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The UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Food Price Index climbed to a three-year high in July, extending its upward trajectory as conflicts across Eurasia (the Black Sea and the Hormuz chokepoint) disrupt critical trade routes and mounting El Niño risks threaten global harvests.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s FAO Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in the international prices of a basket of globally traded food commodities, averaged 131.09 last month, up .6% from the previous month, led by gains in grain, sugar, and vegetable oils.

Wheat surged 5.8% during the month to a two-year high, while corn climbed 3.6%. Vegetable oil prices reached their highest since June 2022, while meat and dairy prices declined, according to the FAO.

Fueling the price surge is the widening Russia-Ukraine war in the Black Sea, where attacks are increasing and threaten critical bulk-shipping corridors. Disruptions through the Strait of Hormuz are also pushing food prices higher by raising energy, fertilizer, and transportation costs. Layered on top of all this are deteriorating crop conditions in major growing regions across the world as El Niño risks mount, a threat that has been flagged for many months.

"Chances of a very strong El Niño are rising. Risks are concentrated in select EMs, with inflationary and fiscal pressures likely to outweigh growth risks. We view El Niño as a key sovereign credit risk, particularly for countries with weak fiscal buffers," Morgan Stanley analyst Emma Cerda wrote in a recent note.

Earlier this week, UBS analyst Sreedhar Mahamkali identified five long-term forces likely to keep global food inflation "structurally higher" above its pre-pandemic average of about 2.5%.

"While food inflation globally has fallen from the COVID peak, a new debate is emerging: is the c2.5% LT average obsolete?" the London-based managing director and equity-research analyst said.

Mahamkali's first and most important long-term driver of elevated food prices is that "climate risk is global," and the number of institutional desks warning about El Niño is certainly on the rise. Read the full report here.

Perhaps Bank of America analyst Robert Ohmes will be proven right about his warning in mid-June (Read Here) that another food price spike could arrive in supermarkets this fall. He said that grocery inflation "may be on the way," citing a blended index of wages, diesel, and commodity costs.

Putting it all together, the theme is clear: multiple pressures are converging across the global food supply chain, tilting the balance of risks toward higher prices. That is already visible at the supermarket, particularly in beef, even as chicken and pork remain comparatively affordable. Egg prices, meanwhile, have collapsed, but fresh warnings from Mexico suggest that avocados could be the next grocery staple to surge.

For households, the best hedge may be to strengthen their own local food supply chains, whether by planting a backyard garden, buying directly from nearby farms, or building relationships with local farmers and cattle ranchers.

The income needed in order to purchase a typical home for sale in the United States in June was $109,796, marginally lower than the record high $110,382 in 2025, real estate brokerage Redfin said in an Aug. 5 report.

Housing affordability has remained largely flat year over year since monthly housing costs and people’s incomes are growing at a similar rate, Redfin said.

However, the income needed to purchase a house has been dropping consistently since October.

While the income required is around $22,000 higher than the earnings of a typical household, it’s an improvement compared to $26,000 a year ago, according to the report.

Redfin Senior Economist Yingqi Xu said that the double-digit gap between what a typical household makes in a year and the income needed to comfortably buy a home is leaving many prospective buyers on the sidelines.

On the plus side, “even if the market isn’t becoming much more affordable, it is becoming a bit more manageable for house hunters,” Xu said.

“It’s a buyer’s market in most of the country, especially places that were once pandemic homebuying hotspots like Nashville and Austin, giving buyers lots of options to choose from and strong negotiating power.”

According to Redfin, the income needed to afford a house surged in 2022 and 2023 as home prices skyrocketed amid the COVID-19 pandemic buying frenzy. Mortgage rates also doubled during this period.

For the week ending Jan. 6, 2021, the average weekly rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 2.65 percent, according to data from Freddie Mac. This rose to 7.79 percent for the week ending Oct. 25, 2023.

While rates have come down since then, they remain elevated. The persistently high rates contribute to keeping monthly mortgage payments on the higher side.

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) said in an Aug. 4 statement that home prices rose in 80 percent of tracked metro markets in the second quarter this year, which is considerably higher than the 71 percent of metros in the first quarter.

Despite elevated mortgage rates, home sales increased, NAR Chief Economist Dr. Lawrence Yun said in the statement, suggesting that this points to a buildup in housing demand due to steady jobs and income gains.

“It is welcoming to see incomes rising faster than home prices, which has helped boost affordability—but the big short-term challenge to affordability is coming from rising mortgage rates,” Yun said.

However, as Naveen Athrappully reports for The Epoch Times, real estate marketplace Zillow said that 2026 year-end mortgage rates could be 6.4 percent, which would put it slightly higher compared to the fall and winter of 2025.

This would not only erode any affordability gains made recently, but also make it difficult for property listings and sales to remain above year-ago levels.

Affordability Situation

While wage growth has outpaced home value growth in most of the United States and thus helped improve affordability, the increase in prices of everyday goods has eaten into those gains. This essentially limits how much prospective buyers can spend on purchasing a home, Zillow said.

The Trump administration has taken several actions to tackle affordability issues in the housing market.

An aerial view of a residential housing development in Los Angeles on April 3, 2025. Mario Tama/Getty Images

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) said on June 23 that it was making multiple changes to its Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Single Family mortgage insurance program, aimed at lowering costs and improving affordability for people looking to secure FHA-insured mortgages.

The update eliminated outdated requirements and minimized administrative burdens to ensure that FHA financing becomes more efficient for buyers and lenders.

“Every unnecessary regulation comes with a cost, and too often homebuyers pay the price,” HUD Secretary Scott Turner said. “If a policy does not protect taxpayers, improve affordability, or expand opportunity for Americans, we should rethink it. As we recognize National Homeownership Month, these FHA actions reflect that commitment by eliminating barriers to expand homeownership opportunities.”

Earlier in April, HUD and the Department of Agriculture rescinded a policy related to energy standards, the enforcement of which would have pushed up the costs of home construction by $20,000 to $31,000, according to HUD.

Construction workers build a home at a new housing development in Hercules, Calif., on July 1, 2025. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

And in March, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Removing Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Home Construction.”

In the order, Trump instructed the secretaries of HUD, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Energy to take “appropriate action to reform and, where appropriate, eliminate unduly burdensome or costly energy-efficiency, water-use, or alternative-energy requirements regarding housing.”

Trump wrote that unnecessary regulatory barriers and “onerous mandates” had delayed the construction of new homes and driven up their costs, making housing less affordable for American citizens.

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

India’s state-run refiners continue their buying spree of crude from West Africa as the Middle East crisis has sapped supply and made deliveries uncertain.

In one of the latest purchases via a tender, India’s state-owned refiner Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) has acquired 2 million barrels of Nigerian crude oil from Shell, trade sources told Reuters on Thursday.

HPCL has bought 1 million barrels each of Nigerian crude grades Forcados and Bonga for its Visakh refinery in the state of Andhra Pradesh on the east coast of southern India. The refinery has the capacity to process 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude.

Earlier this week, reports emerged that HPCL acquired 2 million barrels of Okwuibome and Utapate crudes from Nigeria from commodity trader Glencore via a tender.

The Nigerian crude from Glencore will go to feed HPCL’s refinery in the state of Rajasthan, HPCL Rajasthan Refinery Limited (HRRL), which has a capacity to process 180,000 bpd and in which Hindustan Petroleum holds a 74% stake. The remaining stake is held by the state government of Rajasthan.

Several Indian refiners have recently bought crude from Oman and West Africa via tenders, as term supplies from the Middle East remain choked by the shipping constraints at the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb.

State-controlled Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited (MRPL) has acquired about 1 million barrels of crude oil from ?Oman via a tender, at a premium of some $3 per barrel to Dated Brent, from Mitsui & Co Energy Trading Singapore, trade sources told Reuters earlier this week.

In addition, state-run Indian Oil Corporation, the largest refiner by capacity in the country, has bought from Chevron a total of 4 million barrels of West African crude, including Nemba, Saxi Batuque, and Clov grades from Angola, and Congo’s Djeno crude.

Indian refiners are in search of crude supply from as far as Angola in Africa and Venezuela in South America as their term supplies from the Middle East were trapped again in July and unable to reach India as planned.

Summary

• Explosions heard near Qeshm island - Iran says it struck 'hostile targets'.
• Iran parliament reviews draft Hormuz plan banning US- and Israel-linked vessels, oil rises
• Houthis intensify attacks on Saudi oil shipping in the Red Sea.
• Yemen fighting escalates amid reports of major casualties.
• Iran-Oman talks continue as US backs diplomatic solution, searches for offramp.

Iran Struck 'Hostile Targets' in Strait of Hormuz: Fars

After explosions were heard on Qeshm island, near the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian state media is saying that Iranian forces attacked and struck 'hostile targets' - though the event still remains shrouded in mystery and few details were offered. The US side has also not confirmed anything, and this could also be the result of drone activity. 

Iran remains defiant, with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian having newly asserted in an interview, "Our enemies expected the country to collapse due to the pressures they have exerted." He added that these pressures have "reached their maximum". Oil jumped again on the reports of attacks in the Hormuz Strait area:

MS Now continues to report on the 'agreed upon' Iran-Oman deal for Hormuz transit:

Oman on Thursday agreed to the framework of a deal with Iran to temporarily reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the global crude oil export route that Washington and Tehran have been wrestling to control since the war began, two Middle East diplomats with knowledge of the negotiations told MS NOW.

The diplomats declined to describe the details of the temporary agreement or what issues remain unresolved. But an Iranian government official linked to the deal told MS NOW on Thursday morning that it will establish new shipping routes by allowing commercial vessels to enter the Persian Gulf through an Iranian-controlled route and exit through a route controlled by Oman.

This also as Iranian leaders continue to taunt Washington, with fresh messages such as the following from the country's influential parliament speaker:

“Massive attack coming… wait, never mind, they want to negotiate.”
That’s theater diplomacy on loop.

Using bullying + broken promises + fake news as leverage is a failed strategy.

Acknowledge the facts and fulfill your commitments. We don’t need more theater.

— ???????? ??????? | MB Ghalibaf (@mb_ghalibaf) August 6, 2026

Deal Details: US-Israeli vessels Banned from Hormuz (Fars)

Iranian state media (Fars) has issued details of the Iran-Omani draft plan for transit rules through the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf. The country's parliament is said to currently be reviewing it, while Tehran still insists that the US has been sidelined, saying that the Oman-Iran contacts are bilateral.

As cited in Bloomberg from state media, key proposals include:

• Ban vessels linked to the U.S., Israel, and other hostile states
• Block military and civilian cargo tied to Israel
• Restrict ships linked to actions against the "Axis of Resistance"
• Deny passage to parties owing compensation to Iran
• Impose fines of up to 20% of cargo value for violations

The first note about banning US-linked vessels could alone serve to restart the war. The White House has appeared to genuinely be searching for an exit strategy, but this may be too hard a pill to swallow, if accurate.

Fars has spelled out that "The passage of vessels belonging to the US, the Israelis, and other hostile countries through the Strait of Hormuz will be prohibited." Below are is the fuller outline of the proposed plan as featured by Fars [machine translation]:

• The passage of vessels belonging to the United States, Israelis and other hostile countries through the Strait of Hormuz will be prohibited.
• Ships related to Israel, whether military or civilian, will not have the right to transit through this area.
• Vessels or cargoes that play a role in actions against the Resistance Front will also be subject to the ban.
• Countries and individuals that have caused damage to Iran will not receive permission to pass through the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf until compensation is paid.
• Heavy fines, including up to 20% of the value of the goods, will be imposed on violators. The cargo is anticipated.
• The government will be required, in cooperation with the armed forces, to assume responsibilities such as guiding navigation, monitoring vessel traffic, and protecting the security and environment of the Persian Gulf.
• This plan is still in the expert review stage, and the parliament has asked experts to submit their suggestions for completing it.

Oil spikes on the headlines of a very clearly 'Iran-favorable' 'deal' - which Washington is unlikely to simply accept.

Does this portend a return to active conflict?

Yemeni 'Blockade for Blockade' Could Threaten Delicate Hormuz Negotiations

Yesterday witnessed at least the eighth Saudi oil tanker attacked by the Houthis since the maritime blockade began on July 22, which is being followed by reports the Yemeni rebel group backed by Iran could be preparing for all-out war with Saudi Arabia.

The group struck two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea on Wednesday and coupled the action with a threat to intensify attacks in order to close "all access routes" to Saudi oil shipments. Military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree confirmed that ballistic missiles were launched at a Saudi tanker called Wafa near the Saudi port city of Yanbu.

A second oil tanker identified as Daisy was subsequently hit in the Gulf of Aden with a ballistic missile and "forced to turn back" - the spokesman said in a social media post. The Houthis are dubbing it a "blockade for blockade" strategy.

Large New Saudi-Backed Operation?

But it seems the Saudis aren't ready to take this laying down, even if the ratcheting Red Sea region conflict threatens fragile Oman-sponsored talks to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, as on Thursday its proxy the Yemeni Armed Forces - representing the official government whose seat is in Aden in the south - announced preparations for a large new military operation.

This as Al Arabiya reports a fresh outbreak of ground fighting, in a renewal and intensification of the civil war that goes back to at least 2015 (and has an international proxy war aspect to it). The Arab publication says that a Houthi attack killed 45 government forces in Hadramawt and Marib in Yemen, areas which also happen to be home to the vast majority of the country's oil and gas fields.

Separately Al Jazeera describes of the same event:

The Yemeni Emergency Forces of the internationally-recognised government, have said that there have been material and human losses following attacks on its camps.

Several causalities have been reported after a suspected Houthi rocket and drone attack targeted bases hosting the forces in Marib and Hadramaut.

So now it seems that even if a grand Hormuz deal to reopen energy transit can be pulled off with some level of sticking power, there will have to be a separate ceasefire to contain the Yemen and Bab al-Mandab Strait crisis.

To some degree, the Houthi closure of the Red Sea to Saudi shipping represents a good cop, bad cop approach to the United States and its Gulf allies. It is a way for Tehran to still maintain some serious tangential leverage over global energy, even as ships in Hormuz could finally get moving again.

The Houthis launched ballistic missile and drone strikes on Saudi-backed Yemeni forces in Marib Governorate, targeting several military sites.

According to preliminary reports, at least 45 personnel were killed and dozens wounded, with Saudi-aligned media confirming the attacks… pic.twitter.com/uThIgebcfe

— Conflict Radar (@Conflict_Radar) August 6, 2026

Houthis Pivotal in Iran's 'Axis of Resistance' 

As a reminder, the Houthis have been part of what Iran sees as the "axis of resistance" going back to when the Shia rebel group first seized power in September 2014:

Saudi Arabia is now being squeezed from three directions in the widening U.S.-Iran war — Iraq to its northeast, Yemen to its southwest, and Iran to its east. (On July 18, Tehran struck Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh, its first direct hit on Saudi soil in nearly four months.)

To understand why this matters beyond the price of oil, it helps to picture the crises as a set of nesting dolls.

The innermost doll is Yemen’s own civil war: a decade-old fight between the Houthis (officially known as Ansar Allah), who rule the populous north from Sana’a, and Yemen’s internationally recognized government, formally led by a body called the Presidential Leadership Council. The roots of this war trace to the 2011 Arab Spring revolution, which toppled Yemen’s long-serving president and left a power vacuum the Houthis moved to fill, seizing Sana’a in 2014. Saudi Arabia and a coalition of partners intervened in 2015 with the explicit aim of reversing that takeover and restoring the internationally recognized government, and the war has continued in one form or another ever since.

The middle doll is Saudi Arabia’s broader rivalry with Iran, a contest for regional leadership that has run since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, when Tehran’s new theocratic government began exporting a revolutionary, Shia-inflected challenge to the Gulf’s Sunni monarchies.

In the meantime, Al Jazeera is reporting Thursday that the Saudi-backed government shot down a drone operated by the Houthis over the city of Marib.

The country's official SABA news agency said the Houthi targeting of Marib "embodies their escalatory approach and their insistence on continuing their terrorist acts" and that "the air defenses engaged the drone as soon as it entered the city’s airspace and successfully shot it down."

Over in the Persian Gulf region, Iran officials have said a deal with Oman to reopen the Strait of Hormuz is "on the verge of being finalized" which entry and exit routes and protocols having been established. Iran continues to say that Washington has nothing to do with this, and warns against US military interference.

The White House seems to be quite serious about ensuring an offramp from the conflict this time, as the bombs have fallen silent for several days now...

???? US Vice President JD Vance said diplomatic negotiations with Iran are "going to be messy" and will "take some time," in an interview on Fox News, a more cautious tone than President Donald Trump, who claimed earlier this week that "a lot of progress" had been made.

??"That…

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) August 6, 2026

Trump: I'd Rather Make a Deal than Kill People

But lots of unknowns and variables remain, as some international reports suggest a final deal could be signed as early as the close of Thursday, or at least by week's end. Al Jazeera notes: "For Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the US must abide by the memorandum of understanding (MoU) it signed with Iran in mid-June, although that would not be enough on its own, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said in comments carried by Iran’s IRNA news agency."

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has newly warned that "We're ready to ?retaliate, but finding a diplomatic solution is the best way to avoid wider escalation and destruction ?across ?the ?region."

Perhaps its indicative of general Iran war fatigue, but the US appears poised to agree to a deal that recognizes Iran's claim to control over the Strait of Hormuz--an unthinkable concession even a few weeks ago--and I'm seeing very little discussion of it among the commentariat.

— Gregory Brew (@gbrew24) August 6, 2026

As for President Trump, he has freshly stated, "I'd rather make a deal because I don't want to kill people. But Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon."

The United States and China are the world’s two preeminent superpowers, but views of them vary widely by country.

This visualization, via Visual Capitalist's Gabriel Cohen, compares approval ratings for Beijing and Washington using survey results from more than 42,000 respondents across 36 countries.

The survey was conducted in February 2026 by the Pew Research Center.

China Now Leads in Global Favorability

Public opinion in many countries has shifted in China’s favor amid changes in U.S. diplomacy and foreign policy.

In 27 of the 36 countries surveyed, China received a higher approval rating than the United States. These include U.S. allies and neighbors such as Canada, France, Germany, Mexico, and the United Kingdom.

The following table lists 2026 approval ratings for China and the U.S. across all 36 countries surveyed.

Country	Approval (%) of U.S. ????	Approval (%) of China ????	China-U.S. Gap (%)
???? Pakistan	15	90	75
???? Malaysia	19	75	56
???? Palestine	9	57	48
???? Indonesia	29	72	43
???? Singapore	34	73	39
???? Thailand	36	69	33
???? Sri Lanka	42	72	30
???? Bangladesh	26	56	30
???? Turkey	13	43	30
???? Spain	30	54	24
???? Italy	31	51	20
???? Mexico	40	59	19
???? Greece	37	55	18
???? South Africa	35	52	17
???? Nigeria	63	78	15
???? Kenya	63	76	13
???? Chile	37	49	12
???? Canada	33	44	11
???? Peru	51	61	10
???? France	27	36	9
???? Netherlands	25	34	9
???? Sweden	19	27	8
???? Australia	24	31	7
???? Argentina	44	50	6
???? Germany	27	33	6
???? UK	41	46	5
???? Colombia	60	63	3
???? Brazil	47	46	-1
???? Ghana	68	64	-4
???? Hungary	58	53	-5
???? Poland	49	39	-10
???? Philippines	56	40	-16
???? South Korea	45	28	-17
???? India	45	23	-22
???? Japan	50	11	-39
???? Israel	81	19	-62

Pakistan has the largest favorability gap. China has a 90% approval rating among Pakistanis, compared with 15% for the United States, a difference of 75 percentage points.

After Pakistan, the largest gaps are found in Malaysia, Palestine, and Indonesia. In each of these Muslim-majority countries, a majority of respondents view China favorably, while fewer than one-third view the United States favorably.

U.S. Soft Power Abroad

In the Americas, respondents in every surveyed country except Brazil view China more favorably than the United States.

The results from the United States’ two direct neighbors are particularly notable. One-third of Canadians and 40% of Mexicans view the U.S. favorably, compared with 44% and 59%, respectively, for China. Both countries have faced heightened trade tensions with their shared neighbor.

U.S. allies farther from North America tend to view Washington more favorably. The U.S. receives its highest approval rating in Israel (81%), followed by Ghana (68%) and Kenya and Nigeria (63% each).

Several U.S. allies closer in proximity to China also favor Washington over Beijing, including India, Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines.

Europe’s Balancing Act

Across Europe, China receives higher approval ratings than the United States in every surveyed country except Poland. In Poland, 49% of respondents view the U.S. favorably, compared with 39% for China.

Perceptions of the United States have declined across much of the continent. Long-standing U.S. allies such as France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands now rate China more favorably.

Economic tensions, tariffs, and disputes involving Greenland may have contributed to weaker transatlantic sentiment. However, the Pew survey measures public opinion rather than the specific reasons behind these views.

To learn more about how the two superpowers compete through their diplomatic networks, read China Tops Global Diplomacy Index on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Samantha Dart, co-head of global commodities research at Goldman Sachs, began the week by telling Bloomberg TV that the global diesel-supply crunch is "what keeps her up at night." She followed up Wednesday with a client note warning that European natural gas storage levels are also lagging the seasonal average ahead of the winter heating period.

Benchmark TTF futures have fallen 7% this week to about 54 euros per megawatt-hour, but Dart maintained her 60-euro balance-of-third-quarter forecast. She noted that Northwest European LNG imports missed July expectations by 2.1 million tons on an annualized basis, leaving storage just 43% full at month-end versus the 45.5% projected.

The latest Bloomberg data shows that Europe's NatGas storage is about 57.87% full, roughly 18 percentage points below the 2009–25 average.

"Specifically, the July miss in European LNG imports (and the resulting miss in storage fill) vs our expectations suggest that European gas storage still has some catching up to do, while LNG supply availability remains uncertain," Dart wrote in the note.

Dart continued, emphasizing that Europe must accelerate NatGas injections to reach her 67% storage target by the end of October. Higher potential Qatari exports, weaker Asian spot demand and reduced Egyptian imports could free additional cargoes for Europe, though an early drop in TTF prices risks redirecting LNG back toward Asia.

Dart warned that if Gulf energy exports recover only gradually, December TTF prices may need to exceed 100 euros to curb Asian demand. A faster reopening of the Hormuz maritime chokepoint could push prices to 40 euros.

Dart continued:

On net, we still see risks to our winter TTF price forecast skewed to the upside. In a scenario where Middle East energy exports normalize only gradually through 2027, we estimate that Dec26 TTF would likely need to move above 100 EUR/MWh, 110% above our 50 EUR/MWh base case, to significantly discourage Asia LNG demand. In contrast, we estimate that a faster-than-expected ramp of Hormuz flows would allow TTF to sell off back in line with the coal-to-gas switching threshold of 40 EUR/MWh, 20% below our current Dec26 TTF price base case.

Putting it all together, if disruptions in the Hormuz persist, Europe could enter winter with NatGas and diesel inventories well below seasonal norms, setting the stage for another surge in energy prices.

Professional subscribers can read more NatGas notes at our new Marketdesk.ai portal.

Authored by Mark Collett,

Running a single marathon is a great achievement. Running 30 marathons is a spectacular feat. Running 30 marathons in 35 days is something only a world-class athlete could achieve. But running 30 marathons in 35 days, and running the final nine of those marathons with a broken leg – that’s an impossible feat that would require superhuman powers. But that is exactly what Jason Arday has claimed to achieve.

But that’s not all, Jason Arday’s incredible feats aren’t just limited to running nearly 240 miles on a fractured leg without medical intervention, he also claimed to have run 600 miles in six days on a treadmill (without any evidence), played both football and snooker at a professional level (a boast that was apparently taken out of context), raised over £5.5 million for charity (but can’t name a single donor), managed to go 15 years with a barely a wink of sleep, and even appeared on the famous television documentary series Seven Up! – which originally premiered a whole 21 years before he was even born.

This is the story of Cambridge University’s youngest-ever black professor, who was appointed as Professor of the Sociology of Education in 2023.

Jason Arday was born in 1985 on a council estate in Clapham, South London, to Ghanaian parents – a humble beginning for a man who would go on to achieve so much. But Jason would not only achieve great feats, but he would do so against all the odds, overcoming what some may have called ‘impossible barriers’ during his meteoric rise to greatness. At just three years of age, Jason was diagnosed with global developmental delay and autism spectrum disorder, leading medical experts and therapists to predict that he would require assisted living for the rest of his life. But this wasn’t the end of young Jason’s struggles – he was completely non-verbal throughout his early childhood and communicated entirely using sign language and as a result he didn’t learn to speak until he was 11 years-old. He credited his mother for helping him break through his silence by using music, rhythm, and song lyrics to connect him to language – the power of love and song set him on the road to such success. However, due to his late language and speech development, he did not learn to read or write until he was 18 years-old.

Allegedly.

And the word ‘allegedly’ should precede many of Jason’s achievements and boastful tales. It is a well-known medical and biological fact that learning to speak a language fluently after the age of 11 – if a person has been completely non-verbal since birth – is incredibly difficult due to a biological phenomenon known as the critical period hypothesis. Whilst it is not always absolutely impossible, it is one of the steepest challenges in cognitive science. This is because children’s brains form billions of neural connections specifically designed to map sounds to meaning, however, around the point when a child passes through puberty (roughly at the age of 11 to 13), the brain undergoes what is known as “synaptic pruning”. Neural connections that were not used – such as the neural pathways for processing and producing spoken speech – are cleared away or repurposed. Once this pruning happens, the brain loses the elasticity required to naturally absorb language structure.

But it’s not all just about neural pathways, when someone speaks, their brain must also simultaneously coordinate the lungs, vocal cords, tongue, teeth, and lips. This motor mapping is trained continuously through babbling and talking during infancy and childhood. A person who has been non-verbal for 11 years has not built these specific motor pathways, making the physical act of clear speech production highly uncoordinated and laborious. But miraculously, Jason beat all the odds, and at the last possible moment he learnt to speak. But the miracles just kept on coming and Jason managed to attend local schools in South London and eventually left secondary education with two GCSEs – one in Physical Education and one in Textiles. But despite the mountainous struggles that would have beaten most men, Jason was determined to go further still – and eventually, not even the boundaries of time itself would hold him back.

Determined to pursue sports and teaching, Jason then went to a local college to study for a BTEC diploma, which allowed him to bridge the gap into higher education. This was another major milestone for the young achiever – and this herculean feat was made even greater as Jason claimed that due to his late language development, he did not learn to read or write until he was 18 years-old. Some may scoff at Jason’s two GCSEs and BTEC diploma, but to have achieved these grades whilst not even being able to read and write proved that he was nothing short of a child prodigy. Jason then went on into higher education, and graduated from St Mary’s University in Twickenham in 2008 with a BA in Education Studies and Physical Education before serving as the university’s Student Union Athletics President for a year immediately following his graduation. For many, this would be the end of a long and arduous academic road, but to Jason, it was just the beginning.

Jason then went on to earn an MA in Education and Pedagogy from St Mary’s and later completed a PGCE at the Institute of Education to become a qualified school PE teacher. At this point, after achieving so much, and overcoming so many almost insurmountable hurdles, he could have entered a well-paid role in teaching. But Jason was still hungry for more, leading to his transitioning into the subject of Sociology of Education and going on to earn a Master of Education (MEd) followed by a PhD in Education from Liverpool John Moores University in 2015. This would have been incredible enough, but due to Jason’s humble background, he had no financial backing, and whilst passing through educational institutions at breakneck speed he was forced to work part-time retail shifts to fund his higher education tuition. Not only did Jason beat all the odds as a late starter, but he was both an academic genius and a hard worker.

But looking at Jason’s impressive academic résumé, it appears that mathematical qualifications are sadly absent, and that may be why things just don’t seem to add up. We are meant to believe that a boy who was completely non-verbal due to autism and global developmental delay until age 11 and who was unable to read or write until 18, then went on to earn a PhD by the age of 29. This means that in just 11 years Jason managed to learn basic literacy and catch up on all those years of missed schooling, complete an undergraduate degree (which typically takes 3 years), complete two separate Master’s degrees (typically taking 1-2 years each), complete a PGCE teacher training qualification (taking 1 year) and then write a 100,000-word PhD dissertation (taking typically 3-4 years). In just over a decade, Jason had not only learnt to read and write, but condensed 12 years of higher education into a near record-breaking period of time that would prove his hyper-accelerated cognitive processing abilities were second to none. And he did it all whilst working multiple jobs and without sleeping.

Jason’s story was remarkable – some may even go as far as to state that it was unbelievable – but it wouldn’t be long before educational institutions up and down the country would begin falling over themselves to offer him prestigious well-paid positions. Once he had completed his PhD, Jason secured his first major permanent academic post at the University of Roehampton, entering the institution directly as a Senior Lecturer in Physical Education, and it must be noted, this rapid entry without years of junior postdoctoral research was highly unusual, but surely by this point, extraordinary achievements were nothing more than everyday occurrences for Jason. Jason then went on to join Durham University’s Department of Sociology before being rapidly promoted into an executive role. Within just a year, Durham University had promoted Jason to Associate Professor. Alongside this, he was named the Deputy Executive Dean for People and Culture within the Faculty of Social Sciences and Health. Interestingly, and rather tellingly, this executive role placed him in charge of institutional diversity and inclusion initiatives.

But the meteoric rise of the non-verbal black youth from inner city London wasn’t over yet. In 2021 Jason stepped into a new role at the University of Glasgow, joining their School of Education to take the position of Chair in the subject of Sociology of Education – another milestone had been achieved, as he was now a full professor. And at the tender age of 35, this appointment officially made him one of the youngest full professors in the whole of the United Kingdom. It was at this point Jason’s numerous lofty achievements and incredible superhuman feats caught the attention of officials at Cambridge University – one of the most prestigious and influential institutions of higher education in human history had now noticed him and they wanted him on their team. And in March 2023, at just 37 years-old, Jason was appointed to the prestigious Professorial Chair of Sociology of Education at Cambridge’s Faculty of Education and was then concurrently elected as a Fellow of Jesus College. This appointment broke the record for the youngest Black professor in the university’s history. Jason was now at the very pinnacle of academic excellence; his fairytale story was now complete.

This is the point where the tale should come to an end, where things should be wrapped up nicely with a big red bow and where Jason receives the applause and recognition he deserves. And that would be how the story ends, if any of his achievements could actually be verified. But at this juncture some uncharitable folk might claim that Jason was just making it all up, and that the only reason anyone believed him is because lecturers and those with institutional power wanted to promote him in order to prove a very specific and racially charged point. It has been noted that people working within modern higher education, and specifically in institutions like Cambridge, Durham, and Glasgow are highly motivated to promote ‘diverse’ talent, especially if that ‘talent’ has a powerful, motivational and inspirational narrative attached. Jason was everything that liberal multiculturalists could have dreamed of, so much so, that university officials all over the UK were so eager to celebrate the story of a non-verbal black man that had beaten all the odds, that they skipped any of the standard, rigorous vetting of his academic work that one might usually expect.

That is exactly how Jason ended up in his position at Cambridge, not so much because of Jason’s myriad of self-professed achievements, but because the institution never checked any of his claims. And this isn’t mere conjecture: the University of Cambridge has now admitted that officials did not conduct an independent textual analysis when hiring Professor Jason Arday in 2023, instead, their vetting process relied heavily on ‘institutional trust’ and ‘reputation’ rather than any raw forensic auditing. In short, because Jason had already been vetted, hired, and promoted to senior positions by three other highly respected institutions (Roehampton, Durham, and Glasgow), Cambridge’s hiring panel assumed his foundational work was immaculate. Instead, Cambridge University’s appointment panel was deeply captivated by Jason’s unique, highly inspirational backstory and the focus of the hiring process was centred on his vision for the sociology department and his high-profile advocacy work surrounding diversity and inclusion, rather than a line-by-line verification of his past work. After all, who needs to know if a candidate can actually do the job they are being hired for when they fit the diversity profile so perfectly?

But unfortunately for Jason and his eager backers – Cambridge University, a number of other respected academic institutions and several publishers – this isn’t where the story ends, and Jason doesn’t get to leave the stage to rapturous applause.

Earlier this year, allegations would emerge that suggested that Jason’s unbelievable backstory and his near impossible achievements weren’t quite as real as some claimed.

An analysis of Jason’s 2015 PhD thesis, which was awarded by Liverpool John Moores University, revealed something truly shocking: the document contained 188 sentences that were identical or nearly identical to a thesis written by a student at Brunel University in 2009. But these issues weren’t just limited to Jason’s PhD, textual overlaps were then identified in several of Jason’s subsequent journal articles, leading to two separate journals issuing formal correction notes. In some papers, Jason allegedly recycled borrowed text and framed the lines as “direct quotes” from research subjects he claimed to have interviewed himself. Worse still, The Times later uncovered severe flaws in his references, including data discrepancies and the complete omission of a research participant who Jason previously claimed had taken their own life.

This would have been enough to sink any other high-profile academic. However, Jason’s run of incredible feats and unbelievable luck only continued. Cambridge University were so enamoured with Jason that when this new information came to light and accusations of plagiarism emerged, the university’s immediate institutional response was not to question Jason, but instead to defend him. Senior figures from Cambridge University completely dismissed the allegations, framing any criticism of their all-star black professor as a “vile campaign of bullying” directed at a vulnerable, dyslexic and autistic scholar. But as more and more allegations surfaced, Cambridge University officials changed their tactics, and attempted to distance themselves and the institution from the core issue by stating that investigating a PhD thesis is strictly the legal responsibility of the institution that awarded it – they were passing the responsibility back to Liverpool John Moores University.

And the response of those who should have checked his work in the first place was just as telling. Colleagues and peer-reviewers admitted to being hesitant to question Jason’s data or writing style out of fear of looking like they were attacking a vulnerable, autistic scholar – in short, no one wanted to question the black academic prodigy, they just wanted to put him on a pedestal to prove a point. But now, and rather ironically, all eyes were on Jason Arday – but not quite in the way that he wanted, as people were now increasingly focusing on the details of his work rather than his tall tales. As a result, independent researchers began feeding Jason’s published work into advanced anti-plagiarism software and the truth was plain for all to see. Several major academic publishers were forced to confront the reality that their peer-review processes had overlooked glaring and obvious anomalies. But the embarrassment wasn’t yet over, as Jason had published several highly regarded books with a company called Routledge, a leader in academic publishing. When complaints were first made regarding text-recycling and uncredited overlap in these texts, Routledge initially stood by their man. However, as the sheer volume of identical sentences became public, the publisher was humiliatingly forced to initiate a series of formal internal reviews.

Everything was coming crashing down – and there was only one thing Jason could do.

And if you thought that would be to admit to his alleged wrong doings, apologise and walk things back, you would be entirely incorrect. It was in fact time to double down, and invent another story to make everyone feel sorry for him in the hope that the whole incident would just go away and people would stop talking about his alleged plagiarism. And this is where Jason would reveal a final, previously hidden chapter to his remarkable story, it was time for him to tell the world that he had of course been the victim of racism. When Jason had first joined Cambridge University as a professor, he had been the victim of a hate campaign and all this talk of plagiarism and falsified superhuman feats of endurance risked stirring up another maelstrom of bigotry. But it wasn’t enough to claim that he had merely been the victim of hate, Jason had to go further: claiming that a severed pig’s head had been sent to him as part of a sudden escalation of abuse and threats that were specifically aimed at him due to his high-profile appointment as the university’s youngest black professor.

This incredible claim would surely silence all of his critics, as once the police reports and photos of this obscene crime were made public, no one would dare to question the black genius and his remarkable stories. There was only one small problem: Jason did not report the delivery of the pig’s head to the police when it allegedly took place. He claimed that he intercepted a large cardboard box at his parents’ house in South London, on opening the box, he discovered the pig’s head and did what anyone else would do – threw it straight into a wheelie bin and waited several months before calling the police. Well, at least he reported it to the police in the end, so a crime number would back up his harrowing tale. What’s more, Jason was so sure of his interaction with the police, that he went on to claim to reporters that when the police finally investigated the hateful act, they managed to trace the animal back to a local butcher who sold a “whole hog” on the morning that the severed head was delivered to his parents’ house.

However, unfortunately for Jason, the Metropolitan Police keep records of crimes that are reported, and they revealed that after an extensive search, there was no evidence whatsoever of any such report or subsequent investigation. This surely must have been the result of institutional racism within the Met Police and officers must have destroyed all evidence of the report. But at least Jason could still rely on the butcher to confirm the details of this gruesome hate crime. Yet in a final bizarre twist, reporters from The Guardian (who were no doubt driven by a desperate attempt to prove Jason’s story to be true) visited the specific South London butcher that Jason himself had named as the providers of the hog. However, the staff at the shop stated that no police officers had ever come in to question them about a pig’s head, dryly noting, “That’s the kind of thing we’d remember.” Indeed, who could forget such a thing?

One would expect that opening a large parcel only to discover a severed pig’s head nestled within would be rather unforgettable – but in the case of Jason, this may have been just another one of many rather extraordinary occurrences. But as we live in a technological wonderland where everyone has a telephone in their back pocket featuring a high-resolution camera, this kind of extraordinary occurrence would surely result in a photograph being taken. However strangely, Jason did not even take a single picture of the offending item before hurling it into a wheelie bin and according to the police – never even reporting the incident. Strange behaviour for a man of such incredible academic stature, after all, a man who had mastered time travel could surely operate a simple device like a smartphone. It seems that just as with Jason’s academic work, accurate citations were sadly lacking. But the embarrassment was not over yet, as Jason’s friends and colleagues at Cambridge, who were interviewed by the press, all claim he never even mentioned the incident to them. It’s almost as if it never even happened.

Backed into a corner, Jason was faced with only one final option: it was time to go nuclear; it was time for him to scream the word ‘racism’ as loudly as he could and then wait for the cavalry. This is exactly what he did, and he got exactly the result he had hoped for, as more than 12,000 people – including Green Party leader Zack Polanski, at least five Labour MPs and a gaggle of Cambridge academics all signed a petition set up by the Good Law Project supporting him. What’s more, fellow black academics were up in arms about his treatment, with Kehinde Andrews, professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University, bellowing profusely that Jason was a good boy and he didn’t do anything wrong. In fact, according to Kehinde, poor Jason was merely the victim of a “smear campaign” that was “as predictable as it is baseless”. But it wasn’t just black academics who were angered, white professors also fell over themselves to come to Jason’s defence, with Alan Lester, a University of Sussex Geography professor who specialises in colonialism, calling the entire saga a “non-story”.

But the best was yet to come.

Jewish cognitive neuroscientist, Fellow of Trinity College and director of Cambridge University’s Autism Research Centre – Sir Simon Baron-Cohen – raised important concerns about the impact that the media coverage was having on Jason and his mental health. As Jason had been through so much, and achieved so many great feats, Simon Baron-Cohen wanted everyone to just shut up and stop talking about the issue, stating: “We should of course always investigate plagiarism to protect academic standards; however, I cannot stand by and watch when an autistic man is on the ground and the kicking continues. This is relentless bullying of a vulnerable autistic man and raises safe-guarding issues. It’s time to stop.” According to Baron-Cohen, this wasn’t about truth, academic integrity or standards in higher education, this was now a ‘safeguarding issue’ and what’s more, it was ‘bullying’.

If Jason Arday had been white, it would have undoubtedly been the case that he would have either resigned, or been forced out of his lucrative position. However, at the time of writing, Cambridge University’s leadership is actively shielding him from any scrutiny, citing a prior institutional clearance. An academic misconduct panel at Liverpool John Moores University – which awarded Jason his PhD – reviewed the 188 copied sentences in March 2026 and cleared him of intentional misconduct, ruling the overlaps were an “honest and reasonable error” caused by a depleted student supervision team. They too wanted the world to know: Jason was indeed a good boy who didn’t do anything wrong and that the copied sentences weren’t his fault. Cambridge have now officially declared Jason the victim of a “vile campaign to undermine his credibility” driven by right-wing media outlets and their Faculty of Education is actively providing him with safety infrastructure, including panic alarms and specialist staff to security-screen his mail – who are no doubt on high-alert for severed animal heads. What’s more, despite everything that has happened, the commercial book publishers he has deals with have also confirmed they are still proceeding with his upcoming titles as planned.

[Update: Arday has resigned "with immediate effect", the university said it had launched an investigation into Professor Jason Arday "following new information" about his "academic qualifications and honorary appointments".

He said his resignation should not "be interpreted as a loss of faith in scholarship or in the values that first brought me to Cambridge. Nor should it be mistaken for an acceptance of the narratives that have surrounded me."

Arday said "this is not the end of my work" and that he needed "time to heal".]

But even now, with all these facts, assertions and allegations out in the wild, the public isn’t left with many answers – only more questions.

Was Jason Arday really non-verbal until 11 years of age? Did he miraculously learn to speak at the very last minute with the help of music? Could he really not read and write until the age of 18? If he could not read and write until 18, how on earth did he get two GCSEs and a BTEC diploma? Some of what we have been told is undoubtedly true – he did indeed go to several major universities – but that raises even more questions. How could anyone even apply to a university if they were still learning to read and write? And why would a university accept a student who couldn’t read or write properly? And if he did learn to read and write at the age of 18, how did he compress such a large amount of learning into a single year of work? So many questions, and these questions are all about events and achievements that allegedly took place before Jason even got to university and before he allegedly began copying the work of others.

But then there are a string of pressing questions about his time in higher education.

Why didn’t those checking his work go over it properly? How did Jason manage to get his work through the peer review process, and who were the peers who reviewed it? What work did he present when attending interviews for lucrative and prestigious positions, and how do institutions decide whether a candidate is suitable for the role?

There are people out there who can answer these questions, but they never will. In fact, the only way any of this could be verified is if we had a time machine, and there’s only one person in this whole sorry tale who claims to have broken the laws of physics and travelled back through time – and conveniently, that is of course Jason. Which all leads to only one conclusion: a young black man who was woefully underqualified ended up being ushered through educational institutions and was given a pass at every level in order to unfairly elevate him in a blatant attempt to prove a political point. Jason Arday is the ultimate token black academic, and universities built him up because of that.

And that’s really the point; this isn’t just a story about a silly man with a big mouth and an overactive imagination. This story is really about the fact that one particular silly man with a big mouth and an overactive imagination ended up as a Cambridge University Professor with a number of academic book deals. And the reason he ended up in that position is simple: it wasn’t because of his incredible achievements; it was because of his ethnic background and the sob story he sold to a panel who were no doubt overwhelmingly made up of white liberals. One of the supposed strengths of the academic system is that it is meant to have rigorous checks in place to ensure those who are underqualified do not get into positions of power or authority, and these checks and balances are not only there to ensure fairness and to guarantee that only the best of the best take the top positions in leading universities, but also to ensure that at the heart of academia is a system of structured meritocracy. This meritocracy is not only to ensure the cream rises to the top, but to create a constant upward cycle that leads to ever-increasing standards and that academic boundaries are constantly tested and pushed. But this all goes out the window if a candidate is from an ethnic minority background.

The fact that Jason Arday rose to such a position is a damning indictment of the current state of academic institutions in Britain. But this story also illustrates another important issue – this wasn’t a one-off failing involving a single university and a small number of officials, but a national systemic failing involving dozens of people at multiple top-tier universities and publishing houses. It is clear, these institutions have given up on the ideals of meritocracy and excellence, and have instead elevated diversity, equity and inclusion as the most important virtues in modern education. This is not only unfair to better and more qualified candidates who have genuinely worked harder and deserve the job in question, but it also inevitably leads to a decline in the overall quality of an institution. But the damage done is not just limited to the institution in question, but is part of a wider process of societal and civilisational decline. What’s more, it is a sign that elite institutions are no longer dominated by scholars who strive for knowledge and truth, but instead are controlled by those who have an almost religious belief in multiculturalism and diversity.

This religious belief is so great, that when a man like Jason Arday walks into an institution he isn’t just seen as a poster boy, but almost as a form of messiah who can do no wrong and should face no criticism. As such, those who are so eager to place him on a pedestal will not even question the incredible feats he boasts of – no matter how outlandish they are. Instead, officials within elite institutions will parrot the wild boasts of men like Jason Arday, happily spreading the word of the great miracles performed by their latest diversity hire. Officials at Cambridge University seem so in love with the idea of Jason that they appear to be one step away from claiming that after he ran his 35 marathons (9 of which were achieved on a broken leg) he then proceeded to walk on water and feed the entire university with one mackerel and a single loaf of sugar bread. Such is the unquestioning and almost religious belief in Jason Arday, that even now, the university stands by him and he will remain as one of the best paid and most highly revered published academics in Britain.

To Britain’s elite educational institutions, Jason Arday’s improbable tales of being non-verbal at 11, running marathons on a broken leg and appearing on a television show that premiered 21 years before he was born weren’t red flags – they were integral reasons as to why they embraced him and put him on a pedestal. And that leads to one final point that must be made clear – an uncomfortable issue that many won’t wish to accept. The case of Jason Arday is absolute proof that the ‘woke’ agenda and shibboleths of ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ are certainly not a thing of the past – in fact they are very much alive and well.

The idea spread by some within the media and in online circles that ‘common sense’ has returned and ‘woke’ politics was just a brief period of social madness is nothing more than a lie that is eagerly accepted and parroted by those who wish to believe they are winning. The notion that woke politics is a ‘thing of the past’ is as realistic as the story of a man running nine marathons on a broken leg – and anyone that chooses to believe either of those assertions is sadly only fooling themselves.

Serbia is set to host Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a major first of the war which could set off serious diplomatic tensions with Russia, a longtime Serbian ally and 'friend'.

Zelensky will arrive on this first-ever trip on Saturday, August 8, according to Ukrainian officials, despite that Serbia - as a Slavic and Orthodox Christian country - has historically maintained warm ties with Moscow.

But Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has been a leader who has put a little distance between himself in Russia, for example skipping this year's Victory Day Parade in Moscow. He's also been accused of allowing Serbian arms to go to Ukraine, which he's denied.

"I believe we will discuss how and in what ways we can help each other on this issue (EU integration, ed.) and, if possible, learn something from one another," Vucic said of the upcoming visit.

"That also includes our cooperation in culture, sports, and everything else," the president added. Regional media indicated the two leaders are expected to address Ukraine's move toward EU membership, energy cooperation, as well as economic ties.

Zelensky is likely to lobby the Serbian government to take a tougher stance on Russia, for example by joining Western sanctions on Moscow.

President Vucic has consistently resisted calls to join anti-Russian international sanctions, however, stressing that the country's position on the matter will remain unchanged.

But Serbia is still hugely dependent on Russian energy, and just a week ago it was reported that— 

Serbia secured another sanctions waiver from the United States for ?its Russian-owned oil company NIS, energy minister Dubravka Djedovic Handanovic ?said on Friday, allowing the firm that supplies most of the country's fuel demand to continue importing crude oil until August 28.

The waiver granted by the U.S. Office ?of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) gives NIS, which operates Serbia's only oil ?refinery, more time while Hungary's oil and gas firm MOL negotiates ?the purchase of the Russian majority stake in the company.

As for Zelensky's state visit, the Kremlin is surely not pleased, given the symbolic nature of Belgrade opening up to Ukraine in essence.

Serbia has stood accused of becoming a key element in NATO's Balkan arms pipeline of secretive transfers...

Seems Zelenskyy (may) visit Serbia next days/weeks. It follows a long, secretive (but certainly not secret) and massive sale of Serbian ammunition to kill thousands of Russians, facilitated by USA, which made Serbia billions of $ and bought Vucic tolerance with Western capitals. https://t.co/Hpc7ba8LCv

— Petrit Selimi (@Petrit) August 6, 2026

An unnamed senior Ukrainian official made no secret of Zelensky's intent is. "We need to pull the Serbs away from Russia’s side," the official said, calling the unprecedented visit to Belgrade a "slap in the face for the Russians."