Egg prices reach new high before Easter

With Easter just around the corner, the cost of a dozen eggs reached a new high of $6.23 last month.

The peak price came despite a drop in wholesale costs and no new bird flu outbreaks at egg farms. That hike threatens to raise the stakes for upcoming Easter Egg hunts throughout the city over the next week.

A dozen eggs sold for $5.90 in February and $4.95 in January, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. President Trump, who campaigned on lowering the price of groceries including eggs, has promised costs would drop for consumers.

The wholesale price for eggs fell in mid-March, but that decrease isn’t yet being seen at supermarket checkout counters. Eggs tend to be in higher demand around Easter, which is April 20.

More than 30 million egg-laying chickens were killed to prevent the spread of bird flu in the first couple months of the year. That culling was blamed for a shortage of eggs and higher costs. Just over 2 million birds were killed in March, but they weren’t on egg farms.

The Trump Administration credited Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins for working to bring down costs by investing in bird flu prevention last month. That potential long-term fix hasn’t so far impacted the retail market. The USDA predicts the price of eggs will rise by more than 40% in 2025.

OpenAI sues Musk for unfair competition

OpenAI is suing Elon Musk for unfair competition and interfering with its business relationships with investors and customers, escalating a legal battle between the ChatGPT maker and the billionaire who helped bankroll the artificial intelligence startup a decade ago.

The allegations against Musk were filed Wednesday in a federal court in California as a counterclaim to the Tesla CEO’s lawsuit against OpenAI, which is heading to a jury trial next year.

Musk, an early OpenAI investor who now runs his own AI firm, xAI, along with Tesla, SpaceX, social media platform X and President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, began a legal offensive against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman more than a year ago.

He first sued for breach of contract over what he said was the betrayal of its founding aims as a nonprofit research laboratory, and later expanded his claims

Apple: few incentives to make iPhones here

President Donald Trump’s administration has been predicting its barrage of tariffs targeting China will push Apple into manufacturing the iPhone in the United States for the first time.

But that’s an unlikely scenario, even with U.S. tariffs now standing at 145% on products made in China — the country where Apple has manufactured most of its iPhones since the first model hit the market 18 years ago.

The disincentives for Apple shifting its production domestically include a complex supply chain that it began building in China during the 1990s. It would take several years and cost billions of dollars to build new plants in the U.S., and then confront Apple with economic forces that could triple the price of an iPhone, threatening to torpedo sales of its marquee product.

“The concept of making iPhones in the U.S. is a non-starter,” asserted Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, reflecting a widely held view in the investment community that tracks Apple’s every move.

He estimated that the current $1,000 price tag for an iPhone made in China, or India, would soar to more than $3,000 if production shifted to the U.S.

And he believes that moving production domestically likely couldn’t be done until, at the earliest, 2028. “Price points would move so dramatically, it’s hard to comprehend.”

— Wire reports