Keir Starmer is weighing up whether to back the US and – as a lawyer – will be aware of the thorny legal issues

• Middle East crisis – live updates

• UK politics live – latest updates

As Keir Starmer considers whether Britain should support the US if Donald Trump decides to bomb Iran, the attorney general, Richard Hermer, has reportedly warned him that UK involvement could be illegal. The prime minister was an outspoken opponent of the 2003 Iraq war when he was a human rights lawyer and will be well aware of the thorny legal issues around engagement in strikes against Iran.

• Panthers won second successive title on Tuesday

• Famous trophy has suffered celebration damage before

The Stanley Cup is a little banged up, thanks to the Florida Panthers’ celebration of back-to-back titles.

The bowl of the famous trophy is cracked and the bottom is dented. Not for the first time and likely not the last.

The star of Showgirls, Bound and High Rollers answers your questions on missing out on The Matrix, being a gay hero and swapping faces with her cat

Gina, you are a spectacular and artistically brave woman and movie star. How do you rationalise – and, hopefully, enjoy – the fact that your audiences often encounter you as a beacon of beauty, sexuality and eroticism? Geroellheimer
People can see me in whatever ways they want. As long as what I do brings them joy or helps them think about things, I don’t contemplate how they view me – it’s too abstract. When people share their opinions about me with me, I wonder who they’re talking about, but I go along with it to be polite.

How do you move on and decompress after playing such intense roles? mansurz
After Showgirls and Bound, I had so much residual energy that I ended up going to Greece, cut off some of my hair and released it into the sea. I thought: “This is very Greek.” There was a lot of energy that came with playing Donatella Versace. When I played Nancy Sinatra, I don’t want to say “I channelled her”, but I tapped into her energy. The next thing I knew, I had all these stomach ulcers. I asked her about it. She said: “I’ve had seven or eight of those.” I thought: “Oh my God, really?”

Call for root-and-branch reform of treatment of children, many of whom are wrongly classified as adults

Decisions relating to lone child asylum seekers should be removed from Home Office officials because of fundamental problems with the way they treat this vulnerable group, a report has found.

The report calls for root-and-branch reform of the treatment of thousands of children who have fled persecution in their home countries and made hazardous journeys in search of safety, often crossing the Channel in a dinghy or concealing themselves in the back of a lorry.

With the top-level juggernaut careering away the majority of Europe’s clubs need help and should be better rewarded for stars they rear

While a dozen of Europe’s elite clubs were chasing the American dream, 170 of their less garlanded peers gathered for a barbecue next to Lake Geneva. They had converged on Uefa’s headquarters to attend the qualifying round draws for next season’s continental competitions; Tuesday night was time to get together, perhaps to speed-date representatives of the team you had been paired with or simply to cut loose before a labyrinthine summer spent journeying in search of league-phase football.

Borussia Dortmund were slugging out a goalless draw with Fluminense while the meat hit the grills, but “Club World Cup” is a dirty formulation in Nyon’s corridors of power. Any available screens showed action from Uefa’s own Under-21 Championship and alternative sources of entertainment roamed the pastel green lawns. A caricature artist did the rounds, stopping at the table occupied by Aleksander Ceferin and putting his pencil to work.

As the 80-year-old gears up for Worthy Farm, we pick the best of his post-Faces career, from moving ballads to silly, sleazy pop, and cover versions that became definitive

This is essentially a lyrical update of (I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone or Where Do You Go to (My Lovely)? – in summary: peeved ex complains that former girlfriend now moves in lofty circles. But Baby Jane was as good as 80s-pop Rod got: very of-its-era arrangement, great melody, big old chorus, a UK No 1.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

Mike Lee knows better than to turn tragedy into disinformation. But outrageousness has become the name of the game

National tragedy used to bring national unity. If only momentarily, partisanship was put aside, and people of all political persuasions came together.

No more. The nation received a startling reminder of that sad fact on Sunday when Republican senator Mike Lee went online to share his reaction to the weekend’s horrible shooting of two Minnesota state lawmakers and their spouses.

Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, is the author or editor of more than 100 books, including Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty

Brad Lander was manhandled and marched out of the courthouse after trying to shield a man from arrest – but, he tells the Guardian, he’s not backing down

As New York city comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander was hauled away by masked Ice agents on Tuesday, all he could think about was whether there was anything more he could do for the man he was trying to help, an immigrant New Yorker named Edgardo.

Both men ended up detained, but unlike Edgardo’s, Lander’s ordeal was over after a few hours. By the time New York governor Katy Hochul marched him out of the courthouse – after proclaiming, of his arrest: “This is bullshit” – videos and photos of the officers manhandling him had gone viral. The arrest of yet another elected official prompted widespread condemnation of another sign of the US’s steady slide into authoritarianism. A host of New York politicians, along with a swelling crowd of angry New Yorkers, awaited Lander outside the courthouse in downtown Manhattan. (Andrew Cuomo, the former governor and mayoral race frontrunner, was a notable absence, though he did condemn the arrest.)

Antwon Wilson was with his two children at a Fort Lauderdale beach when he saw them in distress in the water

A Florida dad has lost his life after helping save his daughter from drowning in the ocean on Father’s Day.

That was the tragic story coming out of Fort Lauderdale on Sunday, when 33-year-old Antwon Wilson died while his daughter and another adult were hospitalized, according to authorities.

Ollie Pope retains his No 3 spot for the first Test and India wouldn’t mind having a bit more of that kind of continuity

There always seems to be one man under pressure in England’s batting lineup and consensus over the winter seemed to be that Jacob Bethell’s emergence had put Ollie Pope’s place at risk. Pope has clung on to his place for the start of the India series and my view is that Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum should be very careful before they mess with what is probably the most settled top six of any Test side in the world at the moment.

There was speculation about both Pope and Zak Crawley before they scored centuries in last month’s game against Zimbabwe, but that performance should have secured their spots for this series at least. Bethell is a huge talent and some really top cricketers have spoken very highly about his performances and potential – clearly his time will come. He was impressive in New Zealand over the winter and since then we’ve seen exhilarating glimpses of his ability in shorter formats.

Netherlands midfielder talks about rejoining FC Twente, the club in her heart, and her hopes for the Euros

For Jill Roord, even after winning the Bundesliga title and reaching a Champions League final, eight years on from saying goodbye to FC Twente, there is simply no place like home. The 107-time capped Netherlands midfielder is returning to the club where she began her career and says the opportunity to move back closer to her family and friends was irresistible.

“It had nothing to do with [Manchester] City. My time with City was really good,” says Roord of her decision to leave after two years. “I have been away for eight years playing abroad and it becomes tough being alone for that many years. In the past few years I lost my fun and my happiness in football a little bit because of being away, travelling a lot and not being able to be with family and friends. With busy summers every year I never really got a break. I needed to move back home, enjoy life and enjoy football again.”

Two survivors urged politicians and those without experience of abuse to allow women to shape the investigation

Campaigners from trade unions, voluntary organisations and the Church of Scotland have announced plans for an anti-poverty march to “demand better” from politicians in Scotland, reports the PA news agency.

The campaign, Scotland Demands Better, will culminate in a march in Edinburgh on 25 October, walking from the Scottish parliament, up the Royal Mile and along George IV Bridge to The Meadows.

Change for the better happens when people stand together and demand it. Scotland desperately needs that change.

Too many of us are being cut off from life’s essentials. Too many are frightened of what the future will bring. Too many of us are feeling tired, angry, isolated, and disillusioned.

Air pollution remains the most important environmental threat to health, with impacts throughout the life course.

It is an area of health where the UK has made substantial progress in the last three decades, with concentrations of many of the main pollutants falling rapidly, but it remains a major cause of chronic ill health as well as premature mortality.

LGBTQ+ standard disappears from Matlock high street as Christian bookshop manager says they are ‘not happy with the gay rights situation’

The spa town of Matlock in the Peak District is known for the joyful flags adorning its historic high street. The St George’s Cross, the union flag, the Derbyshire county flag and the Pride flag flutter brightly above the town’s many independent businesses.

That was until a row erupted that has divided the town, after the mysterious disappearance of a Pride flag turned out to be the work of the very council that had installed it.

The civil service, judiciary and media are still dominated by the privately educated 7%. Lasting change is not a pipe dream – but it’s up to us

For the first time in our history, we have a cabinet made up entirely of people who went to state schools. Several, including prime minister Keir Starmer, come from working-class backgrounds; some, such as deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, were raised in conditions of poverty that feel as if they ought to belong to another age.

So far so good. What better signs could one ask for to show that Britain is a meritocracy, social mobility is real and anyone can rise to the top provided they have talent, commitment and determination?

Alastair Campbell is a former journalist turned strategist and spokesperson for the Labour party. He is now a writer, podcaster, consultant strategist and mental health campaigner

‘Efficiency’ cuts across offices have left teams understaffed, firefighters underpaid and uninsured, and without adequate equipment

Summer temperatures are rising and the US is bracing for another hot, dry and hectic wildfire season. But with the promise of extreme conditions in the months to come, federal fire crews are also growing concerned that a series of changes brought on by the Trump administration have left them underprepared.

Severe cuts to budgets and staff have hamstrung the agencies that manage roughly 640m acres of the nation’s public lands, leaving significant gaps in a workforce that supports wildfire mitigation and suppression. The administration’s crackdown on climate science and the dismantling of departments that provided world-class research and weather forecasting, may also undermine early warning systems, slowing response and strategic planning.

(Island EMI)
The Londoner’s trademark sentimental sweetness is balanced by a new unaffected singing style – his fourth album is his most impressive work yet

Loyle Carner raps like he has a lump in his throat and tears in his eyes. Wonder, nostalgia, love, hurt, excitement, hard-won peace: these are the emotions his voice tends to catch on. When combined with his typically blissed-out sonics – feathery breakbeats, dreamy piano figures, delicate synth washes, gently plucked guitars – the results are often very nice. Sometimes a bit too nice. So it is on Feel at Home, the sentimental love song that opens the 30-year-old’s fourth album, Hopefully!

Carner – whose moniker is a spoonerism of his real name, Benjamin Coyle-Larner – never makes music that is boring or basic. As well as the slushy lyrics and comfortingly toasty chords, Feel at Home is buttressed by madly skittering percussion and what sounds like a blurry reproduction of young children’s playground chatter. But much like the outpouring of earnestness and loveliness on the Croydon-raised rapper’s first two albums, Hopefully! may well have you hankering for a shred of dissonance or disruption – especially after 2022’s Mercury-shortlisted Hugo, which gratifyingly offset Carner’s trademark tenderness with a more abrasive sonic palette. Initially, the musician seems to have moved on – or perhaps backwards – from that record.

False claims obstructing climate action, say researchers, amid calls for climate lies to be criminalised

Rampant climate misinformation is turning the crisis into a catastrophe, according to the authors of a new report.

It found climate action was being obstructed and delayed by false and misleading information stemming from fossil fuel companies, rightwing politicians and some nation states. The report, from the International Panel on the Information Environment (Ipie), systematically reviewed 300 studies.

Depending on who you ask, between four and six million people showed up – and according to one theory, this could be a turning point

The scale of last weekend’s “No Kings” protests is now becoming clearer, with one estimate suggesting that Saturday was among the biggest ever single-day protests in US history.

Working out exactly where the protest ranks compared to similar recent events has been a project of G Elliott Morris, a data journalist who runs the Substack Strength in Numbers, calculated turnout between four million and six million, which would be 1.2-1.8% of the US population. This could exceed the previous record in recent history, when between 3.3 million and 5.6 million people showed up at the 2017 Women’s March to rally against Trump’s misogynistic rhetoric.

Located in Ontario, the church provided shelter and aid to Black Americans who participated in the Underground Railroad to escape slavery in the US

On a cold day in January 2024, Rochelle Bush walked up the steps of Salem Chapel, British Methodist Episcopal Church in St Catharines, Ontario, Canada. Bush, the owner and primary tour guide of Tubman Tours Canada and Salem Chapel’s historian, moved quickly through the church pointing out the history, which spans across generations back to when the building was built centuries ago.

The church’s roots stretch to about 1788 when Black people, many of whom were seeking freedom from slavery in the US, began to settle in the St Catharines area. Along with their hopes, dreams and plans for the future, these settlers, many of whom were followers of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, and Richard Allen, a founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, brought their religions with them.

Government accused of making ‘secret exchange deal’ with fossil fuel companies to compensate for tax hike

The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, told a fossil fuel company the industry would receive a “quid pro quo” in return for higher taxes on its windfall profits, it can be revealed.

In a meeting with the Norwegian state energy company Equinor on 27 August, Reeves suggested that the government’s carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) subsidies were a payoff for oil firms being hit with a higher tax rate.

The legendary video game designer discusses directing actors in LA from Japan, how Mad Max inspired his career and the unique reason why he wants to go to space

Hideo Kojima – the acclaimed video game director who helmed the stealth-action Metal Gear series for decades before founding his own company to make Death Stranding, a supernatural post-apocalyptic delivery game this publication described as “2019’s most interesting blockbuster” – is still starstruck, or perhaps awestruck. “George [Miller] is my sensei, my God,” he proclaims gleefully.

Kojima is visiting Australia for a sold-out chat with Miller, the creator of the Mad Max film franchise, at the Sydney film festival. The two struck up an unlikely but fierce friendship nearly a decade ago, and Kojima says that, as a teenager, the first two Mad Max films inspired him to become a movie director and thus, eventually, a video game maker. At the panel later, Miller is equally effusive, calling Kojima “almost my brother”; the Australian even lent his appearance to a major character in Kojima’s latest game, Death Stranding 2.

Calls follow news that attorney general advised government to limit its involvement to defending allies

• UK politics live – latest updates

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Ministers are facing calls to publish legal advice given to the government on Israel’s war against Iran after reports emerged that the attorney general had warned that any UK involvement beyond defensive support would be illegal.

Richard Hermer, the government’s most senior legal officer, is reported to have raised concerns internally about the legality of joining a bombing campaign against Iran.

Ahead of her Glastonbury performance, the First Cut Is the Deepest singer will be taking on your queries about her star-studded career

She’s the singer with iconic 60s hits such as The First Cut Is the Deepest and Angel of the Morning, who has been called on as a collaborator by some of the biggest names in British music. And as she gears up for a performance at this year’s Glastonbury festival, PP Arnold will be answering your questions.

Born into a family of gospel singers in Los Angeles, Arnold could have easily never ended up in music: by the age of 17 she was a mother-of-two in an abusive marriage. But she auditioned for Ike and Tina Turner and was hired as an Ikette, fleeing her husband to perform backing vocals on tour and in the studio, with Tina becoming a mentor.

Starship 36 was preparing for 10th test flight from Texas when it underwent ‘catastrophic failure’ while on stand

One of Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starships has exploded during a routine test in Texas, authorities said, in the latest setback to the billionaire’s dream of turning humanity into an interplanetary species.

The Starship 36 underwent “catastrophic failure and exploded” at the Starbase launch facility shortly after 11pm on Wednesday (0400 GMT Thursday), a Facebook post by the Cameron County authorities said.

Exploration of Bahamas seabed will be first time notorious New Providence hideout has been searched

The Pirates of the Caribbean is a $4.5bn swashbuckling film franchise and Blackbeard and Calico Jack Rackham are among marauding buccaneers who have captured imaginations over the centuries.

But almost nothing is known about the life and times of actual pirates.

Opponents view the controversial act as part of a growing trend across Brazil to further restrict abortion access

A new law has just come into force in Rio de Janeiro requiring all public hospitals and clinics run by the municipal government to display anti-abortion signs bearing messages such as: “Did you know that the unborn child is discarded as hospital waste?”

Reproductive rights activists view the act as the latest example of a growing trend across Brazil to further restrict access to abortion in a country that already has some of the world’s most restrictive laws.

The Skrmetti decision upholding Tennessee’s ban on transition-related healthcare for minors deprives children and batters the 14th amendment

By now, it is a ritual: every June, Americans endure several weeks of agonizing suspense, as we wait to hear how the supreme court will erode our freedoms, attack our dignity, undermine self-government and empower those who enrich themselves at our expense. The court, controlled by career politicians in robes who were hand-selected for their loyalty to the rightwing and their willingness to be wildly intellectually dishonest in pursuit of Republican policy objectives, has ended the right to abortion, desiccated the Voting Rights Act, made state gun regulations nearly impossible and declared the president functionally immune to criminal law. Many of us waited, with a mixture and terror and disgust, to see what cruelties the court would deliver for us in 2025.

The justices decided to start by attacking vulnerable children. In a 6-3 split, the court’s conservatives ruled on Wednesday that Tennessee’s law banning transition-related healthcare for minors can remain in effect. The law prohibits hormone therapies and surgeries only for their use in treating gender dysphoria; cisgender minors retain access to these drugs. The statute is on its face sex-specific and designed to mandate certain forms of gender conformity: the care that it bans, it bans on the basis of a patient’s sex. This is in straightforward violation of the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause, which has long been interpreted to ban facially sex-discriminatory laws and those that encourage sex-role stereotyping. The court decided to ignore this precedent and the plain intent of Tennessee’s statute, and in the process it both imposed a cruel and needless deprivation on trans children and their families, and also substantially weakened constitutional guarantees of equal protection of the sexes.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

More than 120 years after billions of the trees were wiped out, blight-proof seeds are being planted

It was in New York City that a mysterious fungus was first spotted on an American chestnut, a blight that was to rapidly sweep across the eastern US, wiping out billions of the cherished trees. Now, 120 years later, there is fresh hope of a comeback for chestnuts, spurred not only by scientists but also eager New Yorkers planting blight-proof seeds in their back yards and local parks.

The American chestnut was once found in vast numbers from Maine to Mississippi and known as the redwoods of the east due to its prodigious size. But 4bn trees were killed off in the first half of last century by a blight introduced from Asia to which it had little defense, spread by spores carried by the wind, rain and animals.

Shares fall by as much as 20% at one point to lowest level in 13 years before easing back to more than 10% down

• Business live – latest updates

A slump in hiring activity at businesses around the world means profits will more than halve at Hays, the global recruitment company has warned, sending its shares down more than 10%.

Demand for new permanent staff has fallen sharply, reflecting “low levels of client and candidate confidence as a result of macroeconomic uncertainty”, Hays told investors in an unscheduled update.

Government issued permit to shoot young female who entered Vilnius, despite only small number left in Baltic country

• Europe live – latest updates

A young female bear caused a stir after wandering out of the forest and into the leafy suburbs of the Lithuanian capital.

For two days, the brown bear ambled through the neighbourhoods of Vilnius, trotted across highways and explored backyards – all while being chased by onlookers with smartphones and, eventually, drones.

The star makes for a charmless lead in a rubbishy attempt to mash a female-led wedding comedy and an action caper

In Apple’s 2023 car crash Ghosted, things went from worse to genuinely never been this bad when the sounds of Uptown Funk erupted during another shoddily choreographed action sequence. It was a marriage so heinous that one would be tempted to think it was parody had it not existed in a film so entirely devoid of humour and self-awareness. The Chris Evans/Ana de Armas vehicle became the new nadir of the action comedy, a subgenre that has been run down into the sewer by streamers, carelessly cobbling together big stars and bad quips on an almost weekly basis.

But as dreadful as it was, there was something fascinatingly dreadful about it, a cacophony of bad decisions that became almost instructive to the industry in its of-the-moment awfulness. In this week’s Bride Hard, the latest tinny genre mix to get chucked at us, when Rebel Wilson’s shoddy kitchen-based fight scene is scored to Geri Halliwell’s It’s Raining Men, you’ll be too bored to even roll your eyes, if you’re even awake at that point.

In a world of stress and social media, birding offers something completely different. And it is now easier than ever to get to know your chaffinch from your chiffchaff

I’m assured this is a big deal: on the far side of a field in Thetford, separated from me by a gate, there is a stone-curlew.

Jon Carter, from the British Trust for Ornithology, patiently directs my binoculars up, down and past patches of grass until my gaze lands on an austere-looking, long-legged brown bird. “Quite a rare bird,” Carter says, pleased. “Very much a bird of the Breckland.”

History tells us attacks on migrants are a predictable result of political failings, distorted media coverage and far-right opportunism

In early June, the violence began. Rumours of a foreigner assaulting a local woman resulted in groups roaming through a small British town, breaking windows of homes belonging to “outsiders”. A few days later, the police attempted to stop mobs from reaching another nearby multiracial area. Eventually they broke through, ransacking shops and burning down a house, while local media reported that the violence had developed into “something like a fever”.

Sound familiar? This isn’t Ballymena, the County Antrim town in Northern Ireland that has seen several nights of unrest in which immigrant homes were attacked after reports of an alleged sexual assault on a local girl by two teenagers, who had a Romanian interpreter read them the charges. These incidents actually took place more than a century ago, during the summer of 1919, as racial violence spread throughout south Wales, eventually reaching Cardiff and the diverse district of Tiger Bay.

Lanre Bakare is an arts and culture correspondent for the Guardian. He will be discussing his new book, We Were There, at the Southbank Centre in London on 11 July

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Since 1999, Armando López Pocol and his team of volunteers have bucked the trend for deforestation, regenerating the landscape of the highlands with their Chico Mendes project

Armando López Pocol is showing off some of the thousands of trees he has planted in Pachaj, his village in the highlands of western Guatemala, when he suddenly halts his white pickup truck. Alongside an American volunteer, Lyndon Hauge, he gazes out over a charred field. Clouds of smoke are still billowing from the ground.

As he walks through the ash-covered field, his optimistic speech turns to sadness and he pauses in silence to take in the barren landscape.

Israel Katz officially acknowledges goal of war, as Iranian missile hits hospital and Israel strikes nuclear site

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Israel’s defence minister has said he ordered increased attacks on government targets in Iran to “undermine the regime”, while an Iranian missile evaded Israeli air defences to hit a hospital in the country’s south.

Other missiles landed around Tel Aviv, injuring at least 40 people, as Israeli planes bombed a heavy-water reactor and returned to strike the Natanz nuclear complex.

Volatile weather patterns may be altering taste of juniper berries – a key botanical in the spirit – scientists say

The flavour of a gin and tonic may be impacted by climate change, scientists have found.

Volatile weather patterns, made more likely by climate breakdown, could change the taste of juniper berries, which are the key botanical that give gin its distinctive taste.

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as Switzerland and Philippines cut interest rates

Newsflash: We have a third interest rate cut this morning!

Norway’s central bank has surprised analysts by cutting its policy rate by a quarter of one percentage point, to 4.25%. The rate had been set at 4.5% since December 2023.

“Inflation has declined since the monetary policy meeting in March, and the inflation outlook for the coming year indicates lower inflation than previously expected.

A cautious normalisation of the policy rate will pave the way for inflation to return to target without restricting the economy more than necessary.”

“The uncertainty surrounding the economic outlook is now greater than normal. If the economy takes a different path than currently envisaged, the policy rate path may be adjusted. But our objectives stand firm. We will finish the job and ensure that inflation is brought all the way back to 2 percent.”

The Monetary Board also noted indications of a deceleration in global economic activity, driven primarily by uncertainty over US trade policy and the conflict in the Middle East. This would lead to slower growth in the Philippines.

A rise in oil prices, electricity rate adjustments, and higher rice tariffs, would add to inflationary pressures.

Pedro Sánchez reportedly says move would be ‘counterproductive’ and harm Spanish economy

Earlier today, I cheekily suggested that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is probably wondering how to persuade US president Donald Trump to stay at the Nato summit in The Hague next week long enough to get to discussions on Ukraine and Russia – and not leave early, as he did at the G7 summit.

Well, looks like this issue may have actually influenced the planning.

“Budapest city hall will organise the Budapest Pride march on 28 June as a city event. Period.”

Blockage of strait of Hormuz, through which about 25% of world’s oil passes, could shock energy market, says Wael Sawan

• Business live – latest updates

An escalation in the Middle East conflict could have a “huge impact on global trade”, the boss of the oil company Shell has warned, as Donald Trump suggested the US could enter the air war between Israel and Iran.

Shell, one of the biggest traders of oil and natural gas in the world, said it had contingency plans in case the conflict disrupted flows from the region. There is a risk that a blockage in the strait of Hormuz could shock the energy market.