HEALTH: Apple has a secret team working on the holy grail for treating diabetes.

Apple has hired a small team of biomedical engineers to work at a nondescript office in Palo Alto, miles from corporate headquarters. They are part of a super secret initiative, initially envisioned by the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, to develop sensors that can non-invasively and continuously monitor blood sugar levels to better treat diabetes, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Such a breakthrough would be a “holy grail” for life sciences. Many life sciences companies have tried and failed, as it’s highly challenging to track glucose levels accurately without piercing the skin.

The initiative is far enough along that Apple has been conducting feasibility trials at clinical sites across the Bay Area and has hired consultants to help it figure out the regulatory pathways, the people said.

From a business aspect, the most interesting part of this venture might be how Apple combines its penchant for secrecy with maneuvering through those regulatory pathways. It’s one thing to introduce another new bit of consumer electronics kit. It’s an entirely other thing to get a medical device — which I’m pretty sure this would be — past the FDA.

MARK STEYN: The Churches Close, The Mosques Open & The West Fades Away.

~On Monday, 14 victims were killed in an Islamic terrorist attack on the St Petersburg Metro;

~On Friday, four victims were killed in an Islamic terrorist attack by a homicidal truck driver on Queen Street in Stockholm;

~On Palm Sunday, at least 45 victims were killed in an Islamic terrorist attack on two Coptic churches in Egypt.

Clumping all these news items together reminds me of a brief exchange I had with my television shortly after 9/11. The topic was how to strike back at al Qaeda, and some Democrat Senator was demanding that before we did anything, the President needed to formulate an exit strategy.

And I found myself asking out loud, “Exit from where — Manhattan?”

BE SMART: Liz Sheld has your indispensable Morning Brief.

HMM: Chinese military posts warning to North Korea about nukes, then flushes it down the memory hole.

But not before Pyongyang got the message, I’m sure — screencaps of the disappeared story at the linked tweet.

U.S. AIR FORCE IS PLANNING SOMETHING BIG IN THE NEVADA DESERT: Unusually worded, multi-billion dollar drone services contract possibly points to a new, shadowy unmanned aircraft—and a lot of them.

This contract with URS Federal Services is worth $3.6 billion, but the program, whatever it is, isn’t expected to end until the spring of 2034. That’s 17 years for those keeping score. The math works out to more than $210 million per year, on average, over that period or $17.5 million every month.

That’s a big price tag for services. In 2013, the RAND Corporation estimated that it cost $435 million a year for the Air Force’s 20th Fighter Wing at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina to operate three squadrons of F-16C/D Vipers. This calculation included everything associated with flying the fighter jets, such as pay checks for military personnel and supporting contractors, fuel, depot-level repairs, as well as indirect support from the Wing’s other elements, including security forces guarding the flight line, civil engineers maintaining facilities, and basic utilities and supplies, such as electricity in the barracks and food in the chow halls. A similar analysis of the 187th Fighter Wing, a unit in the Alabama Air National Guard with just one squadron of Vipers, produced a final price tag of just $63.6 million.

In short, the URS Federal Services’ contract could potentially cover the full costs of running multiple squadrons of pilotless planes for nearly two decades. And remember that this deal likely only pays for just a portion of the total cost of this project. So, while we don’t know what unmanned aircraft—singular or plural—the Maryland-based company will be helping test, the money involved here suggests there are quite a few of them.

The Air Force has since backtracked on exactly what kind of contract was awarded to URS, but not the total amount. Given the long history of secret USAF activities in and above the Nevada desert, there’s no telling what’s URS has been hired to do.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Mystery of why shoelaces come undone unravelled by science.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Why This Awful Assignment Doesn’t Deserve its Fate.

I’ve always been a fan of Walter Hill’s over-the-top action movies — especially the bad ones. That Assignment is anti-PC just makes me want to see it even more.

YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE THIS BUT… Michael Walsh is in hot water again.

TERROR IS JUST A WORD FOR THE THINGS THEY CHOOSE TO DO TOGETHER: Iranian Airline’s Ties to Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Boeing announced last week it would sell 30 B737 Max aircraft to Aseman Airlines – a government-owned carrier that is Iran’s third-largest – in a deal valued at around $3 billion. The deal appears to be permitted under the 2015 nuclear agreement, which lifted U.S. sanctions against the Islamic Republic’s aviation sector. There is, however, a problem: Aseman’s CEO, Hossein Alaei, is a decades-long senior member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, which remains under U.S. sanctions.

Since 1979, Alaei has held senior positions in the IRGC’s military establishment. He joined the Guard shortly after the 1979 Iranian revolution and quickly rose to be commander of IRGC forces in two northwestern provinces. In the 1980s, he commanded the Karbala Garrison in the southern front during the Iran-Iraq War. In 1985, then-Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini appointed him commander of the newly established IRGC Navy. Under his leadership, it began using high-speed boats and mines to target commercial and military vessels during the so-called Tanker War with Iraq.

Like his ideological peers, Alaei openly voiced his desire to confront America. During the Tanker War, the IRGC Navy attacked U.S.-owned commercial vessels and Navy vessels, on one occasion injuring U.S. sailors.

Read the whole thing.

DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT? How to deal with the bot crisis on Twitter.

GOODY, GOODY: House Investigation of Susan Rice Scandal Expanding.

HEALTH: Experts reverse themselves on prostate cancer screenings.

Men younger than 70 with no signs of prostate cancer should no longer be discouraged from checking their PSA levels, according to guidelines proposed Tuesday by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

But experts said a positive test might leave some men confused about what to do next.

In all fairness, that’s not an uncommon result after listening to experts.

SALON: “There can be no joy in such incompetence”: Journalists call for Sean Spicer to be fired following “Holocaust center” comments.

Say, did anyone at Salon ever get fired for publishing pieces explicitly defending pedophilia?

Because to some people, that might seem worse than an awkward comment comparing Assad to Hitler.

VIOLENT MASS HOMOPHOBIA IS ALWAYS DESCENDING IN THE UNITED STATES, AND YET LANDS ONLY IN MUSLIM-DOMINATED REGIONS: More than 100 gay men reportedly sent to “prison camps” in Russia’s republic of Chechnya.

POST-VETTING: Germany eyes Islamic extremist motive in Dortmund, arrests 1.

DAVID BYLER: How Trump Picked the Democratic Lock and Won the Presidency.

SAVINGS: Walmart to offer discounts for ordering at home, picking up at the store.

I use Amazon Prime only for the convenience of two-day shipping. If the nearby Walmart offers better prices without the $99 annual membership fee, I can imagine a lot of people giving up Prime.

WASHINGTON PANEL: Populist Surge a Result of 2008 Recession.

Meh. This panel seems to have focused entirely on Marxist-flavored economic determinism, and ignored the cultural blowback in Red America after eight years of top-down Progressive do-goodism.

I’d argue that the cultural angle was at least as important as the economic, and probably more so.

WELL, YES: Forget France, Italy Could Be Markets’ Big Risk.

Italian bonds also came under pressure and continued to weaken on Wednesday, even as French debt steadied. Those moves came as investors looked beyond France’s election to the problems of Italy, the third-largest economy in the eurozone.

Investors say those problems form a worrying list: weak growth, banks with bad loans, and sky-high public debt. Italian bonds have been supported by the European Central Bank’s bond buying program, but many analysts expect that will be scaled back next year.

Indeed, many investors believe that should Ms. Le Pen win, Italian markets could be the biggest casualty.

“If Le Pen gets in, I think Italian spreads would balloon in anticipation of a breakup of the euro,” said Paul Griffiths, chief investment officer of fixed income and multiasset at First State Investments . Mr. Griffiths is avoiding Italian banks and keeping a light exposure to Europe as a whole.

Italy got into so much trouble because adopting the euro gave Italians the opportunity to borrow against Germany’s credit rating.

This is just one of the many reasons the euro was doomed from the start.

HMM: US Residential Solar Is Set for a Radical Makeover.

The problem plaguing the market is not demand, but how demand is being met.

Many articles have analyzed the cause of the current turmoil and what it means for the industry going forward. In a recent GTM article, Andrew Beebe pointed to a rapid commoditization of hardware and financing, as well as a proliferation of specialized productivity tools, to explain how local solar installers have steadily eaten up market share from the retreating national brands.

The overhead-intensive, vertically integrated model has given way to more agile local providers who can deliver better service and better pricing. We at PowerScout have seen this trend developing firsthand throughout our partner network.

The other problem is solar just isn’t that economical. I ran the numbers on our house, and they weren’t encouraging. Even with the cold-but-sunny winters we enjoy on the Front Range and generous tax subsidies, our projected cost savings would only amount to three or four thousand dollars — spread out over 20 years. Take away the tax breaks — i.e., forcing the neighbors to pay for our solar panels — and we’d lose a little money on the deal.

And if everybody converted, in the end we’d all take a loss.

DEATH STINKS: Guitarist J. Geils Dead at 71.

OVER AT HOT MIC: Unpacking Aaron Blake’s belated admission that Susan Rice has a “completely unhelpful tendency to say the wrong thing to the media.”

IT’S ALWAYS THE RUSSIANS WITH THESE PEOPLE: Foreign hacking during Brexit referendum can’t be ruled out, report says.

THE HILL: Clinton campaign plagued by bickering.

She’d been humiliated in the Michigan primary the night before, a loss that not only robbed her of a prime opportunity to put Bernie Sanders down for good but also exposed several of her weaknesses. How could she have been left so vulnerable? She knew — or at least she thought she did. The blame belonged to her campaign team, she believed, for failing to hone her message, energize important constituencies and take care of business in getting voters to the polls. And now, Jake Sullivan, her de facto chief strategist, was giving her lip about the last answer she’d delivered in the prep session.

“That’s not very good,” Sullivan corrected.

“Really?” Hillary snapped back.

The room fell silent.

“Why don’t you do it?”

The comment was pointed and sarcastic, but she meant it. So for the next 30 minutes, there he was, pretending to be Hillary while she critiqued his performance.

Every time the Yale lawyer and former high school debate champ opened his mouth, Hillary cut him off. “That isn’t very good,” she’d say. “You can do better.” Then she’d hammer him with a Bernie line.

Read the whole thing.

THE NATION HEADLINE: A Big Win for Voting Rights in Texas and a Big Loss for Trump.

ALTERNATE HEADLINE: Obama Judicial Appointee Frustrates White House Attempt to Clean Up Texas Voter Fraud.