Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

• Iran war live updates: US temporarily lets India buy Russian oil amid energy fears; Israeli military launches strikes on Beirut

The Iranian war has also led to a sharp increase in the amount of crude stored on tankers at sea, as this chart from RBC Capital Market shows.

RBC Capital Markets explain:

This week’s Strait of Hormuz closure has driven a scramble for alternate supplies and supported the dramatic surge in tanker rates, Brent-Dubai EFS spreads, and oil-on-water in the region.

Asian markets are some of the most exposed to the ongoing disruption, with the lion’s share of both crude and product cargoes in the Strait historically heading to APAC (though Europe also relies on the Middle East for major portions of its jet and diesel imports).

Reacher’s Alan Ritchson takes on alien robots in an action thriller that benefits from some better-than-usual streaming special effects

You’d be forgiven for skipping past Netflix’s gory, militaristic action thriller War Machine at this particular moment. There is, after all, an actual war raging on (is there ever a good time, one could argue?) but those behind the film would likely use its sci-fi bent as a differentiation defense. The war being raged here is not between the US and a foreign earthly entity but rather one from somewhere above, our umpteenth soldiers v aliens matchup. It’s a clear “if you like” column filler for fans of Predator, Edge of Tomorrow or, if they exist, Battle: Los Angeles, yet unlike the many films it’s clearly inspired by, the extraterrestrials here are designed to resemble machines that could have originated from another country rather than another planet, robotic whirring over tentacle slithering.

It gives the film a slightly generic sheen, like a cheaper Transformers spin-off, but it’s also thankfully devoid of the dreaded Netflix murk, that flattening filter that reduces most colours to grey, the film an acquisition from Lionsgate. Set in Colorado but shot in Australia from native writer-director Patrick Hughes, and granted a theatrical release there last month, it makes for a slicker-than-usual streaming premiere, an easy, drink-your-way-through-it Friday night option for those who wish to remain entirely unchallenged.

The city was portrayed as an aspirational place to live, but now those who moved there are realising the precarity that comes with being an economic migrant

To be fooled by a mirage, you needn’t be lost in the desert. Sometimes, the illusion is strongest just when you thought you were safely home, posting from the pool about your teenage daughter’s spa party and your own glittering life in a city where “the possibilities are endless”, as they tend to be for billionaires’ daughters living in tax havens. Only then does the fantasy explode in a puff of intercepted missile smoke, leaving just another woman in her pyjamas telling Instagram (as Petra Ecclestone did at the weekend) that she moved to Dubai “to feel safe” and war was never mentioned in the small print.

Who could have guessed that living a few hundred miles as the drone flies from Tehran might have risks? Certainly not the anonymous hedge funder who fumed to the Financial Times that “the trade was not that you were getting exposed to geopolitics”.

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

More athletes than ever, new nations, old favourites and breakout stars: here are all your questions about the Milano Cortina Paralympics answered

This is the 14^th edition of the Winter Paralympics, to be held on the 50^th anniversary of its first. It will be bigger than ever before, with more than 600 athletes from 56 countries expected to take part. El Salvador, Haiti, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Portugal will compete for the first time. There will be 79 different medal events in six different sports, with mixed doubles in wheelchair curling a new addition since Beijing 2022. The president of the International Paralympic Committee, Andrew Parsons, said the Games would deliver “world-class sport [that is] highly competitive. Sport that will surprise you. And most importantly, sport that will have a life-changing impact on everyone who witnesses it.”

By forefronting Jessie Buckley’s Agnes at the expense of her megastar husband, this female-directed feminist fest gives voice to the anguished howls of disenfranchised women everywhere

On paper, it already sounds the most Oscary film ever. A movie about a visionary man whose genius made him one of the greatest figures in literature. William Shakespeare is played by Paul Mescal, an actor who leaves no demographic unravished by his outrageous levels of magnetism. And yet Hamnet is a film that sidelines both of these men to supporting roles. The film is about Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway, long viewed as a dumpy, illiterate woman unworthy of attention – abandoned by Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon when he swanned off to London.

Anne is referred to in Hamnet as Agnes, as she was also known, and played by Jessie Buckley, the Irish actor who could take on the role of a lamp-post and make you feel its pain. We meet Agnes curled asleep in the roots an ancient tree. She may be illiterate, but she is gifted herbalist who makes medicines from plants and a keeps a falcon. She is her own woman – fierce, intelligent, more than match for the man she calls “the Latin tutor”. Shakespeare’s mother warns him that his bride-to-be is a forest witch.

She co-wrote Gracie Abrams’ hit album then struck out solo, winning a fervent cult for her funny, wordy songs. As her tour hits the UK, she explains why imperfection is so important in pop

Backstage at the Berlin venue Huxleys Neue Welt, Audrey Hobert is showing me around her dressing room. On the 27-year-old pop star’s second time outside the US, the novelty of having local snacks on the rider hasn’t dimmed, although her enthusiasm for chocolate thins can’t distract from what’s going on across the room. A comically overlong beige trenchcoat hangs on a rail, the excess length puddling on the floor. Two sets of joke-shop Groucho Marx glasses sit on the dressing table, the original black brows and moustache replaced with orange fluff to blend with Hobert’s vivid strawberry blond. “Those glasses are not flattering,” says Hobert. Having matching hair under the giant plastic nose, she says, “makes it more flattering”.

In a few hours, Hobert will start her set standing on a ladder that is concealed by the coat, wearing the glasses, miming on a prop banjo and singing a peppy song about charming strangers called I Like to Touch People. After it ends, the lights dim, Hobert climbs down and swaps to a regular-sized trenchcoat. Despite the changeover being entirely visible, the lights come back up as if to say “Hey presto!” – the trompe l’oeil of high-budget pop stagecraft remade as slapstick.

What are Polymarket and Kalshi? What are the odds on US-style exchanges taking off in the UK? Here’s the lowdown

As ballistic missiles and kamikaze drones rained down on the Middle East, one of the world’s most talked-about businesses was inviting wagers on whether nuclear Armageddon might be imminent.

Polymarket is a prediction market, a relatively new breed of betting company that has burst on to the scene, particularly in the US, often seducing customers with little previous interest in gambling.

A decaying gothic mansion tells the story of the family who once lived there, in this pitch-perfect debut of disappearances, betrayal and despair

Angela Tomaski’s debut novel is a delicious comfort read about loyalty and despair, and a gentle questioning of the nature of progress. Crumbling stately home Thornwalk is on the verge of becoming a luxury hotel. The ancestral owners are all dead – with the exception of a pair of rapacious cousins, naturally – and the only person left to mourn is the loyal valet (and maybe more?) of the old master.

Maximus, last guardian of the house, guides the reader on a final tour through Thornwalk, and the lost lives, loves and brass buttons of the titular Gilberts: Lydia, the eldest girl, desperate to fall in love; Hugo, the stubborn eldest son; “poor little Annabel”, dreaming of writing; quiet runaway Jeremy; and unstable actor Rosalind. He takes us, room by room, trinket by trinket, stain by stain (blackcurrant to blood) through 100 years of family life before it is all lost for ever.

The Canadian dance director has created a dazzling body of work that tackles human relationships and the big questions of our times. She talks through pivotal moments in her career

There aren’t many current choreographers more respected and in-demand than the multi-award-winning Crystal Pite. The Canadian founded her contemporary dance company, Kidd Pivot, in Vancouver in 2002, but she’s also made visually splendid works for the Paris Opera Ballet and the Royal Ballet among others.

What stands out in all of Pite’s work is its humanity. These are never just bodies moving for movement’s sake. Her supple choreography is genius at illuminating relationships and emotional grey areas. But she’s also unafraid to tackle the big questions of our times: refugee crises (Flight Pattern), the climate crisis (Figures in Extinction), warmongering and political power struggles (The Statement), often using text in experimental ways.

In opposition to the intimate scale of her duets, Pite has also created a strand of work that uses massed ranks of dancers moving in unison to awesome effect. Elements of all of these strands come together in Pite’s piece Body & Soul (Part 1), which will be performed by English National Ballet at London’s Sadler’s Wells and Plymouth’s Theatre Royal this spring. Here, she talks us through that landmark work along with the rest of her back catalogue

Chow Yun-fat and Tony Leung face off in a wildly inventive film whose hospital shootout remains one of cinema’s most irresistible set pieces

John Woo’s Hong Kong cop-thriller extravaganza from 1992 is now on rerelease; it is pure outrageous mayhem in which Woo showed that he was a pioneering maestro of the PAE – Pointless Action Explosion – as well as the Mexican-standoff set piece, in which a pair of sweaty, homicidal guys statically point guns in each other’s faces, mutually hypnotised by the sudden stalemate, a kind of Zen duplication/opposition of killer and victim.

Hard Boiled irresistibly combined two of the most compellingly beautiful men in Hong Kong cinema: Tony Leung and Chow Yun-fat. As Inspector “Tequila” Yuen, Chow became legendary in this film for the scenes in which he has to carry around an adorable baby during the final, entirely bizarre shootout in a hospital. He and his girlfriend-slash-police-officer Teresa Chang (Teresa Mo) have previously had to get all the newborns out of the maternity unit, having daintily put cotton buds in their ears so the poor little mites weren’t upset by the deafening gunfire. This scene appears to have mutated from a previous script draft about a baby-poisoning wacko, a gruesome idea that was thankfully junked in favour of this inspired image, which made Chow relatable as nothing else could.

Alpine playgrounds, unforgettable train rides and white-water rafting feature in our readers’ family trips from Norway to the Netherlands

• Tell us about a trip to a UK national park or national nature reserve – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

Travelling by rail in Europe gives you plenty of opportunity for ad-hoc adventure. We were returning from a ski trip in Italy and took the Bernina Express part of the way. We’d heard that if you disembark at Bergün, leave your luggage at the station and take the train back one stop to Preda village it’s possible to sledge between the two stations. So there we found ourselves renting traditional wooden sledges from Preda and walking the short distance to the start of the tobogganing run. What we thought might be a gentle run into town turned into a fast and fun-filled couple of hours as we hurtled down the tree-lined course. At times it felt like we were in the game Mario Kart and at one point a children’s birthday party overtook us, the birthday girl’s sledge trailing balloons. About 5 miles later we arrived back in Bergün, before continuing our train journey onwards.
Layla Astley

In this week’s newsletter: From nature projects to biodiversity funds, key programmes will suffer as the UK aims to lower its international climate finance commitments by billions

The UK’s spy chiefs are accustomed to being listened to at the highest levels of government. Prime ministers and cabinets take notice when the joint intelligence committee (JIC), which directs MI5 and MI6, warns of threats to national security. Except, it seems, when it comes to the future of the planet.

Last year the JIC produced a hard-hitting report which, the Guardian revealed, found the collapse of globally important ecosystems around the world – including the potential shift of the Amazon from rainforest to savannah, the demise of coral reefs, and the loss of glaciers – would threaten the UK’s national security, through food shortages at home and the potential for conflict overseas.

Dirty water, death and decline: the inside story of a privatisation scandal

Global sea levels have been underestimated due to poor modelling, research suggests

‘I live in constant fear’: surge in giant sinkholes threatens Turkey’s farmers

What exactly is climate finance? Who pays it? And who gets it? | Explainer

We can move beyond the capitalist model and save the climate – here are the first three steps | Jason Hickel and Yanis Varoufakis

Biodiversity collapse threatens UK security, intelligence chiefs warn

• Updates from the day-night Test at the Waca in Perth

• Any thoughts? Email Tanya

4th over: India 14-0 (Smriti Mandhana 4, Shafali Verma 7) I’ve spotted a couple of people on Healy hill, sitting like white ducks on a green bank. A good battle building between Verma and Hamilton. Perry again looks more traction engine than Ferrari in the field.

3rd over: India 8-0 (Smriti Mandhana 2, Shafali Verma 4) There aren’t huge numbers in at the WACA, unless they’re camera shy. Perhaps there will be an after-work influx. Brown has the ball swinging, Verma doesn’t look entirely secure.

Seafarer tells of explosions in sky as thousands stuck on vessels after strait of Hormuz is effectively closed to shipping

• Maritime and port workers: how is the Middle East conflict affecting you?

Thousands of seafarers are trapped on tankers in the Gulf after the strait of Hormuz was effectively closed to shipping by the escalating war on Iran.

The Guardian spoke to a crew member on one of the stranded tankers that typically ferries vast quantities of oil from the Middle East to ports around the world.

New European Code Against Cancer calls on politicians to phase out use of fossil fuels in homes

Cutting air pollution should form part of government strategies to reduce cancer rates, the European Code Against Cancer has recommended.

The code previously focused on advice to help people to reduce the air pollution that they breathe. But, for the first time since its launch in 1987, it has given clear direction to governments.

Adam Tickell, of University of Birmingham, says money is loaned to people who ‘are not really capable of graduating’

A leading vice-chancellor has questioned whether students without A-levels should be eligible for government-backed student loans, as part of an effort to solve England’s university funding crisis.

Adam Tickell, vice-chancellor of the University of Birmingham, said universities face an “almost existential challenge” and falling public support that requires a radical review of higher education funding.

There’s a reason this 70s staple is never out of style. Take your cue from Margot Robbie and team flares with a structured jacket and smart accessories

The news that healthy life expectancy is in decline in Britain exposes a serious truth about the state we’re in

My guess is you keep across the news. You know Andy Mountbatten-Windsor has just had the worst birthday ever; that tall hotels in Dubai don’t make for a great holiday right now; and that Keir Starmer’s engagements diary for 2027 will be remarkably clear.

Still, there is one headline I’ll bet you haven’t seen, even though it directly affects your life. It’s about your life, and mine, and those of our families and friends and neighbours. I didn’t spot it either, until a few days ago when the Guardian ran a reader’s letter.

The 55 pilot whales, which had to be euthanised, had been following a female having a difficult birth, scientists believe

The mass stranding and death of 55 whales on the Isle of Lewis in 2023 was caused by the mammals’ loyalty to their pod, a report has concluded.

It had been thought that the unusually large incident on Tràigh Mhòr beach, Tolsta, could have been caused by trauma, disease or acoustic disturbance from military or industrially generated noise.

A fine, tender crumb and a soft, creamy, lemon-spiked mascarpone make this the perfect bake for Mother’s Day

This is both simple and celebratory, which in my book makes it just right for Mother’s Day next weekend. It has a fine, tender crumb, which pairs beautifully with the soft, creamy tang of lemon mascarpone, and I use lemon curd in the batter (shop-bought for ease) to bring a particular smoothness and depth of lemon flavour. Finished with a little extra curd and a scattering of edible flowers, it is pretty and unfussy and will hopefully make your own mother’s day.

Ministers urged to abandon plans to let tech firms use work of novelists, artists and writers without permission

The UK’s creative industries must not be sacrificed in the pursuit of speculative gains in AI technology, a House of Lords committee has warned, as the government prepares to reveal the economic cost of proposals to change copyright rules.

A report by peers has urged ministers to develop a licensing regime for the use of creative works in AI products and abandon proposals to let tech firms use the work of novelists, artists, writers and journalists without permission.

Head of government-commissioned review says adult social care is held together by ‘sticking plasters and glue’

England’s “creaking” adult social care system is confusing and impenetrable to the people that rely on it and held together with “sticking plasters and glue”, the head of a government-commissioned review has said in a withering critique.

Louise Casey said the country faced a “moment of reckoning” over its failure to effectively and fairly meet the needs of Britain’s ageing population and rising numbers of people with chronic conditions such as dementia and Alzheimer’s.

Most recorded visits are for smaller debts, data from England and Wales suggests, though method of recovery is a postcode lottery

Tens of thousands of people a year have bailiffs sent to their homes by water companies in England and Wales, data shows.

Many thousands of these visits by debt collectors were for sums worth under £1,000, according to the data released by the House of Commons environment, food and rural affairs (Efra) committee. Bailiffs are debt collectors instructed by a court, who can seize items from those in debt, including electrical items, jewellery or vehicles.