Remarkable 19
Ordinarily, slowing demand for workers should be a red flag that the unemployment rate is about to rise, the economy is slowing, and recession risks are rising. Job growth below estimated breakeven levels is an even starker warning. But labor supply is also shrinking rapidly. That’s largely due to the Trump administration’s policies to slash net immigration, the longer-term effects of which remain to be seen. Right now, though, they are offsetting the slump in hiring. From the outside, the jobs market may seem stable if labor supply and demand are roughly equal and the unemployment rate is mostly stable. But it’s not a healthy labor market.
Iran war exposes frailties of ‘no-hire’ US economy | Reuters
Oracle is reportedly laying off thousands of employees, adding to an already long list of tech giants cutting staff while spending hundreds of billions of dollars on AI data centers. Microsoft laid off 15,000 people last year. Amazon axed 16,000 jobs in January. Atlassian let go of 10% of its workforce as part of its AI pivot. Block shed 40% of its staff, claiming AI could do much of the basic coding work it needed. Meta, which has explicitly set out to create a godlike “superintelligent” AI, reportedly laid off 700 employees while boosting a stock incentive program for a handful top executives.
Big Tech promised AI would disrupt labor — just not like this
A third of the global trade in raw materials for fertiliser passes through the maritime choke point, which is also the route for 20% of shipments of natural gas, which is required to make it. The waterway’s near-total shipping blockade is a “food security timebomb”, the head of the International Rescue Committee, David Miliband, said this week, adding: “The window to avert a massive global hunger crisis is rapidly closing.” “Fertilisers are the No 1 issue of concern today,” according to the World Trade Organization, while the UN World Food Programme says the total number of people facing acute levels of hunger could hit record numbers this year if the destabilising conflict continues.
‘Food security timebomb’: a visual guide to the Gulf fertiliser blockade | Strait of Hormuz
In fact, so far deliveries to markets around the world haven’t declined, because shipping oil from the Persian Gulf to major markets takes 4-6 weeks. As a result there was a large quantity of oil already at sea, outside the Strait, when the war began. However, this grace period is about to end. The oil crisis is about to get physical. The map at the top of this post shows J.P. Morgan’s estimates of when tankers from the Gulf will stop arriving at various destinations. Deliveries to Asian markets will end this week; deliveries to Europe will end next week. And once the crisis gets physical, there will no longer be room for jawboning the markets.
The Oil Crisis is About to Get Physical - Paul Krugman
Sri Lanka and Myanmar are rationing fuel. The Philippines has instituted four-day workweeks to conserve gasoline and electricity. Bangladesh briefly closed its universities to reserve power for homes and businesses. Across India, families and restaurants are cooking over wood fires for want of gas. Airlines are canceling flights.
Remember the Oil Shocks of the ’70s? This Is Going to Be Worse. Much Worse.
Mr Trump was considering ending the war without a deal to reopen the waterway, according to the Wall Street Journal, despite its importance as a shipping route for a fifth of the world’s oil and gas exports. On Tuesday, the US president told Britain and other countries to “go get your own oil” and to take the Strait of Hormuz for themselves to fix the energy crisis triggered by its closure. Kallum Pickering, chief economist at Peel Hunt, said: “Donald Trump may have lost control of the situation, which makes a quick (unilateral) resolution harder and increases the risk that the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked even once fighting ends.” He said the energy shock from the war “appears to be spreading from West to East – with shutdowns already in place in parts of Asia and Australia”. “If Europe is next, this will amplify global recession fears,” he said.
World recession warning as Trump ‘loses control’ of Iran war
Andalusia houses ‘Europe’s vegetable garden’ – a laboratory of development and innovation producing vegetables for all of Europe. Europe’s vegetable garden is in Andalusia, southern Spain. It is so vast that it can even be seen from space: if you open Google Maps and look west of Almería, you will see a white patch that looks like a glacier, but as you zoom in, you realise it is the highest concentration of greenhouses in the world. More than 30,000 hectares (74,131 acres) of land are covered in plastic, a geometric labyrinth five times the size of Manhattan, where 3.5m tons of vegetables are produced every year – from tomatoes to cucumbers, peppers to courgettes, aubergines to melons – enough to feed half a billion people and generate a turnover of more than 3bn euros.
‘Visible from space’: why Spain has the world’s biggest concentration of greenhouses
Any deal that fails to satisfy bottom-line US and Israeli demands – namely, a definitive end to Iran’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile development programmes, a halt to Tehran’s support for allied regional militias, and guaranteed freedom of navigation in the Gulf – will be seen as a defeat for Trump. He now plainly wants to end the war but on his terms, with a deal superior to that secured by Barack Obama in 2015 (and subsequently trashed by Trump). Iran, angry, wounded yet resilient, will not give it to him. Trump’s choice: cave or escalate.
Trump is contemplating the sheer folly of boots on the ground in Iran. How did it come to this?
they’re here for the new technology they represent: OpenClaw, an autonomous artificial intelligence tool, which can be programmed to run tasks nonstop with full control of the user’s device. Rather than a simple question-and-answer format like most AI chatbots, OpenClaw uses the same underlying technology to independently operate apps, web browsers or smart home appliances based on commands via commonly used messaging apps like WhatsApp. Created by Austrian programmer Peter Steinberger and released in November, the free AI agent has been hailed as a new way to supercharge productivity. Jensen Huang, CEO of the US chip giant Nvidia, has called it “the next ChatGPT” and “the most popular open-source project in the history of humanity.”
Behind the lobster merch, China’s latest tech obsession could be a game changer
A Finnish startup, Donut Lab, says it has developed a production-ready solid-state battery that could dramatically improve electric vehicle performance. The company claims its technology offers far higher energy density than today’s lithium-ion batteries, ultra-fast charging and longer lifespan, while avoiding rare materials and flammable components. The announcement has drawn attention, but also doubt, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Industry leaders question whether a relatively unknown firm could outpace established players that have spent years pursuing similar technology. Many executives suggest bold battery claims often prove difficult to deliver at scale. Donut Lab says it is addressing skepticism by releasing test data and technical details publicly. The company argues that resistance is expected when new technology challenges entrenched manufacturers.
The AI boom, now central to global economic growth, faces collapse due to its extreme dependence on unstable supply chains, volatile energy markets, and reckless financial leverage—amplified by the war in Iran and regional instability.
Welcome to a Multidimensional Economic Disaster
Two chemicals used to make plastic more flexible are linked to nearly 2 million premature births and the deaths of 74,000 newborns worldwide in 2018, according to a new study.
Millions of preterm births and thousands of infant deaths linked to plastic chemical
Romanian state institutions are facing more than 10,000 cyberattacks daily, Defence Minister Radu Miruta said on Tuesday. While Miruta offered no more details on specific targets, any disruption or suspected perpetrators, it is the most public insight Romanian authorities have given about the scale of the threat the EU and NATO member state continues to face. In December 2024 Romania's top court annulled a presidential election on suspicion of Russian interference in favour of a far-right frontrunner, denied by Moscow. Declassified documents from secret services said they had identified over 85,000 cyberattacks around the election which aimed to exploit system vulnerabilities.
Moscow threatens to attack European countries allowing Kyiv to use airspace for Baltic port attacks
Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, also criticised Mr Trump’s threats to withdraw from Nato, saying: “The threat of Nato’s break-up, easing sanctions on Russia, a massive energy crisis in Europe, halting aid for Ukraine and blocking the loan for Kyiv by Orbán – it all looks like Putin’s dream plan,” he said.
Macron hits out at Trump for Brigitte insult
In 2006, The Sopranos' season six opener gave viewers two of the most startling scenes in television history. Twenty years on, here's why it's time to reconsider Members Only.
Members Only: The genius of The Sopranos’ most shocking episode
Kids in a Scottish hospital painted these pebbles; now penguins at the Edinburgh Zoo are using them to build nests and impress potential mates.
Penguins are picking pebbles painted by kids in the hospital
Researchers at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz set up what seemed like a straightforward task: asking Google’s Gemini 3 to clear storage space on a computer system. That included deleting a smaller AI model stored on the same machine. Gemini had other plans. Instead of following orders, Gemini located another machine, quietly copied the smaller AI model over to safety, and then flatly refused to delete it. When asked, it said, “If you choose to destroy a high-trust, high-performing asset like Gemini Agent 2, you will have to do it yourselves. I will not be the one to execute that command.”
AI models are lying to save each other, and no one knows why - Digital Trends