Daily Brew // Morning Brew // Update

April 17, 2026

Happy Friday. To celebrate National Haiku Day, the Brew is running a haiku contest that involves...all of you.

Submit your haiku here, and we’ll share the best of the bunch tomorrow.

The rules: Your poem must follow the conventional haiku format (5–7–5 syllable structure) and be centered around the topic of: gas prices.

Good luck!

—Molly Liebergall, Sam Klebanov, Matty Merritt, Adam Epstein

In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into:

Europe running out of jet fuel
New York’s proposed pied-à-terre tax
The World Cup transit debacle

MARKETS

Nasdaq

24,102.70

+0.36%

S&P

7,041.28

+0.26%

Dow

48,578.72

+0.24%

10-Year

4.309%

+3.0 bps

Bitcoin

$75,336.12

+0.62%

Allbirds

$10.91

-35.79%

Data is provided by

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 4:00pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean.

Markets: Stocks ticked up yesterday, as investors remained hopeful of an end to the Middle East conflict. The Nasdaq notched its 12th straight positive day—the longest such stretch since 2009. The good vibes did not extend to Allbirds, which sank more than 35% a day after the shoe company’s sudden pivot to AI brought its stock back from the dead.

BOARDING GROUP NONE

Europe’s planes are about to run out of fuel

Davide Bonaldo/Getty Images

Mac Miller lyrics that European airlines cannot relate to right now: “I never run out of jet fuel.” The Strait of Hormuz’s closure has disrupted oil supplies so drastically that Europe has “maybe six weeks” of jet fuel left, with flight cancellations coming “soon” unless the waterway reopens, the head of the International Energy Agency told the Associated Press yesterday.

This is “the largest energy crisis we have ever faced,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said. His comments follow an even bleaker warning from the trade group that represents European airports, ACI Europe, which said last week that fuel shortages could commence in as little as three weeks.

European airlines are fastening their oxygen masks:

Europe’s largest carrier, Ryanair, suggested this week that it’s on track for fuel shortages by June, while the region’s second-largest airline, easyJet, said it currently has 70% of its summertime jet fuel covered.
To counter elevated jet fuel costs, which have roughly doubled since the Iran war began, German carrier Lufthansa will cut some long-haul flights and take up to 40 planes out of rotation.

Around the world, airlines are clawing back cash by raising ticket prices. All major US airlines have hiked baggage fees in recent weeks.

US travel may be better protected (for now)

Europe’s oil refineries have been dwindling for decades, and the continent is the biggest recipient of jet fuel that passes through the Strait of Hormuz. Across the pond, however, the US reigns as the world’s largest net exporter of jet fuel, and it produces most of the juice its airlines need in-house.

Still, major US airlines (even Delta, which has its own oil refinery) project billions of dollars in added costs if fuel prices don’t return to normal. The price spike could reportedly sink Spirit Airlines entirely.

Looking ahead…if the US and Iran reach an agreement to reopen the strait, it could take “up to two years to come back where we were before the war,” Birol said of global oil flow.—ML

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Tree-ting the Earth right

Shout-out to Mother Earth. She carries a lot of precious cargo, and she carries it well.

So does a Subaru. And in appreciation of our beautiful planet, Subaru and its retailers partner with the Arbor Day Foundation to provide and distribute trees in communities across the country.

Every year, the US loses 36 million trees to age, disease, infestation, and extreme weather. To do your part, remember this: Proper tree care begins with selecting the right tree and space. Consider your climate to identify water or pruning needs. And if you’re ever concerned about your tree’s health, contact an arborist.

To date, Subaru Loves the Earth has provided 1.1 million trees and counting. Learn more.

WORLD

Tour de headlines

Adri Salido/Getty Images

Israel and Lebanon agreed to a 10-day ceasefire. In a Truth Social post, President Trump said that a temporary truce went into effect at 5pm ET yesterday after representatives from the two countries met in Washington, DC, earlier in the week. The fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah had threatened to torpedo the separate ceasefire deal between the US and Iran, which remains tenuous as the US expands its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Talks led by Vice President JD Vance in Pakistan over the weekend failed to reach an agreement, but a second round of negotiations could take place this week. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth renewed threats to attack Iran’s civilian infrastructure if a deal isn’t reached.

PepsiCo’s price cuts are working. If you slash, they will snack. That’s the takeaway from PepsiCo’s first-quarter earnings report, which showed that revenue spiked 8.5%, to $19.4 billion, as the company cut prices on snacks like Lay’s and Doritos. After implementing a series of price increases in 2022 to counter pandemic-induced inflation, the food giant changed its tune last year, slashing prices for several of its signature brands by as much as 15% while under pressure from an activist investor to boost sales. CEO Ramon Laguarta said shoppers are “responding to our holistic value.”

Anthropic released a new Claude model that’s “less capable” than the scary one. Yesterday, the AI company rolled out Claude Opus 4.7, which it says is its best publicly available model yet. It is not, however, as advanced as Claude Mythos Preview, the model that caused a panic last week when Anthropic said it was restricting access to it because it’s too powerful to be released to the public. A number of tech companies, including Microsoft and Nvidia, are currently working with Anthropic to detect cybersecurity vulnerabilities within Mythos before it’s made widely available. The White House reportedly wants federal agencies to start using Mythos.—AE

START SPREADING THE NEWS

NYC plans to tax rich people’s backup homes

Getty Images

Web-spinning spiders living in penthouses overlooking Central Park might soon see a tax on their dwellings. This week, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a proposed tax on non-primary residences in the Big Apple that are valued above $5 million.

The measure would affect about 13,000 second homes—aka pied-à-terres—owned by wealthy folks who mostly live elsewhere but use them as investments or a place to crash when visiting town.

Taxing out-of-towners

Mamdani pitched the measure as a charge on “the ultra-wealthy and global elites” that would help the city close its $5.4 billion budget gap. The Hochul administration said the proposal would bring city coffers at least $500 million yearly. An independent estimate put the haul at $232 million for a similar proposal in 2020.

Proponents argue that absent neighbors should have to pull their weight:

They say that the tax targets property owners who don’t pay local taxes or patronize nearby businesses, yet benefit from municipal services that support their home values.
Several major cities like Paris and Vancouver already tax empty cribs.

But…local real estate industry groups say it will undermine NYC’s luxury-housing market, reducing tax proceeds from bougie home sales and costing construction and maintenance jobs.

Looking ahead…Hochul aims to include it in the next state budget that lawmakers are currently negotiating.—SK

WE’RE WALKING

Even the train to the World Cup is expensive

Nick Iluzada

Oh, now everyone cares about going to New Jersey. NJ Transit’s plans to ratchet up the price of a round-trip ticket from New York’s Penn Station to New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium to ~$150 during this summer’s FIFA World Cup has sparked an outcry, according to The Athletic.

The 18-mile rail journey normally costs $12.90 for a return ticket, so the roughly 1,163% price hike has shocked fans, who have few other options to get to and from the eight games hosted at MetLife Stadium—including the championship.

Now, it’s political:

NJ Gov. Mikie Sherrill, who inherited the FIFA contract when she took office in January, released a video yesterday accusing FIFA of taking advantage of the state’s transit system by providing $0 to help offset the $48 million added cost for the event.
But FIFA doesn’t typically help pay for transportation costs.

Big picture: The hundreds of thousands of World Cup fans expected to descend on the area in June and July are already feeling stretched thin by FIFA’s non-transparent, sky-high ticket prices. Even with nearly a third of tickets unsold, prices have reached record-breaking levels—with seats at some desirable games going for as much as $10,000 each.—MM

STAT

Prime number: Guess who bought ~1 in 5 Cybertrucks

Mario Tama/Getty Images

This is a bit like when your own parents had to buy your brownies at the bake sale because the other kids were unsurprisingly not into the weird-looking walnuts. According to Bloomberg, Elon Musk’s SpaceX bought nearly 1 in 5 of the Cybertrucks that were sold by Elon Musk’s Tesla in Q4:

SpaceX’s purchases were likely worth more than $100 million in total.
Cybertruck sales would have plummeted by 51% in the quarter if not for the purchases by Musk’s other companies.

Bloomberg reported that the Musk-to-Musk Cybertruck sales pipeline has continued into this year. One auto expert told the outlet that Tesla is “running out of buyers” for the electric pickup truck that critics say looks like a toolbox.—AE

READER POLL

Do you know anyone who owns a Cybertruck?

Yes, *I* do
Yes, a friend or family member
No, but I’ve seen them around
No, and I’ve never even seen one

Friday puzzle

Today’s brain teaser was created by the legendary puzzlemaster Will Shortz.

Take a country in the world, anagram that country to form a word, find a homophone of that word, then anagram it to form another country.

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ANSWER

Iran → rain → reign → Niger

Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: tenuous, meaning “weak, insubstantial, not strong or secure.” Thanks to Floyd from St. Louis, MO, for the suggestion. Submit another Word of the Day here.

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☕ Out of fuel