Europe plans Hormuz mission as shipping crisis grows

April 17, 2026

Summary

European governments weighed a Hormuz security mission as shipping disruptions raised energy costs and supply concerns.

Why this matters

The Strait of Hormuz is a critical route for global oil and gas shipments, so prolonged disruption can affect energy prices, trade, and air travel well beyond the region. The story also shows strains in coordination between the United States and European allies over any security response.

European leaders were preparing a multinational military deployment to the Strait of Hormuz as shipping disruptions tied to the U.S.-Iran impasse raised costs and increased pressure on energy supplies.

France and the United Kingdom were set to chair a meeting Friday of about 40 nations on protecting shipping through the strategic waterway, which typically carries about 20% of the world’s oil.

The strait has been largely closed since the joint U.S.-Israel military operation against Iran began nearly two months ago. It is now under a U.S. Navy blockade aimed at taking control from Iran, whose retaliatory actions have sharply reduced maritime traffic.

The disruption has increased pressure on Europe, which depends heavily on oil and gas moving through the Persian Gulf. Gas prices have risen, and airline industry leaders warned this week of a jet fuel shortage that could force flight cuts within weeks.

“The unconditional and immediate reopening of the Strait is a global responsibility, and we need to act to get global energy and trade flowing freely again,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Friday.

Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron said they aimed to create a multinational effort to protect freedom of navigation through the strait. According to Starmer, the goal was to deploy a combined military mission “as soon as conditions allow.”

European allies have faced pressure from President Donald Trump to help reopen the strait. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday that current European plans, focused on support once conditions improve, did not come soon enough.

“When shots were fired and those countries were needed the most, they weren’t there,” Hegseth said. “They weren’t in the strait. They weren’t alongside us. Their leaders weren’t rallying what they have of their navies.” He added that allied support after U.S. Central Command “does the heavy lifting” would be welcomed “after the fact.”

At Friday’s meeting, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz was expected to outline capabilities Berlin could contribute, including mine-hunting boats, an escort ship, and reconnaissance aircraft, according to the German Press Agency.

France and Germany disagree on whether to include the United States in the planning, with Merz favoring coordination with Washington and Macron opposed, Politico reported Thursday.

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Trump Says Iran Agreed to Nuclear Halt, Hormuz Reopens

At least eight oil tankers that had been delayed in the Persian Gulf headed toward the strait after Iran and the U.S. announced the waterway was open.

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Iran said Saturday that it had reasserted control over the Strait of Hormuz after Iranian officials and President Trump announced Friday that the critical waterway was open.

President Donald Trump also said Friday that Iran had agreed to suspend its nuclear program indefinitely, raising hopes for a deal to end the war, though Tehran had not commented on the claim.

Trump said any moratorium on Iran’s nuclear activities would be “unlimited.”

“Most of the main points are finalized. It’ll go pretty quickly,” Trump said. He also said the U.S. would not release frozen Iranian funds.

Details of any potential agreement remained unclear. Iran has long said it has the right to enrich uranium.
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Australia veteran granted bail in war crimes case

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Ben Roberts-Smith, Australia’s most decorated living veteran, was released on bail from a Sydney prison Friday, 10 days after he was charged with war crime murder over the deaths of five Afghans in Afghanistan.

Judge Greg Grogin granted bail in Sydney after finding the former Special Air Service Regiment corporal had shown exceptional circumstances warranting release. Prosecutors opposed bail, arguing Roberts-Smith, 47, could flee Australia or interfere with witnesses and evidence.

Roberts-Smith was arrested April 7 and charged with five counts of war crime murder tied to killings in Uruzgan province in 2009 and 2012. Under Australian law, war crime murder is the intentional killing during armed conflict of a person not taking an active part in hostilities, such as a civilian, prisoner of war, or wounded soldier.

He was driven from Sydney’s Silverwater Correctional Complex late Friday, apparently wearing the same clothes he wore when police removed him from a commercial airliner at Sydney Airport last week, according to media images.

Roberts-Smith received the Victoria Cross and the Medal for Gallantry for his service in Afghanistan. He is the second Australian veteran of that war to be charged with a war crime.

The charges followed a 2020 military report that found evidence that elite Special Air Service Regiment and commando troops unlawfully killed 39 Afghan prisoners, farmers, and other noncombatants.

In a 2023 civil case, a judge found similar allegations against Roberts-Smith were substantially true when rejecting his defamation claims against newspapers. At that trial, Roberts-Smith said he had never killed an unarmed Afghan and denied committing a war crime, saying he was the victim of false claims by fellow soldiers and of others’ envy of his medals.

The civil ruling applied the lower standard of proof of balance of probabilities. The criminal case will require proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Prosecutors said Roberts-Smith was accused of personally shooting two victims and ordering subordinates to shoot three others. Prosecutor Simon Buchen called the allegations “among the most serious known to the criminal law” and said Roberts-Smith had been “on the cusp of relocating overseas” without informing authorities.

Roberts-Smith has not entered pleas. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison on each conviction.
Health

U.S. judge rejects Bayer bid over J&J drug claims

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A U.S. judge denied Bayer’s request for an injunction to block Johnson & Johnson from advertising that its prostate cancer drug Erleada cuts the risk of death by 51%.

In a decision issued Friday night, U.S. District Judge Dale Ho in Manhattan said Bayer had not shown it was likely to succeed on the merits of its false advertising claims or that it faced irreparable harm. Bayer had argued that Johnson & Johnson’s campaign threatened to erode trust in Bayer’s prostate cancer drug, Nubeqa.

Bayer sued Johnson & Johnson on Feb. 23, alleging the company falsely claimed patients had a “51% reduction in risk of death” if treated with Erleada instead of Nubeqa, based on testing that met “rigorous” U.S. Food and Drug Administration standards.

The German drugmaker said those claims were unreliable because most Nubeqa patients in the study received the drug off-label. Bayer also said the Food and Drug Administration did not review Johnson & Johnson’s retrospective, real-world analysis as a substitute for traditional clinical trials.

In his 41-page decision, Ho said Johnson & Johnson’s statements accurately reflected the study’s conclusions, and Bayer had not identified methodological errors “so substantial” that the claims were materially false or misleading.

“Based on the current record,” Ho wrote, “the methodological choices made by the authors of the study were not errant or out-of-step within the relevant scientific community.”

Bayer spokeswoman Sue Ann Pentecost said in a statement: “Bayer continues to believe the full body of evidence supports its false advertising claims and looks forward to the court’s determination on the merits of the case.”

Johnson & Johnson said the ruling was “a win for scientific exchange and a strong win for patients…. Real-world evidence helps clinicians make informed treatment decisions, especially when head-to-head clinical trials data are not available.”
Tech & Artificial Intelligence

Bluesky says DDoS attack caused service outages

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Bluesky said a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack caused service disruptions that continued Friday, affecting its website and app.

In a post on its Bluesky account, the company said the attack was “impacting our operations, with users experiencing intermittent interruptions in service for their feeds, notifications, threads, and search.” Bluesky said it had not seen evidence of unauthorized access to private data.

Distributed denial-of-service attacks typically flood apps or websites with traffic intended to overload servers and knock services offline. Bluesky did not provide an estimated time for a fix when reached for comment Thursday, directing inquiries to its status page and status account for updates. Its status page was later unavailable.

Bluesky said it would provide another update on the attack and mitigation efforts by 1 p.m. ET Friday.

The disruptions were intermittent. At times, the site and app loaded slowly; at others, they showed error messages. In the app, some users saw: “This feed is currently receiving high traffic and is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later. Message from server: Rate Limit Exceeded.” Popular feeds such as Discover and the official Bluesky Team feed were often affected, even when users’ personal feeds were working.

The site also sometimes showed an error message when users tried to visit a profile, requiring a refresh.

Bluesky protocol engineer Bryan Newbold wrote at about 3:46 a.m. ET Wednesday, “oof, our services are getting hit pretty hard tonight.”

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The lawsuit alleged the producers coordinated through an industry price-benchmarking service. The Justice Department and the companies could still reach a settlement to avoid litigation.

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Earlier this month, Cal-Maine said it was cooperating with a Justice Department investigation into potential price-fixing by egg producers after receiving a civil investigative demand. The company said the scope, duration, and outcome of the probe were uncertain.
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Hundreds of displaced residents waited Friday for bulldozers to reopen the Qasmiyeh bridge in south Lebanon, hours after an Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire took effect.

The bridge over the Litani River, a main route between southern areas and the rest of the country, was bombed by Israel shortly before the truce began at midnight. Three bulldozers working under Lebanese army supervision started filling the crater at dawn.

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Speaking at the Semafor World Economy event in Washington, D.C., Garg said, “I personally believe a recession is coming, and recessionary times are the best time to stop paying rent and be your own landlord.” He added that downturns can be a good time to move from renting to owning.

His comments came as mortgage rates eased. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, the average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage fell to 6.42% in the week ending April 10, 2026, the second straight weekly decline and the lowest level in about a month. The group said the drop was tied in part to lower Treasury yields.

At the same conference, Citadel founder Ken Griffin also warned that energy-market disruptions could trigger a downturn. He said a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which carries about 20% of global energy flows, would likely push the world into recession. “Let’s assume the strait is shut down for the next six to 12 months, the world’s going to end up in a recession,” Griffin said. “There’s no way to avoid that.”

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Health

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President Donald Trump named Dr. Erica Schwartz as his nominee to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and announced several other senior appointments at the agency.

In a Truth Social post Thursday, Trump said Schwartz, a former deputy surgeon general during his first term, would be his next pick for CDC director. Schwartz attended Brown University for college and medical school and served as a physician in the U.S. military. Trump called her a “STAR!”

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National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya has overseen the agency for the past few weeks.
World

2 U.S. men sentenced in North Korea IT fraud

According to the Justice Department, the operation brought North Korea about $5 million.

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Two U.S. citizens were sentenced for helping North Korea place remote IT workers at American companies, the U.S. Department of Justice said Wednesday.

Kejia Wang and Zhenxing Wang, both of New Jersey, received prison terms of 7 1/2 years and nine years, respectively. Prosecutors said they provided infrastructure for the scheme, including running or managing “laptop farms” in the United States that let North Korean workers connect remotely and appear to be based in the country.

Co-conspirators also stole the identities of more than 80 Americans and obtained jobs at more than 100 U.S. companies, including some Fortune 500 firms.

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“The ruse placed North Korean IT workers on the payrolls of unwitting U. S. companies and in U.S. computer systems, thereby harming our national security,” John A. Eisenberg, the department’s assistant attorney general for national security, said in the announcement.

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The U.S. government also announced rewards of up to $5 million for information that could help counter the schemes, including information on nine people who allegedly worked with the two men.

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