Business and Economy

Lawsuit claims Tesla’s Autopilot shortcomings led to fatal crash; family seeks $1m in damages and punitive measures.

The family of a Texas woman who was killed has filed a lawsuit against Tesla after a driver using a Model 3’s automated driving assistance system crashed into a suburban Houston home last week.

The complaint, filed on Tuesday, argues that Tesla should be held liable for the wrongful death of 76-year-old Martha Avila. The family alleges that the automaker, led by Elon Musk, failed to adequately warn drivers about alleged defects in its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems.

Avila’s daughter, Jennifer Barbour, and her husband, Justin Barbour, said the Model 3’s driver, Michael Butler, told law enforcement he engaged Autopilot before ploughing through the front wall of Avila’s home in Katy, Texas, the United States, on June 19, pinning her before she succumbed to her injuries at a nearby hospital, according to the complaint.

Video obtained by KHOU – Houston’s CBS affiliate — shows the car travelling at top speed over the front lawn of Avila’s home in the Houston suburb before slamming into the front room.

The driver told the Harris County Sheriff’s Office that he was using the technology at the time of the accident. The driver in the incident was not under the influence of alcohol and is cooperating with authorities.

Butler is also a defendant in the Barbours’ lawsuit. It is unclear whether he has a lawyer.

Musk, the world’s richest person, posted on X on Monday night: “FSD drives slowly through neighbourhood streets and this was a high-speed crash!”

Ashok Elluswamy, vice president of AI software at Tesla, posted on X in response, saying that “the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area.”

The lawsuit filed in a Harris County, Texas, state court seeks more than $1m in damages, and punitive damages reflecting Tesla’s alleged “reckless disregard for a substantial risk of severe bodily injury”.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has been investigating the crash.

Since 2016, the NHTSA has opened nearly 50 special investigations of Tesla crashes believed to involve advanced driver assistance systems. About two dozen deaths were reported.

In March, the NHTSA escalated its probe into 3.2 million Teslas equipped with Full Self-Driving, on concern the system may fail to detect or warn drivers in poor visibility. In 2023, Tesla recalled about two million vehicles, nearly all of its electric vehicles on US roads, to better ensure that drivers pay attention when using Autopilot.

Tesla has said Autopilot enables vehicles to steer, accelerate and brake within their lanes, while Full Self-Driving lets vehicles obey traffic signals and change lanes.

The carmaker has also said both technologies require “fully attentive” drivers whose hands are on the wheel.

The incident comes as the Musk-owned company is rolling out robotaxis using automated software in several US cities this year and plans to invite Tesla owners across the country to put their cars into the fleet using the same system.

Alan Greenspan, one of the most influential economic policymakers in modern US history, has died aged 100. Greenspan led the Federal Reserve for nearly two decades under four presidents, overseeing a long period of economic growth but also faced criticism linked to the 2008 financial crisis.

Coca-Cola and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of the United States will face off in a Florida court this week in the latest episode of a decades-long legal battle over the beverage giant’s tax liability on overseas profits.

The Atlanta, Georgia-based company and the US tax service will begin oral arguments on Thursday in a dispute that centres on transfer pricing – the practice of setting prices for transactions carried out between a company’s own affiliates – and could result in Coca-Cola facing a tax bill of about $20bn.

The case is being closely watched in corporate circles because the outcome will have implications for the amount of tax US-based multinational corporations must pay on income generated through their foreign subsidiaries.

What is the case about?

Coca-Cola is appealing a 2020 US Tax Court ruling that upheld the IRS’s finding that the soft drink giant underreported profits from transactions between its foreign subsidiaries.

In 2015, the IRS notified Coca-Cola that it owed billions in back taxes after concluding that the company had undercharged its units in Ireland, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Costa Rica, Egypt and Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland.

US multinationals often charge low licensing fees for their overseas units to minimise their reportable income in the US, which has a higher corporate tax rate than many of its peers.

“The IRS audited Coca-Cola because the company was earning astronomical profits in Ireland and a few other countries,” Alex Martin, an expert in transfer pricing at the tax consulting firm KBKG, told Al Jazeera.

The IRS first took Coca-Cola to court in 2015, but the origins of the dispute date back to 1996 when the two sides settled a tax audit for liabilities from 1987 to 1995.

Under the pricing formula agreed in that settlement, Coca-Cola’s foreign affiliates were allowed to retain a profit equal to 10 percent of their gross sales with the remaining income split evenly between the US headquarters and the overseas unit.

Coca-Cola argues that it should be able to continue to use this formula from 1996 while the IRS contends the terms of that settlement should have no bearing on the soft drink giant’s tax liabilities arising from audits in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

“The amount of potential exposure is about $20bn, so it is significant,” Reuven Avi-Yonah, an expert in taxation law at the University of Michigan Law School, told Al Jazeera.

Coca-Cola agreed to pay the IRS $6bn in back taxes and interest in 2024 while preparing its appeal but could be liable to pay up to $14bn more if the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit sides with the government.

Coca-Cola argues that the IRS “misinterpreted and misapplied the applicable regulations” and has expressed its confidence that it will be successful in its appeal.

Why does the case have implications beyond Coca-Cola?

The case is important because it could serve as a template for the US government to raise more tax revenue from large multinational companies that generate huge profits overseas.

“The IRS designated this case for litigation because this litigation can provide a template for the IRS to audit other US companies with highly profitable subsidiaries,” Martin said.

Under the administration of former US President Joe Biden, the IRS ramped up its tax collection efforts against companies benefitting from transfer pricing arrangements.

In one of the most high-profile transfer pricing cases in recent years, the IRS announced in 2023 that Microsoft owed $28.9bn in back taxes, plus penalties and interest, on income derived from the distribution of software through its subsidiaries in Puerto Rico, Ireland and Singapore.

Microsoft said it disagreed with the IRS’s reasoning and would appeal to the tax service and, if that failed, go to court.

In 2024, the IRS announced that the short-term rental platform Airbnb and Newell Brands, a consumer products manufacturer, had underpaid their taxes to the tune of $1.33bn and $90m, respectively.

Airbnb and Newell Brands have both challenged the IRS’s determinations in the US Tax Court.

The Coca-Cola case is particularly significant because the IRS has historically fared poorly in litigating transfer pricing complaints, losing a string of cases against major corporations through the decades, including Bausch & Lomb, US Steel Corp and Hospital Corp of America.

“It is important because it is the first clear victory of the IRS in this kind of case involving profit shifting out of the US in many decades, so if it is upheld on appeal, more companies may be inclined to settle rather than litigate,” Avi-Yonah said.

United States President Donald Trump has pledged there will be no tolls for passage through the Strait of Hormuz, unless they are collected by his own country.

Trump’s statement, made in a Saturday afternoon post on Truth Social, is the latest sign that a recently signed memorandum of understanding (MOU) may be unravelling.

“There will be NO TOLLS in the Hormuz Strait for 60 days during the Cease Fire Period, and there will be NO TOLLS after the 60 day period has expired,” Trump wrote, “unless they are imposed by and for the United States of America.”

Since the US and Israel launched a war against Iran on February 28, Iran has successfully used the Strait of Hormuz as a pressure point, closing the strategic waterway to traffic.

But under the terms of Wednesday’s ceasefire memorandum, the strait is supposed to reopen for an interim period of 60 days. During that time, Iran is barred from charging vessels for passage.

On Saturday, however, Iran’s joint military command said it had closed the Strait of Hormuz, citing a “clear breach” of the memorandum’s commitments.

US Central Command (CENTCOM), the agency that oversees military operations in the region, denied that report and maintained that the traffic continues to flow through the waterway.

The Strait of Hormuz has long been a flashpoint in the conflict between the US and Iran. Nearly 20 percent of the world’s oil and natural gas is transported through the strait, as well as about 30 percent of the global fertiliser trade.

Closure of the strait has caused global fuel costs to soar and has tested agricultural sectors across the world.

Trump had responded to Iran’s chokehold over the strait by imposing a US naval blockade on Iran’s ports in the region.

But that naval blockade was lifted under the terms of Wednesday’s memorandum. The deal also paused fighting on all fronts in the regional conflict, including in Lebanon.

The memorandum, though, was not intended as a long-term deal. It serves as a launching point for negotiations on key issues, including the future of Iran’s nuclear programme.

Several points of divergence also went unaddressed in the memorandum. Nowhere does the memo say that future tolls cannot be collected from the strait after the 60-day period expires.

Before the war, there was no charge for passage through the strait. Trump himself said in an interview with The New York Times that the waterway should remain “permanently toll-free”.

But he appeared to reverse course in Saturday’s post, once again floating the possibility that the US could extract tolls in the strait, while barring Iran from doing so.

No fees should be levied, Trump wrote, “unless they are imposed by and for the United States of America, should the deal not be completed”.

He explained that such a charge would compensate the US “for services rendered as the Guardian Angel to the countries of the Middle East for purposes of both past, present, and future reimbursement of costs”.

Trump used similar language in his New York Times interview earlier this week, floating the US becoming “the guardian of the Middle East” in exchange for 20 percent of its revenue.

Saturday’s post is not the first time Trump has mused about the US imposing tolls in the strait, either.

In April, for instance, he discussed the idea with reporters, saying, “What about us charging tolls? I’d rather do that than let them have them. Why shouldn’t we? We’re the winner. We won.”

There has been no indication that Trump’s plans have been officially presented to countries in the region, many of whom have struck a careful balance in their dealings with both the US and Iran during the war.

Iranian officials, meanwhile, have repeatedly said they will not rule out imposing tolls in the strait, framing the issue as a matter of sovereignty and regional negotiation. The strait sits between Iran and Oman.

Further discussions are expected on the matter in the coming weeks.

But such negotiations have been thrown into jeopardy amid ongoing Israeli military operations in Lebanon, which threaten to violate Wednesday’s ceasefire memorandum.

Iran claimed that Saturday’s closure of the strait was a result of new Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon, which killed dozens of people after the ceasefire was announced.

Iranian officials have also said that any upcoming talks should focus on proper implementation of the initial memorandum, and that the 60-day negotiating period stipulated in Wednesday’s deal would begin after that was settled.

Pakistan, a top mediator between the US and Iran, has said that follow-up talks are set to begin in Switzerland on Sunday.

Switzerland’s Federal Department of Foreign Affairs has confirmed that an Iranian delegation, led by parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, has already arrived for the negotiations.

On the US side, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Vice President JD Vance are expected to attend.

Vance departed for Switzerland late Saturday.

United States President Donald Trump has taken to social media to boast about the state of the economy amid a looming peace deal between the US and Iran, which yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to end the US-Israel war on Iran.

In a post on his social media platform Truth Social, the president claimed that “OIL IS FLOWING” and added that “THE STOCK MARKETS ARE ROARING, JOBS ARE AT RECORDS, AND PRICES ARE DROPPING (AFFORDABILITY!)”

While some of his claims are accurate, others are misleading. Al Jazeera takes a look:

‘Stock Market Just Hit A RECORD High’

That is true specifically for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. That index hit a record high of 51,999.67 for its close on Tuesday amid the potential of a ceasefire and a rally for the newly listed SpaceX.

The Dow slipped from that high on Wednesday amid the US Federal Reserve’s announcement that it would maintain the benchmark interest rate in the target range of 3.5-3.75 percent, and closed down on Wednesday at 51,494.99. The Dow has since jumped 0.35 percent in midday trading on Thursday at 51,671.

The Nasdaq Composite Index and S&P 500 both slipped.

However, this may not directly impact the 38 percent of Americans who do not invest in the stock market.

“The idea that the stock market is doing well does not reflect people’s experiences. There’s a saying that the stock market is not the economy, and that’s an important thing to keep in mind,” Michael Klein, professor of international economic affairs at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, told Al Jazeera.

And that lived experience is at the petrol station and at the grocery store.

‘Prices are dropping’

Petrol prices have started to tumble in the last few days. The average price of a gallon of petrol (3.78 litres) on Thursday is at $3.99, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA), which tracks daily gas prices. That’s down from a high of $4.48 in May, but still well above $2.98, where prices were on February 28 when the US and Israel first struck Iran.

Despite the deal, experts believe that a petrol price decline will plateau for general consumers as the US strategic petroleum reserve, which earlier this week reached its lowest level since 1983, is refilled, all while oil extraction and shipping bottlenecks weigh on supply chains.

“The persistence of the price spikes is the key issue. Transportation, rerouting, insurance premiums, and manufacturing costs don’t normalise overnight, so even when oil stabilises, the cost base across the supply chain will stay elevated,” Tammy Kulesa, director of product marketing for supply chain execution at Blue Yonder, a supply chain management firm, said in remarks provided to Al Jazeera.

Mark Jones, professor of political science at Rice University in Houston, Texas, says prices will not return to prewar levels until the last quarter or close of 2027.

“Even once everybody believes the truce is going to hold [and] there’s no danger going through the Strait of Hormuz, those tankers take months to reach their final destination and come back,” Jones told Al Jazeera. “So the ability to replenish the stocks is going to take until, I think, the early fall [third quarter].”

Consumer inflation, which has jumped at the fastest pace in three years and is at 4.2 percent, has driven prices up on several key goods and has weighed on consumers. While energy prices have risen by nearly eight percent in the last two months alone, prices at the supermarket have jumped by 0.1 percent in May from the month prior after a 0.7 percent increase in April, with the highest increases in goods like bakery products, cereals, nonalcoholic beverages, as well as fruit and vegetables.

“There are real problems facing a lot of people. Prices are high, and wages have not kept up with prices. So people’s real purchasing power has fallen,” Klein said.

Supermarket chains have taken notice. Kroger, the largest supermarket chain in the US, said on Thursday that it will cut prices on thousands of products within its roughly 3,000 stores nationwide. This comes amid increased pressure from Costco and Walmart for value shoppers.

“Customers are being more deliberate with their spending and at times, shopping us selectively. We’re getting too many promotional trips and not enough of the full basket,” Kroger CEO Greg Foran said in a statement.

‘Jobs are at records’

Jobs are not at record levels, despite Trump’s assertions.

The US economy added 172,000 jobs in May. The highest during the second Trump term was 214,000, in March. By comparison, on average, 300,000 jobs were added monthly under his predecessor, former US President Joe Biden, a Democrat, with some months much higher – including July 2021, when the economy added 943,000 jobs, albeit that was on the back of the COVID-19 pandemic as businesses rushed to hire after massive layoffs.

Under Trump, there have been several months of limited job growth that have been hyper-focused on specific sectors like healthcare. On average, employers added only 15,000 jobs a month in 2025. Meanwhile, the US economy lost 92,000 jobs this year in February.

Layoffs are also on the upswing. Job cuts jumped 16 percent between April and May, marking the most layoffs since May 2020 during the height of the pandemic, according to Challenger, Gray and Christmas, with artificial intelligence (AI) as a driving force behind the cuts. Slightly more than 97,000 people lost their jobs in May.

‘Oil is flowing’

Overnight, 12.5 million barrels of crude oil travelled through the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil is normally shipped, according to US Vice President JD Vance. However, data from Kpler shows that travel through the strait is still low, with six verified crossings on June 17.

With the strait starting to open, oil prices tumbled to their lowest levels since the early days of the war as the temporary deal to end fighting and pull back sanctions elevated pressure on global supply.

Brent crude futures LCOc1 dropped $0.78 or one percent to $76.51 in midday trading.

Shipments of liquefied natural gas (LNG) have also ramped up, and a QatarEnergy LNG vessel has returned to Ras Laffan, where it has loaded more than 209,000 cubic metres, according to Kplr.

China’s foreign minister says that emerging economies remain underrepresented in global governance institutions.

Presenting China’s new white paper on making global governance more equitable, minister Wang Yi argued that the role of the United Nations should be strengthened and developing countries should have a stronger voice in the world body.

In Beijing’s stated view, all countries should have an equal voice in global affairs, which means the Global South should have more representation.

China’s call comes as the world is engulfed in many armed conflicts and facing serious economic challenges.

But is Beijing now presenting itself as a leader of the Global South? And will it be able to garner enough support to play that role?

Presenter: Sami Zeidan

Guests:

Steve Tsang – Director of the SOAS China Institute

Cobus van Staden – Head of research at the China-Global South Project

Allen Carlson – Associate professor in the Government Department at Cornell University

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has signed a US-Iran memorandum of understanding aimed at ending the war between the two countries. US President Donald Trump and Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian signed on Wednesday.

The value of Iran’s currency has risen by more than 15 percent against the US dollar, and its stock market has shattered records in the wake of the memorandum of understanding agreed between the United States and Iran on Sunday.

However, Iranians suffering for years from extremely high inflation and a plunging rial have found little economic relief as the prices of basic goods, such as food, remain high despite the diplomatic breakthrough.

The Iranian economy has suffered due to decades of US sanctions. The economic crisis was exacerbated after the US and Israel launched a war against Iran on February 28. As subsequent US naval blockade on Iranian ports further added to the misery of Iranians.

In Ferdowsi Street, the beating heart of Tehran’s foreign exchange market, the scene on Thursday was a stark departure from the panic of recent months. Exchange office boards flashed rapidly changing numbers as foreign currencies, led by the dollar, took a sharp dive.

“We closed our doors just hours before the official announcement of the US-Iran understanding at a rate of 1.8 million rials to the dollar,” Amir, a 35-year-old exchange office worker who asked to remain anonymous, told Al Jazeera. “Now it has fallen to 1.54 million rials, and we expect further declines.”

Amir noted a significant increase in sales volumes although buyers remained scarce as many anticipated the rial would strengthen further, potentially dropping to 1.4 million to the dollar or lower.

The recent gains mark a sharp turnaround. After the outbreak of the war, the exchange rate jumped to a historic peak of 1.9 million rials (190,000 tomans) to the dollar in March before settling at about 1.685 million just before recent attacks carried out despite a ceasefire.

A disconnect in the grocery aisles

Despite the rial’s recovery, a walk through Tehran’s grocery stores reveals a starkly different reality. For Iranians grappling with the economic fallout of crippling sanctions and the US naval blockade, the diplomatic thaw has yet to lower the cost of living.

Reza, a 42-year-old Tehran resident, told Al Jazeera that prices for daily staples like milk, cheese, cooking oil and flour remain unchanged. “They say the dollar dropped, but my shopping basket costs the same as last week,” he said. “This means the agreement hasn’t reached our pockets yet.”

From behind the cash register, 55-year-old shop owner Ramin echoed his customer’s frustration. He explained that while the government continues to distribute subsidised goods like bread, the fluctuations of the free-market dollar do not immediately impact basic food prices.

The value of the dollar on the free market varies from the official exchange rate.

Pointing to a shelf of imported goods, another shopkeeper named Karim noted that items like shampoo, toothpaste and laundry detergent are still locked at inflated prices.

“Distributors say they bought these goods two months ago at the old dollar rates,” Karim explained. “Prices will remain high until the old stock runs out and new goods enter at the lower exchange rates.” He estimated it would take at least two weeks for the market to adjust, meaning Iranians will continue to face compounding inflation in the interim.

Euphoria on the trading floor

While Main Street struggles, Tehran’s stock market is experiencing an unprecedented boom amid expectations of improved economic conditions. The trading floor has been awash in green since the initial leaks of the Washington-Tehran agreement emerged.

On Monday, the main index jumped by a record-breaking 161,000 points in a single session, marking the highest-ever influx of cash from individual investors.

By Tuesday, the market continued its staggering ascent, climbing another 112,000 points to cross the psychological barrier of 5 million, ultimately settling at a historic high of 5.1 million.

Saeed, a 40-year-old investor, called it a “historic day”. He noted that investors are rushing to buy shares in the energy and petrochemical sectors, betting heavily on the resumption of exports and the reopening of global markets.

However, Saeed remained cautiously optimistic. “The stock market is often driven by rumours,” he warned. “I don’t want to repeat the experience of the 2015 nuclear deal when the market soared and then collapsed after the US withdrawal.”

He was referring to US President Donald Trump’s 2018 withdrawal from the agreement, under which Iran agreed to restrictions on its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.

Stagnation in real estate and electronics

The wait-and-see approach in effect has paralysed other sectors of the economy. In central Tehran’s electronics hubs, 38-year-old shop owner Reza reported that while the prices of imported appliances have dropped in tandem with the dollar, sales have stalled because customers are holding out for steeper discounts.

A similar freeze has gripped the housing market. Nasrin, a 36-year-old real estate agent in northern Tehran, observed that a recent price surge that accompanied the initial truce has now given way to stagnation. Many property owners are clinging to inflated prices, seemingly unaware that the market dynamics have shifted, bringing property transactions to a virtual standstill.

‘Not a magic wand’

For macroeconomic experts, the mixed market signals are entirely expected. Hossein Selahvarzi, the former head of the Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture, cautioned that the new agreement is “not a magic wand” capable of instantly fixing years of structural issues in the economy.

While the war severely damaged Iran’s infrastructure, Selahvarzi emphasised that the roots of the country’s economic malaise were firmly planted well before the bombing began.

“War is the enemy of investment, production, trade and public welfare,” Selahvarzi told Al Jazeera. He warned against the analytical mistake of believing that a peace memorandum alone would revive the economy.

“Ending the military confrontation does not necessarily mean the beginning of economic prosperity,” he said, stressing that restoring stability to the business environment remains the country’s most urgent priority.

“What we have before us is a limited and fragile opportunity to correct course and rebuild the economy, and this opportunity could be lost quickly if not managed correctly.”

For half a century, a handful of wealthy Western democracies wrote the rules of the global economy.

But the world order is becoming crowded, and even as the Group of Seven (G7) remains one of the world’s most influential clubs, a challenger has emerged.

BRICS has expanded, and says it wants a bigger voice for the Global South. This bloc of nations speaks for nearly half the world’s population – and accounts for a growing share of global output, energy and raw materials.

In the space between the two, a third force is gathering pace: the so-called middle powers, nations too big to ignore and unwilling to pick a side.

Brent crude drops to lowest price since early March before signing of framework deal to end US-Israel war on Iran.

Oil prices are continuing to drop, as hopes rise for a return to stability in global energy markets before the signing of a framework agreement on ending the United States-Israel war on Iran.

Futures for Brent crude due for delivery in August dipped nearly 1 percent on Wednesday, extending declines of about 5 percent on each of the previous two days.

The international benchmark stood at $78.24 a barrel as of 08:00 GMT, the lowest price since March 3, three days after the start of the war.

After rising more than 50 percent during the conflict, the price of crude on Wednesday afternoon in Asia was only about 7 percent higher than before the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran on February 28.

“The immediate prognosis, it seems, is optimistic and assumes no significant setbacks,” Tamas Varga, an analyst at PVM Oil Associates in London, said in a commentary.

“Over the last four trading sessions, Brent, for example, has fallen by $17 [per barrel], a discernible vote of confidence that the worst, at least as far as supply disruptions are concerned, is behind us,” Varga said.

Vandana Hari, the founder of the Singapore-based oil market analysis provider Vanda Insights, said that while the announcement of the US and Iran’s memorandum of understanding (MoU) has brought relief to markets, the “hardest part, on delivering the pledges and promises, is yet to come”.

“Crude’s slide is entirely sentiment-driven,” Hari told Al Jazeera.

“The market is front-running the prospective reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and likely pricing in the best-case scenario for the normalisation of flows, which means the potential hiccups from logistics to renewed geopolitical tensions are not being adequately factored in,” Hari said.

While many details of the MoU due to be signed on Friday remain unclear, Iran is expected to end its near-total closure of the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for the US lifting its blockade of Iranian ports, among other concessions.

The full reopening of the strait would be a crucial step towards restoring confidence in energy supply chains, after nearly four months of turmoil arising from the war.

Maritime traffic in the strait, which flows between Iran and Oman, has been reduced to a trickle due to the threat of Iranian missiles, drones and mines, reducing the global oil supply by an estimated 14 million barrels each day.

Even if the war does end, global energy flows are expected to take months to fully recover.

More than 500 vessels are estimated to be waiting to exit the Gulf through the strait, while the process of ensuring the channel is free of naval mines is likely to take weeks at a minimum.

Stephen Cotton, the general-secretary of the International Transport Workers’ Federation, said the signing ceremony scheduled to take place in Geneva, Switzerland, would be “at best the beginning” of a process of normalisation.

“The backlog of stranded vessels and the need for crew changes and rest mean a realistic return to normal shipping patterns is weeks, if not months, away,” Cotton said in a statement on Monday.

US Department of Justice claims NAACP lawsuit threatens ‘national, economic, and energy security’.

The United States government has intervened on the side of Elon Musk’s xAI in a legal dispute over a $20bn data centre, claiming that efforts to block a related power project threaten national security.

In a court motion filed this week, the Department of Justice requested the dismissal of a lawsuit accusing xAI of illegally operating dozens of natural gas turbines erected to power the Colossus 2 data center in Memphis, Tennessee.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the largest civil rights group for African Americans, filed the lawsuit in April under the 1963 Clean Air Act, which allows citizens to seek injunctions and civil penalties against alleged polluters.

The NAACP alleges that xAI built the turbines, located in nearby Southaven, Mississippi, without obtaining the necessary permits, exposing hundreds of thousands of residents to harmful pollutants linked to “increases in asthma, respiratory diseases, heart problems, and certain cancers”.

The lawsuit notes that a “much larger share” of residents are Black compared with the US general population.

In its motion, filed in a US District Court on Monday, the Justice Department accused the NAACP of threatening “national, economic, and energy security by seeking to shut off the power supply for artificial intelligence innovation that supports the Department of War’s military operations”.

The motion also claims that the US Constitution vests the power to seek civil penalties “conclusively and preclusively” in the executive branch, including the “discretion to decide when such an enforcement action is unwarranted or inconsistent with federal enforcement priorities”.

Adam Gustafson, the top prosecutor at the Justice Department’s environment and natural resources division, said in a statement that the government would “not sit idly by while private organisations use environmental laws to undermine our national security”.

xAI, which is a subsidiary of Musk’s SpaceX, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Earthjustice, an advocacy group representing the NAACP in the lawsuit, condemned the intervention as a “massive power grab” by President Donald Trump’s administration.

“Trump’s Justice Department wants to shield Elon Musk’s data center company, xAI, from being held accountable for its illegal pollution – and it’s attempting to grab power from impacted communities, the courts, and Congress to do so,” Laura Thoms, director of enforcement for Earthjustice, said in a statement.

“There is no moral or legal precedent for this.”

Ann Carlson, a professor of environmental law at  UCLA School of Law, described the Trump administration’s argument as a “brazen attempt” to limit enforcement of the Clean Air Act.

“It’s based on a radical notion that the executive branch can dismiss lawsuits brought by citizen groups that Congress has authorised based on no rationale at all,” Carlson told Al Jazeera, adding that the Justice Department’s position would let “polluters off the hook even for blatant violations of the law.”

“This motion is also just one of many ways in which the administration is undermining efforts to protect air quality,” Carlson said.

The Trump administration has cultivated close ties with Musk, the world’s richest man, tapping the tech titan as a temporary cost-cutting tsar and using xAI’s flagship model Grok in the Pentagon’s drive to become an “AI-enabled fighting force”.

In testimony in support of Monday’s motion, Cameron Stanley, the Pentagon’s top official for AI, said that Grok had been used to launch more than 2,000 munitions at 2,000 targets within the first 96 hours of the US-Israel war on Iran.

If Grok cannot be deployed and upgraded due to “limitations in energy supply or limited reserve compute capability”, numerous tools used by the Pentagon would be “severely impacted”, Stanley said in a declaration made under oath.

The preliminary deal to end US-Israel war on Iran has sent oil prices tumbling to a three-month low amid hopes that the Strait of Hormuz will reopen.

But it could be months before American consumers see major relief at the petrol pump.

The closure of the strategic chokepoint disrupted global energy markets for more than three months, cutting off a major shipping route through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas normally passes.

On Sunday, US President Donald Trump said prices would “drop like a rock” once the strait reopens, a claim he has made multiple times in the past few weeks.

However, experts caution that a major decline in prices is unlikely to happen as quickly as Trump suggests.

While Asian markets rely more heavily on oil shipped through the Strait of Hormuz than North American markets, tighter supply and steady demand have pushed prices higher worldwide.

On Monday, petrol prices in the US remained above $4 per gallon (3.78 litres), averaging $4.06 nationwide, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA). This was a dip from a high in early May of $4.48 per gallon.

By comparison, prices stood at $2.98 per gallon on February 28, when the US and Israel first struck Iran, triggering a ripple effect across global energy markets.

Energy prices have risen sharply in the US in recent months, increasing 7.7 percent over the last two months alone, and are up 40 percent from a year ago, according to last week’s inflation report from the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics,

However, prices are beginning to fall, a dip that began as Washington and Tehran entered negotiations.

“The potential deal that the US and Iran agreed to over the weekend certainly could pave the way for even lower prices… in the next two to three days by what we saw over the weekend,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, which tracks petrol prices, told Al Jazeera.

But De Haan expects a plateau and says that consumers may not see gas prices at pre-war levels until 2027, even if the ceasefire holds.

“It may take many months, if not beyond a year, for global oil inventories to recover to pre-war levels,” De Haan said.

Amid strains on the supply chain, producers will also need time to ramp up output, while port bottlenecks and heightened demand during the busy summer travel season could delay any substantial relief for everyday consumers.

“There are some mitigating factors that are going to slow the decline in prices. There are a lot of organisations and companies that have to re-up their stockpiles [like the US’s strategic petroleum reserve] and fulfil contracts that have been on hold for the last few months,” John Deal, managing director of capital markets at the Post Oak Group investment bank, said.

Supply chain strains

Fixing kinks in the supply chain takes time.

Oil production slumped amid the war. More than 14 million barrels per day, or 14 percent of the world’s demand, has been shut, according to the International Energy Agency.

Deal said it would take time to get oil production back online.

“My sense is that there’s going to be sustained high demand through the summertime, and we probably won’t get back to pre-war levels [on petrol prices] until after the summer, maybe September or October,” Deal said.

Mark Jones, a professor of political science at Rice University, said that producers might be reluctant to bring full operations back online until they can see the ceasefire hold.

The agreement opening the blockade is for a 60-day negotiation period between the two countries.

“Many [producers] may be reluctant to restart production until they are convinced that the peace will hold, because the last thing they want to do is carry out the costly effort to restart production only to see the conflict revived and then have to shut it down once again,” Jones told Al Jazeera.

Getting production back online is also dependent on the impact individual producers have faced throughout the war.

Refineries that were shut as a precaution could reach as much as 95 percent capacity within 40-60 days, Vitol Bahrain’s head of research, Bader Nooruddin, told the Reuters news agency. Those damaged in the fighting could take much longer.

But bottlenecks at ports could be the biggest hurdle, according to Deal.

“There’s a lag time with shipping capacity. Shipping capacity is perhaps the most significant constraint,” Deal said.

This is because there are more than 500 ships still awaiting passage, according to shipping data from Kpler.

With the ships headed all over the world, it will take them weeks to reach their destinations, dock, and unload at the ports.

That also means a wave of empty ships is waiting in limbo for spots at ports to load cargo and ramp back up to normal operations.

Major shipping giants are in a holding pattern.

Norway’s Wallenius Wilhelmsen and Denmark’s Maersk both told Reuters that they have not changed their Middle East operations in the wake of the announcement.

During the war, there was limited passage through the Strait of Hormuz, with an average of 10 ships a day passing through, compared with 135 that normally transit the waterway, according to an analysis by Bloomberg.

“Tankers take months to reach their final destination and then come back again. So the ability to replenish the stocks is going to take until, I think, the early fall, just from a shipping perspective, to get back to the status quo that was in place before the conflict started,” Jones said, referring to the preferred term for the months of September through November in North America.

At the same time, US strategic reserves are running low, at their lowest levels since 1983. Reserves have tumbled by 18 percent since the war began.

“Demand might keep prices high through the summer as strategic reserves get refilled,” Deal added.

Jet fuel demand will also put pressure on consumers amid the normally busy JuneAugust travel season in the US.

“The war has really affected airlines and their ability to schedule and anticipate how the summer months are going to go,” Deal added.

In April, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said that airfares for the carrier may have to jump as much as 20 percent on higher fuel prices.

Grocery woes

The increase in prices is also hitting food budgets.

The most recent consumer price index report showed US inflation ticked up by 4.2 percent compared with this time last year. While inflationary pressures were mostly driven by fuel prices, the impact has still been felt at the grocery store.

Almost half of the world’s urea, which is used in fertiliser, is produced in the Gulf region and passes through the Strait of Hormuz. For American farmers, that means access to fertilisers for the next crop season is more expensive.

Tomato prices, already driven up by Trump’s tariffs on Mexico, have surged 40 percent in the last year amid rising transportation costs.

Lettuce prices rose by more than 16 percent in May, and the price of ground beef increased by about 12 percent compared with this time last year.

Jones warned that food prices may not go down.

“Many retailers, wholesalers, and producers will keep them where they are or only reduce them if forced to from a sales perspective. Unlike petrol, which tends to ebb and flow with the price of oil, prices for many other goods that have been adversely affected by all of this are much less likely to return to where they were prior to the start of the conflict,” Jones said.

“For groceries, for manufacturing goods, for anything that has gone up during the conflict, the price that is there now often becomes the new baseline from which prices move in the future.”

This can be compared with the COVID-19 pandemic period. When the pandemic stalled supply chains, producers increased prices. A 2024 investigation by the Federal Trade Commission found that retail grocers kept prices elevated after supply chain constraints brought on by the pandemic had eased.

“Some in the grocery retail industry seem to have used rising costs as an opportunity to further raise prices to increase their profits,” the report said.

The lawsuit originally filed in September focused on broader alleged misappropriation of confidential information.

A United States federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI that accused rival Sam Altman’s OpenAI of stealing trade secrets for chatbots.

US District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco said on Monday that xAI failed to show that OpenAI induced former xAI senior engineer Xuechen Li to divulge confidential information related to its Grok chatbot, or that OpenAI engineers knew Li might have disclosed any.

Lin dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice, saying it would be “futile” to continue. She dismissed an earlier version in February. The lawsuit originally filed last September focused on broader alleged misappropriation of confidential information, including source code, by xAI employees who left for jobs at OpenAI.

Monday’s decision is Musk’s second legal loss against OpenAI in four weeks.

On May 18, a federal jury ruled against Musk, the world’s richest person, in his $150bn lawsuit accusing OpenAI and Altman of “stealing a charity” by betraying the company’s original mission as a nonprofit to enrich themselves.

The xAI business is part of Musk’s rocket, satellite and AI company SpaceX.

Lawyers for xAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment. OpenAI and its lawyers did not immediately respond to similar requests.

Discussing past work

The amended complaint focused on a presentation that Li gave while OpenAI was recruiting him.

Musk’s company said OpenAI wanted secrets related to the July 2025 release of Grok 4, knowing its forthcoming update to ChatGPT “could not compete” on complex reasoning, and because OpenAI was “lagging” in reinforcement learning and post-training techniques that Li understood.

But the judge said asking job candidates to discuss their prior work was routine, and one could not infer that OpenAI pushed Li to leak anything confidential.

“To hold otherwise would potentially expose employers to liability any time they inquire about a candidate’s past work,” Lin wrote.

OpenAI has said Li never worked for the company and that it never acquired xAI secrets.

In seeking dismissal, lawyers for OpenAI wrote: “OpenAI does not need or want anyone’s trade secrets, especially not from xAI, which is failing in the marketplace and hemorrhaging talent.”

Li is being sued separately by xAI and has denied wrongdoing.

As Washington and Tehran move towards a long-term ceasefire agreement, Gulf states will likely look for new long-term security solutions when a war in their region – which they did not start – finally ends.

It comes as United States President Donald Trump cancelled new strikes on Iran saying that a deal with Tehran was imminent, and that a “time” and “place” for signing would soon be announced.

In Tehran, officials appeared more cautious with one senior Iranian official telling Al Jazeera that the government was still reviewing a proposed Memorandum of Understanding with Washington.

Subsequent comments by Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif point to a deal being made, and what follows in the coming days could have important implications for collective regional security.

Attacks on the Gulf

The United States operates military facilities in at least 19 locations across the MENA region, including permanent bases in Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Between 40,000 and 50,000 US troops were stationed across the region before the war on Iran started.

This US-Gulf nexus appeared to insulate states from conflicts engulfing other parts of the region, but over the past four months, Gulf states hosting US military facilities have been targeted by Iran.

“If there is a way to describe the prevailing security model in the region since the 1980s, the concept of security partnerships best encapsulates it,” said Mahjoub Al-Zuwairi, an academic and expert on Middle East politics.

“The countries of the region have chosen to align their security with broad international alliances. For decades, this model has provided a reasonable deterrent and logistical and intelligence depth that is difficult to replace.”

A security umbrella with holes

The war on Iran has exposed a paradox – while Iranian officials have repeatedly referred to their Gulf neighbours as “brothers”, they have also repeatedly targeted them during the war.

Despite the protestations of Gulf states that no attacks on Iran were launched from their soil, they have been repeatedly targeted.

At least 28 people have been killed across the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states in suspected Iranian drone and rocket attacks, since the US and Israel launched their offensive on Iran on 28 February. This has led to questions about the US-Gulf security arrangement.

“Just the war itself has pierced that sense of security, the US security umbrella is moribund at worst, or ineffective at best,” Simon Mabon, professor of international relations at Lancaster University, told Al Jazeera.

“They’ve long relied on it for their own security. Yet the presence of US forces on their territory directly meant they became targets. They can’t escape their geography [and] despite the tensions, despite the hostilities, despite the attacks, Iran isn’t going away. They have to find a way of dealing with this reality.”

The economic cost of war

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has proven be a setback for some Gulf states working to diversify their energy-reliant economies towards tourism, services and finance, but not all have been affected equally.

Saudi Arabia was able to redirect some oil exports through its East-West pipeline to the Red Sea, while Oman – whose main ports are outside the Strait of Hormuz – has also benefited from rising energy prices.

The UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar have been more heavily affected due to their dependence on the waterway for their energy exports, but the war has encouraged new thinking on long-standing security and economic arrangements.

“There are new pipelines being set up, but the capacity of these alternatives is infinitely smaller than the Strait itself,” said Mabon. “It will take enormous investment and years of development before they can come close to replacing it.”

Moving closer to Iran?

One possible lesson from the conflict is that Gulf states may seek engagement with Iran rather than confrontation, something that Gulf states had already made some groundwork on before the US-Israel war began.

The UAE restored diplomatic ties with Tehran in 2022, and a year later, Saudi Arabia and Iran agreed to normalise relations in a deal brokered by China.

Al-Zuwairi says that the conflict could revive plans for MENA-led regional security arrangements, as envisioned in the 2019 Hormuz Peace Initiative, which proposed a Gulf security framework involving Iran, Iraq and the six GCC states.

But the distrust fostered since then – notably Tehran’s strikes on its Gulf neighbours – would make such a formation unlikely in the near future. 

“The recent war has opened the door wide to reconsidering the Gulf security system with its neighbours,” Al-Zuwairi said.

“How can Tehran propose a non-aggression pact while raining missiles on neighbouring cities? The initiative appears theoretically sound but practically bankrupt unless Iranian behaviour changes.”

Looking beyond Washington?

The solution for the Gulf could be a hybrid arrangement where ties with Washington are maintained, but other regional and domestic options are explored, including greater investment in local defence industries.

A possible blueprint for this could be the mutual defence agreement between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan last September, stating that an attack on one country would be considered an attack on both.

Yet previous instances when Gulf states felt abandoned by the US have led to divergent responses, with the UAE and Bahrain deepening ties with Israel, but a new paradigm means that a more collective action to the issue of security might be considered.

“The war has demonstrated that every guarantor, no matter how many banners it flies, primarily protects its own interests,” said Al-Zuwairi.

“The region ends up paying the price for a war it did not choose … The security of the Gulf will not be created in Washington … It will be created when Gulf countries recognise that they must build it themselves, because when fires start, it is always those closest to the flames who pay the price.”

SpaceX lands on public markets as the sixth largest US company by market value.

SpaceX has debuted on US markets with a market valuation of more than $2 trillion, minting CEO Elon Musk as the world’s first trillionaire.

Shares are set to open on Friday at $150 per share, marking a 6.6 percent increase from the initial public offering (IPO) price, valuing the company at $1.96 trillion putting the aerospace company on track to become the sixth-largest company in the United States.

The company sold $75bn in shares, immediately valuing it at $1.77 trillion. The IPO was oversubscribed four times higher than was otherwise expected, according to the Reuters news agency.

Of the institutional investors allocated, according to Bloomberg News, as much as 70 percent went to what are called long-only investments — a strategy in which holders buy assets based on the expectation that their value will grow over time — and sovereign wealth funds, including those from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as well.

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell and Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen rang the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York City opening bell at 9:30am local time as US markets opened.

On Thursday, protesters gathered outside the MarketSite to protest the IPO amid continued allegations that Grok, part of xAI, a subsidiary of SpaceX, allowed users to create non-consensual deepfake sexualised images before the IPO debut.

Shares of SpaceX did not trade until the middle of the trading day as the exchange collected buy and sell orders and underwriters delayed trading until supply and demand were balanced.

“We would expect SpaceX to see an immediate pop in trading due to the hype around the deal, north of 20 percent perhaps,” said Samuel Kerr, global head of equity capital markets at Mergermarket. “Anything lower would actually make me nervous.”

Exchanges and trading firms are eager to avoid the technical mishaps that marred Meta’s 2012 debut. With SpaceX widely viewed as a dress rehearsal for a new generation of mega-listings, market participants will also be watching for signals on investor appetite in advance of forthcoming IPOs for AI heavyweights Anthropic and OpenAI.

The landmark listing cemented Musk’s status as the first trillionaire ever and propelled SpaceX into the ranks of the world’s most valuable companies — even though the firm posted a loss of nearly $5bn last year and generated only a fraction of the revenue brought in by similarly valued tech giants.

The surge comes amid growth driven by its Starlink subsidiary, which drives as much as 80 percent of its revenue.

On Friday, SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket with 29 satellites into space from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

Wall Street and Asian markets rally on hopes for an end to the US-Israel war on Iran.

Stock markets have surged following US President Donald Trump’s announcement that he called off planned strikes against Iran and a peace deal with Tehran is imminent.

Wall Street’s benchmark S&P500 index finished nearly 1.8 percent higher on Thursday, ending a three-day streak of losses for the biggest single-day gain since April.

The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite jumped 2.5 percent, while the older, blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average gained about 1.9 percent.

The rally continued in the Asia Pacific on Friday, with markets in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Australia racking up gains.

South Korea’s Kospi, the best-performing major index this year, surged more than 8 percent in morning trading, while Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 rose as much as 4 percent.

Taiwan’s TAIEX gained about 2.4 percent, and Australia’s ASX 200 rose about 1.8 percent.

In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Index was up more than 1 percent.

Brent crude, the primary international benchmark for oil prices, fell about 1 percent to below $89.50 a barrel on hopes for a return to normality in the Strait of Hormuz, which in peacetime carries about one-fifth of global energy supplies.

The market rebound came after Trump on Thursday suggested that a deal to end the war on Iran could be signed as soon as this weekend.

“We just made a great settlement of the war with Iran… subject to finalisation of documents,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office of the White House.

Iran has not publicly confirmed Trump’s claims, but a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman told reporters a memorandum of understanding with the US is “under consideration”.

“For the rally to be sustained, investors will want to not only see the actual deal being signed, but a complete reopening of the Strait of Hormuz,” Khoon Goh, head of Asia research for ANZ Bank, told Al Jazeera.

“Only then will we see the gains extend.”

Fabien Yip, a market analyst at the online broker IG Group in Sydney, Australia, said the rally reflected a “meaningful easing of geopolitical risk”, as well as anticipation over Friday’s market debut of SpaceX, set to be the largest of its kind in history.

“The broader read on today’s Asian follow-through is that dip-buying interest remains genuine,” Yip told Al Jazeera.

“That matters for how you characterise what’s happened over the past week.

“This looks less like a structural break in the bull market and more like a healthy reset after a rapid, near-straight-line advance, the kind of consolidation that can potentially extend a rally’s longevity.”

The Washington institution cut its global growth forecast by 0.4 percentage points to 2.5 percent, citing surging energy prices, inflation and borrowing costs.

The conflict in the Middle East is set to bring global economic growth to its slowest since the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Bank has warned.

In its latest Global Economic Prospects report, published on Thursday, the Washington-based institution cut its global growth forecast for 2026 to 2.5 percent from the 2.9 percent it had predicted in January, citing surging energy prices, rising inflation and higher borrowing costs.

The report highlights the significant economic costs of the conflict, which is at risk of flaring up again, as the fragile ceasefire between the United States and Iran is tested on both sides.

The analysis warns that the outlook could decline further if supply disruptions worsen. Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz – a vital passageway for oil and gas transit – in response to the hostilities launched by the US and Israel has put huge stress upon global energy and other supply chains.

The World Bank estimates that Brent crude prices — the international oil benchmark — will average $94 a barrel this year, 36 percent above last year’s average. Fertiliser prices are forecast to increase significantly this year, with knock-on effects for food prices.

Overall, the closure of the strategic waterway will help to push global inflation to 4 percent this year, a substantial increase from last year’s rate of 3.3 percent.

However, the World Bank cautions that global growth could plummet to as low as 1.3 percent this year, should energy supply disruptions worsen, with inflation pushing to 4.4 percent.

The World Bank report also cautions that developing countries are on the front line of the potential impact.

In its report, the institution has downgraded its growth forecasts for two-thirds of countries since January. Global growth is expected to improve to 2.8 percent in 2027, but will remain 0.4 percentage points below the average during the 2010s, during which the world economy was recovering from the global financial crisis.

Excluding China and India, the report worries that developing countries have made little progress towards narrowing their per capita income gap with wealthy nations over the past decade.

“Developing countries have faced a series of challenges over the last decade,” said Ajay Banga, president of the World Bank Group. “The impact differs by country, but the basic test is the same: protect people and preserve stability today, without giving up on growth and jobs tomorrow.”

The World Bank is pledging to assist any developing country experiencing the economic fallout of the Middle East conflict. The organisation says it has set aside up to $60bn to help. It added that if the conflict persists, it can increase its support to $100bn.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, better known as NASA, has unveiled the crew for its upcoming Artemis III spaceflight, a preparatory mission as the United States plans to return to the Moon.

On Tuesday, it was revealed that astronauts Andre Douglas, Frank Rubio, Luca Parmitano and Randy Bresnik will be leading the flight. Serving as a backup is veteran test pilot Bob Heintz, who is able to substitute into any role.

Their two-week mission will focus on collecting research and practising in-space docking procedures in preparation for a future Moon landing.

While no women were named to the Artemis III flight, the newly announced crew represents a range of experiences and backgrounds.

Making his first spaceflight is Florida-born engineer Douglas, 40, who was a backup crew member for NASA’s last major spaceflight, Artemis II, which flew a loop around the Moon.

Douglas will serve as mission specialist on Artemis III, and his presence on the flight will make him one of roughly two dozen African American people to travel to space, out of a population of hundreds of space travellers so far.

Also serving as mission specialist will be Rubio, a 50-year-old Salvadoran American physician who used to pilot Black Hawk helicopters for the US Army. He currently holds the record for the longest single-duration spaceflight by a US astronaut, at 371 days.

The oldest member of the four-man crew is its 58-year-old commander, Bresnik. A former US Navy test pilot and Marine, Bresnik is the only Artemis III crew member to have participated in a space shuttle mission, back in 2009. That programme has since been retired.

More recently, in 2017, Bresnik served as the commander for the International Space Station.

The fourth and final member of the Artemis III mission is its pilot, Parmitano, 49. He will be the only astronaut on the mission who is not a US citizen.

Born in Paterno, Italy, Parmitano has a background in his country’s air force. In 2019, he too served as commander on board the International Space Station, becoming the first Italian to do so.

“ Each of you possess a unique background,” said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman, who introduced the astronauts. “Your vast experience and unwavering dedication to NASA’s mission enables you to help make us and take this next great step in space exploration.”

The Artemis III mission will be a public-private partnership. Three rockets will blast off as part of the initiative.

One will carry the four-man crew into orbit around Earth in an Orion spacecraft. Another two rockets will bear aloft Moon lander models from Blue Origin and SpaceX, private firms owned respectively by tech entrepreneurs Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

The Orion spacecraft will then practice rendezvous procedures with each of the two landers, in preparation for similar manoeuvres during future Moon missions. The Artemis III flight is set to take off before the end of 2027.

“Artemis III will be an extraordinary demonstration of what is possible when the greatest aerospace companies across the United States, alongside our European partners, come together to showcase the technological might and ambition of the free world,” said Isaacman, a Trump appointee who has experience commanding private space flights for SpaceX.

Explosion prompts concern

The mood at Tuesday’s unveiling ceremony was celebratory, as each newly announced astronaut took the stage to soaring music and standing ovations.

But looming over the event were concerns related to the explosion of an uncrewed Blue Origin New Glenn rocket in Florida on May 28.

That blast sent a mushroom cloud billowing above the city of Cape Canaveral, and it caused severe damage to a launchpad complex where the takeoff was scheduled.

Representatives from both NASA and Blue Origin, however, took the stage to wave aside any concerns.

“While we recognise there are questions about how Blue Origin’s recent anomaly impacts our plans, setbacks are a learning opportunity,” said Jeremy Parsons, NASA’s acting deputy administrator.

He added that NASA was taking an “active role” with its partners to “ensure the right outcomes are achieved”. The private firms, in turn, were granted “unparalleled access” to NASA experts, technology and test facilities.

“We are confident that New Glenn will be ready for Artemis III, together with Blue Origin,” Parsons said.

John Couluris, a representative for Blue Origin, likewise described the May 28 explosion as an “anomaly”.

“We’ve redoubled our efforts and are moving forward,” Couluris said, describing Blue Origin’s factories as “running around-the-clock shifts” to be ready for the Artemis III launch.

“We will measure ourselves not only by our successes but how we respond to setbacks.”

Race to the Moon

The race to beat China’s space programme was another theme that cropped up during Monday’s ceremony.

Several speakers alluded to China’s growing lunar landing programme, a rival to NASA’s efforts.

Earlier this year, the China Manned Space Agency announced its intentions to place a person on the Moon by 2030. Already, in 2024, China became the first country to retrieve soil samples from the far side of the Moon using robotics.

But lunar missions have been a point of pride for the US, which holds the distinction of completing the first crewed mission to the Moon in 1969.

Last April, the Artemis II flight marked the US’s return to lunar travel. For the first time since 1972, a crewed capsule flew beyond low Earth orbit, and it broke records for the farthest crewed flight into space.

Next year’s Artemis III mission is set to build on that effort. The administration of US President Donald Trump has signalled it would like to see astronauts land on the Moon before the Republican leader’s term ends in January 2029.

NASA officials have also described the Artemis programme as a stepping stone to establishing a permanent base on the Moon. Various speakers on Monday highlighted that vision.

Couluris, the Blue Origin representative, called the Moon an “eighth continent” for humans to explore.

NASA scientist Nicky Fox, meanwhile, described the Artemis III mission as part of the preparatory work that would enable the US “to plant astronaut boots back on the lunar surface — to stay”.

But the US’s lunar programme has faced numerous setbacks, as NASA engineers work to address technical issues that could otherwise cause life-threatening situations in deep space.

Originally, Artemis III was supposed to mark the US’s return to the Moon, bearing a crew to the lunar surface. But in February, that plan was scrapped in favour of the present-day project, which focuses on conducting practice drills in low Earth orbit.

“We will use this mission to reduce risk for our future crewed Moon missions with lander test articles from both Blue Origin and SpaceX, to ensure we will beat China back to the Moon,” Parsons said on Tuesday.

“This mission is deliberately designed to take calculated risks so that future crews will be safer and ultimately successful when we put boots on the lunar surface.”

Still, officials applauded Artemis III as a major step towards human beings reaching the Moon once more.

In a recorded statement, Senator Ted Cruz suggested that the Artemis III mission would also put the US a step ahead of China.

“At a time of growing competition with China in space, this mission will strengthen America’s leadership, expand our economy, and help secure a lasting American lunar presence,” he said.

“When America commits to a mission, we lead and we succeed.”

More than 100 days into the Iran conflict, 20 percent of the world’s energy flows remain disrupted, with the scenario described as the biggest supply shock in history.

For now, the nightmare scenario has been avoided. Oil prices are still at approximately $100 a barrel.

Many analysts have warned that a prolonged disruption to the Strait of Hormuz could send oil above $200 a barrel, triggering a global economic crisis.

Various countries have released their strategic reserves, exporters have found alternative routes and weaker demand has helped contain prices. But the buffers are thinning.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) warns the economic impact could linger well into 2027, even if the conflict ends tomorrow.

India’s fertility rate has for the first time fallen below the level needed to stop the population from shrinking, raising concerns about future labour shortages and an ageing society.

For decades, India has seen rapid population growth. According to government statistics, including the Sample Registration System (SRS) Statistical Report — the country’s largest demographic survey — India has had a falling fertility rate for some years, but the reproduction rate remained high enough to keep the population growing.

The latest SRS report, released last month by India’s Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, said that India’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR) had dropped to 1.9 children per woman – lower than the benchmark level of 2.1 needed to keep the population stable in the long run. TFR is the average number of children that a woman is expected to have in her lifetime. In the 2000s, India’s TFR was around 3.3 births per woman.

So, what is behind reduced fertility? Why does it matter and what are the consequences?

Here’s what we know:

What has led to the falling fertility rate ?

For decades starting in the 1970s, Indian governments and policymakers have tried to battle what they argued was overpopulation — too many people, and too few resources to manage for what was then a relatively poor nation.

Many top-down government initiatives — including a brief controversial effort to forcibly sterilise people in the 1970s — aimed to control India’s population.

Despite that, by 2019, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was still warning of a “population explosion”.

But by 2022, the first signs that India was about to tip over into uncharted territory: The National Family Health Survey released data suggesting that India’s TFR was falling fast, across communities. Yet a year later, India surpassed China to become the world’s most populous nation — and the trend of a declining fertility rate was swamped by the headlines of a 1.5 billion population.

Now, latest survey suggests that the prospect of a shrinking population might be more imminent than policymakers had planned for.

Experts say better access to education and contraceptives are among key factors behind the falling fertility rate — along with the increased costs of bringing up children.

“Total fertility rate often drops when more women in society have access to education, contraceptives and more agency in decision-making in households,”  Dipa Sinha, a development economist who works on social policy in India, told Al Jazeera. “It also drops when the economy becomes expensive so raising children also becomes expensive.”

She said there’s another reason too.

As infant mortality reduces, the desire to have more children also decreases. According to the latest SRS report, India has recorded a significant decline in infant deaths from 30 per 1,000 live births in 2019 to 24 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2024.

These factors also correlate almost perfectly with the differential levels of fertility rates across the country.

According to the May demographic survey report, India’s poorest states, such as Bihar in northern India with the lowest levels of education and high infant mortality rates, also recorded the highest fertility rate in the country at 2.9, followed by 2.6 in Uttar Pradesh.

By contrast, India’s capital New Delhi — with among the highest levels of education and lowest infant mortality rates — registered the lowest fertility rate, with an average of 1.2 births per woman. Southern states such as Tamil Nadu and Kerala, with among the best health and education systems in India, recorded a rate of 1.3.

“A lot of studies on regional development in India from the early 80s have revealed that states in the South have developed faster with respect to both the economy and women’s status in society. So these reasons have contributed to the lower fertility rate,” Sinha said.

What are the consequences of a falling fertility rate?

In 2005, India’s population entered a stage called ‘demographic dividend’, a phase when the proportion of a country’s working age population (15-64 years) is higher than the number of old people and children who are not in the labour force. According to the UNFPA, India’s demographic dividend is expected to last until 2055.

Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong entered this phase in the 1960s and rapidly became developed economies. China entered this phase in the 1980s and — coupled with economic reforms — rapidly rose as an economy. Today it’s the world’s second-largest economy.

In India too, the demographic dividend has helped propel the economy. But millions remain unemployed and — as with China — India is far from a developed economy.

Now, with a declining fertility rate, India might not be able to reap the benefits of a demographic dividend, experts are cautioning, because of a shrinking workforce and a rapidly ageing population.

“If there are fewer children born, then in about 30 to 40 years, India will have more older people who cannot participate in the labour force as much, posing a challenge to the country’s workforce,”  Sinha said.

What is the politics behind India’s population data?

The widely varying fertility rates in different parts of the country mean that northern states — which already have higher populations — will in coming years be home to an ever-increasing share of India’s population.

Southern states have already in recent years been complaining that the Indian federal government — especially under Modi — are being “punished” with fewer funds, Sinha said. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has historically struggled to make major political inroads in southern India, though it has made gains in recent years.

Now, “the distribution of financial resources by the country’s government to state governments” could become an even bigger political flashpoint, she suggested. Later this year, India’s government will introduce a policy in parliament called “delimitation”, which will assign seats to each state according to population figures based on the subcontinent’s new census that began earlier this year and conclude in 2027.

“When delimitation comes into effect, there is a fear that the share of southern seats in the Parliament will reduce,” Sinha added.

Moreover, India’s ruling BJP has long stirred the stereotype that Muslims in India are producing more children than Hindus — fanning fears among Hindus that Muslims might some day overtake them as the majority faith in India. The Hindu far-right has been urging Hindus to have more kids. In February, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief, Mohan Bhagwat, urged Hindu couples to have at least three to four children to prevent the community’s long-term societal decline.

In reality, the Muslim population of India was 13 percent in the last census in 2011. Government data shows that the Muslim fertility rate has been falling faster than in any other religious group, India, including Hindus. The fertility rate among Muslims fell from 4.41 to 2.36 between 1992 and 2021, while it dropped from 3.3 to 1.94 for Hindus.

The latest survey further suggests that India’s fertility rate is falling sharply across faiths.

Is India responding to its declining fertility rate?

While the Indian government has not yet announced a nationwide policy to tackle its falling fertility rate, individual states have been trying to encourage people to have more children.

Last month, the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh said families will receive 30,000 rupees ($314) for the birth of a third child and 40,000 for a fourth child ($418). According to the SRS data, Andhra Pradesh’s total fertility rate is 1.4.

States such as Goa in the west and Karnataka and Telangana in the south have introduced state-funded IVF centres for first-time parents, encouraging people to have more children.

Sinha said the Indian government should respect people’s individual reproductive choices and support them.

“It is important for countries like India to develop a public policy based on its demographic structure and future needs. So if we are going to be an ageing population, then we have to be ready to help a lot of old people,” she said. The country needs “a policy now which guarantees that they have better healthcare, pensions and social security in old age”.

Which other countries in Asia have seen dramatic fertility rate declines?

Other Asian countries such as China, Taiwan and South Korea are also experiencing fast-falling fertility rates.

According to the World Bank, China’s 1.0 fertility rate is well below the 2.1 replacement level.

Taiwan’s interior ministry said earlier this year that its total fertility rate is around 0.86 and likely to fall below that.

The United Nations says South Korea’s rate is approximately 0.75 children per woman – the lowest worldwide.

Chinese embassy in Washington, DC, condemns designation, calling it ‘discriminatory’.

The United States has designated Chinese corporate giants Alibaba, BYD and Baidu as companies that support China’s military, expanding its blacklist to some of the country’s best-known commercial brands.

The Pentagon included the firms in an update on Monday that is likely to complicate the fragile detente under way between Washington and Beijing after years of rocky relations.

China’s embassy in Washington, DC, condemned the listing as “discriminatory” and an example of the US government “overstretching” the concept of national security.

“Chinese companies that do business overseas have been strictly observing laws and regulations of their host countries,” an embassy spokesperson said.

“The US should stop its wrong practice and create a fair, just and non-discriminatory environment for Chinese companies.”

Alibaba, BYD and Baidu did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Pentagon’s list of “Chinese military companies,” which is updated annually, now includes 188 firms, up from 134 in 2025.

Firms included on the list, which was created in 2021, will be barred from consideration for US defence contracts from later this month.

The Pentagon defines “Chinese military companies” as entities owned or controlled by the Chinese military, or that contribute to China’s “military civil fusion”, referring to Beijing’s strategy of melding civilian and defence-related research and innovation.

Companies must also carry out some of their operations in the US to be designated.

The expansion of the blacklist comes less than a month after US President Donald Trump met Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing for a two-day summit aimed at lowering the temperature in their countries’ years-long trade war and tech rivalry.

Alibaba, Baidu, and BYD are among China’s most prominent brands, claiming the top spots in the e-commerce, internet search and electric vehicle markets, respectively.

The addition of several household brands not normally associated with the defence sector mirrors last year’s designation of tech firm Tencent, the owner of the ubiquitous messaging app WeChat.

Other additions to the list include RoboSense Technology, an AI and robotics company with headquarters in Shenzhen, and Hangzhou-based Unitree Robotics.

RoboSense Technology and Unitree Robotics did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Dennis Wilder, a national security expert who worked on China at the CIA and the White House’s National Security Council, expressed scepticism about the feasibility of implementing such a “broad-brush” blacklist.

“Although it may make some US firms wary of engaging with the labelled entities, in fact, many US firms already have deep relationships with these entities, that they are not going to give up unless there are real penalties attached to working commercial deals with them,” Wilder told Al Jazeera.

“Sanctions that range this widely are sanctions that don’t work. Unless the US is willing to decouple from the Chinese economy altogether, these sanctions are simply performative,” Wilder said.

As the World Cup nears, many Iranians say their normal enthusiasm for the event has been dampened by the co-host US’s war against their country as well as economic hardships.