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Global food prices rose to their highest level in more than three years in April as the Iran war disrupted agricultural supply chains and increased the cost of key farming inputs, raising concerns over renewed food inflation for consumers worldwide. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s food price index increased 1.6% month-on-month and was 2.5% higher than a year earlier, marking a third consecutive monthly increase. The rise was driven primarily by higher prices for vegetable oils, meat and cereals as the ongoing conflict around the Strait of Hormuz disrupted supplies of diesel and fertiliser critical to global agricultural production. Higher oil prices also boosted demand for biofuels, helping push the UN vegetable oils index up 5.9% to its highest level since July 2022. Meat prices rose 1.2% to a record high, while cereal prices increased 0.8% amid weather concerns and expectations of reduced wheat plantings in 2026 as farmers shift towards less fertiliser-intensive crops to manage rising input costs.

 

Bloomberg

Senators are this week set to consider long-awaited legislation that would create a regulatory framework for cryptocurrency. The bill, which has been dubbed the Clarity Act, would, if signed into law, clarify financial regulators' jurisdiction ‌over the burgeoning sector, bringing to an end a deadlock that pitted crypto companies ​against banks, and potentially boosting digital asset adoption. U.S. Senator Tim Scott, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said on Friday the panel would hold an executive session on May 14 at 10:30 a.m. (1430 GMT) in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C.

 

Reuters

U.S. wholesale inventories rose 1.3% in March, following a 0.9% increase in February, driven largely by a sharp jump in petroleum stocks as companies appeared to build supplies amid disruptions linked to the Iran war. According to the Commerce Department, petroleum inventories surged 33.9% in March after a 5.5% rise the previous month, as higher oil prices and supply concerns prompted stockpiling. Wholesale inventories were up 2.9% year over year. Wholesale sales also climbed strongly, rising 2.8% in March after a 2.6% gain in February. The stronger sales pace reduced the inventories-to-sales ratio to 1.21 months from 1.23 months in February. The inventory buildup contributed to first-quarter economic growth, with government estimates showing business inventories added 0.40 percentage points to GDP growth during the quarter.

 

Reuters

White House economists estimate that President Donald Trump's deals with pharmaceutical companies to drop some of their U.S. prescription drug prices to what they charge in other countries could save $529bn over the next 10 years. The figures come from an analysis by the White House Council of Economic Advisers, which modeled the projected savings from the Trump administration's "most favored nation" framework, which covers 17 pharma companies and applies across all U.S. markets, including private insurance.

 

Quartz

PBS

Reuters

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde has called on Europe to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels and energy imports amid soaring energy costs due to the Iran war. “Today’s surging energy prices are a reminder of the cost of that dependency,” she said. “Alternative sources of energy offer the clearest path to minimizing the trade-offs between Europe’s energy-policy goals of security, sustainability and affordability.” Lagarde told a climate conference in Frankfurt that the status quo is “clearly unsustainable.”  Europe imports about 60% of its energy, almost all of it fossil fuels.

 

Bloomberg

Apple and Meta have publicly made known their opposition to Bill C-22, a Canadian ‌bill which the companies say could require them to break the encryption of their devices and services if passed. The bill is currently being debated in the House of Commons. Canadian law enforcement ​officials say that if passed, the bill would help them investigate security threats earlier and act more quickly.

 

Reuters

Chief Justice John Roberts has said unpopular court decisions are based solely on the law. “I think, at a very basic level, people think we're making policy decisions, we're saying we think this is how things should be, as opposed to what the law provides . . . I think they view us as purely political actors, which I don't think is an accurate understanding of what we do,” Roberts said to a conference of judges and lawyers from the 3rd U.S. Circuit in Pennsylvania. The report notes that Roberts' words came at a time of low public confidence in the court, and about a week after it handed down a decision that hollowed out the Voting Rights Act.

 

U.S. News

The U.S. has imposed sanctions on three Chinese commercial satellite companies - The Earth Eye, MizarVision, and Chang Guang Satellite Technology - for allegedly providing support to Iran. The Department of State said the supply of satellite imagery of U.S. facilities in the Middle East to Iran threatens American and partner personnel, and the U.S. will continue to take action to hold China-based entities accountable for their support to Iran and ensure Iran cannot reconstitute its proliferation-sensitive programs following Operation Epic Fury. 

 

Financial Times

U.S. Department of State

The White House has published a new national counterterrorism strategy, outlining its intention to neutralize hemispheric threats posed by cartels and combat "violent, secular political ​groups whose ideology is anti-American." The document states that European nations have been turned into "permissive operating environments" for nefarious actors who have exploited open borders. It asserts that Europe's decline has been "wilful" but that it can be strong again if it reverses its current policies, "rediscovers traditional principles of freedom of speech" and significantly increases its counter-terrorism efforts.

 

Reuters

Whitehouse.gov

California tech company Cloudflare is laying off 20% of its workforce, equating to approximately 1,100 employees, as it adapts to a significant increase in artificial intelligence usage among staff. “The way we work at Cloudflare has fundamentally changed,” Chief Executive Matthew Prince and Chief Operating Officer Michelle Zatlyn told employees in an e-mail. “We don't just build and sell AI tools and platforms. We are our own most demanding customer.” The email said that in the last three months, its use of AI has increased more than 600%. Employees in various roles in HR, engineering, finance and marketing are running “thousands of AI agent sessions each day to get their work done,” and the company has to be “intentional” as it prepares for the “agentic AI era,” the email said.

 

Los Angeles Times

American Electric Power Co., one of the largest U.S. utilities, has said it is in the early stages of evaluating membership in PJM Interconnection, the largest regional grid in the U.S., as well as Southwest Power Pool, over the length of time it takes to connect new AI data centers. “We have to solve the speed to market issue,” Chief Executive Officer Bill Fehrman said. “This is an area that clearly has to get fixed.”

 

Bloomberg

Hundreds of foreign doctors nearing the end of their training in the U.S. face the risk of having to leave the country due to delays in the processing of their visa waiver applications. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) oversees the waiver program, which allows non-citizen physicians to remain in the U.S. while they work in underserved areas for three years. “It will be the patients that suffer the most because in about three months, there's going to be hundreds of places that are not going to have a physician that should have,” said a psychiatrist affected by the delays. The American Medical Association has urged HHS to expedite the processing of these applications to prevent further disruption in healthcare services.

 

U.S. News

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has blocked the publication of several studies that found Covid-19 and shingles vaccines to be safe, according to a spokesperson from the Department of Health and Human Services. The agency’s scientists and data contractors were said to have reviewed millions of patient records for studies that were pulled back before release. Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the department, said in an email: “The studies were withdrawn because the authors drew broad conclusions that were not supported by the underlying data. The FDA acted to protect the integrity of its scientific process and ensure that any work associated with the agency meets its high standards.” Of the shingles study that found the vaccine to be effective, he said: “The design of that study fell outside the agency’s purview.” Reuters says the withdrawal of the studies is the latest attempt by the health regulator and the administration ​to limit access to vaccines, reflecting broader policy changes under vaccine-skeptic U.S. ​Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

 

New York Times

The Guardian