BREAKING: What we know about Russia, Mike Pence, and the end of the world

If you have been perusing Facebook, scanning your Twitter feed, or paying attention to some headlines, something interesting is going on right now.

Here is what has happened in the last few hours:

Vice President Mike Pence canceled a New Hampshire event about the drug crisis. The initial report was that his plane turned around to return to Washington, but then his press secretary confirmed that he never left Washington in the first place. He decided to stay behind and now his team is working on rescheduling his trip.

At around the same time, it was being reported that President Vladimir Putin canceled his plans today to meet with the Defense Ministry. The meeting is apparently about a Russian submarine that caught on fire and killed 14 sailors. Moscow did not confirm what the cause was or if there were any survivors.

There were false reports that the European Union Security Commission had been convened for an emergency meeting. But here is the kicker: There is no such thing as the European Union Security Commission. There is, however, an EU Political & Security Committee that monitors international events.

France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the European External Action Service issued a joint statement on the Iran situation.

Markets are seemingly paying attention.

This is the USD/RUB currency pair:

The Direxion Daily Russia Bear 3X Shares (RUSS) is up 1.4 percent.

The MOEX Russian Index finished the session up 0.3 percent.

Stay tuned for updates!

Update 1:

Apparently, we are going to find out “in a few weeks” what really happened.

Pence’s COS Marc Short told @meridithmcgraw that the Vice President was on the plane but it didn’t take off. Then he turned around, back to the White House. He told her we’ll find out “in a few weeks” what happened.

— Tara Palmeri (@tarapalmeri) July 2, 2019

Gold finished the trading sessions up nearly $28 to $1,416.80 an ounce

Update 2

President Putin withdrew Russia from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with the United States, effective immediately.

Also, an interesting point on Twitter:

I’m convinced there’s serious natsec shit going down behind the scenes because there have been like eight tweetworthy culture-war controversies in the last 48 hours and Trump’s missed all of them

— Allahpundit (@allahpundit) July 3, 2019