With oil markets in flux, suspending an early-20th-century law might help stabilize energy prices. President Donald Trump certainly hopes so. Last week, he signed a 60-day waiver from employing the Jones Act, a law that requires U.S.-flagged vessels be used to carry goods and passengers if they are traveling between American ports. The law was created to protect the domestic shipping industry, but detractors say it hobbles trade and creates more problems than it solves.

‘Lower transportation costs and increased supply’
The Jones Act was passed after World War I to “rebuild U.S. shipping after German U-boats decimated America’s merchant fleet” during the war, said The Associated Press. Presidents can waive the law during crises, and Trump is using that power for one reason: U.S.-flagged ships are “generally more expensive to operate,” and those added costs fall heavily on places like Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico that rely on overseas shipping.

Trump’s pause will allow foreign tankers to transport oil and gas between ports in the U.S. That should “lead to lower transportation costs and increased supply” and eventually lower gasoline prices by 10 cents per gallon, said Christopher Niezrecki at The Conversation.

‘Nothing more America First than the Jones Act’
The law does have defenders among American shipbuilders and vessel operators. There’s “nothing more America First than the Jones Act,”said Jennifer Carpenter, the CEO of the American Waterways Operators, at DC Journal. Repealing it would allow foreign companies to “undercut American companies on labor costs” and hollow out the domestic industry. Without the law, the U.S.’s “most sensitive cargo” would be transported between U.S. ports by “foreign mariners, including Chinese shipmen who ultimately answer to the Chinese Communist Party.”

Those against the law hope Trump’s waiver is the “beginning of the end of the Jones Act,” said The Washington Post in an editorial. A South Korean-built tanker costs $170 million less than one made in the U.S., and it costs “millions more to operate every year thereafter.” The law has failed to save American shipbuilding but has imposed “significant costs.” Those are “much longer-running issues than anything having to do with the war in Iran.”

While the world is distracted by the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, another conflict is raging in the region since Pakistan declared “open war” on Afghanistan.

In a dangerous escalation from cross-border skirmishes, Pakistan launched air strikes at the end of February, targeting major cities including Kabul. Afghanistan’s Taliban regime responded with drone attacks. Both sides blame the other for the conflict. 

More than 1,000 people are estimated to have been killed or injured, and 100,000 displaced. With a temporary ceasefire to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr having ended at midnight on Monday, there are no signs of a desire for de-escalation.

What’s the background? 
This is “not a sudden rupture of relations,” said international relations expert Rabia Akhtar at The Conversation. It’s the “intensification of long-simmering, historical security concerns” along the two countries’ disputed 1,600-mile border, the Durand Line. Afghanistan has never formally recognized the border, drawn in 1893 through ethnic Pashtun areas. That has caused “sustained and persistent tension” since Pakistan’s independence in 1947. 

The countries also took opposite sides in the Cold War, with Pakistan “embedded” in the U.S.-led framework and Afghanistan maintaining “closer ties” with the Soviet Union (until it invaded). All of this “entrenched cross-border militant networks.”

When the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan and the Taliban took over in 2021, terrorist attacks within Pakistan increased, particularly by the Tereek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP or Pakistan Taliban).

What triggered this latest outbreak?
Pakistani authorities have accused the TTP of killing 4,000 people in the last four years and accused the Taliban of allowing them to operate from sanctuaries within Afghanistan. Pakistan launched air strikes against alleged TTP hideouts in Afghanistan last year and accused its historic foe, India, of supporting the Taliban, allegedly with Indian-made drones used in recent attacks. India then effectively normalized relations with the Taliban.

India and the Taliban “vehemently deny” Pakistan’s accusations, said the BBC. They say the TTP is an “internal matter” for Islamabad, a “Pakistan-created problem,” but that has “done little but to further infuriate” Pakistani leaders.

Pakistan has been “taking advantage of the West’s disengagement” and regional powers’ distraction, said the Financial Times. It’s “enraged.” But all-out war “threatens stability” across Asia. The stakes are “too high for the world to keep looking away.” 

A temple worker installs lotus lanterns for upcoming celebrations of Buddha’s birthday at Jogyesa Temple in Seoul, South Korea. A national public holiday, his birthday falls on the eighth day of the fourth lunar month, making it May 24 this year. 
Jung Yeon-je / AFP / Getty Images

The ingredients themselves are the luminaries of spring. They are often verdant — peas, leeks, asparagus, spinach. These recipes center the season’s finest, using techniques and sauces to complement, not overwhelm, their pristine gestalt.

Asparagus Pakoras
A tender asparagus stalk is a perfect specimen. It needs little to twinkle. Then you go and coat it in a chile-spiked batter made from chickpea flour, fry it till it shatters, and dust it with salt, and suddenly the spear downright scintillates. 

Lowland Celery Salad
Celery, please step center stage and into the spotlight. No, more to the right and pick up some dates, toasted walnuts and extra-sharp cheddar. Close, but to the left a touch, that mustardy sherry vinaigrette can join you. There! You made it. Feeling the love and attention you have always merited? 

Sabzi
We are just on the other side of the spring equinox but the hunger for an ongoing, explicit spring jubilee persists. Spinach has the tonic earthiness the season necessitates; lamb is the holy protein of now. This Afghan braise stars not just spinach as the green blast but also a wallop of green onions and cilantro. Steadying and lush, sabzi is a spring headliner.