Is the Strait of Hormuz open? You be the judge:

It is indeed.

There it is. Sharp dip in number of flights at the end of April, according to data from Airportia. www.airportia.com/flights-moni...

Base chemical prices rose more than 60% in recent weeks, the fastest pace ever recorded - Goldman Sachs research

NEW: I've been shocked by some of the numbers I've been seeing on behind-the-meter power plants for data centers, so I did a little math. less than a dozen gas plants being built to power data centers for big tech companies could emit a maximum of nearly 130 million tons of CO2e each year (!)

NEW | Record exports of solar, batteries and EVs last month 📈 China’s exports for the ‘new three’ industries reached a record high of $21.9bn in March 2026, up 70% year-on-year, in the wake of the US-Israel war with Iran and changing export rebates for solar and batteries.

China curtailing, not banning fuel exports, shipping data shows reut.rs/4vGYbuY

Guardian article on the new paper: www.theguardian.com/environment/...

This is quite extraordinary- scientists set a kind of trap for AI chat bots by inventing a fake disease. AI told people it was real and… the deliberately bogus preprints started being cited in peer reviewed literature 🫣 🧪 #MedSky www.nature.com/articles/d41...

An Al Jazeera investigation finds internal security facilities in populated areas have been heavily targeted.

⚡️ NEW from @dropsitenews.com: Iran Rejects US Narrative That It Must Adhere to Trump’s ‘Disingenuous’ Negotiation Framework Tehran put forward its own terms to end the war, a senior Iranian official tells Drop Site, despite claims... By @jeremyscahill.com & @ryangrim.bsky.social t.co/dYaKfrjAWW

big computer is for big money small computer is for small money that's just how it works

I keep seeing this framing like Bremmer's. It is wrong. Instead: 1. Iran was developing an ICBM when Khamenei imposed a 2,000-km range limit. 3. The programs shifted to space launch. 4. Khamenei lifted the restriction in October 2025 after the June attacks. 5. Now he's dead, and here we are.

NEW | The world installed a record 814 GW of solar and wind capacity in 2025 ☀️⚡️ That's over 1,000 TWh of electricity generation per year... ...enough to displace nearly twice Qatar's annual LNG export volume in gas generation 🔥❌ Fossil fuels crisis? Wind and solar deliver.

The only reason Thailand isn't in a deep red on this list is because the government froze prices and is paying out the nose to subsidize. This is gonna be bad.

As the US-Israel war on Iran continues, Tehran has said the Strait of Hormuz is open to all except the US and its allies. So far, only a small number of ships from certain countries have passed through the strategic waterway. #Infograph

Today is #LongCovidAwarenessDay Long Covid changed my life beyond recognition. I got ill. I never recovered. Lost my job. Became housebound. I rely on others to do things for me. I lie on my bed most of the day. Watch the Guardian's short film about my life with #LongCovid 👇

This is a very strange moment, in how obvious it is that a major crisis is approaching, and how calmly and clearly people are observing it come. www.ft.com/content/3647...

*TRUMP: MORE IMPORTANT TO ME IRAN IS STOPPED THAN HIGH OIL PRICE *TRUMP: US MAKES A LOT OF MONEY WHEN OIL PRICES GO UP

Iran war causes biggest disruption in oil markets, IEA says @seekingalpha

The volume of international transfers of major arms in 2021–25 was 9.2% higher than in 2016–20. This was the biggest increase in global arms flows since 2011–15. Read the fact sheet ➡️ doi.org/10.55163/OSM... #ArmsTransfers #GlobalArmsTrade #ArmsData #SIPRIData #Peace

Germany overtakes China to become the world's forth largest exporter of major arms.

Blowing up an oil facility next to a city of 8 million people is essentially the same as deliberately targeting civilians with chemical weaponry

Airwars, a non-profit group tracking civilian harm in conflict, found that the initial days of the U.S.-Israeli campaign in Iran hit significantly more targets per day than any campaign in recent decades. The targets also map heavily onto the highest populated areas. airwars.org/record-pace-...

Why is the Korean economy SOOOOOO affected? Because it imports more of its energy than almost any other country...

“.. the politics are a lot better if the Israelis go first and alone and the Iranians retaliate against us, and give us more reason to take action,” said one of the people familiar with discussions. @politico.com #OOTT www.politico.com/news/2026/02...

Hyperscaler butterfly effect: memory shortage --> lower smartphone sales in Africa www.idc.com/resource-cen...

Was the global decline of extreme poverty only due to China? The share of the world population living in extreme poverty has never declined as rapidly as in the past three decades.

everything you read about AI is someone's FORECAST. To date, there is no evidence it has raised economy-wide productivity or destroyed jobs (even among graduates). Even the impact of the capex on GDP - which is a real thing - has been wildly overstated for the past 12 months

Dangote signs $400 mln equipment deal with China's XCMG to speed up refinery expansion reut.rs/4roanOJ

This piece written in 2000 predicted US trade deficits would become unsustainable in "two or three years," and the author is on the BoE monetary policy committee today. Economics has a real accountability problem www.imf.org/external/pub...

‘Lower-income households devote almost two-thirds of their earnings to education; the authors call it “a tax on China’s poor”.’ @izading.bsky.social on China’s university entrance exam, the gaokao. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Exclusive: Mexican officials are evaluating how to send fuel to Cuba to help meet basic needs such as electricity without triggering reprisals from Washington, which threatened tariffs against countries supplying fuel to Cuba, sources told Reuters reut.rs/4r6E5Yk

Read Tabitha Speelman's essay on China's independent bookstore scene: chinabooksreview.com/2026/01/29/b...

China sees most high temperature days on record in 2025 reut.rs/4t4d5dg

Global investment in the energy transition climbed to a record $2.3 trillion in 2025, defying fears that the shifting political landscape and economic uncertainty would halt the world’s clean energy progress. Findings from a new BloombergNEF report with a gift link www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

"Single ship load of solar PV – which can ultimately deliver 170 terawatt hours of PV once installed, is now worth 120 coal carries, or 57 LNG tankers"

🚨 NEW RECORD | China exported a RECORD 455 GW equivalent of solar PV products in 2025 – about TWICE the total solar capacity in the US ☀️ 🇨🇳's solar exports in 2025 grew 29% from 354 GW in 2024, with cell exports DOUBLING year-on-year. Explore the data: https://loom.ly/QN9barE

In a newly published paper, we find that in 2025 human emissions of greenhouse gases added around 23 billion trillion joules of heat to the world's oceans – 39 times as much as the annual energy produced by all human activity on Earth. link.springer.com/ar...

What urban areas in the world have the longest existing/under construction metro networks per capita? In a quick analysis using Transit Explorer & EU GHS-UCDB 2024 data, the top urban areas are: 1—Chengdu 2—Hangzhou 3—Ningbo 4—Xuzhou 5—Stockholm 6—Zhengzhou 7—Singapore 8—Xi'an 9—Hamburg 10—Changsha

The latest Duke CFO survey shows that the vast majority of CFOs are seeing no impact from AI on labor productivity, decision-making speed, customer satisfaction, or time spent on high-value-added tasks Torsten at Apollo

China said it has reached a deal with the European Union on exports of Chinese made electric vehicles to the bloc. The EU will be issuing guidelines on minimum pricing for Chinese auto exporters, the Commerce Ministry in Beijing said.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has finalized a deal exempting U.S. multinational corporations from paying more corporate taxes overseas.

Trump, Rubio & Miller are directing a foreign policy increasingly defined by big apparent violations of international law Govt experts on that law are quitting or feeling silenced: www.huffpost.com/entry/state-... www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-... For US personnel + US influence, huge risks here..

Nice chart

Quite like this. Thinking about how to think about economics of structural transformation where formal models offer little help academic.oup.com/oxrep/articl...