As we outlined in our recent analysis on Australia’s dangerous vulnerability to disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, most of Asia is heavily exposed and faces an unprecedented energy crisis should the war in Iran continue to prevent safe passage of oil and natural gas from the Gulf.  As Australia debates the potential for a national emergency, the Philippines has already declared one.

This week, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed Executive Order No. 110, declaring a state of national emergency as a targeted measure focused on the energy sector in response to disruptions from the ongoing US-Israel war with Iran.  Approximately 98% of all oil bound for the Philippines passes through the Strait of Hormuz.

The emergency declaration allows the Philippine government to exert control over fuel prices and fast-track imports from alternative suppliers, such as Russia. Philippine authorities say they have enough fuel to last about 45 days at typical consumption levels.  

Energy rationing programs are being instituted across Asia and questions are rising about a possible domino effect on global markets.  The Philippines announcement comes a day after South Korea launched a nationwide energy-saving campaign, calling on people to ride bicycles for short trips and reduce the length of showers. Japan, meanwhile, said Wednesday that it would soon begin releasing oil from its emergency reserve, equivalent to a 30-day supply. Thailand and Vietnam have also asked citizens to take steps to curtail energy use.

China’s exposure to Iran and the Hormuz situation could be detrimental.  Over 35% of their energy supplies pass through the Strait and 15% of their oil comes directly from Iranian wells.  That said, China also has a large oil buffer, with enough emergency supply to last around four months.  

The emergency declaration in the Philippines is initially set to last one year and serves as a tool to provide the government with more legal flexibility to respond to the crisis.  Executive Order 110 enables the government to:

Fast-track procurement and imports of fuel and petroleum products from alternative suppliers. Exert control over fuel prices if needed to prevent excessive hikes or profiteering. Ensure orderly distribution of fuel, food, medicines, and other basic goods. Form a contingency committee for coordinated response. Authorize advance payments on contracts if required for timely supply. Activate a “whole-of-government” framework, including support packages for livelihoods, industry, food, and transport.  

The last time the world faced a similar threat of energy shortages was the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 following the Yom Kippur War.  It was this event, coupled with a massive devaluation of the US dollar, that triggered a stagflationary malaise that lasted until 1981.  It was also the event that led to the US diversifying its energy resources to avoid future dependency on OPEC.  Only 7% of all oil bound for the US travels through the Hormuz.  

Asian nations, however, have less access to alternatives, which is setting up the region for a historic breakdown in productivity if the flow of oil and natural gas is not restored within the next couple of months.  

The US-Israel war against Iran is nearly one month in, and amid the ongoing escalating threats and warnings Iran is touting that it is able to tap more than one million fighters for a potential ground confrontation with the United States, according to Tasnim News Agency citing a military source.

Some 7,000 additional US troops, mainly Marines and elite Army Airborne troops, are currently headed toward the region, amid speculation that President Trump will order a military operation to forcibly open the Strait of Hormuz, which could involve a high risk island campaign and effort to takeover Kharg Island oil export hub.

Getty Images

Tasnim has described a surge in volunteerism which driving the buildup, with young Iranians seeking to join military formations – angry at Iranian cities coming under heavy US-Israeli bombardment.

The report, which has been picked up in Western media headlines, also cites a surge in requests from Iranian youth to the Basij, which is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) domestic security force, and has stood accused of the large-scale killing of protesters last January.

According to some of the direct quotes presented from military sources in the report:

Iranian authorities claimed that the possibility of the US launching a ground offensive, prompted “a wave of enthusiasm” among the population to create what it calls a “historic hell for American forces”.

“The US wants to open the Strait of Hormuz with suicide and self-destructive tactics; that’s fine”, the military source told Tasnim in response. “We are ready for both their suicide strategy to be executed and for the Strait to remain closed”.

President Trump said this during a televised cabinet meeting on Thursday:

US President Donald Trump has said Iran is “begging to make a deal”, describing them as “lousy fighters but great negotiators”, while casting doubt on whether the two sides would be able to reach a deal. pic.twitter.com/3GGINOwduu

— Al Jazeera Breaking News (@AJENews) March 26, 2026

At the moment, US CENTCOM has indicated some 40,000 to 50,000 American troops were already stationed in the region, but after over a dozen US Gulf bases came under Iranian missile attack, most have been moved to other, safer and more locations which are more removed.

Visualizing Iran’s armed forces and military hierarchy…

International estimates have long put Iran’s total active duty force at around 600,000 – with another few hundred-thousand in reserves. These significant figures, among a large population of over 90 million, do indeed suggest any potential American ground force could prove an utter disaster for the US, spelling quagmire for years to come. It is indeed very possible that Iran could draw on a million extra ‘volunteers’ during this state of war and existential survival for the nation.

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby told ABC News on Wednesday that the month-long U.S.-Iran conflict and the resulting spike in jet fuel prices are set to push domestic summer airfares higher.

Kirby told ABC that ticket prices will have to rise by 20% to offset the more than 80% jump in jet fuel prices since the conflict began late last month. He said travelers should lock in their ticket prices now, before fares move higher.

Jet Fuel NY Buckeye MOC (New York Buckeye Pipeline jet fuel benchmark) 

In a separate report, Bloomberg cited data from research firm Alton Aviation showing that long-haul summer airfares have surged. In particular, June fares on key Asia-Pacific-to-Europe routes are up 70% from a year ago, with some routes experiencing even steeper increases: Hong Kong to London, up 560%; Bangkok to Frankfurt, up 505%; and Sydney to London, up 429%.

Data from the research firm Cirium show that demand for summer travel is already softening. Summer bookings for June travel from Europe to the U.S. have declined 15% from the same month a year ago, while bookings in the opposite direction have fallen 11%. Bookings from Asia to Europe also declined during the month, down 4.4%, including routes that connect through the Middle East.

“What we’re seeing is not just a short-term pricing shock. Even as the immediate disruption eases, longer routings, tighter capacity, and higher fuel costs will keep upward pressure on prices for an extended period,” Bryan Terry, a managing director at Alton, told Bloomberg.

Terry added, “It could take up to three months for the price reductions to work their way through the jet fuel supply chain.”

In recent weeks, analysts at Deutsche Bank and UBS have both warned that airlines may have to cut capacity to offset the spike in jet fuel prices. Reduced capacity, combined with higher fuel costs, points to possible demand destruction in travel this summer as consumers face sticker shock on ticket prices.

S&P 500 Airlines Index breaks sees technical breakdown.  

However, UBS analyst Atul Maheswari states why he sees a possible bottom (report here). 

Authored by Tyler Turman via TheDailyEconomy.org,

America has spent more than $20 trillion on fighting poverty since the introduction of President Johnson’s Great Society program in 1964. Sixty years later, how are we doing?

That depends, as it turns out, on how you measure it.

Last month, Senator Kennedy (R-LA) introduced a bill that would require the Census Bureau to report a new poverty metric as an alternative to the Official Poverty Measure (OPM) by including both cash and non-cash welfare benefits in its calculations.

As Kennedy points out, this is a much-needed fix. The OPM’s methodological weaknesses are well documented. Most notably, it ignores the hundreds of billions of dollars the government spends each year to assist low-income families through tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit and in-kind transfers such as Medicaid, food stamps, and housing subsidies.

In short, the OPM paints an egregiously inaccurate picture of material poverty in America.

Kennedy’s bill would require the Census Bureau to publish the Congressional Budget Office’s more comprehensive poverty measure alongside the OPM in its annual poverty report. A similarly constructed measure was developed by economists Richard Burkhauser and Kevin Corinth in a recent paper with the National Bureau of Economic Research. After accounting for taxes and transfers, they found that the “full-income” poverty measure sat at just 3.7 percent in 2023—1.6 percent after including employer-provided health insurance—a far more optimistic look than the OPM’s 11.1 percent from the same year.

That sounds like a triumph.

But Burkhauser and Corinth take it one step further and use their “full-income” measure to track changes in the poverty rate dating back to 1939. 

Contrary to popular belief, they find that the greatest era of poverty reduction happened before Johnson declared war on it.

From 1939 to 1963, absolute full-income poverty plummeted by 29 percentage points, from 48.5 percent to 19.5 percent. Then, despite the government pouring trillions of taxpayer dollars into combating poverty, poverty fell by only 15.7 percentage points from 1963 to 2023. Barely half the progress in more than twice the time.

But the stagnating decline is only half the story. The more consequential difference is what drove it. 

Before 1964, the main engine of poverty reduction was increases in market income — a measurement that includes wages, salaries, and other forms of income from employment. From 1939 to 1959, market income poverty fell by 26.1 percentage points, nearly all of the 27.3 percent decline in full-income poverty over the same period. In short, before the rapid expansion of the welfare state, most people were earning their way out of poverty.

After 1964, that engine stalled. Market income poverty fell by just 3.9 percentage points from 1967 to 2023, while post-tax, post-transfer poverty fell by 10 percentage points. Even though poverty has continued to decline over the past six decades, most of that was due to the ever-expanding generosity of government transfers.

While low-income Americans were benefiting from the biggest poverty reduction in the country’s history, the percentage of working-age adults relying on government transfers for more than half their income decreased from 2.9 percent in 1939 to 2.7 percent in 1959.

By 2023, this number had nearly tripled to 7.6 percent, even reaching as high as 15 percent in some years.

As Mercatus scholar Jack Salmon put it: “The War on Poverty changed the how of poverty reduction, but it didn’t accelerate the how much.” 

If anything, by changing the former, it may have blunted the latter. A 76 percent increase in real median income, paired with rising employment and higher productivity, largely driven by rapid postwar economic expansion, pulled more people out of poverty in 24 years than trillions of dollars in government-imposed wealth redistribution have done in 60.

Some may argue that this trend is to be expected. After all, reducing poverty from 48 percent to 20 percent is arithmetically easier than reducing it further because there are simply fewer people left below the poverty line, and those who remain tend to face the most entrenched barriers to self-sufficiency.

Fair enough. But as Burkhauser and Corinth point out, full-income poverty largely stagnated starting in the 1970s — right as welfare spending was ramping up dramatically.

In short, taxpayers have been paying for a multitrillion-dollar boondoggle that has yielded increasingly diminishing marginal returns. 

So, what was the main driver behind the pre-1964 miracle?

Simple: Economic growth.

The pre-1964 record, along with centuries of evidence, suggests that nothing has worked better than economic growth in helping individuals, especially those at the bottom of the income ladder, to achieve a higher quality of life. Across the world, economic growth driven by liberalization helped pull almost one billion people out of extreme poverty from 1990 to 2010.

The Fraser Institute’s research shows that North American states with higher and increasing levels of economic freedom tend to have more income mobility especially among low-income households, higher economic growth, less homelessness, and lower levels of food insecurity.

The fruits of economic growth are visible in ways that poverty statistics fail to capture, especially for America’s poor. As Joseph Heath points out, 95 percent of American households below the poverty line have electricity, indoor plumbing, a refrigerator, a stove, and a color television. More than 80 percent have an air conditioner and a cell phone, and two-thirds own a washing machine and dryer. Economic growth, not government programs, is what helped make these once-luxury goods unavailable to many wealthy households now accessible to nearly everyone. It continues to bear fruit today — wages for typical American workers are at all-time highs.

The most powerful anti-poverty program had no enrollment forms, caseworkers, or spending bills. It was a growing economy that helped millions of people earn their way to a better life. As such, subsequent efforts should focus on removing government-created barriers to economic growth, occupational opportunities, and job market entry rather than adding another layer of expensive, inefficient wealth transfers.

Senator Kennedy is right to say we need a more accurate measure of poverty. When analyzing the best ways to combat poverty, policymakers should reflect on whether the welfare state was ever the right tool for the job.

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

Our forefathers had the idea of creating a government of, by, and for the people. The crucial tool to make this possible was the vote: The people would have their way, within law, and through their elected representatives.

The idea was rooted in the ancient idea of democracy but with a republican twist—it would not be mob rule.

There would be checks and balances. There would be inviolable rights.

Everyone on the planet Earth at the time said that this would never work—you need a king or a dictator or some other hereditary or ecclesiastical leader. It worked anyway. One hundred years later, the United States—its economy, culture, and freedoms—became the envy of the world.

We’ve drifted far from those ideals, but in 2024, voters on a national level delivered a clear mandate to the incoming Trump administration. It would clean up the vote, control immigration, root out fraud and waste, rebuild the country after five tumultuous years, restore the middle class, and recommit the nation to freedom and the Constitution.

It’s a compelling idea, and majorities agreed.

In the past year, we’ve seen many examples of how appointed federal judges have intervened to try to stop the voters from having their way.

The Supreme Court has had to intervene several times to make a simple point: The president is head of the executive branch.

There is no such thing as a fourth branch of permanent administrators.

Somehow, some federal judges have not yet gotten the message.

In the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Judge Brian E. Murphy issued a preliminary injunction on March 16, blocking several crucial changes pushed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to federal vaccine policy.

He did so on behalf of the American Academy of Pediatrics, a pharma-supported organization that advocates for childhood gender transitions and maximum vaccinations.

The ruling targeted Kennedy’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) panel that recommends vaccine schedules. Murphy found that Kennedy likely violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act by firing all prior members (it was a deeply conflicted panel that rubber-stamped new shots) and appointing new ones. The new ACIP revised the childhood schedule.

The judge stayed the new ACIP appointments and halted votes and decisions by the reformed committee, including revisions to the childhood vaccine schedule. The schedule on the CDC site now is reversed by one year. This effectively pauses efforts to overhaul immunization guidance.

So much for democracy. So much for good science. So much for the mandate for change.

Separately, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai ruled from the bench on March 19, in the case State of Oregon et al. v. Kennedy et al. He sided with a coalition of 21 Democratic-led states (including Oregon, California, and New York) challenging a December 2025 declaration by Kennedy.

Kennedy had said that gender-transition medical treatments for minors—such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgeries—were “neither safe nor effective” for treating gender dysphoria, did not meet “professionally recognized standards of care,” and “superseded” state or national standards.

Kasubhai vacated the declaration, finding that Kennedy overstepped his authority. The ruling blocked threats to exclude providers from Medicare and Medicaid, protecting access in states where mutilation remains legal.

These rulings make the point. Federal district judges are using procedural and statutory grounds to halt executive-branch initiatives on contested health issues.

In both cases, the judges did not directly rule on the scientific merits of vaccines or gender-affirming care but emphasized acquiescence to the administrative state and not the voters.

Is this judicial overreach? Certainly. The framers of the Constitution did worry that the judiciary would have too much power and did their best to contain it. The Supreme Court is doing the same now. But this still has not stopped rogue judges from generating wild opinions and judgments that seem to have the force of law.

We can speculate that the Department of Justice will appeal whatever the final decisions turn out to be. But that’s a waiting game. Meanwhile, the judges get their way. It would otherwise be quite the step for the administration simply to ignore the courts, as much as we might fantasize that they would.

The rest of us are getting an education in how the real world of government operations really works. The administrative state and its industrial backers are happy to let us have the illusion of democratic power so long as it never impinges on their profits and powers. But the minute it does, the pieces start coming together to build blockades to reform.

Consider the larger picture.

The mandate that Trump had in 2024 was an experiment without precedent. Not since the administrative state was built 100 years ago has any president and his appointees sought dramatic and fundamental change to the conduct of government, of what it consists, and how it is managed.

We aren’t talking small policy changes here and there—we’re talking a serious root canal for the bureaucracy and all its works. That’s never been tried before. It amounts to a hostile takeover of Washington. Is it any wonder that we are seeing dramatic pushback using surreptitious means but sneakily brutal tactics? We might have anticipated as much.

The use of judicial power like this really does represent a last resort of survival for a system that the public despises and Trump swore to upend. It’s not surprising that the goal was not achieved in one year, but not even one term is going to be enough. This effort could take a decade, provided the public has the patience and economic functioning survives.

All legal technicalities aside, never forget the big picture. What the vast majority of Americans want is the original promise of America: a government of the people, a guarantee of rights, a government limited in size, a thriving middle class pursuing happiness, and freedom above all else.

That’s easily said. Getting there—restoring the Founders’ vision—is the challenge of this generation.

No, the district courts cannot delete democracy. Now we await the Supreme Court to make that crystal clear.

According to a newly declassified intelligence report, U.S. intelligence agencies intercepted communications from Ukrainian government officials back in 2022 discussing a scheme to siphon off hundreds of millions in American taxpayer dollars. The funds, earmarked for clean energy projects in the war-torn country, were allegedly redirected to the United States to benefit Joe Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee. 

The report, obtained by Just the News, summarizes raw intercepts gathered by U.S. spy agencies in late 2022. Officials familiar with the material say the communications are not believed to be tied to Russian disinformation efforts.

The declassified summary is very specific. 

“The Ukrainian Government and unspecified U.S. Government personnel, through USAID in Kyiv, reportedly developed a plan that would provide hundreds of millions of US taxpayer dollars to fund an infrastructure project for Ukraine that would be used as a cover to send approximately 90% of funds allocated to the DNC to fund Joe Biden’s reelection campaign,” the document states. 

The mechanics described are textbook money-laundering architecture. “The plan included details of how subcontractors would be funded through U.S. companies so that how the funds were spent and allocated would be difficult to track,” the report explains. Two American subcontractors were named in the raw intercepts as conduits for funneling money toward Democratic coffers, though their identities remain redacted in the declassified version.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, Ukraine became by far the top recipient of U.S. foreign aid after Russia’s invasion in February 2022 — the first time a European nation held that distinction since the Marshall Plan. As of December 31, 2025, Congress had made available $188 billion in Ukraine-related spending, with $164 billion flowing from just five pieces of legislation. The last of those bills passed in April 2024 — while Biden was actively campaigning for a second term. 

What makes the alleged scheme particularly audacious is the built-in exit strategy. “They were confident the project would be funded initially, even though at some time in the future the project would be disapproved as unnecessary. At this time, the money would already be allocated and impossible to return or use for a different purpose,” the report added. In other words, the design assumed the fraud would eventually be discovered – and didn’t care. By then, the money would be gone and untraceable.

The cover-to-transfer pipeline was engineered for maximum opacity. “Additionally, contracts would be executed that would be difficult to verify. In this manner, most of the U.S. funding would be diverted to Joe Biden’s election campaign without the ability to track where exactly the funds came from,” the report read.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently learned of the intercepts and directed USAID officials to search agency records for evidence that the plot was actually carried out and to evaluate whether a criminal referral to the FBI is warranted. Perhaps the most disturbing find so far is that there is no substantive evidence that anyone during the Biden years made a serious effort to investigate what U.S. intelligence had intercepted. Officials reviewing the files noted a lack of investigative curiosity about allegations of foreign election interference.

Since President Trump took office, no new legislation authorizing additional spending for Ukraine has passed Congress. But now we need to find out how much of the funds for Ukraine were diverted to Biden’s campaign or the DNC, and whether the lack of an investigation reflects willful negligence, deliberate burial, or a conspiracy. 

Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness,

Paid activists in Los Angeles, California, have been caught on hidden camera paying homeless people on skid row to forge signatures of registered voters on ballot initiatives.

O’Keefe Media Group (OMG) released part Two of its undercover investigation into the Democrats’ blatant election fraud operation in L.A. on Tuesday.

President Trump shared the report on Truth Social, commenting “terrible!”

California’s Republican gubernatorial frontrunner Steve Hilton commented on X: “They paid homeless people cash and drugs on Skid Row to forge your signature. Your name. Your vote. Stolen by a crackhead with a clipboard — while Gavin Newsom looked the other way.”

Hilton added: “This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s on tape. And not one Democrat is outraged. That’s because THEY DID IT ON PURPOSE.”

Part One showed petitioners offering cash to homeless people and drug addicts for their signatures. The shocking new video shows the activists, armed with printed lists of voter names and addresses, taking the scheme to another level.

“Fraudulent petitioners on Skid Row are now paying the homeless people to forge names, forge addresses and forge signatures of registered voters,” O’Keefe says at the beginning of Part Two.

Rather than registering the Skid Row denizens to vote, activists gave them $2–$3 in cash to commit forgery and election fraud in what OMG called “a coordinated system.”

O’Keefe stated that the operation was observed on nearly every street corner in downtown Los Angeles.

“The scheme appeared to be present in whatever direction we walked,” he noted.

The goal of the operation, according to OMG, is to “ensure the information matches official records so he signature passes verification.”

The workers handed out post-it notes with the names of a single voter written on them to each of the homeless dupes.

“I’m gonna tell you what to write,” a petitioners told one of the undercover journalists. “Your name’s Robert,” he said.

A petitioner told a female OMG journalist that she could move from corner to corner and get paid $3 a pop for signing other peoples’ names to the ballot petitions.

“Oh, so you guys are all working together?” she asked.

“You ask a lot of questions,” the petitioner replied. “You’re scaring me.”

The undercover journalists were taking a risk by asking questions and clandestinely recording among the unpredictable and potentially violent fraudsters.

At one point, during the investigation, one of the Skid Row workers attacked an OMG producer, punching him in the neck.

O’Keefe and colleague Cam Higby tracked down the addresses of some of the registered voters whose names were being used in the scheme.

In one case, the voter had not lived at the residence for nearly a decade,  but the current owners were still getting her election mail.

“Doesn’t live here . . . I bought this house nearly 9 years ago. The only reason I know that name is because we still get her mail,” the homeowner told Higby.

“I always feel really weird when I get the voting ballot . . . obviously that’s fraudulent,” he added.

After being shown the undercover footage, other residents appeared shocked that their names were used without their consent.

“I hope you put a stop to this soon,” a homeowner told O’Keefe and Higby. “I didn’t know they were using my name and address, for political fraud. Hopefully, the governor and district attorney just put a stop to this,” he added.

Multiple California felony statutes appear to have been violated, “including Elections Code §18613 (signing another person’s name to a petition), Penal Code §470 (forgery), and Elections Code §18601–18602 (paying for petition signatures),” OMG pointed out.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, the other Republican in the gubernatorial race, has meanwhile been investigating a reported discrepancy of 45,000 votes in his county from the November 2025 special election on Proposition 50, the state’s congressional redistricting plan. Attorney General Rob Bonta on Monday filed an emergency writ with the court of appeals to stop the ballots from being counted.

“Why in the world would Rob Bonta want that count stopped unless he was afraid of what that count would uncover?” Bianco asked in a video posted on X.

In a sit down interview with O’Keefe, Hilton said it was vital to stop the money flow to California’s election fraud operations.

“We have to freeze all the money going to any organization doing this,” he said. “The other thing is the entire voting system in California is called into question by this. Because you can’t trust any of it.”

“Prosecutions need to happen, the money flow needs to stop because this is all being funded,” he added. “These people are being paid. Where’s the money coming from?”

In Part One, OMG reported that the Weingart Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that offers services to homeless men and women living in LA’s skid row, appeared to be in on the scam.

The nonprofit has reportedly received millions in taxpayer grants since early 2022, including $112 million in 2022 alone and has over $800 million in net assets. Executives “are paid between $400,000 and $600,000 per year, yet the organization has repeatedly missed federal audit deadlines.”

Several petitioners also told OMG they work for Populus Inc., a political consulting firm.

Hilton told O’Keefe that he has put together a team that will weed out the fraud and prosecute the fraudsters in California if he is elected.

By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice

Iran’s oil exports have not collapsed and are fetching much higher prices than before the war, handing Tehran handsome extra revenues from its crude, which is the only one unimpeded from transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

Unlike all other Gulf producers, Iran is passing its oil through the Strait of Hormuz and its export volumes remain resilient. Steady volumes and higher prices have been bringing millions of dollars of additional oil revenues for the Islamic Republic since the war began, as oil prices jumped and discounts for Iranian barrels significantly narrowed versus Brent.

Iran has likely earned $139 million per day by selling its flagship Iran Light crude so far in March, according to Bloomberg calculations based on export estimates by Tankertrackers.com and prices for Iranian Light.

The estimated daily revenues were nearly $25 million higher compared to the average of $115 million daily proceeds from Iranian Light in February, according to Bloomberg’s calculations.

Iran is benefiting in several ways from the Hormuz crisis.

First, its tankers are transiting the Strait of Hormuz while most other Gulf oil supply is still trapped. Then, the massive supply shock from the Middle East has hiked international crude prices to above $100 per barrel (at about $105 a barrel of Brent early on Thursday), which adds more revenues from oil sales. And last but not least, the huge discount of more than $10 per barrel for Iran’s oil to Brent before the war has now narrowed to just $2.10 per barrel this week.

Iranian oil exports have remained resilient since the U.S. and Israel started bombing Iran and killed the Ayatollah, meaning that the jump in oil prices and the free flow of Iranian oil through the Strait of Hormuz is likely hiking Iran’s oil revenues.

Iranian crude exports remain relatively steady, maritime intelligence firm Windward said on Wednesday.

The U.S. waiver on Iranian sales may not be attracting buyers beyond the already established customers, the Chinese independent refiners, but it surely is driving up the price of Iranian crude to narrowed discounts to Brent.

Microsoft shares were trading lower Thursday afternoon, leaving the stock deeper in bear-market territory and down about 24% on the year. Seasonal data suggests it is the worst start to a year for Microsoft on record. 

A new report from The Information says Microsoft executives have instructed managers across major divisions, including Azure cloud and North American sales, to freeze hiring as part of a broader effort to reduce costs and boost margins ahead of the June fiscal year-end. 

Microsoft employees who spoke with the outlet said the hiring freeze is not companywide. They said Copilot and some other AI-related engineering divisions are still hiring, but managers in large cloud and sales organizations were told to halt all new hirings in recent weeks. 

“The company reported slightly decelerating Azure growth in the fourth quarter of last year and said roughly 45% of its Azure revenue backlog, or customer spending commitments, come from one customer, OpenAI,” The Information noted.

Microsoft reduced headcount by 15,000 last year. The company ended 2025 with 228,000 full-time employees, the same amount as a year earlier, according to Bloomberg data. Hiring momentum has certainly leveled off after hiring sprees that began in 2016 and accelerated in the early days of Covid.

Another employee who spoke with senior Microsoft executives said headcount will not increase in the coming years, both due to pressures on the software business and the proliferation of AI tools. 

The pattern of behavior across big tech companies pouring tens of billions of dollars into AI infrastructure has been to trim labor costs. Meta, Google, AWS, Atlassian, and ServiceNow have all been cutting, freezing, or reshuffling headcount as AI spending rises.

Layoff tracker Layoffs.fyi shows 71 tech companies have axed nearly 40,500 jobs so far this year. Layoffs are nowhere near the levels seen during the tech job-cut apocalypse between 2Q22 and 2Q23.

“Azure Core no longer has room or approval to continue hiring,” Azure Core chief of staff Hilary Macfadden told the outlet. “Until we have credible, executable plans locked to address that [gross margin] gap, pressure will continue to cascade,” she said.