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The United Nations Refugee Agency has cited conflicts not only in Ukraine but also disasters and war in Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Myanmar, Nigeria, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to calculate that the world's total number of displaced persons has now surpassed 100 million for the first time in recorded history.

"One hundred million is a stark figure — sobering and alarming in equal measure," UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said Monday. "It’s a record that should never have been set" - which should "serve as a wake-up call," according to the official.

"To reverse this trend, the only answer is peace and stability so that innocent people are not forced to gamble between acute danger at home or precarious flight and exile," Grandi said.

Specifically on Ukraine, the new UN statement said, "In 2022, the war in Ukraine has displaced 8 million within the country this year and forced around 6 million to leave the nation."

The UN is expected to release a comprehensive official report covering the new data in June. "The number of refugees, who are primarily driven out of their homes and living situations by war, conflict and disasters, now represents more than 1 percent of the entire world population and would equal the 14th most populous country if the people represented a nation," according to preliminary details from the UN.

Many among the total 100 million are internally displaced persons in conflict zones and disaster stricken regions, such as Yemen. Significantly, that figure represents 1% of the world's total population.

A quarter of those are under the age of 18. "This must serve as a wake-up call to resolve and prevent destructive conflicts, end persecution, and address the underlying causes that force innocent people to flee their homes," Grandi urged.

Over 100 million people forcibly displaced in the world, @Refugees says

The war in Ukraine & protracted conflict in places like Ethiopia & DR of Congo were factors behind the high numbers.https://t.co/bNFBTiEVcn

— Seifesilassie Gebremeskel (@SeifGebre) May 23, 2022

An estimated 38 million were internally displaced within their home countries in 2021, which includes 14.4 million impacted by conflict, and 23 million fleeing natural disasters like wildfires and hurricanes.

The UN statement added that "Meanwhile, weather-related events such as floods, storms and cyclones resulted in some 23.7 million internal displacements in 2021, mainly in the Asia-Pacific region."

* * *

Meanwhile according to the latest note from Rabobank:

Inflation and geopolitical instability aren’t going to go away any time soon. Linking the two, as one should, a former German ambassador to Moscow tells @Tagesspiegel that President Putin is hoping his blockade of Ukraine’s grain supplies will lead to a migration crisis, with starving people then fleeing to Europe, that destabilizes the EU and pushes them to soften sanctions on Russia. Does he look wrong in that call when Germany, France, and Italy are already hardly hawkish? More pointedly, does the West have any answers to a hybrid warfare that weaponizes food, as in the past?   

By Jake Lloyd-Smith, Bloomberg Markets Live Commentator and Reporter

The most consequential event for the oil market this week may come on Tuesday, but not from the battlefields of Ukraine or a high-profile analyst talking the talk.

With WTI more than 40% higher YTD on the fallout from the invasion, rising demand, and tight product markets, another bullish risk comes to the fore: Atlantic hurricane season looms and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is set to issue its initial outlook.

It could be a difficult few months, with scope for interruptions to offshore supply, as well as to refinery operations. President Joe Biden -- who’s already ordered a vast SPR crude release as oil prices rallied -- has warned “another tough hurricane season” awaits with storms that’ll be more intense.

Separately, early projections from Colorado State University and AccuWeather suggested a rough ride.

Officially, the hurricane season starts on June 1, beginning at almost the same time as the US summer driving season, which will elevate gasoline and diesel demand.

[ZH: As if right on cue, the National Hurricane Center has spotted a pre-season tropical disturbance in the Gulf of Mexico already. NHC said the system is located over the north-central Gulf of Mexico and has a very low chance of strengthening into a named tropical storm. It is expected to move inland over the central Gulf coast early this week. ]

Stockpiles of both key fuels are low and falling, with prices rallying to records.

Given all the risks, it’s unlikely those prices have yet topped out.

Solar flares? The alignment of the planets? Just plain old terrible production quality? What possible explanation could their be for two separate Teslas catching fire within a couple days of each other this weekend?

In fact, the incidents in question took place so close to each other, that we couldn't even finish writing about one of the stories before the other one broke - we so combined them into one piece. 

First, it was reported late last week that a blaze in California had been started by a 2019 Tesla Model 3. 

Owner Ediel Ruiz said that after taking a trip in the vehicle, he was greeted with a notification on his phone that his car's alarm was going off. When he looked outside at the car, it was filled with smoke and flames. 

Ruiz said the first thing to melt was his 4-month-old’s car seat, according to KBAK. 

"Honestly, I didn’t know how to react, I mean it just kind of happened," he said. “We had that, the stroller, formula, [his partner] had just graduated from USC the day prior. All her graduation stuff burned up.”

“We were going to go to Bakersfield to go eat at Texas Roadhouse. Luckily, for whatever reason, her grandparents canceled and we didn’t go. It didn’t happen while we were driving.”

He called the California City Fire Department to help remove the vehicle after the blaze: “I tried to make it clear that the car was completely gone. I don’t think they understood how bad the fire was. So when he showed up, he said, ‘I’m not prepared or equipped to remove this, I can’t drive this down the freeway or the ash will go everywhere.’”

Then, on Monday morning, it was reported by electrek that an almost brand new Model Y caught fire after powering down while driving. The incident happened last Friday, when the owner was says the car "pushed an error notification and then powered down" before the cabin began filling with smoke. 

He told the fire department: "I had to smash the window to get out of the car. I kicked through the window. Everything stops. The power didn’t work. The door didn’t open. The windows didn’t go down so I’m thinking I need to get the f*ck out of this car so I kicked through."

"Oh f*ck there's the fire," you can hear someone on the video say. "I swear to God, all of a sudden my car just shut down, it just said 'error, error, error', and then all of a sudden the battery started smoking..."

"It’s going to be interesting to see the results of this investigation," electrek wrote. To which we ask, what investigation?

Here is video of the incident, where you can see clearly how the driver had to kick the window out:

As if an intense proxy war with nuclear powerhouse Russia isn’t bringing enough heat, the Biden White House has now given the greenlight for unprecedented U.S. participation in an Israeli drill simulating a massive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

According to The Times of Israel, “The U.S. Air Force will serve as a complementary force, with refueling planes drilling with Israeli fighter jets as they simulate entering Iranian territory and carrying out repeated strikes.” The mock attack on Iran will happen this month, as part of a broader Israeli military exercise called “Chariots of Fire.”  

The US Air Force is joining apartheid Israel to do military exercises simulating entering Iranian territory and launching airstrikes.

The US and Israeli militaries are blatantly threatening Iran with war.https://t.co/j8upZD96FR

— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) May 17, 2022

In September, Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi said the IDF had “greatly accelerated” preparations for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“Dozens of Israeli air force fighter jets are expected to take part in the exercise and fly hundreds of miles from Israel to the west above the Mediterranean in a way that simulates a flight route to Iran,” reports Axios. General Michael Kurilla, commander of U.S. Central Command, landed in Israel on Tuesday to observe the exercises.

Though there’s no indication of an imminent real-world strike, U.S. participation in the drill is an implicit endorsement of an Israeli-initiated war of aggression—and a signal that the United States might not only agree to it, but participate.

If so, it wouldn’t be the first time USAF tankers facilitated aggression in the region: Before a halt was announced in 2018, American tankers controversially aided Saudi strikes in Yemen. In addition to directly killing civilians—including 131 men, women and children gathered at a 2015 wedding celebration—the Saudi campaign has plunged Yemen into one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises. 

To the Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi, the hawkish participation in the Israeli drill is a “puzzling” extension of a pattern, as Biden perpetuates an aggressive Trump-like posture toward Iran that Biden previously condemned:       

“Biden heavily criticized former President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal and opposed his ‘maximum pressure’ strategy seeking to force Iran to capitulate by crushing its economy through unprecedented sanctions. Yet, 18 months into his presidency, Biden has yet to shift away from Trump’s sanctions policy.”

The saber-rattling move by Biden comes as talks to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal are stalled. A key sticking point: Iran wants the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps removed from the list of designated—and sanctioned—terrorist organizations.

As with sanctions, Biden’s intransigence on the IRGC designation represents another hypocritical embrace of Trump policy. Parsi notes that, in 2017, current Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote a New York Times op-ed arguing that such a designation by the Trump administration would needlessly escalate tensions.   

But hey, whether it’s Ukraine or Iran, ditching honest diplomacy in favor of nerve-racking brinksmanship seems to be the Biden administration’s trademark.

Sure, it pushes us deeper into the threshold of World War III. On the other, as Biden’s approval rating has just reached yet another a new low, at least it helps keep our mind off surging price inflation, baby formula shortages and an economy that’s teetering along the edge off the abyss.

Maybe that’s the point.

Avian influenza has already impacted more than 37 million birds across 34 US states this year. The fast-spreading virus has sent the production of eggs tumbling and prices at the supermarket soaring. 

Bloomberg reports the production of US eggs in April plunged as millions of egg-producing hens were slaughtered to mitigate the virus' spread. The latest data from the USDA shows egg production fell 3.9% to 7.55 billion, while the number of egg-laying birds dropped 5.3% from a year ago. 

The reduced output will continue to pressure retail prices for a dozen of eggs higher. In April alone, prices jumped 23% from the month before to $2.52. Prices reached levels not seen since early 2016, a period that followed the avian influenza outbreak of 2014-15, which led to a 50% increase in egg prices in the second half of 2015.

Egg prices could rise more as producers fail to meet increased demand as supplies tighten. The cost of breakfast is soaring. Everything from orange juice to bacon to wheat has jumped in price -- the first meal of the day used to be the most affordable -- not so much anymore. 

Update (1753ET): Posobiec has detailed what went down, via TPUSA.

"The World Economic Forum under Klaus Schwab has its own paramilitary police force called the World Economic Forum Police," he said.

"Two minivans full of officers, essentially a quick reaction force pop up, everybody storms out, they've got MP5s, one of the guys is flagging me... and then each of us was taken, the entire crew - one by one - behind the building and behind this stack of tables, and we were made to empty our pockets, and we were frisked," he continued.

Watch:

Watch the full interview: https://t.co/8acGyDhWgr

— Turning Point USA (@TPUSA) May 23, 2022

*  *  *

Journalist Jack Posobiec and his crew were briefly detained without explanation in Davos, Switzerland on Monday, where the World Economic Forum has kicked off its annual conference.

In a clip posted to Twitter, Davos police can be seen surrounding Posobiec of Human Events, along with his crew. When a woman he was with began asking questions, a policewoman in plain clothes asked her to stop filming.

The policewoman said "We're just making a normal police patrol, because you know, it's WEF..."

"Is there a reason he specifically was targeted?" the woman asked.

"There is a reason, because we have to have a reason to control a person."

When asked what the reason was, the policewoman said "I don't have to tell you."

Watch:

BREAKING: Detained at Davos pic.twitter.com/H1RdaOebDI

— WEF Detainee Poso (@JackPosobiec) May 23, 2022

BREAKING: We just got detained at Davos pic.twitter.com/WVLTUTzkgg

— WEF Detainee Poso (@JackPosobiec) May 23, 2022

We just got DETAINED at Davos by WEF Police https://t.co/C4gz5UFWUE

— WEF Detainee Poso (@JackPosobiec) May 23, 2022

Posobiec attended CPAC Hungary last weekend where he was a guest speaker.

War zone equipment here.

The Globalist Military.

You WILL eat the bugs and LIVE in the pod. pic.twitter.com/qYvkxUmD3A

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) May 23, 2022