How King Charles Un-Tariffed Scotch

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Luke Vargas (0:18)

US oil executives give Venezuela a second look. Plus, Republicans rush to redraw congressional maps after the Supreme Court's race ruling.

And Jews look for safety as the UK grapples with the surge in anti-Semitic attacks.

David Luna (0:33)

Britain was long seen as a much safer haven for Jews than a lot of the rest of Europe. But now it feels like what happened on the continent has come here. And for a lot of members of the Jewish community, there are active conversations about where to go. Do you go to Israel, which is more or less a war zone? Do you go to the US where there are safety numbers in some areas?

Luke Vargas (0:53)

It's Friday, May 1st. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM Edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

We begin in Caracas, where passengers from an American Airlines flight from Miami have been welcomed to the city's Simone Bolivar Airport in the first direct commercial flight between the US and Venezuela since 2019 While the $1,700 round trip remains out of reach of most Venezuelans hoping to travel to see family in either country, the flight symbolizes the rapid thaw that's occurred since the capture of Nicolas Maduro. After the flight, the top US diplomat in Venezuela, John Barrett, to the country, was once again open for business.

John Barrett (1:41)

Right now, again, this focus right now is ensuring that we have an investment climate here that offers the kind of assurances that quality US firms and US investors require to have a high level of confidence in the potential because of the potential is here.

Luke Vargas (1:55)

Just months ago, oil majors like Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips deemed Venezuela too risky for business, but we exclusively report that they are now pitching their plans to revive the country's rundown oil fields. That says engineers, lawyers, and other representatives from the energy sector and US government have been flocking to the Caracas Marriott, now a makeshift American embassy, to meet with acting president Delci Rodriguez.

Since the start of the Iran War, dozens of countries around the world have responded to a worsening energy crisis by enacting measures to try and protect energy supplies. Romania, Japan, and the Philippines have declared states of emergency. India, South Korea, and Egypt have been rationing fuel. Others have paused fuel taxes, released millions of barrels of oil from their reserves, or told their citizens to change their habits. Among them, Australia, where we're joined this morning by Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen.

Minister, Australia has been very reliant on refined energy imports, diesel, gasoline, jet fuel. Recap for us what has been done since the Iran War began to prevent fuel shortages because for a little while there things were looking a bit tenuous.

Chris Bowen (3:10)

Yeah, that's right, Luke. Thanks for having me on. Well, yeah, we are at the end of a refined fuel supply chain here in Australia. We have two refineries. They're relatively small by international standards, and we have some oil extraction, but it only provides a small amount of our oil. So we are at the end of a supply chain, and in this particular international crisis where the Straits of Hormuz have been the real flashpoint, we like the rest of the Asia Pacific region, Foreign Minister Balak Sheeran of Singapore has called this an Asian crisis, and I think he's pretty right, have really been in the pointy end of the impact. Having said that, we've had no ships that we expected to arrive failed to turn up.

We have actually now more fuel in Australia at the, at today than on the day that Iran was bombed. So we've taken a number of measures. Firstly, public communications to tell people, look, we're okay for the moment, but you know, let's all be sensible here. Let's all not use any fuel that we don't need. We did deal early on in the international crisis with a big spike in domestic demand. No more fuel use for a lot more fuel purchases. So that really put pressure on our domestic supply chain. And more latterly, we've carried legislation through the Parliament to give our export finance Australia, our trade financing organisation, the ability to work with companies to get extra cargos into Australia, to provide a bit of extra buffer because this crisis is not being sold overnight. So as we speak, we've secured an extra 450 million litres of diesel and an extra 100 million litres of jet fuel.