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Remember when TikTok went nuts for Dubai chocolate? Well, that continued fervor is now causing an international shortage of pistachios. The trend took off in 2023 when food reviewer Maria Vehera posted a video unwrapping and eating the high-end chocolate bar (called “Cant Get Knafeh of It” in a nod to the traditional Arab dessert). The bar was originally launched in 2021 by boutique Emirati chocolatier Fix. Vehera’s video has since racked up more than 124 million views and is widely credited with sparking the Dubai chocolate craze. Instantly recognizable by its vibrant green filling, TikTokers flooded the platform with enthusiastic taste tests of the bar, which is sold exclusively in the UAE. Many also began rating dupes and attempting homemade recreations. The traditional recipe features milk chocolate, the shredded pastry known as kataifi, and a pistachio cream filling. If the bar wasnt already hard enough to get your hands on, the global shortage of its key ingredientpistachio kernelshas made it that much more precious. In just one year, prices have soared from $7.65 to $10.30 per pound, Giles Hacking from nut trader CG Hacking told the Financial Times. The pistachio world is basically tapped out at the moment, he said. Primarily grown in the U.S. and Iran, pistachios were already in short supply due to a poor American harvest last year. This year, Iranian producers have exported 40% more nuts to the UAE in the six months leading to March than they did in the entire 12 months before. Thats a major shift from 2023, when global supply exceeded demand and prices dipped, according to Behrooz Agah, a founding member of the Iran Pistachio Association. Major chocolate makers like Läderach and Lindt have since joined the trend with their own pistachio-infused products. Meanwhile, cookie chain Crumbl reportedly has Dubai Chocolate Brownie and Dubai Chocolate Cheesecake flavors in development. And with demand still booming, scammers have even set up fake websites claiming to sell the coveted chocolate. In response, some stores are now reportedly rationing the number of bars per customer. Id like to see them try to stand between me and my pistachio chocolate.
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E-Commerce
Weeks ahead of his death, Pope Francis dedicated this months prayer intention to new technologies and the hope that it can serve every person, especially the weakest. How I would like for us to look less at screens and look each other in the eyes more, Pope Francis said in a prerecorded video released April 1. Somethings wrong if we spend more time on our cellphones than with people. The screen makes us forget that there are real people behind it who breathe, laugh, and cry. Pope Francis died at 88 Monday morning, the Vatican announced in a statement on X, just after his appearance in St. Peters Square on Easter Sunday. Pope Francis, in his 12-year papacy, often stood up for the marginalized, including migrants. And the April 1 tech-focused prayer intention was no different. “It’s true, technology is the fruit of the intelligence God gave us,” he continued. “But we need to use it well. It can’t benefit only a few while excluding others. So, what should we do? We should use technology to unite, not to divide. To help the poor. To improve the lives of the sick and persons with different abilities.” The pope has voiced his concerns over technology before. Last year, he warned that artificial intelligence could lock the world order in a “technocratic paradigm.” In 2023, he spoke to participants at a workshop about how tech should be considered with its moral implications. “Use technology to care for our common home,” Pope Francis said during his April 1 intention. “To connect as brothers and sisters. It’s when we look at each other in the eyes that we discover what really matters: that we are brothers, sisters, children of the same Father. Let us pray that the use of new technologies will not replace human relationships, will respect the dignity of the person, and will help us face the crises of our times.”
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E-Commerce
As Big Tech kicks off its quarterly earnings season this week, the industry’s bellwether companies have been thrust into a cauldron of uncertainty and turmoil that they didn’t anticipate when Donald Trump re-entered the White House nearly 100 days ago.Since President Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, Big Tech stocks have been on a see-sawing ride that has eviscerated trillions of dollars in shareholder wealth amid an onslaught of tariffs and other potentially detrimental actions.It’s the polar opposite of what Apple CEO Tim Cook, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos hoped for when they assembled behind Trump as he was sworn in.That display of unity reflected a belief that Trump’s second stint in the White House would be a refreshing change from the heavy-handed regulation of President Joe Biden’s administration while unleashing even more lucrative opportunities in artificial intelligence and deal-making.But the Trump administration’s policies so far have vexed Big Tech’s “Magnificent Seven” companies a group consisting of Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Tesla, Google parent Alphabet and Facebook parent Meta Platforms. Since Trump’s inauguration, the Magnificent Seven’s combined market value has plunged by $3.8 trillion, or 22%, as of April 20.The financial damage was even more severe a few days after Trump’s April 2 unveiling of sweeping reciprocal tariffs that would have exacted a heavy toll on Big Tech’s supply chains in China and other key markets around the globe. A temporary freeze on the majority of the most punitive tariffs and an exemption from most of the fees on electronics coming in from China has provided some relief, but Trump has made it clear the reprieve may be short-lived.That has left the specter of Trump’s ongoing trade war hanging over Big Tech, whose influence extends around the world.“The mass confusion created by this constant news flow out of the White House is dizzying for the industry and investors and creating massive uncertainty and chaos for companies trying to plan their supply chain, inventory, and demand,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said.Besides the upheaval triggered by Trump’s tariffs, his administration is also in the midst of trying to prove regulators’ allegations that Meta has been running an illegal monopoly in social networking, and working to persuade a federal judge to break up Google after its search engine last year was found to be illegally abusing its power. Trump also has given no indication of abandoning antitrust lawsuits filed by the Biden administration that aim to hobble Apple and Amazon.And Nvidia absorbed a significant setback last week when the Trump administration banned it from selling one of its popular AI chips to China, prompting the company to record a $5.5 billion charge to account for the stockpile of processors that it intended to export to that country.Tech CEOs will get a chance to discuss the fallout from the trade war and other challenges still ahead during analyst conference calls that will be held as part of their companies’ financial reports for the January-March quarter.The ritual will kick off Tuesday when Tesla is scheduled to release its full financial report after already revealing that its first-quarter car sales dropped by 13% from the same time last year.The decline occurred against a backdrop of vandalism, widespread protests and calls for a consumer boycott amid a backlash to Musk’s high-profile role in the White House overseeing a cost-cutting purge of U.S. government agencies.After Musk discusses his strategy for reversing a decrease in Tesla’s market value since he joined Trump in the White House, Google parent Alphabet Inc. is scheduled to announce its results on Thursday. Then four of the Magnificent Seven will get their turn next week: Amazon on April 29; Meta and Microsoft on April 30; and Apple on May 1.Nvidia, which operates on a fiscal year ending in January, is scheduled to wrap things up on May 28 with the release of its quarterly results. Michael Liedtke, AP Technology Writer
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E-Commerce
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