"four months after its establishment, the board’s financial fund set up by the World Bank has received no money from donors, according to four people familiar with the matter. “Zero dollars have been deposited,” one said." giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

“Food security starts with fertiliser security. Europe must produce more and depend less on others for the nutrients that sustain our agriculture.” giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

[2/6] Barcelona Summer School of the Med and the Middle East!🌍 ✏️ Energy, Water, and Food Security under Strain: The Gulf, Iran, and the Geopolitics of Regional Supply Chains 🗣️@eckartwoertz.bsky.social (IMES) 29 & 30 June | 10:30-13:30 t.ly/UasPP 🤝IBEI, Catalonia International & @iemed.bsky.social

Please enjoy my cartoon for Thursday's Toronto Star

Join GIGA’s WONAGO Lecture Series on 5 May 2026 for Sean Yom’s talk on Middle Eastern monarchies, authoritarian politics, and the puzzle of ruling monarchism. It's a hybrid event. Register here ⬇️ www.giga-hamburg.de/en/events/co...

Klimakrise, Pandemien und Kriege - wer kann uns vor all diesen Bedrohungen schützen? Was kann der Staat übernehmen, worum müssen wir uns als Bürger:in kümmern? Diese und andere Fragen untersucht @uschroeder.bsky.social in ihrem neuen Buch. Mehr erfahren ➡️ www.ifsh.de/news-detail/...

Xy "described eurodollars as a “remarkable conspiracy of silence”. ... America extends a financial security umbrella to dollars created abroad. Should the Fed ...not extend the diplomatic generosity of its swap lines — that’s when it would be time to worry." giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

You can read my take here: paw.princeton.edu/article/scho...

"The FT reviewed more than 300 articles published over the past five years in a dozen Iranian defence publications. They provide a unique window into the secretive Iranian establishment" (e.g. tactics and what technologies are being prioritised). giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

www.cfr.org/articles/pet... "There is too much talk about Kissinger’s 1974 deal with the Saudis... That deal wasn’t for all time. The Saudi surplus from ‘73 and ‘79 had disappeared by the late 80s and early 90s, but at the time, few talked about the end of the petrodollar system."

"A substantial share of Egypt’s export-oriented nitrogen capacity is controlled by Fertiglobe, a company in which the UAE’s Adnoc now holds a controlling stake and that claims to be the world’s largest seaborne exporter of urea and ammonia" giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

www.stimson.org/2026/beneath... Over 90% of Europe's internet traffic to Asia goes through Egypt and the Red Sea. International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC): 200 instances of cable damage each year, only about one percent was intentional, 3/4 of cable cuts:fishing equipment and ship anchors.

www.bakerinstitute.org/sites/defaul... Scenario of a possible Iraq-GCC-Oman pipeline: ca $55 billion and 5-7 years construction.

"Formalising the Strait of Hormuz into a fee-paying corridor could deliver $5bn-$8bn annually to Iran and Oman, whose territorial waters cover the southern half of the strait" (Illegal for territorial waters in international law, Suez Canal 2023: €10.3bn) giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

I am happy to have written this piece of applied history with Daniel Chardell on what we can learn from the Gulf War ceasefire about today’s war with Iran. www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/how-cea...

It would behoove Big Tech to spread the potential benefits of AI to the public. In the short term, this might include investments in grid upgrades, workforce retraining and community benefit agreements in places where data centres are built. www.ft.com/content/525c...

1973-74, Ölembargos iJom-Kippur-Kriegs, Versorgungslücke rund acht Prozent. 1979 bis 1980, während der Iran-Revolution und des Ausbruchs des Irak-Iran-Kriegs, waren es rund sieben Prozent. In der aktuellen Krise wird der Ausfall auf zehn bis elf Prozent geschätzt. www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/s...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Unlikely Companions of Energy Transitions? Opportunities and Challenges of Triangular Cooperation Between the EU, the GCC, and Hydrocarbon-Poor Countries From the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)

"Analysts contend that it is possible to run a cost-effective electricity grid where the vast majority of power comes from renewables in concert with batteries."

"Spain has managed quite a feat. ... The country’s electricity prices only reached or exceeded the average cost of gas-fired electricity 15 per cent of the time, according to analysis by Ember. In Italy, gas set the price of electricity 89 per cent of the time." giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

The AI economy looks...really precarious. So @matteowong.bsky.social & I did a bunch of reporting to try to figure out what happens when a potential bubble collides with a war in Iran and a potential resource shortage. The answer is...arguably the most dire stuff i've heard from smart ppl in a while

"Storage is patchy: the UAE aims to have reserves equivalent to just two days of normal consumption by 2036, which could be stretched to around a month by strict rationing." www.economist.com/middle-east-...

"Bis die Welt einmal gründlich aufgebohrt, aufgeteilt, verheizt und verscherbelt war, gab der Raubtierspirit keine Ruhe. So war es. Der Tisch wurde ohne verabredeten Spielabbruch nie fürs Abendbrot frei." www.zeit.de/feuilleton/2...

"Meloni said after meeting Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune that they agreed their state-controlled energy companies should develop new joint projects, including shale and offshore gas exploration." 44% of electricity from gas vs. 17% in EU giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

"Gulf states account for 49 per cent of globally traded urea and 30 per cent of ammonia. When that supply chain stops, the effects accumulate quietly in soil chemistry and planting decisions over the months that follow." giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Insider trading at work. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... "The well-timed trades echoed the flurry of large highly profitable bets made on prediction market Polymarket on the timing of the US’s attacks in recent months on Iran and Venezuela."

"The Dead Sea is also the world’s largest source of bromine, a chemical that helps score patterns on to silicon wafers. South Korea imports virtually all of its supply from Israel."

"Roughly half of global seaborne sulphur — an element used for chip cleaning and etching — transits the strait. "

"About one-third of global helium supply — a byproduct of natural gas processing that is used to cool silicon wafers — is from Qatar." giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

"Middle Eastern benchmarks such as Dubai and Oman have surged far beyond the global markers, with spot barrels changing hands near $170 a barrel. That extreme pricing underscores just how tight Gulf-origin supply has become." giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

"Iran has allowed a limited number of cargo ships carrying grains and other agricultural goods through the Strait of Hormuz since the start of the war with the US and Israel, as Tehran tries to shore up critical supplies." giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

www.economist.com/finance-and-... "The region accounts for nearly 45% of global seaborne naphtha flows and 23-30% of exports of other key plastic inputs, including styrene and polyethylene. Several Asian plastic-makers have already declared force majeure."

giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... "About a third of global urea exports pass through the Strait of Hormuz, according to CRU. About 45 per cent of global sulphur exports — a key input for phosphate fertilisers — are also shipped through the vital waterway, which has in effect closed."

Piro couldn't write this book until he retired from the FBI, but it will be interesting to see how two decades later, his account engages with the work based on the captured records, insights from which were only emerging at the time he interrogated Saddam. www.simonandschuster.ca/books/The-In...

"Produziert die Golfregion ein Drittel der weltweit verkauften Urea-Menge, dazu fast die Hälfte des Schwefels, ein Fünftel des Phosphatgesteins sowie rund ein Viertel des weltweit gehandelten Ammoniaks". www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft...

Come work with us! Tenure track position for development economics + postcolonial political economy, feminist economics, critical macrofinance. jobs.univie.ac.at/job/Tenure-T... @univie.ac.at @divdececon.bsky.social @econ4future.bsky.social @econgeo.bsky.social @economicethics.bsky.social

‪Strategic petroleum reserve release, possible impact: “The maximum we have ever seen is 1.3mn barrels a day across all the IEA countries combined,” said Rats. “Theoretically, they might be able to do 3mn to 3.5mn b/d but that has never been done before.” giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

"The Epstein connection was business as usual. In his professional life at MIT, Chomsky was well used to finding positive features in people he considered to be criminals." www.counterpunch.org/2026/02/06/t...

Markus-Lanz-Sondersendung zum Krieg in #Nahost: #GIGA-Forscherin Diba Mirzaei ist heute Abend in der Expert:innenrunde zu Gast. Sie ordnet die innenpolitische Lage im #Iran ein und teilt ihre Einschätzungen zur Stabilität des Regimes. ➡️ Ab 23:40 Uhr im ZDF: www.zdf.de/video/talk/m...

📣 CFP | Populist World Order Narratives, Hamburg, 24 to 25 Sept 2026. I am organizing a workshop on #populism and #WorldOrder narratives as part of our WONAGO project. Submit your abstract by 31 May 2026. Travel and accommodation funding available. Please circulate widely.

“1984 (…) the leftwing Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv declared that Iran’s “atomic bomb” had entered the final stages of production “with German assistance”, according to a copy of that front page archived at the National Library of Israel.” giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...