Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

Clarksons, the world’s biggest shipping services provider, has warned this morning that trade tensions and geopolitical conflict is hitting its sector.

Andi Case, chief executive officer of Clarksons, told shareholders that both freight rates and asset values have fallen this year, hitting its financial results in 2025.

For some years now we have started each new financial period with an uncertain geo-political outlook; 2025 has started with more uncertainty than most due to political change, ongoing regional conflicts, increased trade tensions, tariffs and sanctions, inflation and changing monetary policy across global economies.

As I write this report, the impact of these uncertainties is that freight rates and asset values have broadly fallen, which has meant that the value of spot business done to date is less than the same period last year.

The week starts on a sharp negative note for the Chinese stocks, as the latest inflation update showed that consumer prices in China fell the most in more than a year….

Overall, the week is expected to bring more tariffs the Chinese tariffs on US agricultural and some Canadian products will start today, while the US steel and aluminium tariffs will be live from Wednesday.

Ruben Amorim parks the bus, Son Heung-min shows he still has some spark and Marc Cucurella fires up Chelsea

• Premier League top scorers: the latest standings

Some observers look at Ruben Amorim and Ange Postecoglou and see the same thing: stubbornness. But there is a big difference between them. With Tottenham, you have no idea what to expect. With Manchester United, you know exactly what to expect. A whole lot of nothing in the first half. Some flickers of fight in the second. Dismal results against middling Premier League teams. Decent ones against teams at the top and the bottom. This was Amorim’s first home game against a “big six” club, but it might as well have been away. He parked the bus. His nominal 3-4-2-1 was actually a 5-4-1. United started with no No 9 and just one real forward, Alejandro Garnacho. It’s three months since any of their strikers scored in the league. Their only goal threat, Bruno Fernandes, has been shunted back to central midfield. Where once they had wingers, now they have full-backs. Even when the bus moves, the handbrake stays on. Tim de Lisle

Match report: Manchester United 1-1 Arsenal

Match report: Tottenham 2-2 Bournemouth

Match report: Liverpool 3-1 Southampton

Match report: Nottingham Forest 1-0 Manchester City

Match report: Chelsea 1-0 Leicester

Match report: Brentford 0-1 Aston Villa

Even with talisman Dupont forced out by injury, Les Bleus brought a brutal end to the green party in Dublin

It’s never a good sign when the place is crawling with French supporters. They gather in knots along pavements around the stadium, yakking away, disrupting pedestrian traffic, lost in the enjoyment of a sunny Six Nations day in Dublin. Worse still is when you climb to the dizzy height of the press box in the Aviva Stadium and survey a scene where there is lots of blue. Then they start to sing. Not good.

Some of the darkest days in Ireland’s rugby history came with the away leg in this fixture. When on one occasion the front page of L’Équipe read “Le Massacre du Printemps” we learned to associate sunshine in Paris with pain and recrimination. That was the preview, not the match report.

In her irreverent new exhibition, Sylvie Fleury is pairing the great modernist’s drawings and cutouts with her own fashion-focused work

When Henri Matisse described his work as “in step with the future”, he was thinking about his revolutionary cutouts, made with collaged coloured paper, rather than, say, the evolution of the women’s movement or consumer culture. The leading Swiss artist Sylvie Fleury came of age with the latter, but when she was invited to select drawings and cutouts from the Matisse estate for an exhibition, she was struck by the enduring immediacy of his vision. “My feeling with modernist artists is that, a lot of the time, they were trying to define what was happening within the history of art,” she says preparing for Drawing on Matisse, her showwhich situating 16 of his works within and alongside her impishly feminist and fashion-focused sculpture. “With Matisse, it was more like: ‘Just do it, be radical.’”

Fleury well understands the power of disruption. Her first work was a clutch of designer store bags full of high-end merch, which she dropped in the middle of a group exhibition in 1991. Fashion, that frivolous and feminine pursuit, was a luxury commodity but, she seemed to ask, was the art that surrounded it so different? Her work since has included canvases coated in pink fake fur, glittered rockets and a video of female bikers shooting guns at Chanel handbags. In previous projects laying bare art’s tacitly gendered aesthetics, she has feminised the macho minimalist visions of Carl Andre and Donald Judd, imagining an Andre-esque floor sculpture as a runway for women parading in stilettos, or riffing on Judd’s unadorned wall-mounted boxes by adding what look like blobs of shiny metallic melted flesh.

From gen Z’s interest in ‘natural’ materials to the darker ‘boom boom’ aesthetic of the Trump era, the trend wheel has turned back to pelts

I’ll admit it, Carrie Bradshaw in aviators and a fur coat, smoking and drinking beer while watching baseball, spoke to me. It was season two of Sex and the City, 1999. She was bruised from a recently ended relationship but on the brink of dating “the new Yankee” and I was a teenager, probably home from playing racketball and on the brink of Quorn sausages for dinner.

While it wasn’t the whole equation, the fur coat was certainly part of it. The way she could shrink into it and appear nonchalantly, breezily beautiful despite unwashed hair and an aching heart. I’m not proud, but I was young, and this to me then looked like something I wanted a piece of.

Ellie Violet Bramley is the Guardian’s acting fashion and lifestyle editor

Campaigners say funding halt is a ‘staggering blow’ to vulnerable nations and to efforts to keep heating below 1.5C

Donald Trump’s withdrawal of US overseas aid will almost decimate global climate finance from the developed world, data shows, with potentially devastating impacts on vulnerable nations.

The US was responsible last year for about $8 in every $100 that flowed from the rich world to developing countries, to help them cut greenhouse gas emissions and cope with the impacts of extreme weather, according to data from the analyst organisation Carbon Brief.

With PGA Tour’s marquee event approaching and Trump’s intervention seemingly unsuccessful, the sport is at crossroads

An opening address from Jay Monahan at the Arnold Palmer Invitational here involved almost 1,500 words. A mere 108 of them referred to the Saudi Arabian elephant in the room. Or more specifically, the status of unification talks between the PGA Tour, which Monahan leads, and the Saudi‑fronted LIV circuit.

Monahan was very keen to speak about innovation, about corporate partners, about fan engagement. Fluff. A blunt reality is that any excitement created by the announcement of a framework agreement between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has long since dissipated. No wonder: that shock press release landed on 6 June 2023.

Robert Pattinson, Robert De Niro and Michael B Jordan are all pulling double duty in their new films and that’s just the start

For years, dual roles have been played largely for laughs. Think of Adam Sandler’s Razzie-sweeping twin turn in Jack and Jill, or Lisa Kudrow as both Phoebe and Ursula Buffay on Friends. Eddie Murphy was always particularly prolific, his most multiplicitous performance as a clutch of Klumps for Nutty Professor II.

There are exceptions, of course. But for every Legend or The Prestige there are ten Austin Powers, Bowfingers and – shudder – Norbits. This year, however, is giving us a more dramatic breed of duplicate. Robert De Niro will pull double Don duty in The Alto Knights, Michael B Jordan will play twin leads in the supernatural Sinners and a pair of Robert Pattinson clones is currently headlining Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17.

Calls grow to control military use of unmanned aerial vehicles which, despite claims of precise targeting, are claiming civilian lives

Almost 1,000 civilians have been killed and hundreds more injured in military drone attacks across Africa as the proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicles continues unchecked on the continent, according to a report.

At least 50 separate deadly strikes by armed forces in Africa have been confirmed during the three years up to November 2024, with analysts describing a “striking pattern of civilian harm” with little or no accountability.

As a film extra, I surrendered my device and discovered the extraordinary connections I miss while staring at my screen

A few Thursdays ago was a wrap. For my brief acting career, that is. One of the benefits of having a writer’s schedule in a city like Paris is the ability to say yes to the flurry of random opportunities that pop up. When an announcement flashed across a WhatsApp group that a Hollywood comedy-thriller with an all-star cast and a wacky plot was looking for extras, I thought why not – and sent in a few headshots. (I wish I could reveal more details, but I am, alas, bound by a non-disclosure clause that the production company declined to release me from.)

I had little idea of exactly what to expect. But I certainly wasn’t thinking that one of the biggest takeaways would be spending hours with other people without access to our phones.

Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist

A daughter’s death is the catalyst for a difficult journey to Kabul, chronicled in this claustrophobic documentary about the void left by trauma

Living in the remote, mountainous Daikundi province in central Afghanistan, the Khawari family is part of the Hazara community, one of the most persecuted ethnic groups in the region. The family’s day-to-day life is coloured by tragedy: while enrolled at Kabul University, Zahra, the eldest daughter, killed herself after her thesis was repeatedly rejected by her supervisors. Named after an indigenous plant that survives in the harsh climate of the region, Ilyas Yourish and Shahrokh Bikaran’s searing film is anchored by the family’s resolute quest for justice.

From the beginning, Kamay contextualises Zahra’s death within a bloody history of ethnic violence. Back in the 19th century, more than half of the Hazara population were massacred during the reign of Abdur Rahman Khan. Nearly 200 years later, systematic brutality and discrimination continue, now with the Taliban as perpetrators. As the Khawari family make difficult journeys through rough country to Kabul, the film inhabits this atmosphere of claustrophobia and fear. The camera often gazes at the open road through the windscreen of a cramped car or bus, a recurring composition that embodies the uncertainties and dangers that pave the Khawaris’ path.

Our writers make the most of warm weather, smaller crowds and off-peak prices to visit their favourite spots, from the Baltic to the Bosphorus

‘There’s a magic to sleeping surrounded by Alpine peaks, nestled up against the stars’

The Norwegian explorer – who in 1990 became the first to reach 90 degrees north without the help of machine nor beast – journeys into the past to uncover the myths, politics and pure joy of the northernmost point on Earth

Just before reaching the north pole in 1990, Erling Kagge dropped to his knees on the ice. He’d been trying to open a bag of raisins while wearing thick mittens but one escaped. On all fours he flicked out his tongue like some foraging beast and licked it in to his mouth.

What, the Norwegian adventurer asked himself, is the meaning of life out there on the ice, where it’s dark for six months each year, always cold, cannibalism a possibility, where winds howl through the bones of dead explorers and where, if you encounter a polar bear, the question will be which of you will become the other’s dinner? The answer, he reflected, “lies in small daily miracles”.

The Thick of It creator tells all in a revealing new podcast from actor Rebecca Front. Plus, a smash-hit history show launches a juicy spinoff

Lewis and The Thick of It star Rebecca Front tries to prise intimate interviews out of celebrity guests by asking about three people who’ve changed their lives. First up, her friend of 40 years Armando Iannucci talks about the person who opened a library near his Glasgow childhood home, and the founder of an NHS unit for higher risk pregnancies that led to all three of Iannucci’s kids being born. His third choice? Alan Partridge. Alexi Duggins
Episodes weekly, widely available

Houses are starting to smell of damp and mould, food is rotting in fridges and even charging a phone involves ingenuity

• Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred LIVE: latest news and updates
• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

The normally pristine coastline in the northern rivers region of New South Wales has been reconfigured into sand cliffs and fallen trees after ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred.

The rivers are brown and engorged, creeping towards breaching their banks. There is water everywhere – across roads, flooding country people in. The rain has been incessant, pounding down for days. Black-tinged clouds move ominously in a gray sky, promising more.

Bureau urged to review its systems after Fraser Coast mayor says Hervey Bay was pelted with 260mm of rain after being told it was not in firing line

• Ex-Cyclone Alfred LIVE: latest news and updates
• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

The Bureau of Meteorology has defended its forecasting against criticism it failed to give the coastal Queensland community of Harvey Bay enough notice of a torrential downpour in the aftermath of Tropical Cyclone Alfred.

The Fraser Coast mayor, George Seymour, said the bureau should review its systems, claiming the area was not adequately warned before it was pelted with more than 260mm of rain in a few hours on Sunday, sparking an emergency situation and about a dozen rescues.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email

After the pre-match protests about the owners, Amorim saw his wing-backs combine in what could be a taste of things to come

With 53 minutes gone at Old Trafford, Manchester United’s home support was treated for one brief, flickering moment to a glimpse of the Amorim-shaped universe, a vision of what might yet come to pass.

Out of nowhere, on an afternoon that had felt to that point like a competently staged practice event, United’s wing‑backs Diogo Dalot and Noussair Mazraoui appeared in a wide pincer, surging towards the Arsenal goal, a living breathing incarnation of the Amorim blueprint. Left wing-back Dalot dug out a cross. Right wing-back Mazraoui counted his strides and placed a measured volley just too close to David Raya.

• Borthwick: ‘Fingers crossed it’s not as severe as we fear’
• Maro Itoje ‘looking forward’ to ‘humungous’ Wales tie

England stayed in the chase for the Six Nations title with a bonus-point victory against Italy but lost Ollie Lawrence to an achilles injury that threatens his hopes of touring Australia with the British & Irish Lions.

Steve Borthwick’s side scored seven tries as they overwhelmed the Azzurri after a close first half in sunny south-west London, with the fly-half Fin Smith orchestrating the attack impressively.

We would like to hear from people about the impact the Covid-19 pandemic has had on them five years on

Ahead of the fifth anniversary of Covid being declared a pandemic in the US, we would like to hear how your life has changed since the outbreak started.

Have you changed jobs or moved home? Do you socialize more – or less –since the pandemic? Perhaps you’ve decided to take more of an interest in your mental and physical health?

We would like to hear about your hacks to remedy small, irritating problems

In an increasingly unpredictable world, there are daily challenges that we can find easy fixes for and make life better on a micro level, because if you can’t control the big stuff, why not start small?

These things are sent to try us: containers you can never find the lid for, impossible to remove garlic skin, washing that flies off the line, hair covered bobbles, glasses that steam up in the warm, grating the very last chunk of cheese or carrot.

‘The caravan plot was an elaborate scheme contrived by organised criminals domestically and from offshore,’ AFP deputy commissioner Krissy Barrett says

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Federal police say a caravan with explosives found in Sydney earlier this year was “never going to cause a mass casualty event” and was a “fake terrorism plot”.

The Australian federal police deputy commissioner, Krissy Barrett, said on Monday investigators now believed the caravan incident was concocted by criminals who wanted to cause fear for personal benefit.

A winding down of operations in Gaza has allowed Israel to turn its attention to the West Bank, with devastating effects

It has been just over six weeks since a ceasefire came into effect in Gaza, and it’s clear that it would more accurately be called a “reduce” fire, rather than a cessation. Scores of people are still being killed; enough, in any other scenario, to be deemed both alarming and newsworthy. More than 100 people have died since 19 January, Gaza’s civil defence service spokesperson says. Those killings constitute, alongside other breaches, a grim record of hundreds of reported ceasefire violations by the Israeli government.

The latest among them is Israeli authorities’ decision to halt humanitarian aid into Gaza, in order to put pressure on Hamas to accept new ceasefire terms: mere hours after the first phase of the ceasefire expired, Israel cut off all supplies. In doing so, Israel is using food and civilian relief as a political tool to achieve its objectives, a move that the Qatari foreign ministry, the midwife of hostage releases and ceasefire agreements over the past few months, called “a clear violation” of the terms of the truce and of international humanitarian law.

Monarch recalls ‘infectious energy’ of late reggae singer in Apple Music broadcast to celebrate Commonwealth Day

King Charles has paid tribute to the “marvellous, infectious energy” of the late reggae star Bob Marley, in a series of comments about his favourite music and musicians from around the Commonwealth.

In a broadcast released in a collaboration with Apple Music on Monday as part of Commonwealth Day celebrations, the king described meeting Marley and other music legends during his royal duties, as he shared his “personal playlist of hits that bring him joy”.

Watchdog warns that move, which also includes domestic abusers, must be closely watched to keep public safe

Domestic abusers and sex offenders in England and Wales will be rehabilitated by less-experienced staff with fewer qualifications from June, prompting warnings from a watchdog that the plans must be closely monitored to ensure public safety.

Proposals approved by ministers will roll out behaviour programmes for offenders to be delivered by “band 3” staff who are not fully qualified probation officers.

Commission for Healthier Working Lives warns against cutting benefits and calls for proactive route for 8m affected

Providing more support for people in ill health to stay in work could save the UK government more than £1bn, according to a report warning ministers against cutting benefits.

As the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, looks for savings before the 26 March spring statement, the cross-sector Commission for Healthier Working Lives has called for a new approach to supporting the 8 million people in Britain with a work-limiting health condition.

Most say they have seen no impact on applications for year 7 places, despite warnings from those against policy

Predictions that adding VAT to private school fees would set off a wave of parents moving children to the state sector have been proved wrong at their first key test, according to figures from councils in England.

While critics including the former chancellor Jeremy Hunt had predicted that up to 90,000 children could flood the state sector if VAT of 20% was charged, most councils say they have seen no impact from the policy in applications to start at state secondary schools later this year.

Chief executive of Reach says he is committed to print, and higher online income will keep business afloat

The boss of the publisher of the Mirror, Express and Star newspapers has said that its print titles will become loss-making in six to eight years, but that its burgeoning digital strategy will save them from closure.

The chief executive of Reach, which owns more than 100 news brands including the Manchester Evening News, the Birmingham Mail and the Liverpool Echo, said he intended to remain committed to print even when the operations became a drag on the business.

Echo vom Eierstock is opening up the overwhelmingly male Alpine folk music scene with new versions of lyrics about nagging wives and naive girls

Elena Kaiser just wanted to yodel, and living in central Switzerland, that didn’t seem too much to ask for. “But as a woman you couldn’t yodel in a choir unless you were already a professional; there were simply no options,” she says. There were also the words to the songs, portraying an idyllic Alpine life surrounded by pristine nature and overseen by a benevolent God, the men in charge and the women presented either as naive girls, self-sacrificing mothers or nagging wives. Kaiser couldn’t get past them: “The beautiful melodies with these completely outdated lyrics.”

So, in 2022, she founded Switzerland’s first feminist yodelling choir, and Echo vom Eierstock (“echo from the ovary”) has been rewriting traditional yodelling songs and dragging the Alpine folk music scene into the 21st century ever since.

More people were killed in the 1945 attack than the atomic bombing of Nagasaki a few months later, but there is no national memorial, accurate death toll or compensation for survivors

Not even the passage of eight decades has dimmed Shizuko Nishio’s memory of the night American bomber planes killed tens of thousands of people in the space of a few hours and turned her city to ash.

In the early hours of 10 March 1945, around 300 B-29 Superfortress bombers dropped 330,000 incendiary devices on Tokyo and killed an estimated 100,000 civilians, in an attack that cost more lives than the atomic bombing, months later, of Nagasaki.

Yunus is facing a huge security challenge as some police refuse to return to their posts, gang crime is rife and tensions simmer with the country’s army chief

When Muhammad Yunus flew back to Bangladesh in August, he was greeted by bleak scenes. The streets were still slick with blood, and the bodies of more than 1,000 protesters and children were piled up in morgues, riddled with bullets fired by police.

Sheikh Hasina had just been toppled by a student-led revolution after 15 years of authoritarian rule. She fled the country in a helicopter as civilians, seeking revenge for her atrocities, ransacked her residence.

Former Lenin Museum in Tampere, which opened in 1946 as a symbol of Finnish-Russian friendship, has rebranded amid Ukraine war

A Finnish museum dedicated to the Russian Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin has reopened under a new name and with new exhibits in response to rapidly changing relations between two neighbouring countries after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The former Lenin Museum in Tampere, which closed in November, reopened this month under a new name, Nootti, which refers to the Finnish word for a diplomatic note.

People warn of growing lawlessness amid concerns that thousands of escaped convicts may try to exact revenge

Mass prison escapes during the chaos of fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where Rwanda-backed M23 rebels have captured two of its largest cities over the past two months, have caused panic among the public.

Jailbreaks involving thousands of people at four prisons in the region have accompanied the rapid advance that the militia started in January in its fighting against the Congolese army that also caused widespread chaos and confusion.

Yolanda Díaz Pérez’s leftwing government has championed employment reform similar to Labour’s proposals – and she tells British business there is nothing to fear

Spain’s leftwing deputy prime minister, Yolanda Díaz Pérez, has a message for Labour politicians as the UK government’s employment rights bill takes its next step to becoming law this week: take heart from our success.

With business groups in the UK issuing dire warnings about the impact of the workers’ rights package, Díaz, the minister of labour and social economy, remembers her own government’s battle when it thrashed out radical labour laws that came into force in 2022. “We went through nine months of hell, literally. We had the press against it, academia, research centres – everybody was saying this was going to contribute to unemployment and not eradicate it,” she recalls.

We are far more likely to use our hands to type or swipe than pick up a pen. But in the process we are in danger of losing cognitive skills, sensory experience – and a connection to history

By Christine Rosen. Read by Laurel Lefkow

The actor grew up poor, got rich, then lost everything backing the 2019 Homeless World Cup. Now he’s giving away more of his money to help 900 total strangers. Doesn’t he think he’s done enough?

Michael Sheen walks into a post office in Port Talbot and asks to withdraw £100,000. “That would be nice,” says the young woman behind the till. Then it dawns on her that he’s not joking. “Can I do £100,000?” she asks her colleague. She cannot.

“I loved that so much. She was really funny,” says Sheen. Filmed for a new Channel 4 documentary, Michael Sheen’s Secret Million Pound Giveaway, this was part of the actor’s two-year project to use £100,000 of his own money to buy £1m worth of debt, owed by about 900 people in south Wales – and immediately cancel it.

US president’s late-night social media post came after Turnbull criticised Trump’s leadership as ‘chaotic’

• Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred LIVE: latest news and updates
• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Donald Trump has lashed former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull as a “weak and ineffective leader” who was rejected by the Australian people in a late-night social media post.

Taking to Truth Social platform just before midnight Sunday night in Washington DC, Trump said Turnbull led Australia from “behind” and did not understand China.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email

Crime scenes set up in Green Park area with 40-year-old man taken into custody, say police

A man has been arrested after a 40-year-old woman who was shot dead in Talbot Green, about 15 miles west of Cardiff.

The woman was found with serious injuries in the Green Park area of the Welsh town just after 6pm on Sunday and could not be saved by emergency services, south Wales police said.

How a rogue letting agency destroyed homes and caused hundreds of pounds in damage. Sirin Kale reports

Hajaj Hajaj was 79 when he rented out his house in south London, so his daughter, Kinda Jackson, urged him to use a reputable lettings agent for peace of mind. He hired a company called Imperial after being impressed by the professionalism of the agent, Shan Miah.

But, Kinda tells Helen Pidd, her father became seriously ill with Covid and almost died, and when he came out of hospital it was to find his wife had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, meaning he suddenly needed to pay for her care. He then discovered that during this time the rent for his property had suddenly stopped.

• Buffalo quarterback rewarded for MVP season
• Pittsburgh make move for Seattle receiver
• Davante Adams agrees to deal with Rams
• Garrett agrees new deal to stay with Browns

NFL MVP Josh Allen was rewarded Sunday with a contract extension worth $330m, with $250m of it guaranteed, which makes him among the league’s highest-paid players.

The Buffalo Bills announced the agreement, while two people with knowledge of the deal revealed the contract’s value to the Associated Press. The new deal adds two years to Allen’s contract and locks the 28-year-old in through the 2030 season.