Top Stories — Thursday, April 9, 2026
What is trending in the USA today? Here is Breaking News:
- Europe stocks rebound to stall as U.S-Iran ceasefire comes under strain — CNBC
- How War in the Middle East Paralyzed an Asian Food Giant — nyt News
- From war to weather: A 'super El Niño' event poses fresh risks to global food costs — CNBC
Europe stocks rebound to stall as U.S-Iran ceasefire comes under strain
Source: CNBC • Published: 4/9/2026, 11:50:22 AM
Shares in Europe are poised to open in mixed territory on Thursday, as the fragile truce agreed between the U.S. and Iran already shows signs ofstrain.
The U.K's FTSE 100 is set to open 0.4% higher, according to IG futures data, while France's Cac 40 is on course to open 0.2% lower. Germany's DAX 0.4% is expected to open lower.
Late on Wednesday, Iran's parliamentary speaker Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf accused the U.S. of violating the ceasefire less than 24 hours after it was agreed. Ghalibaf highlighted Israel's continued attacks on Lebanon, a drone's entry into Iranian airspace and the denial of the Islamic Republic's right to enrich uranium./
U.S. military forces will remain deployed in and around Iran until Tehran fully complies with the "real agreement," President Donald Trump said Wednesday, warning that any breach would trigger a military response larger than anything seen before.
Asian markets traded lower following the dispute. South Korea's Kospi was down 1.53%, while the small-cap Kosdaq declined 1.38%.
Japan's Nikkei 225 fell by 0.77%, while the Topix was 0.78% lower.
Thursday's moves follow a particularly strong session in Europe on Wednesday, when the pan-European Stoxx 600 index finished the day 3.7% higher.
Antofagasta, Lufthansa, and Easyjet were among the biggest risers on the day, each gaining around 10%.
How War in the Middle East Paralyzed an Asian Food Giant
Source: nyt News • Published: 4/9/2026, 10:54:42 AM
Reporting from across Vietnam’s Mekong River Delta
A dozen barges, heavy with just-harvested rice, cut their engines and floated to a halt. Two huge rice mills upriver stopped de-husking and bagging as electricity prices peaked.
It was midmorning in Vietnam’s Mekong River Delta — one of the most productive agricultural areas on Earth, in a nation that is the world’s second-largest exporter of rice.
Only birds and a stray motorbike could be heard.
And in the quiet, anxieties unfurled.
Boat captains talked about diesel prices doubling, surging higher and for longer than they did after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Workers on the water and near forklifts worried about having to find new jobs. The scarcity of fuel and fertilizer from the Middle East was already seizing up a food producing giant, and no matter how the war in Iran goes, the next planting looked shaky too.
“If I grow new crops, I’m just pouring money into the ground,” said Vo Minh Tam, a rice farmer who owns a farm supply store where he’s stopped stocking fertilizer because so many neighbors have paused plans for the May growing season. “I’d rather leave it abandoned.”
Vietnam’s stalled land of plenty shows how the war — even with the two-week cease-fire announced on Tuesday — has caused an immediate shock to the global food supply that’s sparking a chain reaction of long-term disruption. Until the massive backlog of fuel tankers pass through the narrow Strait of Hormuz that Iran has now promised to stop blocking, and until long-term peace looks probable, pain for farmers will continue, along with the risk of under-fertilized crops, lesser yields and higher grocery prices worldwide.
Asia is especially reliant on the Middle East for oil and fertilizer. The Mekong Delta and its 19 million residents are not easily disturbed or defeated, but even before the war, climate change was pushing saltwater into fields, twisting arms and budgets. The gut punch of an oil shock has added to frustration with an energy source that already felt like tainted treasure — black gold once just valuable, now looks cursed.
The war spurred fuel rationing within a week. Vietnam lacks ample reserves, so resource allocation has been zero-sum. One sector ends up pitted against another, creating a dilemma for this one-party Communist state.
Who wins in a fight for scarce resources? City-dwellers, manufacturers or the Mekong Delta, a pump-irrigated plain that exports eight million tons of rice, four million tons of fruit and nearly two million tons of seafood every year?
The Mekong Delta sprawls across Vietnam’s southern tip, covering an area larger than the Mississippi Delta. Complex irrigation networks run like capillaries through lands where shrimp are farmed, poultry is raised, and citrus, durian and rice grow side by side. Everything, including water and fertilizer, has been costlier to move since the start of the war, and no one knows whether the nations negotiating for peace can be trusted to create stability.
“These leaders, I think maybe they’re crazy,” said Nguyen Thanh Tam, 71, a rice farmer with deep family roots in the Mekong. “I wish we could go back to the old days,” he added, “when our weather and lives were more stable.”
Mr. Tam, a soft-spoken man with deep wrinkles from a life in the sun, had started the harvest a few weeks ago feeling good. He expected to earn enough for a new Honda scooter costing about $800 — the first of his life. Now, even after hearing about the cease-fire, he’s sticking with his silver bicycle.
“I remain very worried,” he said on Wednesday, soon after the cease-fire was announced.
Mr. Tam said he fears that prices will stay high, especially for fertilizer. A third of the world’s supply comes from the Middle East and global prices for urea, a common fertilizer for rice, are up more than 70 percent since January.
The farm supply store owned by Mr. Minh Tam is usually crammed full of the stuff. He’s got room for 100 tons. In late March, he had only four. Empty pallets gathered dust on his concrete floor near a pink rice cooker with a mouse’s face.
“I’d be certain to lose money if I stockpile fertilizer now,” he said. “Farmers are all complaining about how expensive it is.”
Inactivity is an aberration in Vietnam. Fifty years after a brutal war followed by grinding famine, the country moves with more throttle than brake. When the Covid pandemic hit, farmers bought drones for seeding to reduce clustering by seasonal workers.
But studies of agricultural economics have shown that uncertainty freezes enterprise. Not even the Mekong is immune.
On a recent afternoon near the Cai Be market, 60 miles from Ho Chi Minh City — where traders usually clog traffic, moving rice to highways and ports — men with thick shoulders sat still on red plastic chairs.
In one warehouse, a laborer swung on an army green hammock between walls of premium rice stacked to the ceiling.
“Normally, we’d be racing against time, loading sacks of rice onto trucks to fill orders,” said Phan Van Suong, 56. “But now there are no orders.”
Around 90 percent of the rice Vietnam ships — mostly to the Philippines, but also to Africa and the United States — comes from the Mekong. Normally.
In today’s abnormal times, buyers are hesitating. Shipping delays of 10 to 15 days have become common as carriers slow steam to conserve fuel. Basmati rice from India bound for the Middle East has been unable to get through the Strait of Hormuz. In the Philippines, wholesalers are not sure when there might be enough diesel to move imports around the country.
That means rice has been piling up across Asia, creating a short-term paradox: wholesale prices declining as production costs rise. After a year of healthy harvests, traders are paying farmers less right now to hedge against future risk.
If that tamps down inflation, it may not be for long, according to food economy experts, who expect sharper price hikes for crops like vegetables that are harder to stockpile.
“Complex systems have a habit of creating wicked problems,” said Paul Teng Piang Siong, a senior fellow in food security at Singapore’s ISEAS — Yusof Ishak Institute.
Even if a lasting peace emerges, he added, the consequences of America’s latest military adventure will likely linger for agriculture. In Vietnam, where the soil still holds unexploded American bombs from more than 50 years ago, anger has been firing in many directions.
Nguyen Thanh Can sells diesel at a floating gas station on a major waterway. His tanks can hold around 100,000 liters (about 26,400 gallons) but since the war started, his distributor will only give him a few thousand at a time. When he ran out on a recent weekend, barge captains were furious.
“They accused me of holding onto fuel, waiting for prices to go up,” he said. “I had to show them the tanks.”
He swung open a hatch, revealing mostly empty space.
“I’m selling everything I have,” he said. “It’s not just about high prices. I don’t have enough.”
Tung Ngo contributed reporting.
Damien Cave leads The Times’s new bureau in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, covering shifts in power across Asia and the wider world.
Read the full story at nyt News.
From war to weather: A 'super El Niño' event poses fresh risks to global food costs
Source: CNBC • Published: 4/9/2026, 10:31:10 AM
An unusually powerful El Niño later this year could exacerbate food security fears as disruption caused by the Iran war strains supply for crucial fertilizer products.
Climate scientists warn it appears increasingly likely that a planet-warming El Niño will take shape over the coming months, with U.S. meteorologists estimating a one-in-three chance of a "strong" weather event forming in October to December.
European climate models indicate an even higher probability of a very strong or "super El Niño," although the so-called spring barrier means that these forecasts can be inaccurate.
El Niño — or "the little boy" in Spanish — is widely recognized as the warming of the sea surface temperature, which occurs naturally every few years. Such an event is declared when sea temperatures in the tropical eastern Pacific rise 0.5 degrees Celsius above the long-term average.
A super El Niño, which doesn't have an official scientific category, is understood to refer to an exceptionally strong phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), when sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific rise at least 2 degrees Celsius above normal.
Chris Jaccarini, senior analyst, food and farming at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said 2026 was shaping up to be another year in which conflict and climate risks have become a costly reality.
"Food prices are being squeezed from both sides: by climate extremes disrupting production in major growing regions, and by a food system still hooked on fossil fuels and therefore exposed to spikes in gas, fertiliser, transport and packaging costs," Jaccarini told CNBC by email.
"That is why the prospect of a strong El Niño matters," he continued. "It can turbocharge weather risks in a climate already destabilised by human emissions, compounding inflation driven by high fossil fuel prices."
Some commodities are particularly exposed to the weather event, with El Niño typically putting upward pressure on cocoa, food oils, rice and sugar, Jaccarini said. He also cited broader risks for other products linked to the tropics, such as bananas, tea, coffee, chocolate and soy-fed meat.
Expectations of El Niño's return follow a multi-year La Niña event, which generally has the effect of lowering global temperatures compared to normal years.
Oil and gas prices and fertilizer costs have skyrocketed due to the Iran war severely disrupting supplies through the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway connecting the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.
Roughly one-third of the world's seaborne fertilizer trade typically passes through the Strait of Hormuz, although shipping traffic has virtually ground to a halt since the U.S. and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran on Feb. 28.
World leaders on Wednesday welcomed the announcement of a temporary U.S.-Iran ceasefire although experts told CNBC that the agreement offers no clear path to peace and the disruption caused by weeks of strikes will have a lasting impact.
The price spikes for fuel and fertilizer come as the U.S. planting season begins in earnest, ramping up fears among U.S. farmers of elevated food prices and lower crop yields.
Every energy price spike inevitably stokes fears of higher food prices given that fertilizer manufacture is energy intensive and natural gas is used to produce some chemicals, according to Paul Donovan, chief economist at Swiss bank UBS.
"However, higher fertilizer prices may not be the biggest agricultural price threat this year, 2026 might produce a super El Niño weather pattern," Donovan said in a note published in late March.
"In that case, drought and limited water supply might be more important than shortages of nitrogen," he added.
Analysis published by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) last month warned that the number of food-insecure people across the globe could reach levels last seen at the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.
The WFP estimates that the number of people facing acute hunger could jump by 45 million if the Iran war persists beyond June and oil prices stay above $100 per barrel. This prediction would add to the 318 million people across the globe who are already food insecure.
Dawid Heyl, a co-portfolio manager for the global natural resources strategy at Ninety One, said the prospect of an El Niño event poses a risk to global food production, but the extent of this risk depends on when the climate phenomenon develops, how extreme it is and how long it lasts.
"I've been saying this to so many colleagues and anyone who would listen, but I wasn't really concerned about Russia-Ukraine in terms of food inflation," Heyl told CNBC by video call.
"I am a lot more concerned about [the Iran war] this time around, because of the impact on nitrogen, fertilizer production and availability," Heyl said.
Asked about the prospect of a powerful El Niño event developing in the wake of the sprawling Middle East crisis, Heyl said: "If you get two negative factors like that combining then it could really be tough going."
The likes of India, Australia, Brazil and Argentina were all cited as countries that could be significantly exposed to El Niño, Heyl said, albeit for different reasons.
The European Union, meanwhile, said earlier this month that an El Niño event later this year threatens northwestern Ethiopia, South Sudan and Sudan with dry conditions, "posing a significant risk to the main agricultural season."
For the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit's Jaccarini, the answer to deepening food security fears lies in recognizing that risks to the global food system are not going away anytime soon.
"With traditional geopolitical partnerships under strain, international collaboration matters more than ever. Reducing food price volatility depends on reaching net zero together," Jaccarini said.
"Climate finance from wealthy nations to producer countries with low climate readiness helps farmers adapt to climate impacts and protect crops and livelihoods," he added.
— CNBC's Chloe Taylor contributed to this report.
For complete details, visit the original sources linked above.
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