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I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, March 27th. Here's what we're covering.
“As the war with Iran hits the four-week mark, fuel prices are high.”
The flow of oil from the Gulf remains largely cut off. An American's will likely start to feel it soon in their grocery bills.
The first thing to watch is Raspberry.
And raspberries are kind of the drama queens of fresh produce. They need to be transported quickly in refrigerated trucks, even on planes, which are a faster ride. They need to be kept cool. All of this makes the berries one of the most fuel-sensitive items at the grocery store. Which means they can be an early sign of just how much the war in Iran could affect prices.
Raspberry's were already expensive, but according to federal data, the wholesale price of fresh berries has doubled since January. And the Department of Agriculture is now warning that food bills, overall, could climb as much as 6% this year. It's not just about gas for transport. The war could drive up the cost of plastic packaging, a lot of which is petroleum-based. Also, a lot of the world's fertilizer is stuck in the Gulf, and that could affect crops too.
All of this comes on top of tariffs, a tight labor market, and other factors that were already contributing to higher prices. Beyond grocery stores and gas stations, the war is also continuing to shake the stock market. Yesterday Wall Street had its biggest one-day drop since the start of the war. And the S&P 500 is on track for its fifth-strait week of losses. Meanwhile, they've been obliterated.
Who wouldn't negotiate? They are begging to make a deal. We'll see if we can make the right deal. President Trump said he is extending his deadline again for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
“The key shipping routes have been effectively closed for weeks, snarling global markets.”
If Iran doesn't comply, Trump is threatened to destroy the country's power plants.
The President's first deadline was this past Monday.
He then delayed it to today, and he's now set it for April 6th. He said Iran had asked him to push it back, as the two countries have started talks about ending the war. For almost six weeks, many arrived at the airport this morning, three, four hours early. There has been growing chaos at American airports, with 50,000 TSA workers going unpaid. As senators have spared over funding for the Department of Homeland Security.
Line still snaking through baggage claim and out the door. But just after 2 a.m., the Senate passed a funding measure that would cover most parts of the department. The TSA, along with FEMA and the Coast Guard, the bill has one clear exception, though. No new money for ice or border patrol. Those DHS agencies have been at the center of the fight, with Democrats refusing to fund them without restrictions on agents.
The legislation is now headed for a vote in the House, which is expected to happen this morning. Before the vote, President Trump surprised many when he posted on social media that he had a plan to pay TSA agents. He said he was going to order the DHS Secretary to do it. Trump offered no details about where the money would come from. And it's unclear why if this was an option, he waited more than a month to help get the TSA agents paid.
And one last update on the administration. The Treasury Department has announced that starting later this year, President Trump's signature will appear on US dollars. For more than a century, American currency has been signed by the Treasury Secretary and the US treasurer. Now, Trump's autograph will replace the treasurers, making him the first sitting president to ever have his signature on the bills. The Treasury Department said the move was being made in honor of the country's 250th birthday this year.
And it's the latest in a string of examples of Trump effectively rebranding national institutions. He's added his name to the Kennedy Center. There's been an effort to rename Washington's Dillus Airport after him. And Trump has pushed the idea of minting a $1 coin with his face on it. Across the US, with big tech companies competing in an all-out AI sprint, data centers have been popping up on what used to be pastures and forests and farmland.
The massive facilities of already raised concerns about how much power and wa...
But the times has also been tracking a controversial new type of construction that's happening right next to them.
“What was really shocking to me is just how quickly tech companies are ditching the power grid and saying, you know what?”
We're going to build our own power plants. Rebecca Elliott is a reporter on the Times Business Desk. She says that because it can take years to get all the infrastructure set for a new data center to be connected to the normal power grid. Companies are rushing to set up giant gas turbines and engines to make their own electricity.
Near Columbus, Ohio, for example, three gas-fired power plants exclusively for data centers are currently under construction and a fourth one is being planned.
One of the concerns that communities around these off-grid power plants have is how these new generating facilities will affect air quality.
“In many cases, the equipment being used is more polluting than what you would typically find at a big power plant.”
In addition to worries about air pollution, some of the people who've had these big power plants pop up next door are speaking out about noise pollution too. One Mississippi resident told the Times that he's been recording measurements inside his house that are roughly equivalent to the sound of a vacuum cleaner going 24/7.
A mid-noise complaints, the company that built the power plant, installed a $7 million anti-sound barrier earlier this year.
And finally, the new season of baseball is upon us tonight, live for more of a parking lot. The 2026 season for Major League Baseball has kicked off with opening day, and if you're a fan who wants to watch at home, it could cost you more than ever. A decade ago, for example, if you were a Yankees fan in New York, you needed a cable subscription to watch all the regular season games and the playoffs. A cable subscription as in just one. Now, catching all 160 something games could mean navigating 10 networks and 5 or more subscriptions. This year, the team's opening game was exclusively on Netflix. The cost of all that together is approaching $800 if the Yankees season goes all the way to October.
It also basically makes it the world series of trying to remember your password to log in to all the services. The sprawling tangle and the expense are the byproducts of the MLB trying to keep up its television revenues in a media sphere that's now focused on streaming and has become super fractured. The situation has obviously riled up fans and even prompted the Federal Communications Commission to look into whether there's anything the government can do about how hard it's become to just sit on your couch and watch a game.
Those are the headlines. If you'd like to play the Friday news quiz, stick around it's just after these credits. This show is made by Will Jarvis Margaret Kadifa, John Stewart and me, Tracy Mumford, original theme by Dan Powell, special thanks to Isabella Anderson, Larissa Anderson, Miles McKinley, Zoe Murphy, Paula Schuman and Chris Wood. Now, time for the quiz. Every week we ask you a few questions about stories the time has been covering, can you get them all? Here we go. Recently, a number of countries around the world have been putting out urgent announcements. Sri Lanka said every Wednesday will now be a national holiday telling people not to work.
South Korea is urging people to start writing their bikes more, and Egyptian media has reported that there will be a 9pm curfew going into place for restaurants and stores.
“Your question, what's causing this blurry of new guidelines?”
The answer, it's the energy crisis caused by the war in Iran, with oil and gas exports from the region largely cut off. Countries across the globe are trying to figure out how to cut back some of the suggested restrictions are intuitive, drive less, carpool, but some are highly specific. One of South Korea's 12 recommendations is to only use your vacuum cleaner on the weekend. This past weekend Saturday night live jumped the pond with a new British version of the sketch show. The cast is British, the writers are British, and unsurprisingly, they're trying a lot of British impressions.
Before we commence, there's a mystery I should like to solve. That was Agatha Christie, played by Tina Fey, who was hosting the premiere. Your question, can you ID this impression from the shows called Open?
Hi, Donald.
Who is this an impression of? We'll play a little more here.
“I know how badly you want to start World War 3, and that's great.”
The answer? That's supposed to be a very awkward Prime Minister, Kier Starmer, nervously dialing up President Trump.
Whether SNL style will catch on with British audiences is still an open question. They've only greenlit eight episodes to start,
but the starmer sketch did make an impression back in the U.S., where Trump himself shared it on social media. And last question. The Times has a series called Overlooked, which features obituaries of remarkable people,
whose deaths originally went unreported in the Times.
In the latest one, my colleagues covered the life of Eleanor Abbott, the creator of a very famous board game. She designed the colorful game during an outbreak of polio in the 1940s. She wanted to give all the kids stuck in the hospital,
“something to take their minds off their dreary surroundings. What game did she create?”
The answer? This is Candyland. A place you pretend to visit when you play this game. Candyland. The game hit shelves in 1949 and cost a whole dollar. If you can track down one of the original boards, the artwork includes what something is actually a nod to its origins. It has a drawing of a boy with a thin line running down his leg, which looks a lot like the brace some kids had to wear after getting polio. Up until Abbott's death in the 1980s, she donated much of her royalties from Candyland to children affected by the disease.
And that was not a small amount of money since the game was a runaway hit. According to one estimate, more than 60% of American households with young kids own Candyland. All hail, Wardlich-Rish.
“That's it for the news quiz. If you want to tell us how you did, our email is the headlines at NYTime.com.”
I'm Tracy Mumford. The headlines will be back on Monday.
