The global energy crisis caused by the war in Iran is equivalent to the combined force of the twin oil shocks of the 1970s and the fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the head of the International Energy Agency has warned. Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director, said the growing fallout could be seriously compounded through interuptions to the “vital arteries of the global economy”, includ...
The global energy crisis caused by the war in Iran is equivalent to the combined force of the twin oil shocks of the 1970s and the fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the head of the International Energy Agency has warned. Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director, said the growing fallout could be seriously compounded through interuptions to the “vital arteries of the global economy”, including petrochemicals, fertilisers, sulfur and helium. Speaking at the National Press Club of Australia in Canberra on Monday, Birol said the depth of the problems in energy markets caused by American and Israeli bombings in Iran, and the closure of the stragetic strait of Hormuz, had not initally been properly understood by world leaders. That situation prompted his intervention last week, when the IEA pushed for demand-side measures such as increases in the number of employees working from home, a temporary lowering of speed limits on highways and reduced air travel. He warned that at least 40 energy assets in the Gulf region had been severely or very severely damaged, so even an end to the conflict would not immediately restore energy supply. Birol said that about 5m barrels of oil had been lost each day in the two crises in 1973 and 1979. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine had removed about 75bn cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas from international markets. But the current crisis, which started with bombings against the regime in Tehran on 28 February, already represented the loss of 11m barrels of oil per day and about 140 bcm of gas. Before meetings with the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, Birol told journalists: “This crisis, as things stand now, is two oil crises and one gas crisis put all together.” On 11 March, Birol oversaw the release of 400m barrels of oil from strategic reserves, the largest emergency measure in its history. There was a surplus in global oil markets at the start of 2026, but strikes on ships in the strait of Hormuz, through which about...
The amount of heat trapped by the Earth reached record levels in 2025, with the consequences of such warming feared to last for thousands of years, the UN warned on Monday. The 11 hottest years ever recorded were all between 2015 and 2025, the United Nations’ WMO weather and climate agency confirmed in its flagship State of the Global Climate annual report. Last year was the second or third hottes...
The amount of heat trapped by the Earth reached record levels in 2025, with the consequences of such warming feared to last for thousands of years, the UN warned on Monday. The 11 hottest years ever recorded were all between 2015 and 2025, the United Nations’ WMO weather and climate agency confirmed in its flagship State of the Global Climate annual report. Last year was the second or third hottest year on record, at about 1.43 degrees Celsius above the 1850-1900 average, the World Meteorological Organization said. Advertisement “The global climate is in a state of emergency. Planet Earth is being pushed beyond its limits. Every key climate indicator is flashing red,” said UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. Paris in July 2025, when the city was on red alert for high temperatures. Photo: AFP “Humanity has just endured the 11 hottest years on record. When history repeats itself 11 times, it is no longer a coincidence. It is a call to act.”
One of HS2’s biggest contractors has warned the government that raising tariffs on foreign steel imports will “exacerbate” cost pressures for the UK construction industry, amid growing concern over the £100bn railway’s rising budget. Ministers said last week they would double the tariffs on imported steel and slash the amount that can be bought from overseas, in an attempt to save Britain’s strugg...
One of HS2’s biggest contractors has warned the government that raising tariffs on foreign steel imports will “exacerbate” cost pressures for the UK construction industry, amid growing concern over the £100bn railway’s rising budget. Ministers said last week they would double the tariffs on imported steel and slash the amount that can be bought from overseas, in an attempt to save Britain’s struggling steelmakers. However, the move will also raise the cost of the metal, crucial for infrastructure projects such as HS2, at a time when an energy shock from the Iran war is already inflating steel and concrete prices. Mark Reynolds, the chair of the construction company Mace, said that amid the rising energy costs and an already depressed construction sector, the tariffs were “ill-timed and unhelpful and will only exacerbate the challenges” facing the UK industry. Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, is due to update the Commons on Monday on Labour’s drive to “reset” the cost of HS2 amid concern over its rising price tag. She is expected to say she has asked HS2’s chief executive, Mark Wild, to explore reducing the speed of its trains to save money. A government source said Alexander was “weighing up all options to claw back as much time and money for the taxpayer as possible” with the aim to open the railway as soon as possible and at the lowest possible cost. Mace is building stations at London Euston and Birmingham Curzon Street for HS2, the stalling rail project that is already expected to cost about £100bn when accounting for inflation. Last year its boss told ministers that a deadline of opening the line in 2033 could not be met. Contractors are understood to have already bought much of the steel that goes into the tunnels, viaducts, bridges and underground work that will support the railway. Now they are being told to look for opportunities to buy in advance for other elements such as stations, to mitigate against future price increases. From July, quotas on ...
Of all their seven children, Abed Elrahman Hamdouna’s parents worried about him the most during the war in Gaza. Hamdouna was a volunteer ambulance driver in northern Gaza, “risking his life to help people who were injured”, says his father, Hosny Hamdouna. They knew about the repeated Israeli attacks on Gaza’s health facilities which have claimed the lives of hundreds of healthcare workers. So wh...
Of all their seven children, Abed Elrahman Hamdouna’s parents worried about him the most during the war in Gaza. Hamdouna was a volunteer ambulance driver in northern Gaza, “risking his life to help people who were injured”, says his father, Hosny Hamdouna. They knew about the repeated Israeli attacks on Gaza’s health facilities which have claimed the lives of hundreds of healthcare workers. So when a ceasefire was reached in October 2025, they were cautiously relieved. But that relief turned to shock after Hamdouna, a 31-year-old father of two, was killed in a reported drone strike west of Gaza City two weeks ago, as he was on his way to a family Ramadan iftar, to break fast with his brothers. His death is a shocking reality check on the large numbers of civilians that continue to die in Gaza. Since the ceasefire was announced on 10 October last year, Israel has killed 677 and injured a further 1,800 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Israeli strikes in Gaza have averaged about 10 a day across the territory over the past five months. “There’s no ceasefire,” says Hamdouna’s father. “It’s all talk, for the media. In reality, there’s no ceasefire.” double quotation mark I will continue to say it: the paramedics, the firefighters and the civil defence workers are the real heroes of this war Hamza Nabhan, medical student Hamdouna’s brothers, his wife and two young children were busy preparing maftoul, a Palestinian dish made of bulgur wheat, and meat for iftar. When his brother, Mohammed, tried to call to check where he was, there was no answer. “His battery must be dead,” he says he thought, knowing that his brother normally charged his phone at work. Soon after, 20 minutes before iftar time, Mohammed got the news and immediately rushed to the hospital. En route his father was calling. Their parents had travelled to Egypt before the war started, got stuck there and hadn’t seen Hamdouna in more than two years. “I didn’t know what to tell him,” says Moham...
How have the rich and powerful convinced so many voters that the reason they are struggling is the poor and powerless? The American historian talks about the weaponising of divisiveness ‘I think I’ve had at least seven books that have been banned in the United States,” says Ibram X Kendi, in a tone that carries no bitterness but stops just short of pride. It’s proof, he says, that his works on rac...
How have the rich and powerful convinced so many voters that the reason they are struggling is the poor and powerless? The American historian talks about the weaponising of divisiveness ‘I think I’ve had at least seven books that have been banned in the United States,” says Ibram X Kendi, in a tone that carries no bitterness but stops just short of pride. It’s proof, he says, that his works on racism, which extend from deep, scholarly histories to a biography of Malcolm X for children, are getting through to the right people – and annoying the right people. According to the writers’ advocacy group PEN America, his books have been banned at least 50 times by multiple US school districts during the tumultuous “anti-woke” backlash of the past five years. He’s not happy about that, but nor was he discouraged. “I understood that the major reason why people were singling me out and demonising me was because they did not want people reading my books,” he says. “And when the character assassinations did not work to the scale that they wanted them to, then they started banning my books, and the books of many others.” Kendi’s work is divisive almost by design. He has a way of framing his ideas in radically stark terms. In his 2016 breakthrough book Stamped from the Beginning, a history of racist ideas in the US, he argued that racist policies lead to racist ideas, not the other way round. His bestselling follow-up, 2019’s How to Be an Antiracist , introduced an equally contentious proposition: there was no such thing as “not racist”; you were either racist or anti -racist. There was no in-between: inaction or neutrality about racist issues was effectively complicity. By extension, he argued that all racial disparities in outcome for Black people were the result of racist policies – not just some, all . Continue reading...
Elanor Boekholt-O’Sullivan is on a mission. The new housing minister of the Netherlands is charged with building 100,000 homes a year and breaking through a planning deadlock to combat one of Europe’s worst housing crises. The Irish-born 50-year-old is new to politics. Until a fortnight ago she was the country’s top female military officer, famous for getting flak jackets redesigned for women’s bo...
Elanor Boekholt-O’Sullivan is on a mission. The new housing minister of the Netherlands is charged with building 100,000 homes a year and breaking through a planning deadlock to combat one of Europe’s worst housing crises. The Irish-born 50-year-old is new to politics. Until a fortnight ago she was the country’s top female military officer, famous for getting flak jackets redesigned for women’s bodies and holding her own in a male-dominated sphere. Now she is clear. With a shortage of 400,000 homes, average house prices of almost €500,000 and a growing population, the country must build like it did after the second world war – and be prepared to make some compromises along the way. “What I take from working in defence is that you keep your eye on the ball,” Boekholt-O’Sullivan, from the liberal-progressive D66 party that now leads the coalition government, said. “The homes have to be built: that is the primary need right now. Luxury takes time, and we do not have time.” Many European countries are struggling with shortages of affordable housing, with punishingly high rents and sky-high property prices locking younger and disadvantaged people out of the market and proving a divisive issue at the ballot box. But in the Netherlands, a densely packed nation of 18 million people, the crisis feels particularly biting. Nationwide, house prices have doubled in the past decade; in more sought-after neighbourhoods they have surged 130%. A new-build home can cost 16 times an average salary. View image in fullscreen Protesters marching through Amsterdam on 1 March 2026 in protest at the severe housing shortage in the city and nationwide. Photograph: Georgios Kostomitsopoulos/NurPhoto/Shutterstock The rental market is equally dysfunctional and waiting lists for social housing in the bigger Dutch cities, particularly in Amsterdam, can stretch to 10 years. During the election campaign last year before he became the Dutch prime minister, Rob Jetten accused other parties of a “lack ...
The great sculptor worked as a war artist in the 1940s, sketching people sheltering from bombings. Now his powerful underground drawings are opening the vast, renovated sheep barn gallery at his Arcadian home In September 1940, Henry Moore and his wife, Irina, left London to escape wartime bombing, ending up in the bucolic hamlet of Perry Green, where Hertfordshire meets Essex. What was envisaged ...
The great sculptor worked as a war artist in the 1940s, sketching people sheltering from bombings. Now his powerful underground drawings are opening the vast, renovated sheep barn gallery at his Arcadian home In September 1940, Henry Moore and his wife, Irina, left London to escape wartime bombing, ending up in the bucolic hamlet of Perry Green, where Hertfordshire meets Essex. What was envisaged as a temporary refuge eventually became permanent, and the array of buildings in which Moore lived and worked is now a kind of cultural ecosystem dedicated to his genius. Part minor stately home, part sculpture park and part archive – one of the largest devoted to a single artist – it’s now overseen by his eponymous foundation, established in 1977. Today, it comprises a constellation of studios and workspaces dispersed across an Arcadian landscape. Sheep graze in far fields and colossal sculptures loom on the horizon. Moore’s house, Hoglands, is preserved just as he left it, replete with his collections of books and artefacts – Dogon and Ashanti carvings, a narwhal tusk casually slung in a corner, a Picasso print in the kitchen – along with amply provisioned drinks trays for entertaining visitors and prospective buyers. Over the years, Moore clinked glasses with a stream of admirers, from Lauren Bacall to German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who had a large Moore situated outside his Bonn chancellery in the 1970s, remarking that it synthesised “nature with intelligence”. Continue reading...
It has seen its fair share of Hollywood parties – albeit with a twist. Instead of champagne and caviar it is usually Guinness and scampi fries. Red carpet? There aren’t even cushions on the seats. The tiny Sheffield pub, Fagan’s, has raised more than a few toasts in the last year as Adolescence, the Netflix hit made by two of its owners, scooped multiple awards at the Emmys and Golden Globes and b...
It has seen its fair share of Hollywood parties – albeit with a twist. Instead of champagne and caviar it is usually Guinness and scampi fries. Red carpet? There aren’t even cushions on the seats. The tiny Sheffield pub, Fagan’s, has raised more than a few toasts in the last year as Adolescence, the Netflix hit made by two of its owners, scooped multiple awards at the Emmys and Golden Globes and became one of the world’s most-watched dramas. A year after the drama’s release, Sheffield appears to be basking in a newfound confidence. “It feels like we’re on the cusp of something really exciting,” said Neil Shamma, the chief operating officer of Warp Films, the production company behind Adolescence. Shamma is not the only one excited. The former steel city is now home to the UK’s biggest podcast festival, Crossed Wires, as well as the genre’s leading independent producer, Persephonica, which makes Lily Allen’s show with Miquita Oliver, Political Currency with Ed Balls and George Osborne, and launched The News Agents with Emily Maitlis. Dino Sofos, the former BBC News podcast boss who runs Persephonica, said the success of Adolescence – Netflix’s second most-watched show of all time – had transformed South Yorkshire’s creative scene: “Between Arctic Monkeys and a few years ago it’s been nostalgia driven. What’s great about Adolescence is that we’re proud of what we’re doing now.” Civic leaders all say South Yorkshire has for years punched below its weight creatively and economically, notwithstanding the success of Arctic Monkeys (two of whom co-own Fagan’s). The region struggled to recover from the brutal dismantling of its heavy industry and missed out as money and jobs flowed to Manchester and Leeds. Oliver Coppard, the Labour mayor of South Yorkshire, said its leaders had failed to offer an ambitious vision of the area’s future: “There was never a moment where someone stood up and said: ‘And now we’re going to move on.’ We’ve been shit at that. That sense of renewal ...
More than £170m was given to MPs, political parties, media organisations and thinktanks aligned with the UK’s populist right over the past five years, new research from the Labour MP Liam Byrne has found. Byrne, a former cabinet minister who chairs parliament’s business committee, said he had identified a “media-political complex” funded largely by a handful of billionaires. He said news organisat...
More than £170m was given to MPs, political parties, media organisations and thinktanks aligned with the UK’s populist right over the past five years, new research from the Labour MP Liam Byrne has found. Byrne, a former cabinet minister who chairs parliament’s business committee, said he had identified a “media-political complex” funded largely by a handful of billionaires. He said news organisations, such as GB News, are receiving large amounts of money to fund their broadcasting, while paying rightwing politicians to act as presenters, which in turn amplifies their views. Some of those views are then clipped on social media, which generates more money a click. The research was carried out for Byrne’s new book, Why Populists Are Winning and How to Beat Them, with updated figures showing even greater sums of money have been given in the past year, including £12m to Reform from the crypto investor Christopher Harborne. Byrne said his research “maps for the first time the financial architecture of Britain’s populist right – and found a media-political complex of extraordinary scale, built in plain sight in just five years”. The research analysed almost 500 transactions covering January 2020 to February 2026 drawn from the Electoral Commission, the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, Companies House filings and civil society reports. He said more than £130m can be traced to just four entities: Harborne, the hedge fund manager Paul Marshall, the Dubai-based investment firm Legatum and the financier Jeremy Hosking. The vast majority – more than £133m, or 76% of the total – went not to political parties but to three media organisations: GB News, the Critic, and UnHerd. Byrne said GB News “privileges and channels coverage to Reform politicians” while the Critic and UnHerd predominantly feature rightwing and “anti-woke” voices, although UnHerd claims to be non-partisan. GB News is funded by Legatum and Marshall, while the Critic is bankrolled by Hosking and UnHerd by...
Satellite images of Tehran show toxic fires caused by Israeli bombings on oil depots were still burning days after the strikes, which have caused fears of serious health complications for millions of residents in the Iranian capital. Clouds of smoke from bombings on 7 March on multiple facilities blanketed the city with pollutants ranging from soot to oil particles to sulphur dioxide. Hours later,...
Satellite images of Tehran show toxic fires caused by Israeli bombings on oil depots were still burning days after the strikes, which have caused fears of serious health complications for millions of residents in the Iranian capital. Clouds of smoke from bombings on 7 March on multiple facilities blanketed the city with pollutants ranging from soot to oil particles to sulphur dioxide. Hours later, a passing storm showered Tehran with poisonous, oil-filled rain. View image in fullscreen Tehran oil refinery lies south of the city. Photograph: Copernicus Sentinel The Guardian spoke to residents who described having headaches, eye and skin irritation and difficulty breathing. Experts have warned those symptoms could be just the beginning, with longterm risks of cardiovascular disease, cognitive impairment, DNA damage and cancer. Four fuel facilities in and around the capital were hit, with Shahran depot in the north-west spewing a thick column of smoke into the atmosphere. The Aqdasieh oil depot in the north-east, Tehran refinery in the south and Shahid Dolati facility in the west were also hit. Iran has described the attacks as “ecocide”, which is described as wanton acts of environmental destruction. Satellite images from two days after the strikes showed the Shahran depot and the Tehran refinery were still burning. Another image taken by the European Space Agency satellite on Tuesday – 10 days after the strikes – showed those two fires had smouldered. However, smoke and flames were visible at the Aqdasieh oil depot in the north-east. View image in fullscreen Aqadsieh oil depot was still visibly burning 10 days after the strike. Photograph: Copernicus Sentinel Footage posted on social media on 8 March showed a violent fire at the Aqdasieh site. Residents say the capital’s air has been unbreathable for years – Tehran’s chronic air pollution has long been exacerbated by the use of “mazut”, a low-quality heating oil. But the particles released by the explosions this mont...
Owners of luxury brands ranging from Gucci to Fendi and Bulgari opened more stores in Europe last year despite a slowdown in the wider sector. The continent’s leading luxury retail streets saw a 13% rise in new outlets last year, data compiled by global real estate broker Cushman & Wakefield Ltd. show. Brands owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE , Kering SA and Cie Financiere Richemont SA ...
Owners of luxury brands ranging from Gucci to Fendi and Bulgari opened more stores in Europe last year despite a slowdown in the wider sector. The continent’s leading luxury retail streets saw a 13% rise in new outlets last year, data compiled by global real estate broker Cushman & Wakefield Ltd. show. Brands owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE , Kering SA and Cie Financiere Richemont SA made up almost a third of those stores. The region saw 96 openings in 2025, up from the prior year but below the 107 seen in 2023. Paris, which saw a drop in 2024 as the city hosted the Olympic Games, made up a little more than a fifth of the new outlets. The flurry of ribbon-cuttings comes as retailers focus on attracting customers who are increasingly becoming picky about what they splurge on as a deteriorating outlook for the global economy lowers luxury spending following a post-pandemic boom. Brick-and-mortar outlets have become key to luring buyers, according to Cushman & Wakefield. “The physical store is more strategic, not less,” said Sally Bruer , head of EMEA retail research at the broker. In January, LVMH reported poor Christmas sales and signaled 2026 won’t get much better, damping hopes of a luxury industry rebound. Three of the fashion giant’s five divisions missed estimates for the fourth quarter of 2025, with Chief Executive Officer Bernard Arnault telling investors the group would limit spending as a result. Sales at Gucci, which is owned by Kering, fell 10% in the same period, although that was the smallest decline in two years. Still, high-end fashion and accessories accounted for roughly half of the store openings last year, while luxury perfumeries saw an expansion. “We’ve seen six luxury fragrance stores open this year, all in Paris actually,” said Bruer. Fragrances have been particularly popular due to their lower price point when compared to items such as jewelery and watches. LVMH, owner of brands such as Louis Vuitton and Dior, was the most active ...
Private capital firms are starting to swap software systems for hard hats as the artificial intelligence boom forces the industry into a quick rethink of its priorities. The likes of Blackstone Inc. , Bain Capital and Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. have all been talking of an increased focus on heavy assets with low obsolescence. This so-called HALO trade is targeting makers of everything from s...
Private capital firms are starting to swap software systems for hard hats as the artificial intelligence boom forces the industry into a quick rethink of its priorities. The likes of Blackstone Inc. , Bain Capital and Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. have all been talking of an increased focus on heavy assets with low obsolescence. This so-called HALO trade is targeting makers of everything from ship engines to conveyor belts that are considered less likely to be made extinct by AI. “People are looking for terra firma,” Blackstone President Jonathan Gray said in an interview. “There is a lot of interest across public and private markets in real, tangible assets – medical supplies, energy, real estate, industrials.” Some of the hottest deals in the European market right now underscore the shift. Private equity buyers are competing for Volkswagen AG ’s heavy diesel engine unit , there’s a three-way battle shaping up for British aerospace supplier Senior Plc , and Advent and Cinven are discussing the sale of TK Elevator at a potential value of €25 billion ($29 billion). Meanwhile, firms including Triton Partners , Warburg Pincus and Brookfield have been raising new funds to invest in industrial technologies, data centers and the once- unloved defense sector. Anuj Ranjan , chief executive officer of Brookfield’s private equity unit, said more capital was moving into industrials for two key reasons: a need to secure supply chains following the pandemic, and the potential for AI to transform the way things are made. “Manufacturing is one of the least digitized sectors in the world,” Ranjan said. “Industrial businesses may still look similar from the outside five years from now, but what they produce and how they produce it won’t look or feel the same.” Software Selloff The HALO shift is coming at the expense of fresh bets on software, a sector that’s benefited from more than $1 trillion of private equity investment over the last five years, according to data compiled by B...
The next supposed bombshell from the rumor mill sounds spectacular at first glance, but on closer inspection, it’s more of a case for the “interesting, but take it with a grain of salt” category. An alleged AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 has appeared in a CPU-Z validation, complete with model name and key technical specifications. The problem: The cache configuration shown makes little sense in this form. T...
The next supposed bombshell from the rumor mill sounds spectacular at first glance, but on closer inspection, it’s more of a case for the “interesting, but take it with a grain of salt” category. An alleged AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 has appeared in a CPU-Z validation, complete with model name and key technical specifications. The problem: The cache configuration shown makes little sense in this form. That’s exactly why the leak is relevant, but by no means reliable. At the center is a name that has already been circulating in the scene since the ASRock leak: Ryzen 9 9950X3D2. It is now considered very likely that AMD is working on a dual-cache X3D model for the Ryzen 9000 series. ASRock had inadvertently revealed a corresponding model in support documents or BIOS-related lists before the entries disappeared again. Such “accidental confirmations” are rarely coincidental in the motherboard business and are usually only embarrassing because they reveal a product before its official launch. That is precisely why the existence of a 9950X3D2 is now more plausible than the question of whether it will be released. The more exciting question has long been: What exactly does the configuration look like? And this is where things get murky with the CPU-Z entry. According to the leaked screenshot or the Validity page, the processor appears in the CPU field as “AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2,” while elsewhere in the tool it is still referred to as “Ryzen 9 9950X3D.” That’s already the first red flag. If a diagnostic tool contradicts itself regarding model identification, no one should pretend that this is a watertight leak. This isn’t proof; at best, it’s circumstantial evidence with a question mark. The second notable detail is the TDP value of 200 watts. This point, in turn, fits surprisingly well with what one would expect from a potential dual-CCD X3D with 3D V-Cache on both sides. The standard Ryzen 9 9950X3D officially has a TDP of 170 watts, and AMD has always worked within clear limits ...
aquarius83men/iStock via Getty Images Goldman Sachs lifted its 2026 oil price ( CL1:COM ) ( CO1:COM ) outlook on Sunday, citing prolonged disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, which it described as the largest-ever supply shock for global crude markets. Brent ( CO1:COM ) is expected to average $85 a barrel in 2026, up from an earlier forecast of $77, analysts including Daan Struyven said in a note,...
aquarius83men/iStock via Getty Images Goldman Sachs lifted its 2026 oil price ( CL1:COM ) ( CO1:COM ) outlook on Sunday, citing prolonged disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, which it described as the largest-ever supply shock for global crude markets. Brent ( CO1:COM ) is expected to average $85 a barrel in 2026, up from an earlier forecast of $77, analysts including Daan Struyven said in a note, as per reports. The oil benchmark was trading 0.4% higher at $ 112.61/bbl at press time. The full-year outlook for West Texas Intermediate, meanwhile, was hiked to $79 from $72. Goldman also expects Brent to average $110/bbl in March and April, up from a prior forecast of $98, as traders attach a growing risk premium amid uncertainty over how long supply disruptions will last. The bank said the changes reflect both a deeper drawdown in commercial inventories and a repricing of effective spare capacity as markets adjust to higher risks. "The price when uncertainty peaks may be $135/bbl if the market required a risk premium to generate precautionary demand destruction offsetting supply destruction over six months in a risk scenario of 10 weeks of very low flows and (2 million barrels a day) of persistent production losses," Goldman said in a note. The bank outlined two upside risk factors to its forecasts: one where a prolonged Hormuz disruption pushes Brent past its 2008 peak and another where a sustained 2 million barrels per day supply loss in Mideast production leads to a spike in prices. Meanwhile, a potential end to U.S. military action in the region could quickly erode the risk premium, while Washington's possible consideration of oil-export restrictions could widen the Brent–WTI price gap further, Goldman said, as per Reuters . President Trump under pressure to bring down soaring oil prices ( CL1:COM ) , ( CO1:COM), said Iran must “fully open, without threat,” the vital waterway for energy flows. He gave the Islamic Republic 48 hours “from this exact point i...
Hong Kong will raise its postage rates next month amid surging oil prices triggered by the conflict in the Middle East, with the cost of posting local letters increasing by 9 per cent to HK$2.40 (31 US cents). Hongkong Post on Monday said that the new rates would come into effect from April 13, highlighting the need to adjust postage rates to offset escalating operating costs, particularly increas...
Hong Kong will raise its postage rates next month amid surging oil prices triggered by the conflict in the Middle East, with the cost of posting local letters increasing by 9 per cent to HK$2.40 (31 US cents). Hongkong Post on Monday said that the new rates would come into effect from April 13, highlighting the need to adjust postage rates to offset escalating operating costs, particularly increases in major cost components such as conveyance costs and terminal dues payments. “Overall, the postage increases for over 90 per cent of local mail and surface mail will be within HK$0.20, while those for 90 per cent of airmail will be within HK$0.50,” a spokesman said. “The expected impact on both the general public and the commercial sectors is considered to be very mild.” Advertisement The operator also said the adjustments were broadly in line with cumulative inflation since the last increase in September 2022 up to January this year. Under the new rates, the cost of posting a local letter weighing 30 grams (1.06 ounces) or less will be raised from the existing HK$2.20 to HK$2.40. Advertisement The cost of airmail weighing 20 grams or less to mainland China and Taiwan will also increase from HK$3.70 to HK$3.90, while those to other places will be adjusted from HK$4-HK$5.5 to HK$4.20-HK$5.80.
Goldman Sachs APAC Ex-Japan President Kevin Sneader says China is better equipped than its peers to weather the impact of the Iran war on energy prices. Sneader speaks with Bloomberg’s Minmin Low at the Milken Institute's Global Investors’ Symposium Hong Kong 2026. (Source: Bloomberg)
Goldman Sachs APAC Ex-Japan President Kevin Sneader says China is better equipped than its peers to weather the impact of the Iran war on energy prices. Sneader speaks with Bloomberg’s Minmin Low at the Milken Institute's Global Investors’ Symposium Hong Kong 2026. (Source: Bloomberg)