a broader geopolitical framework laid out earlier this month by Zoltan Pozsar of Ex Uno Plures.

In Pozsar’s view, the Trump administration is “methodically building a portfolio of assets” from Venezuela to the Panama Canal to Iran’s oil flows and the Strait of Hormuz, a strategy aimed at reasserting American dominance, securing the empire for years to come, and tightening the screws on Beijing after last year’s rare earths stunt.

Over the weekend, both Emirates Global Aluminum (EGA) – the largest aluminum producers in the Gulf – and Aluminium Bahrain (ALBA) reported drone attacks damaging smelting facilities after hits on Iranian steel infrastructure last week.

Neither company (at the time) confirmed whether supply will be impacted, but this morning the worst case appears to be confirmed with Reuters reporting that according to a Wednesday note by consultancy Wood Mackenzie “EGA’s Al Taweelah facility in the United Arab Emirates halted operations after an Iranian missile and drone attack on Saturday damaged a power plant.” A subsequent report from Bloomberg confirmed the report, writing that “Emirates Global Aluminium, the Middle East’s top producer of the metal, halted operations at its Al Taweelah smelter after the site was struck by Iranian missiles and drones over the weekend, according to a person familiar with the matter.“

At the same time, the smelter belonging to Aluminium Bahrain – Alba – which was also targeted on Saturday, “sustained significant damages and is expected to operate at an estimated utilisation of 30 percent”, Wood Mackenzie said.

“The ongoing Middle East conflict is triggering a critical supply crisis in the global aluminium market, with disruptions potentially removing 3 to 3.5 million tonnes of output in 2026,” Wood Mackenzie said. For context, the world produced just under 74 million tonnes of primary aluminum last year.

Wood Mackenzie’s press office said its information was sourced from the consultancy’s contacts in the Middle East, but declined to provide further details. 

As a reminder, the aluminum smelter in Al Taweelah, in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, has a capacity of roughly 1.5 million metric tonnes per year, and an alumina refinery. Alba’s capacity of 1.6 million tonnes per year in Bahrain makes it the world’s biggest single-site aluminium smelter. The Middle East as a whole produces about 9% of global supply, with EGA and others playing a key role in supplying manufacturers across Europe, Asia and the US. Even before the industry was directly targeted, the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz had already left the region’s major producers short of critical inputs, with the sector anticipating a cascading wave of production cuts unless the strait reopens soon.

As Goldman commodity specialist James McGeoch writes, it’s “hard to think of a bigger metal supply shock: High degree of expectation this was where it was heading, but the initial reaction was to fade the uncertainty yesterday, that should be replaced by fresh length if history is a guide.”

This is how the Goldman trader does the math on lost output:

Lost ALBA 1mm + EGA 1.6mm + Qatalam 0.3mm  + Mozal 0.6mm = 3.5m on a 74mt mkt = 4.7% impact to supply, and 7.7% of ex china supply

Balance this with Oil price demand destruction ~1mm, assume China overproduce and ship 500k – need to price demand destruction to balance ~2mt (inventory we see at ~1.5mt but majority of that is China link).

McGeoch says that in light of the shut downs, some traders have been eyeballing a significant surge in the aluminum price to $4500 (15% premium to LME for China is a clear starting point).

The Goldman trader also writes that if the report is accurate, the market will first draw LME stocks, which is hard as not everyone can take Russian units, both regionally and financially.
Second, market needs to solve for the China export tax.
Third, it will be important to see China ramp supply, which means you have to convince them its a good use of power allocations.  

Aluminum futures on the London Metal Exchange have surged since the strikes, with LME Aluminum trading up 50% from a year ago, and if production remains shuttered, it will likely move notably higher.

Via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Dario Perkins of TS Lombard wrote a piece titled “How to Respond to Oil Shocks.”

His analysis draws on the Fed’s history to address how it should respond to today’s oil shock.

While researching Fed transcripts from the 1990 Gulf War, he discovered a proposal by Don Kohn, senior Fed staffer, that offers a solution to the central bank’s oil shock problem: nominal GDP targeting.

Kohn’s logic is straightforward and makes sense in the current environment where the Fed is contemplating monetary policy as oil prices spike, simultaneously boosting inflation and reducing economic growth. Per Kohn, if those two forces balance out, the Fed should hold rates steady. But if one dominates, the Fed should respond: “hike if nominal GDP growth rises” and “cut if nominal GDP growth falls.”

In other words, a demand shock calls for higher rates, while a supply-side shock calls for lower rates.

Historically, as he shares in the table below, nominal GDP almost always falls after a supply-driven oil shock.

Today’s spike, driven by the Iranian conflict and “the Iranian weaponization of the Strait of Hormuz,” is unambiguously a supply shock. By the Kohn framework, the Fed should be cutting the Fed Funds rate, not considering hiking it.

The current counterargument is the high-inflation era of the 1970s, when central banks were allegedly too dovish on inflation and allowed inflation expectations to spiral out of control.

Perkins dismisses this comparison directly. To wit:

The 1973-74 recession “was one of the worst in history” and “in terms of its impact on unemployment, it was only slightly better than the GFC.”

Importantly, he notes that the 1970s featured widespread union membership and inflation-indexed wage contracts that caused wages to “accelerate even as the economy sank.”

That wage-price spiral is nonexistent today.

Thus, the inflationary danger of easing into an oil shock is considerably lower than the popular 1970s narrative suggests.

His conclusion: Central banks don’t need to hike today. In fact, if they follow the advice of Don Kohn, they will probably need to ease policy.

Russia has suffered one of its worst aerial disasters of the Ukraine war, as an An-26 Military Transport aircraft went down in Crimea with no survivors reported.

The aerial disaster happened Tuesday, with state media reporting that the aircraft slammed into a cliff during what was described as a routine flight over the Black Sea peninsula.

via TASS

All 29 onboard, including 23 passengers and six crew, were killed in the crash, marking one of the deadliest recent incidents involving Russian military aviation in the region.

Officials say the trouble began very quickly into the flight. “On 31 March at around 18:00 Moscow time, contact was lost with the An-26 military transport aircraft whilst it was on a scheduled flight over the Crimean Peninsula,” the defense ministry said.

Shortly after, confirmation came from the ground: “The An-26 aircraft, with which communication was lost earlier, crashed into a cliff, it was reported to TASS from the site of the crash.”

While no official cause has been confirmed, early indications point to possible technical failure, which if accurate would mark another blow to aging Soviet-era hardware still widely used across Russia’s military fleet, also as sweeping Western sanctions have been in effect, impacting aviation parts and software.

A huge search effort for bodies is ongoing and is difficult, given the crash happened in a mountainous region. Various emergency units – local and national – are involved.

Meanwhile, separately there are reports of a new drone attack on a Russian petrochemical plant:

“RUSSIA: Mass casualty event declared after a Ukrainian drone strike hit one of Russia’s largest petrochemical complexes, Nizhnekamskneftekhim”
[Amir Tsarfati post quoting Open Source Intel] pic.twitter.com/Hd5ZE9yOxl

— LarryE (@LarryE77197284) April 1, 2026

“A criminal case was opened into the crash of the aircraft due to alleged violations of Article 351 of the Russian Criminal Code which pertains to violations of flight rules or regulations governing flight preparation, according to a report from the Russian Investigative Committee press office,” one regional report says.