Global Pulse

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  • Rescue for whale stranded off German coast in ‘decisive phase’

    Rescue for whale stranded off German coast in ‘decisive phase’

    A months-long struggle for survival of a 13.5-meter humpback whale stranded off Germany’s Baltic Sea coast has reached a critical turning point, with a last-ditch private rescue operation entering its decisive phase, regional officials confirmed Friday.

    The whale’s ordeal stretches back to late March, when it was first spotted trapped on a sandbank near the northern German city of Luebeck. After managing to free itself from the initial stranding, the large marine mammal only traveled a short distance east along the coast before becoming stuck again near Poel Island, close to Wismar.

    By early this month, official observers held a grim outlook: they said the whale had been too severely weakened by its weeks-long displacement from its natural Atlantic habitat to survive, and expected the animal to die. That prognosis shifted dramatically this week, when state authorities approved an unconventional rescue plan put forward by two private entrepreneurs. Unlike earlier proposals that were scrapped over fears they would kill the animal, the new plan relies on inflatable cushions to lift the weakened whale, which will then be transported out to open water on large pontoons.

    On Friday, Till Backhaus, environment minister for the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, announced the operation had entered its decisive window, and confirmed the mammal now has a tangible chance at survival. Rescue teams were spotted Friday approaching the whale’s location to carry out pre-lifting preparations, and observers noted the animal has shown increased activity in recent days, including repeatedly lifting and flapping its tail above the water’s surface.

    Backhaus added he was encouraged by the whale’s current state, noting it “is in a better condition than some had suspected.” Rescuers emphasized they are moving at a deliberate, cautious pace to avoid causing additional stress to the animal, and have not set a firm timeline for when the full lifting and transport will be carried out.

    The whale, nicknamed “Timmy” by much of the German press, has captured widespread public attention across the country. The prolonged struggle has sparked public demonstrations in support of continuing rescue efforts, though the outcry has also turned extreme in some cases: some social media posts targeting state officials have included violent threats of death. Earlier rescue proposals, including a plan to use a large catamaran to move the whale, were previously rejected after experts concluded the animal would not survive the stress of that method.

  • Shenzhou XXI astronauts complete third spacewalk

    Shenzhou XXI astronauts complete third spacewalk

    On April 17, 2026, the China Manned Space Agency announced a key milestone in China’s low-Earth orbit space program: the three-person crew of the Shenzhou XXI mission, stationed aboard the country’s operational Tiangong space station, has successfully completed its third extravehicular activity (EVA), more commonly known as a spacewalk.

    The outing, which concluded in the early hours of Friday Beijing time, saw two mission members — mission commander Senior Colonel Zhang Lu and spaceflight engineer Major Wu Fei — wrap up approximately five and a half hours of work outside the orbital outpost before re-entering the Wentian science module at 1:36 a.m. local time. The third member of the Shenzhou XXI team, payload specialist Zhang Hongzhang, an academic researcher from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, remained inside the station throughout the EVA to coordinate operations and provide critical in-station support to his extravehicular crewmates.

    Working in tandem with ground control teams back on Earth and leveraging the station’s onboard robotic arm for maneuvering support, Zhang and Wu completed all pre-planned tasks scheduled for the spacewalk. These included the installation of protective space debris shields, designed to shield critical station components from micrometeoroid and orbital debris impacts, as well as comprehensive inspections of the condition of EVA support equipment stored outside the station.

    This spacewalk marks not only a routine operational milestone for the Shenzhou XXI mission but also a historic first for China’s human spaceflight program. It is the 27th spacewalk conducted by Chinese astronauts since the country began its extravehicular activity program, and it is the seventh spacewalk for mission commander Zhang Lu. At 49 years old, the Hunan Province native now holds the new national record for the most spacewalks completed by any Chinese astronaut. Zhang previously notched four spacewalks during his first mission, the six-month long Shenzhou XV expedition that launched in November 2022, demonstrating his extensive experience and reliability in leading complex extravehicular operations.

  • Tensions lift prices, reshape farm trade

    Tensions lift prices, reshape farm trade

    Global agricultural markets and everyday consumers across the world are facing growing strain from two overlapping sources of instability: escalating geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and persistent uncertainty around United States trade policy, industry and policy experts warned during a recent media briefing held at the Port of Los Angeles. The event brought together top port leadership and international relations scholars to examine how regional conflict, disrupted shipping corridors, and unpredictable tariff policies are sending new ripple effects through economies far beyond coastal cargo terminals and port infrastructure.

  • Nigeria students abducted as gunmen attack pasenger bus in Benue state

    Nigeria students abducted as gunmen attack pasenger bus in Benue state

    ABUJA, Nigeria – A targeted attack on a civilian passenger bus traveling through Nigeria’s Benue State has left multiple university students, who were heading to sit for their final examinations, in captivity after gunmen intercepted the vehicle Thursday, state government officials confirmed. The abduction took place along the busy Otukpo-Makurdi highway, a major transportation route connecting communities across the central state, Governor Hyacinth Alia announced in an official statement released Thursday evening.

    While Alia did not release an exact count of abducted individuals, local Nigerian news outlets have reported the bus was carrying 14 passengers total, all of whom were taken by the attackers. In his statement, Governor Alia strongly condemned the act of violence against vulnerable civilians. “The targeting of innocent citizens, particularly students on their way to sit for examinations, is unacceptable and stands against every norm of humanity and civil order,” he said.

    Benue State, located in north-central Nigeria, has long been classified as a high-risk zone for armed violence in the country’s northern region. For years, criminal armed gangs operating in the area have routinely targeted isolated rural villagers and passing travelers, carrying out mass killings and large-scale kidnappings to extract ransom payments. No criminal or insurgent group has yet stepped forward to claim responsibility for Thursday’s abduction.

    State security forces have already launched active search and rescue missions across the region, with the explicit goal of securing the safe release of all captives, Alia confirmed. The governor called on local residents to remain calm and maintain close cooperation with security agencies throughout the rescue operation and broader counter-insurgency efforts. “We will continue to take decisive actions to protect lives and property,” he added.

    Widespread kidnapping of students has become one of the most visible markers of systemic insecurity across Africa’s most populous nation. Security analysts who study criminal violence in Nigeria note that gangs deliberately target students and educational institutions because they view these targets as strategically valuable: attacks on students draw rapid, widespread media and public attention, increasing pressure on authorities and families to pay large ransom payments quickly.

  • It’s the posters who should pay when spreading malicious rumors online

    It’s the posters who should pay when spreading malicious rumors online

    Online sexual rumors, one of the most insidious forms of digital harm, can take root from the most mundane materials — a single ordinary public photo, and a fabricated caption never written or approved by the person pictured. This is exactly what unfolded in the case of Xiaoting, a victim whose experience lays bare the broken systems currently in place to address digital defamation.

    The playbook for spreading these malicious rumors is depressingly consistent: bad actors attach dehumanizing language and false pricing claims to an innocent image, frame the person’s life as a public proposition for strangers to judge, and let unchecked comment sections escalate the humiliation. Unlike accidental misinformation, the shame and damage inflicted are not side effects — they are the entire point of the post.

    When victims like Xiaoting try to fight back against this harm, they quickly hit a wall of bureaucratic barriers that shift the entire burden of proof from the perpetrators to the people they have harmed. Platforms hide behind formal procedures that demand victims prove they hold the rights to their own image, prove the post is defamatory, and prove the damage it has inflicted — all while the original poster hides behind anonymity, free to repost the rumor on other platforms and continue their abuse. Even when a single false post is taken down, the core problem remains unchanged: the incentives that reward bad actors for spreading harmful rumors are still intact, and the stigma attached to the victim lingers long after the content is removed.

    Modern platform algorithms only amplify this cruelty, making the spread of malicious rumors far more efficient than ever before. Rumors do not organically reach audiences; instead, algorithms are designed to push them to the users most likely to engage with negative, salacious content — overwhelmingly men — until repeated exposure twists the lie into what many viewers accept as fact. Eventually, this online abuse bleeds into victims’ offline lives, where fabricated stories are treated as biographical fact, manifesting as offhand “jokes”, unwanted advances, and persistent teasing that erodes personal and professional reputations.

    While sexual rumors targeting people of all genders, including men who are often targeted in sexual blackmail schemes, this form of digital abuse disproportionately harms women. Sexualization and character assassination through false sexual claims remain one of the fastest and most effective ways to strip a woman of her dignity online, with long-lasting impacts on her personal relationships, career, and mental health.

    What makes Xiaoting’s story stand out is not a sudden shift in the toxic culture of many online spaces, but her deliberate rejection of the shame that perpetrators and systemic failures try to force on victims. Instead of withdrawing and giving up, as exhaustion and stigma push many to do, Xiaoting chose to treat her humiliation as evidence. She documented the abuse, named the harm, and refused to be silenced — making the case that instead of forcing victims to carry the burden of clearing their names, the people who create and spread malicious rumors should be the ones held responsible, and made to pay for the damage they cause.

  • About 15 Latin American deportees from the US arrive in Congo, lawyer says

    About 15 Latin American deportees from the US arrive in Congo, lawyer says

    In the pre-dawn hours of Friday, a plane carrying 15 migrants deported from the United States touched down in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to legal counsel representing the group. This arrival marks the first operational delivery under a new controversial agreement between the Trump White House and the Central African nation that accelerates the U.S. government’s effort to remove non-African migrants through third-country partnerships.

    All 15 people on the flight were born in Latin American nations, and the Congolese government has confirmed their stay in the country will only be temporary, explained Alma David, a U.S.-based attorney representing the deportees. A senior official from Congo’s national migration administration verified the arrival of the group to the Associated Press but declined to share further operational or personal details about the migrants.

    David told reporters that every one of the 15 deportees had already been granted formal legal protection by U.S. immigration judges, who ruled they could not be forcibly returned to their home countries due to credible fears of persecution or harm. Since landing, the group has been housed in a local Kinshasa hotel while authorities work out next steps. The United Nations’ International Organization for Migration (IOM), the global body tapped to coordinate post-arrival support, will lead efforts to organize what the program terms “assisted voluntary return” to the migrants’ countries of origin.

    David, however, raised sharp alarm over the framing of this next step, noting that the migrants spent months in U.S. immigration detention fighting specifically to avoid being sent back to their home countries. “For them to now be pushed toward ‘voluntary’ return after all that struggle is deeply troubling,” she emphasized. The IOM had not issued a public response to requests for comment from AP as of Friday.

    Earlier this month, Congo’s Ministry of Communications confirmed in an official statement that it had agreed to accept migrants as part of the Trump administration’s third-country deportation initiative. The statement characterized the arrangement as a temporary measure that demonstrates the Congolese government’s commitment to upholding human dignity and practicing international solidarity. It also stressed that the deal would impose no financial burden on Congolese public funds, with the U.S. government covering all logistical and operational costs associated with the arrivals. Per the terms of the agreement, there will be no automatic mass transfer of deportees; each individual’s case will undergo a separate review aligned with Congolese national law and domestic security requirements.

    The Democratic Republic of Congo is not the only African nation to have signed on to this policy. U.S. officials have struck identical third-country deportation deals with at least seven other African countries. Many of these partner nations are among those that have faced the strictest new restrictions on trade, aid and migration from the Trump administration, according to Senate records.

    A recent analysis from Democratic committee staff on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee found that the Trump administration has spent at least $40 million in public funds to deport roughly 300 migrants to third countries outside their nations of origin since launching the program. The deals have drawn growing criticism from immigration lawyers and human rights activists, who point out that multiple participating African nations are ruled by notoriously repressive regimes with well-documented poor human rights records. Those problematic partners include Eswatini, South Sudan and Equatorial Guinea, according to public human rights reporting.

  • Sri Lanka sent home 238 Iranian sailors, including survivors of a US torpedo attack

    Sri Lanka sent home 238 Iranian sailors, including survivors of a US torpedo attack

    COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – In a move that highlights the South Asian island nation’s careful diplomatic navigation amid heightened U.S.-Iran tensions, Sri Lanka has completed the repatriation of 238 Iranian sailors, including 32 survivors of a U.S. torpedo attack that sank their naval vessel IRIS Dena in the Indian Ocean earlier this year, senior defense officials confirmed Friday.

    The incident dates back to March 4, when a U.S. submarine struck and sank the IRIS Dena. At the time of the attack, the Iranian ship was en route back to Iran after completing a scheduled participation in a multinational naval exercise held on invitation from the Indian government. Following the sinking, Sri Lanka’s navy launched a large-scale search and recovery operation, pulling 87 bodies of deceased crew members from the ocean and evacuating 32 injured survivors for emergency hospital care in Sri Lanka.

    A second Iranian vessel, which diverted to Sri Lanka after its crew reported unspecified technical malfunctions shortly after the sinking, was escorted to a southern port of the country for inspections. Defense Ministry spokesman Brigadier Franklin Joseph confirmed Friday that all but a small number of crew from the second disabled ship have already been flown back to Iran earlier this week. The empty Iranian vessel currently remains anchored at Sri Lanka’s eastern deep-water port of Trincomalee, and authorities have not yet announced a final decision on its future disposition.

    For a country still grappling with the aftermath of a catastrophic multi-year economic crisis, balancing relations with both the United States and Iran is a high-stakes diplomatic challenge. The U.S. has been a key international backer of Sri Lanka’s economic recovery, playing a critical role in unlocking a major International Monetary Fund bailout package and providing support to the country’s agricultural sector to prevent a widespread food emergency. Both the U.S. and Iran also rank as major trading partners for the island nation.

    Retired veteran diplomat H.M.G.S. Palihakkara, a former Sri Lankan foreign secretary and ex-permanent representative to the United Nations, praised the government’s handling of the sensitive incident. According to Palihakkara, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake faced an immediate critical test days after the sinking when he received two simultaneous, conflicting requests: one from the U.S. asking for permission to land military aircraft on Sri Lankan soil, and a second from Iran requesting permission to dock additional Iranian warships in Sri Lankan ports. Dissanayake declined both requests, a decision Palihakkara called a difficult but necessary balancing act.

    “Sri Lanka has proven its neutral policy posture not just through public statements, but through concrete action,” Palihakkara said. He added that the government structured its response around legal obligations, humanitarian principles, and established international law, deliberately avoiding any perception of taking sides in the ongoing U.S.-Iran confrontation. “All parties involved in the incident have acknowledged this even-handed approach. This has significantly boosted the credibility of the Sri Lankan government on the global diplomatic stage,” Palihakkara noted.

  • Choosing evidence over shame

    Choosing evidence over shame

    In September 2023, six former college roommates gathered in the warm, humid air of Liuzhou, located in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, to mark a quiet milestone: half a decade of unbroken friendship after graduation. What started as a joyful, intimate moment captured in a single photograph shared publicly on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu would quickly transform into a 12-month battle to reclaim their dignity and hold a content creator accountable for digital exploitation.

    Weeks after the photo was posted, the unassuming snapshot was stolen and weaponized for online traffic. A Douyin short-video creator going by the username “Business Tycoon” republished the image, overlaid a digital price tag on the frame, and shared the altered post with his 330,000 followers alongside an inflammatory caption: “The bride price is 100,000 yuan. Which one would you pick as your girlfriend?”

    For Xiaoting — a pseudonym used by one of the women in the photo to protect her privacy — and her five friends, this marked the beginning of a traumatic, extended fight to remove the defamatory content and force the creator to face consequences for his actions. Their fight would ultimately conclude a year later, in September 2024, when the Guangzhou Internet Court issued a ruling ordering the creator, identified only by his surname Luo, to pay financial damages to the women and publish a formal public apology for fabricating the viral bride price rumor using a stolen photograph.

    Xiaoting first learned of the malicious post when an online contact messaged her to alert her about the content. She immediately searched for the video on Douyin, and was stunned by what she found: hundreds of comments engaging with the dehumanizing framing of the post, treating the six women like purchasable goods rather than real people.

    Comments on the post ranged from crude jokes to outright objectifying bids. “I’m not picky, I’ll take any,” one user wrote. Another joked, “I’ll take all six as a package deal — I can’t bear to split the sisters up.”

    “We had such a beautiful memory captured in that photo, and it got turned into this. It was completely absurd,” Xiaoting recalled in an interview.

    Initially assuming the post was the result of an innocent misunderstanding, Xiaoting reached out directly to the creator to demand he remove the content. When she checked back the following weekend, the post was still live — and it had been joined by multiple altered variations. One version numbered each woman from “first sister” to “sixth sister” and repeated the false bride price claim, prompting more users to weigh in with their “choices” as if the women were being auctioned off.

    Xiaoting and her friends flooded the creator’s inbox and the post’s comment section with repeated demands to take the content down, but their requests were met with total silence. Digging deeper into the creator’s account, the women quickly realized their photo was not a one-off target: the creator had a pattern of stealing other women’s public photos, spinning false sexualized rumors about them to generate clicks and engagement, and using the traffic to promote household goods he sold through the account.

    Further investigation revealed the creator also operated a paid “dating fans group” on the platform, and had reused Xiaoting’s stolen photo as the group’s official avatar. When the six women joined the group to set the record straight and clarify the entire story was fabricated, they were immediately removed from the group and blocked by the admin.

    The women filed formal complaints about the video with Douyin’s moderation team, but the platform only responded with a generic template message stating it could not confirm that copyright infringement had occurred or that Xiaoting was the legal rights holder of the photo. Complaints to other regulatory platforms similarly went nowhere. Even when a small number of posts were removed, the creator faced no other public consequences, and he quickly reposted the content to other areas of the platform.

    As the false rumor spread, the harassment eventually spilled out of the digital space and into the women’s everyday real lives. One of the roommates faced awkward teasing at her workplace, where a colleague joked, “Are you out recruiting a husband online?” Xiaoting also received repeated messages from acquaintances, half in jest and half in earnest, asking if she really was advertising herself for a 100,000 yuan bride price — forcing her to explain the situation over and over again to people she knew in real life.

    All six women experienced severe emotional distress as the saga dragged on. Even though a court would later formally rule they were the wronged victims of intellectual property rights infringement, some members of the group found themselves internalizing a sense of misplaced shame over ever sharing the original photo. Refusing to let the harassment stand, Xiaoting made the decision to file an official report with local police. According to Xiaoting, after hearing her account, an officer told her the posts had not caused “substantial harm” and declined to open a formal case.

    Using an alternate account, Xiaoting reached out to the creator once more to inform him she had filed a police report. This time, he replied, writing “Sorry, I deleted it” and claiming he had copied the photo from another user’s post he found via a search engine. When Xiaoting pushed back, explaining that deleting one post could not undo the damage from all the other iterations he had published across the platform, his response made it clear he felt put upon by her demands. “He didn’t think he’d done anything wrong at all,” Xiaoting said. Through their persistent pursuit of legal accountability, the women ultimately secured the ruling they had fought for, setting a small but important precedent for addressing digital sexual exploitation and image theft in China’s fast-growing online ecosystem.

  • Kosovo to approve troop contribution for Gaza force

    Kosovo to approve troop contribution for Gaza force

    PRISTINA, Kosovo — The small Balkan country of Kosovo is set to become the latest contributor to a new U.S.-backed international stabilization mission in Gaza, a step national leaders frame as a historic turning point: after relying on NATO-led peacekeeping for its own security for nearly 25 years, Kosovo is now stepping forward to provide security to a conflict zone abroad.

    Kosovo’s parliament is scheduled to vote Friday to formally approve the government’s earlier decision to deploy a contingent of several dozen security personnel to the International Stabilization Force (ISF), a multinational mission established following last year’s ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. The force, which will support peacekeeping and post-conflict reconstruction in Gaza under the Trump administration’s Board of Peace initiative, counts Kosovo among its participating members, alongside other nations including Indonesia, Albania, and Kazakhstan, which have already pledged contributions.

    For Kosovo, the deployment carries far more symbolic weight than its small troop size suggests. The country has viewed the contribution as tangible proof of its progress and growing international standing since it declared independence from Serbia in 2008 — a sovereignty declaration that Belgrade still refuses to recognize.

    The modern context of Kosovo’s security journey traces back to the 1998-1999 conflict between Serbian forces and Kosovo separatist fighters. When Belgrade launched a brutal crackdown on separatist movements, NATO launched a military intervention in 1999 that ousted Serbian troops from Kosovo territory, clearing the way for the deployment of the alliance’s KFOR peacekeeping mission. Ever since, NATO member states have shouldered the responsibility of maintaining Kosovo’s security, a reality that has shaped the country’s perspective on international peacebuilding.

    “Our country has been a security consumer, meaning NATO countries have contributed to the security of the Republic of Kosovo,” Defense Minister Ejup Maqedonci told the Associated Press in an interview. “Today we are entering a phase where we are becoming a provider, or exporter, of security.”

    Maqedonci detailed that the Kosovo contingent will include personnel from the country’s demining units along with other specialist officers. Once deployed, the troops will carry out a range of duties aligned with the ISF mandate: delivering humanitarian aid to civilian populations, providing local security support, and other tasks as assigned by mission leadership. The minister added that preparations for deployment are in their final stages, with a U.S. diplomatic representative assisting with critical logistical arrangements, including troop vaccinations, visa processing, and other administrative requirements.

    Currently, Kosovo’s domestic security force numbers approximately 4,000 personnel. The force is currently undergoing training and restructuring to evolve into a small, professional military aligned with NATO integration goals.

    Public reaction to the deployment decision has been largely supportive among Kosovar citizens. Milot Hoxha, a 43-year-old musician from Pristina, voiced strong backing for the mission, noting that Kosovo’s own post-conflict experience gives the country unique perspective on the value of international support. “We ourselves have gone through such a transition and every small help for us has been very significant,” Hoxha said. “I believe it will be the same for them, that any kind of help will be positive. I strongly support this decision.”

    Despite the milestone for Kosovo’s international engagement, cross-border tensions with Serbia remain unresolved. Friction between Belgrade and Pristina has simmered constantly since the 1999 war, with occasional outbreaks of violent confrontation. The European Union has led long-running mediation efforts to normalize relations between the two sides, but those negotiations have stalled in recent months.

    Global recognition of Kosovo’s independence remains split: the United States and a majority of European Union member states recognize Kosovo as a sovereign state, while Russia and China continue to back Serbia’s territorial claim to the region.

  • International shipping under threat from blockade

    International shipping under threat from blockade

    Following the collapse of US-Iran diplomatic negotiations and the implementation of a sweeping US military blockade on all vessels entering or exiting Iranian coastal areas and ports, global maritime shipping faces unprecedented new disruptions at the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz, according to industry experts and global officials.

    The blockade officially entered into force on Monday, closing off the narrow waterway that connects the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and the wider Arabian Sea. US Central Command confirmed that no commercial vessels have successfully passed through the US naval cordon in the first 48 hours of the operation. Despite the escalating tensions, the White House claimed in a televised interview Wednesday that the ongoing conflict in Iran is “very close to over.”

    Iran has issued a sharp retaliatory warning in response. The commander of Iran’s joint military command stated Wednesday that the country will shut down all commercial trade activity across the entire Gulf region if the US does not reverse the blockade immediately. Data from the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, a division of the UK Royal Navy, confirms the blockade is enforced by a fleet of at least 15 US warships deployed in the area.

    By Monday, the disruption had already stranded an estimated 20,000 seafarers and roughly 1,600 commercial vessels in the Persian Gulf, said Arsenio Dominguez, secretary-general of the International Maritime Organization. The crisis has sparked urgent alarm across global shipping firms, international businesses, and commodity traders, with immediate ripple effects already visible in global energy markets. On Thursday, Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil prices, climbed to $96.32 per barrel, a sharp jump from its pre-conflict average of roughly $70 per barrel.

    Mohammad Elahee, a professor of international business at Connecticut’s Quinnipiac University, noted the strait’s outsized role in global energy supplies: “Approximately 20 million barrels of oil, 20 percent of the world’s daily oil supply and one-third of all seaborne oil traded globally, pass through this narrow waterway that is effectively controlled by Iran.” Data from maritime analytics firm Kpler shows Iran exported an average of 1.84 million barrels of crude per day in March 2026, and has hit 1.71 million barrels per day so far in April, up from a 2025 average of 1.68 million barrels per day.

    The concept of US-escorted commercial shipping through the strait was previously floated by former US president Donald Trump, but experts warn the plan carries major practical and economic barriers. “The US Navy could, in theory, escort ships through there, but that would be expensive and slow,” explained Robert Kaufmann, an affiliate faculty member of the Boston University Global Development Policy Center.

    The United Nations has called on all parties to uphold the longstanding principle of freedom of navigation through the strait. “The secretary-general’s position has been consistent: No one should do anything that harms the freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz,” said Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for the UN secretary-general. “That freedom of navigation is based on international law and years and years of custom.”

    Beyond energy markets, the crisis also threatens to upend global food systems, as the strait is a key transit route for global fertilizer trade. Delays and supply uncertainty have already pushed fertilizer prices higher, according to Luis Ribera, an extension economist in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Texas A&M University. “Slower shipments through the Strait of Hormuz make fertilizer prices increase more, both because of the slower shipments and the uncertainty,” Ribera said.

    The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has issued a formal warning that the ongoing crisis could drive up global food prices worldwide. William Wilson, a professor of agribusiness and applied economics at North Dakota State University, summarized the widespread risk: “Everything going on in Hormuz is very negative to agriculture — negative for the world economy and for the world food economy in particular.”