The Price of War: How High Could Global Inflation Go? Before the bombs fell, the global economy was, by most measures, in reasonable shape. Inflation had cooled from the painful highs of the early 2020s. Central banks were cautiously eyeing rate cuts. Consumers, while still stretched, were adjusting. Then, on 28 February 2026, the war in Iran began — and the calculus changed almost overnight. The conflict's most immediate economic weapon has been geography. The Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula, is the jugular vein of global energy supply. Around 20 percent of the world's oil passes through it, along with vast quantities of liquefied natural gas and other commodities. Iran's closure of the strait has triggered what the International Energy Agency has called the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market — a verdict that gives some sense of the scale of what is unfolding. The numbers bear it out. Brent crude, which was trading at around $73 a barrel before the conflict erupted, surged sharply in the first days of fighting and has remained elevated and volatile ever since. At the peak of tensions, it briefly exceeded $114 a barrel as markets priced in the worst-case scenarios. Goldman Sachs has revised its full-year Brent forecast upward to $85, though analysts at Wood Mackenzie have warned that $150 to $200 a barrel is not outside the realm of possibility if disruptions persist. For ordinary consumers, the consequences have already arrived at the petrol station and the supermarket checkout. In the United States, the March Consumer Price Index laid bare the damage in stark terms. Inflation climbed to a 3.3 percent annual rate — the highest reading in nearly two years — up from 2.4 percent in February. Energy prices drove almost the entire increase, rising 10.9 percent in a single month, the largest monthly gain since 2005. Gasoline surged 21.2 percent — the steepest one-month jump since records began in 1967. The silver lining, such as it is, lies in the core reading: strip out food and energy, and prices rose just 0.2 percent in March, suggesting the shock has not yet rippled into the broader economy. That distinction matters enormously for central banks, but it offers cold comfort to anyone filling up their car or heating their home.

Tesla's Self-Driving Software Gets Its First European Green Light For years, it was a promise Elon Musk made repeatedly and Europe's regulators received with scepticism. Now, after months of testing, negotiations, and more than a few missed deadlines, Tesla has secured its first European approval for Full Self-Driving — the advanced driver assistance system that the company has long marketed as a glimpse into the autonomous future of motoring. The Netherlands has become the first country on the continent to grant the software its official blessing, marking a milestone that could reshape how Europe thinks about semi-autonomous driving. The Dutch vehicle authority RDW confirmed the approval on 10 April, five months after Tesla first publicly announced its ambitions for a European launch. The system — officially known as Full Self-Driving (Supervised), or FSD (Supervised) — allows the vehicle to handle most driving tasks on motorways and in urban traffic, including navigating junctions, roundabouts, and highway on-ramps. The driver, however, remains legally responsible at all times and must keep their eyes on the road, ready to take back control at any moment. It is what engineers classify as SAE Level 2: highly capable, but not autonomous. The road to this approval was anything but smooth. Tesla had initially suggested a February 2026 launch in the Netherlands, a claim the RDW publicly pushed back on at the time, clarifying that it had merely set out a timeline for Tesla to demonstrate compliance — not issued any guarantee of approval. The regulator even had to ask Tesla supporters to stop calling its offices, warning that the pressure was wasting time without influencing the outcome. In the end, the approval came through in April, three weeks later than Tesla's revised estimate — a modest slip in a process that had already stretched well beyond the company's original ambitions. What convinced the Dutch authorities was a substantial body of evidence. Tesla logged over 1.6 million kilometres of internal test drives across Europe with FSD active, covering cities including Amsterdam, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Madrid, and London. The company also conducted more than 4,500 test scenarios on closed tracks and gave demonstration rides to around 13,000 customers — with a Tesla employee at the wheel and the customer in the passenger seat. The RDW noted that one factor in Tesla's favour was the system's continuous and comparatively strict monitoring of driver attention, which it considered more rigorous than many competing systems. The regulator also stressed that it had spent over eighteen months scrutinising the technology before reaching its decision.

Holiday Plans on Hold: How the War in the Middle East is Weighing on the 2026 Travel Season It is normally the most lucrative time of year for the tourism industry — the weeks before summer, when millions of Germans finalise their holiday plans. But this year, a palpable unease has settled over the booking business. The ongoing conflict in the Middle East is casting a long shadow across the entire sector, from travel agencies and airlines to hoteliers along the Mediterranean coast. Albin Loidl, President of the German Travel Association, describes a market caught between anxiety and resilience. Geopolitical uncertainties are causing a noticeable reluctance to book, he says, though without fundamentally undermining demand. Rising costs and operational disruptions are adding further pressure on top. Many travellers are simply redirecting to alternative destinations, and Loidl is cautiously optimistic that the current slowdown is temporary — a pause, rather than a collapse — with demand expected to recover once the situation stabilises. The numbers back up that gloomy mood. According to the Ifo Institute, the business climate among travel agencies and tour operators deteriorated significantly in March. Ifo expert Patrick Höppner points especially to routes passing through the Gulf states, where uncertainty is highest. Rebookings and cancellations have already become commonplace across the industry, forcing operators to scramble. The crisis is, however, distributing its burden unevenly. Destinations in the eastern Mediterranean, lying geographically closer to the conflict zone, are bearing the brunt of the drop in new bookings. Western Mediterranean destinations are picking up some of the slack — though higher prices and limited capacity mean the shift is far from seamless. Hoteliers in Greece currently see the situation as comparatively stable, with European demand holding steady thanks to the country's greater distance from the crisis region. Yet even they acknowledge that the rest of the season hinges on how events unfold. Cyprus is feeling the impact far more acutely. The island's airports recorded a drop of more than 15 percent in passenger numbers in March compared to the previous year, prompting the government to ramp up its international tourism promotion efforts.