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Before President Donald Trump flouted longstanding tradition by choosing Saudi Arabia as the destination of his first foreign visit as president, where he was lavished with gifts and reportedly struck a record-setting arms deal with the kingdom (after his administration called the CEO of Lockheed Martin to get a cheaper deal for the Saudis); before he took part in the male-only sword dance in Riyadh; before he ramped up support for the widely criticized Saudi-led war in Yemen; before he undermined his own secretary of State’s position by siding with the Saudis in their alarming diplomatic row with the Qataris—before any of this, Trump actually castigated Saudi Arabia.

In fact, candidate Trump went as far as saying—twice in one day, in February of 2016—that Saudi Arabia was behind the 9/11 attacks. During the presidential debates with Hillary Clinton, Trump admonished the Clinton Foundation for receiving contributions from the Saudis, saying, “These are people that kill women and treat women horribly and yet you take their money.”

Since then, Trump has allowed more than a billion dollars worth of arms to be delivered to Saudi Arabia, according to a new analysis of U.S. Census Bureau export data conducted by The Daily Beast. In the first eight months of 2017, a total of $1.56 billion worth of arms have been delivered from the U.S. to Saudi Arabia; during this period, the U.S. has more than doubled its bombs, missiles, and ammunition deliveries to Saudi Arabia, and nearly doubled the deliveries of armored fighting vehicles like the M1 tank, when compared with the first eight months of 2016, under the Obama administration.

In addition, The Daily Beast found that the Trump administration has shipped Saudi Arabia $561 million in bombs and missiles, $503 million in armored fighting vehicles and parts, and $552 million in parts to maintain military aircraft like Apache gunships, Blackhawk helicopters, and F15 jets for use in their disastrous war in Yemen. The total value of arms delivered to Saudi in 2017 represents a $70 million increase compared with the same eight-month period in 2016.

Arms monitoring experts are critical of the arms increase for a variety of reasons, perhaps chief among them the humanitarian crisis ravaging Yemen. Jeff Abramson, a senior fellow at the Arms Control Association, told The Daily Beast, “The United States should not be sending more weapons into an unwinnable conflict and into the hands of a country that uses U.S. weapons against civilian targets. Instead, the Trump administration should use its influence to find a political solution to the disastrous war in Yemen, which has led to a massive humanitarian crisis.”

More than 10,000 civilians have been killed in the war and 40,000 more have been wounded. The majority of these casualties have come as a result of Saudi coalition air strikes. The Saudi-led war has pushed Yemen, already poor, into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. More than 19 million people—80 percent of the population—require some form of humanitarian assistance.

Another arms analyst, Colby Goodman, director of the Security Assistance Monitor at the Center for International Policy, told The Daily Beast, “There have been a lot of concerns about the Trump administration’s big weapons push. The big concerns have been removing some of the Obama administration’s restrictions on arms sales, like precision guided munitions for Saudi Arabia.

Collision in a distant galaxy propelled atoms of gold and uranium into space

Astronomers have entered a new era, combining observations of gravitational waves and light for the first time. They have recorded a cataclysmic collision between two neutron stars in a distant galaxy, which not only set the universe aquiver but also propelled newly created atoms of gold, uranium and other heavy metals into space.

Excited scientists announced the discovery at briefings around the world on Monday. One of them, Professor Stephen Smartt of Queen’s University Belfast, said: “This opens up a new dawn in physics and astronomy. We had only just begun to detect gravitational waves and now we have used telescopes to detect light from the object that caused them: a merger of two neutron stars, which had been predicted but never seen before.”

Neutron stars are the densest form of matter known — the collapsed cores of massive stars. Each has a mass greater than the Sun in a region of space just 10km across. Putting it another way, a teaspoon of neutron star would weigh a billion tonnes.

When gravitational waves from the neutron star collision 130m light years away reached Earth on August 17, these tiny distortions in space-time were picked up by scientists at the new Ligo detector in the US and Virgo, its European counterpart in Italy. The first four gravitational wave detections since 2015 had all resulted from giant black holes colliding and gave off no visible radiation.

This fifth one looked quite different and fitted the theoretical predictions for colliding neutron stars. It lasted for 100 seconds — much longer than the previous four detections — reflecting a final death spiral by the two neutron stars, followed by a mega-explosion called a kilonova that astronomers had not previously observed.

The gravitational wave teams immediately alerted astronomers across the world. More than 70 observatories on Earth and in space then detected light — electromagnetic radiation at various wavelengths — arriving from the collision, which took place in the previously obscure NGC 4993 galaxy in the Hydra constellation. This ranged from a short burst of ultra-energetic gamma rays through visible and ultraviolet light to radio waves.

All astronomical observations used to depend entirely on electromagnetic radiation. Gravitational waves, whose discovery was recognised with the 2017 Nobel physics prize this month, provide another window on the most violent events in the universe: possibly including reverberations from the Big Bang that began it all.

Observations of the neutron star collision and kilonova explosion may answer an important question in astrophysics: where did the heavy chemical elements come from?

They did not form in the Big Bang and the nuclear processes in ordinary stars are not energetic enough to produce anything heavier than iron.

Astronomers had assumed that heavy elements originated in massive stellar explosions called supernovae but kilonovae now emerge as another source.

“We have discovered that this neutron star merger scattered heavy chemical elements such as gold and platinum out into space at high speeds,” said Kate Maguire of Queen’s University Belfast, who was in the international team analysing light bursting from the neutron star collision.

“These new results have significantly contributed to solving the long-debated mystery of the origin of elements heavier than iron in the periodic table,” said Ms Maguire.

Or, as Professor Sheila Rowan of Glasgow University, put it: “We now know that the violent collision of neutron stars is a gold factory.”

The first papers about the event appeared online in several scientific journals on Monday, with much more analysis and interpretation expected over the next few months. At the same time the gravitational wave detectors will be listening out for cataclysmic cosmic collisions.

The Weinstein Company said on Monday that it had agreed to a financial lifeline from Colony Capital, securing vital cash as the embattled studio reels from the growing scandals surrounding its co-founder, Harvey Weinstein.

In a short statement, the Weinstein Company said that it had a preliminary agreement from Colony for an immediate cash infusion. The amount was not disclosed. The statement said the two sides would negotiate over selling some or all of the studio’s assets to Colony.

Colony’s founder and chief executive is Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a financier who is one of President Trump’s closest outside advisers.

Mr. Weinstein has been at the center of a widening crisis since The New York Times and The New Yorker revealed sexual harassment and rape allegations against him going back decades.

Mr. Barrack, who made his fortune in real estate, is no stranger to media investments. He stepped in to save Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch from foreclosure.

Companies usually list their shares on a public exchange to get cash, growth, influence or discipline. Selling 5 percent of Aramco at its owner’s preferred valuation of $2 trillion would certainly bring in cash; selling a slice to a sovereign investor would bring in somewhat less. That said, Saudi doesn’t urgently need the money. Though its foreign exchange reserves have been falling – the $488 billion war chest at the end of August is one-third smaller than three years ago – that’s still nearly five times what the International Monetary Fund considers the “adequate” level. If the goal were to raise money quickly, Saudi could simply sell some of its vast oil reserves.

As for influence, China offers some. But it will want something in return, like help getting more oil priced in its own currency, the yuan. A global stock offering would do more to open up financial channels that Crown Prince Mohammed bin-Salman can tap to finance his grand diversification of Saudi’s economy away from the black stuff. At $100 billion, it would also divert liquidity from regional rivals like Iran that also hope to attract global capital.

Perhaps the best case for listing Aramco internationally is to improve discipline at the company itself. China shows that can work. The country’s state-owned enterprises, from Sinopec to Agricultural Bank of China, put their affairs in better order than they would otherwise have been to court global capitalists. But a Chinese investor is unlikely to demand as much transparency as a global pension fund or a Western private equity investor.

So why even consider selling a stake to China? The answer might be momentum. Carving off a slice of Aramco – however small – at a theoretical valuation of $2 trillion would help to keep that doubtful number alive, and give the impression of movement towards the Crown Prince’s ultimate goal. But compared with a full listing at a more realistic valuation, or simply bringing in a wider raft of institutional investors, it sounds like a third-best option.