Oil markets lurched higher at the start of the week following the Saudi East-West pipeline attack, which forced the kingdom to close a critical artery carrying crude away from the increasingly volatile Strait of Hormuz. US West Texas Intermediate futures rose 2.89% to $102.94 per barrel, while Brent crude, the international benchmark, climbed 2.82% to $107.56 per barrel.The pipeline, which spans the Arabian Peninsula for Al Jazeera describes as 1,200 kilometres (746 miles), connects Saudi Arabia’s oil-producing regions near the Persian Gulf to export terminals on its Red Sea coast. At full capacity, it can move seven million barrels of…
Author: Helen Rourke
Helen Rourke
Helen Rourke trained as a chartered accountant and spent fourteen years in financial services before starting to write. She qualified at a mid-tier firm, moved in-house to a media company's finance team, and spent her last years as a finance director at a creative agency, which gave her an unusual vantage point on both sides of the balance sheet. She writes about personal finance, tax, pensions, and the money questions people ask at dinner parties but never ask their accountant. She explains numbers without condescension and has no interest in making simple things sound complicated. Helen lives in North London. She files her own tax return on the first day it opens and considers this a character flaw.
A vessel was hit by an unknown projectile during a Strait of Hormuz vessel strike late on Saturday, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) centre confirmed, as a senior Iranian official declared further negotiations with the United States pointless.UKMTO said it received the initial report at 2300GMT on Saturday, according to Anadolu Agency. A fire broke out on board, and local authorities arrived to help evacuate crew members. The vessel had been transiting the Strait when the projectile hit.What We Know About the Strait of Hormuz Vessel StrikeThe attack is one of numerous incidents on shipping in the Strait…
Chinese President Xi Jinping has called on Xi Jinping BRICS Middle East allies to back a permanent ceasefire and a two-state solution, telling the bloc’s summit in New Delhi that the conflict in the region ‘has caused severe losses to the people of the region and is not in the common interest of the international community.’The 18th BRICS Summit took place in New Delhi on 12 September 2026, according to the Chinese Government Official Website. Xi used the occasion to set out China’s position on the Middle East in direct terms, stressing that all parties should ‘adhere to the direction…
A former Anthropic researcher whose warnings about Anthropic researcher AI fears have now reached tens of millions of people online has told the BBC that staff working on artificial intelligence are ‘genuinely frightened’ about where the technology is heading, and that some colleagues are even making contingency plans for civilisational collapse.Jacob Coxon, 27, left Anthropic after previously working at OpenAI, and published a resignation post that has since been viewed more than 70 million times on X, according to CNBC. He appeared on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg to explain what drove him to go public with his concerns.A park bench,…
Rough sleeping in Harlow is rising, and the charity at the heart of the town’s response says that housing people is only the beginning of the problem. Streets2Homes, which works with people experiencing homelessness in the Essex town, was monitoring and supporting 31 rough sleepers when its chief spoke to BBC Politics East, a figure she described as high and still creeping upward.The government has pledged £442m over three years to help end rough sleeping in England, a commitment that includes what BBC News reports as more than 1,000 homes to give rough sleepers permanent accommodation. The plan, steered by…
The Houthis’ advance toward full control of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the narrow waterway connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, has rattled oil markets and raised fears for global trade, as fighting between the United States and Iran reshapes the Middle East’s most critical shipping lanes. Brent crude settled down 2.8% on Friday at $104.61 a barrel, pulling back from a peak of around $108 the previous day, though the weekly gain remained sharp after prices surged above $100 for the first time in months.The week’s extraordinary volatility was driven by a cascade of military and diplomatic…
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian used his Pezeshkian India BRICS visit to declare that Tehran will not yield to American or Israeli pressure, even as the conflict’s mounting toll on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz placed his host country in an increasingly exposed position. Speaking late on Friday to a gathering of Indian religious leaders in New Delhi, Pezeshkian said: ‘Iran has successfully stood against Israel and the U.S. Since we are seeking truth and justice, we will not yield in front of bullying arrogance.’ The remarks came shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that, if forced…
Saudi Arabia has shut down its East-West crude oil pipeline following multiple drone attacks launched from Iraq, in a move that underlines how vulnerable the kingdom’s energy infrastructure has become as conflict across the region intensifies. The Saudi East-West pipeline shutdown, described by authorities as a precautionary measure, came after drones struck the pipeline in the Riyadh and Medina regions on Thursday morning, causing fires, some damage, and injuries to several people. Pumping stations hit, millions of barrels halted The scale of the damage is becoming clearer. According to Reuters, three pumping stations serving the pipeline were damaged in the…
Ryanair’s chief executive Michael O’Leary has refused to apologise over his Michael O’Leary rape remarks, after the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre wrote to him directly asking him to do so and two senior politicians called the language unacceptable.O’Leary made the comments while speaking to journalists ahead of Ryanair’s annual shareholder meeting. He described rival airlines as ‘high-fare rapists’, saying some passengers were ‘desperate to get to Ryanair’s low fares because they can’t afford to fly with the high-fare rapists around Europe’. When a reporter from the Press Association asked whether that language was appropriate, O’Leary replied: ‘Absolutely.’He went on to…
The US diesel price record high of $6.06 per gallon, reached for the first time, is sending shockwaves through the broader economy, as wars in Ukraine and the Middle East throttle global fuel supplies and leave refineries with nowhere left to run.Diesel, which powers the trucks, trains and ships that move goods across the country, as well as the farm machinery that grows the food on American plates, has hit a level that analysts say will hurt consumers well beyond the petrol station forecourt. Truckers and farmers are paying about 63% more to fill their vehicles than at this point…
