Today's top stories, with context, in just 15 minutes.
On today's podcast:
1) Iran will seek to bar US and Israeli ships from the Strait of Hormuz and require compensation from hostile countries before they’re allowed to sail through it, according to local media reports on a proposed Iran-Oman deal to manage the crucial waterway. The agreement has become key to expectations for a reopening of Hormuz and a resumption of energy flows that have been throttled since the US and Israel attacked Iran in February.
2) The Trump administration is actively considering issuing an executive order on vaccines and autism as soon as next week, according to people familiar with the matter. The effort is prompted by President Donald Trump’s interest in seeing additional action, according to the people, who asked not to be named to discuss internal deliberations. Options officials are discussing include research initiatives, encompassing both forward-looking studies and backward-looking analyses, the people said.
3) The yen is heading into the end of the week having surrendered nearly half of its intervention-driven gains, fueling speculation among traders that authorities may step into the market again. The currency traded around 158.40 versus the dollar on Friday afternoon, well off the strong point of 155.23 reached on Monday. It had been near a four-decade nadir around 164 per dollar last week before the first joint yen-buying operation from Japan and the US since 1998.